"Still life" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from Dazer Falls. The solitude of the upper air, therefore, suited us. A man can stand for five hours at any corner in Dazer Falls and shout "Fire" through a forty-inch megaphone without starting up a native. Dazer Falls is a study in village still life. In Gorley silence and race suicide are equally common and not noticed except by strangers. Up in the fifth flat we got away from the world almost as well, except that the clatter of our dish-washing and the thumping of our disagreeing opinions would at times ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... sympathy with Queen Anne's time, and reproduced it with unfailing zest and knowledge. He had been very careful about details. The interior at Hampton Court had been painted on the spot, and all the still life in the picture, even to a fan, had been studied with equal accuracy. Mrs. Leslie's mother sat looking at the picture, and making the liveliest comments on the subject and the actors. She would get up without ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... air and left one moving behind a blue dress, under a jaunty hat like all other jaunty hats. But something else moved elsewhere. There were two worlds for her. But not for Erik. One world for Erik. Where would his wings take him? Beyond life there was still life. A wall of life that never came to an end or a top. That was the one world for Erik. Hurl himself against it, higher, higher. Soar till the superfluous ones became little dots on a ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... not know where to look, in the whole range of contemporary fictitious literature, for pictures in which the sober and the brilliant tones of Nature blend with more exquisite harmony than in those which are set in every chapter of "Adam Bede." Still life—the harvest-field, the polished kitchens, the dairies with a concentrated cool smell of all that is nourishing and sweet, the green, the porches that have vines about them and are pleasant late in the afternoon, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... afterwards known as the Soma. There it lay, in Strabo's time, not in its original body-mask of golden chase-work, which Ptolemaeus Cocces had stolen, but in a casket of glass. Great men "turned to pilgrims" to visit Alexander's grave. Augustus crowned the still life-like body with a golden laurel-wreath, and scattered flowers over the tomb: Caligula stole the breastplate, and wore it during his pantomimic triumphs; Septimius Severus buried in the sarcophagus the writings of the priests, and a clue to the hieroglyphics. Finally, the sarcophagus ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... breathless; and he was supposed to be dead. "One of the dames who were tending him," says Joinville, "would have drawn the sheet over his face, saying that he was dead; but another dame, who was on the other side of the bed, would not suffer it, saying that there was still life in his body. When the king heard the dispute between these two dames, our Lord wrought in him: he began to sigh, stretched his arms and legs, and said, in a hollow voice, as if he had come forth from the tomb, 'He, by God's grace, hath ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... department of the Puy de Doue, on the bank of the little River Durolle, which is actually made to flow, or rather trickle over large stones; whilst smoke ascends from the chimney of an adjoining cottage. As a romantic picture of still life, its merits can scarcely be too highly spoken of, and when we say it is quite equal to Unterseen, by the same artist, and engraved in our last volume, we hope our readers will not be long ere they judge for themselves. We could have lingered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... camp like a picture of still life, glowing and silent at her appointed labor. She sewed for all of them, looking womanly and unhurried, with a pink-veined moccasin-flower in her hair; while Brown, cooking and baking, rushed from tent to wood-pile, his sleeves turned back from his white, muscular arms. He ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... could have done nothing to make Hintock House dry and salubrious; and ruthless ignorance could have done little to make it unpicturesque. It was vegetable nature's own home; a spot to inspire the painter and poet of still life—if they did not suffer too much from the relaxing atmosphere—and to draw groans from the gregariously disposed. Grace descended the green escarpment by a zigzag path into the drive, which swept round beneath the slope. The exterior of the house ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... golden sunsets which tinged the woods. By this time, Chatty, too, began to have sensations unusual to her,—such as must thrill through the boat upon the shore, when the little waves run up and kiss its sides, wooing it to the water, for which it was made. Chatty had been almost as much a piece of still life as the boat: but the baptism of the spray had been flung in her face, and dreams of triumphant winds and dazzling waves outside had crept into her cave. Minnie was conscious of no longings, but she ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought. The old opinions in religion, morals, and politics, are so much discredited in the more intellectual minds as to have lost the greater part of their efficacy for good, while they have still life enough in them to be a powerful obstacle to the growing up of any better opinions on those subjects. When the philosophic minds of the world can no longer believe its religion, or can only believe it with modifications amounting to an essential change of its ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... doors; and at the same time serving aesthetically as a background to high chairs and tables heaped with objects of art, and tall vases of flowers. The high screen groups and unites the pictures of active and still life around it; and meanwhile the little fire-screens are performing the merciful service of saving the complexions of our daughters from being sacrificed to Moloch in front of our scorching coal fires. I need not recommend ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... preliminary nervousness of the diocesan clergy, who would one after another look at that steel engraving of Jesus Christ preaching by the Sea of Galilee, and who when they had finished looking at that would look at those two oil paintings of still life, those rich and sombre accumulations of fish, fruit and game, that glowed upon the walls with a kind of sinister luxury. Waiting rooms are all much alike, the doctor's, the dentist's, the bishop's, the railway-station's; they may ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... who can make them his by the right of superior strength. But every one has his own firm and sure possession of his friendships, while even if those things which seem the gifts of fortune remain, still life unadorned and deserted by friends cannot be happy. But enough has been said on this branch of ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... effects of those sure and infallible principles of light and colour which Rubens had so successfully disseminated in the Netherlands, were soon found in every department of art. Landscapes, portraits, drolls, and even the dullest and most uninteresting objects of still life, possess irresistible charms and fascination from the magic of those principles. Rembrandt, who, it is said, was never at Venice, might, notwithstanding, have seen, without going out of his country, many pictures of the Venetian school. Besides, he was about thirty years younger ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... no talent. You are wrong, my father. I know myself. I am not of those to whom nature gives talents. I am born only for still life. I have no taste except for privacy. The convent is more suited to me ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... yet another! reach from Lethe's stream The last reviving draught of cool refreshment! Soon shall its waters in my bosom still Life's fitful fever; and my spirit then Adown oblivion's stream shall glide to you, Ye spirits, shrouded in eternal mist. With tranquil pleasure in your deep repose A weary son of earth may lave his soul!— What whisp'ring sounds pervade the dreary grove? What hollow murmurs haunt its twilight gloom?— ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... all Queen Charlotte's; they are catalogued to-day, and so are many manuscripts and autograph letters of royal persons which attract careful readers. From remarks which can be overheard in those sombre rooms, many visitors, I think, imagine the paintings of still life, of flowers in vases, odd representations of game and fruit, and so forth, to have been selected and hung in the house as specially suitable for public gardens. The portraits of royal gentlemen in blue and red puzzle them; why should they be shown these at Kew? These are for palaces and galleries; ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... in another way, the creation of indefinite beauty. However much an artist may have felt, he cannot just sit down and express it; he cannot create form in the vague. He must sit down to write a play or a poem, to paint a portrait or a still life. ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offices. He scorned to bear the yoke of any regular schooling; and proceeded to turn one half of the dining-room into a studio for the reproduction of still life. There he amassed a variety of objects, indiscriminately chosen from the kitchen, the drawing-room, and the back garden; and there spent his days in smiling assiduity. Meantime, the great bulk of empty building ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reality and correctness of portraits. He gives the extremes of character and expression, but he gives them with perfect truth and accuracy. This is, in fact, what distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same kind, that they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere still life.... His faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet never (we believe in any ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... silver arranged in proper array in wall closets, cabinets, and sideboards are the most appropriate decorations of the dining-room. It is not at all necessary that there should be pictures on the wall of game, fruit and flowers, or "still life" studies of vegetables and kitchen utensils. Indeed, these have become so expected that a change is quite a relief to a guest, who would welcome even the death's head that was the invariable ornament of the Egyptian feasts. Any pictures ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... the picture of still life. That of animated nature was not less picturesque. Cows bellowed, and cart-horses neighed, and pigs grunted, and geese gabbled, and ducks quacked, and cocks and hens flapped and fluttered promiscuously, as they mingled in a sort of yard divided from the house by ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... duck pond. He was a bit of still life; a chip; weak water gruel; a tame rabbit, boiled to rags, without sauce or salt. He received my arguments with his mouth open, like a poorbox gaping for half-pence, and, good or bad, he swallowed ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... than of genius or feeling. He retained the regular, habitual impressions of actual objects, but he could not follow the rapid flights of fancy, or the strong movements of passion. That is, he was to the poet what the painter of still life is to the painter of history. Common sense sympathizes with the impressions of things on ordinary minds in ordinary circumstances: genius catches the glancing combinations presented to the eye of fancy, under the influence of passion. It is the province of the didactic reasoner to take cognizance ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... proficient in the art of painting, and drew King James II, and his Queen; which pieces are also highly applauded by Mr. Dryden. She drew several history pieces, also some portraits for her diversion, exceeding well, and likewise some pieces of still life. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... wings. Rising from amongst the dirty litter of the floor were lay figures: one in the frock of a Vallombrosan monk, strangely surmounted by a helmet with barred visor, another smothered with brocade and skins hastily tossed over it. Amongst this heterogeneous still life, several speckled and white pigeons were perched or strutting, too tame to fly at the entrance of men; three corpulent toads were crawling in an intimate friendly way near the door-stone; and a white ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... he was able to make from nature in his early years, are chiefly of fishing-boats, barges, and other minor marine still life; and his better acquaintance with this kind of shipping than with the larger kind is very marked in the Liber Studiorum, in which there are five careful studies of fishing-boats under various circumstances; namely, Calais ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... conversation the still life of the beautiful cottage was enlivened. A lovely boy played before the door, while a pale mother watched him from within. That pale mother was not yet thirty years of age, yet her cheeks were sunken, her eyes dim, and her hair streaked with silver. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... otherwise, when all one's prospect, all one's landscapes, historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life, are nothing but a single line, with no varieties except degrees ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... look singularly without risks in the direction of slyness and brazen archness; or talk animatedly without dipping in slang. Conventional situations preserve them and interchange dignity with them; still life befits them; pre-eminently that judicial seat from which in briefest speech they deliver their judgements upon their foreign sisters. Jealousy it was that plucked Cecilia from her majestic place and caused her to envy in Renee things she would ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in life, when you know that ——[1038] was loaded with wealth and honours; a man who had acquired his fortune by such crimes, that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat.' BOSWELL. 'You will recollect, Sir, that Dr. Robertson said, he cut his throat because he was weary of still life; little things not being sufficient to move his great mind.' JOHNSON, (very angry.) 'Nay, Sir, what stuff is this! You had no more this opinion after Robertson said it, than before. I know nothing more offensive than repeating what one knows ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... gallipots, boluses, and cephalic draughts; delivering their orders to me in hated whispers; and answering other curtain-holding impertinents, inquiring how I was, and how I took their execrable potions, whisperingly too! What a cursed still life was this!—Nothing active in me, or about me, but ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... flat-fish taken in sweep-nets showed brightly white, the steel-blue tints of their backs gradually toning down to the soft transparency of their bellies. However, it was the fat snowy-white barbel that supplied the liveliest brightness in this gigantic collection of still life. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... mind saying that Dick told me when I first rode up to the corral that you and Mose were both boozing up to beat the band; and right after that we heard a deuce of a racket up here, and it did look—" He waved an apologetic hand at Mose and the fragments of pottery which framed like a "still life" picture on the floor, and let it go at that. "I'm strong for you, Ford," he added, and his smile was frank and friendly. "Double Cross is the name of this outfit, but I'm all in favor of running that brand on the cow-critters ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... continuance of the Greek, characterized by dark and rich backgrounds, which were frequently black, red or deep yellow and dark blue, on which figures and landscapes, or animals, or groups from still life, were executed in bright colorings of powerful contrasts. Black and white were used, and later, when the Byzantine artists and craftsmen found their way to Western Italy, they spread this love of bold coloring, so that at the dawn of the ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... however, it occurred to Mr. Smith that it would be interesting to revive the Cornhill and show that there was still life and force in the magazine which had published some of Thackeray's best essays, and his later novels—the magazine in which had appeared novels like Romola, with Leighton's illustrations, and in which Louis Stevenson had given to the world those first and most delightful of his ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... comprehended by the very meanest capacity and, indeed, may be said to appeal to it. For the perfect development, however, of this pattern-producing faculty a severe training is necessary. The art student must begin by painting china, crockery, and 'still life' generally. He should rule his straight lines and employ actual measurements wherever it is possible. He will also find that a plumb-line comes in very useful. Then he should proceed to Greek sculpture, for from pottery to Phidias is only one step. Ultimately he will arrive at the living model, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... at last with some reluctance. "It's charming. There are some delightful touches—all that still life on the table, it might be a Chardin—and I like the background very ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... discharge its contents in the great city. To all these things we say, 'Pass on!' the world is various, and must be amused; but for us, we respectfully withdraw. We have had enough of the intense; we now welcome the trifling, appropriating however as much of the serious as we care to admit in our still life. When the Sabbath comes round, there are seven bells that reach us, each with its separate voice; and these, with falling waters, and the morning incense going up from the hill-sides, are as much of 'mass' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... submitted to his scrutiny. As they lingered floating upon the waters, a tiny boat shot from beneath a cliff below them, and was propelled swiftly down the river. In it was a female rendered conspicuous by a scarlet shawl, and in the still life around them, this boat became an object of interest. It was only for a moment, the young people were too deeply occupied with their own feelings to dwell upon even this picturesque adjunct to a scene which ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... mahout, a grey-bearded Mahommedan, slipped instantly to the earth and, drawing his kukri, struggled through the arresting creepers and undergrowth to where the stag lay feebly moving its limbs. Seizing one horn he performed the hallal, that is, he cut its throat to let blood while there was still life in the animal, muttering the short Mussulman creed as he did so. For his religion enjoins this hygienic practice—borrowed by the Prophet from the Mosaic law—to guard against long-dead carrion being eaten. At the touch of the Colonel's hand Badshah sank to its knees; and ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... the great work accomplished during the Renaissance, when the painters ran through the whole domain of thought within the scope of that age, there only remained portraiture, history, dramatic incident, landscape, genre, still life, and animals. In these spheres the art is still exercised, and much good work, undoubtedly, is annually produced by European painters. But painting has lost its hold upon the centre of our intellectual activity. It can no longer give form to the ideas that at the present ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Isabel whom Clara last remembered with her baby in her lap, beautiful and almost as inanimate as a statue? There was scarcely more change from the long-frocked infant to the bustling important sprite, than from that fair piece of still life to the active house-mother. Unruffled grace was innate; every movement had a lofty, placid deliberation and simplicity, that made her like a disguised princess; and though her beauty was a little worn, what it had lost in youth ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him off the stretcher again. Ruthven heard that and opened his eyes to look at the speaker, although at the moment it would not have troubled him much if he had been tipped off again. But the other stretcher-bearer said there was still life in him; and partly because the ground about them was pattering with bullets, and the air about them clamant and reverberating with the rush and roar of passing and exploding shells and bombs, and that particular spot, therefore, ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... spotted shell, which he has made altogether sublime by broad truth and large ideality of light and shade; and so I have seen frequent instances of very grand ideality in treatment of the most commonplace still life, by our own Hunt, where the petty glosses and delicacies, and minor forms, are all merged in a broad glow of suffused color; so also in pieces of the same kind by Etty, where, however, though the richness and play of color are greater, and the arrangement grander, there ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... those infinite lines of strength which rose from broad and massive bases, and, sweeping upwards, told of illimitable tracts beyond—mighty waves on the surface of the world's great inland seas, on whose crests sat the green and purple foam of herbage, and in whose hollows lay the still life of home and pasture. Silent, changeless, secure, perpetual sublimity rested on their summits, and unbroken repose lay along their graceful sweeps. They were the joy-bearers to the poor child of sorrow, who with eager eye looked ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... expected to be a mine of wealth to the shareholder’s, but, having been ruined by the railway, it is now disused; in parts silted up and only a bed of water plants; in other parts its banks have given way, and the bed is dry. Its only present utility is to add picturesqueness to a scene of still life. Following the towing path westward, with the straggling street of Tattershall on the other side of the water, we reach what is called a “staunch,” a weir, over which the surplus carnal water discharges itself into what was the original channel of the river ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... represented an eclectic taste, and the fine arts had been liberally patronized in its decoration. On the wall hung various subjects in oil, including still life, landscapes, marine scenes and figures, all of which had been billed to Morris by ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... pictures in the past have been merely pictures that happened to represent war. Paolo Uccello's battle scenes are but pretexts for his peculiar version of the visible world. They might as well be still life for all the effect the subject has had upon his treatment of it. Leonardo, in his lost battle picture, was no doubt dramatic, and expressed in it his infinite curiosity; he has left notes about the manner in which fighting men and horses ought to be ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... (1603-1649), was a celebrated painter of still life and animals. He chose for his subjects fruits, flowers, insects and animals, which he painted after nature with a lively tint of colour, great tenderness of pencil, and a strong character of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... ye, 'Mfuni, if thou canst slay the white man, or even disable him, thou shalt choose twenty head of cattle from mine own herd, and they shall be thine. But if the white man proves to be the victor in the fight, and there is still life in thee when it is over, I swear, by the bones of my royal father, that thou shalt be given to the ants! ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... myself than with a view to studying this huge, dark-complexioned gipsy-queen; of whom, indeed, I soon tired, and betook myself for refreshment to the contemplation of some exquisite little pictures of still life: wild-flowers, wild- fruit, mossy woodnests, casketing eggs that looked like pearls seen through clear green sea-water; all hung modestly beneath that coarse and ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... fact he allows that this is a relevant consideration, but declines to bring it within his own lines of discussion. There is also a curious passage which has been remarked upon as next door to absurd; that where, in treating of various forms of still life as inferior subjects for art, he says that "the dead pheasant in a picture will always be as 'food,' while the same at the poulterer's will be but a dead pheasant." I do not perceive that this is really absurd. At the poulterer's (and Mr. Tupper has proceeded to say as much in his article) all ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Manet's originality; that is just what I can't see. What he has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... caused by the knowledge that she had still life to struggle infused new energy into Glynn's well-nigh exhausted frame, and he assumed as calm and cheerful a tone as was possible under the circumstances when he exclaimed—"Ailie, Ailie, don't struggle, dear, I'll save ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... speak here of the Dutch school, whose highest aim, and highest praise, is exquisite mechanical precision in the representation of common nature and still life: but of those pictures which are the productions of mind, which address themselves to the understanding, the fancy, the feelings, and convey either a ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... is an abundance of still life in the Gardens at this ungenial season. We find the Elephant, the Antelopes, and the Zebra, in their winter quarters, and their mightinesses, the large cats, as the lions, tiger, and leopards, accommodated with a snug fire. The tropical birds, as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... if the ground were giving way under him and he were falling irresistibly from space to space into an awful, infinite, boundless void. His mind refused to work; he asked himself, horrified, whether this was still life, dared call itself life; Nature's glorious structure seemed to him ravaged like a wall rent by a storm, the speaking mouth of all these people struck him as nothing but a chasm convulsively and repellently opening and shutting, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... cried Bob, "there seems to be as little of still life about him just now, as there is about Hookey Walker. But pray who is that dingy gentleman who passed us within the last minute, and who appeared to be an object of attraction to some persons on the opposite side—he appears to have been cut ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... When did I feel the sorrow, act the part, Which I have striv'n to shadow forth in song? In what dead century swept that mingled throng Of mighty pains and pleasures through my heart? Not in the yesterdays of that still life Which I have passed so free and far from strife, But somewhere in this weary world I know, In some strange land, beneath some orient clime, I saw or shared a martyrdom sublime, And felt a deeper grief than ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... bolting all doors. Hardly a day that the sun did not shine; but the light was hard, white, glittering, and cold, the winds treacherous, the snow wild and restless. There was now comparatively little danger of being lost even in the fiercest storms, but still life in one of these little cabins had an isolation almost as terrible as that of a ship wedged amid the ice-floes ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... her. And as they went up and up, further from the street door, the air grew more close and unbearable; heavy with vapours and odours that had no chance at any time to feel the purification of a draught of free air. Poor cookery, soapsuds, unclean humanity and dirty still life, mingled their various smell ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... the still life of this sequestered nook; but it is in fact a crowded thoroughfare. No tropic jungle more swarms with busy existence than these midsummer waters and their bushy banks. The warm and humming air is filled with insect sounds, ranging from the murmur of invisible gnats and midges, to the impetuous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... silver spoons of a construction similar to what may sometimes be seen in Flemish pictures of still life, were procured here by Mr. Gore, who bought them from a native, who wore them, tied together with a leather thong, as an ornament round his neck. Mr. Gore gave the spoons ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... of ghosts and marble halls. It was a symbol of Rajput womanhood—strong and beautiful, withdrawn from the clamour of the market-place, given over to her dreams and her gods. For though kings have deserted Amber, the gods remain. There is still life in her temples and the blood of sacrifice on her altar stones. Therefore she must not be approached in the spirit of the tourist. And, emphatically, she must not be approached in a motor-car; at least so far as Thea's guests were concerned. Of course one knew she was ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... commenced painting in tempora, and then in oil, copying the pictures lent to the school from the South Kensington Art Library. I worked also from still life, and began sketching from nature in oil and water-colours, sometimes selling my work to help me to buy materials for art-work and scientific experiments. I was, however, able to do very little ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... cloth exposed to the weather; nor is it probable that, after the failure of his early attempt to play the deliverer to Israel, he nourished further designs of that sort. He appears to have settled down quietly to be Jethro's son-in-law, and to have lived a modest, still life of humble toil. He had flung away fair prospects,—and what had he made of it? The world would say 'Nothing,' as it ever does about those who despise material advantages and covet higher good. Looking after sheep in the desert ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... or the Yare; or the gray wing of the heron as it flies heavily along the marsh; and that is all. Far away, perhaps, rises a ridge, with a house on it; or a steeple, with a few trees struggling to yield the barren spot a shelter from the suns of summer or the howling winds of winter; but all is still life there, and the habitations of men are few and far between. In the particular lane to which I have introduced the reader—there are but two—there is a little cottage on your left, and beyond, under ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... action, in movement,—how they appear to others,—he cannot know. The eye that looks around upon a landscape sees everything but itself. It is just as a man may look in the glass and see himself there every day; but he sees only the framework, only the "still life" in his face; he does not see it in the free play of expression,—in the strong workings of thought and feeling. I was one day sitting with Robert Walsh in Paris, and there was a large mirror behind him. Suddenly he said, "Ah, what a vain fellow ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... of it is high and true, without being obtrusively good. Such a book is as great a relief amid the sensational stories of the day, as a quiet little bit of "still life" is to the eye, after being blinded by the glaring colors of ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... changed. I lost myself, and were it not that I so loathe that time, I could recall how first I learned to turn my mind against itself ... at length I was restored, yet long the influence remained; and nought but the still life I led, apart from all, which left my soul to seek its old delights, could e'er have brought me thus far back to peace." No reader, alert to the subtle and haunting music of rarefied blank verse (and unless it be rarefied it should not be put forward as poetry), could possibly ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... until all hope had vanished, he turned towards the prostrate body, and knelt down to examine it. To his surprise there was still life, and, after her lips had been touched with water, the old woman showed symptoms of recovery. She had only been stunned by the ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... into the relative period and circumstances of the artists who created it. The landscape background, the rocky defile, the wooded declivity, and the trees laden with fruit, are all eminently beautiful. The eye would almost lose itself in this rich sense of still life if it were not constantly led back to the interest of ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... Chiefly Lyrical" of 1830. Tennyson has written many greater poems than this, but few in which the special string of romance vibrates more purely. The tableau of the spellbound palace, with all its activities suspended, gave opportunity for the display of his unexampled pictorial power in scenes of still life; and the legend itself supplied that charmed isolation from the sphere of reality which we noticed as so important a part of the romantic poet's stock-in-trade in "Christabel" and "The ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... certain weirdness of plot to his already recognised beauty of style, still further attracted that cultured public which had at once accepted his earlier work as that of a master of English. As already stated, it was Will o' the Mill, a charmingly written story of still life, with a quiet philosophy all its own, that Mr Hamerton had pronounced a masterpiece of style. Markheim was a graphic, but very unpleasant, story of a murder; Olalla, a horrible, but powerfully written, sketch of hereditary ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... Carolina, of Scottish ancestry, first studied law and retired with a competency. He then took up art and achieved eminent success in miniature painting and as a painter of landscapes, pictures of genre, still life, etc. William Dunlap (1766-1839), artist and dramatist, founder and early Vice-President of the National Academy of Design, was of Ulster Scot descent. His family name was originally Dunlop. Robert Walter Weir (1803-89), of Scots parentage, is best known for his historical pictures, he being ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... the best of the Dutch portrait-painters, though his still life is considered even more artistic than his portraits. The foremost of the lady portrait and figure painters is Therese Schwartze, who, like Josselin de Jong, often takes Queen Wilhelmina as a grateful ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... his bed was a stout sheet of packing paper. On this lay, like one of those pictures in still life that one sees on suburban parlor walls, a tongue, some bread, a knife, a fork, salt, a corkscrew and a small ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Walter Douglas, then but twenty-six, was his private secretary. Walter and Hortense met in the quiet, woodland paths. It is difficult to know just what the mutual attractions were. She had received many advantages which had not been his, still life was certainly a lonely thing for her. He was her first real interest since she had left Washington, and love reawakened and blew into life the embers she thought were gray-cold. It was never to be the flaming love-fire of ten years before, but it was bright enough to decide ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... face seemingly emaciated with sickness, and a look of patient dejection. A bundle of dirty shreds served him for a pillow, but he had a better support—the arm of a female who kneeled beside him, beautiful as an angel, but with a fading languor in her countenance, the still life of melancholy, that seemed to borrow its shade from the object on which she gazed. There was a tear in her eye—the sick man kissed it off in its bud, smiling through the dimness of his own—when she saw Mountford, she ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... work—those laborious little studies of still life or nature, the public would have none. Even the two life-sized pictures, which had more than a little merit in them, remained unpurchased. Both were for sale now; for Joseph needed no portrait of what was his; and Prince G—— naturally never ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the men cry out. But no; I see his hair far down, close under the stern of the boat I plunge in, and diving, grasp it and bring him to the surface. The boat has forged ahead. With difficulty I get him alongside, and we are hauled on board. The young man has still life in him, but cannot speak. We pull back to the ship, more than once narrowly escaping being swamped. It is some time before the stranger can speak. Even then he does not seem willing to say much. He ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... promising mediocrity. Among them are the productions of many of the more humble painters of genre subjects—the class who delight in portraying homely cottage interiors, or troops of playing children, or bits of minutely-finished still life—or careful academical studies of groups with all the conventions duly observed: this class of pictures musters strong, and connoisseurs, without so much remarking their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... vessel was absolutely and finally in order. As he walked among the perfumed tangles of shrub and flower in his garden, and out towards the sea-shore he was impressed by the great silence everywhere around him. Everything looked like a moveless picture—a study in still life. Passing through a little olive wood which lay between his own grounds and the sea, he paused as he came out of the shadow of the trees and looked towards the height crowned by the Palazzo d'Oro, where from the upper windows twinkled a few lights showing the position of the room where the ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... opened his eyes again, he first turned around for the tea by his bedside, then stared in front of him, wondering if these things which he saw were indeed displayed through an upraised blind. There was the marsh—a picture of still life—winding belts of sea creeping, serpent-like, away from him towards the land, with broad pools, in whose bosom, here and there, were flashes of a feeble sunlight. There were the clumps of wild lavender ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... surpassed, Claude in some respects. The distinction, which Mr Ruskin draws between them, is that, while Claude, in the sense of beauty, is the superior to Cuyp, in the sense of truth Claude is the inferior. Besides Cuyp's landscapes, he painted portraits, and what is called 'still life' (dead game, fruit or flower pieces, etc.), but Cuyp's triumph was found in his skies, with their 'clearness and coolness,' and in 'expressions of yellow sunlight.' Mr Ruskin admits, while he is proceeding to censure Cuyp, parts might be chosen out of the good pictures ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... was full of pictures in the widest gold frames, all sorts: landscapes, portraits, cats, dogs, groups of still life, good, bad, and indifferent massed together on a wall covered with large-patterned scarlet and gilt Japanese leather paper. Guarding the doors and staircase were imitation suits of armour on dummy men, standing under some really beautiful ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... accompanied by a crowd, the other stayed to look after the woman. He touched the woman with his foot as he might have tapped a dying dog to see if there was still life there. A low growl like a fierce animal came ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... he was not frightened at the situation. He found that even over the level spaces he could scarce drag his snow-shoes, but this had ceased to alarm him as he had been alarmed at first. He went on, hour after hour, weaker and weaker. Within himself there was still life which reasoned that if death were to come it could not come in a better way. It at least promised to be painless— even pleasant. The sharp, stinging pains of hunger, like little electrical knives piercing him, were gone; he no longer experienced a sensation of intense cold; he almost ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... her stupidity, eventually embraced by her parents, corresponded with a great date in her small still life: the complete vision, private but final, of the strange office she filled. It was literally a moral revolution and accomplished in the depths of her nature. The stiff dolls on the dusky shelves began to move their ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... Such fables did not remain special to German national literature, but became popular subjects in the literature of the whole world; and it is a significant fact that they afterwards took root especially in Flanders, where the taste for still life and delight in Nature has always found a home, and which became the nursery, in later times, of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... there is no picture of flowers, or still life, or even of landscape, that will interest long. You must be very solitary here at times—that is, you must have a great deal more resource than I, or, indeed, almost anyone I know, or this solitude must at times be oppressive. I hope so, at least, for that ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu |
