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Transfiguration

noun
1.
(Christianity) a church festival held in commemoration of the Transfiguration of Jesus.  Synonyms: August 6, Transfiguration Day.
2.
(New Testament) the sudden emanation of radiance from the person of Jesus.  Synonym: Transfiguration of Jesus.
3.
A striking change in appearance or character or circumstances.  Synonym: metamorphosis.
4.
The act of transforming so as to exalt or glorify.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Transfiguration" Quotes from Famous Books



... Dien," or that passage of Scripture, "He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." Suspended around his neck by a slender chain was a bronze medal, presented by vote of the Signoria when the great picture of "The Transfiguration" was unveiled. If this medal had been a crucifix, and you had met the wearer in San Marco, one glance at the finely chiseled features, the black cap and the flowing robe and you would have said at once the man was a priest, Vicar-General of some important diocese. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... rapturous delight, and so count yourselves filled with the Spirit, do these visions lead you to virtue and to lowly, loving service? If not, take heed to yourselves, lest, exalted like Capernaum to Heaven, you are at last cast down to Hell. Thank God for the mounts of transfiguration where we behold His glory! but down below in the valley are children possessed of devils, and to them He would have us go with the glory of the mount on our faces, and lowly love and vigorous faith in ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... have never disguised my opinion about the "Transfiguration.". And all the time we talked, there were Clara's eyes looking lucidly out from the dark corner in which she was sitting, working away at the stockings. The lucky fellow! They were in a dreadful state of bad repair when she ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... recorded and datable works of the master; others attributed to him on good and sufficient internal evidences are as follows:—A small panel in the Florence Academy, with the three subjects of the Baptism, the Marriage of Cana and the Transfiguration; this was long attributed to Fra Angelico, but is to all appearance early work of Baldovinetti: an Annunciation in the Uffizi, formerly in the church of S. Giorgio; unmistakably by the master's hand though given by Vasari to Peselino: ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... fire in the glass, the light of the lamp on the chimney-piece striking on her cheek, and the animation of impatient expectation and love, shed on her countenance a splendor of youth, bloom, and life, which seemed a transfiguration effected ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... into Ostend on the tail-end of the sunset. What was left of it was enough to keep up for us the intense moment of transfiguration, so that we didn't miss it. The long white Digue, the towers, the domes of the casinos and hotels, the high, flat fronts of the houses showed soaked in light, quivering with light. Ostend might have been ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... owing to the power of Jesus to metamorphose himself and others having been exercised with that object in view.[31] This power is referred to more than once in our Gospels, for instance in the account of the so-called "Transfiguration" upon the Mount; the Greek word rendered in our Bibles as "transfigured" being the word which in translations of the older Greek classics ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... even when in the first dim vision, the organizing hand of Law moved among the unordered truths of my Spiritual World, poor and scantily-furnished as it was, there seemed to come over it the beauty of a transfiguration. The change was as great as from the old chaotic world of Pythagoras to the symmetrical and harmonious universe of Newton. My Spiritual World before was a chaos of facts; my Theology, a Pythagorean system trying to make the best of Phenomena apart ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... that Smoke knew himself a coward. He lied. Reluctantly he did it, but he lied. He shook his head with a slow indulgent smile, and in his face was more of fondness than he dreamed as he noted Labiskwee's swift joy-transfiguration. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... life of its people, through all the strain of a strenuous and overworked existence. Her vision had been fair, and at first she was much disappointed. In artistic or architectural magnificence St. Peter's and the Transfiguration could not disappoint a soul like Margaret's, but she was deeply disappointed in the life of the Italian people and in the general charm ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... Angelo was my demigod before; but I find no offering worthy to cast at the feet of his Moses. I like much, too, his Christ. It is a refreshing contrast with all the other representations of the same subject. I like it even as contrasted with Raphael's Christ of the Transfiguration, or that of the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... also elaborately carved with floriated pattern. It was fitted with coloured glass, by an anonymous donor, in memory of the Rev. T. J. Clarke, in whose vicariate, as has been stated, the church was built. The subjects are, running across and in the centre, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and Transfiguration; above being the Resurrection, and Christ sitting in glory; and in the lower row, our Lord as the Good Shepherd, the Man of sorrows and ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... been delicate nor self-indulgent? To help the mind of such a woman to unfold to the recognition of the endless delights of truth; to watch the dawn of the rising intelligence upon the too still face, and the transfiguration of the whole form, as the gentle rusticity vanishes in yet gentler grace, is a labour and a delight worth the time and mind of an archangel. Our best living poet says—but no; I will not quote. It is a distinct wrong that befalls the best books ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... work he did not write poetry. Erasmus Darwin may have been more prosaic than Sir Thomas Browne, but in his most famous work he did not write prose. Sir Henry Newbolt will not permit a classification of this kind. For him poetry is an expression of intuitions—an emotional transfiguration of life—while prose is the expression of a scientific fact or a judgment. I doubt if this division is defensible. Everything that is literature is, in a sense, poetry as opposed to science; but both prose and poetry contain a great deal of work that is preponderantly ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... everywhere present. And this body and divinity, we remark in passing, were already present, though veiled, when the God-man walked this earth. Peter and James and John caught a glimpse of it on the Mount of Transfiguration. It is of this body, and blood, of which Peter says, 1 Peter i. 18, 19, that it is not a corruptible thing, and of which the Apostle says, Heb. ix. 12, "By his own blood he entered in once into the ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding

... this ancient garden—here in the sun of earliest summer, she had beheld a transfiguration. And still under the spell of it, still thrilled by wonder, she had so utterly believed in it, so ardently accepted it, that she scarcely understood what this transfiguration had also wrought in her. She only felt that she was no longer captain ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... but all these are surpassed by the Dutch artists, Van der Velde, Berghum, Karel der Jardin, and by the prince of animal painters, Paul Potter, whose famous "Bull," in the gallery of The Hague, deserves to be placed in the Vatican beside the "Transfiguration" by Rafael. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... imaginations were not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-makes and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of "happy endings" to misfit all stories. Now, the history of Eliza Doolittle, though called a romance because of the transfiguration it records seems exceedingly improbable, is common enough. Such transfigurations have been achieved by hundreds of resolutely ambitious young women since Nell Gwynne set them the example by playing queens and fascinating ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw

... so exceedingly clear and bright is his skin. Gotama explains that there are two occasions when the skin of a Buddha glows like this—the night of his enlightenment and the night before his death. The transfiguration of Christ suggests itself as a parallel and is also associated with an allusion to his coming death. Most people have seen a face so light up under the influence of emotion that this popular metaphor seemed to express physical truth and it is perhaps not excessive ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... not seldom copiously streaked with a vein that, to eyes not trained to evangelical light and to minds not tolerant of the expansion that comes to religious natures in the days of adolescence, may seem unpleasantly strained and excessive. The fashion of such words undergoes transfiguration as the epochs pass. Yet in all their fashions, even the crudest, they deserve much tenderness. He consults a clergyman (1829) on the practice of prayer meetings in his rooms. His correspondent answers, that as the wicked have their ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... Dutch engraver, went to Venice, lived with Titian; engraved some of his pictures; went to Rome and engraved Raphael's "Transfiguration"; executed over 150 plates, all displaying great accuracy and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... that experience, when for our sakes He became man. He chose comrades who were a blessing to Himself, although He was a far greater blessing to them. He took them with Him when he went forth to confront the crises of His life—on the Mount of Transfiguration, and in the Garden of Gethsemane, where His sorrow was intensified by their failure to watch with Him. He had three specially intimate friends. He called twelve to be apostles, and sent forth seventy as missioners—an arrangement ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... years, by a train of circumstances I was not able to control, brought me to the present place and hour. Perhaps it may be proper for me to say, with St. Peter, on the mount of transfiguration, it is good ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger

... commonly called the Communion of St. Jerome, painted for the principal altar of St. Girolamo della Carita. This work has immortalized his name, and is universally allowed to be the finest picture Rome can boast after the Transfiguration of Raffaelle. It was taken to Paris by Napoleon, restored in 1815 by the Allies, and has since been copied in mosaic, to preserve so grand a work, the original having suffered greatly from the effects of time. Lanzi says, "One great attraction in the church paintings ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... Madonnas in our art galleries cast their fervent regards on Jesus or on the heavens. The expression in Murillo's 'Immaculate Conception' may be interpreted by the highest voluptuous exaltation of love as well as by holy transfiguration. The 'saints' of Correggio regard the Virgin with an amorous ardour which may be celestial, but appears in reality extremely ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... stripe, monotony, deadly monotony, and lonesomeness, gray as a rat both on 'em, all loosely twisted together makin' a wide melancholy stripe. Then a more flowery piece, golden moments, mounts of soul transfiguration, full understandin', divine hopes and raptures, heart talks, illuminations, all striped in with images of golden rod, evergreen trees pintin' up into the friendly blue heavens, that leaned down so clost you could almost see into the Sweet ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... towards the heavens. 'And a cloud received Him out of their sight'—the Shechinah cloud, the bright symbol of the Divine Presence which had shone round the shepherds on the pastures of Bethlehem, and enwrapped Him and the three disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. It came not to lift Him on its soft folds to the heavens, but in order that, first, He might be plainly seen till the moment that He ceased to be seen, and might not dwindle into a speck by reason of distance; and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... did permit the service, and there was conferred upon it the new name, which it still bears. It has sheltered a long line of actor folk and their friends since then, earning thereby reverence, gratitude, and immortal memory.—[Church of the Transfiguration. Memorial services were held there for Joseph Jefferson; and a memorial window, by John La Farge, has been placed there in memory of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... inquiries of physicists continually increase, is aided by that other {52} transfiguration resulting from metaphysical inquiries. Subjective analysis compels us to admit that our scientific interpretations of the phenomena which objects present, are expressed in terms of our own variously-combined ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall

... his,—inconceivably—incomprehensively—to his utter consternation and rout—he saw that it was a stranger's little face that he held. Gone was the sullen frown, the indifferent glance, the bitter smile, and in that sudden, amazing, wild, sweet transfiguration of brow, eyes, mouth, that met his astonished eyes, he felt his whole mean, supercilious world slip out from under his feet! And just as precipitously, just as inexplainably, as ten days before he had seen a Great Light that had knocked all consciousness out of him, he experienced now ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... soul; few find their fullness of soul-enjoyment. I have seen some of these weary ones as they entered the other world and were led to places of rest. As they caught a single glimpse of the peace and rest awaiting them, their faces glowed with the light of a divine transfiguration; yet they knew that the bliss they had been permitted to look upon, and to hope for, could be theirs only as they were developed into a state of perfect appreciation of it. Even so the person who enters the most fully and understandingly into our own feelings, grasps and holds ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... to be cast in the mould of one of Corneille's heroes, and the thought of immolating their child on the altar of a barbaric idea would have filled them with horror; but the transfiguration of their petted boy suddenly become a hero, touched them with a tenderness never before felt. In spite of their anxiety, Maxime's enthusiasm intoxicated them, and it made them ungrateful toward their former life, that ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... behold: Thrice thirty million souls being bound together In the love of larger truth, Rapt in the expectation of the birth Of a new Beauty, Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom. I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration Before you see it. But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ever higher, Wheeling ever higher, the sun-light wooing Of lofty places of Thought, Forgive the blindness ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... The transfiguration of familiar objects is indeed curious and wonderful. The hulk, once gaudy with paint and gilding, has come under the skill of the lapidary and sea-artist. It is crusted with emerald and flossy mosses, and glimmers with diamond, jacinth, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... Sebastian Del Piombo, who being a Venetian by birth was an excellent colourist. For one of his pictures—the very 'Raising of Lazarus' now in the National Gallery, which the Pope had ordered at the same time that he had ordered Raphael's 'Transfiguration'—it is rumoured that Michael Angelo gave the designs and even drew the figures, leaving Sebastian the credit, and trusting that without Michael Angelo's name appearing in the work, by the help of his drawing ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... follow the ascending Jesus as He lets His benediction drop on the upturned faces of His friends, until He again passes into the Shekinah cloud, and leaving the world, goes to the Father. And from both His momentary transfiguration and His permanent Ascension we can draw the certain assurance that 'He shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... of the name: it should also be recognised as the sole method by which the work of a great poet can be studied to any serious purpose. For the student it can be no less useful, for the expert it should be no less easy, to trace through its several stages of expansion and transfiguration the genius of Chaucer or of Shakespeare, of Milton or of Shelley, than the genius of Titian or of Raffaelle, of Turner or of Rossetti. Some great artists there are of either kind in whom no such process of growth or transformation is perceptible: of these are Coleridge and Blake; ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... of her, Lady Cicely congealed and stiffened. Easy and unpretending with Mrs. Staines, she was all dignity, and even majesty, in the presence of this chatterbox; and the smoothness with which the transfiguration was accomplished marked that accomplished actress the high-bred woman of ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... as this has power to blind us for a moment to the underlying meaning: Faustus enjoys a temporary transfiguration. But Marlowe's muse flags in the effort to sublimate dross. Such a character as Faustus is unfitted to support tragedy. His creator inspires him with his own Bohemian joy in mere pleasure, his own thirst ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of these respective sciences, thus familiarised to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... indignation that make the usual aims and satisfactions of the world appear trivial and fond. To him it has been granted to hand on the torch of that impassioned movement and change by which the soul of man appears slowly to be working out its transfiguration. And if he dies in the race, he may still hope that some glimmer of freedom will shine where ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... wonderful view of the light of His countenance the favoured disciples must have had, who were witnesses of His transfiguration: we are told that His face did shine as the sun. To the proto-martyr Stephen the heavens were opened, and the face of the LORD shone upon him: and when he saw Him he became so like Him, that his dying utterances corresponded with those of his LORD on the Cross. ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor

... woman is essentially inferior to man, she still has rights. Grant that Mrs. Norton[48] never could be Byron; that Elizabeth Barrett never could have written Paradise Lost; that Mrs. Somerville never could be La Place, nor Sirani have painted the Transfiguration. What then? Does that prove they should be deprived of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... approving of our service. It is no task to follow when it brings praise and admiration. It is no task to follow in the calm after his "Peace, be still," on Gennesaret. Who would not follow gladly to the mount of transfiguration to behold his glory? But to follow him "whithersoever" ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... indeed no such god; and now Man must take in hand all the work that he used to shirk with an idle prayer. He must, in effect, change himself into the political Providence which he formerly conceived as god; and such change is not only possible, but the only sort of change that is real. The mere transfiguration of institutions, as from military and priestly dominance to commercial and scientific dominance, from commercial dominance to proletarian democracy, from slavery to serfdom, from serfdom to capitalism, from monarchy to republicanism, ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... they assumed. The second adopted shape was called by the same name as the original shape, hamr, and the expression made use of to designate the transition from one body to another, was at skipta hmum, or at hamaz; whilst the expedition made in the second form, was the hamfr. By this transfiguration extraordinary powers were acquired; the natural strength of the individual was doubled, or quadrupled; he acquired the strength of the beast in whose body he travelled, in addition to his own, and a man thus invigorated was ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... rose from a huge oak tree in the meadow across the road, and darkened the sky for a moment in their flight to the cedars that were their nightly resting place. Gradually the mist changed from amethyst to rose, and the poorest object shared in the transfiguration of the ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall

... Those who try it never are able to dive deep nor soar high.... Good digestion demands a certain amount of coarse food—refined and condensed aliment alone kills. Man should work and busy himself with the commonplace, rest himself for his flight, and when the moment of transfiguration comes, make the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... entirely thrown down the scaffolding on which the airy fabric, so delightful to poets and moralists, reposed. The departing Emperor stands no longer in a transparency robed in shining garments. His transfiguration is at an end. Every action, almost every moment of his retirement, accurately chronicled by those who shared his solitude, have been placed before our eyes, in the most felicitous manner, by able and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... a fine thing from the window to-day," Terry wrote, "a thing of sheer delight, the complete transfiguration of a human being. An Italian street labourer came into the yard and sprawled on the grass to eat his own lunch. He was bandy-legged from being coaxed to stand alone too soon. But he had a most wonderful face; all the mobility which toil had banished from his form must have sought ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... Beginning in the path made by Brahms, he soon came under the influence of Liszt, and we were given a chaplet of tone-poems, sheer programme-music, but cast in a bigger and more flexible mould than the thrice-familiar Liszt pattern. Whatever fate is reserved for Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Hero's Life, and Don Quixote, there is no denying their significance during the last decade of the nineteenth century. For me it seemed a decided step backward when Strauss entered the operatic field. One so conspicuously rich in the gift of music-making ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... caught by his pupil Benozzo, but thenceforward forever lost. The angels of Perugino appear to be let down by cords and moved by wires; that of Titian, in the sacrifice of Isaac, kicks like an awkward swimmer; Raphael's Moses and Elias of the Transfiguration are cramped at the knees; and the flight of Domenichino's angels is a sprawl paralyzed. The authority of Tintoret over movement is, on the other hand, too unlimited; the descent of his angels is the swoop of a whirlwind or the fall of a thunderbolt; ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... Bethlehemites; who by his words and deeds had attracted much attention and made some converts; now accused of breaking the Jewish Sabbath, now of plotting against the Roman sovereignty; one who in his own person had felt the full power of temptation, and who had been raised to the grandeur of a transfiguration; so tender he would not bruise the broken reed, so gentle his yoke was rest; raying out with compassion and love wherever he went; healing alike the pangs of grief and the languor of disease; whom some believed to be the Messiah, and others thought a prophet; whom the masses followed, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... with us," Father Kiprian assured everyone. "First he questioned us about our parish, about our arrangements, and then he began to examine us.... He turned to me also: 'What is your church's dedication day?' 'The Transfiguration of our Lord,' I replied. 'Do you know the hymn for that day?' 'I think so.' 'Sing it.' 'Thou wert transfigured on the mountain, Christ our Lord,' I began. 'Stop! Do you know the meaning of the Transfiguration?' 'To be quite brief,' I replied, 'our Lord wished to show himself ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... we discover a strange transfiguration that is being wrought. Experiences which were painful or grievous to the actors and sufferers become in the representation the source of keen pleasure to the hearers or readers. The Iliad is mainly a story of men destroying one another. The Odyssey depicts ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... and modified the law that otherwise would have had things its own way. In apergy we undoubtedly have the counterpart of gravitation, which must exist, or Nature's system of compensation is broken. May we not believe that in Christ's transfiguration on the mount, and in the appearance of Moses and Elias with him—doubtless in the flesh, since otherwise mortal eyes could not have seen them—apergy came into play and upheld them; that otherwise, and if no other ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... nineteen centuries ago; they are processes that still continue, and their term is fixed only by the total regeneration and perfecting of matter, while the Seven Sacraments are the chiefest amongst an infinity of sacramental processes which are the agencies of this eternal transfiguration. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... It was the transfiguration of those heart diseases which enshroud dying girls in all the beauty of their soul and then carry away to Heaven the ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... In the "Transfiguration on Mount Tabor" the figure of the ascending Christ with outstretched arms and noble features is one of Fra Angelico's best works, but the attitudes of the Apostles are conventional; the kneeling figure on the left with hands upraised ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... emblem of light, every white ray of light containing all the prismatic colors; and as it symbolizes innocence and purity, it is the color must appropriate for clothing infants, brides, and the dead. We think of the angels as clothed in white. At the transfiguration of our Lord and Master, his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow, as no fuller on earth can white them; and in one of the Evangelists his raiment is described as at that time as white as the light, and so our highest comparison of whiteness is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... make it a memorable occasion. Mrs. Livermore wrote afterwards: "It was greater and grander than any public day, not specially devoted to religion, that I have ever known. The hill was a Mount of Transfiguration, the faces of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... which the nurse thought it justifiable to practise on relations, for in fact death had not changed Henrietta; there had been no transfiguration to beauty and nobility, she looked what she had been ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor

... massive and placid sense of what he said, when he could be induced to say anything; and particularly valued by the minister, Mr. Torrance, as a right-hand man in the parish, and a model to parents. The transfiguration had been for the moment only; some Barbarossa, some old Adam of our ancestors, sleeps in all of us till the fit circumstance shall call it into action; and, for as sober as he now seemed, Hob had given once for all the measure of the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... arithmetic or navigation, are governed by exact rules. Art in the highest esthetic sense, while it makes use of rules, transcends all rule; no rules can be given for the production of a painting like Raffael's "Transfiguration," a statue like the Apollo Belvedere, or a poem like the Iliad. Science does not, like the mechanic arts, make production its direct aim, yet its possible productive application in the arts is a constant stimulus to scientific ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be transfiguration behind and ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... of Christ's countenance at His transfiguration show His disciples, but that He was a spiritual King, whose strength lay in the spirit of power, and wisdom, and beauty, and love, which God had given Him without measure; and that there was such a thing as a spiritual body—such a body as each of us some day ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley

... received a medal from the Society of Arts for his crayon drawing of 'Raphael's Transfiguration.' In 1787, being then seventeen, he exhibited seven pictures at the Royal Academy. He painted his own portrait, and wrote concerning it to his mother, 'To any but my own family I certainly should not say this; ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... removed to Rome; a split in the camp ensued, inspired by a lady initiate, since famous under the name of Diana Vaughan, and to this we owe most of the revelations. Furthermore, with the death of Albert Pike the cultus of Lucifer is said to have undergone a significant transfiguration. For him the conception of Satan was a blasphemous fiction, devised by Adonaite priestcraft to obscure the veridic lustre which inheres in the angel of the morning-star; but this view represented, as it is said, rather the private opinion ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... Indang. Natives in the high places about, were waiting for the Train to debouch upon the river-bank—so as to take a few shots at the outfit. Every one expected this, but just as the Train broke out of the gorge into the open, at the edge of the river-bed—there was a great sucking transfiguration from the shallows, a hideous sort of giving ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... the Parnasus is singular. In the house(191) of Augustimguis (Chigi) Raphael has painted very preciously a poetry, the story of Psyche, and very gracefully he surrounded Galatea by mermen in the middle of the waves and by cupids in the air. The picture in S. Pietro in Montorio of the Transfiguration of our Lord,(192) in oils, is very good, and another in Aracoeli, and in the Temple of Peace, in fresco.(193) The picture in S. Pietro in Montorio by the hand of Bastiaeo Veneziano(194) is famous; he ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... door and showed herself, the change was so wonderful that Amelius was literally unable to speak to her. Joy flushed her pale cheeks, and diffused its tender radiance over her pure blue eyes. A more charming little creature, in that momentary transfiguration of pride and delight, no man's eyes ever looked on. She ran across the room to Amelius, and threw her arms round his neck. "Let me be your servant!" she cried; "I want to live with you all my life. Jump ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... paid a visit to the family of En-Noor, who were greatly astonished at my transfiguration from a bad Moorish dress into an European suit. They were much disconcerted at this change, and my happy humour. Madame En-Noor rated me for running away from them yesterday. I told them I wished to get to my friends ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... and painting have been employed on most ignoble objects—on scourgers and hangmen, on beggarly enthusiasts and base impostors. Look at the two masterpieces of the pencil; the Transfiguration of Raphael, and the St. Jerome of Correggio; [102] can any thing be more incongruous, any thing more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... intimacies, the influence which she exercised to develop the latent germ of every character, the constancy with which she clung to each when she had once given and received confidence, the delicate justice which kept every intimacy separate, and the process of transfiguration which took place when she met any one on this mountain of Friendship, giving a dazzling lustre to the details of common life,—all these should be at least touched upon and illustrated, to give any adequate view of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... would close the Bible and go back to her hard practical life, awed yet strengthened, and with a hopeful expression, like that which must have rested on the disciples' faces on coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... genius shines no less here than in the world of tone. The musical energy flows entirely from the dramatic conditions, like the electrical current from the cups of the battery; and the rhythmical structure of the melos (tune) is simply the transfiguration of the poetical basis. The poetry, then, is all-important in the music-drama. Wagner has rejected the forms of blank verse and rhyme as utterly unsuited to the lofty purposes of music, and has gone to the metrical principle of all the Teutonic ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... the life of God in the soul of man. But I do insist that literature is the most inclusive and the most definite of all the arts, and that therefore books unlock to us a vaster world than obeys the spell of any other art. One man's soul may attain its transfiguration through architecture or music or painting or sculpture as another does through poetry; the great thing is to attain the transfiguration; and let us be thankful for the many ways in which God fulfills himself to man. I am not trying to make out a ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... and feudal quarrels that were comparatively remote. The Holy Land was much nearer to a plain man's house than Westminster, and immeasurably nearer than Runymede. To give a list of English kings and parliaments, without pausing for a moment upon this prodigious presence of a religious transfiguration in common life, is something the folly of which can but faintly be conveyed by a more modern parallel, with secularity and religion reversed. It is as if some Clericalist or Royalist writer should give a list of the Archbishops of Paris from ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... her old skin and got new, And walks fresh varnish'd to the public view; Foul Judith was and foul she will be known For all this fair transfiguration. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... Schumann's "Genoveva" will be given here—and I think I may venture to promise before-hand that the performance will be a far better one than that at Leipzig. Fraulein Riese will tell you about the "Transfiguration of the Lord." [Oratorio by Kuhmstedt] Of this kind there should certainly be no more [oratorios The word is missing in the original, as the corner of the letter is ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... other hours of equally memorable transfiguration, which their surroundings had nothing whatever to do with—hours lighted only by the flame that flared ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... two hundred gold florins, so that both declared themselves satisfied. Then the church passed to me, these three sheep belong rather to the upper part of the mosaic which, with the Cross in the midst, bearing the face of Our Lord, and on either side Moses and Elias, symbolises the Transfiguration. These three sheep would thus represent S. Peter, S. James ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... a forward movement, through changes soft and slow. The great marvel was drawing nearer, to shine forth and eclipse all other things. It came on in its own calm way: you felt no wish to hurry it. The coming transfiguration, the expected witcheries of the light, took not a whit away from the deep enjoyment of being still under the divinity of night, still, as it were, half-hidden, and slow to emerge from so wonderful a spell.... Come forth, O Sun! We worship thee while ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... these ministering spirits, that the author calls "men"? Are they the glorified inhabitants of the Celestial City? Moses and Elias appeared at the transfiguration; so the spirit who spake with John (Rev. 20:10), was his fellow-servant. Are these "spirits of just men made perfect"-the angel-ministering spirits which are sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? (Heb. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... now, as I had always meant to serve you some day. Ey, yes, I think I always meant to give you back to Perion as a free gift. Meanwhile to see, and to writhe in seeing your perfection, has meant so much to me that daily I have delayed such a transfiguration of myself until to-morrow." The man grimaced. "My son Orestes, who will presently succeed me, has been summoned. I will order that he conduct you at once into Perion's camp—yonder by Quesiton. I think I shall not ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us BY HIS SON" (Heb. 1: 1, 2). Moses, representative of the law, and Elias, representative of the prophets, appeared in glory on the Mount of Transfiguration; but when Peter suggested that they be accorded equal honors with Jesus, immediately a cloud overshadowed the company and a voice out of the cloud said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; HEAR YE HIM." "And when they had lifted up their eyes, ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... saith: If he had known him he would have torn him with his teeth, and therefore our Lord would not name him to him, for as Chrysostom, saith: If he had named him, Peter had arisen and all to-torn him. Peter went upon the sea; he was chosen of God to be at his transfiguration, and raised a maid from death to life; he found the stater or piece of money in the fish's mouth; he received of our Lord the keys of the kingdom of heaven; he took the charge to feed the sheep of Jesu Christ. He converted at ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... in their hasty desire to speak constantly interrupted each other, but they referred to the great works in which they had been engaged while on the earth, and the monuments they had left behind them. I remember Raphael particularly speaking of his last great painting of the Transfiguration, which he declared he had left in an unfinished condition in Rome, and which he desired to complete if he only had the opportunity. I regret that I am not able at this distant time to give full details of these, their marvelous revelations. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various

... puts a new physiognomy on an old story without distorting the tradition, as we have seen in our own day the story of Arthur told again, not with the elaborate allegory of Spenser, but with a spiritual transfiguration which makes the "Idylls of the King" truly an epic of the nineteenth century, so I conceive that Beowulf was a genuine growth of that junction in time (define it where we may) when the heathen tales still ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... Philae, and in several temples in Nubia. The dome over the altar still remains as it was constructed by Justinian, whose portrait, together with that of his wife Theodora, may yet be distinguished on the dome, together with a large picture of the transfiguration, in honour of which event the convent was erected. An abundance of silver lamps, paintings, and portraits of saints adorn the walls round the altar; among the latter is a saint Christopher, with a dog's ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... that is, next to David, who, of course, was the nearest resemblance to Him of all, as a sufferer, an inspired teacher, and a king. Jeremiah comes next to David; I do not say in dignity and privilege, for it was Elijah who was taken up to heaven, and appeared at the Transfiguration; nor in inspiration, for to Isaiah one should assign the higher evangelical gifts; but in typifying Him who came and wept over Jerusalem, and then was tortured and put to death by those He wept over. And hence, when our Lord came, while some thought Him Elijah, and others John the ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... importance. Then Rome still has to boast of so many of the best things which the world has to show. No other cathedral is so grand as St. Peter's nor so beautiful as St. Paul's; no other "bit of color" is equal to the Transfiguration; no other heroic statue is to be compared with the Augustus; nowhere else is so sweet a girl-face as the Cenci; no other group is to be named with the Laocoon, no other fresco with the Aurora; and where is there another Moses, or Apollo Belvedere, or Antinous, or where is there vocal music so heavenly ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... people who cherish them. A fight for the waters between a monstrous dragon like Vrittra and a heroic god like Indra is a nobler affair than a quarrel for the waters between a woodpecker and a toad. But the improvement and transfiguration, so to speak, of a myth at bottom the same is due to the superior culture, not to the peculiar race, of the Vedic poets, except so far as culture itself depends on race. How far the purer culture was attained to by the original superiority of the Aryan over the Andaman breed, it is not necessary ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... stood to his work with such manly energy that he finished right off a superb roughing out of the whole figure. Never before had he felt such enthusiasm in his art. It seemed to him as if he were in the presence of some saint; and at times he wondered at the transfiguration of Christine's face, whose somewhat massive jaws seemed to have receded beneath the gentle placidity which her brow and cheeks displayed. During those two hours she did not stir, she did not speak, but from time to time she ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... this is given by one who witnessed the appearance of departed spirits on a certain most interesting occasion. Two illustrious men, of the Jewish line, appeared and spake with Christ. The person of the Saviour experienced a remarkable transfiguration, assuring his human soul of the joy set before him; the presence of the celestial spirits, also, confirming his assurance respecting the separate existence of souls, and the whole transaction being designed to strengthen the faith ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... gem-like being whose existence defined her own non-existence. When she heard he was ill again, her hatred only intensified itself a few degrees, if that were possible. It stunned her and annihilated her, but she could not escape it. She could not escape this transfiguration of hatred that had come ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... of Europe insisted on the restoration of the works of art which Napoleon had pillaged. "The bronzed horses, brought from Corinth to Rome, again resumed their old station in the front of the Church of St. Mark; the Transfiguration was restored to the Vatican; the Apollo and the Laocoon again adorned St. Peter's; the Venus was enshrined with new beauty at Florence; and the Descent from the Cross was replaced in the Cathedral of Antwerp." ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... her in joy too deep for words. By it he divined something of what Lassiter's revelation meant to Bess, but he knew he could only faintly understand. That moment when she seemed to be lifted by some spiritual transfiguration was the most beautiful moment of his life. She stood with parted, quivering lips, with hands tightly clasping the locket to her heaving breast. A new conscious pride of worth dignified the old wild, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... to them of 'the coming glory,' first reading Luke ix. 25-35; and knowing that many before him would as Christians be called upon to endure ridicule from ungodly companions, he pointed out to them that in all the Gospels which speak of the Transfiguration, the event is preceded by an account of the Christian's path of self-denial. After an earnest address to the unsaved, this delightful gathering was closed by his telling them that a little offering ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... beams shining through his window, cheer him; and he thinks of his people who are poor and ill, and also welcomes the sunbeams for their sake. And his gentle Holiness, Pius IX, in walking past the great painting of the Transfiguration, thinks "how glorious it looks in the sun's rays," and he too was glad. And the lazy peasant lying in the sun, stretched himself and was glad, for surely many noble ladies and gentlemen would be abroad in the sweet warm air, and he would beg ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... cynical people. But here it never deviated from dignity and seemliness; it only seemed new and true, and the best gift of God. These two spirits seemed, with hands intertwined, to have ascended gladly into the mountain, and to have seen a transfiguration of life: which left them not in a blissful eminence of isolation, but rather, as it were, beckoning others upwards, and saying that the road was indeed easy and plain. And so the sweet hour passed, and left a fragrance behind it; whatever might befall, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... whether they were in the body or out of the body, they could not tell; for it did seem unto them like a transfiguration of them, that they were changed from this body of flesh into an immortal state, that they could ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... unsterblichen Lehrer." Further, the translator has at times so to manipulate his material as to incorporate into his verse epithets and figures of speech of surpassing grace and expressiveness, which do not readily admit of transfiguration into any modern language; such, for instance, as the "much-wooed white-armed Maiden Muse" ([Greek: polymneste leukolene parthene Mousa]) of Empedocles; the "long countless Time" ([Greek: makros kanarithmetos Chronos]), ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... Cardoville had truly remarked a complete transfiguration in the countenance of Rodin. This man, lately so harsh, severe, inflexible, with regard to Dr. Baleinier, appeared now under the influence of the mildest and most tender sentiments. His little, half-veiled eyes were fixed upon Adrienne with an expression of ineffable interest. Then, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... regularly resorted to learn the divine will, God was wont to speak to Moses face to face, xxxii. 1-xxxiv. 9. Then follows the other version of the decalogue already referred to—ritual rather than moral, xxxiv. l0-28—and an account of the transfiguration of Moses, as he laid Jehovah's commands upon the people, xxxiv. 29-35. From this point to the end of the book the atmosphere is again unmistakably priestly. Chs. xxxv.-xxxix, beginning with the Sabbath law, assert with a profusion of detail that the instructions given ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... clearly recognised in Sculpture, where the perfection of form is merely a symbol of mental perfection and the loftiest moral ideas, and where the body is wholly pervaded by soul, and spiritualized even to a glorious transfiguration. The merry or ludicrous ideal, on the other hand, consists in the perfect harmony and unison of the higher part of our nature with the animal as the ruling principle. Reason and understanding are represented as the voluntary slaves of the senses. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... altar. The snowy top and sides of the mountain appeared, shining in the bright sun, like a grand dome of the purest white marble. But it cannot be described. I thought of Sinai, of Moses on the Mount, when the glory of the Lord was passing by; of the mountain of the Transfiguration, something too intolerably bright and magnificent for mortal eye to look upon and live. We rode slowly, and in speechless wonder, till the sun, which had crowned the mountain like a glory, rose slowly from its radiant brow, and we were reminded that it was ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... He no longer knew. The peculiarity of pains of this nature, in which that which is pitiless—that is to say, that which is brutalizing—predominates, is to transform a man, little by little, by a sort of stupid transfiguration, into a wild beast; sometimes into ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... death, the body of Raphael was placed at the upper end of the hall wherein he had last worked, with the picture of the Transfiguration which he had executed for Cardinal Ginlio de' Medici at the head of the corpse. He who, regarding that living picture, afterward turned to consider that dead body, felt his heart bursting with grief as he beheld them. The loss of Raphael caused the cardinal to command that this work should ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... is concerned with the Finn-myth. The Finns live in the depths of the sea. 'Their transfiguration into seals seems to be more a kind of deception they practise. For the males are described as most daring boatmen, with powerful sweep of the oar, who chase foreign vessels on the sea.... By means of a "skin" which they possess, ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick

... changing from shadow to sunshine, and from sunshine to shadow, every uplifted countenance over which they pass, you will find yourself at the very next breath a wiser, a better, and a happier man. You will undergo a transfiguration upon the spot? You will see a mighty angel sitting in the sun. You will hear the rush of wings overshadowing the whole firmament. And, take my word for it, you will be so much better satisfied with yourself! But mind though—never do this ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various



Words linked to "Transfiguration" :   Christianity, transformation, alteration, transfigure, Christian holy day, Transfiguration of Jesus, August 6, Transfiguration Day, revision, New Testament, miracle, metamorphosis, translation, Christian religion



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