"Personality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the initiative on board the steamer. I do not think that I should ever have made his acquaintance if he had not forced himself on me. He accosted me, introduced himself, carried the acquaintance through to an intimacy by sheer force of personality, and ended by inducing me to like him. He began his attack on me during that very uncomfortable time just before the ship actually starts. It is never possible to settle down to the ordinary routine of life at sea until the screw begins to revolve. There is an hour or two, ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... opened on the 3rd of February. Earl Grey in the lords, and Mr. Disraeli in the commons, opened the party campaign by assailing the foreign policy of the government; and Disraeli was alike caustic and unjust upon Lord Palmerston, scarcely avoiding personality, while inveighing against the public conduct ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... actuation were not limited to the person of a Pope, who could only be the representative, the bearer, the enactor, for the world of this idea in its fullest meaning. If here and there a particular personality seemed unequal to the carrying out such a charge, the force of the idea did not suffer any defect through him. Most papal governments were very short in their duration. This itself was a challenge to those whose life was absorbed in that of the Church to place at ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... psychological point of view—A numerically strong agglomeration of individuals does not suffice to form a crowd—Special characteristics of psychological crowds—The turning in a fixed direction of the ideas and sentiments of individuals composing such a crowd, and the disappearance of their personality—The crowd is always dominated by considerations of which it is unconscious—The disappearance of brain activity and the predominance of medullar activity—The lowering of the intelligence and the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... have not, as I say, fully explained to myself this logical contradiction; but this is the explanation to which I tend. The French are so exclusively occupied with the idea of themselves, that in spite of the very definite image the German personality presented to them by the war of 1870, they have at present no distinct apprehension of its existence. They are not very sure that there are any Germans; they have already forgotten the convincing proofs of the fact that were presented to them nine years ago. ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... which is the religion of the hand and of the tongue, and of forms and ceremonies and sacraments; external worship. There is plenty of religion which surrenders to Him some of the more superficial parts of our personality, whilst the ancient Anarch, Self, sits undisturbed on his dark throne, in the depths of our being. But none of these are the religion that either Christ requires or that we need. The only true notion of a Christian ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wholly emerge from the nursery. They may put away childish things and rise in the world to affluence and success, but the hand that rocked their cradle still rules their lives. As a boy, Derek had always been firmly controlled by his mother, and the sway of her aggressive personality had endured through manhood. Lady Underhill was a born ruler, dominating most of the people with whom life brought her in contact. Distant cousins quaked at her name, while among the male portion of her nearer relatives she was generally alluded ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... made of the Baron Giraud, and I learnt that that financier was among the Vicomte's friends. The name was not new to me, although the Baron's personality was unknown. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... and welcome Bishop, full of joy at the prospect of tasting anew the rich personality of his old friend. It is true that he had a qualm about the expense of standing Bishop a lunch—a fellow who relished his food and drink and could distinguish between the best and the second best; ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... critical treatment. And again, while Lyly's claims as a novelist are acknowledged on all hands, I felt that a clear statement of his exact position in the history of our novel was still needed. Finally, inasmuch as the personality of an author is always more fascinating to me than his writings, I determined to attempt to throw some light, however fitful and uncertain, upon the man Lyly himself. The attempt was not entirely fruitless, for it led to the interesting discovery that the fully-developed euphuism ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... Proceeding northwards to the Manukau Harbour, he found there the Rev. R. Maunsell already established. They worked together for three years; then Maunsell, leaving Hamlin at Manukau, opened a new station at Waikato Heads. Maunsell was a Dublin graduate of great eloquence and strong personality. He soon acquired a commanding influence over the people of his district, and an examination held by him in 1839 rivalled those of the Bay of Islands ten years before. Fifteen hundred people were present at this gathering. ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... of it, to be their province. The author of "Thoughts on the Universe" has something in common with these, but he appears also to have a good deal about him of what we call the humorist; that is, an individual with a somewhat heterogeneous personality, in which various distinctly human elements are mixed together, so as to form a kind of coherent and sometimes pleasing whole, which is to a symmetrical character as a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... line quoted to prove the justice of the unstrained censure! I could not account for the malignant personality of this critique, until Barry informed me that my publishers never advertised their books in the columns of the "Frogpond Gazette." This, of course, explained it. I only wish I had the stubborn editor of the "Frogpond" at arm's length, ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... had small scope to think for himself; cared for him so sedulously that he shall hardly know how to take care of himself; sheltered him so rigorously that, once removed from the sphere of your strong personality, he would be pitifully lost and helpless. In short, he is suffering of a surfeit of love, determined tenderness and pertinacious care—in a ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... careful precautions against spontaneity and the indiscretions of unvarnished truth; but the boy among his fellows and on his own ground represents the normal and unfettered reaction of the human heart to a given personality. The minister may be profoundly benefited by knowing and heeding the frank estimate of a "bunch" of boys. They are the advance agents of the final judgment; they will find the essential man. May it not be with him as with Kipling's Tomlinson, who, under the examination of both "Peter" ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... able to accept its leading dogmas, and officiated as a Unitarian minister for some years at Bedford chapel, Bloomsbury. Bedford chapel was pulled down about 1894, and from that time he had no church of his own, but his eloquence and powerful religious personality continued to make themselves felt among a wide circle. A man of independent means, he was always keenly interested in literature and art, and a fine critic of both. He published in 1865 his Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson (of Brighton), and in 1876 wrote an admirable primer of English ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... between man's undying existence and the transient trifles on which he is tempted to fix his love and hopes. We belong to one set of existences by our bodies, and to another by our souls. Though we are parts of the passing material world, yet in that outward frame is lodged a personality that has nothing in common with decay and death. A spark of eternity dwells in these fleeting frames. The laws of physical growth and accretion and maturity and decay, which rule over all things material, do not apply to my true self. 'In our embers is something that doth live.' Whatsoever befalls ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fine lines of Channing were always ready in his memory, to come to the front when called for. His love and loyalty to Elizabeth Hoar should never be forgotten, in however imperfect a rehearsal of his valued companionships. One morning at breakfast I heard him describing her attributes and personality in the most tender and engaging way to Mrs. Stowe, who had never known her, which I would give much to be able ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... Company and occasional voyages as a first-cabin passenger. Notwithstanding this apparent lack of salt-water wisdom, however, his intimate knowledge of ships and the men who go down to the sea in them, together with his very distinct personality, had conduced to provide him with a courtesy title in ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... into life,—have an analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit. Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not. They are one to our present design. They both put nature under foot. The first and last lesson of religion is, "The things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." It puts an affront ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... spirit that quickeneth"; the spirit of effort, of discipline, of the fellowship of cohesion of organization—spreading out from the personality at the desk in this room down through all the units to the men themselves. Though officers and soldiers rarely saw him they had felt the impulse of his spirit soon after he had taken command. A new era had come in France. That old organization ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and moved that His Majesty's forces be withdrawn from Boston. With a singular charm of personality and address, the great dissenter made his speech. Jack wrote in his diary that evening: "The most captivating figure that ever I saw is a well-bred Englishman trained in the art of public speaking." The words were no doubt inspired by the impressive speech of Chatham, which is now ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... views current in the fourth century regarding the punishment due to heresy. Very little was known of Priscillian until lately; and despite the publication of several of his works in 1889, he still remains an enigmatical personality.[1] His erudition and critical spirit were, however, so remarkable, that an historian of weight declares that henceforth we must rank him with St. Jerome.[2] But his writings were, in all probability, far from orthodox. We can easily find in them traces of Gnosticism ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... variance with the spirit of Plato. Believing that he was inspired by the Holy Ghost, or had received his wisdom from Moses, they seemed to find in his writings the Christian Trinity, the Word, the Church, the creation of the world in a Jewish sense, as they really found the personality of God or of mind, and the immortality of the soul. All religions and philosophies met and mingled in the schools of Alexandria, and the Neo-Platonists had a method of interpretation which could elicit any meaning ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... of the South. It was inevitable, however, that abroad so horrible a crime should react both to the detriment of the Confederacy and to the advantage of the North. Sympathy with the North took the form of a sudden exaltation of the personality of Lincoln, bringing out characterizations of the man far different from those which had been his earlier in the war. The presence of a "rural attorney" in the Presidential office had seemed like the irony of fate in the great crisis ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... necessary. Both favoured Home Rule for Ireland, but neither thought it possible to grant it. Both wished for the war to end, but were for prosecuting it to Victory, and neither knew what they meant by that word. So much for the large. On the narrower issues, such as strategy, and the personality of their country's leaders, they were opposed. Edward was a Westerner, Robert an Easterner, as was natural in one who had lived twenty-five years in Ceylon. Edward favoured the fallen government, Robert the risen. Neither ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... This is a body created by Me. In 1530 he published a book: "Against the Entire World after the Apostles—Contra Totum post Apostolos Mundum," in which he taught that the Son is inferior to the Father, and denied the personality of the Holy Spirit. "He argues," says Melanchthon, who in his letters frequently refers to the "blasphemies of Campanus," "that Christ is not God; that the Holy Spirit is not God; that original sin is an empty word. Finally there is nothing which he does not transform into ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... But one can never tell, and the girl was probably quite young. But who was she? The signature gave no clew; the date was two years before, and from New York—sufficiently vague! She would have to read until she found the thread, and as she read the wonder grew that so flimsy a personality could have held her boy. One letter, two, three, six, and yet no sign to identify the writer. She wrote first from New York on the point of starting for a long stay abroad, and the other letters were all from different places on the other side. Once in awhile a familiar ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... wise, would dare to marry this man, noble and love-worthy as he is, till time has tamed and experience developed him. Even then the risk is great, for he demands and unconsciously absorbs into himself the personality of others, making large returns, but of a kind which only those as strong, sagacious, and steadfast as himself can receive and adapt to their individual uses, without being overcome and possessed. That none of us should ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... tiny, and she spoke imperfectly, but shyness was not a part of her small personality, and she insisted on making herself understood. To Tahn-te she seemed like a boy rather than a girl, and he called her Pa-ah-de which is the Te-hna word for "brother"—and later he gave her to his mother to keep her out of the way of the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... love altruism reaches its climax. Turgenieff did not exaggerate when he said that "it is in a man really in love as if his personality were eliminated." Genuine love makes a man shed egoism as a snake sheds its skin. His one thought is: "How can I make her happy and save her from grief" at whatever cost to his own comfort. Amorous sympathy implies a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... failure. And not till she found herself back among sights and sounds hauntingly familiar, did she fully awake to the changes wrought in her by marriage with one of another race. For, if she had profoundly affected Nevil's personality, he had no less profoundly influenced her sense of values ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... however, be remarked, that this notable group of works, stamped with the marks and even the mannerisms of a strong personality, reveal in their unknown author gifts amounting to genius, and heretofore deemed not unworthy of Bramante. It is almost inconceivable that they should have been designed by a mere beginner previously utterly unknown and forgotten soon after. It is incumbent upon those who deny the attribution ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... proposition which has, perhaps, given rise to more controversy in the world than any other. But no one has ever meant to say that three and one are to be taken in the same sense. Whereas the one and many of the Parmenides have precisely the same meaning; there is no notion of one personality or substance having many attributes or qualities. The truth seems to be rather the opposite of that which Socrates implies: There is no contradiction in the concrete, but in the abstract; and the more abstract the idea, the more palpable ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... across our mutual friend, Herr Kore. A perusal of his very business-like ledgers showed me that on the day following your disappearance from the Esplanade he had received 3,600 marks from a certain E. 2 ... all names in his books were in cipher. Under the influence of my winning personality, Herr Kore told me all he knew; I pursued my investigations and then discovered what the asinine police had omitted to tell me, namely, that on the date in question an alleged American had made a hurried flight from the Countess Rachwitz's apartment in the Bendler-Strasse. ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... single face or personality which is suggestive, one sees a thousand of the type which only irritates—the great rank and file of the commonplace. I wonder, after all, whether the game is ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... suggests all things strong and beautiful and joyous, and gives me a sense of physical happiness. I wonder if others observe that all infants have the same scent—pure, simple, undecipherable as their dormant personality. It is not until the age of six or seven that they begin to have perceptible individual odours. These develop and mature along with ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... think it compensates for the loss of the individual person? Take my own case—if you will not think me personal. I have never had the pleasure of seeing you; do you believe that I am content with only that suggestion of your personality which the satisfaction of hearing ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... our eyes fresh from His Father's presence. The mere fact of His presence, the winsomeness of His personality, the clearness of His teaching, the power of His actions, the uncompromising purity of His character amidst sin-stained crowds and sin-dirtied surroundings, the unflinching rigidity of His ideals, the persuasiveness of His very manner and tone of speech, the patience and gentleness, ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... These work creatively from within to mould character, not only inflaming great passions, but touching the springs of pity, tenderness, gentleness, and love,—above all, infusing that wide-reaching sympathy which sends the individual out of the grit-guarded fortress of his personality into the wide plain of the race. The culmination of these ideal powers is in genius and heroism, which draw their inspiration from ideal and spiritual sources, and radiate it in thoughts beautifully large and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... existence of a free will, when modern psychology armed with all the instruments of positive modern research, denies that there is any free will and demonstrates that every act of a human being is the result of an interaction between the personality and the ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... required no inconsiderable ability to preserve the throne to his successor amid such a war of factions, and such a disposition for encroachments on the part of the royal family. In contrast with the splendid achievements and immense personality of Napoleon, Louis XVIII. is not a great figure in history; but had there been no Revolution and no Napoleon, he would have left the fame of a wise and benevolent sovereign. His only striking weakness was in submitting to the influence of either a favorite or a woman, like ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... lips, and the "old familiar faces" and places would be to her as the things that Memory is a silent widow for. Nevertheless, in writing to Mr. Osgood, to acknowledge the receipt of the check, and to thank him, that cunning Miss Wimple took the precaution to put him in possession of as much of her personality as would serve his purpose in case of accident, and provide for the chance of a shock to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... determined, and it can be considered as only relatively finished on any one side. Education is impossible to him who is born an idiot, since the want of the power of generalizing and of ideality of conscious personality leaves to such an unfortunate only the ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... to Torby as fast as they could. Maggie was hardly conscious of having said or done anything decisive. All yielding is attended with a less vivid consciousness than resistance; it is the partial sleep of thought; it is the submergence of our own personality by another. Every influence tended to lull her into acquiescence. That dreamy gliding in the boat which had lasted for four hours, and had brought some weariness and exhaustion; the recoil of her fatigued sensations from the impracticable difficulty of getting out of the boat at this unknown ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... be known of it. His faith in the mine was contagious, though it was not served by a great eloquence; but business men are frequently as sanguine and imaginative as lovers. They are affected by a personality much oftener than people would suppose; and Charles Gould, in his unshaken assurance, was absolutely convincing. Besides, it was a matter of common knowledge to the men to whom he addressed himself that mining in Costaguana was a game that could be made considerably more than worth ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Eustacia's moral training never exceeding in severity a dialogue of this sort, which, if it ever became profitable to good works, would be a result not dear at the price. But her thoughts soon strayed far from her own personality; and, full of a passionate and indescribable solicitude for one to whom she was not even a name, she went forth into the amplitude of tanned wild around her, restless as Ahasuerus the Jew. She was about half a ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... influences, the workers of Massachusetts for the most part pursue solitary ways, with little enough—all too little, some would say—of the advantages that come from intimate association. There is, however, another side of the shield. It is at least questionable whether such strongly marked personality as appears in the work of Seeley, Garo, Davis, Hammond, Eicheim, Buttler, the Allen sisters, and a dozen others who might be mentioned, would be possible if the workers of this section were under the closely dominating ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1920 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... of contemptible personality, I have incurred the wrath of high Heaven. My ministers have deceived me. I am ashamed to meet my ancestors; and therefore I myself take off my cap of State, and with my hair covering my face, await dismemberment at ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch—not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... too deeply, or too devotionally on the personeity of God, and his personality in the Word, [Greek: Gio to monogenei], and thence on the individuity of the responsible creature;—that it is a perfection which, not indeed in my intellect, but yet in my habit of feeling, I have too much confounded with that 'complexus' of visual images, cycles or customs ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... us again. I did not find myself indignant at this insolent idea of the Englishman's. Instead, my mind seemed to distinctly close its doors against the admission of his personality. I was near Daisy, and that was enough; let there be no thoughts ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... excel at his own work has already climbed the first rung of the ladder; in that process he perforce learns to think for himself while setting an example to those who are around him. Out of application to work comes capacity for original and creative progress. The personality characteristics, emotional balance, etc., which give him excellence in those things which he does with his own brain and hand will enable him to command the respect, and in turn, the ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... smell of the Kut Sang. I caught it last week passing a ship-chandler's shop, and it set my veins throbbing again with the sense of conflict, and I caught myself tensing my muscles for a death grapple. To me the Kut Sang is a personality, a sentient being, with her own soul and moods and temper, audaciously tossing her bows at the threatening seas rising to meet her. She is my sea-ghost, and as much a character to me as Riggs or Thirkle or ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... I declared bitterly, "to have chosen the most unfortunate personality! I wish to goodness you had remained Mr. Parker! This infernal name of yours, Bundercombe, has ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... given an erroneous account of this incident, as of many others. She pretends to relate it from recollection, as if she herself had been present; when the fact is that it was communicated to her by me. She has represented it as a personality, and the true point has escaped her. BOSWELL. She tells the story against Boswell. 'I fancy Mr. B—— has ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... its doings are so cleverly concealed.... Aunt Liz doesn't figure amongst the shareholders any more than Crofts does. That horrid Bax holds most of the shares now, and mother the rest.... Yet Aunt Liz must be rich and she certainly didn't get it from the Canon, who only left a net personality of under L4,000.... I read his will at Somerset House.... She has had her portrait in the Queen because she gave a large subscription to the underpinning of Winchester Cathedral and the restoration of Wolvesey as a clergy house.... Mother must be very rich, I should judge, from certain ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... for the discussion of the second question, but I do not know that it is more possible to come to a definite conclusion. The personality of the anonymous adept who took the name of Eirenaeus Philalethes was shrouded in mystery even to his contemporaries. The fullest account given of him on any of his title-pages is on that of the Experimenta de Praeparatione ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... little Square which squatted beside the East River, differed from the others only in that three balls of tarnished gilt swung before it and unredeemed pledges emanated a weakly lure from behind its dirt-streaked windows, and also in that the personality of the Duchess gave the house something of a character ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... I like. How good of you to wait for me! I know you have been longing for the town which I am convinced is a part of your very personality." ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... ago when he was Chief of Staff to Sir Edward Seymour, then Commander-in-Chief of the Asiatic Squadron. Indeed, you were always hearing about Jellicoe in those days on the China coast. He was the kind of man whom people talk about after they have met him, which means personality. It was in China seas, you may remember, that when a few British seamen were hard pressed in a fight that was not ours the phrase, "Blood is thicker than water," sprang from the lips of an American commander, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... prepared Prescott for a second. The affair, too, began to absorb his mind to such an extent that his friends noticed his lack of interest in the society and amusements of Richmond. He had been well received there, his own connections, his new friends, and above all his pleasing personality, exercising a powerful influence; and, coming from the rough fields of war, he had ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Left. He is a slender, smooth-shaven, young-old looking man, his voice and body almost vibrating with nerve; a personality that so often appeals to the tenderness in women, while it irritates men. He brings his hat and ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... into the crowd, and there in a twinkling we would be changed. Once more we were members of the whole and took on its huge personality. And again the vision came to me, the dream of a weary world set free, a world where poverty and pain and all the bitterness they bring might in the end be swept away by this awakening giant here—which day by day ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... for only one or two the thing is child's-play, but when he has to represent a whole troop, it is then that he earns his money in the sweat of his brow. Then must he bound from spot to spot, reduplicate, triplicate, sexduplicate his single personality, and swell and hasten his blows, until he produce a perfect illusion for the ear, and you would swear that a crowd of emulous masons were continuing merrily to roof the house. It must be a strange ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some new and interesting object of natural history, instead of a ponderous and grumpy old sailor, who seemed to doubt somewhat the bona fides of the Kangaroo Bank. But the truth was that the young man was dazzled by the personality of one who might command such wealth; it had suddenly dawned on his calculating mind that a large sum of money was standing in the name of Rose Summerhayes; he realised with the clearness of a revelation that there were other fish ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... forbidden by positive law the rights of education, through which alone are attained the culture and refinement of real manhood—these are the 'freedmen' just emerging from the most insignificant nonage to the sublime personality of citizenship in a Government of the people. Such being practically their attitude, what are the real demands and needs in ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... any difficulty in preaching to them. For, whatever place a man may give to preaching in the ritual of the church—indeed it does not properly belong to the ritual at all—it is yet the part of the so-called service with which his personality has most to do. To the influences of the other parts he has to submit himself, ever turning the openings of his soul towards them, that he may not be a mere praying-machine; but with the sermon it is otherwise. That he produces. For that he ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the thing above all others. The secret, in the eyes of these wretches, is unity which serves as a base of union. To betray a secret is to tear from each member of this fierce community something of his own personality. To inform against, in the energetic slang dialect, is called: "to eat the bit." As though the informer drew to himself a little of the substance of all and nourished himself on a bit of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in a rather worn military cape, which on entering the door he promptly threw back in such a manner as to display the red lining. This seemed an appropriate envelopment of his flaming, buoyant personality. He walked with his chin up and his back straight, and trod directly on and over the ends of his toes so that he seemed fairly to spring with vigour. His body was very erect and tall and pliant, bending easily to every change of balance. If I were never to have seen his face at all ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... force is misdirected in personal strain, we can no more give full and responsive attention to the music, than a piano can sound the harmonies of a sonata if some one is drawing his hands at the same time backwards and forwards over the strings. But, alas! a contracted personality is so much the order of the day that many of us carry the chronic contractions of years constantly with us, and can no more free ourselves for a concert at a day's or a week's notice, than we can gain freedom ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The Angel" are ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... felt this more even than her husband, for when she appealed to him, he would scarcely confess to a sense of it; but from time to time in the stronger passages she was aware of an echo, to the ear and to the eye, of a more passionate personality than Miss Pettrell's. Had Godolphin profited by his knowledge of Miss Havisham's creation, and had he imparted to Miss Pettrell, who never saw it, hints of it which she used in her own creation of the ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... a most complex and interesting personality, I assure you—in fact, a dual personality, a sort of aeronautical Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There's Lift, my vertical part or component, as those who prefer long words would say; he always acts vertically upwards, and hates Gravity like poison. He's the useful and admirable ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... which makes him a writer of the second Romantic generation, always a contemporary, a modern, without on this account having sacrificed anything to the latest literary fashion or copied some brand-new aesthetic, above all conserving his own distinct, singular personality ... is but to repeat what has been said many times already. All these judgments are confirmed by his latest book, wherein may be noted the same impeccable correctness of language, the same firm grasp upon form, ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... article except that he has acquired prominence in a section of the country that has always been inimical to my heart and mind. But I recognize his genius; and, as I have told you, I have instituted an investigation of his personality. Perhaps it will be futile. But I shall pursue the inquiry. Until that is finished, I must leave open the question of filling the vacant space in our ...
— Options • O. Henry
... who had just brought himself into notice by a series of articles in 'The Screw and Lever,' in which he had subjected the universe piecemeal to his critical analysis. Duncan Macmorrogh cut up the creation, and got a name. His attack upon mountains was most violent, and proved, by its personality, that he had come from the Lowlands. He demonstrated the inutility of all elevation, and declared that the Andes were the aristocracy of the globe. Rivers he rather patronised; but flowers he quite pulled to pieces, and proved them to be the most useless of ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... by at the hospital without a decision on the girl's part and without another word from her former friend. Sonya Valesky she must remember was her Russian name. A beautiful name and somehow it seemed to fit the personality of the woman whom Nona at once admired and distrusted. For the name carried with it its own suggestion of beauty and of melancholy. What secret could Sonya Valesky be concealing that forced even her friends to ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... a fault to omit it. But that the Poet should have dared to think of exhibiting it dramatically in this instance, and that, too, in its most hopeless form—that he should have dared to think of exhibiting the personality which was then 'the state' to the eye of 'the subject' labouring under that personal disability, in the very act, too, of boasting of its kingly terrors—this only goes to show what large prerogatives, what boundless freedoms and immunities, the resources of this particular department ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... poorest miner. In private life he was fond of music, art, and literature; but in public life he was autocratic as a czar and sternly righteous as a prophet. He was a vigilance committee in himself through sheer force of personality. Crime did not flourish where Begbie went. Chinaman or Indian could be as sure of justice as the richest miner in Cariboo. From hating and fearing him, the camp ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... letters. We have several volumes of Bismarck anecdotes, Bismarck table-talk, etc. The best known are those of Busch, which have been translated into English—and in spite of the fact that his sayings come to us at second hand and colored by the personality of the transmitter, we recognize the qualities which, by the universal testimony of those who knew him, made him one of the most fascinating of talkers. These qualities, however, come out most clearly in a little volume of letters ('Bismarck briefe'), chiefly addressed to his wife. (These ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... house reminded him of his mother and of his grandfather, and of those who had been the village historians for his childhood, and a musing gravity seemed to deepen in his mind. He was aware of the brevity of life, and of the lapse of the personality; of the tragedies of passion, with their gravity and poignancy, and of the mystery that broods at the back of all our thoughts. But most of all he was aware that the building standing fronting him was the very kernel of his individuality ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... sometimes eccentric, but eccentricity is not genius. Vocal students should hear as many good singers as possible, but actually imitate none. A skilled teacher will always discern and strive to develop the personality of the pupil, will be on the alert to discover latent features of originality and character. He will respect and encourage individuality, rather than insist upon the servile imitation of some model—even though that model be himself. As the distinguished ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... opposite the more important names. Thus he has written opposite the name of the King: "To accomplish something in this world, one has to risk morality and conscience;" opposite the name of Olof: "He who strives to realize an idea develops greatness of personality—he accomplishes good by his personal example, but he is doomed to perish;" opposite that of Bishop Brask: "There is movement in whatever exists—whatever stands still must be crushed;" and opposite that of Gert: "He who wills more than his reason ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... expected, the narrative composed by such an author is characterized by (1) unusual literary beauty; it is plainly the product of Greek culture. The divine Spirit chose and equipped a rare instrument in the poetic and refined personality of Luke and through him gave to the world that version of the gospel story which is most exquisite in style ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... curiosity, and had always hated what he disbelieved, but none the less he had heard occasionally of absurd and questionable experiments. He remembered even to have glanced over reports of cases in the newspapers concerning disappearances, loss of memory, dual personality. Cranks... Oh yes, he thought now, with a sense of cold humiliating relief, there had been such cases as his before. They were no doubt curable. They must be comparatively common in America—that land of jangled ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... personality and life of Nataputta are still more remarkable. They say repeatedly that he laid claim to the dignity of an Arhat and to omniscience which the Jainas also claim for their prophet, whom they prefer ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... any sort of reticence on this point hitherto on the part of Cicero, he made up for it in this second speech. Nothing can equal its bitter personality, except perhaps its rhetorical power. He begins the attack by declaring that he will not tell all he knows—"in order that, if we have to do battle again hereafter, I may come always fresh-armed to the attack; an advantage which the multiplicity of that man's crimes ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... determined not to talk about herself if the subject could be in any way avoided; but now he felt that he was driven up into a corner;—now he was forced to speak to her of her own personality. "You have no experience yet as to that. How can you say what age ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... something very much more than a purely speculative basis to work upon. Religious reformers there had been in Germany throughout the Middle Ages, but their preachings had taken no deep root. The powerful personality of the Monk of Wittenberg found an economic soil ready to hand in which his teachings could fructify, and hence the world-historic result. The peasant revolts, sporadic the Middle Ages through, had for the half-century preceding the Reformation been growing in frequency and importance, but it ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... educated and given liberty gradually. Though we Muslim girls have come to Christian colleges and don't observe purdah, yet we are very careful of how we should make the best of it and show a good example by our personality and behavior so that the people who criticize us may not have anything to say. I think if all of us try hard to abolish this system it will take us at least twenty years to do it. No matter what happens I don't approve of ladies ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... truth of statement, and sincerity and self-restraint in sentiment. These elements give substantial worth to the matter or content of literature. Besides all this there is a grace or elegance or force, proceeding from the personality of the writer and transcending all rules of art, that gives a peculiar charm to the best literature. Sometimes the personal element or spirit of a work is so pleasing that it more than counterbalances defects of form, and wins its way to ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... necessary to an understanding of what she has written, it was thought best to supplement her autobiography with the reports and letters of her teacher, Miss Anne Mansfield Sullivan. The addition of a further account of Miss Keller's personality and achievements may be unnecessary; yet it will help to make clear some of the traits of her character and the nature of the work which she and ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... man of many subtleties—she knew it instinctively—a man of tigerish temperament, harmless as a kitten in sunshine, merciless as a fiend in storm. Yes, he was certainly like a tiger, forcible even in repose. She had never before encountered so dominant a personality. It affected her strangely, half-attracting, half-repelling, arousing in her a sense of antagonism that yet was ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Inspector Clohesy reminds me that he was a remarkable personality, now-a-days not so common—tall, slight and wiry, he could sit a horse as well as the best of riders and hold his own with men of all sorts. Endowed with quick insight into the character of men who were in many instances indifferent to law, he exercised a restraining influence ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... as Dr. Holmes says, may be very unlike his neighbour's John; but in the case of Mr. Stevenson, his Louis was very similar to my Louis; I mean that, as he presents his personality to the world in his writings, even so did that personality appear to me in our intercourse. The man I knew was always ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... the chief qualities of Signorelli's work, I must not omit one characteristic which points to the strength of his personality—the way he repeats his own types (and not types only, but precisely the same forms) time after time, and often after the lapse of many years. The child Christs he paints over and over again, the same figure, sometimes exactly in the same attitude, as in the "Madonnas," of ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... If she had been unhappy for complex reasons, the unhappiness was as real as though it had been uncomplicated. Soul is more bruisable than flesh, and Julia was wounded in every fibre of her spirit. Her husband's personality seemed to be closing gradually in on her, obscuring the sky and cutting off the air, till she felt herself shut up among the decaying bodies of her starved hopes. A sense of having been decoyed by some world-old ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... under the seat his cap was abandoned, as usual. His face was brown with tan—a strong, fine face, with dark-lashed hazel eyes alight under thick, dark eyebrows. From head to foot he was a rather striking personality. ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... from the many published pictures, but no one who had not met his smiling eyes can realize the charm of his personality. ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... something so manly in George's speech, that, but for its final fling and personality, every man in the room would have crowded round him to shake hands; but what man ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... in a suitor's obvious panoply was Anthony Wilding, of Zoyland Chase, and Richard watched his advent with foreboding. Wilding's was a personality to dazzle any woman, despite—perhaps even because of—the reputation for wildness that clung to him. That he was known as Wild Wilding to the countryside is true; but it were unfair—as Richard knew—to attach to this too much importance; for the adoption of so obvious an alliteration ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... The individual soul of Ramanuja, on the other hand, is really individual; it has indeed sprung from Brahman and is never outside Brahman, but nevertheless it enjoys a separate personal existence and will remain a personality for ever—The release from sa/m/sara means, according to /S/a@nkara, the absolute merging of the individual soul in Brahman, due to the dismissal of the erroneous notion that the soul is distinct from Brahman; according to Ramanuja it only means the soul's passing ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... natural phenomena and the laws they exhibit give evidence of the personality of God and the existence of his will. A being without will, acting by necessity of ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... based on dislike—her behaviour towards Mr. Pratt had disgusted him at the start, but his antipathy was not all built on that foundation. During the weeks he had been at home, he had heard a good deal about her—indeed he had found her rather a dominant personality on the Marsh—and what he had heard had not helped turn him from his first predisposition ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... out in brilliant contrast with the ignorance and superstition of his age. The world was not yet ripe for his advanced ideas, hence when the work lost the support of his strong personality, its effects soon became obliterated, and ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... no more edifying and compelling personality amongst the party who were in the habit of taking the floor in 10 Downing Street in 1915 than Lord Curzon. He, Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Lloyd George might almost have been called rivals for the role ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Van Blarcom, but without results. It was ruffling; I should have absorbed in so much intercourse a fairly definite impression of his personality, profession, and social grade. But he was baffling; reticent, but self-assured, authoritative even, and, in a quiet way, watchful. He smoked a good cigar, mixed a good drink, seemed used to travel, but ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti |
