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More "Figurative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from her husband. Indeed the latter is a class that requires as much sustainment and comfort as the other—being as they are, more numerous, and suffering all the privations of widowhood, poor things, except its reality. The expression, my Lord, is figurative, and taken from the agricultural occupation of ploughing; for whenever one animal is unyoked for any other purpose, such as travelling a journey or the like, the other is forthwith turned into some park or grassy paddock, and indeed generally enjoys more comfortable times than if still with ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... you for that hint," said Mr. Slick, "I was in jeest like; but there is more in it, for all that, than you'd think. It ain't literal fact, but it is figurative truth. But now I'll shew you sunthin' in this town, that's as false as parjury, sunthin that's a disgrace to this country and an insult to our great nation, and there is no jeest in it nother, but a downright lie; and, since you go for ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... delight to the few enlightened travellers who sojourn within its borders. It is a field which has been neglected by anthologists and essayists; one of its few serious recognitions being in a certain "Treatise of Figurative Language," which says: "Nonsense; shall we dignify that with a place on our list? Assuredly will vote for doing so every one who hath at all duly noticed what admirable and wise uses it can be, and often is, put to, though never before ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... pleasing than Myeerah's shy yet eloquent greeting. She gave Alfred her little hand and said in her figurative style of speaking, "Myeerah is happy for you and for others. You are strong like the West Wind ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... little Fyne less solemn. He hissed through his teeth in unexpectedly figurative style that it would take a lot to persuade him to "push under the head of a poor devil of a girl quite sufficiently plucky"—and snorted. He was still gazing at the distant quarry, and I think he was ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... tones of the priest whom he had met at the North End; and without even apologizing he answered with an overwhelming sense of how true were the words in a figurative sense:— ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... writing a hymn on the Beauty of Viceroys; and have repeatedly attuned my mind to the subject; but my inability to express myself in figurative language, and my total ignorance of everything pertaining to metre, rhythm, and rhyme, make me rather hesitate to employ verse. Certainly, the subject is inviting, and I am surprised that no singer has arisen. How can any one view the Viceroyal halo of scarlet ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... figurative finds on entering the New York Stock-Exchange a strong suggestion of having penetrated a die with which Giants have been casting lots. The first impression is one of cubical dimensions—and unless the curb be drawn, a fancy so spurred will plunge ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. Francis Quarles' Divine Emblems long remained a favorite book with religious readers, both in Old and New England. Emblem books, in which engravings of a figurative design were accompanied with explanatory letterpress in verse, were a popular class of literature in the 17th century. The most famous of them all ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... newly-made friend, Mr. Jingle, on the 13th May, 1827. Our cabman is so satisfied with his fare ("only a bob's worth"), that he does not, as one of his predecessors did, on a very remarkable occasion, "fling the money on the pavement, and request in figurative terms to be allowed the pleasure of fighting us for the amount," which circumstance we take to be an improving sign ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... egg or the division of a Divinity into male and female halves. In many accounts the Deity brings into being personages who continue the work of world-making and such entities as mind, time and desire are produced before the material world. But everything in these creation stories is figurative. The faithful are not perplexed by the discrepancies in the inspired narratives, and one can hardly imagine an Indian sect agitated by the question whether God made the world in six ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew's Gospel. They are called the "foolish virgins." We all know that a virgin is an unmarried woman who has kept the integrity of her virtue unbroken. The ten spoken of in the chapter are virgins in a figurative sense. They are so called because in appearance and profession they were not defiled with the world. They all had lamps. David says: "Thy word is a LAMP unto my feet, and a light unto my path." Each one had this lamp according to their understanding and use of the Word. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... Said he hadn't any ship, Any flocks at his command, Nor to feed them any land; Said he never in his life Owned a mine to keep a wife. But the guilty stammer so That his meaning wouldn't flow; So he thought his aim to reach By some figurative speech: Said his Fate had been unkind Had pursued him from behind (How the mischief ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... instinctively the better to listen; when—But I cannot tell, nor have I ever been able to describe exactly what it was. My heart made all at once a sudden leap in my breast. I am aware that this language is figurative, and that the heart cannot leap; but it is a figure so entirely justified by sensation, that no one will have any difficulty in understanding what I mean. My heart leaped up and began beating wildly in my throat, in my ears, as if my whole being ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... to possess?" asked an ancient philosopher of his pupils. One answered, "Nothing is better than a good eye,"—a figurative expression for a liberal and contented disposition. Another said, "A good companion is the best thing in the world;" a third chose a good neighbor; and a fourth, a wise friend. But Eleazar said: "A good heart is better than them all." "True," said the master; "thou hast comprehended in two ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... should account for his possession of the baby, and he did not want an explanation forced upon him before he was ready to make it. These men had come on board after the departure of the young woman, and could know nothing of the facts, and therefore Lodloe, speaking from a high, figurative standpoint, settled the matter by shaking his ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... him. They knew what he meant by the word, and that the assumed tone of cheerfulness in which he pronounced it had been intended to cheer them. Ben's proposal was not without some significance; though to call it "supper" of which it was designed they should partake was making a somewhat figurative ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... the way his imagination works and clothes itself in language. The quality of his mind is poetic, and his style is highly figurative. There have been very few professors, lecturing on abstruse subjects, such as economics, jurisprudence, and politics, who have dared to give so free a rein to an instinct frankly artistic. In the early days of his career, Mr. Wilson was invited to ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... Greek, it is not a common word; nor can the proper meaning, fornication, be strictly applied to matrimonial sin. In a figurative sense, how far, and to what offences, may it be extended? Did Christ speak the Rabbinical or Syriac tongue? Of what original word is the translation? How variously is that Greek word translated in the versions ancient and modern! There are two (Mark, x. 11, Luke, xvi. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... with whom I was enamoured, no rhyme of any Vernacular was worthy to speak openly, neither were the hearers so well prepared that they could have easily understood the words without figure: neither would faith have been given by them to the true meaning, as to the figurative; since if the truth of the whole was believed, that I was inclined to that love, it would not be believed of this. I then begin to speak: "Ye who, intent of ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... mused on this unprecedented occurrence, I made a discovery,—that of Sergeant Marigold's sense of humour. To that sense of humour my upbraidings, often, I must confess, couched in picturesque and figurative terms so as not too greatly to hurt his feelings, had made constant appeal for the past fifteen years. Hitherto he had hidden all signs of humorous titillation behind his impassive mask. To-night, a spark of sentiment had been the match ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Distemper, or The Dissenters' Usual Pleas for Comprehension, Toleration, and the Renouncing the Covenant, Considered and Discussed. Non Quis sed Quid. London. 1680. 12mo. Second Edition. Pp. 184. (With a figurative frontispiece, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... linking the two anecdotes, as cause and effect, would also bring a third anecdote under the same nexus. We are told that Calpurnia, the last wife of Caesar, dreamed on the same night, and to the same ominous result. The circumstances of her dream are less striking, because less figurative; but on that account its import was less open to doubt: she dreamed, in fact, that after the roof of their mansion had fallen in, her husband was stabbed in her bosom. Laying all these omens together, Caesar would have been more or less than human had he continued utterly ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... firm and steadfast as the mountains round about Jerusalem; but even as those mountains rose before us glorified, uplifted, and bejewelled by the vague splendours of the sunset, so the form of the history was enlarged and its colours irradiated by the figurative ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... SPEECH. The use of figurative language is also an aid to clearness and to force. Simile, metaphor, personification, antithesis, balance, climax, rhetorical question, and repetition are all effective aids in the presentation of argument. The speeches of great orators are replete with ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... This figurative address seemed to have great weight with the young man, who gradually yielded to the representations of Marmaduke, and eventually consented to his proposal. It was, however, to be an experiment only; and, if either of the parties ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... not give way to riot or disorder on that occasion. He hoped and believed it would not—here M. le Maire laid his hand on his heart—but a spark, as I knew, fired tinder, and the St. Meuse populace were at present figurative tinder. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... he said hastily. "My words were figurative, and exaggerated by deep feeling. I meant that I wished you, or some one, could be human and charitable enough to understand me, and help me to triumph over my weakness without condemning ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... appearance of the Grecian Helen in the second; but whereas the popular tradition makes Fust's great discovery the fruit of his alliance with the powers of Evil, Mr. Browning represents it as an act of atonement for the figurative devil-worship which was involved in a disorderly and ostentatious life. Fust has by his own admission sinned to this extent.[139] He has obeyed the father of lies. He has also accepted with thankfulness ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... sensation of this longing, unconscious of the end; but as to all soulless and lifeless beings and elements in the world, they can see in these words of a sighing and longing creation only a strong figurative expression used because of its suitableness to denote suffering of the animal world, as well as of men,—for the destination of the world to another and higher existence in which the law of perishableness and suffering no ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... not much care for fishing,' said Lady Bude, who was Merton's companion. The Countess had abandoned, much to her lord's regret, the coloured and figurative language of her maiden days, the American slang. Now (as may have been observed) her style was of that polished character which can only be heard to perfection in circles socially elevated and intellectually cultured—'in that Garden of the Souls'—to ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... or careless, clear and easy or confused and difficult; simple or complex; terse and forceful (perhaps colloquial) or involved and stately; eloquent, balanced, rhythmical; vigorous, or musical, languid, delicate and decorative; varied or monotonous; plain or figurative; poor or rich in connotation and poetic suggestiveness; beautiful, or only clear and strong? Are the sentences mostly long or short; periodic or loose; mostly of one type, such as the declarative, or with frequent introduction ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... amount to conclusive demonstration. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add, that all the suggestions attributed to Brewster and Herschel, in the beginning of the article, about "a transfusion of artificial light through the focal object of vision," etc., etc., belong to that species of figurative writing which comes, most properly, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... passed; she sprang across to Joe's side of the car, and shook him almost out of his seat, as she shouted, "Joe! you've shook de lion's paw!" This was her phrase for having entered on the dominions of England. But Joe did not understand this figurative expression. Then she shook him again, and put it more plainly, "Joe, you're in Queen Victoria's dominions! You're a ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... for if ye did, ye would not blaspheme God as ye do, to set an alien God instead of the living God. Also Christ saith, "I am a very vine; wherefore then worship ye not the vine God, as ye do the bread? Wherein was Christ a very vine, or wherein was the bread Christ's body, in figurative speech, which is hidden to the understanding? Then if Christ became not a material or an earthly vine, neither did a material vine become His body. So neither the bread, material bread, was changed from its substance to the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... to show that all hereditary traits, whether of mind or body, are inherited in virtue of, and as a manifestation of, the same power whereby we are able to remember intelligently what we did half an hour, yesterday, or a twelvemonth since, and this in no figurative but in a perfectly real sense. If life be compared to an equation of a hundred unknown quantities, I followed Professor Hering of Prague in reducing it to one of ninety-nine only, by showing two of the supposed unknown quantities to be so closely allied that they should count as ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... to need comment, Zion is the Lord's mountain. The wolf dwelling with the Lamb is figurative language, and never will be literally fulfilled, but has been spiritually and figuratively fulfilled throughout the whole of this Christian dispensation. It shows the wonders of God's grace. Jesus called Herod a "fox." ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... conduct which has been pursued. It is said and believed through Paris literally, that the Count de Montmorin, "pleuroit comme un enfant," when obliged to sign the counter-declaration. Considering the phrase as figurative, I believe it expresses the distress of his heart. Indeed, he has made no secret of his individual opinion. In the meantime, the Principal goes on with a firm and patriotic spirit, in reforming the cruel ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... various metaphors to express what is meant by death. The principal ones are, extinction of the vital spark, departing, expiring, cutting the thread of life, giving up the ghost, falling asleep. These figurative modes of speech spring from extremely imperfect correspondences. Indeed, the unlikenesses are more important and more numerous than the likenesses. They are simply artifices to indicate what is so ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... with joy." To people of my age it recalls the dread spirits of Pinnock and Colenso and Hamblin Smith, and that even more terrible Smith who edited Dictionaries of everything. So, though this chapter is to be concerned with the substance, I eschew the word, and choose for my title a figurative phrase. I might, with perfect justice, have chosen another figure, and have headed my paper "The Peg and the Hole"; for, after nearly a century of patient expectation, we have at last got a Square Peg in the Square Hole of Public Instruction. In simpler speech, England has at length ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... abolished. They are the remains of tyranny on one part and slavery on the other; and the name of the Creator ought not to be introduced to witness the degradation of his creation; or if taken, as is already mentioned, as figurative of the nation, it is in this place redundant. But whatever apology may be made for oaths at the first establishment of a government, they ought not to be permitted afterwards. If a government requires ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... attached in Scripture to the expression God dwells in man. According to the first meaning, we understand it in the most plain and literal sense the words are capable of conveying. According to the second, we understand His dwelling in a figurative sense, implying this—that He gives an acquaintance with Himself to man. So, for instance, when Judas asked, "Lord, how is it, that Thou wilt manifest Thyself to us and not to the world?" Our Redeemer's reply was ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... wicked Sodom and saved lot, all of which suggests the attitude and work of Jesus. Isaac is an only son, is offered in sacrifice, has secured for him a bride in a most unusual manner. This again in many ways illustrates the attitude and work of the Savior. But Joseph is perhaps more highly figurative of the Redeemer. His being hated and cast out by his brethren is like the rejection of Jesus; the way his wicked brethren came to him in their extremity and received forgiveness and sustenance suggest how a sinner finds mercy and life in Jesus; his prosperity and honor gained among ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... sign and test of infallible truth. To my present feelings it seems incredible that I should ever believe that I believed in transubstantiation. But my conqueror oppressed me with the sacramental words, 'Hoc est corpus meum,' and dashed against each other the figurative half meanings of the Protestant sects; every objection was resolved into omnipotence, and, after repeating at St. Mary's the Athanasian Creed, I humbly acquiesced in the mystery of the ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... garrison at Michili-Makinak, and endeavour to destroy all the English in Upper Canada. Henry did not pay over much attention to this warning, because "the Indian manner of speech is so extravagantly figurative". ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... steady mental eye, in order to see the conclusion that is implicated in the premises. Without this, he falls into confusion and fallacy, or fails, with the premises both before him, to get the conclusion. The "clear and steady mental eye", in less figurative language, means the ability to check hasty responses to either premise alone, or to extraneous features of the situation, so as to insure that "unitary response" to the combination of premises which constitutes the perceptive act ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... do not laugh! I lived forever under the terror of two separate wars in two separate worlds: one against the factory boys, in a real world of flesh and blood, of stones and brickbats, of flight and pursuit, that were any thing but figurative; the other in a world purely aerial, where all the combats and the sufferings were absolute moonshine. And yet the simple truth is, that, for anxiety and distress of mind, the reality (which almost every ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... and weak judgment of the individual expositors, is the literal rendering of Scripture in passages, which the number and variety of images employed in different places to express one and the same verity, plainly mark out for figurative. And lastly, add to all these the strange—in all other writings unexampled—practice of bringing together into logical dependency detached sentences from books composed at the distance of centuries, nay, sometimes ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... vol. i., p. 370; which agrees, for the greater part, with the observations in the Bibl. Crevenn., vol. v., 290. The work is a sine qua non with collectors; but in this country it begins to be—to use the figurative language of some of the German bibliographers—"scarcer than a white crow,"—or "a black swan." The reader may admit which simile he pleases—or reject both! But, in sober sadness, it is very rare, and unconscionably dear. I know not whether it was the same CLEMENT who ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... that class of myths which have been dramatized in ritual, or, to put it otherwise, which have been performed as magical ceremonies for the sake of producing those natural effects which they describe in figurative language. A myth is never so graphic and precise in its details as when it is, so to speak, the book of the words which are spoken and acted by the performers of the sacred rite. That the Norse story of Balder was a myth of this sort will become probable if we can prove that ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... most stretch'd, the Image is most Sublime; if we consider no foreign Assistances. As Homer say's, The Horses of the Gods, sprung as far at every Stride, as a Man can see who sit's upon the Sea-shore. But foreign Assistances, as a figurative Turn, &c. may raise a passage to an equal degree of Sublimity, which yet does not so largely dilate the Mind; as this of Shakespear's is more ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... N'yamasore, taking my blankets, a pillow, and some cooking-pots to make a day of it, and try to win the affections of the queen with sixteen cubits bindera, three pints peke, and three pints mtende beads, which, as Waganda are all fond of figurative language, I called a trifle ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... love to hear him read his poems,—and Clement had never written that "little bit of a poem to Susie," which she had asked him for so long ago! She received him therefore with open arms,—not literally, of course, which would have been a breach of duty and propriety, but in a figurative sense, which it is hoped no reader will interpret ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... with a gay vehemence, a good-humoured imperiousness, that bore everything down before it. The period of his ascendency was known by the name of the "Drunken Administration"; and the expression was not altogether figurative. His habits were extremely convivial; and champagne probably lent its aid to keep him in that state of joyous excitement in which ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... manner; he will avoid all ornaments as something injurious to his subject, and should bear in mind the saying of the first king of Great Britain respecting a sermon which was excellent in doctrine but overcharged with poetical allusions and figurative language, "that the tropes and metaphors of the speaker were like the brilliant wild flowers in a field of corn—very pretty, but which did very much hurt the corn." In announcing even the greatest and most important discoveries, the true philosopher will ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... Natche may be considered, from the above account of it, as merely figurative. For the small quantity of yams, which we saw the first day, could not be intended as a general contribution; and, indeed, we were given to understand, that they were a portion consecrated to the Otooa, or Divinity. But we were informed, that, in about three months, there ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... is nearly the same, but written with a pen, and less ornamental than the carved figures; and thirdly, the demotic, or common alphabetic writing. He then divides the hieroglyphic into the alphabetic and the symbolic; and lastly, he divides the symbolic characters into the imitative, the figurative, and those formed like riddles. As instances of these last we may quote, for the first, the three zigzag lines which by simple imitation mean "water;" for the second, the oval which mean "a name," because kings' names were written within ovals; and for ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... illustration of figurative oratory a good story is told of a barrister pleading before Lord Ellenborough: "My lord, I appear before you in the character of an advocate for the City of London; my lord, the City of London herself appears before you as a suppliant for justice. My lord, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... on top," Young said, grimly, "I guess we've about got t' th' end of a division; an' there's not much chance of our changin' engines an' keepin' on with th' run." To which figurative suggestion Rayburn gave an immediate ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... time to settle down to the more serious business of courtship. Her letter shows beyond the shadow of a figurative doubt that she is "interested," and the next move is "up to you." Probably she will soon come into the office to see her father, in which case you should have ready at hand some appropriate gift, such as, for ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... expression: 'that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate[139].' This was a short and figurative state of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners. But I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Washington in 1862 to indicate that a great war was raging. The reference in the previous chapter to the "thunder of Burnside's guns" was figurative only. No guns were heard. It was Sunday morning. Church bells pealed out the call for divine worship and streams of well-dressed people were wending their way to the sanctuaries. The presence of uniformed troops in such a scene appeared incongruous, and was the only thing that spoke ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... heraldic devices, bear modest record to the willing service of those whose munificence has reared the pile, and give increased light and richness to the scene. The great western window, also covered with armorial bearings, throws a dim, yet kindling, tint on the stone font aptly placed beneath it, as figurative of its character—initial to that further sacrament, meetly celebrated where the star of Him who first blessed it proclaimed His advent to the expectant world. While throughout the holy building, high-springing arch, and sombre aisle, and vaulted ceiling, and curiously-wrought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... influence of a beautiful diction, it will always be found that it consists in this happy relation between external freedom and internal necessity. The principal features that contribute to this freedom of the imagination are the individualizing of objects and the figurative or inexact expression of a thing; the former employed to give force to its sensuousness, the latter to produce it where it does not exist. When we express a species or kind by an individual, and portray a conception in a single ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... bloated style and peculiar rhythm of Hervey, which is poetic only on account of its utter unfitness for prose, and might as appropriately be called prosaic, from its utter unfitness for poetry; we have only, I repeat, to combine these Herveyisms with the strained thoughts, the figurative metaphysics and solemn epigrams of Young on the one hand; and with the loaded sensibility, the minute detail, the morbid consciousness of every thought and feeling in the whole flux and reflux of the mind, in short the self-involution and dreamlike continuity ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... here, and has no time to stop to disentangle them. They all mean substantially the same thing which I have stated in the words that conduct here determines the possession of life hereafter; but they put it in three different figurative fashions which we may separate and look ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was no one, except a stupid young soldier servant, to speak to. Further, he was aware that the episode, so grave professionally, had its comic side. When reflecting upon it, he still felt that he would like to wring Lieut. Feraud's neck for him. But this formula was figurative rather than precise, and expressed more a state of mind than an actual physical impulse. At the same time, there was in that young man a feeling of comradeship and kindness which made him unwilling to make the position of Lieut. Feraud worse than it was. He ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... whispered words from the bearer thereof, sent the squire back to Mrs. Hazeldean a much soberer man than she had ventured to hope for. The fact was, that on the day of nomination, the captain having honoured Mr. Hazeldean with many poetical and figurative appellations,—such as "Prize Ox," "Tony Lumpkin," "Blood-sucking Vampire," and "Brotherly Warming-Pan,"—the squire had retorted by a joke about "Saltwater Jack;" and the captain, who like all ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had he ever known a public and real actors! It is remarkable, by the way, that Schiller, who is not at bottom very objective, lends himself so perfectly to an objective representation. He became figurative, while believing himself to be only eloquent—one more proof of his incomparable genius. In Goethe we find the exact opposite. While he is ordinarily called objective and is so to a great extent, his characters lose in the actual representation. His figurativeness ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... darkness and mystery. He travels yearly from the hyperborean regions toward the south, and daily he traverses the firmament in a chariot. He sleeps in a sea-nymph's bosom or rises from the dawn's couch. In all this we see clearly a scarcely figurative description of the material sun and its motions. A quasi-scientific fancy spins these fables almost inevitably to fill the vacuum not yet occupied by astronomy. Such myths are indeed compacted out of wonders, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... tinge of Puritanism in Dr. Sill's Christianity which to some minds imported an unnecessary strictness of view, but none could quarrel with it, for he practised his austerities upon himself, not toward others. Certain precepts of the Sermon on the Mount usually interpreted in a figurative sense he took literally as rules of action. "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away" was one of these. His literal fidelity to this precept afforded him the deep satisfaction of giving aid to honest neighbors in distress; it enabled ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... his brothers as ambassadors to the nearest tribe, the Oneidas, to lay the project before them. The Oneida nation is deemed to be a comparatively recent offshoot from the Mohawks. The difference of language is slight, showing that their separation was much later than that of the Onondagas. In the figurative speech of the Iroquois, the Oneida is the son, and the Onondaga is the brother, of the Mohawk. Dekanawidah had good reason to expect that it would not prove difficult to win the consent of the Oneidas to the proposed ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... (see above, pp. xxvii., liv.), apart from the probability that, as contemporaries resident in the same provincial town, Ely, they were well acquainted with each other, leave little doubt that the two were personal friends. Bulleyn's figurative description of the poet, quoted at p. xxvii., is scarcely complete without the following verses, which are appended to it by way of summary of his teachings (similar verses are appended to the descriptions of Chaucer, Gower, &c.):—[Barclay ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... garrisoned. This was a castellated town, strongly situated upon a high mountain, partly surrounded by thick forests and partly girdled by a river. It defended one of the rugged and solitary passes by which the Christians were wont to make their inroads, insomuch that the Moors, in their figurative way, denominated ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... man helps indigent beggars. Studious scholars learn many long lessons. Wealthy merchants own large ships. The heavy ships bear large burdens; the lighter ships carry less burdens. Just poets use figurative language. Ungrammatical expressions offend a true critic's ear. Weak critics magnify trifling errors. No composition is perfect. The rabble was tumultuous. The late-washed grass looks green. Shady trees form a delightful arbor. ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... It had been hidden in the cellar, hidden in the parlor, hidden in the kitchen, and hidden in his chamber; but no place seemed to be safe, and the miser trembled when awake, and trembled when asleep, in his dreams, lest the figurative description of riches should be realized, and his gold should take to itself wings ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... flashes through this gleam, as amaze and astonish. The style is too much inflated, too unnatural, too closely copied from the Hebrew writers, who abound so much with the Asiatic fustian. But then it must be also confessed that the stilts of the figurative style, on which the English tongue is lifted up, raises the genius at the same time very far aloft, though with an irregular pace. The first English writer who composed a regular tragedy, and infused a spirit of elegance through every part of it, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... we are reminded that he was a millennarian. The Chiliastic teaching of his work is the subject of severe comment with Eusebius, who accuses him of misinterpreting figurative sayings in the Apostolic writings and assigning to them a literal sense. This tendency appears also in the one passage which Irenaeus quotes from Papias. But the answer to this is decisive. Chiliasm is the rule, not the ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... Then follows the body of the inscription, of great length and beautiful execution, consisting of 1780 characters. Its chief contents are as follows:— 1st. An abstract of Christian doctrine, of a vague and figurative kind; 2nd. An account of the arrival of the missionary OLOPAN (probably a Chinese form of Rabban Monk),[B] from Ta T'sin in the year equivalent to A.D. 635 bringing sacred books and images, of the translation of the said books, of the Imperial approval of the doctrine ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... astonishment, when that unaccountable person flung the money on the pavement, and requested in figurative terms to be allowed the pleasure of fighting him (Mr. Pickwick) for ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... for you count them in the basis of representation. Half our Congressmen hold their seats to-day as representatives of women. We help to swell the figures by which you are here, and too many of you, alas, are only figurative representatives, paying little heed to our ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... reprimand to the Pharisees, Christ was pointing out that divine justice is no figurative abstraction, and that a man of peace, though his tongue be torn from its roots, will yet find his speech and his defense in the bedrock of creation, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... men. He would make of it a serious study, weighing the precise power of every phrase and word, as though it were precious metal, disentangling the later associations and going back to the original and native sense of each,—restoring to full significance all its wealth of latent figurative expression, reviving or replacing its outworn or tarnished images. Latin literature and the Latin tongue were dying of routine and languor; and what was necessary, first of all, was to re-establish the natural ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... crown prince on the very front of our house, between the door and window, painted in cinnabar—the pigment of the country—with doggrel rhymes and contumelious pictures, and announcing in terms unnecessarily figurative, that the trick was already played, the claim already jumped, and the author of the placard the legitimate successor of Mr. Ronalds. But no, nothing could save that man; quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat. As he came so he went, and left ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... earnestness of my manner, and the figurative style of my language, that caught the excited imagination of Leslie. I knew the auditor I had to deal with; and following up the impression I had made, I finished by persuading him to go home and unburden his sad heart ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... brought up in the practice of the ablutions which have to be performed by those who are initiated into the deeper secrets of the heathen mysteries, regarded baptism as an act of purification, a mystical process of happy augury, or at the best a figurative purification of the soul, and crowded to receive it. Here, in Alexandria, the number of these deluded ones is especially great; for where could any superstition find a more favorable soil than in this seat of philosophical ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... we have creative power, not in a figurative sense, but in reality. Everything in the material universe about us had its origin first in spirit, in thought, and from this it took its form. The very world in which we live, with all its manifold wonders and sublime manifestations, is the result of the energies ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Bacon, who is equally conspicuous in the use and abuse of figurative illustration, says that the stream of time has brought down to us only the least valuable part of the writings of the ancients, as a river carries froth and straws floating on its surface, while more weighty objects sink to the bottom; this, even if the assertion illustrated by it were ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... link in the chain of Sacred Literature. There are, moreover, in the details, other undeniable references to the Song of Solomon, which coincide with this connection with it, as regards the fundamental idea. The basis, however, for this whole figurative representation is Gen. ii. 24, where marriage appears as the most intimate of all earthly relations of love, and must, for this very reason, have a character of ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... something great in the half-success that has attended the effort of turning into an emotional religion, Bald Conduct, without any appeal, or almost none, to the figurative, mysterious, and constitutive facts of life. Not that conduct is not constitutive, but dear! it's dreary! On the whole, conduct is better dealt with on the cast-iron "gentleman" and duty formula, with as little ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... self-evident. Yet, if we do not ask our superlative writers to be heaven-sent teachers, to be prophets, to be discoverers, what do we ask of them? Is it to write in a particular style, in a given lucid style, a given figurative style, or a given dignified style? Nay, it is only very mediocre writers who could obey such precepts. Every supreme writer has his own style, inalienable and inimitable, which is as much a part of him as his own soul, the look in his eyes, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... (Latin) agrees in its figurative language with the character of the monument. It practically states that William Austin had the tomb constructed, while he was yet alive, as a burial-place for his wife, his mother (Lady Clarke), and himself, and that the three were laid there in succession ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... and adulterers, as the result of the influence of Aryan speech upon Aryan thought. Men, in Mr. Muller's opinion, had originally pure ideas about the gods, and expressed them in language which we should call figurative. The figures remained, when their meaning was lost; the names were then supposed to be gods, the nomina became numina, and out of the inextricable confusion of thought which followed, the belief in cannibal, bestial, adulterous, and incestuous gods was evolved. That is Mr. Muller's hypothesis; ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... "You are figurative," said Louis, unable to restrain an emotion of peevishness; "I am a dull, blunt man, Sir of Comines. I pray you leave your tropes, and come to plain ground. What does ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... dream of adventurous and enterprising youth there? Australia, like Canada, has its call of the west and the north, with their appealing tale of untried potentialities. Canada has also, across its merely figurative and political southern border, a vast and teeming world, reaching down to the equator, and comprising almost every possible diversity of human effort and natural resource. Australia, the purely British island continent, is more isolated. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... to rise above when the gyros were finally in place and starting out for space. The gyros, of course, were now on their way to be installed in the artificial satellite to be blasted up and set in an orbit around the Earth as the initial stage of that figurative stepladder by which men would make their first attempt to reach the stars. Until that Space Platform left the ground, ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... mother. She turned out to be in a rather remote manner "one of us," and had about her, very faint and dim, like an antique lavender bag, the odour of Ashbridge. She lived like the lilies of the field, without toiling or spinning, either literally or with the more figurative work of the mind; indeed, she can scarcely be said to have had any mind at all, for, as with drugs, she had sapped it away by a practically unremitting perusal of all the fiction that makes the average reader wonder why it was written. In fact, she supplied the answer to that perplexing ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... not these clumsy drawings, too, reveal that which, considering their environment, is talent—original and unacademic. Here is the sheer beginning, the spontaneous germ of art, the labouring of a savage soul controlled by wilful aesthetic emotions. For these pictures are not figurative, not mere signs and symbols capable of elucidation, but the earliest and only efforts of an illiterate race, a race in intellectual infancy, towards the ideal—a forlorn but none the less sincere attempt to reach the "light ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... drank in the comfortable doctrine with relief. It was worth the while having come to church that Sunday morning! All was plain. The Bible, as usual, meant nothing in particular; it was merely an obscure and figurative school-copybook; and if a man were only respectable, he was a man after ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the figurative last straw. Tom's mind had been dark and gloomy enough to begin with, but when during his father's harangue he glanced up and saw De Courcy bending his aquiline face over his paper with a slightly sardonic smile, he could stand ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... contrary, who aimed at the same easy, degage mode of communicating his thoughts to the world, has quite spoiled his matter, which is sometimes valuable, by his manner, in which he carries a certain flaunting, flowery, figurative, flirting style of amicable condescension to the reader, to an excess more tantalising than the most starched and ridiculous formality of the age of James I. There is nothing so tormenting as the affectation of ease ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... an interest in preserving and providing access to historical texts. But within this broad field the attendees represented a variety of formal, informal, figurative, and literal groups, with many individuals belonging to more than one. These groups may be defined roughly according to the ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... as poetry. Other parts are clearly the stories and legends current in the days when the accounts were written, and should be read as other stories and legends are read. The great question is not the problem of the literal or the figurative nature of the truth, but the problem of discovering for the child the rich nugget of spiritual ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... if not, a successor, of a more meritorious character, is chosen by them from some collateral branch of the family. There is a legend among them relating to the relative rank of their chiefs, which, although perhaps purely figurative, may not be uninteresting to the reader. They say that a great while ago, their fathers had a long lodge, in the centre of which were ranged four fires. By the first fire stood two chiefs, one on the right, who was called the great Bear, and one on the left, called the little Bear: ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... thicker fog than I should have thought the atmosphere capable of sustaining; it seemed to hang in solid festoons from the masts and spars. To say that you could not see your hand, ceased almost to be any longer figurative; even the ice was hid—except those fragments immediately adjacent, whose ghastly brilliancy the mist itself could not quite extinguish, as they glimmered round the vessel like a circle of luminous phantoms. The perfect stillness of the sea and sky added very much ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Karna were putting on had to be played to an audience. But there were other intelligent races throughout the galaxy, most of whom had remained as neutral as possible during the Earth-Karn war. They had no intention of sticking their figurative noses into a battle between the two most powerful races in ...
— In Case of Fire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... professes to contain all the words used in South France, with their meaning in French, their proper and figurative acceptations, augmentatives, diminutives, with examples and quotations. Along with each word we have all its various forms as they appear in the different dialects, its forms in the older dialects, the closely related forms in the ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... which shows how bold and vivid are their conceptions of the imaginative. The war-song—the death-song—the song of victory—the cradle-chant—the lament for the slain—these are the overflowings of the essential poetry of their untaught souls. Their eloquence is proverbially soaring and figurative; and in spite of all that renders gross and mechanical their ordinary mode of marrying and giving in marriage, instances are not rare among them of love as true, as fiery, and as fatal, as that of the most exalted hero of romance. They, indeed, live poetry; it should be ours to write ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... light of vertue to leade my hope unto Heauen:" and signs himself "Your La. sometime unworthy Poet, and now, and ever poore Beadman, Nich. Breton." And the "Address" after it is signed, "Your poore friend or servant N.B." I am aware that these phrases are sometimes used in a figurative sense, but am disposed to think that here they are intended for something real. And I am at a loss how to reconcile these expressions of poverty with his being the purchaser and enjoyer of such an estate. I shall wait, therefore, with considerable anxiety till it ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... high, violent threat. High is thus used in a number of figurative senses, e.g. a high wind, a high hand, high passions (Par. Lost, ix. 123), ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... he is to continue is said to be forty and two months, which would be one-half the tribulation period; and this statement is probably not at all figurative. By his overwhelming supernatural power and wisdom he gains authority over every living thing in the Satanic system, excepting those recorded in the Lamb's book of life. These are not brought under ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... New Distemper, or The Dissenters' Usual Pleas for Comprehension, Toleration, and the Renouncing the Covenant, Considered and Discussed. Non Quis sed Quid. London. 1680. 12mo. Second Edition. Pp. 184. (With a figurative frontispiece, representing ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... The opposite of what is termed Coventry; for it is figurative of a man incurring the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... this, the modern commentators of Philo, notably Professor Drummond,[219] have examined his words more carefully and studied them in relation to their context; and they have shown how, judged in this critical fashion, the personality of the Logos is only figurative. It is, indeed, probable that certain extreme passages, where the Logos is presented most explicitly as a separate Deity, are due to Christological interpolation. The Church Fathers found in the popular ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... and figurative expression beyond her, paused in her knitting and looked anxiously at Phoebe, to see how she would take it. After a moment of thought, the young woman admitted her ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... wretched state to which such anxiety brings a man. Nothing tears us to pieces like foreboding care. Then our text forbids the same anxiety, as well as other fluctuations of feeling that come from setting our hopes and hearts on aught which can change; and its figurative representation of the misery that follows on fastening ourselves to the perishable, is that of the poor little skiff, at one moment high on the crest of the billow, at the next down in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... magnificent rivers, with their numerous tributaries—its lofty mountains, its dark forests, its extended plains and its vast extent. A voyage in a canoe, from the source of the Hogohegee[9] to the Wabash,[10] required for its performance, in their figurative language, 'two paddles, two warriors, three moons.' The Ohio itself was but a tributary of a still larger river, of whose source, size and direction, no intelligible account could be communicated or understood. The Muscle Shoals and the obstructions in the river above ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... morning, June 7, 1847) in reference to my saying on the general question of miracles: Why these dubious miracles?—such as curing blindness that may have been cured by a process?—since the unity given to the act of healing is probably (more probably than otherwise) but the figurative unity of the tendency to mythus; or else it is that unity misapprehended and mistranslated by the reporters. Such, again, as the miracles of the loaves—so liable to be utterly gossip, so incapable of being watched or examined amongst a crowd ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... made use of the expressions above recorded for the consolation and encouragement of his desponding friend; and it may not be uninteresting or improper to remark that even these brief observations partook in a double sense of the figurative and poetical character of Mr Swiveller's mind, as the rosy wine was in fact represented by one glass of cold gin-and-water, which was replenished as occasion required from a bottle and jug upon the table, and was passed from one to another, in a scarcity of tumblers which, as Mr Swiveller's ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... prejudices, which in the nature of things might more or less interfere with expressing an honest opinion about the Association football player of the past or his colleagues and successors, I will introduce them to you, and in figurative language allow them to tell their own unvarnished tale. My last advice, however, to you, my old friends, before leaving you to the tender mercies of a scribbler, is not to answer all the questions he thinks proper to put. Please don't ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... the Bible are in accord. The inference is that in the Holy Scriptures there are many metaphors and words with a double or allegoric sense. Such is the case with the word "image." It has two meanings, the one usual and obvious, the other figurative. Here the word must be taken in its figurative sense. God is conceived as the highest Reason, and as reason is the specific attribute which characterizes the human mind, it follows that man, by virtue ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... already had he bethought himself of acting in more subtle ways; and now he would speak to this one, now to that one, words whereby I, being most eager for such enlightenment, discovered that whatever he said to these was fraught with figurative and hidden meanings, intended to show forth his ardent affection for myself. When he was sensible that I had a clear perception of the occult significance of his questions and answers, he went still further, and by gestures, and mobile changes in the expression of his features, he would make known ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... it, but the soil in which the tree must grow: so an expositor, whose ultimate aim is to explain and enforce the parables of Jesus, should mark well at the outset the fundamental analogies which pervade the works of God, and constitute the basis of all figurative language, whether in ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... the speeches made at this council, as given in his work, and the most important of which is presented here; they were taken down at the time from the lips of the interpreter, who stated that "he could not translate some of Red Jacket's figurative flights, they were too wild and difficult to be rendered in English, and he did not attempt it." Much doubtless that served to give point and zest to his speech, was either omitted, or lost its force, in being transferred to our language. The writer ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... practice of the ablutions which have to be performed by those who are initiated into the deeper secrets of the heathen mysteries, regarded baptism as an act of purification, a mystical process of happy augury, or at the best a figurative purification of the soul, and crowded to receive it. Here, in Alexandria, the number of these deluded ones is especially great; for where could any superstition find a more favorable soil than in this seat of philosophical ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lagunes, over which the high trees spread in vaulted cupolas almost impervious to the light of day, there dwells the powerful giant snake (Eunectes murinus, Wagl.), called by the Indians, in their figurative language, yacumaman, "mother of the waters." Stretched in listless repose, or winding round the stem of an old tree, bathing her tail in the cool lagune, she watches wistfully for the animals of the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... was, a little cooled my ardour by reminding me I was a beggar, in the figurative meaning of the word. Chloe led the way, however, and I was soon in the drawing-room, and in the presence of the youthful mistress of the house. How gloriously beautiful did Lucy then appear! She had dressed for dinner, as usual, but it was in the simplest and neatest manner. Her face ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... often said that in an advanced stage of yoga, one is enabled to behold one's Soul, or, a sort of double existence is realised in consequence of which the Soul becomes an object of internal survey to the Soul itself. Very probably, writers on yoga employ this language in a figurative sense. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... doors of carved walnut. We are ushered into the one on the right by a yellow servant, who, neatly dressed in black, has prepared his politeness for the occasion. With great suavity, accompanied by a figurative grin, he informs us that master will pay his respects presently. Pieces of singularly antique furniture are arranged round the room, of which, he adds, master is proud indeed. Two plaster figures, standing in dingy niches, he tells us are wonders of the white man's genius. In his ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... time the girl stayed away, and Harry thought she would not return; but one night, when he was walking alone on the prairie, she ran suddenly up to him, and pointing to the swiftly-flowing Red River, told him in the figurative language of her people, that because of him her heart was as troubled as the river was in the spring-time—when the melting snow vexed it so that it burst its barriers and flowed over the prairie. She went on in her childish, earnest way to tell him that she could not help loving ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... and regular, and their substantives are Hebrew. "Their language, in the roots, idioms, and particular construction, has the genius of the Hebrew language, as their orations have the bold, laconic, and figurative style of the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... is excess of sentiment, in the other the contrary vice of frigidity, and a premeditated and ostentatious use of figurative expressions. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Nevertheless, I bought a pound of dates (getting short weight by reason of immense flights of harpy flies who pursued and lighted upon their prey even in the very scales), which purchase I made not only with an eye to the little ones at home, but also as a figurative reproof of that too frequent habit of my mind, which, forgetting the due order of chronology, will often persuade me that the happy sceptre of Saturn is stretched ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... two principal causes; first and chiefly, because the churchyard cross was always placed here; secondly, because this is the sunny side of the churchyard. The cross, the emblem of all the Christian's hopes, the bright sun shining on the holy ground, figurative of the sun of righteousness, could not fail to bring to mind the comforting assurance that they who slept around would one day rise again. And as the greater part of the congregation entered the church by the south and principal door, another cause of the preference was the hope ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... succeeds the father by the assent of the tribe, if worthy of the office, and if not, a successor, of a more meritorious character, is chosen by them from some collateral branch of the family. There is a legend among them relating to the relative rank of their chiefs, which, although perhaps purely figurative, may not be uninteresting to the reader. They say that a great while ago, their fathers had a long lodge, in the centre of which were ranged four fires. By the first fire stood two chiefs, one on the right, who was called ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... conclude, they must all act according to their distinct and peculiar characters. If the persons represented were to speak upon the stage, it would follow, of necessity, that the expressions should be lofty, figurative, and majestical: but the nature of an opera denies the frequent use of these poetical ornaments; for vocal music, though it often admits a loftiness of sound, yet always exacts an harmonious sweetness; or, to distinguish yet more justly, the recitative part of the opera ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Thee, that I believe, O Lord, that Thou spokest not so in vain; nor will I suppress, what this lesson suggests to me. For it is true, nor do I see what should hinder me from thus understanding the figurative sayings of Thy Bible. For I know a thing to be manifoldly signified by corporeal expressions, which is understood one way by the mind; and that understood many ways in the mind, which is signified ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered." There is no modern writer who possesses so large a profusion of figurative language. His works are also full of the pithiest and most memorable ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... of Opposite Influences.*—(b) Since we are now dropping the figurative manner of expression hitherto employed, by which we spoke of sources of sexual excitement, we may now assume that all the connecting ways leading from other functions to sexuality must also be passable in the ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... conclusion of any work he has undertaken. A common and very simple reason for this disappointment is that most of us overrate our capacity. We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to, in virtue of our endowments. The figurative descriptions of the last Grand Assize must no more be taken literally than the golden crowns, which we do not expect or want to wear on our heads, or the golden harps, which we do not want or expect to hold in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... second, but with a gay vehemence, a good-humoured imperiousness, that bore everything down before it. The period of his ascendency was known by the name of the "Drunken Administration"; and the expression was not altogether figurative. His habits were extremely convivial; and champagne probably lent its aid to keep him in that state of joyous excitement in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... lion of the tribe of Juda," the king of the mental realm. Free and fearless it roams in 514:12 the forest. Undisturbed it lies in the open field, or rests in "green pastures, . . . beside the still waters." In the figurative transmission from the 514:15 divine thought to the human, diligence, promptness, and perseverance are likened to "the cattle upon a thousand hills." They carry the baggage of stern resolve, and 514:18 keep pace ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the conversation which she had had with Margaret. She was his darling, the child of his old age, and he loved her more dearly than he was himself aware. But the blessed hair, and the holy water, were swallowed by him in a figurative sense, with far more implicit faith than they had been, physically, by Margaret. He was quite easy in his mind ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... at such language? Is it merely figurative, expressive of more than the reality?—He gave Himself for us; after that pledge of His affection we must cease to marvel at any expression of the interest He feels in us. Anything He can say or do is infinitely less ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... together, and afterwards proved, in an eloquent discourse, that the Sovereign of heaven and earth, who accepted not the persons of men, makes no distinction between the right and left foot. The envious man and his wife alleged that his discourse was not figurative enough, and that he did not make the rocks and mountains ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... philosopher should adopt the simplest style and manner; he will avoid all ornaments as something injurious to his subject, and should bear in mind the saying of the first king of Great Britain respecting a sermon which was excellent in doctrine but overcharged with poetical allusions and figurative language, "that the tropes and metaphors of the speaker were like the brilliant wild flowers in a field of corn—very pretty, but which did very much hurt the corn." In announcing even the greatest and most important discoveries, the true philosopher will communicate ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... Turkey, Italy, and Spain. The cold countries, even the temperate ones, France, England and Germany, make no pretensions. He is acquainted with every language and speaks the most of them. His style, elevated, grand and figurative, leads me to believe that he is of Oriental origin, and that he has absorbed what he found good among the Europeans. He is passionately fond of music, wild over poetry, inquisitive about paintings, a connoisseur in everything—I cannot remember all. He has friends ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... flights of oratory, or to wander after Sense into that region of metaphor, where too often, like Angelica in the enchanted palace of Atlante, she is sought for in vain. [Footnote: Curran used to say laughingly, "When I can't talk sense, I talk metaphor."] His attempts, indeed, at the florid or figurative style, whether in his speeches or his writings, were seldom very successful. That luxuriance of fancy, which in Burke was natural and indigenous, was in him rather a forced and exotic growth. It is a remarkable proof ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... this reality of facts and figures in many a matter-of-fact statement and figurative rejoinder, they sat there among the great cranks, and valves, and pistons, and levers, until the declining day warned them that it was time ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... All this figurative language, which was like the prelude to a solemn piece of music, gave Fan the idea that something of very great importance was about to follow. But, alas! the mixture, and the rose-honey sweetness of hope, failed to prevent the attack which Constance had feared, and he coughed so long and so ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... of a beautiful diction, it will always be found that it consists in this happy relation between external freedom and internal necessity. The principal features that contribute to this freedom of the imagination are the individualizing of objects and the figurative or inexact expression of a thing; the former employed to give force to its sensuousness, the latter to produce it where it does not exist. When we express a species or kind by an individual, and portray a conception in a single case, we remove from fancy the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Thames-side yard, into these white heats and hammerings, amidst the fine realites of steel—to think it all over in my leisure and jot down the notes and inconsecutive observations that make this book. It was more, you know, than a figurative soar. The zenith of that career was surely our flight across the channel ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... contained a secret and mystic meaning': [Footnote: Edinb. Rev., July 1808.] he was prepared to go a considerable step farther, and claim that there was no essential difference between ancient mythology and the theology of the Christians, that both were interpretations, in more or less figurative language, of the great mysteries of being, and indeed that the earlier interpretation, precisely because it was more frankly figurative and poetical than the later one, was better fitted to stimulate and to allay the sense of wonder which ought to accompany a reverent and high-souled ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... that they should pretend not to understand the simile of which she had made use, accustomed as she was to speak in figurative language. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... considered, from the above account of it, as merely figurative. For the small quantity of yams, which we saw the first day, could not be intended as a general contribution; and, indeed, we were given to understand, that they were a portion consecrated to the Otooa, or Divinity. But we were informed, that, in about ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... a road built along the rocky shore of a seaside, being a figurative application of the architectural ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... but from what we know?" and therefore a great part of such language will be necessarily figurative; but it by no means follows from this, that the writers who are obliged to use this figurative language when speaking of the Deity, intend to be understood in the same sense when they apply the same expressions to describe ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... from Moors and from negroes, on its course by Timbuctoo. The Jinnie of Park is synonymous with Jenne, Gine, Dhjenne, of other writers, as Jenne has again been confounded with Kano or Kanno. It may be a figurative term—for the Jinnie of Park was on an island, as was the Jenne of the Moorish reports, while the Jenne of some travellers is at a short distance from the river. This cannot be the case with regard to Timbuctoo, which is visited by caravans twice ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... too plain to need comment, Zion is the Lord's mountain. The wolf dwelling with the Lamb is figurative language, and never will be literally fulfilled, but has been spiritually and figuratively fulfilled throughout the whole of this Christian dispensation. It shows the wonders of God's grace. Jesus called Herod ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... extraordinary degree. His carriage was erect and commanding, and there was an air of hauteur in his countenance, arising from an elevated pride of soul, which did not forsake it when life was extinct. He was habitually taciturn, but, when excited, his eloquence was nervous, concise, and figurative. His dress was plain, and he was never known to indulge in the gaudy decoration of his person, which is the common practice of the Indians. On the day of his death, he wore a dressed deer skin coat and pantaloons. ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... honest," said the rector, "the problems of clergymen would be much easier. And it is precisely because people will not tell us what they feel that we are left in the dark and cannot help them. Of course, the language of St. John about the future is figurative." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a reductio ad absurdum of those professors of religion who still preach a heaven of golden streets and pearly gates, of idleness and everlasting psalm-singing, of restful and innocuous bliss. Mark Twain wanted to point out the absurdity of taking the allegories and the figurative language of the Bible literally. Of course everybody called for a harp and a halo as soon as they reached heaven. They were given the harps and halos—indeed nothing harmless and reasonable was refused them. But they found these things the merest accessories. Mark ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... all figurative expression, what hopes can we ever have of engaging mankind to a practice which we confess full of austerity and rigour? Or what theory of morals can ever serve any useful purpose, unless it can show, by a particular detail, that all the duties which it recommends are also the true interest of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... is a calumnious procedure, arguing malignant disposition and mischievous design. Thus, when two men did witness that our Lord affirmed, he "could demolish the Temple, and rear it again in three days"—although he did, indeed, speak words to that purpose, meaning them in a figurative sense, discernible enough to those who would candidly have minded his drift and way of speaking:—yet they who crudely alleged them against him are called false witnesses. "At last," saith the Gospel, "came two false witnesses, and said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple," ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... ALLEGORY, a figurative mode of representation, in which a subject of a higher spiritual order is described in terms of that of a lower which resembles it in properties and circumstances, the principal subject being so kept out of view that we are left to construe the drift of it from the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in the home-life that needs the fullest sympathy, Granville had no true companionship. He went out alone to parties and the theatres. Nothing in his house appealed to him. A huge Crucifix that hung between his bed and Angelique's seemed figurative of his destiny. Does it not represent a murdered Divinity, a Man-God, done to death in all the prime of life and beauty? The ivory of that cross was less cold than Angelique crucifying her husband under the plea of virtue. This it was that lay at the root of their woes; the young wife saw nothing ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... nothing is said of the word [Hebrew: PETACH]. I do not know of any place in Holy Scripture where this word is used figuratively, and unless this can be shown, there is no supporting so strong a metaphor as the advocates of the figurative meaning of the passage contend for. Davison takes no notice of the remainder of the verse.... Now the words are remarkable; they are the same as those in which the Lord declares the subjection of Eve to her husband, Gen. iii. 16. I have always thought this passage (Gen. iv. 7.) to allude ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... except to lift my eyes from the book as one does instinctively the better to listen; when—But I cannot tell, nor have I ever been able to describe exactly what it was. My heart made all at once a sudden leap in my breast. I am aware that this language is figurative, and that the heart cannot leap; but it is a figure so entirely justified by sensation, that no one will have any difficulty in understanding what I mean. My heart leaped up and began beating wildly ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... gone through the natural and figurative senses, it will be proper to subjoin the poetical sense of each word, where it differs from that which is in common use; as wanton, applied to any thing of which the motion is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... the King's was always the natural expression. He himself composed, three times or oftener, his famous answers to the Parliament which he banished. But in his letters he was negligent, and always incorrect. Simplicity was the characteristic of the King's style; the figurative style of M. Necker did not please him; the sarcasms of Maurepas were disagreeable to him. Unfortunate Prince! he would predict, in his observations, that if such a calamity should happen, the monarchy would be ruined; and the next day he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... benevolent man helps indigent beggars. Studious scholars learn many long lessons. Wealthy merchants own large ships. The heavy ships bear large burdens; the lighter ships carry less burdens. Just poets use figurative language. Ungrammatical expressions offend a true critic's ear. Weak critics magnify trifling errors. No composition is perfect. The rabble was tumultuous. The late-washed grass looks green. Shady trees form a delightful arbor. The setting sun makes a beautiful appearance; the variegated rainbow ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... a better chance of winning than he who has none, though in his hand may be all the aces of the others, diamonds included. But, lest I go too far beyond the analogy—as I might ignorantly do, being unskilled in the many games of cards—I will drop the figurative.... Keep your heart for faith, love, friendship, for God, your country, and truth. And where the heart is given, it should be unreservedly. Its allegiance is too often withheld where it is due, yet this is better than a half-way ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... intelligences, by which many of them were smitten down from their radiant emerald thrones. Their communications on the subject are not specific and unambiguous, and neither can they escape the suspicion of being designedly figurative; intended, probably, as much to veil as to reveal. One of the clearest statements is made by Jude, where he says: "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... the same language, forgetting himself, in the excitement of the moment, and unconsciously using the same figurative diction, "or the fountain of the red stream may be dried up before the medicine-man comes. Hasten! It is noble to do good, and the Great Spirit shall ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... lance is to enter the lists, to try one's strength. The concussion of two powerful knights would suffice to shiver the lances. Hence comes the figurative use. Cp. I Henry VI. ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... hammered its waxen head on the rocks when she was alone, and sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck to and from school. At other times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion of its patient and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge of what she considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's excellences upon her, or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of the rites of certain other heathens, and, indulging in that "fetish" ceremony, imagined that the original of her wax model would pine away and finally die, is ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Agrippa, who when the whole people of Rome had resolutely divided themselves from the Senate, with apparent show of utter ruin: though he were (for that time) an excellent orator, came not among them upon trust of figurative speeches, or cunning insinuations: and much less, with far-fetched maxims of philosophy, which (especially if they were Platonic [Footnote: Alluding to the inscription over the door of Plato's Academy: ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... to it by figures and figurative speaches, which be the flowers, as it were, and colours that a Poet setteth upon his language of arte, as the embroderer doth his stone and perle or passements of gold upon the stuffe of ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... on a long and fanciful discourse on the use of figurative language, to explain how he speaks of Love as if it were not a mere notion of the intellect, but as if it had a corporeal existence. There is much curious matter in this dissertation, and it is one of the most striking examples that could be found of the youthful character ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... any figurative expression and give its meaning. "Thy servants shall bring down the gray hairs of thy servant our father with sorrow to the grave." The blow which separation from Benjamin would involve will cause the aged father to die of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... places the great drama of the Judgment and the final decision of each man's destiny. Whether it will be a great spectacular event such as His picture suggests, with all humanity assembled and the Judge on the great White Throne, or whether His picture is figurative, we cannot affirm. We can only gather that it will be a final judgment and that it will be a judgment according to finally developed character, when men shall be clearly seen to belong to the right hand or the left, the ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... together; were taught by the same master; sat on the same bench, in a figurative sense; were lovers from the very first. Prince certainly had the most elegant manners; Nelly was his first thought, at all times, and his courtesy to her savored of the old school. He wouldn't go into the shed of a cold, rainy day and ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... anodyne, either actual or figurative," I answered, rising to go. "If you had no recuperative force left in you there would be less energy in your despair. It rests with yourself now entirely to be as healthy-minded as ever again ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... highly figurative view of the subject; and notwithstanding the urgent representations of Duchess Margaret to her brother, that nobles and people were all clamoring about the necessity of convening the states general, Philip was true to his instincts ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... having two, three, five, seven, nine and thirteen cupolas or spires is as early as the Eleventh Century. The numbers were figurative; two signifying the two natures of Jesus Christ, three, a symbol of the Trinity, five, our Lord and the four evangelists or the five wounds, seven, the seven sacraments, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, or ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... will rest till morning, the eagle will show him the way to the nest of his white dove," was the reply of the Indian, in that figurative style so general among his people; and then taking him by the hand he led him through the rapidly increasing darkness, until they reached a small encampment lying near the river, and under the cover of some trees ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... that he cannot struggle, and consignment to the blackness outside, of which our Lord adds, in words not put into the king's mouth, but which we have heard from Him before, 'There shall be the [well-known and terrible] weeping and gnashing of teeth—awful though figurative expressions for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... course, he could not and never did. Various greedy sinners of the congregation drank in the comfortable doctrine with relief. It was worth the while having come to church that Sunday morning! All was plain. The Bible, as usual, meant nothing in particular; it was merely an obscure and figurative school-copybook; and if a man were only respectable, he was a man ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of speech is a deviation from the plain and ordinary mode of speaking. Its object is greater effect. Figures originated, perhaps, in a limitation of vocabulary; and many words that are now regarded as plain were at first figurative. But the use of figures is natural, and at present they are used to embellish discourse and to give it greater vividness and force. To say with ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... terram a monstris liberat Perseus frees the land from monsters (literal separation—actual motion is expressed) (b) Perseus terram tristitia liberat Perseus frees the land from sorrow (figurative ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... in truth had been fully accomplished, and the event had occurred without Bishop Barlow having recurred to it; so easy it seems to forget what we dislike to remember! The period of time was too literally taken, and seems to have been only the figurative expression of man's age in scriptural language which Hooker had employed; but no one will now deny that this prescient sage had profoundly foreseen the results of that rising party, whose designs on church and state were clearly depicted in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... form of teeth, the character of their stomachs, and the shortness of their bowels, and fed, for the time they remained in it, exclusively on vegetable substances, which, in ordinary circumstances, their lacteals could not have converted into chyle. Certain figurative expressions in Scripture taken literally, which refer to a class of wild animals whose real destiny is rather, it would seem, to be extirpated than to be changed, coupled with the belief, now no longer tenable, that there was a time, ere man had sinned, when there was no death among the inferior ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... me think of a chestnut burr," said Kittie resorting to figurative comparisons. "There's lots of good in her, but she won't let any one get at it. If we try, she shuts up and gets prickly. I never thought much about it, until here lately, and then she was so splendid, and knew how to do everything; and, I begin to think that there is ever so much ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... give way to riot or disorder on that occasion. He hoped and believed it would not—here M. le Maire laid his hand on his heart—but a spark, as I knew, fired tinder, and the St. Meuse populace were at present figurative tinder. I might be ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... roundabout warnings that the Indians of different tribes were going to attack the British garrison at Michili-Makinak, and endeavour to destroy all the English in Upper Canada. Henry did not pay over much attention to this warning, because "the Indian manner of speech is so extravagantly figurative". ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and of some of His apostles. The didactical books (the epistles or letters) explain the Gospel of Christ more fully, and show how we are to believe in Him aright and live aright. The prophetical book tells in figurative language what shall take place in the Church of Christ up to the time when there shall be new heavens ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... see no figurative application of your words," he retorted, beginning to be annoyed at her prolonged ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... with a stick until the sparks rose like quail out of the grass, Dr. Slavens vowed solemnly that he would win that fee or take in his shingle—which, of course, was a figurative shingle only at that time—and Agnes pledged herself to stand by and help him do it as faithfully as if they were already in the future and bound to sustain each other's hands in the bitter ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... (for example, Canto I, stanzas 11, 12), and examine the language to see what kind of words are most effective: specific or general, concrete or abstract, figurative or literal. ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... the Old Testament is only figurative, and that the prophets understood by temporal blessings other blessings, this is ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... the clergy. Brahmanism is also. The archaic conflict between light and darkness, the triumph of the former over the latter, diminished, at their hands, into the figurative. That is only reasonable. It was only reasonable also that they should claim the triumph as their own. Without them the gods could do nothing. They would not even be. In the Rig-Veda and the Vedas generally they are transparent. The subsequent evolution of the Paramatma, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... speaking of Nature, "gave to her inclinations, intentions, and views, and horrors (of a vacuum), and sports," etc. He says that one of the principal objects of his book is to show how Mr. Darwin "has deluded himself, and perhaps others, by a constant abuse of figurative language." "He plays with Nature as he pleases, and makes her do whatsoever he wishes." When we remember that Mr. Darwin defines Nature to be the aggregate of physical forces, we see how, in attributing everything to Nature, he effectually ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... had taken up my affair, and kept me for a week or two careering through the public prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving's Headless Horseman, ghastly and grim, and longing to be buried, as a political dead man ought. So much for my figurative self. The real human being all this time, with his head safely on his shoulders, had brought himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything was for the best; and making an investment in ink, paper, and steel pens, had opened his long-disused ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... capsules bearing sporidia, which correspond to seeds. It is true that leaves are absent, but these are sometimes compensated by lateral processes or abortive branchlets. A tuft of mould is in miniature a forest of trees. Although such a definition may be deemed more poetic than accurate, more figurative than literal, yet few could believe in the marvellous beauty of a tuft of mould if they never saw it as exhibited under the microscope. In such a condition no doubt could be entertained of its vegetable character. But there is a lower ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... nations attempt to perpetrate innovations. From time to time they resume forgotten expressions in their vocabulary, which they restore to use; or they borrow from some particular class of the community a term peculiar to it, which they introduce with a figurative meaning into the language of daily life. Many expressions which originally belonged to the technical language of a profession or a party, are thus ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the Mind is most stretch'd, the Image is most Sublime; if we consider no foreign Assistances. As Homer say's, The Horses of the Gods, sprung as far at every Stride, as a Man can see who sit's upon the Sea-shore. But foreign Assistances, as a figurative Turn, &c. may raise a passage to an equal degree of Sublimity, which yet does not so largely dilate the Mind; as this of Shakespear's is more Sublime than that ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... highest interest of humanity, He reposed his faith on the abilities of clerics who knew nothing of human nature or practical politics, but comprehended only a paternal control, absolute, and to be enforced by the rod, actual or figurative; or on those of civilian devotees and fanatics less intelligent even than the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... [155] A figurative and highly poetic expression as old as Homer. In this instance it is said to signify that the sun had been two gharis ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... Tammany Hall was highly respectable in the beginning of its career. I have here used the term in the figurative sense; it is in truth an epigram into which ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... daughter is the porcupine. In the family history an ichneumon, an elephant, a monkey and an eland all figure. The Bushmen have also solar and lunar myths, and observe and name the stars. Canopus alone has five names. Some of the constellations have figurative names. Thus they call Orion's Belt "three she-tortoises hanging on a stick," and Castor and [v.04 p.0873] Pollux "the cow-elands." The planets, too, have their names and myths, and some idea of the astonishing wealth of this Bushman folklore and oral literature may be ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... veil the mysteries of religion under emblems, by which they would be able to maintain the devotion of the soldier, and protect themselves from the incursion of those who were their enemies, after the example of the Scriptures, the style of which is figurative. Those zealous brethren chose Solomon's temple for their model. This building has strong allusions to the Christian church. Since that period they (Masons) have been known by the name of Master Architect; and they have employed themselves in improving the ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... the hoary past, when language was figurative, and often pictorial, had recourse to a system of symbols to express abstract truths and ideas. In order to impress the minds of pupils with a true concept of the attributes of the celestial forces, we call ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... glow the heavy panelings and the time-worn tapestries. Dinner was just over, the dessert was on the table, and two gentlemen were sitting over their wine—though this is to be taken rather in a figurative sense, for their conversation was so engrossing as to make them oblivious of even the charms of the old ancestral port of rare vintage which Lord Chetwynde had produced to do honor to his guest. Nor is this to be wondered at. Friends of boyhood and early manhood, sharers long ago ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... chapter of Matthew's Gospel. They are called the "foolish virgins." We all know that a virgin is an unmarried woman who has kept the integrity of her virtue unbroken. The ten spoken of in the chapter are virgins in a figurative sense. They are so called because in appearance and profession they were not defiled with the world. They all had lamps. David says: "Thy word is a LAMP unto my feet, and a light unto my path." Each one had this lamp according ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... one figurative expression, the mask of night; and every one reading this speech with the context, must have felt the peculiar propriety of its simplicity, though perhaps without examining the cause of an omission which certainly is not fortuitous. The reason lies in the situation and in the feeling of ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... few hundred monosyllabic roots, each expressing with analytic precision some definite material object, from which roots the whole subsequent must be derived by etymologic spinning-out, by agglutination, and by figurative heightening ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... anecdote under the same nexus. We are told that Calpurnia, the last wife of Caesar, dreamed on the same night, and to the same ominous result. The circumstances of her dream are less striking, because less figurative; but on that account its import was less open to doubt: she dreamed, in fact, that after the roof of their mansion had fallen in, her husband was stabbed in her bosom. Laying all these omens together, Caesar ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... full of romantic charm * * * it possesses ingenuity of incident, a figurative designation of the unhallowed scenes in which unlicensed love accomplishes and wrecks ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... consisting mostly in its dismal words and tune. Then the terrible moment arrived, the lowering of the coffin and the sound of the first earth upon it; for, formerly the company awaited this last act. This was not the formal dust to dust, a verbal and figurative act, but some shovelfuls of real earth that for a few moments rattled and pounded the top of the coffin with a heart-rending sound. The minister shook hands with the chief mourners, every one took his way ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... light to shine." It has been thought by Johnson that this passage is an allusion to an eclipse of the Sun, and so it might be; but on the other hand, it may be no more than one of those highly figurative phrases which abound in holy Scripture, and of which the well-known passage, "The stars in their courses fought against Sisera" (Judges v. 20), ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity? Here are no tropes, no figurative expressions, not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution, by unnecessarily informing them what he is going to sing, or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing; ...
— English Satires • Various
... the creatures of the coulee would sleep in comfort that night. Pink, therefore, withdrew his challenge to the bunch, and laid his billiard cue down with a sigh and the remark that all he lacked was time, to have the scalps of every last one of them hanging from his belt. Pink was figurative in his speech, you will understand; and also a bit vainglorious over beating Andy Green and Big Medicine twice ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... disordered mind, which is supposed to differ from idiotcy and lunacy, has been the source of considerable perplexity to medical practitioners; and, in my own opinion, opens an avenue for ignorance and injustice. The application of figurative terms, especially when imposed under a loose analogy, and where they might be supplied by words of direct meaning, always tends ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... sight is here to be understood. But I am surprized, how they happened not to take notice, that every thing in this discourse, even to the most minute circumstances, is expressed in words bearing a figurative sense. For whereas, in describing the infirmities of Old-age, the injuries of the operations of the mind, as the most grievous of all, were not to be pretermitted; so these could not be more clearly expressed, than by the obscuration of the coelestial luminous ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... disturb the equilibrium of his mind. Such passions as anger, hatred, jealousy, sorrow, worry, grudge, and fear always untune one's mood and break the harmony of one's mind. They poison one's body, not in a figurative, but in a literal sense of the word. Obnoxious passions once aroused never fail to bring about the physiological change in the nerves, in the organs, and eventually in the whole constitution, and leave those injurious impressions ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... "the windows of heaven" and taught that they were opened when it rained, and closed when it ceased to rain. Hence it is evident that the ancient Astronomers did not refer to these pillars and windows in a figurative sense, but as real appurtenances to a solid firmament, as will be seen by reference to Gen. vii. 11, and viii. 2, Job xxvi. ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... rogues are we in all climes and under whatever rule, quoth I, internally, as I listened to these wordy disputants; for, to do messieurs the pilots justice, the matter was conducted in a manner more worthy the courts, better argued, and in language less offensively figurative, than similar disputes at which it has been my chance to assist between angry members of our ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... endless friction when it's bad, especially with regard to things like interfering with the servants, and wanting to order the kitchen dinner. So absurd, as well as annoying. There's a place for a man and a place for a woman, and the man's place is not the kitchen, even if his entry is only figurative. By which I mean that Mr. Stanley did not actually go to the kitchen, but gave orders from his study, on a sort of telephone business he had had fixed up and communicating with the kitchen. So trying for the cook's nerves, especially when making ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... be measured by thermometers was not the kind that was causing two groups of men in two hotels, only a few blocks apart on the East Side of New York's Midtown, to break out in sweat, both figurative and literal. ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
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