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verb
Contrast  v. t.  
1.
To set in opposition, or over against, in order to show the differences between, or the comparative excellences and defects of; to compare by difference or contrariety of qualities; as, to contrast the present with the past.
2.
(Fine Arts) To give greater effect to, as to a figure or other object, by putting it in some relation of opposition to another figure or object. "the figures of the groups must not be all on side... but must contrast each other by their several position."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Contrast" Quotes from Famous Books



... In striking contrast with the want and desolation around, stood a beautiful mansion. Around it was a garden of choice flowers, and the vine, with its rich clusters of luscious grapes, shaded the path to the entrance ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... but made no reply, as by this time they had arrived at the door of the room which she shared with Katherine. It was a complete contrast to Elizabeth's; it was larger and lighter, and looked out upon the bright garden, the alms-houses, and the church tower. The upper part of the window was occupied by Katherine's large cage of canary birds, and below was a stand of flower-pots, a cactus which ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the door passed unheard, or translated itself into the remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted itself more distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and opened the door. On the threshold stood a woman, the self- assertion and audacity of whose dress were in singular contrast to her timid, irresolute bearing. Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious mother of her anonymous pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she was only fastidious; but as she coldly invited ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... was heavy and cold: his eye rested upon the miniature of the unfortunate Lady Merton, which, since the night of the attempted robbery, Talbot had worn constantly round his neck. Strange and powerful was the contrast of the pictured face—in which not a colour had yet faded, and where the hues and fulness and prime of youth dwelt, unconscious of the lapse of years—with the aged and shrunken ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... present position, to think longingly of the life of active movement which was hers at the Towers. Even lessons in the old schoolroom, even that hateful darning and mending to which she had to devote a portion of her time each day, seemed delightful in contrast to her present inertia. She was thinking of Friar's Wood and of Annie's bright face just when Annie herself, looking like a bit of the summer ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... The Apostle contrasts justifying faith, not with those preparatory acts of salvation which spring from it, but with the sterile "works of the law" (i.e. the Old Testament), which, as such, possessed no more power to justify than the good works of the heathen. Keeping this contrast in mind, it would not be incorrect to say, and St. Paul might well have said, that "supernatural faith alone (i.e. only) justifies, while the works of the law do not." But if faith be taken in contradistinction ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth"—does it not almost seem as if the portraiture was drawn in view of the contrast often exhibited by men in their political relations?—this charity must be preserved, its image unbroken, amidst all the struggle and competition of public ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett

... both prophetic and creative, and took all sincere minds captive. Dry and arid in comparison as Egyptian deserts, lay all around him the writings of his contemporaries. No living waters flowed through them; all was sand, and parch, and darkness. The contrast was immense: a living soul and a dead corpse! Since the era of the Commonwealth,—the holy, learned, intellectual, and earnest age of Taylor, Barrow, Milton, Fuller,—no such pen of fire had wrought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... In contrast to Migwan's peaceful night, Hinpoha lay tossing in dire distress. She was no sooner in bed than the biscuits she had gobbled for dinner started to make war on the slumgullion, and the lemonade began to have words with the blueberries. The fudge ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... light and shade, or have taken it for a portrait by Rembrandt, without a frame. The brim of the hat which covered the old man's brow cast a black line of shadow on the upper part of the face. This grotesque effect, though natural, threw into relief by contrast the white furrows, the cold wrinkles, the colorless tone of the corpse-like countenance. And the absence of all movement in the figure, of all fire in the eye, were in harmony with a certain look of melancholy madness, and the deteriorating symptoms characteristic of senility, ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac

... not to be visible from our deck at a greater distance than seven miles. Their summits are crowned with a slight shrubby vegetation, the bright verdure of which, separated from the dark blue colour of the sea by their glittering sandy beaches, formed a pleasing contrast to the dull, monotonous appearance of the mainland. These islets are in fact only the dry parts of a shoal, on which the sand has accumulated, and formed a soil to receive and nourish the seeds of plants, which have either been ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... the two men could speak, the door was violently flung open and Martin Jaffry appeared. His clothing was disarranged, his manner agitated—in striking contrast to the dapper and composed appearance usual to ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... I thought, would probably judge my entire character from this exhibition. A man, she would reflect, who could be so feeble and miserable a failure at tennis, could not be good for much in any department of life. She would compare me instinctively with my opponent, and contrast his dash and brilliance with my own inefficiency. Somehow the massacre was beginning to have a bad effect on my character. All my self-respect was ebbing. A little more of this, and I should become crushed,—a mere human jelly. It was my turn to serve. Service is my strong point ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... them, drew a good deal of attention as they sat and talked together. The little lady was not young, but was certainly very fascinating. She had a vivacious, merry smile, the keenest, most brilliant black eyes in the world, and a certain grace and dignity about her which seemed to contrast with her rapid ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... sharp contrast between them smote Diana almost painfully—she herself, young and radiant, holding in her slender throat a key that would unlock the doors of the whole world, and beside her the little boarding-house help, equally young, and with ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... were the views of the Bishop to be considered, who might have objected to the introduction into the diocese of a striking person who so recently had been a heathen, and to one in such strong contrast to my ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... monument is of silver, and the worth of the metal alone is estimated at 80,000 florins. The church itself is not spacious, but is built in the noble Gothic style; the lesser altars, however, with their innumerable gilded wooden figures, look by contrast extremely puny. In the chapel are many sarcophagi, on which repose bishops and knights hewn in stone, but so much damaged, that many are without hands and feet, while some lack heads. To the right, at the entrance of the church, is ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... those underneath, had become dark and discoloured by time; the ink had changed to a dull red, and the imprint of many a thumb inferred how many years they had been in existence, and how long they had lain as sad mementos of the law's delay. Others were fresh and clean, the japanned ink in strong contrast with the glossy parchment, new cases of litigation fresh as the hopes of those who had been persuaded by flattering assurances to enter into a labyrinth of vexation, from which, perhaps, not to be extricated until ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... taste; while a larger picture of San Francisco d'Assisis, under the choir, seemed to belong to an older and more artistic civilization. But the sombre half-light of the two lamps mellowed and softened the harsh contrast of these details until the whole body of the church appeared filled with a vague harmonious shadow. The air, heavy with the odors of past incense, seemed to be a part of that expression, as if the solemn and sympathetic twilight became palpable in ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... to herself, could this communication so secretly given mean? She regarded the lay sister who attended upon her as a happy looking young woman whose face was in strong contrast to most of those within the walls of the convent; but she had exchanged but few words with her, knowing that she would be but a short time about her. For the policy of the abbess was to change the attendants upon ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... inwardly at the contrast between these twin sisters, yet their resemblance to their former selves when, six years before, she had visited England. It was the same Janie who, at seven years old, devoured books of geography and history, but laid down Aesop's ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... scenes, notably the Council of the Devils at the beginning. Here again, the underlying sentiment is the abhorrence of human recklessness and extravagance. In some of these plays, the vanity of bold ambition is brought out with particular emphasis through the contrast between the daring and dissatisfied Faust and his farcical counterpart, the jolly and contented Casperle. In the last scene, while Faust in despair and contrition is waiting for the sound of the midnight bell which is to be the signal of his destruction, Casperle, as night watchman, patrols the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... is a solemn obligation, which may well make us tremble, that is laid on us in these words, 'As I have loved you.' Calvary was less than twenty-four hours off, and He says to us, 'That is your pattern!' Contrast our love at its height with His—a drop to an ocean, a poor little flickering rushlight held up beside the sun. My love, at its best, has so far conquered my selfishness that now and then I am ready to suffer a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... a handsome fellow of the type described as dashing. Dark gleaming eyes peered out beneath thick black eyebrows which met in an unbroken line above his nose. Set in a face of unusual pallor, they were no doubt rendered superlatively brilliant by contrast. His skin was singularly white above the bluish, freshly shaven cheeks and chin. His hair was black and long and curling. The thin lips, set and unsmiling, were nevertheless drawn up slightly at one corner of the mouth in what appeared to be a permanent stamp of superiority and disdain,—or even ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... contrast look at the wall tomb of a bishop on the right of the Pesaro picture. The old priest lies on his bier resting his head on his hand and gazing for ever at the choir screen and stalls. It is one of the simplest and most satisfactory tombs in ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... cause diffuseness. The remark was once made to him, it seems, by two good judges—George Henry Lewes and George Eliot—that the style of "Social Statics" is better than the style of his later volumes; Mr. Spencer would ascribe the contrast to the deteriorating effect of dictation. A recent experience has strengthened him in this conclusion. When lately revising "First Principles," which originally was dictated, the cutting out of superfluous words, clauses, sentences, and sometimes paragraphs, had the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... Burlesque has a plot, but usually one which is absurdly impossible, or which is treated in a burlesque style. The amusement is derived chiefly from the contrast between the matter and the method of its presentation. Most of Stockton's stories are of this type: notably his "The Lady, or the Tiger?" Mark Twain, too, usually writes in this vein, as in "The Jumping Frog" ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... the weak and unprotected. Their constant employment is grinding the poor and preying upon the rich. What is the result? Their homes are cold and cheerless—the blessing of him that is ready to perish comes not to them, and they live in wretchedness to die in misery. What a contrast have we in the glorious old twins—brother Charles and brother Ned. They have never been to school, they eat with their knives (as the Yankees are said to do), and yet what an elucidation do they present of the truth that it is better ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... lay within the loops. In one section of a slightly earlier stage before synapsis, there were found two pairs of chromosomes (fig. 271, x{1}, x{2}, and m{1}, m{2}) which were stained with safranin in contrast with the violet spireme. These two pairs I interpret as being (1) the homologues of the pair of m-chromosomes, which remain condensed during the growth stage of the spermatocytes, and (2) a pair of heterochromosomes corresponding ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis - Part II • Nettie Maria Stevens

... 1917, Paul Jones joined the M.G.C.H.B., in other words the Tank Corps. His joy at this transfer was unbounded. Nothing could be in sharper contrast than the letters he wrote after joining the Tank Corps and those penned during the preceding three months, when the enforced inactivity of the cavalry and the nature of his own routine work preyed on his spirits and made him exclaim ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... I was picked because I'm pretty good with the stick—a sort of pinch hitter. But then that's not being a star pitcher," he added, lest Joe feel badly at the contrast in their batting averages. ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick

... rank." He is quite above me. Compare my grange with his palace, if you please. I am disdained by his kith and kin. "Suitability of age." We were born in the same year; consequently he is still a boy, while I am a woman—ten years his senior to all intents and purposes. "Contrast of temper." Mild and amiable, is he; ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... ancient and impregnable city of New York. The ground on which is I trod was hallowed by recollections of the past, and as I slowly wandered through the long alley of poplars, which, like so many birch-brooms standing on end, diffused a melancholy and lugubrious shade, my imagination drew a contrast between the surrounding scenery, and what it was in the classic days of our forefathers. Where the government house by name, but the customhouse by occupation, proudly reared its brick walls and wooden pillars, there whilom stood the low, but substantial red-tiled ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... camp was hot and damp, it made, of course, a sufficiently nasty mess in the victim's hair, but Gillsey, by contrast, deemed rather to enjoy it. It ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... existence; feeding through long times the life-roots of all excellent human things whatsoever,—in a way that 'utilities' will not succeed well in calculating! We will not estimate the Sun by the quantity of gas-light it saves us; Dante shall be invaluable, or of no value. One remark I may make: the contrast in this respect between the Hero-Poet and the Hero-Prophet. In a hundred years, Mahomet, as we saw, had his Arabians at Grenada and at Delhi; Dante's Italians seem to be yet very much where they were. Shall ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... bold, and so good as Hume. Notwithstanding his heterodox reputation, many learned and excellent Christians openly enjoyed his friendship. A contemporary critic recently presented the public with 'a curious instance of contrast and of parallel,' between Robertson and Hume. 'Flourishing (says he) in the same walk of literature, living in the same society at the same time; similar in their habits and generous dispositions; equally pure in their morals, and blameless in all ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell

... should show her appreciation of their gifts by placing each one in the position of greatest advantage. Naturally, all people's tastes are not equally pleasing to the taste of the bride—nor are all pocketbooks equally filled. Very valuable presents are better put in close contrast with others of like quality—or others entirely different in character. Colors should be carefully grouped. Two presents, both lovely in themselves, can be made completely destructive to each other if the colors are ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... saddle, speak of the experienced soldier, while in the first word that falls from his lips one hears the tone of the man far more at home in camp than court. There is something utterly blunt and abrupt in his manner, a scathing contrast to the affected drawl brought into the regiment by recent importations from the East, and assiduously copied by a professed Anglo-maniac among the captains. Rude indeed may he sometimes be in his speech, "and little versed in the set phrase of peace," but through it all is the ring of sturdy honesty ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... leaving Catlet's Station. Short as their stay in camp had been, few of the men had returned empty-handed. The Northern army was supplied with an abundance of excellent food of all descriptions, forming the strongest possible contrast to the insufficient rations upon which the Confederate troops existed, and the troopers had helped themselves to whatever they could lay hands upon in ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... Gourmont writes: 'Moliere has never drawn a doctor more comically "the doctor" than Paramore, nor more characteristic figures of women than those in the same play, The Philanderer. The character-drawing is admirable.'" M. Hamon himself goes on, however, to suggest an important contrast between the characterization in Mr. Shaw and the ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... idyllicly—there were, nevertheless, many things which he could do alone which she could not do—heights to which he could rise where she could not possibly follow. Chicago society might be a negligible quantity, but he was now to contrast her sharply with the best of what the Old World had to offer in the matter of femininity, for following their social expulsion in Chicago and his financial victory, he once more decided to go abroad. In Rome, at the Japanese and Brazilian embassies ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... was stiff and motionless, which made its rolling and fiery eyes, and the slow, spasmodic undulations of its tail more fearful by contrast. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... occasionally—quite often enough. It is waste of stamps, waste of energy, and waste of time to write when you have nothing special to say. But he has something to say to-day. He has a son, a poor, weak fellow I have heard, as far as outward appearance and bodily health go—a contrast to you, Cardo—but a clever fellow, a senior wrangler, and an M.A. of his college. He has just been ordained, and wants to recruit his health before he settles down to a living which is in the gift of his uncle, and which will be vacant in a short time; and ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... found pieces of rag and clothing. The natives, instead of coming to greet them, lurked guiltily behind trees, and when they were seen fled away into the woods. All this was very disquieting indeed, and in significant contrast to their behaviour of the year before. The party from the ship threw buttons and beads and bells to the retiring natives in order to try and induce them to come forward, but only four approached, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... proceeding during the month of February is to be found in his genuine friendship for the Indian, which eventually profited him much, it is true, but, from this time henceforth, was lifelong. He stood in somewhat of a contrast to Blunt, whom General Steele thought unprincipled[933] and who in Southern parlance was "an old land speculator,"[934] and to Curtis, who was soon to show himself, as far as the Indians were concerned, in his true colors. While Phillips was absent from Fort Gibson, Curtis arrived there. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... raced at a dog-trot, chuckling. The contrast between bulky Sambo and little Nicolas and the big negro's comic fear of the slim ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... into the circle of religious schemers and reactionary fanatics; he would occasionally speak in contemptuous terms of "the creed of court chaplains"; but, writing to his wife of that historic meeting with Napoleon in the lonely cottage near the battlefield of Sedan, he said: "A powerful contrast with our last meeting in the Tuileries in '67. Our conversation was a difficult thing, if I wanted to avoid touching on topics which could not but affect painfully the man whom God's mighty hand had cast down." And more than once ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... belonged to Miss Pennington who now came forward with a cordial greeting, and presented Alex and Miss Virginia to her friend, Miss Carpenter. Miss Carpenter's manner was somewhat distant in contrast, but seen without the disfiguring glasses she usually wore, Alex found her ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard

... Harry, his impulsive manner in strange contrast to that of his listener, "that if I had been behaving myself all this time, I might have seen ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... profitably and honorably cultivated. During this time she wrote her first poems, songs full of the girl's longing for her German home, which the strange half Asiatic environment of Southern Russia rendered by contrast only dearer and more attractive. In 1811 her father was transferred to St. Petersburg, and there her studies were necessarily confined to the modern languages. But her own industry was intense and incessant; she devoted a great deal of time to historical reading, and privately cultivated her ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... universal liking for the Englishman cannot have rested only on motives of political expediency or from temporary alliances made in Revolutionary times. They must have had abundant proof of the loyalty and trustworthiness of Englishmen before so deep-rooted a sentiment could have been created. The contrast, of course, was not with the American colonist, but with the French. The colonists, too, were King George ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... settlement, not a development. This was the method chosen in order to evade resentment on the part of Catholics and the weakening of the crown. To speak in general or abstract terms of the sovereign conscience was to urge the contrast between the Roman Inquisition and the spirit of early Christianity, and to promote a breach with the Catholicism of Southern Europe. To proclaim that the civil magistrate has no right to regulate belief was to limit monarchy and to repel the Politiques, who were ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... A sharp contrast they presented,—the German, erect, well-poised, plainly a soldier in spite of his ill-fitting clothes; the American, lank and stomachless, yet taller than the other in spite of his bent shoulders. His tawny beard was guiltless of care. Of all his slack ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... greatly changed,—his skin drawn and shrunken,—his grizzled beard, once so great a contrast to his ruddy skin, only added to the pallor of his face. He had had a slight "stroke," he thought. It had passed off, but left him ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... degrading. The trick here is to argue from the opponent's language, never from his insight. You take him literally, you pick up his sentences, and you show what nonsense they are. You do not try to weigh what you see against what he sees; you contrast what you see with what he says. So debating becomes a way of confirming your own prejudices; it is never, never in any debate I have suffered through, a search for understanding from the angles of ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... two testimonies of men concerning their wives, and let you see the contrast. An aged man was asked the reason of his salvation. With tearful emotion he said: "My wife was brought to God some years before myself. I persecuted and abused her because of her religion. She, however, returned nothing but kindness, constantly maintaining an ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... have announced previously, I shall endeavor to record in this chapter some recollections of events personal to the Emperor which occurred during the journey between the frontiers of France and Prussia. How sad a contrast results, alas! as we attempt to compare our journey to Moscow with that of our return. One must have seen Napoleon at Dresden, surrounded by a court of princes and of kings, to form an idea of the highest ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... contrast we may ask what have women done? Again I may say that New York is a fair example because it is the largest of the States in population and has the second city in size in the world and occupies perhaps the most important position in any land in which a suffrage referendum ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... Harris so far recovered, as to allow them again to resume their employment. They now had no difficulty in obtaining work, and although obliged to toil early and late, they became cheerful and contented; although they could not but feel the change in their circumstances, and often contrast the happy past, with their present ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell

... her mother were alone; but they felt that the ground they stood on, was enchanted. Mother said it was like a scene from the opera. They watched the fire; how the flames leaped and crackled; yet they were dying down. The fire made a bright contrast to the dark fir-woods which formed the background to the picture. The glory died from the sky; but yet it was strangely light; darker and darker grew the woods near the fire. Suddenly Lotty espied ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... to find a greater contrast than that presented by Reimers and this Senior-lieutenant Guentz; externally and internally they differed radically. Reimers was tall and lean, with golden-brown hair, and a noble, but somewhat melancholy expression; Guentz was small and very fair, with a tendency ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... of the average Ulster Unionist the particular point of contrast between himself and the Nationalist of which he is more forcibly conscious than of any other, and in which all other distinguishing traits are merged, is that he is loyal to the British Crown and the British Flag, whereas the other man is loyal to neither. Religious intolerance, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... that actually left England for her various colonies or for the United States. For several years one thousand Irish people sailed daily from the ports of Great Britain; and for a great number of years 200,000 at least did so every twelve months. When we come, to contrast the Irish at home with the Irish abroad, we shall give fuller details than are possible here. These few words suffice to show the immense number of vessels and the vast sums that were required for such an ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... him from generation to generation. He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree." (Luke 1:46-52) Her words draw the contrast between the once favored family of Solomon and the humbler family of Nathan, Solomon's family being abased and Nathan's now exalted. Thus the proof is brought forth that the Lord did raise up unto David ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford

... dangers to which the Tree-dwellers were exposed. Pass lightly over these dark pictures and emphasize the fact that it was possible even in those times for Sharptooth and her baby to sleep safe from harm. In contrast to this wild life let the children draw pictures that will illustrate the security and comfort ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp

... holding high public office, members of the Government. Their follies and their sins would scarcely be worth remembering to-day were it not for the chance that gave them for companion and ally one of the most remarkable men of his age, a man whose abilities were in striking contrast to those of his associates, a man who might almost be called ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... is speaking German serves perhaps to suggest even more vividly than might otherwise occur to one the contrast between this meeting and a meeting of the corresponding German society—the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Each is held in an old building of palatial cast and dimensions, of which Burlington House, here in Piccadilly, is much the older—dating ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... after a miniature by Cosway, accompanies Miss Skene's sketch of Lady Stuart-Forbes,—a pleasing contrast to the picture, without merit, either as a work of art or as a likeness, which was engraved for the Memoir of her youngest son, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... least a contrast from a rough Mississippi River boat and the crude homes of an unsettled Western State, to the royal carriage waiting to convey one to the apartments reserved in a palace, the elegance and culture of a court, the precision of a congress ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton

... Robert's inheritance, the lordship of the Cotentin, with its important castles, towns, and vassals. The chroniclers call him now Count of the Cotentin, and he there practised the art of government for a time, and, in sharp contrast to Robert, maintained order with a strong hand. During the same summer of 1088, Henry crossed over to England to get possession of the lands of his mother Matilda, which she had bequeathed to him on her death. This inheritance he does not seem ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... if we were to base our judgments upon the statistics of slave and free, the various acts for manumission or the vigorous anti-slavery agitation from 1830 on. A closer acquaintance with the actual conditions of the time shows that there was a striking contrast between the theoretical rights and privileges which the Negro was supposed to enjoy by virtue of the constitution and bills of rights and those he ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... hound flies howling, abjectly petitioning and promising; but the rest bark all with new comfort, and even he starts again straightway. It is bad travelling in those woods, with such Lions and such Dogs. And then the sparsely scattered HUMAN Creatures (so we may call them in contrast, persons of Quality for most part) are not always what they should be. The grand mansions you arrive at, in this waste-howling solitude, prove sometimes essentially Robber-towers;—and there may be Armida Palaces, and divine-looking ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... Sologoub happily blends fantasy and reality. Revolutionary meetings alternate with improbable hypnotic seances, and terrible corteges of corpses contrast violently with scenes of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... a member of the Society of Friends, and as such, served by the striking contrast of his own life and character, with the average of the Society, to exemplify to the world the real, genuine Quakerism. It is not at all to the credit of his fellow-members, that it must be said of them, that ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... have long since vanished entirely. Towers have been rebuilt or restored, and in 1899 a new guard house has been built between Wakefield tower, "l," and the south-west angle of the keep. The hideously ugly effect of its staring new red brick in contrast with the old and time-worn stone of the ancient fortress must be seen to be realized, its sole redeeming feature being the impossibility of future generations mistaking it for a building of any earlier period. During the clearance ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... the woman's husband entered the door. He was an emaciated, unkempt man, whose movements were in strange contrast with his appearance. He was one of the most trustworthy of General Forrest's scouts, but neither betrayed the fact that he knew the other. On the contrary, the man was both angry and rude. "What'd I tell you, Rhody?" he exclaimed, turning to his wife. "I ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris

... Society. Their acquaintance was renewed years afterwards in London. Who can ever forget the small, quiet dinners given by Mackintosh when living out of Parliament, and out of office in Cadogan Place? Simple but genial were those repasts, forming a strong contrast to the Edinburgh dinners of yore. He had then long given up both the theory and practice of the Brunonians, and took nothing but light French and German wines, and these in moderation. His tall, somewhat high-shouldered, massive form; his calm brow, mild, thoughtful; his dignity of manner; his ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... make him inflict on him the punishment he merited. But the young poet could not resist the temptation of throwing a brighter light on the redeeming points in the character of a robber and murderer by pointedly placing him in contrast with the even darker shades of hypocritical respectability and saintliness in the picture of his brother Franz. The language in which Schiller paints his characters is powerful, but it is often wild and even coarse. The Duke did not approve of his former protege; the very title-page of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... with lime does it any good. This, however, is said to have been the practice of the country ever since the period of the Romans, and at present the many white pits on the hill sides, which so frequently afford a picturesque contrast with the overhanging yew trees, are all ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... girls laid their heads together over the Bradshaw, Evelyn's dark-soft hair making a charming contrast to Aurelia's yellow curls. At last the journey was made out and duly written down, and a post-card despatched to ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... in frightful contrast the condition of each before and after that awful change. The BODY, now endowed with "sensible warm motion," to become in death "a kneaded clod," to "lie in cold obstruction, and to rot." The SPIRIT, now "delighted" (all full of delight), to become in death ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various

... kind of pedantic and profligate literature, perfectly devoid of all natural sentiment, full of self-contradictions; and, in fact, the contrast to those maidens in my work, whom I have, during half my lifetime, seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. And though I will not presume to estimate them as superior to the heroes and heroines in the works of former ages, yet the perusal ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... intelligibility and assert their office. Infinitely suggestive such an observation as this last on the whole delightful head, where representation is concerned, of possible variety, of effective expressional change and contrast. One would like, at such an hour as this, for critical licence, to go into the matter of the noted inevitable deviation (from too fond an original vision) that the exquisite treachery even of the straightest execution may ever be trusted to inflict even on the most ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... without any meaning in them. But Mary liked it. She decidedly would not have liked it had it ever occurred to her that the man was flirting with her. It was the very childishness of the thing that pleased her,—the contrast to conversation at Manor Cross, where no childish word was ever spoken. And though she was by no means prepared to flirt with Captain De Baron, still she found in him something of the realisation of her dreams. There was the combination ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... hides and skins are never dried in the immediate vicinity of their lodges, but at a great distance where the effluvia can hurt no one. The interior of their lodges is dry, and always covered with a coat of hard white clay, a good precaution against insects and reptiles, the contrast of colour immediately betraying their presence. Besides which, having always a plentiful supply of food, they are temperate in their habits, and are never guilty of excess; while the Crows, Black-feet, and Clubs, having often to suffer hunger for days, nay, weeks ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... The daily contrast presented by Cecil and Russell irritated the father, and hence his settled dislike of the latter. The faithful discharge of duty on the part of the clerk afforded no plausible occasion for invective; he ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... enough! The bell clanged frequently, sharply, jangling in the gusts—like an anxious warning. My window was black; there was no light in the sky—no star shining. Rain pattered on the roof. I heard the rush of wind. 'Twas inevitable that I should contrast the quiet of the room, the security of my place, the comfort of my couch and blankets, with a rain-swept, heaving deck and a tumultuous sea. A gusty night, I thought—thick, wet, with the wind rising. The sea would be in a turmoil on the grounds by dawn: there would be no fishing; ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... has been usually defined as "intercourse with the spirit world." That definition is inexact. Under such a definition the spirit world is contrasted with the material world. But this is erroneous; there is no such contrast! Both worlds are so closely connected that it is impossible to draw a line of demarcation, separating the one from the other. We say matter ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... to pictures on the walls of ancient temples in Egypt, in which, a thousand years or more before the Christian era, "the Negro and Caucasian physiognomies were portrayed as faithfully, and in as strong contrast, as if the likenesses of these races had been taken yesterday." In relation to the same subject, I dwelt on the slight modification which the Negro has undergone, after having been transported from the tropics and settled for more than two centuries in the temperate climate ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... overview: A decade after the implosion of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Russia is still struggling to establish a modern market economy and achieve strong economic growth. In contrast to its trading partners in Central Europe - which were able within 3 to 5 years to overcome the initial production declines that accompanied the launch of market reforms - Russia saw its economy contract for five ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... outhouses were odorously barbaric in squalor. They were in strange contrast to any of the rooms in the rabbit warren of attached dwelling-places within the Khalifa's private compound. Around the Mahdi's tomb were great splashes of human blood. On the previous evening I had seen many dead dervishes lying in that vicinity. ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... is here," returned Archie, "for I have to go back by the early train to-morrow. Ah, there she is. Well, how are you, Belle?" greeting her affectionately as she came up to him rather shyly. Archie could hardly help smiling at the contrast between Isabel's brilliant evening toilet and his other sister's brown stuff dress. It was a little trying to his gravity to see her putting on such pretty little airs of matronly dignity. Mrs. Ellis Burton was an important person now; that was sufficiently obvious; the ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... sight as it had never appeared before. A wide prospect, whose grateful silence was only broken by the cry or song of some wild bird. Great thickets of dwarf thorn tree and brambles and gorse, aflame with yellow flowers or dark to blackness by contrast with the pale verdure of the earth. And open reaches of elastic turf, its green suffused or sprinkled with red or blue or yellow, according to the kind of flowers proper to the season and place. The sight, too, of wild creatures: fallow deer, looking yellow ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson

... voice and airs of languor showed that she was admired, and that she knew it. Glory found her very amusing, and broke into little trills of laughter at her weary, withering comments. This drew the attention of some of the men; they found the contrast interesting. The conversation consisted first of hints, half signs, brilliant bits of by-play, and Glory rose to it like a fish to the May-fly. Then it fell upon bicycling and the costumes ladies wore ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... triumphal arches, of the people of empire, such as remain even now, not in the South of France only. The simple "flying," or rather leaning and almost couchant, buttresses, quadrants of a circle, might be parts of a Roman aqueduct. In contrast to the lightsome Gothic manner of the last quarter of the twelfth century (as we shall presently find it here too, like an escape for the eye, for the temper, out of some grim underworld into genial daylight), the Cluniac ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... "not to-day; there is something to be done at home. I have been comparing my abode with yours, and the contrast makes me uncomfortable, if it doesn't you. Oblige me by building yourself ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... perhaps more conspicuously so by contrast with the long spell of damp just lifted. Activities that had been suppressed were now springing into life, like emotional mushrooms, and the True Treds were markedly busy, trying to fit all the good times ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis

... authors you choose, but make me one concession: don't hold forth in my presence on either of two subjects: the corruption of the upper classes and the evils of the marriage system. Do understand me, at last. The upper class is always abused in contrast with the world of tradesmen, priests, workmen and peasants, Sidors and Nikitas of all sorts. I detest both classes, but if I had honestly to choose between the two, I should without hesitation, prefer the upper class, and there would be no falsity or affectation about it, since all my tastes ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the air. The facade itself has a distinctly military look, as though a fortress had been altered into a church. A charming arcade at the top has the air of being thrown across in order to disguise the alteration, and perhaps owes much of its charm to the contrast it makes with the severity of military lines. Even the great west window looks like an afterthought; one's instinct asks for a blank wall. Yet, from the ground up to the cross on the spire, one feels ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... spirits. "These Bolsheviki will try to dictate to the intelligentzia? We'll show them!"... Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between this assemblage and the Congress of Soviets. There, great masses of shabby soldiers, grimy workmen, peasants-poor men, bent and scarred in the brute struggle for existence; here the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary leaders-Avksentievs, Dans, Liebers,-the former Socialist Ministers-Skobelievs, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... rocket he had seen was fired at an evening fete for the amusement of the audience. The contrast struck him as dreadful. He wondered whether there were any power or infernal population that could be amused by a tragedy such as enacted itself before his eyes; how it came about also that such a tragedy was permitted by the merciful ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... the borders of Gruenewald descend somewhat steeply, here and there breaking into crags; and this shaggy and trackless country stands in a bold contrast to the cultivated plain below. It was traversed at that period by two roads alone; one, the imperial highway, bound to Brandenau in Gerolstein, descended the slope obliquely and by the easiest gradients. The other ran like a fillet across the very ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sitting motionless and silent, wrapped in admiration of the enchanting scene, all the more enchanting, perhaps, to us from its striking contrast to the long monotony of sea and sky only upon which our eyes had so lately rested, when a slight, sharp, crackling sound— proceeding from apparently but a short distance off in the bush on our port bow—arrested our attention. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... we all remember too well. Farm production stayed up while demand and prices fell, in contrast with industry where prices stayed up and output declined, farm surpluses piled up, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... as a whole, will be athletic in the same sense in which cultured ladies and gentlemen are at present. It will, a century hence, offer a still more striking contrast to the existing state of the Chinese, who bandage their women's feet in order to show that they are high born and never needed to walk or to exert themselves!—the assumption being that no one would ever move a muscle unless under fear of the lash of poverty ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... smile to see how quiet and orderly everything was, and how different to the new line of business we had taken up. The men here never thought of committing outrages or interfering with those who employed them, and I could not help thinking what a contrast there was between them and the Arrowfield rough independence ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... welfare. They have always given their support to movements which have had for their objects the improvement of Irish conditions and the increase of Irish well-being. Their sympathies are with Irish social reform—and the sympathies of many of them with social reform of an advanced character. Contrast their attitude with that of the Irish Nationalist Party in respect of reforms which have proceeded from the Imperial Parliament and movements ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... two nearest to the door, as I went in, were occupied. On one side sat a tall, flashy, rather Mephistophelian man whom I had seen from time to time in the domino-room and elsewhere. On the other side sat Soames. They made a queer contrast in that sunlit room, Soames sitting haggard in that hat and cape, which nowhere at any season had I seen him doff, and this other, this keenly vital man, at sight of whom I more than ever wondered whether he were a diamond merchant, a conjurer, ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm

... way of condemning his predecessor's memory; by the contrast of his own virtues with the vices of Commodus. On the day of his accession, he resigned over to his wife and son his whole private fortune; that they might have no pretence to solicit favors at the expense of the state. He refused to flatter the vanity of the former with the title of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... unmistakably a man from Far Out; tall, wiry-framed, and very dark, and so spare and lean of figure that he did not seem to have an ounce of superfluous flesh anywhere. His face was as hard and impassive as a Red Indian's, and looked almost black by contrast with his white shirt-front. So did his hands. He had thin straight hair, high cheek-bones, and a drooping black moustache. But the eyes were the most remarkable feature. Very keen and piercing they were, deep-set in the head; even when he was looking straight ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... good job of it, certainly," the gentleman said. "The signs haven't shone like that since they were first put there. Quite a contrast to the others on the building. Come back ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... doing as the Romans do that Elsie Trant found at first one of life's little difficulties. There is a very pleasant scene of the dinner-party at which she was formally presented to her husband's family; the contrast in atmospheres between that of the new-risen West and that of the severely Papal circles to which Prince Pietro belonged being suggested most happily. I wish, though, the authors had been content to leave it at that, as a social comedy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various

... work in French, than it is for him to fully enter into the popular matter of the same tongue. Moreover, the technicalities of these peoples, being not so immediately and constantly brought into contrast and contact with their Latin or Greek roots as they would be if they were derived (as are so many "patriotic" German technicalities) from native roots, are free to qualify and develop a final meaning distinct from their original intention. In the growing and changing body of science this ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... more, Captain Passford," protested the steward, showing his ivory, though he was not a very black man, and the contrast was not as ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... prevailing gabble about white slave jails and kidnappers comes from pious rogues who make a living by feeding such nonsense to the credulous. So long as the average prostitute is able to make a good living, she is quite content with her lot, and disposed to contrast it egotistically with the slavery of her virtuous sisters. If she complains of it, then you may be sure that her success is below her expectations. A starving lawyer always sees injustice, in the courts. A ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... excitement was a strong contrast to the Major's placidity. He walked round McNabbs, looking at him and questioning him with his eyes without eliciting one remark from the imperturbable Scotchman, or awakening his curiosity in the least, to know where he came from, and where he was going, and ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... praise becomes severe condemnation or ridicule; practical irony is evinced in ostensibly furthering some one's hopes and wishes while really leading him to his overthrow. Life and history are full of irony in the contrast between ambitions and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... power and wealth and lofty station and such other obstacles to the following of my own thinking and my own desires. I could not endure the eternal arguing this led to, which was always reminding me, by contrast, of the quiet dear ways of Niafer and of the delight I had in the ways of Niafer. So it seemed best for everyone concerned for me to break off ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... black eyes wore their wonderful soft look as they gazed down upon her visitor. It was a strange contrast they made as they stood there in the full light ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... Indian and danced like a Parisian. He did not greatly enjoy most of his partners; they could not appeal to any side of his nature just then. Not that he at all times stood too much on his aristocratic traditions, or lacked the virile traits common to vigorous and worldly-minded men; but the contrast between Alice and the other girls present was somehow an absolute bar to a democratic freedom of the sort demanded by the occasion. He met Father Beret and passed a few pleasant ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... complexioned and has peculiarly pale eyes behind the round spectacles he wears. Joe is first baseman on the Nine, and a remarkably competent one. He is slow of speech and possesses a dry humour that on occasion can be uncomfortably ironical. Beside him, Perry Bush is a complete contrast, for Perry is large-limbed, rather heavy of build, freckle-faced, red-haired and jolly. He has very dark blue eyes and, in spite of a moon-shaped countenance, is distinctly pleasing to ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... posts, and the great race was on. The minute the starting gun was fired, Paul saw Walter lean forward and put his face in his hands. He then lifted his head, put both hands on the rail of the seat in front of him, and gazed up the river with a look so intense that even the faces about him by contrast were calm. Paul found himself looking oftener at Walter than at the race. From where they sat it was impossible to tell which crew was in the lead. The black streaks up the river grew more distinct and another gun fired sent the news ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... Convention. Lincoln's Fairness to Rivals. Chances of the Campaign. The Pivotal States. The Wigwam. Organization of the Convention. Chicago Platform. Contrast between the Charleston and Chicago Conventions. The Balloting. Lincoln Nominated for President. Hamlin Nominated ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay



Words linked to "Contrast" :   differentiate, reach, comparison, oppose, contrastive, compass, comparing, seeing, differentiation, point of no return, visual perception, separate, range, contrasty, ambit, line, demarcation, differ, distinction, foil, opposition, secern, photography, conflict, distinguish, secernate, scope



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