"Mannerism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he was a good reviewer, even after making allowance for the prejudices and partisanships of the time, and for the monkey tricks of mannerism, which, at any rate in his earlier days, were incumbent on a reviewer in "Maga." He is too prone to the besetting sins of reviewing—the right hand defections and left hand fallings off, which, being interpreted, consist ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... detractors. For When We Dead Awaken is very like the sort of play that haunted the "anti-Ibsenite" imagination in the year 1893 or thereabouts. It is a piece of self-caricature, a series of echoes from all the earlier plays, an exaggeration of manner to the pitch of mannerism. Moreover, in his treatment of his symbolic motives, Ibsen did exactly what he had hitherto, with perfect justice, plumed himself upon never doing: he sacrificed the surface reality to the underlying ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... my bruises by condescending once or twice in the course of the evening to talk with me. The great historian was light and playful, suiting his matter to the capacity of the boy: but it was done more suo—still his mannerism prevailed, still he tapped his snuff-box, still he smirked and smiled, and rounded his periods with the same air of good-breeding, as if he were conversing with men. His mouth, mellifluous as Plato's, was a round hole nearly in the centre ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... This was a mannerism which amused the House at the time, but did nothing to obscure the genuine qualities of Sir Walter, or lessen the esteem in which he was held. It cannot be said that the House of Commons was habitually moved by his argument in debate. But he was held in its warmest esteem, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... creative activity, he recognized only one self-imposed limitation—beauty. Hence, though his span of life was short, his work is imperishable. He steadily progressed: but he was ever true, beautiful and pure, and freer than any other master from superficiality and mannerism. He produced a vast number of pictures, elevating to men of every race and of every age, and before whose immortal beauty artists of every school unite ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... in some cases is certain; but it is also quite as evident that the veriest daub, if its subject be attractive, is enjoyed no less thoroughly. There are prigs of course, the children of the "prignorant," who babble of Botticelli, and profess to disdain any picture not conceived with "high art" mannerism. Yet even these will forget their pretence, and roar over a Comic Cuts found on the seat of a railway carriage, or stand delighted before some unspeakable poster of a melodrama. It is well to face the plain fact that the most popular illustrated books which please ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... spectator's existence varies inversely as the degree of dramatic value. Thus, at one end of the scale we have, for instance, Mrs. Fiske, whose fondness for playing to the centre of the stage and ignoring the audience is commented upon as a mannerism; at the other, the low comedian who says his say or sings his song directly at the audience and converses gaily with them as his boon companions. Now it will be shown that familiar address of the audience and the singing of monodies to musical accompaniment are ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... a joy to his present company, but the eccentric mannerism of one is much easier to imitate than the charm of another, and the subjects of the habitual mimic are all too apt to become ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... though he fought to refrain from backward glances, he was now and again taken off his guard. A few of her pencil marks on the margin of a leaf in one of his books; a gesture, a little mannerism of some woman passing him in the street—and he would be ready to sink down with weariness and loneliness, like a tired traveller ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... system of instruction that may tend to perpetuate mannerism, to cramp originality, and fetter genius, has of late years led to considerable opposition to art-academies generally, whenever more is contemplated by them than the mere school-teaching of the pupil, and the affording ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... For the Germans are the tonangebende (the standard-setting) nation in music to-day, and, as there seems to be a natural antipathy between the Slavic and the Teutonic mind, the Germans are apt, like Mendelssohn, to regard as mannerism what is simply the exotic fragrance which betrays a foreign nationality. The ultro-Teutons still persist in their depreciation of Chopin. In the latest edition of Brockhaus's "Conservations-Lexicon" ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... with trembling fingers counted its contents. His weird eyes assumed a greedy expression, and his unkempt beard and mustache twitched with the muscles of his mouth and chin. It was quite evident from his very mannerism that Thurid had keenly guessed the man's weakness—even the clawlike, clutching movement of the fingers betokened the ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Percy believe that—my word!" and Mollie imitated the mannerism perfectly. For young Falconer, be it known, was partial to good clothes of a rather flashy type, and much given to showing them off. He had very little good sense—in fact, what little he had, some of his enemies used to say, he displayed when he showed a preference for pretty Betty ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... enabled her to move among these people as a studious observer of this aspect of human nature, neither adopting their costume nor imitating their manners. She was very unostentatious and simple in her style of dress, and never, in the slightest degree, affected the mannerism of mindless and ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Lecky's place. He spread out the diagram, finishing it as he talked. His nervous, faint smile appeared as the mannerism ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... his face, was marked by the way in which he walked, in which he sat, in which he stood, and, above all, in which he bowed." The Whig historian, here following the Whig tradition, formed his estimate of the whole man from what was merely a parliamentary mannerism. Pitt, as we have seen, was a prey to shyness and gaucherie; and the rigid attitude which he adopted for the House was not so much the outcome of a sense of superiority (though he had an able man's consciousness of worth) ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... rhythm. Body and mind must move together in harmony. So it is with the Mohammedan over the Koran, and the Rabbi over the Talmud. Jews sway at prayer for the same reason. Movement of the body is not a mere mannerism; it is part of the emotion, like the instrumental accompaniment to a song. The child cons his lesson moving; we foolishly call it "fidgeting." The child is never receptive unless also active. But there is another of Montaigne's feelings, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... because a man is in opposition to Senator Lodge there is no guarantee that he has freed himself from the routineer's habit of mind. A prejudice against some mannerism or a dislike of pretensions may merely cloak some other kind of routine. Take the "good government" attitude. No fresh insight is behind that. It does not promise anything; it does not offer to contribute new values to human life. The machine which exists is ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... travelled and even lived in more lands than one. They have encountered vicissitudes and seen much that is odd and varied in nature and human nature. In consequence they are often pleasant and interesting talkers, refreshingly free from mannerism or self-consciousness. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Mason. I noted at dinner that in some manner you had destroyed Haggerty's photograph of your finger-tips. But I recognize you, and know you—your gestures, the turn of your head, every little mannerism. And if you do not do as I bid, I'll take my oath in court as to your identity. Besides,"—with a nod toward the suitcases—"if you're not the man, why this hurry? An hour. I see, fortunately, you have already changed your ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... the change. To him it had appeared chiefly as an increased womanliness, a gentle softness of speech and mannerism very charming and attractive. Those few days at sea together had been like a dream to him. He had come on board as nearly broken-hearted as a strong man could be, and fiercely anxious to reach his destination and know the whole, cruel truth. In a few hours ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... frown at her newspaper deepened; otherwise she made no response. She learned with difficulty, like a Bourbon; but many years' experience had at last convinced her that her daughter's occasional mocking mannerism had to be put up with. Conceivably there were people in the world who might have liked this mild cynical way of Carlisle's, seeing in it, not indeed a good quality, but, so to say, the seamy side of a good quality; the lingering outpost of a good quality ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... me—that the subject may not be approached except through the dicta of certain ecclesiastic bodies, and that the language which touches it must not be that every-day language which mirrors the vitality of our thought, but should have some twist of that theologic mannerism, which is as cold to the boy as to the busy man ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... of the punishing of Pathans, of drilling by companies and of agriculture; and he writes as one from whom no craft could hide its mysteries. This fascination of mere craft, this delight in the technicalities and dialect of the world's work, is not a mannerism. It is not a parade of omniscience or the madness of a note-book worm. It is fundamental in Mr Kipling. It is wrong to think of Between the Devil and the Deep Sea or of .007 as the unfortunate rioting ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... was about twenty-eight, tall and bony, with the shoulder stoop of a hard worker. Con and the father had the same general peculiarities. The three were identical in height and complexion, and in their mannerism and tricks of speech; but to-night the old man had a vacant, helpless expression, and seemed for the greater part of the time unconscious of the company he was in, and looked furtively about him into ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... from the utterances of darling Mr. Povey on the stairs, and Sophia delivered them with an exact imitation of Mr. Povey's vocal mannerism. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Mr. Carlyle ... to have painted these things alone—however strange their mannerism ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... drafted on to the hustings, could have given a lucid or intelligent statement of his views, or indication that he was furnished with any, and yet not one slip on the part of a candidate, one inconsistent point, personal mannerism or peccadillo, but was remarked in an astonishingly humorous ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... week, until she came down out of the grim iron door of the shirt factory where she worked, his one hip flung out, bamboo cane bent almost double, and, in his further zeal to attitudinize, one finger screwing up furiously at a vacant upper lip. That was a favorite comedy mannerism, screwing at where ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Mr. Kenyon should misrepresent me so. Euphuisms there may be to the end of the world—affected parlances—just as a fop at heart may go without shoestrings to mimic the distractions of some great wandering soul—although that is a bad comparison, seeing that what is called Carlyle's mannerism, is not his dress, but his physiognomy—or ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... you, if at all, for a lack of mannerism," said Vera briskly. "It's too bad of you. Here I am as so much ballast for your party, and when I begin to make myself useful, you pretend I'm not there. But I ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... violence and vigour of Campanella. Campanella borrows little by way of simile or illustration from the outer world, and he never falls into the commonplaces of poetic phraseology. His poems exhibit the exact opposite of the Petrarchistic or the Marinistic mannerism. Each sonnet seems to have been wrenched alive and palpitating from the poet's heart. There is no smoothness, no gradual unfolding of a theme, no rhetorical exposition, no fanciful embroidery, no sweetness of melodic cadence, in his masculine art of poetry. Brusque, rough, ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... espionage. And it was easy to see how he had been able to do it. Fred knew that he must be a Russian. Yet in every detail of his appearance he was German. His clothes, his bearing, his every little mannerism, were carefully studied. Fred guessed that this was no servant, but a secret agent of much skill and experience. He was to learn the truth of his surmise before many ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... you will do well to give full effect to some such mannerism as Mr. WARNER'S trick of hitching up the left side of the trousers and tapping the ground seven times. And just as the bowler is about to start his run you can disconcert him by suddenly whipping round to see if they have moved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... the error. It is a common thing to hear such and such statues, or pictures, recommended as models. If the advice is followed,—as it too often is literally,—the consequence must be an offensive mannerism; for, if repeating himself makes an artist a mannerist, he is still more likely to become one if he repeat another. There is but one model that will not lead him astray,—which is Nature: we do not mean what is merely obvious to the senses, but whatever is so acknowledged by the mind. So far, then, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... like a boy investigating a new mechanical toy. He was so interested that he forgot himself and pushed his hair straight back off his forehead with the gesture that had become an unconscious mannerism, spoiling utterly the plastered effect which he had with so much pains given to his hair. But Hank and the fireman were neither suspicious nor observing, and only laughed at his exuberance, which they believed was going to die a violent death when Jack had spent ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... finished period for him, and by detaching several of the sixteenths in the first group, the first and fourth, he makes the accent clearer,—at least to the eye. He indicates alla breve with 88 to the half. In later studies examples will be given of this phrasing, a phrasing that becomes a mannerism with the editor. He offers no startling finger changes. The value of his criticism throughout the volume seems to be in the phrasing, and this by no means conforms to accepted notions of how Chopin should be interpreted. I intend quoting ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... into the Republic. In 1916 they all but grumbled themselves into revolution. One heard revolt whispered in a thousand places. But they did not revolt. They will not revolt. Grumbling is a mere outer mannerism. In their hearts they ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... commands a style excellently adapted to his purpose: clear, forcible, free from mannerism, yet telling and often memorable in phrase. Whatever may be the exact magnitude of his services to pure science, he was a master in the writing of English for the purposes of exposition and controversy, and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the blinking, and to herself she pronounced it a new and ugly mannerism. She did not take the trouble to notice the eyes themselves, to read the earnest desire to please her, written so plainly ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... or expressions used in a new sense, turns of phrases and combinations of all kinds, to produce the appearance of intellect in order to compensate for the want of it which is so painfully felt. It is amusing to see how, with this aim in view, first this mannerism and then that is tried; these they intend to represent the mask of intellect: this mask may possibly deceive the inexperienced for a while, until it is recognised as being nothing but a dead mask, when it is laughed at and exchanged ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... do not disturb nor divide their greatness. The lights are kept broad and bright, and yet are found on near approach to be charged with intricate design. This, again, is a part of the great system of treatment which I shall hereafter call "Proutism;" much of what is thought mannerism and imperfection in Prout's work, being the result of his determined resolution that minor details shall never break up his large masses ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... education is superseded by a narrow economical or religious vein. The grace and cheerfulness of Athenian life have disappeared; and a spirit of moroseness and religious intolerance has taken their place. The charm of youth is no longer there; the mannerism of age makes itself unpleasantly felt. The connection is often imperfect; and there is a want of arrangement, exhibited especially in the enumeration of the laws towards the end of the work. The Laws are full of flaws and repetitions. The Greek is in places very ungrammatical ...
— Laws • Plato
... it. Now first I will say, that, when I became a Catholic, nothing struck me more at once than the English out-spoken manner of the priests. It was the same at Oscott, at Old Hall Green, at Ushaw; there was nothing of that smoothness, or mannerism, which is commonly imputed to them, and they were more natural and unaffected than many an Anglican clergyman. The many years, which have passed since, have only confirmed my first impression. I have ever found it in the priests of this Diocese; did I wish to point out a straightforward ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... our hero revelled awhile under the protection of Sir Charles Sterling, and the petting of peers, Members of Parliament, and loungers who swarm therein. Certain gentlemen of Stock Exchange mannerism and dressiness gave the protege the go-by, and even sneered at those who noticed him with kindness. But then these are of the men with whom every question is checked by money, and is balanced on the pivot of profit and loss. I dare say some of them thought the worse of Judas ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... expression during my Davis Cup trip happened to be "Peach" for any particularly good shot by my opponent. The gallery at the Championship, quick to appreciate any mannerism of a player, and to, know him by it, enjoyed the remark on many occasions as the ball went floating by me. In my match with Kingscote in the final set, the court was very slippery owing to the heavy drizzle that had ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... Toepffer illustrates the true aim of Art, as being the expression, the idealization, and not the rigid copy of Nature. He maintains that Nature should be the only teacher, and that we are to be wedded to no man's mannerism. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... Browning's Grammarian, every native custom, every native conventionality, every one of the ten thousand ceremonial observances to which natives attach so vast an importance. He must grow to understand each one of the hints and doubles ententes, of which Malays make such frequent use, every little mannerism, sign and token, and, most difficult of all, every motion of the hearts, and every turn of thought, of those whom he is beginning to call his own people. He must become conscious of native Public Opinion, which is often diametrically opposed to the opinion ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... a training department one of the most valuable points of the training consists in the outspoken comments. And this does not only refer to musical work, but to personal faults. We all know that if a mannerism does not interfere with the unity of a strong personality, it may be left alone. But there are some mannerisms which merely express the weaknesses of those who possess them, and which spoil the expression of the personality. These must ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... mannerism of Wagner's dramas is the tedious length of explanation in some scenes or soliloquies, and they have often been severely criticized. There is one in Tristan, King Marke's speech at the end of Act II., and I may say at once that after all that has been said the objections ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... with those of the other speakers. Had he still any marks of the ignoble world from which he sprang? Any defect of pronunciation, any native awkwardness of utterance? Impossible to judge himself infallibly, but he was conscious of no vulgar mannerism. Though it was so long since he left Whitelaw, the accent of certain of the Professors still remained with him as an example: when endeavouring to be graceful, he was wont to hear the voice of Dr Nares, or of Professor Barber who lectured on English ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... swinging his head from side to side in the strange racial mannerism. "Now hol' on a minnet, jedge," he said, defensively. "'Tain't like as if I didn't 'preciate what the docteh done. 'Tain't that. Docteh Trescott is er kind man, an' 'tain't like as if I didn't 'preciate ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... ease. Any one who has watched at all carefully the Cardinal's career, whether in old days or later, must have been struck with this feature of his character, his naturalness, the freshness and freedom with which he addressed a friend or expressed an opinion, the absence of all mannerism and formality; and, where he had to keep his dignity, both his loyal obedience to the authority which enjoined it and the half-amused, half-bored impatience that he should be the person round whom ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the lines of cynicism, or dissipation, round the sombre, reckless eyes and intolerant mouth. He had a cool, clear voice and a whimsical, devil-may-care sort of manner that was apparently natural to him, as was also a certain languid grace of movement. He possessed an irritating mannerism of continually elevating his chin and dilating his curved nostrils disdainfully in a sort of soundless sniff. Beyond a slight flush he showed little trace of his ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... we find ourselves in the right temper to seek out small sequestered loveliness. The constant recurrence of similar combinations of colour and outline gradually forces upon us a sense of how the harmony has been built up, and we become familiar with something of nature's mannerism. This is the true pleasure of your 'rural voluptuary,'—not to remain awe-stricken before a Mount Chimborazo; not to sit deafened over the big drum in the orchestra, but day by day to teach himself some new beauty—to experience some new vague and tranquil sensation that has before evaded him. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... But the stiff mannerism of the patriarchal system which survived until recently from the early Roman times gave him that formal tone and authoritative manner which are so characteristic of his conversation in private. His deliberate but unhesitating ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the teacher.—Strange as it may seem, the teacher may himself be a distraction in the classroom. Any striking mannerism, any peculiarity of manner or carriage, extreme types of dress, or any personal quality that attracts attention to itself is a distraction to the class. One teacher may have a very loud or ill-modulated voice; another may speak too low to be heard without too much effort; ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... I am not conscious of the quaintness and mannerism laid to my charge, and am very sure that I have always written too naturally (that is, too much from the impulse of thought and feeling) to have studied 'attitudes,' yet the critic was quite right in stating his opinion, and so am I in being grateful to him for the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... her epistolary style was his very own, every turn of phrase, every little mannerism. The mystery of it overwhelmed him again, though he had grown somewhat accustomed to the idea during the last twelvemonth. Why was she so anxious he should marry Julia? Had he, situated as he was, the right to win the love of this splendid creature, in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... art thou?" asked one of them suspiciously. Perhaps there had been a shade too much cocksureness in the hakim's voice, but he acted faultlessly when he answered. Voice, accent, mannerism, guilty ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... will make you fishers of men." for he was quite content to be a fisher. Let us hope that occasionally, as by a miracle, his lenient Master enabled him to catch some well-disposed sinner; but as a rule his mannerism, his set phrases, his utter lack of magnetism and appreciation of the various shades of character with which he was dealing, repelled even those who respected his motive and mission. Sensitive, sad-hearted women ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... regularity of form gives pleasure to the taste, while the position of balanced and parallel parts adds clearness, coherence, and emphasis to the thoughts expressed. This method of sentence structure, if employed too frequently, however, will lead to a mannerism difficult to overcome. The caution to be heeded in the case of this type of sentence as well as in the case of every other is, "Nothing too much." Observe ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... My thoughts did wander. I was thinking of my mother. Something about you reminds me of her. I do not know what, unless it is that little mannerism you have of pursing up your lips when you hesitate or ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... their internal belief in their religious professions. First, I will say that when I became a Catholic, nothing struck me more at once than the English outspoken manner of the priests. There was nothing of that smoothness or mannerism which is commonly imputed to them. Next, I was struck, when I had more opportunity of judging of the priests, by the simple faith in the Catholic creed and system, of which they always give evidence, and which they never seemed to feel in any ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Mrs. Haxton. She entered, with the graceful ease of one accustomed to meet greater dignitaries than the head of a small Italian colony. Signor Marchetti advanced a few paces. Where a lady was concerned he could be courteous enough, his abruptness being a specially cultivated mannerism intended to impress natives with a sense of his importance. But, beneath the skin of office, he was Italian to the core, and he promised himself a fine scenic effect when the Englishwoman's glance fell on the other ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... power, infinite variety is the characteristic of Dante's style, as it is of his invention. With a stronger individuality than any poet of any age or country, there is not a trace of mannerism in all his poem. The stern, the tender, the grand, simple exposition, fierce satire, and passionate appeal have each their appropriate words and their appropriate cadence. This Cary did not perceive, and has told the stories of Francesca ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... from any one. How things change, become effaced and forgotten. Here I am accommodating myself to this finical Japan and dwindling down to its affected mannerism; I feel that my thoughts run in smaller grooves, my tastes incline to smaller things,—things which suggest nothing greater than a smile. I am becoming used to tiny and ingenious furniture, to doll-like desks, to miniature bowls with which to play at dinner, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... "objects of art," for in such an environment art is everywhere. An artistic people no more dreams of creating art than a great nobleman of consciously exhibiting a distinguished manner. Distinction lies in his slightest mannerism without his being conscious of the fact. So, among artistic peoples, the most ordinary and humble objects have style. And this style, furthermore, is in perfect harmony with the purpose of the object. It is absolutely appropriate for that purpose in its proportions, in the purity of its lines, ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... little luxury. Paucity of money gave rise to that habit of barter and dicker in trade which was a mannerism of our fathers. Agriculture formed the basal industry, especially in the Southern colonies; yet in New England and Pennsylvania both manufactures and commerce thrived. Pennsylvania's yearly foreign commerce exceeded 1,000,000 pounds sterling, ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... stopper on bombast and grandiloquence and mannerism; be neither supercilious nor overbearing; cease to carp at other people's performances and to count their loss your gain. And then, perhaps the greatest of all your errors is this: instead of arranging your matter first, and then elaborating ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the future. The inward and outward characteristics of Shakspere are his vast and rich variety of persons and themes, with his wondrous delineation of each and all,—not only limitless funds of verbal and pictorial resource, but great excess, superfoetation—mannerism, like a fine, aristocratic perfume, holding a touch of musk (Euphues, his mark)—with boundless sumptuousness and adornment, real velvet and gems, not shoddy nor paste—but a good deal of bombast and fustian—(certainly ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... reality is sharp and clear, but distorted. Burlesque and satire are never far away in their most serious moments. Not even the calmest and best ordered of Spanish minds can resist a tendency to excess of all sorts, to over-elaboration, to grotesquerie, to deadening mannerism. All that is greatest in their art, indeed, lies on the borderland of the extravagant, where sublime things skim the thin ice of absurdity. The great epic, Don Quixote, such plays as Calderon's La Vida es Sueno, such paintings as El Greco's Resurreccion and Velasquez's dwarfs, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... beauty had hesitated an her early thirties it came to an abrupt decision just afterward and completely left her. A tentative outlay of wrinkles on her face suddenly deepened and flesh collected rapidly on her legs and hips and arms. Her mannerism of drawing her brows together had become an expression—it was habitual when she was reading or speaking and even while she ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of the unequalled facilities of a European railway carriage for rendering unpleasant things almost intolerable. These people could find no way to alleviate the poignancy of their position. Coleman did not know where to look. Every personal mannerism becomes accentuated in a European railway carriage. If you glance at a man, your glance defines itself as a stare. If you carefully look at nothing, you create for yourself a resemblance to all wooden-headed things. A newspaper is, then, in the nature of a preservative, ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... This set, formal mannerism is entirely inconsistent with that commanding, intellectual influence, which the teacher should exert in the administration of his school. He should work, with what an artist calls boldness and freedom of touch. Activity and enterprise of mind should ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... composition—not, as you will observe, a caricature of any one picture, but a boiling down of all into an original picture of my own in which I emphasise his mannerisms. Furthermore, in my catalogue I parodied the same artist's mannerism in drawing in black and white, and with one or two exceptions this applies to all the works I exhibited. I hit upon a new idea for the illustrated catalogue. The illustrations, with few exceptions, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... elaborate kind does not often make its appearance very early in literary departments; and there may be (v. inf.) some special reasons why it should not do so in prose fiction. With the exception of Marivaux, who had carried his attention to it over the boundary-line of mannerism, few earlier novelists, though some of them were great writers, had made a point of it, the chief exceptions being in the particular line of "wit," such as Hamilton, Crebillon fils, and Voltaire. Chateaubriand had been almost the first to attempt a novel-rhetoric; and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of saying things, could I find fault. He seemed generous, broad-minded, and, for a sailor, very much of a man of the world. It was easy for me to overlook his excessive suavity of speech and super-courtesy of social mannerism. It was not that. But all the time I was distressingly, and, I suppose, intuitively aware, though in the darkness I couldn't even see his eyes, that there, behind those eyes, inside that skull, was ambuscaded an alien personality that spied upon me, measured me, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... remain—showing nothing against the sky-line. Long practice had freed the posture from irksomeness. As a young man Mr. Fletcher had been employed in a public tennis-court, and there had learned the little mannerism to which he now had constant resort. In those days the necessity of freeing himself from the constant annoyance of nets to be tightened, or of disputes between rival claims to courts to be settled, had driven ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... betray a lacklustre that might be the result of over-indulgence in liquor or want of rest; he is thin and poorly clad, his face is cleanly shaven. At every pause in his speech he runs his fingers through his thick dishevelled black hair, and finishes this mannerism with wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. His delivery is awkward and these repeated ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... falling away of the schools of Italy, and especially of the followers of Michael Angelo and Raphael, into mannerism and exaggeration, fitly expressed in delineation of heathen gods and goddesses, there arose a cluster of painters in the North of Italy who had ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... called affected, as was his art, because it wasn't exactly like everybody else's. I have never yet come across the genius whose manner was exactly like everybody else's, and shyness, self-consciousness, counted for something in his, at least at the start. He had only to exaggerate this manner, or mannerism, to set London talking. It was the easier because rumours quickly began to go about of the darkened room in which he worked, of his turning night into day and day into night like Huysmans's hero, and of this or of that strange ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... of his mannerism; but the fact that a man with the desire for chess should have grown up without being able to see or engage in a game astonished her not a little. She pondered on the circumstance for some time, looking into vacancy and hindering ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... was well set on, and his whole bearing was that of one who had learned ease, and grace, and freedom, combined with dignity of carriage, in no school of practice and mannerism, but from the example of those with whom he had been brought up, and by familiar intercourse from his cradle upward with the high-born and gently nurtured ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... thought to, and which come upon him as a surprise when they are pointed out to him. Their detection is rendered the more easy when one knows what to look for from the fact that they are, unlike gestures and tricks of voice, permanent. A mannerism may not strike two observers in the same way, nor is it easy to compare, for it is fleeting, and the memory has to be relied upon to recall a former gesture in order to compare it with the last. It is not so with a hand-gesture in writing. The sign remains side by side with its ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... labours to exaggerate Shakespeare, and by his insistence and iteration goes about to spoil for us the "flower-soft hands" of Cleopatra's rudder-maiden; but he shall not spoil Shakespeare's phrase for us. And behold, in all this fundamental fumbling Swinburne's critics saw only a "mannerism," if they saw even thus ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... little all through. But her achievements were less hampered now by these material hindrances than by the fact that her repertoire consisted of a limited number of leading parts, which she had sung so frequently that a certain monotony in the conscious calculation of effect often developed into a mannerism which, from her tendency to exaggeration, was at ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... better, my dear sir!" The professor turned beamingly upon me and continued, dropping into a Whistlerian mannerism that he had sometimes: "You must not blame that great wind of a Keredec for preaching at other people to listen. It gives the poor man more room ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... and euphonious constructions. Although not acquainted with the word style in any other sense than that it bears in the expression "style-book," the Danish equivalent for what in English is termed an "exercise-book," I tried to acquire a certain style, and was very near falling into mannerism, from sheer inexperience, when a sarcastic master, to my distress, reminded me one day of Heiberg's words: "The unguent of expression, smeared thickly over the thinness ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... exactly how far he could go, and never made experiments in search of qualities that were not his. Although he had a certain quality of delicate imagination, he was a realist, and could not paint without a model; he never acquired a mannerism, or applied to one sitter the treatment that some artists seem to keep for types. Every figure he set upon canvas has its own individuality, and, while Velazquez, like other artists, had manners and methods that belong to fixed periods of his life, it is not easy to set down in cold print ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... as slowly unfolded it. He always handled money in that careful fashion—a habit which he had inherited from his father and his grandfather before him, and of which he was entirely unconscious. Filtering down through so many generations, the mannerism had ceased at last to be merely a physical peculiarity, and had become strangely spiritual in its suggestion. The craving for possession, the singleness of desire, the tenacity of grasp, the dread of relinquishment, the cold-blooded ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... sec,' he says of himself. 'Je veux imposer silence a mon coeur, qui croit avoir beaucoup a dire. Je tremble toujours de n'avoir ecrit qu'un soupir, quand je crois avoir note une verite.' Often he succeeds, but not always. At times his desire for dryness becomes a mannerism and fills whole pages with tedious and obscure argumentation. And, at other times, his sensibility gets the upper hand, throws off all control, and revels in an orgy of melodrama and 'espagnolisme.' Do what he will, he cannot ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... brooding horror; its rooms so peeled, meagre and creaking—depravity so sincere. Crime certainly had not been spared around the world to furnish its living actors for Treasure Island Inn. All the ragtag was there—not a lust nor a mannerism missing. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... festive sports, hand-to-hand combats, and ancient customs, charmingly intermingled. It is all very pretty and picturesque, but shallow; brilliant superficiality. Among the imitators of Fouque, as among the imitators of Walter Scott, this mannerism of portraying—not the inner nature of men and things, but merely the outward garb and appearance—was carried to still greater extremes. This shallow art and frivolous style is still [1833] in vogue in Germany as ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... us that the extreme peril of such a principle, incautiously applied, has not been pointed out, and that the method of Rubens has been so highly extolled for its technical perfection, without the slightest notice of the gross mannerism into which its facile brilliancy too frequently betrayed ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... think of it, I don't!" Mr. Morfey answered nearly all questions as though they were curious, disconcerting questions that took him by surprise. This mannerism was universally attractive—until you ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the Alban Hills of an intenser broken purple than I had yet seen them—their white towns blooming upon it like vague projected lights. It was like a piece of very modern painting, and a good example of how Nature has at times a sort of mannerism which ought to make us careful how we condemn out of hand the more refined and affected artists. The collection of marbles in the Casino (Winckelmann's) admirable and to be seen again. The famous Antinous ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... his mind melancholic; if the lines deepened in his face and the quick, bright look of his eye changed to a fitful, suspicious and desperate expression; if his splendid talent deteriorated too much into mannerism. Although this was his own fault, we could not help feeling pity for him, and the kind of regret with which we look on the fragments of a beautiful statue. He was evidently carried away with the ambition of becoming a ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... in its few remains of a first-rate character, there is but one voice throughout the whole of civilized Europe; and if ever their merit was called in question, it was in times when the modern arts of design had sunk to the lowest depths of mannerism. Not only all intelligent artists, but all men of any degree of taste, bow with enthusiastic adoration before the masterly productions of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... strong fresh blood was sent through its veins. Without them, perhaps, we should never have had the same appeal to the imagination and the nobler instincts in the Sistine paintings, although there is not in the whole of the work one single mannerism from Signorelli's style.[93] But what is called the "Terribilita" of the older master was entirely free from the sombre melancholy which strikes so gloomy a note in the work of Michelangelo. Signorelli's greatest gift to us is his conception of humanity, ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... proportioned, the uneasy spirit of the man ever looking out of those arresting eyes so wholly dominated him as to create a false impression of fragility, of a casket too frail to confine the burning, eager soul within. His emotions were dynamic, and in his every mannerism there was distinction. The vein of femininity which is found in all creative artists betrayed itself in one item of Mario's attire: a white French knot, which slightly overlay the lapels of ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... finish which he carries almost to excess, which was certainly carried to excess by Slingelandt, who worked three years continuously in painting the Meerman family. This style afterward degenerated into that smooth, affected, painful mannerism where the figures are like ivory, the skies enamel, and the fields velvet, of which Van der Werff is the best known representative. Among other things to be seen in this picture by Dou is a broom-handle, the size of a pen-holder, on which they say the artist ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... in an article in Punch on the advantage to a cricketer of some harmless mannerism, giving as an instance Mr. P.F. WARNER'S habit of hitching up the left side of his trousers and patting the ground seven times with his bat. This homely touch reminded me irresistibly of Rankin. Not that Rankin resembles Mr. WARNER even remotely in any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... himself that it was not the child's fault, he bore it at first with what self-restraint he could; but as solitude encouraged brooding thoughts, he found, as the summer wore on, that his stock of patience was running low. There were times when some chance sentence or imitated bit of mannerism on Dorothea's part almost drew from him that which in tragedy would be a cry, but which in our smaller life becomes ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... His lyric inspiration was here too strong; otherwise with Debussy. Each article of rebellion is more highly stressed in the French leader, save as to organic form, where the latter is far the stronger. And finally the element of mannerism cannot be ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... substance. He abandons the living model, and with recipes which he has gathered in the course of his experience, he proceeds to construct a drama or novel, a picture or statue. Now, the first period, says Taine, is that of genuine art; the second is that of mannerism. Our author cites the case of Michael Angelo, a man who was one of the most colossal embodiments of physical and mental energy that the world has ever seen. In Michael Angelo's case, the period ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... of execution, coupled with fine artistic style, is not to be acquired within a short space of time. In most of the apparently rough hewn scrolls of the Italian masters there is to be seen the result of experience in cutting, perhaps, hundreds of them previously. If we examine closely the mannerism of the different schools with regard to that seemingly insignificant termination of the back grooves called the shell; the different ways, breadths, depths and direction of the gouging will be found to give, ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... powder, his hand on his sword-guard, at the age of ten, plump and spirited as one of Fragonard's Cupids." Here we have the younger of the Goncourts, delineated with all the subtlety of a delicate mannerism. Edmond was eighteen at the time. Scarcely free of the ferule of his pedagogues, he already looked at life with that air of keen astonishment which was never to leave him, and which was to kindle in his eye the sort of phosphorescent ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... belief of them will tend to make us all more reverent and earnest in examining the utterances of others, more simple and truthful in giving vent to our own, fearing equally all prejudiced and hasty criticism, all self-willed mannerism, all display of fine words, as sins against the divine dignity of language. From these assertions I think we may conclude what is the true method of studying style. The critical examination of good authors, looking at language ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... danger lay in falling into mannerism, and too often repeating the same idea. He has a theory of coloring which is in danger of running out into coldness and poverty of effect. His idea seems to be, that in the representation of spiritual subjects the artist should avoid the sensualism ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 'in that balanced style in which the wise love to talk' (Symp.). The characteristics of rhetoric are insipidity, mannerism, and monotonous parallelism of clauses. There is more rhythm than reason; the creative power of imagination ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... Even to Thales, an observing, positive spirit that calculates eclipses, the world is full of daemons, remains of primitive animism.[63] In Plato, even leaving out his theory of Ideas, the employment of myth is not merely a playful mannerism, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... any mannerism, detracts from the thought because it calls the attention of the listener to the mannerism or affectation, when his whole attention should be monopolized by the thought. Read Herbert Spencer on the "Philosophy of Style," and apply his reasoning ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... with an expression of high refinement, but at the same time a frank cheerfulness and engaging affability. Their brothers were tall, and elegantly formed. They were dressed fashionably, but simply—with strict neatness and propriety, but without any mannerism or foppishness. Their whole demeanor was easy and natural, with that lofty grace and noble frankness which bespeak free-born souls that have never been checked in their growth by feelings of inferiority. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the people recall to God the vow made to them in Egypt, but sinks to accents of awe when they reflect upon the incidents of their former serfdom. Now Samson stands forth. In a broad arioso, half recitative, half cantilena, wholly in the oratorio style when it does not drop into the mannerism of Meyerbeerian opera, he admonishes his brethren of their need to trust in God, their duty to worship Him, of His promises to aid them, of the wonders that He had already wrought in their behalf; he bids them to put off their doubts and put on their armor of faith and ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... charm cannot do his arrogance and his effrontery assuredly will not do. And yet I said that this book gave me a wholesome shock. Far from deteriorating, Mr. Chesterton is improving. In spite of the awful tediousness of his mannerism of antithetical epigram, he does occasionally write finer epigrams than ever. His imagination is stronger, his fancy more delicate, and his sense of beauty widened. There are things in this book that really are very excellent indeed; things that, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... there is no better lecture on the prevailing vices of style and thought (if thought this frothy ferment of the mind may be called) than in Cotton Mather's "Magnalia." For Mather, like a true provincial, appropriates only the mannerism, and, as is usual in such cases, betrays all its weakness by the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... with her moral and intellectual strength, made her the champion of the suffering and oppressed wherever she found them. Her gift was essentially lyrical, though much of her work was not so in form. Her weak points are the lack of compression, an occasional somewhat obtrusive mannerism, and frequent failure both in metre and rhyme. Though not nearly the equal of her husband in force of intellect and the higher qualities of the poet, her works had, as might be expected on a comparison of their respective subjects and styles, a much earlier and wider acceptance with the ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... that made it seem stronger than it was. In figure she was delicate, but radiant of life and health—aglow, not ablaze. She was neither tall nor short, and was dressed simply, but in the fashion—I heard the other women discussing her clothes after she left. And she still had the mannerism that was most fascinating to me—she kept her eyes down while she was talking or listening, and raised them now and then with a full, ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... Beethoven seems to have evolved the themes of all four movements from the first; in Op. 106 and Op. 109, connection is clear between the first and last movements. Such an experiment was safe in the hands of Beethoven, and Brahms has never allowed it to become a mannerism; but second-rate composers, and superficial listeners run the danger of mistaking the shadow for the substance. To this matter we shall, however, soon return. Many references have been made to the composers who have influenced Brahms, yet we cannot resist naming one ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... towards him from the Marble Arch, and he saw that no mannerism of her gait had been changed. It was good to find her still Maisie, and, so to speak, his next-door neighbour. No greeting passed between them, because there had been ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... anything so markedly good as absolutely to insist on inclusion. The Essay on Conversation, however, seemed pretty peremptorily to challenge a place. It is in a style which Fielding was very slow to abandon, which indeed has left strong traces even on his great novels; and if its mannerism is not now very attractive, the separate traits in it are often sharp and well-drawn. The book would not have been complete without a specimen or two of Fielding's journalism. The Champion, his first attempt of this kind, has not been drawn upon in consequence of the ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... the crowd is only a stimulus that keeps every one dancing and howling in emulation. This unconsidered flow of early art remains present, more or less, to the end. Instead of vague custom we have schools, and instead of swaying multitudes academic example; but many a discord and mannerism survive simply because the musician is so suggestible, or so lost in the tumult of production, as never to reconsider what he does, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... should like to say that I prefer Giovanni Bellini to Gaudenzio; but unless Giotto and Giorgione, I really do not know who the Italian painters should stand before him. Bernardino Luini runs him close, but great as Bernardino Luini was, Gaudenzio, in spite of not a little mannerism, was greater. ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... dado was paneled off by the application of moldings to give it a lighter scale. The complete entablature was used only over the archway at the head of the stairs, where it was supported by square, fluted columns with beautifully carved capitals. Another mannerism of the time is the variation in the treatment of the doorways, the pedimental doorheads on one side being broken, whereas the ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... never happened, a joy, which, by his essential nature, he was barred from ever knowing. Yet, while his interest had gone to sleep and his energy was consumed in the endless battles he waged, he knew every trick of the light on her hair, every quick denote mannerism of movement, every line of her figure as expounded by her tailor-made gowns. Several times, six months or so apart, he had increased her salary, until now she was receiving ninety dollars a month. Beyond this he dared not go, though he had got around it by making the work easier. This he had accomplished ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Generaciones, cap. 28.—Juan de Mena introduces Villena into his "Laberinto," in an agreeable stanza, which has something of the mannerism ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... long now before the "style pompadour" began to make itself shown with regard to garden design—the exaggeration of an undeniable grace by an affected mannerism. All the rococco details which had been applied to architecture now began to find their duplication in the garden rockeries—weird fantasies built of plaster and ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Duerer has been over-praised. He stands so alone in his own field, that the people who care much for him generally lose the power of enjoying anything else rightly; and are continually attributing to the force of his imagination quaintnesses which are merely part of the general mannerism of ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... whimsical, contorted, and overloaded with ornament as it is, it yet compels admiration by its vigorous life and movement. The art of the sei-cento in Venice was extravagant, but it was alive. It escaped the most deadly of all faults, a cold and academic mannerism—and this at a time when the rest of Italy was given over to the inflated followers of Michelangelo and the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... more ready to acknowledge. France even, selfish and proud of its past supremacy in all things, has within the last quarter of a century laid aside much of its exclusiveness, and a Germanic infusion is perceptible through all the mannerism of the latest and best productions of the French school. Comparatively of late years is it, that the English mind has fairly come in contact with this German culture. Its first loud manifestation may be heard in the prose ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... in exacting the observance of the rule that the English present should talk to each other, as well as to the strangers, in French. He had a thorough colloquial knowledge of the French language, marked not so much by any French mannerism, of which there was little, as by a ready command of the vocabulary ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... time Jeremy was dressed in Feisul's clothes; and though he didn't look a bit like Feisul from a yard away, in the mist at ten yards, provided you were looking for Feisul, you'd have taken your Bible oath he was the man; for he had the gesture and mannerism ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... The mannerism of Professor Legros is still, of course, a common denominator for the older men, and the younger artists evince a familiarity with drawing unusual in England, due to the admirable training of Professor Brown and Mr. Henry Tonks. The Spartan Mr. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... said, be reasonably doubted. The anecdote is interesting, however, as showing in what a naturalistic spirit Michelangelo began to work. The unlimited mastery which he acquired over form, and which certainly seduced him at the close of his career into a stylistic mannerism, was based in the first instance upon profound ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... not young and she was certainly not handsome. The coquettish angle at which she carried her head was a mannerism surviving from a time when it was more becoming. She shuddered at the cold candor of the new business ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... movement he made, and his voice was extremely effective. Mr. Tree is the perfect Proteus of actors. He can wear the dress of any century and the appearance of any age, and has a marvellous capacity of absorbing his personality into the character he is creating. To have method without mannerism is given only to a few, but among the few is Mr. Tree. Miss Alma Murray does not possess the physique requisite for our conception of Helen, but the beauty of her movements and the extremely sympathetic quality of her voice gave an indefinable charm to her performance. Mrs. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of seriousness in the assembly, no mannerism of worship; some would say too little of the manner of worship. They think of nothing, in fact, save what meets their intelligence and enters into them by that method. They appear like men who have a digestion for strong meat, and have no conception ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the production of a man of genius. No one can too much admire the legerdemain of the magician who could produce this thing; for it is a story out of the Arabian Nights, told with a perfection of mannerism, a reproduction of the English in which the later translators of the Arabian Nights have seen fit to deal, a simulation of the movement and detail of the Eastern stories which fairly takes ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... N. {opp. 78} speciality, specialite[obs3]; individuality, individuity|; particularity, peculiarity; idiocrasy &c. (tendency) 176[obs3]; personality, characteristic, mannerism, idiosyncrasy; specificness &c. adj[obs3].; singularity &c. (unconformity) 83; reading, version, lection; state; trait; distinctive feature; technicality; differentia. particulars, details, items, counts; minutiae. I, self, I myself; myself, himself, herself, itself. V. specify, particularize, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Feuvre's qualities are very nearly the reverse of these: he has a fondness for integrity quite hostile in his case to simplicity. In his very frank appeal to one's susceptibility he is a little careless of sculptural considerations, which he is prone to sacrifice to pictorial ends. The result is a mannerism that in the end ceases to impress, and even becomes disagreeable. As nearly as may be in a French sculptor it borders on sentimentality, and finally the swaying attitudes of his figures become limp, and the startled-fawn eyes of his maidens and youths appear less touching than lackadaisical. ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... a hundred or even a thousand queer faces or eccentric figures, without the gift of invention or originality, will not of themselves constitute the designer a comic artist. The truth is that with Kenny Meadows mannerism takes the place of genius. You will recognise his hand anywhere without the familiar "K.M." appended to it, for all his faces are chubby (not to say puffy), and their arms and legs look for all the world as if the hand that designed them had been guided ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... scrolls, and a sombre sky is behind the figure. Invocation, a girl in white robes with arms raised above her head, and a Portrait of Mrs. F. Lucas, were also shown; but Greek Girls playing at Ball is not only the most important, but is also a picture that shows the mannerism of Lord Leighton's treatment of drapery at its finest. Elsewhere the undulating snaky coils may be somewhat distressing, here they float in the air and help the suggestion of movement. The landscape ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... in a mannerism all his own, an action that ended in an all-expressive shrug. "I suppose ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... sympathetically, perceiving with satisfaction that beneath his Metropolitan mannerism, and his amusing pomposities, and his perfectly dandiacal clothes, Charlie still remained the Sunday, possibly more naive than ever. This naivete of Charlie's was particularly pleasing to him, for the reason that it gave him a feeling of superiority to the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... that it is all plot, or, as with George Eliot, that there is no plot. The story comes naturally without calling for too much attention, and is thus proof of the completeness of the man's intellect. His language is clear, good, intelligible English, but it is defaced by mannerism. In all that he did, affectation was ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... and his head had been full of Hebrew poetry and Gospel ethics; until they had struck deep root into his heart, and the very expressions had become a part of him; so that he rarely spoke without some antique idiom or Scripture mannerism that gave a raciness to the merest trivialities of talk. But the influence of the Bible did not stop here. There was more in Robert than quaint phrase and ready store of reference. He was imbued with a spirit of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... confusion. "I have it yet. In those days misfortune had not curbed it. I had not learned to be charitable. When I was a child I used to ride with my father to the hunts at St. Gre, and I was too ready to pick out the weaknesses of his guests. If one of the company had a trick or a mannerism, I never failed to catch it. People used to ask me what I thought of such and such a person, and that was bad for me. I saw their failings and pretensions, but I ignored my own. It was the same ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... jacket and the spurred top-boots. It was her first meeting with such a type in the back-blocks of New South Wales. The gallant ease, the natural gayety, the charming manners that charmed no less for a clear trace of mannerism, were a peculiar refreshment after society racier of Riverina soil. Yet it was none of these things which attracted this woman to this man; for the susceptible girl was dead in her for the time being; but the desperate ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... the eccentricities of the age. As a specimen of prose style it is remarkable for its spirit and "go," qualities which may enable us to forget how turbid, ungraceful, and harsh it is. Nash had now dropped the mannerism of the Euphuists; he had hardly gained a style of his own. "Pierce Penniless," with its chains of "letter-leaping metaphors," rattles breathlessly on, and at length abruptly ceases. Any sense of the artistic fashioning of a sentence, or of the relative harmony of the parts of a composition, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... old Corthell beyond doubting or denial. Not a single inflection of his low-pitched, gently modulated voice was wanting; not a single infinitesimal mannerism was changed, even to the little tilting of the chin when he spoke, or the quick winking of the eyelids, or the smile that narrowed the corners of the eyes themselves, or the trick of perfect repose of his whole body. Even his handkerchief, as always, since first ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... we were not strangers at all. I suppose it is what they call mesmerism. He had that soft, delightful way of speaking, and gentle mannerism. There was nothing abrupt or new about him. He seemed, somehow, to become part of the life of any one in whom he chose to interest himself in the slightest. And he talked so delightfully, Arnold. I cannot tell you how ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the last ray of doubt fled from my mind, for to my trained ear the fellow's voice and accent were but feeble imitations of what they ought to be, and I fancied I could detect a little trick of mannerism I had observed in Cuthbert Mackenzie. It was time for me to show the iron hand, and I did not ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... is sometimes even agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke. But a mannerism which does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always offensive. And such is the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... shrivelled blossoms from the stout old laurels touched with frost of winter and old age. But I find little to dwell upon in either of them. Browning has more sap of life—Tennyson more ripe and mellow mastery. Each is here in the main reproducing his mannerism. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... Hunt is excellently qualified for the task which he has now undertaken. His style, in spite of its mannerism, nay, partly by reason of its mannerism, is well suited for light, garrulous, desultory ana, half critical, half biographical. We do not always agree with his literary judgments; but we find in him what is very rare in our time, the power of justly appreciating ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which was wrought outside of them, is plainly visible in the change in the style of Art. Byzantine models stiffened, formalized, and gradually destroyed the spirit of the early paintings. Richness of vestment and mannerism of expression took the place of simplicity and straightforwardness. The Art which is still the popular Art in Italy began to exhibit its lower round of subjects. Saints of all kinds were preferred to the personages ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... actor upon the French or English stage with whom we can compare him is the veteran Farren. But the comparison is to the advantage of the Frenchman, whose chief characteristic is his entire freedom from mannerism and stage trick. Mr. Farren is of the old and sterling school of actors, of which, unfortunately, so few remain. He stands first in his line upon the English boards, and deserves to be spoken of with all respect. Would that we had a dozen as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... of art should be able, before and above all, to portray humanity in its essential truth, and according to the original tendency of each type. Mannerism and affectation should forever be proscribed—unless they are imitated as an exercise—but all the excellence that chance has produced up to the present time should be incorporated in ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various |
