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More "Adumbration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the brains to know it, there lay before me as fine a field as any craftsman in the art of fiction ever had a chance to glean in. It is an impertinence for a man to speak of his own work, but I have often thought in my own story of Aunt Rachel, there is at least an adumbration of what a man aimed with real sympathy and humour might have done with the people of that place and time. When I say that the characters in Aunt Rachel are all real, I do not mean to make the foolish boast that they are all alive. I mean simply to say that they are all sketches from ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... further, let me remind you of how this contrast is borne out by the fact that all that previous system was an adumbration, a shadow and a premonition of the perfect revelation that was to come. Temple, priest, sacrifice, law, the whole body of the Mosaic constitution of things was, as it were, a shadow thrown along the road in advance by the swiftly coming King. The shadow fell before Him, but when ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... imaginary beings is certainly quite unique; she is strictly, as one may say, sui generis in the whole world of fiction. A figment born from a figment; one fancy evolved from another; the shadow of a shadow. If only in remembrance of that one daring adumbration from Mrs. Gamp'sinner consciousness, that purely supposititious entity "which her name, I'll not deceive you, is Harris," one would say that Mr. Mould, the undertaker, has full reason for exclaiming, in regard to Mrs. Gamp, "I'll tell you what, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... which parts us from one another, Jesus Christ assumes the Divine prerogative of passing and joining Himself to each of us, if we love Him and trust Him, in a union so close, and with a communication of life so real, that every other union which we know is but a faint and far-off adumbration of it. A oneness of life from root to branch, which is the sole cause of fruitfulness and growth, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... conditions, an idea of existence, so little correspondent with the ways and modes of this world—which we are apt to think the only world, that the best choice I can make of word or phrase is but an adumbration of what I would convey. I begin indeed to fear that I have undertaken an impossibility, undertaken to tell what I cannot tell because no speech at my command will fit the forms in my mind. Already I have set down ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... these trivialities the grand results which send Shakib in ecstasies about his Master's genius. Nor do we for a moment believe that the waywardness of a genius or a prophet in boyhood is always a significant adumbration. Shakespeare started as a deer-poacher, and Rousseau as a thief. Yet, neither the one nor the other, as far as we know, was a plagiarist. This, however, does not disprove the contrary proposition, that he who begins ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... himself powerless to go on with his work. He pottered a while longer among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. They appeared an utter futility. Why index a lot of nonsense? Somehow this recalled his flare, his adumbration of some great idea connected with young Arkwright and the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... chestnut of her thick hair was dank and sodden with brine, the wistful face that she turned up to him was pinched and colorless and blue about the lips. She seemed, of a sudden, as she leaned heavily on his arm, a presaging apparition out of the dim future, an adumbration of her own body grown frail and old, looking up to him for help, calling forlornly to him for solace. And in that impressionable moment his heart had gone out to her, in a burst of pity that seemed deeper and ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... knew not then that shadows were the scoffing synonym for all unsubstantial vanities and day-dreams, or that other mystic conception that substance itself is but the shadow and reflection of the power which created it, or that light itself is but the adumbration of God. How good it is that the child is ignorant of so many things. It leaves room for the existence and growth of a mind, of an imagination which, in time, shall lead rather than follow the processes of reason; which shall leap before it looks, ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... fortnight; but now, having seen her, he found himself powerless to go on with his work. He pottered a while longer among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. They appeared an utter futility. Why index a lot of nonsense? Somehow this recalled his flare, his adumbration of some great idea connected with young Arkwright and the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... Hedulio to tell you anything more definite than the very vague and hazy adumbration of his exploit he has already given. I heard some rumors of his feat as I rode down here from my house. I conjecture that the story is worth telling, to its least detail. If you want to hear what really occurred, call in Agathemer; he ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... until 1799. The wish was father to that thought. Already he had laid his plans to seize Egypt, and now strongly advised the orientation of French policy. A third possible course was the closing of all continental ports against England, an adumbration of the Continental System of 1806-13 for assuring the ruin of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy: I had as lieve you tell me that anima est angelus hominis, est corpus Dei, as [Greek omitted];—lux est umbra Dei, as actus perspicui. Where there is an obscurity too deep for our reason, 'tis good to sit down with a description, periphrasis, or adumbration; for, by acquainting our reason how unable it is to display the visible and obvious effects of nature, it becomes more humble and submissive unto the subtleties of faith: and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... giving his little boys comic names; later to appear in his stories. Thus, one known as 'Plorn,' which later appeared as 'Plornish.' This is a pleasant picture of the great writer's domestic life, and it gives also a faint 'adumbration' of what is now forgotten: the intense curiosity and eager anticipation that was abroad as to what he was doing or preparing. Hints of his characters got known; their movements and developments were discussed, and the incidents of his story were like public events. ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... silence to speak; she knew that it did so too eloquently, and could not control the personal adumbration she gave to the one point of light revealed in, "if he has not any". Her figure seemed immediately to wear a cap and cloak ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
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