"Characteristic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ferocious people; while the peasants of Sennaar inhabiting the villages we found on our route, are a respectable people in comparison with those of the capital. Throughout the whole of these countries there is one general characteristic, in which they resemble the Indians of America, namely, courage and self-respect. The chiefs, after coming to salute the Pasha, would make no scruple of sitting down facing him, and converse with him without embarrassment, in the same manner as they are accustomed to do with their own Maleks, ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... its gallant crew only here and there was one able to struggle with the waves; most had sunk under the deadly volley. A few were picked up by the hindmost boat, the second having pressed on with the valor characteristic of English seamen; they were met, however, by a heavy fire from the starboard guns, which had been depressed so as to cover a particular range, and the second boat like the first was shattered to pieces. The third busied itself in picking ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... are inevitable where numerous[*] audiences are addressed by the same man on the same subject, yet amid all these necessary liberties retains not only the true sentiments and arguments of the speaker, but his forms of thought and all that is characteristic of his genius. Such an operation, rightly performed, may, like a diminishing mirror, concentrate the brilliancy of diffuse orations, and assist their efficacy on minds which would faint under the effort of ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... other chaplains for this man was great indeed. He seemed to lead a charmed life, and though he rapidly aged during the siege, he never gave up. He was overworked and half-starved, but he always had a cheery word for every one. He tells the story himself with characteristic modesty in The Church of Scotland Home and Foreign Mission Record. ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... omission will reveal to any one who undertakes it an underlying characteristic of our later, as distinguished from our earlier, oratory. The careful elaboration of the parts, the restraint of each topic treated to its appropriate part, and the systematic development of the parts into a symmetrical whole, are as markedly present in the latter as they are absent ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... granddaughter of the celebrated Jean Gordon, and was said to have much resembled her in appearance. The following account of her is extracted from the letter of a friend, who for many years enjoyed frequent and favourable opportunities of observing the characteristic peculiarities of the Yetholm tribes.—'Madge Gordon was descended from the Faas by the mother's side, and was married to a Young. She was a remarkable personage of a very commanding presence, and high stature, being nearly six feet high. She had a large aquiline nose-penetrating eyes, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the letter twice and then locked it in a drawer. It was characteristic of the writer in that he said hardly anything of himself. That might have been expected, and there was no need to be frightened by the hand-writing. A moment later he unlocked the drawer and enclosed the ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... passage quoted, apostasy from God does not denote the special sin, but rather that general condition of every sin, consisting in its turning away from God. It may also be said that apostasy from God is said to be the beginning of pride, because it is the first species of pride. For it is characteristic of pride to be unwilling to be subject to any superior, and especially to God; the result being that a man is unduly lifted up, in respect of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... evening, without any warning, old Saracinesca arrived, and was warmly greeted. After dinner Giovanni told him the story of Del Ferice's escape. Thereupon the old gentleman flew into a towering rage, swearing and cursing in a most characteristic manner, but finally declaring that to arrest spies was the work of spies, and that Giovanni had behaved like a gentleman, as of course he could not help doing, seeing that he was ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... the expression of it. The world has grown older, and in the evolution of his nature man has become conscious of the irreconcilable paradoxes of life, and more or less aware that while he is infinite in faculty, he is also the quintessence of dust. But there is one essential characteristic in which Shakespeare and Homer resemble each other as poets,—that they both show to us the scene of life without the interference of their own personality. Each simply holds the mirror up to nature, and lets ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... prolixity, and a single downy woodpecker called sharply again and again. A mocking-bird near me (there is always a mocking-bird near you, in Florida) added his voice for a time, but soon relapsed into silence. The fact was characteristic; for, wherever I went, I found it true that the mocker grew less musical as the place grew wilder. By instinct he is a public performer, he demands an audience; and it is only in cities, like St. Augustine and Tallahassee, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... money to a beggar; how he spoke with effusion of his little daughter; how he had once borrowed money to send her a doll - a trait worthy of Newton, she being then in her nineteenth year at least; how, if the doll never arrived (which it appeared it never did), the trait was only more characteristic of the highest order of creative intellect; how he was - no, not beautiful - striking, yes, Dick would go so far, decidedly striking in appearance; how his boots were made to lace and his coat was black, not cut-away, a ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were glad to leave it Establishment had the air of taking care of itself Fond of lawsuits seems a characteristic of an isolated people It is not much use to try to run a jail without liquor Man's success in court depended upon the length of his purse Maried? No, she hoped not Monument of procrastination Not much inclination to change his clothes or his cabin One has to dodge this sort ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... and antagonistic motives, and invests the combinations in astounding orchestral colors, so that the hearer, unaccustomed to such bold experimentations, is quite lost in the maze. Here, for example, is a characteristic passage for solo French horn ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... companion from San Francisco, having proved to be talkative and uninteresting, Elsie Marley was more than content to find herself alone after the change had been made and her train pulled out of Chicago. It was characteristic of the girl that she did not even look out of the window to see the last of Mrs. Bennet, who, having waited on the platform until the train started and waved her handkerchief in vain, betook herself ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... than rude; as Cleggett watched the machine make off towards an isolated road house on the bayside he wondered at the quick intensity of his own antipathy. Unconsciously he flexed his wrist in his characteristic gesture. Scarcely knowing that he spoke, ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... connected with the letters themselves, that Mr. Walpole wrote them in the intention and hope that they might be preserved; and although they are enlivened by his characteristic vivacity, and are not deficient in the lighter matters with which he was in the habit of amusing all his correspondents, they are, on the whole, written in a more careful style, and are employed on more important ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... thirteen hundred yards in length, and in launching the empty boats over three several ridges of rock which obstruct the channel and produce as many cascades. I shall long remember the rude and characteristic wildness of the scenery which surrounded these falls; rocks piled on rocks hung in rude and shapeless masses over the agitated torrents which swept their bases, whilst the bright and variegated tints of the mosses and lichens, that covered the face of the cliffs, contrasting with the dark ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... although there was little promise of excitement about it, the work was distinctly congenial, and offered him a field for showing practical judgment and skill as an engineer. He threw himself into his task with his characteristic energy and enthusiasm. But how far the latter was damped by his prompt discovery that the whole project of the Thames defences was faulty and unsound it is impossible to say, but his attention to his work in all its details certainly showed no diminution ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... is no mention of pork, the characteristic animal food of China, and the only one specified by Friar Odoric in his account of the same city. Probably Mark may have got a little Saracenized among the Mahomedans at the Kaan's Court, and doubted if ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... irradiated his blurred eyes and intensified his wrinkles; his cough, shaking the folds of his outer fur garments above his wasted chest, mingled with his gay chuckle of merriment, as young as a boy's, while he cried, "Iroquois! Iroquois!"—the characteristic exclamation of the Mengwe confederation, whence they take their modern and popular name, and signifying, "I have spoken! ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Thompson," remarked Willoughby, "his conversation this afternoon rather amused me. It recalled to my mind an excellent and most characteristic pleasantry, which you may not have heard. The story goes that Coleridge once asked Lamb, 'Did you ever hear me preach?' 'Preach!' said Lamb; 'Gad, I never heard you do anything else!' And yet, if Mr. Collins had enjoyed ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... stocks; for it is impossible to make the present domestic breeds by the crossing of any lesser number: how, for instance, could a pouter be produced by crossing two breeds unless one of the parent-stocks possessed the characteristic enormous crop? The supposed aboriginal stocks must all have been rock-pigeons, that is, they did not breed or willingly perch on trees. But besides C. livia, with its geographical sub-species, only two or three other species of rock-pigeons are known; and these have not any ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... still-lifes, and in some of the figure studies also. The endeavor to eliminate all aspects of extraneous conception by dismissing the quality of literature, of poetry and romance from painting, was the exact characteristic which made him what he is for us today, the pioneer in the field of modern art. It was significant enough when he once said to Renoir, that it took him twenty years to find out that painting was not sculpture. Those earlier and heavy impasto studies of his are the evidence of ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... evident that two religions having such contrary effects on mankind should not be confused as they are under a common name. There is not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of Jesus. When Saul watched the clothes of the men who stoned Stephen, he was not acting upon beliefs which Paul renounced. There is no record of Christ's having ever said to any man: "Go and sin as much as you like: you can put it all on ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... coupled sometimes with laughable ignorance; sometimes with real learning and wisdom and culture. It is emphasized sometimes the more by school training, and other such advantages. But through all these accidental things it remains,—the dominant human characteristic. The chief letter in man's alphabet is the one next after h, spelled and written with a large capital. The yellow fever—the fever for gold—so increasingly epidemic, is at heart a bit of the same thing. The money gives power, and power gives a certain independence of others, ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... characteristic of the collection as now reconstructed is the great preponderance of pieces, of which the authors are not known, or by authors who have not left more than one or two dramatic productions. It was judged expedient, in the interest of purchasers, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... that my range of sensibility was more extended, being obliged to believe that I should receive large influxes of happiness and happy Thoughts" (I suppose from the L.B.)—With a deal of stuff about a certain Union of Tenderness and Imagination, which in the sense he used Imagination was not the characteristic of Shakspeare, but which Milton possessed in a degree far exceeding other Poets: which Union, as the highest species of Poetry, and chiefly deserving that name, "He was most proud to aspire to;" then illustrating the said Union by two quotations ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... diverges in tint from the white, in one direction towards the yellow, and in another towards the red or pink; whilst sometimes we witness a seeming tinge of blue,—characteristic of asphyxia, cholera, or some other disease. We often see a mixture of red and yellow (the yellow predominating) in persons subject to bilious complaints; and not unfrequently a mixture of all three, forming what the painters call a "neutral ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... intelligence, Chicago in its internal trade, and Washington in its Congressional and State politics. New York has its literary aspirations, its commercial grandeur, and, Heaven knows, it has its politics also. But these do not strike the visitor as being specially characteristic of the city. That it is pre-eminently American is its glory or its disgrace, as men of different ways of thinking may decide upon it. Free institutions, general education, and the ascendency of dollars are the words written on ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... one of the principal in Brussels, is usually deserted between the hours of three and four. At other times it is filled with business men discussing their affairs, or playing dominoes with that rattle which is characteristic of ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... liberate a man, who had become English, would never do. He next saw Mansoor, the brother, and asked him if he knew that Asaad was in close confinement. "Yes," answered he, "and he may end his days there, unless he can learn to behave himself better." One characteristic mark of a heathen is, that he is "without ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... and diligence in his work could not lighten the persistent sadness which was Alick's chief characteristic now. Gaunt and silent, with the eyes of a man whose inner self is absent and whose thoughts are not with his company, he looked as if he had passed through the fire, and had not passed through unscathed. No one knew ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... had shown a great deal; he had made short work of the most formidable man in the yard, and given the rest to understand that he was not to be tampered with. This had taken many by surprise, for hitherto an imperturbable amiability had been the leading characteristic of Slocum's manager. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... homogeneous from Behring Strait nearly to the North Cape, we have the frozen tundra region, with a characteristic tundra culture; pushed now far north since Europe mellowed into a habitable world, but formerly widespread about the skirts of the shrinking ice-sheet. Here we hunt large animals and sea-shore beasts, and trap small-deer very ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... kept his promise. His bold assertion of his own rights, his pretended submission to the king, and the ascendancy which he tacitly assumes over him without openly claiming it, as soon as he has him in his power, are characteristic traits of this ambitious and politic usurper. But the part of Richard himself gives the chief interest to the play. His folly, his vices, his misfortunes, his reluctance to part with the crown, his fear to keep it, his weak and womanish regrets, his starting tears, his fits of hectic ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... citadel at this time was a worthy gentleman named M. d'Ainsi, who was, in every respect, a polite and well-accomplished man, having the carriage and behaviour of one of our most perfect courtiers, very different from the rude incivility which appears to be the characteristic of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Another characteristic of our religion is its call for what have sometimes been termed the passive virtues, fortitude, submission, patience, resignation. The acquisition of these qualities is to man a most arduous task. He can toil, and ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... later that two men entered the room from the hotel office together. The contained, defiant walk of the slightly heavier and taller of the two was characteristic, and without the black beard, deep eyes and the pallor of his face, would almost have identified him as Abe Hawk; while in the emotionless, sandy features of his companion and in his more frank, careless make-up, ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... off his hat, naming himself in that well-bred and agreeable manner characteristic of men of his sort,—and even his smile appeared to be part and parcel of a conventional ensemble so harmonious ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... in the serenity characteristic of one's mood when the present is so agreeable that neither memories of the past nor misgivings as to the future are obtrusive. He met Watterly in town, and remarked, "This is another piece of good luck. I ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... connection or sympathy with the Protector, it was a deception; if it was intended as preparatory to renouncing the worship of the setting sun of Cromwell, and worshipping the rising sun of Charles the Second, it was indeed characteristic of their siding with the stronger party, if they could thereby advance their own interests. But I think every candid man in this age will admit, that there was much more dignity of sentiment and conduct of those loyal colonies who adhered to their Sovereign in ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... "Descent of Man."[2] He is, as usual, more moderate and guarded than Huxley. He says, for instance: "It is generally admitted that with women the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization." Then he passes to the usual assertion that man has thus far attained to a higher eminence than woman. "If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music,— comprising ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... This characteristic I grasped only after patient investigation. At the southern foot of the hills of Serignan, not far from the village, is a wood of maritime pines alternating with rows of cypress. There, towards Toussaint, after the autumnal rains, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... advantage in our attempting to maintain the traditional four-year class-system of the American colleges. It has never existed in the University of Virginia; it is modified, though not nominally given up at Harvard; it is not an important characteristic of Michigan and Cornell; it is not known in the English, French or German universities. It is a collegiate rather than a university method. If parents or students desire us to mark out prescribed courses, either classical or scientific, lasting four years, it will be easy ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... that every other young lady I met had wide, staring eyes. Now, after two years sitting by a person who never reasons, it strikes me that every other person whom I meet has been thinking hard, and his logic stands out a prominent characteristic. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... cutler saws a piece of bone for a knife handle. You commit a rascal to prison because he merits transportation, but by the time he comes out he merits a halter. By uniting also with industry, we become industrious. It is easy to give instances of people whose distinguishing characteristic was idleness, but when they breathed the air of Birmingham, diligence became the predominant feature. The view of profit, like the view of corn to the hungry ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... flourishing more than fourteen centuries before Christ. It is certain, however, that we have here a carefully-elaborated portrait of an Egyptian hero who flourished many centuries before our era. The features have all the prominent parts noticed by writers on Egyptian sculpture as characteristic of the Egyptian style. Here are the wonderfully high and prominent ears (which must have been invaluable peculiarities to Egyptian wits), the thick Ethiopian lips, the coarse nose, and the full eyes, all carefully and skilfully chiselled. Certainly, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... the larger world. Some were middle-class lawyers, merchants, and squires; a few, but very few, were of higher rank, while scores were of the soil, coarse in language and habits, and given to practices characteristic of the peasantry of England at that time. The fact that hardly a fifth of those in Massachusetts were professed Christians renders it doubtful how far religious convictions were the only driving motive that sent hundreds ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... open with a quick characteristic gesture, and as he did so a small photograph fell out. Two childish faces with eyes equally appealing and lovely gazed up at him. Joe regarded it with the look of tenderness which he always felt for children, and then placed ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... look thoroughly into the whole thing, you know." And Sir Claude, with characteristic kindness, gave her a nod of assurance accompanied by a ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... her efforts to inspire her husband with her own energetic will. She knew that all was in vain, and had accepted her fate. Since she could not live as a queen, she would at least die as one. She made her preparations for this calmly and with characteristic decision. "They will kill me, I know," she said to her maids. "I have only one duty left me, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... readiness to treat every pretty girl they meet as a proper field of endeavor and a possible instrument of pleasure; and the corresponding attitude among thoroughly educated and up-to-date girls, in accepting and welcoming such treatment; all these characteristic symptoms of the modern spirit, of the so-called "unrest," need not be referred, in any but a secondary and accessory way, to the after effects of a war, which did not begin until their line of progress ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... the rhythm of a song," {euruthmon}. See Mr. Ruskin's most appropriate note ("Bib. Past." i. 59), "A remarkable word, as significant of the complete rhythm ({ruthmos}) whether of sound or motion, that was so great a characteristic of the Greek ideal (cf. xi. 16, {metarruthmizo})," and much ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... give the former layer time to consolidate and harden, and this would assist in giving it that bedded structure which is so noticeable in the shales, and which causes it to split up into fine laminae. This uniformity of structure in the shales over wide areas is a well ascertained characteristic of the coal-shales, and we may therefore regard the method of their deposition as given here with ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... "Characteristic," thought Kendal grimly, as he tore up the note. "She can't think why. But I'm glad the Academy doesn't stick in her pretty throat—I was afraid it would. It's the potent influence of ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... myself. There will be this advantage about being arrested, that at the preliminary investigation I shall have an opportunity of exposing to the authorities and to the public all the infamy of her conduct. If I kill myself she may, with her characteristic duplicity and impudence, throw all the blame on me, and society will justify her behaviour and will very likely laugh at me. . . . If I remain alive, then ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... is fully transformed, changes his shape, acquires wings and wing-cases; nevertheless, like the female, he possesses, from the time when he is hatched, the pale lamp of the end segment. This luminous aspect of the stern is characteristic of the entire Glow-worm tribe, independently of sex and season. It appears upon the budding grub and continues throughout life unchanged. And we must not forget to add that it is visible on the dorsal as well as on the ventral surface, whereas the two large ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Angelin had been deep in consultation with Madame Bourdieu. The former had not given her name, but had simply played the part of an obliging friend accompanying another on an occasion of some delicacy. Madame Bourdieu, with the keen scent characteristic of her profession, divined a possible customer in that inquisitive lady who put such strange questions to her. However, a rather painful scene took place, for realizing that she could not forever deceive Madame Angelin with false hopes, Madame Bourdieu decided ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... reached a decision, it was characteristic that she moved swiftly. Also, there was cause for haste, for by this time Pierre must have discovered that there was no one in the lower reaches of the gorge and would be galloping back with all the speed of the cream-colored mare which ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... of wealth. In fact, he was too proud a man to be a vain one. He resolved, therefore, to place himself upon the footing of a country gentleman of easy fortune, without assuming, or permitting his household to assume, any of the faste which then was considered as characteristic of a nabob. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... I should best describe the characteristic quality of Four Blind Mice (LANE) as geniality. The scene of it is Burmah—astonishing, when you consider the host of novels about the rest of India, that so few should employ this equally picturesque setting—and it is quickly apparent that what Mr. C.C. LOWIS doesn't know ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... Emsworth's indefatigable private secretary, was one of those men whose chief characteristic is a vague suspicion of their fellow human beings. He did not suspect them of this or that definite crime; he simply suspected them. He prowled through life as we are told the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... declension in Old English, the Vowel Declension and the Consonant Declension. Anoun is said to belong to the Vowel Declension when the final letter of its stem is a vowel, this vowel being then known as the stem-characteristic; but if the stem-characteristic is a consonant, the noun belongs to the Consonant Declension. There might have been, therefore, as many subdivisions of the Vowel Declension in Old English as there were vowels, and as many subdivisions of the Consonant Declension ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... marriages; they all had a superficial cosmopolitanism and a comfortable mixture of the four chief languages, and the intellectual baggage of the four great nations of the West. Each nation brought into the pool its personal characteristic, the Jews their restlessness and the Anglo-Saxons their phlegm, but everything was quickly absorbed in the Italian melting-pot. When centuries of great plundering barons have impressed on a race the haughty and rapacious ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... You're as ready to take risks as I am," he added, with his characteristic pursing of the lips; "and 'pon my word, you're just as lucky! For I'm lucky, Burke; there's no doubt of it. That affair at Calcutta might have done for us but for the morning mist. I'd like to try myself. It would punish a set of ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... mountain-man added, and got to his feet slowly, drawing himself out to six and a half feet of burly manhood. The shoulders were, however, a little stooped, and the head was thrust forwards with an eager, watchful look—a habit become a physical characteristic. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... took his coronation oath, as usual on such occasions, with his hands up on the scripture, and in the form in which it was repeated to him by the Pope. But in the act of coronation itself, there was a marked deviation from the universal custom, characteristic of the man, the age, and the conjuncture. In all other similar solemnities, the crown had been placed on the sovereign's head by the presiding spiritual person, as representing the Deity, by whom princes rule. But not even from the head of the Catholic Church would Bonaparte consent to receive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... straight with a tendency to branch. The leaves are alternate on the stems, 4 to 5 inches in length, and about 1-1/2 inches in breadth with serrated edges. Pale yellow flowers spring from the axil (axilla) of the leaves, and there is an abundance of small seeds in the fruit which, as mentioned, is characteristic ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... that those altercations are the foundation of the whole, and therefore a necessary part of the work? The letters and conversations, where the story makes the slowest progress, are presumed to be characteristic. They give occasion, likewise, to suggest many interesting personalities, in which a good deal of the instruction essential to a work of this nature is conveyed. And it will, moreover, be remembered, that the author, at his first setting out, apprized the reader, that the story (interesting ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... her. She saw a lean, nervous young man, whose flowing black hair and full beard were streaked with gray. His dark face, hollow in the cheeks and not too well-colored with the glow of health, seemed to get light and vivacity from his melancholy eyes. Seriousness was the characteristic expression. Once he laughed, in the whole evening. Once he looked straight into her face, with so fixed, so intense an expression, so near a gaze, so intimate and penetrating, that she ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... the skipper's sudden 'bout-face. But they were not. They were just as convinced as the rest of the stiffs that the afterguard had suddenly become afraid of the foc'sle. Just lack of imagination, I suppose; I've read that it is usually a characteristic of ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... alkaline solution of which has a marked bitter flavor, and which easily changes on exposure to the air, assuming a resinous form. According to Lermer, the formula of this substance is C{32}H{50}O{7}; it possesses the properties of a weak acid and forms a characteristic copper salt, which is soluble in ether. This hop bitter is, however, produced from the hop by a very roundabout process, by treatment of the extract with alkalies; it is not therefore regarded by many as present in this form in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... interesting than to trace predisposition. An indefinite, yet strong sympathy with the peasantry of the realm had been one of the characteristic sensibilities of Lord Henry at Eton. Yet a schoolboy, he had busied himself with their pastimes and the details of their cottage economy. As he advanced in life the horizon of his views expanded with his intelligence and his experience; ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... following the progress of the war we must take them chronologically. No attempt can be made here to describe the movements on either side in any detail. An outline must suffice. Two points, however, need special emphasis, as they are both markedly characteristic of the war in general and of this campaign in particular. First, the combined effect of the American victories of Lake Erie and the Thames affords a perfect example of the inseparable connection between the water and the land. Secondly, the British victories at the Beaver ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... the mother is never rejected. In Hindu family life the respect and affection which the son has for his mother is a most touching and beautiful characteristic, which only intensifies the older he grows. The Indian boy is often wilful and disobedient and rude to his mother, but he makes up for this by his dutiful conduct when he grows to manhood. It is almost comical to find Hindus of mature years referring ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... stooping very much as they walked; he wanted to be told that he could look at her for a thousand years. Her face was rarely and exquisitely modelled, but, perhaps, just now the salient characteristic of her beauty (for the salient characteristic seemed to be a different thing at different times) was the coloring, a delicate glow under the white skin, that bewitched him in its seeming a reflection of the rich benediction of the noonday ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... project for establishing Italian opera in the United States, and with characteristic daring he set sail for America with a miserable company, of which the only talent consisted of his own family, comprising himself, his son, daughter, and wife, Mme. Garcia having been a fairly good artist in her youth. The first opera produced ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... but it was characteristic of them, nevertheless, that no one made any mention of escape. Many could have stolen away in the night over the lower walls. Perhaps all could have done so, but not a single Texan ever spoke of such a thing, and not one ever ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... child-bearing, and deriving from the old comparison of the tillage of the soil and the bearing of the young. This association existed in Hebrew also, and Cain, the first-born of Adam, was the first agriculturist. We still say the tree bears fruit, the land bears crops, is fertile, and the most characteristic word in English belonging to the category in question is "to bear" children, cognate with Modern High German ge-baren, Gothic gabairan, Latin ferre (whence fertilis), Greek [Greek: ferein], Sanskrit bhri, etc., all from the Indo-European root bher, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... of not more urgent concernment to the physician, than are the regions named cervical, axillary, inguinal, &c., to the surgeon. He who would combine both modes of a relationary practice, such as that of medicine and surgery, should be well acquainted with the form and structures characteristic of all regions of the human body; and it may be doubted whether he who pursues either mode of practice, wholly exclusive of the other, can do so with honest purpose and large range of understanding, if he be ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... to the doorway, with a flush mounting on his face and a grimace distorting its youngness. Only Paolo, unmoved and detached, stood by the tree with unchanging, abstract face, very strange, his eyes fixed in the ageless stare which is so characteristic. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... dipping of the bill just alluded to is mentioned as characteristic of the Phalaropes, though I did not observe it, and is thought to be a snapping-up of minute Crustacea. But in the case of the Black Guillemot, I question if this be its true explanation. The bird makes this movement only when on the alert. Several of them are frolicking together; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... characteristic of a vain man in contradistinction to an ambitious man, his eternal obstacle to a high and honourable fame, is this: he requires for any expenditure of trouble too speedy a reward; he cannot wait for years, and climb, step by step, to a lofty object; whatever he attempts, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his actual farewell of Barnsley until the end of the year. The reflections which he has recorded on leaving his home of so many years are very characteristic of ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... had begun to flag, both in strength and spirits, as winter approached, but there came a revival in the shape of "Ship Letters!" Alan wrote cheerfully and graphically, with excellent accounts of Harry, who, on his side, sent very joyous and characteristic despatches, only wishing that he could present Mary with all the monkeys and parrots he had seen at Rio, as well as the little ruby-crested humming-birds, that always reminded ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... I told you that aeroplanes are all the time flying over our camp. With characteristic British frankness they always have two huge Union Jacks painted on the undersides of the wings. We have become so used to them that we scarcely trouble to look up unless ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... gives life to the language—so also it gives repose to the action; but it is that beautiful and lofty repose which is the characteristic of a true work of art. For the mind of the spectator ought to maintain its freedom through the most impassioned scenes; it should not be the mere prey of impressions, but calmly and severely detach itself from the emotions ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... instincts—they will present themselves as "a priori syntheses of the most perfect sort needing no proof but their own evidence." They will not, however, it is important to remember, necessarily always give this quality to the same specific acts, but will show this great distinguishing characteristic that they may give to any opinion whatever the characters of instinctive belief, making it into an "a priori synthesis"; so that we shall expect to find acts which it would be absurd to look upon as the results of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a large head, high cheek bones, in general, large lips and mouth; a contour of face inclining, on the whole, to undue breadth, and lacking that pleasantly-rounded appearance so characteristic of the white. He has usually a scant beard, his chin and cheeks seldom, if ever, asserting that sturdy and bountiful growth of whisker and moustache, in such esteem with adults among ourselves, and which they are so ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... place, the bull-roarer is associated with mysteries and initiations. Now mysteries and initiations are things that tend to dwindle and to lose their characteristic features as civilisation advances. The rites of baptism and confirmation are not secret and hidden; they are common to both sexes, they are publicly performed, and religion and morality of the purest sort blend in these ceremonies. There are no other initiations or mysteries ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... Square, and after running through a district of tall warehouses and squat weaving-sheds, began a long and steady climb to the heights along the town. When he left it, he found himself in a district eminently characteristic of that part of the country. The tram set him down at a cross-roads on a high ridge of land. Beneath him lay Barford, its towers and spires and the gables of its tall buildings showing amongst the smoke of its many chimneys. All about him lay open ground, ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... great hazel eyes, a sweet smile hovered round his lips. Fritz, looking at him, seemed to see something in his face which he had scarcely noted before—a depth, a serenity, a beauty quite apart from the dashing gallantry of look and bearing which was his most salient characteristic. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... lot seems to be the characteristic of man in all ages and climates. So far, however, from being an evil, as at first might be supposed, it has been the great civiliser of our race; and has tended, more than anything else, to raise us above the condition of the brutes. But the same discontent which has been the source ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... him. The varied and characteristic ways in which her friends lighted and smoked their cigarettes always interested Jane. There were at least a dozen young men of whom she could have given the names upon hearing a description of their method. Also, she had ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... of Virtues held before their Eyes, but, making up their own Minds, shall impartially give in their Suffrages, after their best Enquiries into the Characters of Candidates, for those whom they judge to be the fittest Persons, there will be no Danger that the generous Enthusiasm of Freedom, so characteristic of the People of Massachusetts, will ever sink into the Violence and Rage of Party, which has often ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... following chapters. Chesterton sallied forth like a Crusader against the political and literary Turks who had unjustly come into possession of a part of the heritage of a Christian people. We must not forget that the leading characteristic of a Crusader is his power of invigorating, which he applies impartially to virtues and to vices. There is a great difference between a Crusader and a Christian, which is not commonly realized. The latter attempts to show his love for ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... believe I meant it, of course, and it took a long time to convince her. But when at last she began to believe—at least to the extent of believing that I had sent the telegram—her next remark was characteristic. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... us. The high standard of righteousness which Jesus teaches here and throughout this chapter is the standard of sanctification. The love of God must be perfected in us, which destroys every element of the old nature, of which hatred is a prominent characteristic. ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... Wedgwood (1787), representing a negro in chains, with one knee on the ground, and both hands lifted up to heaven. This was adopted as a characteristic seal by the Antislavery Society ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... of the new developments was simply to increase the number of giant cities in the world by rendering them possible in regions where they had hitherto been impossible—concentrating the trade of vast areas in a manner that had hitherto been entirely characteristic of navigable waters. It might seem as though the state of affairs in China, in which population has been concentrated about densely-congested "million-cities," with pauper masses, public charities, and a crowded struggle for existence, for many hundreds of years, was merely ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... This was characteristic of the future hero of New Orleans, and president of the United States, whose independent spirit rebelled at the ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... Sir Jocelyn preserved one characteristic, an unerring instinct for field-sports that no amount of drinking could impair. He could hit a flying bird with a stone, was a deadly shot for snipe or mallard, rode like a centaur, and fished with the instinct of a heron. It is probable that his consciousness of this faculty was at the ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... Bible and his broad chest stooped, kept trying to coax a response from that obstinate text. It seemed a lost battle. At last a sudden flash of thought seemed to strike the speaker, irradiating his face and lifting his form as he gave it utterance, with a characteristic throwing back of his shoulders and upward sweep of his arms. Those present will never forget what followed. The afflatus of the true orator had at last fallen upon him; the mighty ship was launched, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... the Court has declared that it was within the power of Congress to require a donee of stock, who sells it at a profit, to pay income tax on the difference between the selling price and the value when the donor acquired it.[34] Moreover, "the receipt in cash or property * * * not [being] the only characteristic of realization of income to a taxpayer on the cash receipts basis," it follows that one who is normally taxable only on the receipt of interest payments cannot escape taxation thereon by giving away his right to such income in advance of payment. When "the taxpayer does not receive ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the weak, and that all rulers will reduce their subjects to abject slavery, is absolutely convinced, it seems, of the possibility of somehow transmuting selfishness into public spirit, justice, generosity, and devotion to truth. Equally characteristic is the faith in the 'political machine.' Mill speaks as if somebody had 'discovered' the representative system as Watt (more or less) discovered the steam-engine; that to 'discover' the system is the same thing as to set it to work; and that, once at work, it will be omnipotent. He ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... p. 640. His exhortations to the Landgrave to put down the Zwinglians are characteristic: "The Zwinglians, without waiting for the Council, persecute the Papists and the Anabaptists; why must it be wrong for others to prohibit their indefensible doctrine independent of the Council?" Philip replied: "Forcibly, to prohibit a doctrine which neither ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the same place. A great number of persons were standing in the hotel yard to view the sport, when old Smut and his game appeared, rushing in full fly through the crowd. The elk was so bothered and headed that she went through the back door of the hotel at full gallop, and Smut, with his characteristic sagacity, immediately bolted round to the front of the house, naturally concluding that if she went in at the back door she must come out at the front. He was perfectly right; the old dog stood on the lawn before the hotel, watching the house with great eagerness. ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... I was speaking of her in the abstract, merely. But is it not true that the marked characteristic of all Englishmen is tyranny? Don't they rule wherever they go? Aren't they always and everywhere the dominant class—the oppressors? Watch the British tourist in any far country. Does he ever conform to its customs in the least? No, he forces them to come to his ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... began at 3700 meters in the air, and lasted ten minutes, the two combatants being separated by a distance of 50 and sometimes 20 meters. The statement of fact is characteristic of Guynemer. An unforgettable sight had been imprinted on his eyes: the pilot sinking down in his cock-pit, the arms of the observer beating the air, the burning airplane sinking. Such were to be his future landscape sketches, done in ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... characteristic line. She sat up with instant decision; her pale face flushed, and her large pathetic grey eyes shone with ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... unclassified group is characterized by a peculiarly superficial, or non-essential, or purely circumstantial relationship to the stimulus. Such reactions, though occasionally given by normal subjects, are more often given by insane ones, and seem to be somewhat characteristic of states of mental deterioration which are clinically rather loosely described as puerilism. We offer the following examples, given ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... the cart. 'Yes, she can count, and she can see when men don't play fair. Each one in that group held up two hands when the last vote was taken.' She made a great deal of this incident, and elevated it into a principle. 'It is entirely characteristic of the means men will stoop to use in opposing ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... nothing exaggerated about his method of raising his hat to a lady whom he passed, no gesticulations, no active nervous movements of his hands, and none of that shrugging of the shoulders which, public opinion has it, is so eminently characteristic of our Gallic neighbours. And yet the ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... Cummington on the 8th of January, 1810, being "The Genius of Columbia;" and another, "An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1812," to the tune of "Ye Gentlemen of England." These productions are undeniably clever, but they are not characteristic of their writer, nor of the nature which surrounded his birthplace, with which he was familiar, and of which he was a close observer, as his poetry was soon ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... later when the Germans had recaptured this spot, and it had been fought over, and the bronze cross still stood, the Hun, too, gathered his dead together and buried them side by side with the French. Then he did a characteristic thing. He got a large stone as a base and mounted a cannon-ball on top of this stone, and left it there, side by side with the ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... Professor Wright has taken numerous shadow pictures of the human hand, showing the bones within, and he has made a great number of experiments in photographing various metals and different varieties of quartz and glass, with a view to studying characteristic differences in the shadows produced. A photograph of the latter sort is reproduced on page 401. Aluminium shows a remarkable degree of transparency to the Roentgen rays; so much so that Professor Wright was able to photograph a medal of this metal, showing ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... from the family priest; he was sent to a school at Twyford, where he is said to have got into trouble for writing a lampoon upon his master; he went for a short time to another in London, where he gave a more creditable if less characteristic proof of his poetical precocity. Like other lads of genius, he put together a kind of play—a combination, it seems, of the speeches in Ogilby's Iliad—and got it acted by his schoolfellows. These brief snatches of schooling, however, counted ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... we quote are very characteristic of their author. While protesting eternal fidelity, and declaring his intention to renounce the world and live but for Madame Recamier, he begs her at the same time to use all her influence to get him sent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Grace Greenwood has now become a household word in the popular literature of our country and our day. Of the intellectual woman we are not called to say much, as her writings speak for themselves, and they have spoken widely. They are eminently characteristic; they are strictly national; they are likewise decisively individual. All true individuality is honestly social; and also, in Miss Clarke's writings, nothing is sectional, and nothing sectarian. There ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... well informed; he had travelled; had seen a great deal of the world; had lived in the best company; had acquired what is called good tact; was full of anecdote, not mere gossiping anecdotes that lead to nothing, but characteristic of national manners, of human nature in general, or of those illustrious individuals who excite public curiosity and interest. Miss Nugent had seen him always in large companies, where he was admired for his scavoir-vivre, and for his entertaining anecdotes, but where he had no opportunity of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... capacity of mischief by the use of actual poison, so that the epithet of sorceress and poisoner were almost synonymous. This is known to have been the case in many of those darker iniquities which bear as their characteristic something connected with hidden and prohibited arts. Such was the statement in the indictment of those concerned in the famous murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, when the arts of Forman and other sorcerers having been found insufficient to touch the victim's ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Sister Carrie, as she had been half affectionately termed by the family, was possessed of a mind rudimentary in its power of observation and analysis. Self-interest with her was high, but not strong. It was, nevertheless, her guiding characteristic. Warm with the fancies of youth, pretty with the insipid prettiness of the formative period, possessed of a figure promising eventual shapeliness and an eye alight with certain native intelligence, she was a fair example of the ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... pasted up at that window ever since the last time we stood here and talked, Mattie?" asked Jed, half resentfully, half amusedly. It was characteristic of Mattie to laugh first at the question, and then blush over the memory ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... moral suasion could preserve harmony or proper courses, either party might formally repudiate the contract, and, after a short interval, seek better fortune in some other quarter. There was, of course, a public sentiment to be considered; there was family influence; there was the characteristic Roman pride; there was often a fair measure of mutual esteem and even affection; and there were obvious joint interests which made for stability; but beyond these considerations there was nothing to hamper the inclination of either husband or wife. Yet it is a grave mistake to imagine, because ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... to one of his characteristic sniffs. He had a way, when he was stating what he considered to be a dead certainty, or when he was assenting to one, of throwing up his head and sniffing, with a somewhat cynical smile as accompaniment. He sniffed now, and Lorrimore ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... sometimes assumes a character which, as Kugler puts it, oversteps the strict limits of the higher ecclesiastical style. It is worth noting, however, that the early Netherlandish school—as we shall see in a later chapter—developed this characteristic to a far greater extent, continuing the tradition handed down, quite independently of Giotto, through illuminated manuscripts, and with less of that expression of the highest religious or moral feeling which ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies |
