"Portrayal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saint who enjoyed the greatest fame—partly on account of her frequent portrayal by the plastic arts—was doubtless St. Teresa (Teresia de Jesus), a Spanish nun (1515-1582). During childhood and early youth she suffered from serious illnesses, and on one occasion was even believed to ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... their martial enthusiasm and fatalistic courage were all aglow, when the recital of their fathers' deeds had stirred their blood and the portrayal of their own victories filled them again with the fierce joy of conflict, when the mountain of stone that arched the Columbia had risen before them in assurance of dominion as eternal as itself,—now, when in every eye gleamed desire of battle and every ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... of Maggie to Cedar Crest in the bottom of his trunk, and kept it locked in his chiffonier. During these days, more frequently than before, he would take out the portrait and in the security of his locked room would gaze long at that keen-visioned portrayal of her many characters. No doubt of it: there was a possible splendid woman there! And no doubt of it: ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... Or, Afloat in New York Mr. Alger is always at his best in the portrayal of life in New York City, and this story is among the best he has given ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... The portrayal of the situation which caused our early forefathers to rob birds' nests and kill young animals will no doubt shock the sentimentalist who orders eggs or veal as a matter of course. There might be good ground for his feeling ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... things that cannot be recorded! facts too startling, and at the same time, too delicately intricate, to admit a public portrayal, or meet the public gaze; But the cheek can blush in secret at the true images which memory evokes, and the oppressed mind shrinks back, in horror, from the dark shadows which have saddened and overwhelmed it. I appeal to converts, to converts of the gentler ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... comedy proceeded from the atellane. The atellane enjoyed much success in the second century before Christ. It was, however, ousted by the mime, which was the kind of comic literature thoroughly national at Rome. The mime was a farce of popular morals, particularly of the lower classes; it was a portrayal of the dregs of society in their comic aspects. It maintained its sway until the close of the Roman Empire without becoming more dignified; rather the reverse. The names of some authors of mimes have survived: Publius Syrus and Laberius, in the time of Caesar. What is curious is that these mimes, ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... represented, from the vagabond to the noble lord. Richardson, in describing the shifts and subterfuges of Mr. B—and the elaborate intrigue of Lovelace, moves within a narrow circle, devoting himself, not to the portrayal of character, but to the minute analysis of a woman's heart. The sentiment of Richardson descends to Mrs. Radcliffe. Her heroines are fashioned in the likeness of Clarissa Harlowe; her heroes inherit many of the traits of the immaculate ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... literary graces, in its portrayal of characters that are never commonplace though genuinely human, and in its development of a singular social situation, the book is one ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... heart he said it was a vain hope, a happy delusion that might serve to make the harsh bondage endurable till time dispelled it. The simple words of the girl were eloquent portrayal of Israel's plight, and Kenkenes subsided into a sorry state of helpless sympathy. She was not ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the preface and introduction, characterized by an ample command of the resources of the subject, easy discursiveness and lively criticism, he puts the reader in possession of such preliminary information as he will like or need to have. The body of the work begins with a portrayal of America as it appeared to its earliest discoverers and explorers. The second chapter is devoted to the Jesuit missionaries, who, reviving the spirit of the Crusades, plunged into the wilderness to convert the aborigines to Christianity, and, inspired by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... being offered a thousand pounds for a pen-and-ink portrait of a provincial mayor—being asked to devote his graphic art, his felicitous choice of words, his gifts of insight and sympathy, his genius, in a word, to the portrayal of a real live mayor—the same to be published in book-form, asked for at the libraries, and discussed at dinner-tables and in the reviews as a specimen of the season's art. Of course Meredith would tell the man to ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... you can do while you practise towards the things you hope to do, and illustrating impersonal themes until the time comes for you to try your own individual battle in the great world of thought and feeling; till, mature in strength equal to the portrayal of great natures, the Angels of God as shown forth by you may be recognised as indeed Spirit, and His Ministers ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... could get some men to match them I would have some corking characters to begin with. But no kind of pen-and-ink picture of Elizabeth would do her justice. Her sweetness of speech when she is particularly nasty is beyond the power of human portrayal. I got in bed quick when she said she wanted to talk, because I was afraid I might have to hit something, and the pillow was the only thing I could manage without sound. I put it where I could give it a dig when politeness ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... strong element of human interest had early carried it into favor with the New York audience that nightly crowded the theatre in which it was being presented. The star, a young woman of exceptional talent, almost a great artist, had by her remarkable portrayal of the leading role sprung from obscurity to fame in ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... have on a mid-sea island, where Mark, pagan, pirate, pearl-hunter, is found, are absorbing. Hidden treasure, mutinies, tropic love, all these are here. The book thrills with its incident and arouses admiration for its splendid character portrayal. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... the inconsistencies, seemingly unchangeable, irreconcilable in conception or in fact; a truthful portrayal of them tends to render the writer a most inconsistent being in the eyes ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... of suffering, she did not take her eyes from that adorable and tragic pair. Never had human face displayed such beauty, such a dazzling splendour of suffering and love; never had there been such a portrayal of ancient Grief, not however cold like marble but quivering with life. What was she thinking of, what were her sufferings, as she thus fixedly gazed at her Prince now and for ever locked in her rival's arms? Was ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... North, Simms accomplished for the South. He lacked Cooper's skill and variety of invention, and he created no character to compare with Cooper's Leatherstocking; but he excelled Cooper in the more realistic portrayal of ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... attributed to Him by the Synoptics, it presents to us a personage so enwrapped in mystery and dignity as altogether to transcend ordinary human nature. This transcendent Personality is indeed the avowed centre of the whole record, and His portrayal is its avowed purpose. Yet whilst the writer never clearly reveals to us who he himself is, it is equally manifest that his own convictions constitute the matrix in which the discourses and events are imbedded, and that there is nothing ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... Royal decrees, until the will of the National Assembly, at once to be convened, should be promulgated on the subject of the penalty of death. The effects of this decree, as it sped on the lightning's wings, like a saving angel, all over France, may be imagined perhaps, but portrayal is impossible! Who can imagine even the joy, the rapture it brought to many a dungeon-prisoner, who was counting the hours that yet remained to him of life and preceded his awful doom, or to those who sorrowed over his ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... imaginative richness, the marvellous ingenuity of plot, the power and subtlety of the portrayal of character, the charm of the romantic environment,—the entire atmosphere, indeed,—rank this novel at once among ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... are no longer organs but organizations. The individuality of the great editor, once supreme, has become less and less a power, till finally it vanishes into mere innocuous anonymity. To show you how far the editor has receded into public obscurity, it is only necessary to try to recall the portrayal of a modern editor in a recent play. Stage lawyers, stage physicians, and stage preachers abound; when you think of them your mind calls up a very definite image. But no one has yet attempted to portray the typical editor, and it is doubtful if the populace would recognize him if he were ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... of his superiority to those in whom self-satisfaction was possible because they had no conception of the ideal. Of such he could say in truth that they did not know enough even to realize the extent of their ignorance. The world has long been familiar with the vivid portrayal of the Socratic consciousness which is contained in Plato's "Apology." Socrates had set out in life with the opinion that his was an age of exceptional enlightenment. But as he came to know men he found that after all no one of them really knew what he was about. ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... and he did it as well as Claude, but no better. He never got beyond the stage of microscopic portrayal; if he painted a dewdrop he painted it, and his blades of grass, swaying lily-stems, and spider-webs are ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... responded or moved, and he then proceeded to arraign the offenders in no light terms, and not one ever forgot the scathing words that fell from his lips or the shame which followed his vivid portrayal of their ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... calculation, record, tab; registry, register; recital, relation, narrative, report, delineation, description, portrayal, explanation; reason, ground, consideration, motive, sake; estimate, valuation, judgment, estimation, opinion; importance, consequence, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Nikolayevich Andreyev, the author of impressive tales and remarkable dramas, is well known both in America and in England. Since the beginning of the Great War he has devoted himself to the artistic portrayal of the war's effect on his country, and also to purely publicistic tasks. ...
— The Shield • Various
... which were meager enough, especially during his student life in Zurich; yet he had felt ashamed of partaking of such a luxury as a cup of coffee even. I had to admit that I could not share his hopes of the influence of an artistic portrayal of the sufferings of the weavers upon the people of wealth. Self-satisfied virtue is hard to move. Rather did I believe that a great work of art, treating of the life of the masses, was bound to rouse their ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... painter's smock intent upon a palette, vividly, whimsically, delightfully Kenny. There was tenderness and sympathy in Sid's portrayal. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... increase in the stature of the actors, who always appear life-size in spite of their lift from level to level above the spectator. But what is the use, what is the use? Am I to abandon the young and younger wisdom with which I have refrained in so many books from attempting the portrayal of any Italian, any English church, and fall into the folly, now that I am old, of trying to say again in words what one of the greatest of Spanish churches says in form, in color? Let me rather turn from that vainest endeavor to the trivialities ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... shocked at anything that happens in the world; he knows the world too well for that. He offends the Puritan in us by his indifference; he is therefore probably the best kind of reading for Puritans. Shakespeare is romantic in his literary methods, but in his portrayal of character he is an unsurpassed realist. If life were all thought and achievement, Shakespeare would be the last word in literature; but there is another side, the side which the Puritan represents, with which Shakespeare ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... his father and his race. He had the supreme distinction of Charles but not his majesty, more than his haughty reserve, even less than his power of enlisting sympathy. In this most difficult of tasks—the portrayal that should be at one and the same time true in its essence, distinguished, and as sympathetic as might be under the circumstances, of so unlovable a personage—Titian won a new victory. His Prince Philip of Austria in Armour at the Prado is one of his most complete ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... the best in the poem: nature description, plot construction, character, description, or the portrayal of ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... that the surpassing interest which fiction, whether in poetry or prose, possesses for most minds arises mainly from the biographic element which it contains. Homer's "Iliad "owes its marvelous popularity to the genius which its author displayed in the portrayal of heroic character. Yet he does not so much describe his personages in detail as make them develop themselves by their actions. "There are in Homer," said Dr. Johnson, "such characters of heroes and ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... perceptics and such. You know Zack's the difference between the artist and the photographer. Actually Zack's real difficulty is the battle he has to keep from getting completely sucked in to Rowe's portrayal while he's recording. Don't misunderstand. He's not complaining. In fact when I suggested relieving him if the strain was too much he said if he couldn't do Rowe's feelies I could relieve him from the payroll. It's ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia
... "American art" no longer raises a doubt. It is at last recognized that America has something of its own to offer the world,—a style developed within the last, two decades. The prime movement of the times presenting boldness, brilliance and a laxity of detail in portrayal, the art of America, as shown in this exhibition, embodies these characteristics without emphasizing them. Keeping in mind the fact that the Palace contains little American art earlier than 1905, American artists are showing marked individualities, ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... son could offer. And he did not give up. Finally, he broke through, reached his boy, and brought him back to his life with his family and his work. Because he was willing to die to himself and every comfortable impulse. Big Daddy was freed to be the instrument of a saving love. Here was a dramatic portrayal of the truth which our Lord not only taught but exemplified, and which He would like to see reproduced in the lives of ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... interesting to follow, and stimulating even to a child? Could we but discover a state in which all man's needs appear in such a way as to appeal to the child's mind, a state in which the ways of providing for these needs are as easily developed, the simple and stirring portrayal of this state should form the earliest training of ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... but he does not need to do this, and the aesthetic value of his work is independent of it; for the picture possesses its beauty even when we know nothing of its model. In the language of current philosophy, truth in the sense of the correspondence of a portrayal to an object external to the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... beclouding hindrance. The little band of missionaries we have sent are hopelessly inadequate to the task and plead for reinforcements with a pathos that almost breaks our hearts. Oh, do not some of us, as we have followed the portrayal of the needs of South America, like Isaiah of old, hear the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" God grant that some of us may respond as he did, "Lord, here am ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... however much tending tardily to do justice to a particular lady, cannot terminate wholesomely. But he became a gallant partisan. His portrayal of Mr. Warwick to his wife and his friends was fine caricature. 'The fellow had his hand up at my first word—stood like a sentinel under inspection. "Understand, Sir Lukin, that I receive you simply as an acquaintance. As an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... puritanical effect. In Crusoe, Defoe brought the realistic adventure story to a very high stage of its development; but his works hardly deserve, to be classed as true novels, which must subordinate incident to the faithful portrayal of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... capital of the empire. The descriptions which other authors have set down are equally remarkable for their powerful coloring, and they leave us with an idea of Rome which is positively astounding in its unbridled luxury. 'We will rest content with offering to our readers the following portrayal, quoted from Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xiv, chap. 6, and lib. xxviii, chap. 4. will not presume to attempt any translation after having read Gibbon's version of the combination of these ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... one day while in this state at an angle of the garden trying to devote his entire mind to the portrayal of a tree-fern, and vainly endeavouring to prevent Hester Sommers from coming between him and the paper, when he was summoned to attend upon Ben-Ahmed. As this was an event of by no means uncommon occurrence, he listlessly gathered ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... remarkable book in its strength of portrayal and its directness of development. It cannot be read without being remembered."—The ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... literary form, is such an essential part of the method of the modern writer of fiction, that Nature has almost become to the novelist what light and shade are to the painter—the one permanent element of style; and if the power of A Village Tragedy be due to its portrayal of human life, no small portion of its charm comes ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... silence, with, at the end, a slight smile for the exactitude of his: "Perhaps I hope that we never shall be;"—and she paused now as if his portrayal of her own wants required consideration. "Perhaps," she said at length, "perhaps I never cared so ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... similarities the essential elements are strongly differentiated. Take, for instance, three poems in which the situations are not unlike. In "My Last Duchess," "The Flight of the Duchess," and The Ring and the Book, we have a portrayal of three men of high lineage, but cold, egotistic, cruel, who have married very young and lovely women over whom the custom of the times gives them absolute power. But there the likeness ends. We cannot for a moment class together ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... all I have to say is that the 'power' to dazzle with strange incidents, to entertain with complicated plots and impossible characters, now belongs to some hundreds of writers in Europe; while there are not much above a dozen who know how to interest with the ordinary events of life, and by the portrayal of characters truly human. If the former is a talent, it must be owned that it is much commoner than the latter . . . . If we are to rate novelists according to their fecundity, or the riches of their invention, we must put Alexander Dumas above Cervantes. Cervantes wrote a novel ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... barbarous a poet less naturally gifted. And, although the question has never been definitely settled, it is probable that he was born and lived a Catholic; and it is strange how Elizabeth, who, tradition tells us, was present at some of his plays, could endure his faithful portrayal of friars and nuns, while she was persecuting their originals so barbarously at the time; strangest of all, how she could bear to look upon the true and noble image of Katherine of Aragon, whom Henry in his good moment pronounces "the queen of earthly ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... reverence and trust. The countenance is pervaded with that peace only known to the soul that is in complete harmony with the divine power. The Holy Father has taken the tiara from his head and it lies before him on the cushion on which he kneels. Although the entire portrayal of the figure reveals that devotion expressed in the solemn and searching words of the church service, "And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee,"—although it is ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... for autobiography, and his head was full of that curious performance, Der Weisse Konig, which occupied many of the leisure moments of his life, being dictated to his former writing-master, Marcus Sauerwein. He had already designed the portrayal of his father as the old white king, and himself as the young white king, in a series of woodcuts illustrating the narrative which culminated in the one romance of his life, his brief happy marriage with Mary of Burgundy; and he continued eagerly to talk to Master Gottfried about the mystery of ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... character of a very loving wife brought out by a simple incident in her life,—the expected return of her husband. Some of these songs also have been written by poetesses, such as Lady Nairn's exquisite "Land of the Leal;" and really there is such delicacy, such minute accuracy in the portrayal of a woman's feelings in "Are ye sure the news is true?" that one cannot help thinking it must have been written by Jean Adams, or some woman, rather ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the drama or the novel, you will still find, I think, that the character of the physician awaits in its interesting varieties competent portrayal. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... borderman," replied Jonathan. There was a certain dignity or sadness in his answer which reminded Helen of Colonel Zane's portrayal of a borderman's life. It struck her keenly. Here was this young giant standing erect and handsome before her, as rugged as one of the ash trees of his beloved forest. Who could tell when his strong life might be ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... read about Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest masters, so famous for his portrayal of subtile emotion, and were wonderfully interested in his life and work; had been to the Academy to see the Baptism of Christ, painted by his master, Andrea Verrocchio, and were very positive that the ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... sermon gives so graphic and tender a portrayal of the father of one of America's most distinguished ministerial families, that the author feels justified in ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... her heart was wrung by sympathy with her unhappy father in the mystery brooding over him, she was a far more interesting figure than the less complex Haxard; and they intimated that Godolphin had an easier task in his portrayal. They all touched more or less upon the conduct of the subordinate actors in their parts, and the Maxwells, in every case, had to wade through their opinions of the playing before they got to their opinions of the play, which was the only vital ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... of popular dramatists, many of whom had rare gifts, and all of whom glowed with a spark of the genuine literary fire. But Shakespeare was the sun in the firmament: when his light shone, the fires of all contemporaries paled in the contemporary playgoer's eye. There is forcible and humorous portrayal of human frailty and eccentricity in plays of Shakespeare's contemporary, Ben Jonson. Ben Jonson was a classical scholar, which Shakespeare was not. Jonson was as well versed in Roman history as a college tutor. But when Shakespeare ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... witness better than all the rest. Along the "Street of Tombs," by the gate of the city, runs the long row of stele (funeral monuments), inimitable and chaste memorials to the beloved dead; and here we meet, many times over, the portrayal of a sorrow too deep for common lament, the sorrow for the lovely and gracious figures who have passed into the great Mystery. Along the Street of the Tombs the wives and mothers of Athens are honored not less than the wealthy, the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Mr. Brumley as he was, I have perhaps a little neglected to show him as Lady Harman saw him. We have employed the inconsiderate verisimilitude of a novelist repudiating romance in his portrayal; towards her he kept a better face. He was at least a very honest lover and there was little disingenuousness in the flow of fine mental attitudes that met her; the thought and presence of her made him fine; as soon could he have turned his shady side towards the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... denial of De Quincey's statements as to the magnitude of the doses he was able to take; and his frankness and truthfulness is equal to that of any of his detractors. William Rosse Cobbe, in a volume entitled "Dr. Judas, or Portrayal of the Opium Habit," gives with great frankness of confession and considerable purity of diction a record of his own experiences with the drug. One entire chapter of Mr. Cobb's book and several portions ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... A vivid portrayal of the experience of an Eastern author, among the cowboys of the West, in search of "local color" for a new novel. "Bud" Thurston learns many a lesson while following "the lure of the dim trails" but the hardest, and probably the most welcome, ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... was 'The Trail of '98'. For power and blunt realism there was nothing like it, but the character of the hero was torn in the shreds of debate. There was general agreement on two points: that the portrayal of the desolate Alaskan wild had a touch of "home," and that the heroine was ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... wider than is commonly supposed. A very imperfect appreciation of his gifts is gained by those who know only his portraits of women and children. These indeed show a peculiar insight into childhood, and a rare delicacy in the interpretation of womanhood. But Reynolds is at his strongest in the portrayal of men. It is by such portraits as the Johnson and Heathfield that he is worthy a place among ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... then he would take her upon his lap and call her his "dear little spook, the household ghost that would soon cease to cast a shadow;" and she, with a languid curiosity, would easily beguile from him a portrayal of the scenes through which he had just passed. She cared little for them, but from his stores of vitality and strength he imparted life to her, and without understanding why, she simply ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the light draperies swayed like veils in a soft breeze. And then, with a fleeting glance and smile at Farnsworth, Patty plucked apple blossoms from overhanging boughs, and tossed them to the audience. There were no trees, and there were no blossoms, but so exquisite was her portrayal of blossom time, and so lovely her swaying arms and tossing hair that many were ready to declare they could even detect the fragrance of the flowers. But when Patty essayed to stop, the riotous applause that followed and the cries of "Encore! encore!" ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... a kaleidoscopic miscellany of anecdote, grave and gay; brief bits of biography and impressionistic portrayal of types, charming glimpses into Parisian life and character, and, above all, descriptions of the city's chief, and, to outward view, sole occupation—the art of enjoying oneself. Tourists have learned that Mr. Smith is able to initiate them ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... have not been found, and it is idle to speculate how he would have concluded the volume if he had lived to complete it. But no one will read the fascinating description of the Northern Lights without feeling a poetical appropriateness in the fact that his last work ends with a portrayal of the auroras—one of those phenomena which elsewhere he described as "the most glorious of all the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... not prove the genius that was in him, or give voice to his belief that some day he would dominate them all. The restlessness and discomfort, and at the same time the sense of unknown and fascinating possibilities which are the birthright of talented youth, and in the portrayal of which Balzac is supreme, must have been well known to him by experience; and his almost Oriental love of beauty and luxury made his life of grinding ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... portrayal of characters in an old New England town. Dr. Lavendar's fine, kindly wisdom is brought to bear upon the lives of all, permeating the whole volume like the pungent odor of pine, healthful and life giving. "Old Chester Tales" will surely be among the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... startling portrayal of one man's financial greed, its wide spreading power, its action in Wall Street, and its effect on the three women most intimately in his life. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... OF JULIA PAGE. Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert. A sympathetic portrayal of the quest of a normal girl, obscure and lonely, ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... story is to take rank above other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and friendship. Make them understand that you will not interfere with or harm them, and they will go about their own affairs unafraid in your presence. Then you may silently watch their manner of living, their often amusing habits, and their frank portrayal of character. As a guest in the wild, conducting yourself as a courteous guest should, you will be well treated by your wild hosts, some of whom, in time, may even permit you to feed and stroke them. They do not dislike but fear you; they would rather be your friends than your ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... misanthropy, and religion. The charge indicates Scott's weakness, and perhaps also much of his strength, as a biographer and critic, for he had no prejudice against the conventional as such, and was never anxious to exhibit special "insight" of any kind. Yet I think his portrayal of Swift has seemed to most readers a clear presentation of a real and ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... excite the King to envy and jealousy of his Premier—whereupon Wolsey gave it outright to the monarch, who gave him the manor of Richmond in requital. Wolsey's disgrace, downfall and death soon followed; but I leave their portrayal to Hume and Shakspeare. This palace became a favorite residence of Henry VIII. Edward VI. was born here; Queen Mary spent her honeymoon here, after her marriage with Philip of Spain; Queen Elizabeth held many great festivals here; James I. lived and Queen Anne his wife ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... skepticism. This he thought would give weight and distinction to the book. So the Prince's philosophic demoralization is described at tedious length and the story drops out of sight for a long time. Then it is taken up again and the Prince falls in love with a beautiful Greek religieuse. The portrayal of this woman aroused another flicker of interest on Schiller's part, though she too was finally to be unmasked as one of the conspirators. Then he seems to have tired of 'The Ghostseer' altogether; at any rate he choked it off suddenly ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... just this has been, and still is, the central dogma in the faith of ecclesiastical Christendom? The legitimate result of this view, unflinchingly carried out, and applied to the precise point we now have in hand, is seen in that horrible portrayal of the Last Judgment wherewith Michael Angelo has covered the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, in Rome. The great anatomical artist consistently depicts Christ as an almighty athlete, towering with vindictive wrath, flinging thunderbolts on the writhing and helpless wilderness ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of stage comedy grown obsolete with its restrictions. Facts and ideas are all within the province of fiction. The intellect of an incisive moralist, like La Bruyere, the power of treating character as Moliere could treat it, the grand machinery of a Shakespeare, together with the portrayal of the most subtle shades of passion (the one treasury left untouched by our predecessors)—for all this the modern novel affords free scope. How far superior is all this to the cut-and-dried logic-chopping, the cold analysis to the eighteenth century!—'The Novel,' say sententiously, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... land in the hands of aliens was deplored in its results as may be seen from the following portrayal given by Buchanan in his "Travels in the Hebrides," referring to about 1780:—"At present they are obliged to be much more submissive to their tacksmen than ever they were in former times to their lairds or lords. There is a great difference between ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... mean comparison to the studied pen-pictures of the famous writers of this or any other age. They were extensively copied by the press of England and the Continent, and received high praise for their vivid portrayal of the battle-field and its scenes. Apart from the graphic accounts of great battles, they furnished materials from which the historians will write the enduring records of the war. With files of the New York dailies at his side, an industrious writer could compile a history of the ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... humanity—the pleasure of seeing the men and women of long past ages living, acting, and speaking as they might have done, those of the present living, acting, speaking as they do—but in each case with the portrayal not as a mere copy of particulars, but influenced with that spirit of the universal which is the secret and the charm of art. It is because the novels of these years recognised and provided this pleasure in a greater degree than those of the former period (except the productions of a few masters) ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Eastern woman found it in her soul to love the slender white girl who laughed aloud in glee, and showed such amazing aptitude in learning the A.B.C. of this language, especially reserved in the East for the portrayal of the history of love and all its kin. Presents were showered upon the teacher who, with the craft of the Oriental mind, in some cases forbore to fully explain the meaning of certain gestures, so that ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... he builds up their environment. Here his realism is intense. Indeed, occasionally one is tempted to credit Balzac with a greater love of things than of men, yet not the things of nature as much as things made by men. His portrayal of landscape may be fine prose, but contains no pure feeling of poetry in it, while, in the town, in the house, in the street, wherever the human mind and hand have left their imprints, his language grows warm, his fancy swoops and grasps the significance of detail; ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... subsequent books, it was not so much Disraeli's notable skill as a novelist but rather his portrayal of the social and political life of the day that made him one of the most popular writers of his generation, and earned for him a lasting fame as a man of letters. In "Vivian Grey" is narrated the career of an ambitious young man of rank; and in this story the brilliant ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... only for its glory. The color of this picture was like the sound of silver trumpets; the heart-throb of the strings was missing. Mary was neither morbid nor introspective, but at this time her whole being was keyed to more than normal comprehension. Watching the picture, seeing that it was a portrayal not of her but of his love for her, she wondered if any woman could long endure the arduousness of such deification, or if a man who had visioned a goddess could long ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... had not been in some degree inspired and informed by Charles Dickens. He had for that writer a very sincere admiration, though he was inclined to think that his true excellence lay not so much in faithful portrayal of the life of his times, or in gift of sustained narration, or in those scenes of pathos which have moved so many hearts in so many quiet homes, as in the power of inventing highly fantastic figures, such as Mr. Micawber or Mr. Pickwick. ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... to the portrayal of scenes, incidents, and celebrated people in the highest perfection of the photographers', ...
— Wholesale Price List of Newspapers and Periodicals • D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency
... known having nothing to do with reason, being insensible to forebodings and even blind to evidence, the surrender of those two beings to a precarious bliss has nothing very astonishing in itself; and its portrayal, as he attempts it, lacks dramatic interest. The sentimental interest could only have a fascination for readers themselves actually in love. The response of a reader depends on the mood of the moment, so much so that a book may seem extremely interesting when read late at night, but might ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... depressed spirit that Whistling Dick passed the old French market on his chosen route down the river. For safety's sake he still presented to the world his portrayal of the part of the worthy artisan on his way to labour. A stall-keeper in the market, undeceived, hailed him by the generic name of his ilk, and "Jack" halted, taken by surprise. The vender, melted by this proof ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... his intention that Mrs. Newsome, away off with her finger on the pulse of Massachusetts, should yet be no less intensely than circuitously present through the whole thing, should be no less felt as to be reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest portrayal at first hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good faith, I say, once it's unmistakeably there, takes on again an actuality not too much impaired by the comparative dimness of the particular success. Cherished intention too inevitably ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... point the old epic becomes a remarkable portrayal of daily life. In its picturesque lines we see the galley set sail, foam flying from her prow; we catch the first sight of the southern headlands, approach land, hear the challenge of the "warder ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... given us an accurate as well as picturesque portrayal of the social and political conditions which prevailed in the republic in the era made famous by the second ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... said these words I watched the face of the Marquise. She listened to this portrayal with attention, but without appearing moved by it, such is her power of suppressing her natural feeling. The ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... usual subject-matter of poetry, is perhaps only saying that the poet must be sincere. The mathematician is most sincere when he uses his intellect exclusively, but a reasoned portrayal of passion is bound to falsify, for it leads one insensibly either to understate, or to burlesque, or to indulge in a psychopathic analysis of emotion. [Footnote: Of the latter type of poetry a good example is Edgar Lee Masters' Monsieur ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... interrogation of life—not of life universal, but of life particular, the social life of to-day. It is not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice. One lays the book down sick at heart—sick for life with all its "lyings and its lusts." But it is a healthy book. So fearful is its portrayal of social disease, so ruthless its stripping of the painted charms from vice, that its tendency cannot but be strongly for good. It is a goad, to prick sleeping human consciences awake and drive them ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... that favourite device of Selma Lagerloef, the monologue, through which she pries into the very soul of her characters, in this case Ingmar, son of Ingmar, of Ingmar Farm. Ingmar's monologue at the plow is a subtle portrayal of an heroic battle between the forces of conscience and desire. Although this prelude may be too subjective and involved to be readily digested by readers unfamiliar with the Swedish author's method ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... remarkable triumphs; and the fact that so subtle and penetrating a critic as M. Lemaitre has chosen to devote the greater part of a volume to the discussion of his characters shows clearly enough that Racine's portrayal of human nature has lost nothing of its freshness and vitality with the passage of time. On the contrary, his admirers are now tending more and more to lay stress upon the brilliance of his portraits, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... our office the other day, signifying a desire to make some arrangement to bring it out there. I have heard almost no unfavorable criticism of the story—nothing which you could make serviceable in its revision. I have heard Dr. P. criticise Ernest—of course the character and not your portrayal. For myself I consider the character a natural and consistent one. Perhaps few men are found who are quite so blind to a wife's wants and yet so devoted, but—I don't know what the wives might say. We have had hundreds of letters of which the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... placed on the role of the prophet. Throughout these narratives he is portrayed as the dominant figure, moulding the history as God's representative. Abraham and Moses are here conceived of as prophets, and the Ephraimite history of their age is largely devoted to a portrayal of their ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... one moment, now at another. We shall find him anon as art and dramatic critic, to end—so far as we are concerned with him—as farmer. Is it any wonder if such a man, mediaeval in his nature and modern in his character, defies clear and definite portrayal by ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... Punch with a good deal more than ordinary loyal sentiment and esprit de corps. It is interesting to observe the different views the artists have severally taken of it, for most of them in turn have attempted his portrayal. Brine regarded him as a mere buffoon, devoid of either dignity or breeding; Crowquill, as a grinning, drum-beating Showman; Doyle, Thackeray, and others adhered to the idea of the Merry, but certainly not uproarious, Hunchback; ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... materialist, moves onward from a predetermined beginning to a helpless and tragic close. And yet few books have been written of deeper and more permanent fascination than these. Their grim veracity; the creative sympathy and steady dispassionateness of their portrayal of mankind; their constancy of motive, and their sombre earnestness, have been surpassed by none. This earnestness is worth dwelling upon for a moment. It bears no likeness to the dogmatism of the bigot or the fanaticism ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... showed such rare ability in the portrayal of the hidden workings of the heart, has a new work nearly finished, called The House of Seven Gables; it will be eagerly sought for, and we trust may prove as admirable a performance as ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... said in an earlier page that part of the failure of Ireland must be laid to the poets who had dropped out of the divine procession and sang a solitary song; to the writers who had turned from contemplating the great to the portrayal of the little in human nature. I know how difficult it is to constrain the spirit, and how futile it is to ask artists or poets to create what they are not inspired to create. But we can ask all men—artists, poets, litterateurs, and scientists—to be citizens, ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... glowing words of Renan, with their fine spiritual interpretations and descriptive eloquence, the judgments of an eminent contemporary Jewish scholar, and Newman's learned yet simple portrayal of the Church as it took form in its early environment, and as it was seen through the media of contemporary governments, customs, and criticisms, it is believed that readers will derive satisfaction, and will ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... account of those terrible days in Ireland is a fascinating if often gruesome study, and may be recommended as a vivid, if not perhaps calmly impartial, portrayal by an eye-witness of a ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... other words, they are human. The refinement of the four principles, as age steals upon them, adds an element that is somehow lacking from the former books. They now hail from different spheres, which lends richness to their portrayal. Aramis is the man of God, with a scheme always in the works. Athos is the dignified, retired nobleman, whose only concerns are debts left unpaid and the launching of his son into the world. Porthos is a great baron, ...
— Dumas Commentary • John Bursey
... general view at the close of the portrayal. First and final impressions remain the longest. The mind may be trained to take in the characteristic points of a subject, so as to view in a single scene, action, experience, or character, a unified impression of the whole. To describe a thing as a whole ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... problem proposed at the beginning of this article, as to how far Mother Juliana supplied from her own mind the canvas and the colours for this portrayal of Divine love, and as to how far therefore it may be regarded as a product of and a key to her inner self, we are inclined to say that, a comparison of her own style of thought and sentiment and expression as exhibited ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... it is impossible to make you see them as they are. When you once have thoroughly known them, language will fail you to do them justice, and you will prefer to be silent rather than slander them by inadequate portrayal. They are at first sight not attractive-looking. If you stand outside and look at them from a distance their lives will appear to you very humdrum and prosaic. But remember that for almost thirty years our Lord lived just such a life ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... often seen among those who had left Judaism); her daughter Marusya, who although fully Christian is ostracized as being a Jewess, and struggles unsuccessfully to find her place in life; and Peter Khlopov, a full Christian who finds Jewish culture agreeable. Steinberg's portrayal of Samuel makes it clear, even in the first few pages, that Samuel, although Jewish, thinks very much like a Russian peasant; in a very real way he straddles that fringe zone ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... whose sheer height is grandly dignified; the arches rest on roughly carved capitals, and the outer rectangle of the piers is displaced for half a column. The rehearsal of these most simple details seems but the writing of "the letter which killeth," and not the portrayal of the spirit that seems to live within these walls. Details which seem so poorly few when read, are nobly so when seen. This small old church has a true religious stateliness, and it seemed as if a priest should bring ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... would include all portraiture, by which I mean faithful portrayal or transcript whether of animate or inanimate nature; while the second would include all imaginative conceptions, decorative designs, ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... discords of phrasing. Of course if you switch methods intelligently and of purpose, that is quite another matter. An abstract discussion may be enlivened by a concrete illustration. A concrete narrative or portrayal may be given weight and rationalized by generalization. Moreover many things lie on the borderland between the two domains and may properly be attached to either. Thus the abstraction is legitimate when you say or write: "A man wishes to acquire the comforts and luxuries, as ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... beasts, birds, and plants below it, and finishes his task by taking man out of a little hillock of "the earth beneath," and woman out of man's side. Doubtless Linnaeus, as he went to his devotions, often smiled at this childlike portrayal. Yet he was never able to break away from the idea it embodied. At times, in face of the difficulties which beset the orthodox theory, he ventured to favour some slight concessions. Toward the end of his life he timidly ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... emperor spoke to him haughtily and contemptuously, even treating him as an ignoramus in ecclesiastical matters."—Napoleon met him with open arms and embraced him, calling him his father. (Thiers, XV., 295.)—It is probable that the best literary portrayal of these tete-a-tete conversations is the imaginary scene in "Grandeurs et Servitudes Militaires," ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... first children's monthly periodical in the United States. About 1831 both she and her husband began to identify themselves with the anti-slavery cause, and in 1833 she published An Appeal for that Class of Americans called Africans, a stirring portrayal of the evils of slavery, and an argument for immediate abolition, which had a powerful influence in winning recruits to the anti-slavery cause. Henceforth her time was largely devoted to the anti-slavery cause. From 1840 to 1844, assisted by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the production itself the conclusions I drew from it were as follows: the real faults in the work, which I have already mentioned incidentally, lay in the sketchy and clumsy portrayal of the part of Venus, and consequently of the whole of the introductory scene of the first act. In consequence of this defect the drama never even rose to the level of genuine warmth, still less did it attain to the heights of passion which, according to the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... not partaken of this famous beverage, and knew not the inn by reputation, its business was made known by a swinging sign, upon which, very indifferently executed, was the figure of a leopard, and, further, as if the artist had not sufficient confidence in his powers of portrayal, he had printed in large and uncertain letters, "At the sign of the Leopard may be found all manner of goodly cheer and comfort." Below this evidence of what might be found within, a small and narrow doorway gave entrance to the hostelry. Inside, a larger room than the outer aspect of the place ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... undisguised portrayal of greed shocked the susceptibilities, but it was the hideous human attributes patent in the brute that disgusted the imagination. With a terrible cunning of mind and brush the artist had laid bare a vice ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston |
