"Portrayal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kindergarten "in quite a horrid state of intoxication" from the wine-soaked bread upon which she had breakfasted. The mother, with the gentle courtesy of a South Italian, listened politely to her graphic portrayal of the untimely end awaiting so immature a wine bibber; but long before the lecture was finished, quite unconscious of the incongruity, she hospitably set forth her best wines, and when her baffled guest refused one after the other, she disappeared, only to quickly return with a small ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... to invent conditions or imagine situations. The life of any lad of Billy Topsail's years up there is sufficiently romantic. It is this skill in the portrayal of actual conditions that lie ready to the hand of the intelligent observer that makes Mr. Duncan's Newfoundland stories so noteworthy. 'The Adventures of Billy Topsail' is ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... 'Ramona,' you have made your name immortal, you have done something which is far greater. You are but one: they are many. You have helped those who cannot help themselves. As a novel, 'Ramona' must stand beside 'Romola,' both as regards literary excellence and the portrayal of life's deepest, most vital, most solemn interests. I think nothing in literature since Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield' equals your description of the flight of Ramona and Alessandro. Such delicate pathos and tender joy, such pure conception of life's ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... 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 given ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... his own sociological and religious views, I must acknowledge his good intentions, while deploring what seems to me an artistic error. But, all said, the book is very far from being ordinary; its quality in the portrayal both of place and character is of the richest promise for future stories, in which I hope the author will give us more pictures of the land he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... Napoleon. "He simply lets it be understood that the emperor spoke to him haughtily and contemptuously, even treating him as an ignoramus in ecclesiastical matters."—Napoleon met him with open arms and embraced him, calling him his father. (Thiers, XV., 295.)—It is probable that the best literary portrayal of these tete-a-tete conversations is the imaginary scene in "Grandeurs et Servitudes Militaires," by Alfred ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Scott's weakness, and perhaps also much of his strength, as a biographer and critic, for he had no prejudice against the conventional as such, and was never anxious to exhibit special "insight" of any kind. Yet I think his portrayal of Swift has seemed to most readers a clear presentation of a real ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... Afloat in New York Mr. Alger is always at his best in the portrayal of life in New York City, and this story is among the best he ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... work which was published about forty years later. It is the volume entitled "Being a Boy." Nowhere has there been drawn a truer or more vivid picture of rural New England. Nowhere else can there be found such a portrayal of the sights and sounds, the pains and pleasures of life on a farm as seen from the point of view of a boy. Here we have them all graphically represented: the daily "chores" that must be looked after; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... however much tending tardily to do justice to a particular lady, cannot terminate wholesomely. But he became a gallant partisan. His portrayal of Mr. Warwick to his wife and his friends was fine caricature. 'The fellow had his hand up at my first word—stood like a sentinel under inspection. "Understand, Sir Lukin, that I receive you simply as an acquaintance. As an intermediary, permit me ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'The Trail of '98'. For power and blunt realism there was nothing like it, but the character of the hero was torn in the shreds of debate. There was general agreement on two points: that the portrayal of the desolate Alaskan wild had a touch of "home," and that the heroine was ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the Filboid Studge which elegant young fiends held in transparent bowls just beyond their reach. The scene was rendered even more gruesome by a subtle suggestion of the features of leading men and women of the day in the portrayal of the Lost Souls; prominent individuals of both political parties, Society hostesses, well-known dramatic authors and novelists, and distinguished aeroplanists were dimly recognizable in that doomed throng; noted lights of the musical-comedy stage flickered wanly in the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... of birds flying, which might be introduced with great effect in painting, being here practically beyond the artist's reach. Secondly, the material being of uniform appearance, as a rule, color, or even shading, vital points in landscape portrayal, is out of the question, unless the piece were subsequently painted, as in Grecian sculptures, a custom which is not practised in China or Japan. Lastly, another fact fatal to the representation of landscape is the size. The reduced ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... adventure I should write its history, I resolved immediately to note down some details of the state of affairs in Paris at the end of this day, the second of the coup d'etat. I wrote this page, which I reproduce here, because it is a life-like portrayal—a sort of direct photograph:— ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... produced out of an earnest desire to abolish the more recent types of this white slavery, which has, in one form or another, threatened the masses since the days of old John Ball of early England. Perhaps the strongest portrayal, yet, of many phases of the question, especially those relating to the city, maybe found in Mr. Howells' story, "A Hazard of New Fortunes." For the country, if one really wants to see what is behind ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... 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 Eternal City • Hall Caine
... he often found her still upon the lounge with her inevitable book, usually a novel, and then he would take her upon his lap and call her his "dear little spook, the household ghost that would soon cease to cast a shadow;" and she, with a languid curiosity, would easily beguile from him a portrayal of the scenes through which he had just passed. She cared little for them, but from his stores of vitality and strength he imparted life to her, and without understanding why, she simply knew she ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... 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 up his materials ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... 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 reanimation ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... 1861—a movement of which the chief importance lay in the determination to portray local scenes, characters and historical episodes with accuracy instead of merely imaginative romanticism, and to interest readers by fidelity and sympathy in the portrayal of things well known to the authors. Other writings by Cable have dealt with various problems of race and politics in the southern states during and after the "reconstruction period" following the Civil War; while in The Creoles ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... much less of exultation than might have been expected. Love as is well known having nothing to do with reason, being insensible to forebodings and even blind to evidence, the surrender of those two beings to a precarious bliss has nothing very astonishing in itself; and its portrayal, as he attempts it, lacks dramatic interest. The sentimental interest could only have a fascination for readers themselves actually in love. The response of a reader depends on the mood of the moment, so much so that a book may seem extremely interesting when read late ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... with reference to the poem, its character, and its place in German literature. Its theme is the ancient Teutonic ideal of "Treue" (faithfulness or fidelity), which has found here its most magnificent portrayal; faithfulness unto death, the loyalty of the vassal for his lord, as depicted in Hagen, the fidelity of the wife for her husband, as shown by Kriemhild, carried out with unhesitating consistency to the bitter ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... Egils Saga, known at second hand to Warton, the Eyrbyggja Saga, translated by Walter Scott, and the Laxdaela Saga. It is the Laxdaela Saga that gives the story told by Morris in "The Lovers of Gudrun." Among sagas it is famous for its fine portrayal of character. ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... 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 ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... not at first prized at his true worth, while her heart was wrung by sympathy with her unhappy father in the mystery brooding over him, she was a far more interesting figure than the less complex Haxard; and they intimated that Godolphin had an easier task in his portrayal. They all touched more or less upon the conduct of the subordinate actors in their parts, and the Maxwells, in every case, had to wade through their opinions of the playing before they got to their opinions of the play, which was the ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... sorrows were his joys and sorrows, that at times his anguish, both of body and spirit, was poignant and heart-breaking, I know. His interest in and love for his characters were intense as his nature, and is shown nowhere more strongly than in his sufferings during his portrayal of the short life of "Little Nell," like a father he mourned for his little girl—the child of his brain—and he writes: "I am, for the time, nearly dead with work and grief for the loss of my child." Again he writes of her: ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... quotation from the "Vicar of Wakefield" which accompanies it in the catalogue of the South Kensington Museum) a simple story simply told. It is free from the mannerisms which mar much of Mulready's work, especially in the portrayal of children, and in the original is more agreeable in color than are ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... more faithful portrayal of New England life than that which Mrs. Stowe gives in "The Pearl ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the paved ford and in the house made silent by smallpox, where she took refuge. This section of the story is almost as breathless as Smollett.... In the general firmness of touch, and sureness of historic portrayal, the book deserves high ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... 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 rushing, whirling climaxes ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... 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 ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... method of the modern writer of fiction, that Nature has almost become to the novelist what light and shade are to the painter—the one permanent element of style; and if the power of A Village Tragedy be due to its portrayal of human life, no small portion of its charm ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... a borderman," 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 ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... its recognition is rendered somewhat more difficult. The blank expansion of the leaf is not quite unrelieved by ornament, but is set off with small points, spots, and blossoms. This will be thought less strange if we reflect on the Eastern representations of animals, in the portrayal of which the flat expanses produced by the muscle-layers are often treated from a purely decorative point of view, which strikes us as an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... less naturally gifted. And, although the question has never been definitely settled, it is probable that he was born and lived a Catholic; and it is strange how Elizabeth, who, tradition tells us, was present at some of his plays, could endure his faithful portrayal of friars and nuns, while she was persecuting their originals so barbarously at the time; strangest of all, how she could bear to look upon the true and noble image of Katherine of Aragon, whom Henry in his good moment pronounces "the queen of earthly ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... episode of her tour was the production of "Carmen." The fiery, impetuous, emotional, and sensuous character of the Spanish heroine appealed to Miss Nethersole's vivid imagination, and she gave a realistic portrayal of the role that became popular and spectacular. In all parts of the country the "Carmen Kiss" became a byword. The play, in addition to its own merits as a striking drama, and its vogue at the opera through Madame ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... favor. Its numbers are almost as familiar as household words, through constant repetition not only upon the oratorio stage, but in the concert-room and choir-loft. In the presentation of the personalities concerned in the progress of the work, in descriptive power, in the portrayal of emotion and passion, and in genuine lyrical force, "Elijah" has many of the attributes of opera, and some critics have not hesitated to call it a sacred opera. Indeed, there can be no question that with costume, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... of the scene the audience raised a tumultuous roar of appreciation. The portrayal of the type was so exact, so sure and thorough, that the leading characters in the play were forgotten. After repeated calls, Hargraves came before the curtain and bowed, his rather boyish face bright and flushed with the knowledge ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... wheat fields what Mr. Westcott has done for rural New York and Mr. Bacheller for the North country. It is in no way imitative of David Harum or Eben Holden; and, unlike each of these books, it is not in the portrayal of a single quaint character that its power consists. Mr. Harris has taken for his story a typical Iowa farmer's family and their neighbours; and, although every one of the characters is realistically portrayed, the sense of proportion is never lost sight of, and the result ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... to see nothing till you see a triumph in the portrayal of feeling and lifelike earnestness that even your ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... survives it, it has imaginative life. The true artist, however, will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful 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 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... 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 a memorable struggle."—Glasgow ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... ecstasy of suffering, she did not take her eyes from that adorable and tragic pair. Never had human face displayed such beauty, such a dazzling splendour of suffering and love; never had there been such a portrayal of ancient Grief, not however cold like marble but quivering with life. What was she thinking of, what were her sufferings, as she thus fixedly gazed at her Prince now and for ever locked in her rival's arms? Was it some jealousy which could have no end that chilled ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... one Mr. Southard was obliged to leave his sister and guests, and at two o'clock they were getting into their wraps, preparatory to accompanying Miss Southard to another theatre to see one of the most successful plays of the season. That night they saw the actor in "Hamlet," and his remarkable portrayal of the ill-fated Prince of Denmark was something long to be remembered by the three girls as well as by the rest of the enthusiastic assemblage ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... 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 ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seems to take up this cue when he says of the same pair, "I am of Opinion, that neither of the two Gentlemen conducted themselves so, as to overcome an ordinary Share of Virtue" (p. 24). Nevertheless the discussion in the Critical Remarks is thrown out of balance by exaggerated talk about the portrayal ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... literary graces, in its portrayal of characters that are never commonplace though genuinely human, and in its development of a singular social situation, the book is ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... 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
... details with all the most delicate shades. Turgeneff is most renowned artistically for the landscapes which are scattered through his works, and principally portray the nature of his native locality, central Russia. Equally famous, and executed with no less mastery and art, are his portrayal and analysis of the various vicissitudes of the tender passion, and in this respect, he was regarded as a connoisseur of the feminine heart. A special epithet, "the bard of love," was often applied to him. Along with a series of masculine types, Turgeneff's works present ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... a kaleidoscopic miscellany of anecdote, grave and gay; brief bits of biography and impressionistic portrayal of types, charming glimpses into Parisian life and character, and, above all, descriptions of the city's chief, and, to outward view, sole occupation—the art of enjoying oneself. Tourists have learned that ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... the idea, 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
... tenterhooks lest their garrulous companion should give offence. But from the moment that the curtain went up, and the mimic scene presented itself to his gaze, he sat spell-bound and silent, perfectly absorbed in the vivid portrayal of the chief ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... The portrayal of the situation which caused our early forefathers to rob birds' nests and kill young animals will no doubt shock the sentimentalist who orders eggs or veal as a matter of course. There might be good ground for his feeling were there not present in the child the instinct to do ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... with pompous vistas of palaces and city towers, or subordinating their figures to fantastic scenery of wood and rock and seashore. Many were naturalists, delighting, like Gentile da Fabriano, in the delineation of field flowers and living creatures, or, like Piero di Cosimo, in the portrayal of things rare and curious. Gardens please their eyes, and birds and beasts and insects. Whole menageries and aviaries, for instance, were painted by Paolo Uccello. Others, again, abandoned the old ground of Christian story for the tales of Greece and Rome; and not the least charming products ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... the young man's heart he said it was a vain hope, a happy delusion that might serve to make the harsh bondage endurable till time dispelled it. The simple words of the girl were eloquent portrayal of Israel's plight, and Kenkenes subsided into a sorry state of helpless sympathy. She was not long ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... old epic becomes a remarkable portrayal of daily life. In its picturesque lines we see the galley set sail, foam flying from her prow; we catch the first sight of the southern headlands, approach land, hear the challenge of the "warder of the cliffs" and Beowulf's courteous answer. We follow the march to Heorot ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... 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 little ways, and gave ghastly imitations ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... 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
... such as would most directly appeal to the official expounders of Moses and the prophets. While as a practise it would be critically unfair to deduce doctrinal principles from parabolic incidents, we cannot admit that Christ would teach falsely even in parable; and therefore we accept as true the portrayal of conditions in the world of the disembodied. That righteous and unrighteous dwell apart during the interval between death and resurrection is clear. Paradise, or as the Jews like to designate that blessed abode, "Abraham's bosom," is not the place of final glory, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... best in the poem: nature description, plot construction, character, description, or the portrayal of ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... answering the problem proposed at the beginning of this article, as to how far Mother Juliana supplied from her own mind the canvas and the colours for this portrayal of Divine love, and as to how far therefore it may be regarded as a product of and a key to her inner self, we are inclined to say that, a comparison of her own style of thought and sentiment and expression as exhibited in her paraphrases ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... (Pleasure), appeared in 1889. As the title implies, it was pervaded with a frank, almost complacent sensuality, which its author has since been inclined to deprecate. Nevertheless, the book received merited praise for its subtle portrayal of character and incident, and its exuberance of phraseology; and more than all, for the promise which it suggested. With the publication of 'L'Innocente,' the author for the first time showed a real seriousness of purpose. His views ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... is especially valuable in its portrayal of home conditions. The author directed his attention to what these migrants do, where they live, how they spend their earnings and how they amuse themselves. In this treatment, therefore, appears a discussion of health, disease and crime as influenced by ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... language of music—I now have a story to tell you of a certain freakish character; and then we are regaled with the musical portrayal of a series of Till's pranks. As an Epilogue, Strauss improvises on this opening theme as much as to say—you have listened to my musical story, now let us indulge in some reflections as to the fate ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Oliver, and Archbishop Turpin, and the pious, unsophisticated and tender character of their heroism are not pure fables invented by the fancy of a poet, or the credulity of a monk. If the accuracy of historical narrative must not be looked for in them, their moral truth must be recognized in their portrayal of a people ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lines were cast in pleasant places, and his moods were healthy, joyous, and serene. He does not concern himself with the tragedy of life, with its pathos or its disappointments. In his two renderings of "Christ bearing the Cross"[138]—the only instances we have of his portrayal of the Man of Sorrows—he appeals more to our sense of the dignity of humanity, and to the nobility of the Christ, than to our tenderer sympathies. How different from the pathetic Pietas of his master, Giambellini! This shrinking ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... to the last degree, and on the other, aimed at certain classes in society, which, after the middle of the sixteenth century, ceased to afford a ground for public attacks. If in the 'Sofonisba' the portrayal of character gave place to brilliant declamation, the latter, with its half-sister, caricature, was used far too freely in ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... prominently than all the rest, that the really important aspects are quite overshadowed in my memory, and notwithstanding the surprising nature of Alfred Fluette's deportment, I am obliged to pause and group them in my own mind in order to produce a reasonably correct portrayal of what actually transpired. But one's memory is apt to play strange and unaccountable tricks, and mine is no exception. The best mental image I can recall is distorted, all out of drawing, as the artists say; I can see ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... this scene, which, as the French officer from whom the extract is taken says, "appears now almost grotesque, but which is only an exact portrayal of the sea manners of the day, the whole squadron was lost on a group of rocks known as the Aves Islands. Such were the officers." The flag-captain, in another part of his report, says: "The shipwreck resulted from the general line of conduct held by Vice-Admiral d'Estrees. It was always ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... 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
... live together, their relations to one another, and their rights, privileges, and duties, early concerned the philosophers of Greece; but more potent than all the philosophies that have been uttered, than all of the theories concerning man's social relation, is the vivid portrayal of the actual struggle of men to live together in community life, pictured in the course of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... the French genius, and well, if rather impudently, copied by Colonna; Boccaccio's vivid Italian Cressida; Chaucer's inimitable Pandarus, the first pleasing example of the English talent for humorous portrayal in fiction; the wonderful passage, culminating in a more wonderful single line,[69] of that Dunfermline schoolmaster whom some inconceivable person has declared to be only a poet to "Scotch patriotism"; the great gnomic verses ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... life—not of life universal, but of life particular, the social life of to-day. It is not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice. One lays the book down sick at heart—sick for life with all its "lyings and its lusts." But it is a healthy book. So fearful is its portrayal of social disease, so ruthless its stripping of the painted charms from vice, that its tendency cannot but be strongly for good. It is a goad, to prick sleeping human consciences awake and drive them into the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... Crusoe, Defoe brought the realistic adventure story to a very high stage of its development; but his works hardly deserve, to be classed as true novels, which must subordinate incident to the faithful portrayal of human life ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... that a German critic has of late reminded us that the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of the Day of Judgment offers, is the social test. The stern questions are not in regard to personal and family relations, but did ye visit the poor, the criminal, the sick, and did ye feed ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... the theatre. It is safer to keep the mind pure and untainted from all pictures of sin, more especially if they are made attractive by the glamour of jewels and silken attire, of music, dancing, and lifelike portrayal. ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... picture, the ordinary man will say, "If such ugliness as that exists, I don't want to see it. Why paint such subjects?" And at least the first part of this criticism seems to me to be quite incontrovertible. I can imagine no valid reason for the portrayal of so much ugliness; and, what is more important, I can find among the unquestioned masters no slightest precedent for the blank realism of this picture. The ordinary man's aversion to such ugliness seems to me to be entirely right, and I only join issue with him when he ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... 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 days, the exquisite ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... stature of the actors, who always appear life-size in spite of their lift from level to level above the spectator. But what is the use, what is the use? Am I to abandon the young and younger wisdom with which I have refrained in so many books from attempting the portrayal of any Italian, any English church, and fall into the folly, now that I am old, of trying to say again in words what one of the greatest of Spanish churches says in form, in color? Let me rather turn from that ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... dramatist who declares his end to be mere self-expression stultifies himself in that very phrase. The painter may paint, the sculptor model, the lyric poet sing, simply to please himself,[5] but the drama has no meaning except in relation to an audience. It is a portrayal of life by means of a mechanism so devised as to bring it home to a considerable number of people assembled in a given place. "The public," it has been well said, "constitutes the theatre." The moment a playwright ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... period 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 success, was feeling his way among the different types of drama ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... 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, when in every eye gleamed desire of battle and every ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... Lorenzo, where the rough sketch in clay could transmit all its fire and energy to the finished bronze. In this case Donatello not only felt the limitations of the marble, but he was not yet inclined to take the portrayal of tragedy beyond a certain point. The moderation of this relief entitles it to higher praise than we can give to some of his later work. The other panel in stiacciato made about this time belonged to the Salviati family.[132] Technically the carving is inferior to that ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... of dramatic power and warm feeling"; and ten Brink, with more enthusiasm, calls it (p. 96) "one of the pearls of Old English poetry, full, as it is, of dramatic life, and fidelity of an eye-witness. Its deep feeling throbs in the clear and powerful portrayal." He recognizes, however, "the tokens of metrical decline, of the dissolution ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... 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 the most welcome, is ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... 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 a great ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 and ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... completest; nor the cloister, though with this a yet greater step towards the city proper is made. For though this is not itself the City, its ideals of human relations, its theory of the universe and man, its artistic expression and portrayal of all these, ever sooner or later react upon the general view and conduct of life. Hence the Academe of Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle, the mediaeval cloister and the modern Research Institute, have been so fertile, so creative in their influence upon the city's life, from which they ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... us an accurate as well as picturesque portrayal of the social and political conditions which prevailed in the republic in the era made famous by the second war with ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... 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 and the cries of "Encore! encore!" persuaded her ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... became thin and feeble on the canvas. Details no longer fascinated him, but were annoying and depressing. In fact, he ignored them and began to paint in a broad, slap-dash style. Thus, instead of a clear, powerful portrayal of life, the picture became ever more plain of a tawdry, slovenly female. There was nothing original or charming about such a dull stereotyped piece of work, so he thought; a veritable imitation of a Moukh drawing, banal in idea as in execution; and, as usual, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... legalized possibilities of wrong which called for redress. It did not lessen the justice of her plea, that the mass of negroes were more degraded than she knew, or that their average treatment was kinder than her portrayal showed. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... 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 it. I appeal to ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... "A charming portrayal of the attractive life of the South, refreshing as a breeze that blows through a pine ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... theatre in Madrid has been the 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 ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... restrictions. Facts and ideas are all within the province of fiction. The intellect of an incisive moralist, like La Bruyere, the power of treating character as Moliere could treat it, the grand machinery of a Shakespeare, together with the portrayal of the most subtle shades of passion (the one treasury left untouched by our predecessors)—for all this the modern novel affords free scope. How far superior is all this to the cut-and-dried logic-chopping, the cold analysis to the eighteenth century!—'The Novel,' say sententiously, 'is the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... trunk, and kept it locked in his chiffonier. During these days, more frequently than before, he would take out the portrait and in the security of his locked room would gaze long at that keen-visioned portrayal of her many characters. No doubt of it: there was a possible splendid woman there! And no doubt of it: he loved that ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... study of words, you will vacillate 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, as well as the necessaries, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... had left Judaism); her daughter Marusya, who although fully Christian is ostracized as being a Jewess, and struggles unsuccessfully to find her place in life; and Peter Khlopov, a full Christian who finds Jewish culture agreeable. Steinberg's portrayal of Samuel makes it clear, even in the first few pages, that Samuel, although Jewish, thinks very much like a Russian peasant; in a very real way he straddles that fringe zone between the two ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... a truly artistic people, who are also somewhat immoral, would have developed much skill in the portrayal of the nude female form. But such an attempt does not seem to have been made until recent times, and in imitation of Western art. At least such attempts have not been recognized as art nor have they been preserved as such. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... "Mr. Hapgood's portrayal of the American workingman is a 'moving picture' in two senses of this equivocal phrase. It is kinetoscopic, first of all, in its lifelikeness and the convincing reality of the actions it pictures. Then, again, it is emotionally moving; for the character of Anton, the big, honest, alert ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... himself; but he does not need to do this, and the aesthetic value of his work is independent of it; for the picture possesses its beauty even when we know nothing of its model. In the language of current philosophy, truth in the sense of the correspondence of a portrayal to an object external to the portrayal, is not ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... owes to his greater predecessor, he yet succeeds in showing no little originality in his portrayal of character and incident, and in a few cases in his treatment of plot.[489] In one particular indeed he has markedly improved on his model; he has made Jason, the hero of his epic, a real hero; conventional he may be, but he still is a leader of men. In Apollonius, on the other hand, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... 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 ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... Newsome, away off with 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 success. Cherished intention too inevitably ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... in silence, with, at the end, a slight smile for the exactitude of his: "Perhaps I hope that we never shall be;"—and she paused now as if his portrayal of her own wants required consideration. "Perhaps," she said at length, "perhaps I never cared so much about all ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... interest had early carried it into favor with the New York audience that nightly crowded the theatre in which it was being presented. The star, a young woman of exceptional talent, almost a great artist, had by her remarkable portrayal of the leading role sprung from obscurity to fame in ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... have 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 ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... 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 has never ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Strafford's character was penetrating and 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
... deep-set mischievous eyes, whose lightnings never were far from the surface; the humour in the remarkable curves of the mouth, the determination and suppressed energy of the whole face. It was a living portrayal, and Betsey parted from it with tears. When she saw it again her eyes were dim with many tears. The last of its owners to survive fell far into poverty, and sold it to one of her sons. It is to-day as fresh, as alive with impatient ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... 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
... Europe are drawn 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 ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... by the utmost clearness, and thus only by a gradually increasing speed. It is therefore most desirable to practise it piano also by way of variety, for otherwise the strength of tone might easily degenerate into hardness, and in the poetic striving after a realistic portrayal of a storm on the piano the instrument, as well as the piece, would ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... beginning to a helpless and tragic close. And yet few books have been written of deeper and more permanent fascination than these. Their grim veracity; the creative sympathy and steady dispassionateness of their portrayal of mankind; their constancy of motive, and their sombre earnestness, have been surpassed by none. This earnestness is worth dwelling upon for a moment. It bears no likeness to the dogmatism of the bigot ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... short of the immense volume of old and new truths which it has striven to mould and formulate. The characteristic genius of the time is shown more powerfully on the one hand in the accumulation of specific knowledge, as science; and on the other hand in the imaginative portrayal of human life. The favorite vehicle of imagination has been the novel. If our successors hereafter desire to know how man in the nineteenth century appeared to himself, their best guides will be such as Scott, Hawthorne, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Hugo, Balzac. It is the children ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... finished and the kitchen "red up," Amarilly's thoughts again took flight and in fancy she winged her way toward a glorious future amid the glow and glamor of the footlights. To the attentive family, who hung in an ecstasy of approval on her vivid portrayal, she graphically described the play she had witnessed, and then dramatically announced her intention of going on the ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... Therefore as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, in my portrayal ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch |
