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Role   /roʊl/   Listen
Role

noun
1.
The actions and activities assigned to or required or expected of a person or group.  Synonyms: function, office, part.  "The government must do its part" , "Play its role"
2.
An actor's portrayal of someone in a play.  Synonyms: character, part, persona, theatrical role.
3.
What something is used for.  Synonyms: function, purpose, use.  "Ballet is beautiful but what use is it?"
4.
Normal or customary activity of a person in a particular social setting.



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"Role" Quotes from Famous Books



... habit render it a matter of course that a small population should eat or starve at his pleasure; possibly his resolution in seasons of strike is now and then attributable to awakening of insight and pleasure in prolonging his role of hunger-god. Dagworthy appreciated his victim's despair all the more that it made present to him the wretchedness that would fall on Emily. Think not that the man was unashamed. With difficulty he could bring himself to meet Hood's look. But self-contempt may well consist with perseverance ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... days later Lloyd George made still another appearance in his now familiar role of England's Deliverer. The South Wales coal miners, 2,000,000 in number, went on strike at a time when Coal meant Life to the Empire. There is no need of asking the name of the man who went to calm this storm. Only one was eligible ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... confreres who had taken wives. But he railed inwardly at the intense masculinity of his life, for the same reason that the sailorman curses the sea and the plainsman the plains. Just as the tragedian is certain in his inmost soul that his proper role is light comedy, while the popular comedian is equally positive that he should be starring in the legitimate; so Farwell, harsh, dominant, impatient, brutal on occasion, a typical lone male of his species, knowing little of and caring less for ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... Odysseus had left behind his trusty friend Sinon with full instructions as to his course of action. Assuming the role assigned to him, he now approached king Priam with fettered hands and piteous entreaties, alleging that the Greeks, in obedience to the command of an oracle, had attempted to immolate him as a sacrifice; but that he had contrived to escape from their hands, and ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... cat or a dog, and talk ahead with as much freedom as though you were not there." And the critic, Sainte-Beuve, adds: "When the destiny of a nation is in a woman's bedroom, the best place for the historian is in the ante-chamber. Madame du Hausset seemed created for this role of a Suetonius by her position and her character.... A good woman, furthermore, incapable of lying, and remaining on the ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... of the watering-place Miss, which Avice had plainly acquired during her sojourn at the Sandbourne school, helped Pierston greatly in this role of jeune premier which he was not unready to play. Not a word did he say about being a native of the island; still more carefully did he conceal the fact of his having courted her grandmother, and engaged himself to marry ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... philosophy is his criticism of intellectualism. In my opinion he has killed intellectualism definitively and without hope of recovery. I don't see how it can ever revive again in its ancient platonizing role of claiming to be the most authentic, intimate, and exhaustive definer of the nature of reality. Others, as Kant for example, have denied intellectualism's pretensions to define reality an sich or in its absolute capacity; but Kant still leaves it laying down laws—and ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... generally think of Mr. Stowe, although most of them doubtless know that he originated and for several years managed what we have no hesitation in saying is facile princeps among * * * trade papers; but rather in his more permanent role of decidedly the most successful among the younger generation of * * * dealers—as a man who has carved out for himself a position as commanding in respect of the * * * market, especially, as is occupied abroad by his London correspondent, ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell

... Wauchop, M.A., who had joined the staff in 1924 as Assistant Chief Librarian. Freed from the restraints of war, and with a larger grant, the Library expanded rapidly. The Library Committee, which had for some years taken a less important role in the control of the Library, once again came to the fore. It was instrumental in obtaining much needed space and assisting generally in the progress which ...
— Report of the Chief Librarian - for the Year Ended 31 March 1958: Special Centennial Issue • J. O. Wilson and General Assembly Library (New Zealand)

... under his lofty and polished dome of thought, watched us knowingly. You saw that he was getting ready to assume a bless-you-my-children attitude and even to take credit somehow as match-maker. He related anecdotes, in which, as an emissary of Cupid, he played a benevolent and leading role. One detected, too, a grin, ugly and unmirthful, on the unprepossessing countenance of Captain Magnus. I was indifferent. The man my gaiety was intended for sat at the far end of the table. I had to wipe out the memory of my wet eyes ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... rank some fifty paces beyond, with three taxis stationed there. If Gianapolis chartered a cab, and she were compelled to follow in another, would Denise come upon the scene in time to take up the prearranged role of sleuth-hound? ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... and his still-room maid, and the embarrassment caused by her eagerness to learn the philosophy of "eujanics," were full of promise. It was confirmed by the appearance of Mr. AINLEY, whose manner reminded us of his many triumphs in the art of eccentric detachment. His part—the title-role—was that of Sir Geoffrey's faithful butler, on such familiar, though respectful, terms with his master that the two sipped port together in the former's room in broad daylight while discussing family matters. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various

... anything other than the role he had been playing. Bridge smiled as he looked at the clear eyes, the oval face, and the fine, sensitive mouth and thought of the youth's claim to the crime battered sobriquet of The Oskaloosa Kid. The man wondered if the mystery of the clanking chain would prove as harmlessly infantile ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... left idle due the encroaching monarchy, of people well born and well educated who, withdrawn from public activity, fall back on conversation and pass their leisure sampling the different serious or refined pleasures of the intellect.[3201] Eventually, they have no other role nor interest than to talk, to listen, to entertain themselves agreeably and with ease, on all subjects, grave or gay, which may interest men or even women of society, that's their great affair. In the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... satisfied. Meekness was not his metier, yet he could play the part of the faithful servant, humbly loyal through injustice and misunderstanding; and he played it now, because he knew it to be the one effective role. He sat beside the Emperor with bowed head, and stooping shoulders which suggested the weakness of old age, his hands clasped before him; and from time ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... wonderful work of poetry in our century," the fact that it is a "seduction-drama" marred his pleasure. In the same tone he wrote, in the last year of his life, about Renan's Abbesse—"I regret the escapade extremely; he was entirely out of his role in writing such a book.... Renan descends sensibly in the scale from having produced his Abbesse." Heine, with all his genius, "lacked the old-fashioned, laborious, eternally needful moral deliverance": he left a name blemished by "intemperate susceptibility, unscrupulousness ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... cultivated and wild sorts. The difference in the proportion of active organic substance in each sort must be determined by analysis. There then remains to be discovered which of the aforesaid substances plays the leading role in brewing, and also whether the presence of chlorophyl and inorganic salts in the hop extract ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... vivacious friend—turned his thoughts to her. He remembered how at their first meeting he had been interested in her bright audacity, unconventionality, and high spirits, which did not, however, amuse him as greatly as his later suspicion that she was playing a self-elected role, often with difficulty, opposition, and feverishness, rather than spontaneity. He remembered how he had watched her in the obtrusive assumption of a new fashion, in some reckless departure from an old one, or in some ostentatious disregard ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the larger one. They are determined that, if such a confederation is brought about, Serbia shall not occupy the dictatorial position which Prussia did in Germany, and that the Karageorgevitches shall not play a role analogous to that of the Hohenzollerns. Montenegro, remember, threw off the Turkish yoke a century and three-quarters before Serbia was able to achieve her liberty, and the patriotic among her people feel that ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... plays a great role, but individual exercise of power is just as important. Through adaptation life attains a fixed form; through exercise ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... With exceptions too trifling to affect the question, they believe the laborer who feels no stimulus but that of wages and no restraint but that of law, is the most profitable, not only to himself and society at large, but to any employer other than a brutal tyrant. The benefit of this role they claim for every man and woman living within this republic, till on fair trial the proper tribunal shall have judged them unworthy of it. They deny both the justice and expediency of permitting any degree of ignorance or debasement ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... a Brazilian, a quiet little dark body who commonly contented himself with a listening role in the smoking-room discussions. "There are truly criminals of intelligence. And war conditions are driving them ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... would be gratified at her request. After all, Simeon was not an anchorite; he had his moods like other men, and there were times when a rough passion marked his dealings with his wife; perhaps he had not been very felicitous in his role of lover, but the remembrance that there was such a side to his nature gave a ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... bovine faces of the audience. In my last winter in Berlin the hit of the season was "Erdgeist," a play by Wedekind, whose "Spring's Awakening," given in New York in the spring of 1917, horrified and disgusted the most hardened Broadway theatregoers. The principal female role was played by a Servian actress, Maria Orska—very much on the type of Nazimova. In this play, presented to crowded audiences, only one of the four ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... not know how sweet it is to be beloved,' he said to me. 'It is almost enough to tempt one to play the role de ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... subsidiary; the colonial efforts of Italy in the Red Sea and in Somaliland have as yet produced little else than disaster and disappointment. But for the part played by Serpa Pinto in the Zambesi basin, the role of Portugal has been one of quiescence. Some authorities, as will appear in the following chapter, would describe it by a less euphonious term; it is now known that slave-hunting goes on in the upper part of the Zambesi basin owned by them. The French settlement at Obock, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... proved equal to the terrific strain, thanks to Toby's good judgment when selecting a braided line with which to play the role of cow puncher and ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... descriptions and illustrations, the surgical treatise of al-Zahr[a]w[i] very likely played a significant role in the designing of improved surgical instruments in the Middle Ages. Also, the treatise no doubt promoted the development of improved surgical techniques in Islam and, through its translations, promoted these techniques to an even greater ...
— Drawings and Pharmacy in Al-Zahrawi's 10th-Century Surgical Treatise • Sami Hamarneh

... that he liked. It was a political sermon, on "Israel's bringing-out of Egypt, through a Wilderness, by many signs and wonders, towards a Place of Rest,"—Egypt interpreted as old Prelacy and the Stuart role in England, the Wilderness as all the intermediate course of the English Revolution, and the Place of Rest as the Protectorate or what it might lead to. Goodwill seems to have described with special reprobation that latest part of the Wilderness in which the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... accurately. She was an almost pathetic figure in her naive enthusiasm, and evidently regarded her present companions as seriously as those she had left behind her in Russia, and seemed to imagine they played as dangerous a role, and ran the ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... turned away. Again and again Jacques Sennier had been called. He had returned with Annie Meredith, to whom he had made the gift of a splendid role. They shook hands before the audience, not perfunctorily, but as if they loved one another, were bound together, comrades in the beautiful. He—Heath—had stood upright again, had gone on applauding with the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... thing to a paternal benediction that had ever come to Sissy, but she was too wary a small actress to be moved by it out of her role. Nor did her father wait to note the effect of his words. His heavy step passed on and out of her room into his own, and the door slammed ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... want to make it clear that the role of sex in human life is vastly greater than that directly involved in sexual activity. I shall in several lectures touch the big problems from the standpoint of the sexual instincts as these play an ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow

... Taylors. It had been at first proposed to train some boys of Merchant Taylors' School to welcome the king, but Ben Jonson was finally invited to write an entertainment. The king and prince dined separately. The master presented the king with a purse of L100. "Richard Langley shewed him a role, wherein was registered the names of seaven kinges, one queene, seventeene princes and dukes, two dutchesses, one archbishoppe, one and thirtie earles, five countesses, one viscount, fourteene byshoppes, sixtie and sixe barons, two ladies, seaven abbots, seaven priors, and one sub-prior, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... water resources policies which will provide for the most effective application of the streamflow regulation provisions of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, including equitable cost-sharing arrangements, to assure that streamflow regulation assumes its proper role in relation to other pollution control alternatives for ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... eager gaze upon the girl and even in the press of moments he remembered the role he was playing. "I reckon," he suggested, "I'd better lead off—ef thet flyin' limb holds me, it'll hold ther ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... base of organized military power. Moreover, the general possibility of world cultural progress in the foreseeable future has no other conceivable foundation. For any military man to deny, on any ground whatever, the role which his profession has played in the establishment of everything which is well-ordered in our society, shows only a faulty understanding of history. It made possible the birth of the American system of freedoms. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... I found life with him both easy and happy, so far as mine could be quite happy. Soon I learned my role and played it well. It was given out that I was the nephew of the rich old physician Fonseca, whom he was training to take his place; and this, together with my own appearance and manners, ensured me a welcome in the best houses of Seville. Here I took that share of our business which my master ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... or "Scotch-Irish," to whom history has ascribed the dominant role among the pioneer folk of the Old Southwest, began their migrations to America in the latter years of the seventeenth century. It is not known with certainty precisely when or where the first immigrants of their race arrived in this country, but soon after 1680 they were to be found in several ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... prevents the world from stopping while man questions his route. Travelers of a day, we are carried along in a vast movement to which we are called upon to contribute, but which we have not foreseen, nor embraced in its entirety, nor penetrated as to its ultimate aims. Our part is to fill faithfully the role of private, which has devolved upon us, and our thought should adapt itself to the situation. Do not say that we live in more trying times than our ancestors, for things seen from afar are often seen imperfectly: ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... other men's affairs, he promised to take them in hand, not "into my lungs and liver." We are thus forewarned, we know what to expect. The mayor and Montaigne were two distinct persons; under his role and office he reserved to himself a certain freedom and secret security. He continued to judge things in his own fashion and impartially, although acting loyally for the cause confided to him. He ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... attractive cover, a really handsome book. Originally played by Mary Mannering, who created the title role. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... made conquerors and conquered alike proud of their country by its stories of heroes who, curiously enough, were neither Norman nor Saxon, but creations of the native Celts. Thus does literature, whether in a battle song or a history, often play the chief role in the development of nationality.[44] Once the mutual distrust was overcome the two races gradually united, and out of this union of Saxons and Normans came the new English life ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... root, but there are many examples which seem to have come from the delineation of a part of the creature, as the head, foot, eye, or scales—abbreviated representatives of the whole creature. Such parts, assuming the role of radicals, pass also through a series of modifications, ending in purely geometric devices in the manner indicated in the following or fourth series of examples (Fig. 280). In the first cut we have what appears to be the leg and foot of the favorite ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... stand the discomfort for as long as may prove necessary," said Bentley grimly, conquering a feeling of terror as he already saw himself in the role of an ape, a role previously played in which he had suffered the torments of the damned, "and anything is preferable to the wholesale carnage which Barter is doing. In seventy-two hours he has wrecked the morale of Manhattan. I shall try to get it back. ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... realizing the emptiness of this formula, dispensed with it altogether, and boldly assumed the full responsibility for their sentences. They deemed the role of the State so unimportant in the execration of heretics, that they did not even mention it. The Inquisition is the real judge; it lights the fires. "All whom we cause to be burned," says the famous Dominican Sprenger in his Malleus Maleficarum.[1] Although ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... a deeper cause underlying these great patriotic demonstrations than mere hatred of Austria. They were expressions of national resentment at the impotent and dependent role which Italy had played so long. D'Annunzio, in one of his famous addresses in May, 1915, put this feeling into words: "We will no longer be a museum of antiquities, a kind of hostelry, a pleasure resort, under a sky painted over with Prussian blue, ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... be cheated or flattered into a single expression of approbation, but the manager observed with rising hope that they forbore to hiss. Undismayed, and regardless of the reception she met with, the young girl, with perfect composure, began her role. As she continued, the whole richness and beauty of her voice were brought out, and wholly unable to withstand such wonderful, unexpected melody, the people manifested their delight loudly, and at the conclusion of the opera, Signorina ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... receive the poor in your office, don't you? That's in your role. Do you want any money?" added Cerizet, pulling a hundred francs out of his trousers' pocket. "There it is; it ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... sensuous experience in contrast to the often illusory conclusions of the reason, and of the value of induction; but he does not conceal from himself the fact that observation is merely the first step in the process of cognition, leaving the chief role for the understanding. This, supplementing the defect of experience—the impossibility of observing all cases—by its a priori concept of law and with its inferences overstepping the bounds of experience, first makes induction possible, brings the facts established into connection ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... mystery about it! Those officers! This diplomat! And then this questionable person, neither servant, nor lady accustomed to good society, who has to me all the appearance of playing not merely a double role, but at the least a triple, perhaps a quadruple!... Good old Fandor, there's nothing for it, if you want to go South, but to see friend Juve and get ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... liberality, as I shall presently show, is of a nature to put our parsimony to shame. As to the bankrupt acts, of which American creditors have many times complained, nothing can justify them; yet here again the role of pedagogue scarcely becomes us. If more than one American railroad company have taken advantage of a crisis to declare without much dishonor, a suspension of payment, it is not proved that these suspensions ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... revival; but this was not the danger most dreaded by the victorious Lowlanders. The battle of Harlaw was part of the struggle with England. Donald of the Isles was the enemy of Scottish independence, and his success would mean English supremacy. He had taken up the role of "the Disinherited" of the preceding century, just as the Earl of March had done some years before. As time passed, and civilization progressed in the Lowlands while the Highlands maintained their integrity, the feeling of separation ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... needed to secure my success. So he hunted out all the old fairy-ballet costumes from his stock, and fancied that if they only looked gay enough, and if plenty of people were bustling about on the stage, I ought to be satisfied. But the most sorry item of all was the singer he provided for the title- role. He was a man of the name of Wurda, an elderly, flabby and voiceless tenor, who sang Rienzi with the expression of a lover— like Elvino, for instance, in the Somnanibula. He was so dreadful that I conceived the idea of making the Capitol tumble down in the second act, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... young widow, was likewise enchanted, and so was Miss Maria Pearson; but Wilmet could not quite fathom the tone of the elder and graver sister, or decide whether it were her own dissatisfaction that made her think Miss Pearson had not expected to see such a role bestowed upon her niece. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Alwynn demurred. She was determined that if she played the role of a martyr she would do it well. She insisted that Ruth should accompany Mr. Alwynn. She secretly looked forward to telling Mabel that Ruth was going. She did not mind being left alone, she said. She desired, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... remarked that Squire Duncan, who had a high idea of his own personal importance, looked upon Denton as a low and insignificant person, and never noticed him when they met casually in the street. It is difficult to play the part of an aristocrat in a country village, but that is the role which Prince Duncan assumed. Had he been a prince in reality, as he was by name, he could not have borne himself more loftily when he came face to face with those whom ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger

... unsupported gossip, published, though perhaps with more of malice than of faith, by Mr. Herndon, to the effect that Abraham Lincoln was the illegitimate son of some person unknown, presumably some tolerably well-to-do Kentuckian, who induced Thomas to assume the role of parent. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... introduction to Dimonds there and then. So soon as he had 'discussed a brace of muffins and so many eggs,' the new Romeo started for the playhouse, and that very day bills were posted to the effect that 'a Gentleman of Fashion would make his first appearance on February 9 in a role of Shakespeare.' All the lower boxes were immediately secured by Lady Belmore and other lights of Bath. 'Butlers and Abigails,' it is said, 'were commanded by their mistresses to take their stand in the centre of the pit and give Mr. Coates a capital, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... willing that he believe her accomplished in such arts, enchanted that he no longer perhaps suspected genuine emotion in the swift, confused sweetness of her first kiss. If only all that were truly hidden from him, if he dare not in his heart convict her of anything save perfection in a gay, imprudent role, what a weight lifted, what relief, what hot self-contempt cooled! What vengeance, too, she would take on him for the agony of her awakening—the dazed chagrin, the dread of his wise, amused eyes—eyes that she feared had often looked upon such scenes; eyes no doubt familiar with such unimportant ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... went on. This was what he must expect to encounter, for he, too, in his new role of gentleman's man, was to start from the beach in a similar boat that ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... prisoner to a raking occupation with his own mind, to a persistent introspection, making him feel so much more keenly the anxiety and apprehension for the future, the remorse for his deed, that play an important role in the production of mental disorders. This is especially true when it concerns an accidental criminal, one who still possesses a high degree of self-respect and honor. Imprisonment furnishes us with a great ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... party, felt that the eyes of mankind were upon them, and that it behoved them to assume a virtue if they had it not. They were habitually indifferent to self-exaltation, and allowed themselves to be thrust into this or that unfitting role, professing that the Queen's Government and the good of the country were their only considerations. Lord Thrift made way for Sir Orlando Drought at the Admiralty, because it was felt on all sides that Sir Orlando could not join ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... stand tiptoe on something or other; Greenwich Village would awaken and bestir itself. Discovery would come, and forth he would be drawn like a shy, unwilling periwinkle from its shell, once more to play his abased and bashful role of free entertainer to guffawing mixed audiences. For all others in the great city there were havens and homes. But for a poor, lorn, unguided vagrant, enmeshed in the burlesque garnitures of a three-year-old male child, what haven was there? ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... and criticisms are reversed, female jealousy now having its turn. Faust stands entranced at the loveliness of Helen. In spite of the angry protests of Mephistopheles from the prompter's box, who tells him to keep to his role and not to be taken in by a mere phantom of his own raising. Faust, unable any longer to control himself when Paris attempts to carry off Helen, rushes forward to rescue her. A great explosion takes ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... whether or not naturally a man of studious and conscientious temper, Mr. Blensop figured to admiration in the role of such an one. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... Hal Dozier that, if he delayed his entrance for another moment, he might hear something distinctly to his advantage; but his role of eavesdropper did not fit with his broad shoulders, and, after knocking on the door, he stepped in. Pop was putting away the dishes, and Jud ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... the tree, with a little whimsical smile. It was pleasant to appear as a modern Ulysses in the eyes of a very pretty girl, but he had, as she was quick to recognize, taken up the role unconsciously. ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... of Jewels, Carrere and Hastings, architects, is the central structure in the Exposition architecture. (See p. 47.) It plays a triple role. In architecture it is the center on which all the other buildings are balanced. In relation to the theme of the Exposition, it is the triumphal gateway to the commemorative celebration of an event the history of which it summarizes in its sculpture, painting and inscription. Last ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... her son suddenly roused Anna from the helpless condition in which she found herself. She recalled the partly sincere, though greatly exaggerated, role of the mother living for her child, which she had taken up of late years, and she felt with joy that in the plight in which she found herself she had a support, quite apart from her relation to her husband or to Vronsky. This support was her son. In whatever position ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... wheel, in stakes of forty and eighty dollars. To be sure he lost now and then, but the next play he doubled and retrieved. Oh, the American Comic Opera Company should be well taken care of. He could play the good Samaritan after the manner of a prince, if, indeed, princes ever elected to play that role. Two more bets, and then he would pocket his winnings and go. He laid forty francs on number twenty-six and four hundred on black, leaned upon his elbows and studied the pretty woman, who smiled. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... Independent conceptions became effective in a new direction. The theory of the social compact which played so important a role in the founding of the colonies, and had helped to establish religious liberty, now supported in the most significant way the reconstruction of existing institutions. Not that it changed these institutions, it simply gave them ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek

... according to the suggestions under which they act, may be much lower or much higher than that of the individuals composing them—Explanation and examples— Crowds rarely guided by those considerations of interest which are most often the exclusive motives of the isolated individual—The moralising role ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... night I take my sleepy way to a lecture on "The Role of the State in Modern Civilization." And it comes over me in the course of the evening, what a satisfactory thing packing chocolates is. The role of the State—some say this, some say that. A careful teacher guards against being dogmatic. When it comes to the past, one interpreter ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... mind fully to a stranger on the subject next to his heart, he usually felt his way, and only when he had grounds for believing that the fortress was not impregnable did he open his batteries. Even among the initiated, few would suspect the role played by this young proselytizer within one of the strongholds of the Conference, so naturally and unobtrusively was the work done. I may add that luckily he had no direct intercourse ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... details, however, are also found in Oriental forms of the story, which, as a whole, have some peculiarly distinctive traits. These (see Bolte-Polivka, 2 : 407) are (1) the role of the wife, (2) the collapsing of the room, (3) the burning of the magic book. The appearance in the Philippine versions of two of these motifs (one in modified form), together with a third (the betting-contest between ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... tribute I may add that I have never been hypochondriac in any possible respect. However, toward the end of those three weeks I formed the decision that I would go to see a doctor or so. But I would sneak up on these gentlemen, so to speak. I would call upon them in the role of a friend rather than avowedly as a prospective patient, and take them into my confidence, as it were, by degrees. Somewhere in the back part of my brain I nursed a persistent fear that my complaints might be diagnosed as symptoms ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb

... moderately well cultivated; rich, elegant in manner, though a little too demonstrative; and, most to be considered, loves me—or, at least, declares himself my lover. That he is sincere I cannot doubt. His was not the role of a skillful actor, but living expression. I ought to be flattered if not won by the ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... long as they left the land and the money behind. Their economic role was a passive one, and in strong contrast with that of the profit-seeking capitalists, which, for good or ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... conducting surveys and navigating ships; the origin and development of terrestrial fauna and flora; secular variation of climate; behavior of ocean currents—all these are fields of practical investigation in which the phenomena of the Arctic and Antarctic worlds play a very significant role." ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... unless the unknown happened, he would be unable to retain any of his followers; realised that his one chance lay in procrastination. In his despair he began to contemplate an alliance with Marufa, even if he had to take a subordinate role—which would at any rate give him his only ally, time, to ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... which in Roman times played an important role in the worship of Isis, was shaped somewhat like a tennis racquet, with four wire strings on which rattles were strung. The sound of it must have been akin to that of our modern tambourine, and it served much the same purpose as the primitive drum, namely, to drive ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... be in real life. In Ibn Khall. (iii. 104) we find notices of a book "Kitab Nujaba al-Abna" Treatise on Distinguished Children, by Ibn Zakar al- Sakalli (the Sicilian), ob. A. D. 1169-70. And the boy-Kazi is a favourite role in the plays of peasant-lads who enjoy the irreverent "chaff" almost as much as when "making a Pasha." This reminds us of the boys electing Cyrus as their King in sport (Herodotus, i. 114). For the cycle of "Precocious Children" and their adventures, see ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... an eventful day for the millionaire ranchman and his son Paul, as well as for Norman Grant and Roy Moulton, to whom it had opened up possibilities that they could scarcely yet realize. It was now Colonel Howell's mission further to enact the role of a magician and to see if the plans he had outlined were to bear fruit for the ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler

... distinguished for his fine social qualities, for his exquisite humor, and peculiar "Yankee wit." When participating in amateur theatrical exhibitions, he always preferred to play the role of the typical Yankee,—a character now ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... his address the President eloquently and eulogistically referred to the role of Russia's allies in the present war. Speaking of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... bounds; and, wounded in these, she was quite capable of writing post-haste to Mrs. Gurley or Mr. Strachey, complaining of their want of insight, and bringing forward a string of embarrassing proofs. So, leaving Mother to her pleasing illusions, Laura settled down again to her role of dunce, now, though, with more equanimity than before. School was really not a bad place after all—this had for some time been her growing conviction, and the visit to Godmother seemed to ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... loose surtout blazing with gold and silver, and his profusion of ribbons and plumes, always his air and port had something unique,—always he was the first among all. His whole life was like a work of art; and the role was admirably played, because he played ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... person," replied the Chief, "is to be your particular study. If she is not the center of the whole conspiracy, she is, at any rate, in the thick of it. It will be part of your job to ascertain the exact role she is playing." ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... Mozart dedicated quartets to a King of Prussia, who played 'cello, and he was careful to make the 'cello part the most important. And in Smetana's quartet Aus meinem Leben, the viola plays a most important role. Even the second violin often plays themes introducing principal themes of the first violin, and it has its brief moments of prominence. Yet, though the second violin or the 'cellist may be, comparatively speaking, a better player than the first violin, the latter ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens

... thing to which attention should be directed is the role that may be and is played by the printed book in selective education. There is more or less effort to discredit books as educative tools and to lay emphasis on oral instruction and manual training. We need not decry these, but, it must ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... the war become "Father Abraham." We may recall in the thought of this relation to the people the record of Washington. The first President has come into history as the "Father of his Country," but for Washington this role of father is something of historic development. During Washington's lifetime, or certainly at least during the years of his responsibilities as General and as President, there was no such general ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam

... around in his chair, facing Alfred. Pointing his finger at Alfred, in a voice choking with anger, he exclaimed: "You're not as slick as you imagine you are; you've been under cover ever since you came here. You made all my people think you were a straight guy; you played the role of a gilly kid to the queen's taste. But I'm on to you bigger than a house; after you've worked me for a hundred and seventy-five dollars, now you want to wolf me for twenty-five more. I won't shake down for one dime more. You think you'll get your bit of the touch but I'll bet you dollars ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... the most important of the herbs whose seeds, rather than their leaves, are used in flavoring food other than confectionery. It plays its chief role in the pickle barrel. Immense quantities of cucumber pickles flavored principally with dill are used in the restaurants of the larger cities and also by families, the foreign-born citizens and their descendants being the chief consumers. The demand for ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... days of both himself and his brother, who was two years his junior, his sister had assumed the role of a mother to them, and right devotedly had she filled the part. She had been more of a "pal" to them than anything else, and some years' residence in England during her schooldays had broadened her vision of the true meaning and value of this relation ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... the People's Assembly or Majlis al-Sha'b (454 seats; 444 elected by popular vote, 10 appointed by the president; members serve five-year terms) and the Advisory Council or Majlis al-Shura - which functions only in a consultative role (264 seats; 176 elected by popular vote, 88 appointed by the president; members serve six-year terms; mid-term elections for half of the elected members) elections: People's Assembly - three-phase voting - last held 7 and 20 November, 1 December ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... maintained that position, and possibly increased it. He was four times High Sheriff of the two counties; he received Elizabeth, his sovereign and patroness, at his seat at Hinchinbrooke (one of the convents), and in general he played the role with which we are so tediously familiar in the case of the new and monstrous fortunes of ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... that these cases, which I have chosen from a number of similar courtship customs, differ very much from what is our idea of the customary role of the girl and her lover. To me they are very instructive. They show the error of the long-held belief in the passivity of the female as a natural law of the sex.[90] Such openness of conduct in courtship is impossible except where women hold an entirely ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... Bluebottles in allusion to their dress. It is a nickname which, let me say at once, any man might be proud of. I know not whether the history of the Bluebottles has yet been written, but certain it is that their doings have got into newspaper print less often than they deserved. For theirs is a double role which truly merits the country's admiration. While carrying on the commerce of the Empire—that vital commerce without which there would be bankruptcy and no sinews of war, nor indeed any England left to defend—they have vowed themselves also, of their own free-will, to the helping of the wounded. ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... Howe had a delicate role to play. The extreme and logical members of his own party attacked him as a trimmer; on the other hand, any one of the four extruded councillors was considered by Society to be worth a hundred Howes, and Society was not slow to make its feelings known. The fight was fiercest in the Executive ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... of stitchery; would Mistress Evelyn condescend to wait a very few minutes? She placed a chair, and the lady sank into it, finding the quiet of the shadowed room pleasant enough after the sunlight and talkativeness of the world without. Mistress Stagg, in her role of milliner, took the gauzy trifle, called by courtesy a hood, to the farthest window, and ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... to rest upon the belief that the actual experiences of life can be anticipated. This is a fallacy. There is no dress rehearsal for the role of "wife and mother." It is a question of experience piled on experience, life piled on life. The only way to perform the tasks, understand the duties, accept the joys and sorrows of any given stage of existence is to have performed the tasks, learned the duties, fought out the joys and sorrows ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... puzzled as to what she should do as Elizabeth Eliza. Now, behind her pillow-case, she could look on and do nothing; all that was expected of her was to be smothered now and then. She breathed freely and enjoyed herself, because for the evening she could forget the difficult role of ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale

... duties about the sickroom she performed punctiliously. In that way she thought to put her conscience to rights, to regard herself in the kind role of ministering angel. That illusion was hard to attain in the presence of the sardonic comment the old man seemed to add. After all, it was a vulgar grab after the candied fruits of ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... Estella enjoyed herself as much as any of us, though she became strangely quiet and downcast on our way home. But, as Ivy truly remarked, it was not to be wondered at; the fairy palace was left behind, and the role of Cinderella awaited her ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... his friend in many moods; now he saw him in another. And the boy thought he loved him in this last role best, because in it he feared him most. This was not the man of poetry, charming as April, gay-hearted as a boy; this was the remorseless leader, iron for his cause, brutal, if you will, as a man who deals with ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... irregularities and disorders, there we must place the eight Muses, that we may have one to correct each particular irregularity and miscarriage. There are two parts in a man's life, the serious and the merry; and each must be regulated and methodized. The serious role, which instructs us in the knowledge and contemplation of the gods, Calliope, Clio, and Thalia appear chiefly to look after and direct. The other Muses govern our weak part, which changes presently into wantonness ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... imperturbability under her eloquent banter. To be sure, she persisted in treating Jim as an interesting boy, a line of conduct he found somewhat absurd, but which was partly the vein of her humour, and partly due to his inexperience in the role of Don Juan. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... of the streetS Asserts a joyless goal— Re-echoed clang where traffic meets, And drab monotony repeats The hour-encumbered role. Tinsel and glare, twin tawdry shams Outshine the evening star Where puppet-show and printed lie, Victim and trapper and trap, deny Old truths that always are. So fare ye, fare ye well, old roofs! The syren warns the shore, The flowing tide sings overside Of far-off beaches where abide The joys ye ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... storeroom. His lazy speech was cut short by the clangorous slamming of the iron door behind him. Conscientiously he pounded on the iron and yelled wrathful commands to Davy to open. Then when he thought he had made noise enough to add verity to his role and to free the conch from any onlooker's ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... she had confessed to Hannah, "and in order not to do that, I just have to keep still." Catherine, who had felt a little rebuffed by Frieda's chilly manner at the station, and Hannah, not quite sure what the present mood might indicate, were both willing to leave to Polly the role she had undertaken. Frieda sat quite near her, and watched her pretty bright movements with gentle interest, maintaining a silence meanwhile only surpassed in completeness by Dot's. Hannah rattled on, but there was a hollowness ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett

... insists on showing him to the public as her conquest and captive. He has no time to refuse, for the door opens and they all appear. "Le voila," says she, "cet homme si fier qui soupire a mes genoux pour les beaux yeux de ma cassette! Je vous le livre. Mon role est joue." So Ariste, tearing his curled hair, and the gris-de-lin clair coat, and, doubtless, the Presidente's "red rose chain," cursing also terribly, goes off to write a book against the age, and to prove that nobody ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... a kind of energy that plays a most important role in the drama of human evolution. The law operates to bring together the desirer and the object that aroused the desire. For the soul can only judge the wisdom of its desires by observing the result of gratifying ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... not without perspicacity. In order to spy upon the pair, he had contrived of late to open up a stock controversy on the point with M. de Chandour. Chatelet said that Mme. de Bargeton was simply amusing herself with Lucien; she was too proud, too high-born, to stoop to the apothecary's son. The role of incredulity was in accordance with the plan which he had laid down, for he wished to appear as Mme. de Bargeton's champion. Stanislas de Chandour held that Mme. de Bargeton had not been cruel to her lover, and Amelie goaded them to argument, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... be one of the Morningquest family, and he had a portrait of the duke, as the head of the house, in his dressing room. It was balanced on the right by Ecce Homo, and on the left by the Sistine Madonna, but it was popularly supposed that he worshipped the duke. The pair acted the role of devoted husband and wife successfully, being in fact sincere in their habit of playing into each other's hands for their own selfish purposes; and people who wished for an excuse to tolerate them because they were amusing, might say of them quite truly: "Well, whatever their ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... notice. The importance of understanding Japan, because of the light her recent transformations throw on the subject of social evolution and of national character and also because of the conspicuous role to which she is destined as the natural leader of the Oriental races in their adoption of Occidental modes of life and thought, justifies a careful study of Japanese character. He who really understands Japan, has gained the magic key for unlocking the social mysteries of China ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... knife, a sheepskin overcoat, tea, salt, dry bread and a kettle. I penetrated into the heart of the wood to an abandoned half-burned hut. From this day I became a genuine trapper but I never dreamed that I should follow this role as long as I did. The next morning I went hunting and had the good fortune to kill two heathcock. I found deer tracks in plenty and felt sure that I should not want for food. However, my sojourn in this place was not for long. Five days later when I returned from hunting ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... role that I am obliged to take upon me," interposed Janetta; "because my sisters have no father, and a mother whose health makes it impossible for her to guard them as ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... and another. He and I don't chin well together. Besides this matter of your father's impeachment has completely discouraged me. All the wealth in the world could never reconcile me to such methods! I'm ashamed of the role my own flesh and blood has played in that miserable affair. I can't express what ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... crisis was at an end, the dancer was re-engaged. The parts were read to the artists, and the next day Amede Achard threw up his role, declaring that it belonged to grand opera and was beyond the powers of an opera-comique tenor. It is well known that he ended his career ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... island of Java as an agent of the East India Company. He has found no important place in the American tradition, partly because Captain John Smith, the Virginia colony's first historian, took care to see that Captain Newport did not have a hero's role. But those of us who would understand the context in which our history first developed will do well to consider the career of ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven

... we realized that this will be a decisive decade in the history of liberty, that we've been called to a unique role in human events. Rarely has the world faced a ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George W. Bush • George W. Bush

... nothing to which I should object so much as being regarded as a benefactor," he answered definitely, but with entire lack of warmth. "The role does not suit me. Being an extremely bad man," he said it as one who speaks wholly without prejudice, "my experience is wide. I chance to know things. The woman who called herself Lady Etynge is of a class which—which does not count me among ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... to assume the role of prophet? Perhaps, like a good many prophets, I see too much in the future that never will ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman

... her life, Madame Felix de Vandenesse had attained to a degree of worldly knowledge which enabled her to quit the insignificant role of a timid, listening, and observing supernumerary,—a part played, they say, for some time, by Giulia Grisi in the chorus at La Scala. The young countess now felt herself capable of attempting the part of prima-donna, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Role" :   nonfunctional, stead, second fiddle, usefulness, portrayal, characterization, name part, duty, personation, capacity, activity, heroine, functional, place, ingenue, villain, raison d'etre, hat, enactment, lieu, heavy, position, hero, baddie, portfolio, bit part, utility



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