"Delineation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... occurs not only in propositions but also in the delineation of feeling, as, for instance, when feelings are ascribed to a character other than those which nature and the subject-matter demand. You will find this fault in an epigram by Vulteius, which was for ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... was of that common sort which renders delineation superfluous, received them with the customary forms of ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... self-delineation, which so strongly pervades his maturer works is, to the full, as predominant in his early productions, there needs no better record of his mode of life, as a school-boy, than what these fondly circumstantial effusions supply. Thus the sports ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... from experience of what he had seen, if the art of DRAWING had not been also carried to some excellence—although to PAINTING itself the poet makes none but dubious and obscure allusions. Still, if, on the one hand [178], in embroidery, and upon arms (as the shield of Achilles), delineation in its more complex and minute form was attempted,—and if, on the other hand, the use of colours was known (which it was, as applied not only to garments but to ivory), it could not have been long before two ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had hitherto cradled herself. She called the three councils together to consult them on the means by which these disorders were to be remedied. The majority was in favor of sending an extraordinary ambassador to Spain, who by a circumstantial and vivid delineation should make the king acquainted with the true position of affairs, and if possible prevail on him to adopt efficient measures of reform. This proposition was opposed by Viglius, who, however, had not ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... himself, or his readers, to consider how long the nations over whom our freedom is imperious, and in whose shame is our glory, may be satisfied in that arrangement of the globe and its affairs; or may be even at present convinced of their degraded position in it by his method of its delineation. ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... distinguished audience before him, and of his reputation as an orator. From the beginning to the end it was elevated in tone, eloquent in the highest sense of that word, and warm in expression of his affection for the friend he eulogized. His delineation of Garfield as a soldier, an orator, and a man, in all the relations of life, was without exaggeration, but was tinged with his personal friendship and love. He described him on the 2nd of July, the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... psychological, or philosophical point of view. His address on that occasion was masterly, and his conversation at various social functions instructive and pithy. I remember in one of them, especially, his delineation of the characteristics and services of Leibnitz, who was one of the founders of the Royal Academy, and it was perfection in that kind of conversation which is worthy of men claiming to possess immortal souls: for it brought out, especially, examples of Leibnitz's amazing forethought as to ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... it with another drawing, both of which we have been fortunately able to reproduce in our pages. These "two perfect early drawings," he writes, "are of A Lemon Tree, and another of the same date, of A Byzantine Well, which determine for you without appeal, the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. Of all our present masters Sir Frederic Leighton delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of Correggio than any seen since Correggio's time. But you see by what precision of ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... the middle age, for the most part ignored by those writers who have treated it pre-eminently as the "Age of Faith"—this rebellious and antinomian element, the recognition of which has made the delineation of the middle age by the writers of the Romantic school in France, by Victor Hugo for instance in Notre-Dame de Paris, so suggestive and exciting, is found alike in the history of Abelard and the legend of Tannhaeuser. More and more, as we come to mark changes ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... the reprint of an Irish story of exciting interest, which, by its powerful delineation of passion, its bright daguerreotypes of character, and the wild intensity of its plot, must become a favorite with the lovers ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... there is no throb of heart in them.... These things, however, did not seem to affect her audience. They cheered her as if their hearts were really touched.... These, however, are but early impressions, and we shall be anxious to see her in still another delineation." ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... survives, by men, George Eliot's Romola being the only notable exception. The true representatives of female novelists are now the leaders of that school which confines itself to minute observation, whether of outward facts or inward feeling, and which is above all things devoted to the close delineation of contemporary society. The analysis of character within the range of ordinary experience, the play of civilised emotion, the vicissitudes of grief or joy in the parsonage, the ball-room, and the village, the troubled course of legitimate love-making, have all contributed the congenial ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... in examining and enumerating the various groups and clusters of stars which passed before his eye in the field of his powerful telescope, he did not fail to remember the sublime object of his life, and to which he made all his other investigations subordinate, viz., the delineation of the structural configuration of the heavens, and the inclusion of all aggregations, groups, clusters, and galaxies of stars which are apparently scattered promiscuously throughout the regions of space into one grand harmonious design of ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... portraitures of the men and analysis of their lives and work, that will be vivid and picturesque, as well as accurate and faithful, and that will combine the authority of careful historic narration with the interest attaching to anecdote and personal delineation. ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... feeling heart, the surest guide to him who would describe natural truth, whether of the souls of men or of material forms. The realists of art may not be so well satisfied with a composition, as with the delineation, line by line, and point by point, of a scene in nature; yet the more comprehensive critic will own that universality will gain by the composition far more than local identity can lose. By his imaginative skill, Church ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... are only two pictures, he says, in Milton; Adam bending over the sleeping Eve, and the entrance of Dalilah, like a ship under full sail. Certainly the above lines are no picture; but they are more exciting than any clear delineation could be; they are full of scent, and air, and the emotions of ease and bliss. The other passage has more of architectural quality in it, and describes what first met Satan's gaze, when he entered the Garden and sat, perched like ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... at La Pointe about the year 1800, and although the traditions given by Sikassig[)e] is similar to the one surviving at Red Lake, the diagram is an interesting variant for the reason that there is a greater amount of detail in the delineation of objects mentioned ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... no commentary. I may as well, however, bear witness, that exactly as the schoolboy still walks before her "mind's eye," his image rises familiarly to mine, who never saw him until he was past the middle of life: that I trace in every feature of her delineation the same gentleness of aspect and demeanor which the presence of the female sex, whether in silk or in russet, ever commanded in the man; and that her description of the change on his countenance when passing from the "doggie of the mill" to the dream of Paradise is a perfect picture of what ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to Babylon, to boast of having been the instrument through whom the generals were entrapped into the fatal tent, this boast is not to be treated as matter of fact. For not only does Xenophon explain the catastrophe differently, but in the delineation which he gives of Menon, dark and odious as it is in the extreme, he does not advance any such imputation; indirectly, indeed, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... faces concealed by hideous masks, and others enveloped in the cowls, through which only the eyes could be distinguished, the figure of the cross upon the breast, and under that emblem, of divine peace, inflicting such horrible tortures on their fellow-men that the pen shrinks from their delineation. Nor was it the mere instruments of torture Marie beheld: she saw them in actual use; she heard the shrieks and groans of the hapless victims, at times mingled with the brutal leers and jests of their fiendish tormentors; she seemed to take in at one view, every species of torture ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... long been a certain stubborn though planless diligence in digging for the outward details of Friedrich's Life-History; though as to organizing them, assorting them, or even putting labels on them; much more as to the least interpretation or human delineation of the man and his affairs,—you need not inquire in Prussia. In France, in England, it is still worse. There an immense ignorance prevails even as to the outward facts and phenomena of Friedrich's life; and instead of the Prussian no-interpretation, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... boy laughed loudly at Uncle Remus's graphic delineation of the astonishment and admiration of the passers-by. The old man raised his head, stretched his eyes, and seemed to be looking over his spectacles right at Brother ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... conclusion of the story, I daily received letters of remonstrance, especially from the ladies. God bless them for their tender mercies! The Professor was quite right when he said that I had not reached to an adequate delineation of their virtues; and I fear that I must go on blotting their characters in endeavouring to reach the ideal in my mind. These letters were, however, combined with others from the sterner sex, and some of them were not altogether free from personal invective. But, notwithstanding, I kept to my ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... exceedingly erroneous. Well-known streams have been found to extend in either direction many miles beyond the points at which their sources have been laid down on the maps, and great rivers and lakes have, as it were, been discovered, of which no delineation had ever been given by geographers. The extent of these errors in remote and difficultly accessible points may be inferred from what has been found to occur in the part of the region which is most accessible, best known, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... then, by the Sunne, shewing the distinction of time. By Sunne, Mone, and Sterres, this Dialling may be performed, and the precise Time of day or night knowen. But the demonstratiue delineation of these Dialls, of all sortes, requireth good skill, both of Astronomie, and Geometrie Elementall, Sphaericall, Phaenomenall, and Conikall. Then, to vse the groundes of the Arte, for any regular Superficies, in any place offred: and (in any possible ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... impunity. He was told by Mr Cate that he was in a desperate way. Brandon did all he could, but the call would not come for the calling. Mrs Brandon got it very soon, though she strenuously denied the honour. My good nurse was in the family-way, and Mr Cate had frightened her into fits, with a vivid delineation of the agonies of a new-born infant, under the torture of eternal fire, because it had died unelected. However, Brandon began a little to weary of waiting and long prayer, and perhaps of the now too frequent visits of Mr Cate. He commenced to have his fits of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Western Isles, I take the liberty of transmitting my ideas of the conversation which happened between the doctor and myself concerning Lexicography and Poetry, which, as it is a little different from the delineation exhibited in the former edition of your Journal, cannot, I hope, be unacceptable; particularly since I have been informed that a second edition of that work is now in contemplation, if not in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of comfort in a violent death, leaving his poor problems unsolved and his children naked and starving. Such a picture, if drawn by a foreigner, would arouse English indignation from shore to shore; but it is home-drawn. The only foreign delineation is in the author's Jehoiachin Settle, a stage Yankee, whose avocation is planting English children in Canada after the manner of Miss Rye. Settle is a preposterous failure, but every other limb of the writer's argument ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... precedent) the many and remote embassies to and from independent states, in all quarters of the earth, with how many more groups might the spectacle have been crowded, and especially of those who fall within that most picturesque delineation— ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... inventory of the features of men, or of fair women, as there is in the Greek poets of the decline or in modern novels. Man is something different from a curious bit of workmanship that delights the eye. He is a 'speaker of words and a doer of deeds,' and his true delineation is in speech and action, in thought and emotion." Thus, from the first, ideas are the central and important element. They spring from and cling to stories of individual human lives, and the finest of them become ideals handed down for the guidance of the future ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... further inducement to exercise her really considerable powers of verbal delineation. Charging her palette with lively colours, she sprang to the task—and that with a sprightly composure and deftness of touch which went far to cloak malice ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader; rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six Bags hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with our delineation of it. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... in New Bond Street, where hang some hundreds of specimens of the later work of the most unaffected humorist, and most masterly "Black-and-White" artist of his time. Walk up, Ladies and Gentlemen, and see—such miracles of delineation, such witcheries of effect, as were never before put ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... a more definite delineation of the reasons that operated to raise up the conspiracy. There was a partial feud that had long existed in the mutual jealousies between the slaveholders and non-slaveholding population. Nothing very remarkable, however, had transpired to indicate ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... make an indelible impression upon the heart of every reader. How striking, and alas! how true, is this delineation of character. Religious when in company with professors—profane when with the world; pretending to be a Christian on a Sunday; striving to climb with Christian the Hill Difficulty—every other day running down the hill with Timorous and Mistrust. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Mark actually was their Author. Hear him discussing S. Mark's "characteristics," at p. 151:—"In the consecution of his narrations, Mark puts them together very loosely." "Mark is also characterised by a conciseness and apparent incompleteness of delineation which are allied to the obscure." "The abrupt introduction" of many of his details is again and again appealed to by Dr. Davidson, and illustrated by references to the Gospel. What, in the name of ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... between his personal qualities, the position which he held, and the life that he lived, makes him as interesting a personage as all history has to show; and it is a pity that Southey's biography—so good in its superficial way, and yet so inadequate as regards any real delineation of the man—should have taken the subject out of the hands of some writer endowed with more delicate appreciation and deeper insight than that genuine Englishman possessed. But Southey accomplished his own purpose, which, apparently, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... slavery. That we leave to others. Thus far this very perplexing question, has baffled all human wisdom. Either some radical defect must have existed, in the measures devised for its removal, or the time has not yet come for successfully assailing the institution. Our work is completed, in the delineation we have given of its varied relations to our agricultural, commercial, and social interests. As the monopoly of the culture of cotton, imparts to slavery its economical value, the system will continue as long as this monopoly is maintained. Slave labor products ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... could mention five or six who were unconscious contributors to the character.—That it should have been so often, though erroneously, supposed to have been drawn after some particular person, is, perhaps, complimentary to the general truth of the delineation. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... we extract Mr. Pickwick's masterly description of that heartrending scene? His note-book, blotted with the tears of sympathising humanity, lies open before us; one word, and it is in the printer's hands. But, no! we will be resolute! We will not wring the public bosom, with the delineation of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... strongly individualistic in temperament, and his satire and ridicule were aimed not at causes, but at effects. Let but the individuals act morally, and the system, which Gogol never questioned, would work beautifully. This conception caused Gogol to concentrate his best efforts upon delineation of character. It was the characters that were to be revealed, their actions to be held up to scorn and ridicule, not the conditions which created the characters and made them act as they did. If any lesson at all was to be drawn from ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... we are not to look to him for any great intensity of delineation of passion, especially in the sense to which that word is more commonly confined. He has nowhere left us (as some other men of letters have) any hint that he abstained from doing this because the passion would have been so tremendous that it was on the whole best for mankind ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... word is impossible. To describe it in a few words is not easy. Froude himself called it in after life a "cry of pain," meaning that it was intended to relieve the intolerable pressure of his thoughts. It is not a novel, it is not a treatise, it is not poetry, it is not romance. It is the delineation of a mood; and though it was called, with some reason, sceptical, its moral, if it has a moral, is that scepticism leads to misconduct. That unpleasant and unverified hypothesis, soon rejected by Froude himself, has been revived by M. Bourget in Le Disciple, and L'Etape. The Nemesis of Faith is ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... willing to delude others, he will be obliged to acknowledge, that the portrait he has painted, although in its combination it resembles nothing in the universe, is nevertheless in all its constituent members an exact delineation of that which nature presents to our view. Hobbes in his Leviathan says, "The universe, the whole mass of things, is corporeal, that is to say, body; and hath the dimensions of magnitude, namely, length, breadth, and depth: also every part of body is likewise body, and hath ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... elevation to the character of the tales which they illustrate; and the original etchings, as I have before said in the Appendix to my 'Elements of Drawing,' were unrivalled in masterfulness of touch since Rembrandt, in some qualities of delineation unrivalled even by him." "The Two Elves," says Hamerton, "especially the nearer one, who is putting on his breeches, are drawn with a point at once so precise and vivacious, so full of keen fun and inimitably happy invention, that I have not ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... repeat it here—that Herr Grosse has no (individual) living prototype. Like the other Persons of the Drama, in this book and in the books which have preceded it, he is drawn from my general observation of humanity. I have always considered it to be a mistake in Art to limit the delineation of character in fiction to a literary portrait taken from any one "sitter." The result of this process is generally (to my mind) to produce a ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... anomalous position, and encountered its difficulties and perils, make themselves felt and appreciated in all the details of the narrative, while the picture presented of Eastern character and manners is one which only the most intimate knowledge, combined with rare faculties of delineation, could furnish, and differs in many features from any other to be found in European descriptions of life in India. "Meadows Taylor was never, properly speaking, in the civil service of the East India Company or the Crown, nor did ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... immense number of every kind of animal, with several human figures. This terrific, yet truly beautiful representation, was all the more highly esteemed for the time that had been expended on it in the plumage of the birds, and other minutiae in the delineation of the different animals, and in the diversity of the branches and leaves of the various trees seen therein;" and thenceforward the catastrophe is direct, to the ornithological museums which Breughel ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... still his working out of the definition of poetry, his distinction between novels and poems, and between poetry and eloquence, is interesting as throwing light upon his own poetic susceptibilities. He holds that poetry is the delineation of the deeper and more secret workings of human emotion. It is curious to find one who is sometimes assailed as the advocate of a grovelling philosophy complaining that the chivalrous spirit has almost disappeared from books of education, that the youth of both sexes of the educated ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... of Swiss valour were saddened by the breaking out of that great plague, which visited with its ravages the greater part of Europe and Asia, and of which the most vivid delineation ever written (except that of a similar pest by Thucydides) has been preserved in the Decameron of Boccacio. Whole towns were depopulated. Estates were left without claimants or occupiers. Priests, physicians, grave-diggers, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... of elasticity, which made me fancy I could trip along the sward like a patent Vestris. I might go much farther, I might indulge in poetic rapture—most unbecoming my mature age—and after all, fall far short of the reality. The reader will do well to allow a large percentage of omitted ecstatic delineation in consequence of want of ardour on the part of the writer. This is in fact ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the rough, eccentric, but true-hearted Yankee was regarded as one of the finest pieces of acting ever witnessed on the American stage, and drew crowded houses wherever he went. His range of characters included the most refined comedy and the broadest farce, but each delineation bore evidence of close and careful study, and was marked by great originality and delicacy. There was in his performances a freshness, a distinctiveness, and, above all, an entire freedom from any thing coarse or offensive, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... conflict is more emphasized, as in the cases of Hamlet and Macbeth. "See thou character" became in an increasing degree Shakespeare's watchword. He grew to care less for mere incident, for plots based on mistaken identity, as in The Comedy of Errors; but he became more and more interested in the delineation of character, in showing the effect of evil on Macbeth and his wife, of jealousy on Othello, of indecision on Hamlet, as well as in exploring the ineffectual attempts of many of his characters to escape ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... terror for the crime. This, indeed, is a triumph in art never achieved but by the highest genius. The inferior writer, when venturing upon the grandest stage of passion, (which unquestionably exists in the delineation of great guilt as of heroic virtue,) falls into the error either of gilding the crime in order to produce sympathy for the criminal, or, in the spirit of a spurious morality, of involving both crime and criminal in a common odium. It is to discrimination ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... is by Heine. He represents her as Chopin knew her, for although he published the portrait as late as 1854 he did not represent her as she then looked; indeed, at that time he had probably no intercourse with her, and therefore was obliged to draw from memory. The truthfulness of Heine's delineation is testified by the approval of many who knew George Sand, and also by Couture's ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Phrenologist as signifying one who goes about over the country feeling the bumps on the heads of those who consult him, looking for hills and hollows, depressions and ridges of the cranium, and predicating thereon a delineation ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... unfortunate that Mr. Froude should have based his account of French affairs at this important point upon so inaccurate and prejudiced a writer as Varillas. To be correct in his delineation of these transactions was almost as important for his object, as to be correct in the narration of purely English occurrences. If he desired to avoid the labor, from which he might well wish to be excused, of mastering the great accumulation ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Colonel, after this chapter, mounts his best hunter and disappears over a high hedge into space so far as our story is concerned, any further delineation of his wholesome but very ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... reasons for keeping such company." "Reasons, and good ones," said the artist, laughing; "see—where could I find such a picture of life as that, unless among the originals of The Cabin?" He held up his sketch-book and showed a correct delineation of the very scene in which he had so lately been the presiding spirit. One of his best pictures contains this fac-simile of the tap-room, with its ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... succession of scenes rather than unified, organic drama. But, after all, the main thing is the substance—"the weighty content, and this will most certainly secure for them for a long time to come a place in the repertoire of the theater of the Germanic world. So long as we admit that in the delineation of character, in the presentation of noble figures, and in the mastery of dialogue, Shakespeare is unexcelled, so long we must admit that Shakespeare has a place ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... witnessed in a youth four years older than himself. He was present when some of these sketches were taken, and viewed the process with delight and attention; particularly, that pleasing and accurate delineation of the celebrated iceberg in Amsterdam Island, opposite where the ships lay; which measured three hundred feet high, and out of which a cascade ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... testimony to Jesus, he acquired the art of breathing into his Greek the simple manner and the sweet tone of a Hebrew story. There is nothing in all literature more perfectly told than the story of the walk to Emmaus. Nothing can be better than the delineation of character which is suggested to us in the story of Zacharias, or of Anna, or of Zacchaeus. There is always a freshness to remind us that the Gospel is "good tidings of great joy" (ii. 10), and the Magnificat (i. 46-55), the Benedictus (i. 68-79), the Gloria in Excelsis (ii. 14), and the ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... remainder of this day's occurrences, so painfully pregnant in discoveries relative to this savage people. The reader, it is believed, will think the account in the text abundantly minute, without any addition. What a fine specimen to prove the accuracy of Rousseau's delineation of our species, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... with outward events, and taking hold of these only where it cannot be helped, in order by means of them to delineate the history of a mind bewildered in certain errors. We would not willingly, if we could, give a lively and picturesque surrounding to this delineation, but it is necessary that we should advert to the circumstances of the time in which this inward history was passing. We will say, therefore, that that night there was a cry of alarm passing all through the succession of country towns and rural communities that lay around Boston, and dying ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of art is often of the highest aesthetic merit. Velasquez's pictures of dwarfs and degenerate princes are as artistic as Raphael's Madonnas; Goethe's Mephistopheles is one of his supreme artistic achievements; Shakespeare is as successful artistically in his delineation of Lady Macbeth as of Desdemona. Now for us who claim that the purpose of art must be divined from the actual practice of artists, from the inside, and should not be an arbitrary construction, from the outside, the existence of such examples is ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... indefatigable pen she produced, in 1843, three three-volume novels, "Hargreave," "Jessie Phillips," and "The Laurringtons"—the first a not very successful sketch of a man of fashion; the second, an unfair and exaggerated delineation of the action of the new Poor Law; and the third, a forcible and lively satire upon "superior people," in which some of the passages are in ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... the virtuous Mr. Burke forms too obvious a pendant to the rascally agents old Nick and St. Dennis. It is needless to say that the exclusively virtuous people are deadly dull. It is the novel with a purpose written by a novelist whose strength lies in the delineation of character. Miss Edgeworth can never carry you away with her story, as Charles Reade sometimes can, and make you forget ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... are above it. (The pattern of the drapery is rather singular). Mary exhibits a more quiet expression: her resignation is calm and fixed, while her heart seems to be broken. But it is in the figure and countenance of St. John, that the artist has reached all that an artist could reach in a delineation of the same subject. The beloved disciple simply looks upwards—upon the breathless corpse of his crucified master. In that look, the world appears to be for ever forgotten. His arms and hands are locked together, in the agony of his soul. There ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... him, after his eyes have been put out, to beg his way through the world. The Greeks seem to have been deeply impressed with the evils, vicissitudes, and sufferings of life. No word occurs so frequently in their dramas as evils, ([Greek: kaka].) In witnessing the delineation of its miseries on the stage, they seem to have held somewhat of the same stern pleasure which the North American Indians have in beholding the prolonged torture inflicted on a condemned captive at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... form and meaning is a necessity to the artist, and if he does not find it, he will invent it. Hence the embarrassment of some of the English Pre-Raphaelitists, particularly in dealing with the human form. They have no hesitation in pursuing into still further minuteness the literal delineation of inanimate objects, draperies, etc.; but they shrink from giving full life to their figures, not from a slavish adherence to their exemplars, but from a dread lest it should seem that what is shown is all that is meant. The early painters were thus naive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... grandfather's chiding, runs with it into the cemetery where it is lost among the graves and never seen again. This account stands by itself, having no direct connection with what precedes or follows; but the delineation is so vivid, the poetic element in it so strong, that it may be said to stand without assistance, and does not require the name of Hawthorne ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... intercourse with its inmates, have brought them much under the notice of the officers and ladies of the garrison. She has no occasion to present the Indian in a theatrical garb—a mere thing of paint and feathers, less like the original than his own rude delineation on birch-bark or deer-skin. The reader will find in the following pages living men and women, whose feelings are in many respects like his own, and whose motives of action are very similar to those of the rest of the world, though far less artfully covered ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... abruptly, pushes back his chair, and dashes across the room to the cupboard. He takes the black bottle from the shelf, applies it to his lips, and remains for some time motionless. He then returns to finish the delineation of G.H. with ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... History. Fortification. Navigation. Encamping. Decimal arithmetic. Intrenching. Trigonometry. Approaching. Dialing. Attacking. Gauging. Delineation. Mining. Architecture. Fireworking. Surveying. ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... countenance, but the doctor's brow grew still blacker than ever. Bertie was executing his chef d'oeuvre in the delineation of Mrs. Proudie's ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... art could have done no more in the delineation of her superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood before me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... any of the works which describe the manners of the age, from the works of Richardson or Fielding, to the bitter satire of Churchill and the melancholy remonstrances of Cowper, and you are struck with the delineation of a state and manners, and a tone of feeling which, in the present day, appears scarcely credible. "'Sdeath, madam, do you threaten me with the law?" says Lovelace to the victim of his calculating and sordid violence. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... friends are the most unmitigated book-thieves. But perhaps even the too frequent loss of books is an evil to be preferred to the egoistical meanness of the selfish collector. Balzac gives in his 'Cousin Pons' a vivid delineation of such a person. The hero is a poor drudging music-teacher and orchestra-player, who has invested every franc of his hard-won earnings in the collecting of exquisite paintings, prints, bric-a-brac, and ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... Tom Westlake "harked back" and related his experiences of the day. He possessed considerable power of graphic delineation, and gradually aroused the interest of his gay and volatile ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... by the National Opera Company. We thus had in juxtaposition an admirable operatic adaptation of a Shakespearian comedy and a modern comedy, of which I thought at the time I could not speak in higher praise than to say that it was truly Shakespearian in its delineation of character. In my book, "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," I have analyzed Wagner's comedy from many points of view, and printed besides the results of investigations of the old Nuremberg mastersingers made on the spot. The significance ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... little hesitation in pronouncing George Eliot the foremost of the many women who have written fiction. The literary critics sometimes dispute her supremacy by urging the claims of Jane Austen, who is said to have Shaksperean power in the delineation of character. But the name of Jane Austen is unknown to the general public. For every reader of Pride and Prejudice there are a score ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... charm of the photographic delineation. Theoretically, a perfect photograph is absolutely inexhaustible. In a picture you can find nothing which the artist has not seen before you; but in a perfect photograph there will be as many beauties ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... succeed in time, as well as the English, because we have the same language, and equal intellect; but there must be system and discipline in writing plays—a knowledge of stage effect—of sound, cadences, fitness of time and place, interest of plot, spirit of delineation, nature, poetry, and a hundred et ceteras, which are required, to constitute a good dramatic poet, who cannot, in this country, and while occupied in other pursuits, spring up over night like asparagus, ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... skilfully executed. It was a hazardous undertaking to present the character backwards, and let us see the closing scenes of his life first,—like a Hebrew Bible, of which the beginning is at the end; but the author's genius has triumphed over the perils of the task, and given us a delineation as consistent and symmetrical as it is striking and vigorous. Ignorant of books, simple, and credulous, guileless himself, and suspecting no evil in others, with moderate intellectual powers, he commands our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... poetry, as the highest of all earthly objects must be moral truth. Religion does not make a part of my subject; it is something beyond human powers, and has failed in all human hands except Milton's and Dante's, and even Dante's powers are involved in his delineation of human passions, though in supernatural circumstances. What made Socrates the greatest of men? His moral truth—his ethics. What proved Jesus Christ the Son of God hardly less than his miracles? His moral precepts. And if ethics have made a philosopher ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the characters may be made to stand out above the story. You will also remember we found that the stage—the vaudeville quite as much as the legitimate—is "character-ridden," that is, an actor who has made a pronounced success in the delineation of one character type forever afterward wants another play or playlet "just like the last, but with a different plot," so that he can go right on playing the same old character. This we saw has in some cases resulted ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Mak the sheep-stealer. Lively characters were also created out of nonentities like the various Judaeans and soldiers, and the shepherds. But these were all minors; they had no influence on the course of the action, and the smallness of their part made anything like a full delineation impossible. They were real men, recognizable as akin to local types, but no more; one never knew anything of them beyond their simplicity or brutality. Meanwhile their superiors, clothed in the stiff dress of tradition and reverence, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... respectfully to observe, that they hope their examples may not be altogether devoid of indirect instruction; and lest it should be supposed that they lived without object, aim, or principle, they would observe that the maxim which has influenced the delineation of the different Scenes and Characters is, that feeling, unguided and unrestrained, soon becomes mere selfishness; while the simple endeavour to fulfil each immediate claim of duty may lead to the ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... consist with a reasonable attention to economy. The necessity of a numerous court for the trial of impeachments, is equally dictated by the nature of the proceeding. This can never be tied down by such strict rules, either in the delineation of the offense by the prosecutors, or in the construction of it by the judges, as in common cases serve to limit the discretion of courts in favor of personal security. There will be no jury to stand between the judges who are to pronounce the sentence of the law, and the party ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... guilt to Camilla, Leonardo has excused it by an emphatic delineation of Michiella's magic sway over him. (Leonardo, in fact, is your small modern Italian Machiavelli, overmatched in cunning, for the reason that he is always at a last moment the victim of his poor bit of heart or honesty: he is devoid of the inspiration of great patriotic aims.) If Michiella (Austrian ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... points in the geography of Asia, as given by Ptolemy, respect the coasts of India, the route to the Seres, and the Caspian sea. His delineation of India is equally erroneous with his delineation of the British Isles: according to him, it stretches in a right line from west to east, a little to the south of a line drawn between the Ganges and the Indus. He possessed, however, information respecting places in the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... England are known to him as they are to few. He is tempted to draw too largely upon this source of interest: in other words, there is too much of description in his volume. Life is hardly long enough for such elaborate painting. We may admire the skill of the delineation, but we cannot pause sufficiently before the canvas to do full justice to the painter. Those poems in which Mr. Tuckerman expresses the emotions of bereavement and sorrow are those which have the highest merit in point of thought and expression. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the annoyance of children; and that we should not hesitate to take our pleasures. Men, who have contrived to get the keys, come into the Convent during the night, which they have spent in the most dissipated manner." That is the precise delineation of the Canadian Nunneries; into which other men besides Priests are admitted, if the parties are willing to pay the entrance bribe to the Chaplain.—Secrets of Nunneries, by Scipio de Ricci. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... accuracy of my delineation I have high authority. A year and some months ago, I had the pleasure of seeing at Venice my friend the honourable Douglas Kinnaird. In his way through Germany, he told me that he had been honoured with a presentation to, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... reflections, and finally lands me at the commencement of this young girl's story, which, as I said, I have found the time and felt the interest to learn something of, and which I think I can tell without wronging the unconscious subject of my brief delineation. IRIS. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... study of handwriting would be complete unless it recognised that phase of it which touches on the delineation of character by an ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... if "the burden of the action is too heavy for him to bear," if "by a calculating consideration he exhausts all possible issues of the action," it should at least be continually present to his mind. We should look for the delineation of a soul harassed and haunted by one idea; torn by the conflict between conscience and filial obedience; or balancing advantage and peril in an agony of suspense and vacillation; forecasting consequence and result to himself and others; and so absorbed in this terrible secret as ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... heaven, and his intimate conferences with the Deity. Every doubt was silenced by this supernatural evidence; and the articles of the faith of Zoroaster were fixed with equal authority and precision. [9] A short delineation of that celebrated system will be found useful, not only to display the character of the Persian nation, but to illustrate many of their most important transactions, both in peace and war, with the Roman ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... perfectly sincere, yet it was self-deception, for it was not as if it was herself whom she was analysing, but rather as if it was some character in a book; indeed, she would have described herself almost exactly as she is here described, except that her delineation would have been much more clever and more exact. She would not have spared herself—for this reason, that her own character was more a study to her than a reality, her faults rather circumstances than sins; it was her mind, rather ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... life of the capital in its boundless liberty and licence is brought on the stage. Most pieces of this sort were doubtless of a very fugitive nature and made no pretension to a place in literature; but the mimes of Laberius, full of pungent delineation of character and in point of language and metre exhibiting the hand of a master, maintained their ground in it; and even the historian must regret that we are no longer permitted to compare the drama of the republican death-struggle in Rome ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... wonderful tricks of light and shadow with the over-arching foliage. The smooth sandy stretches at the outskirts of the gardens shine like water at rest, on which the leaves of an occasional sparse tuft of palms are etched with crystalline hardness of delineation. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... which the irregular habits of his life will not forfeit. The longest poem in his published volume, entitled "The Country Lass," in the same measure as the "Queen's Wake," contains much simple and graphic delineation of life; while the ballad of "The Brownie of Blednoch," has passages of singular power. His ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... horse, are so masterly that these men stand forth as the spiritual ancestors of Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. And what is also remarkable is that the race which succeeded, that which discovered the use of metal, was devoid of the artistic sense, and their attempts at delineation are like the scribbling of ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... he would fain fathom the depths of those rude scribblings and quaint efforts at delineation, whence, in the course of ages, have been evolved the wonders of the alphabet and the marvellous creations of a Rubens and ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... in Edinburgh, who, though labouring under the great disability of being deaf and dumb, has for some years back been an enthusiastic art student, has succeeded in procuring admission for three oil paintings, each of which gives good indication of his deftness and skill in the delineation of nature, and the ardour with which he has followed up his studies. "Hide and Seek" represents some children playing at that game in a hay field. "Largo, the Beach at Low Water" gives us a pretty coast scene, with figures on the beach. "Baiting the Line" is a very effective ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... for sympathy and approval, are alike often exceedingly pathetic. His personality, though less delicately drawn than that of his niece, Sara Cavendish, is a striking figure throughout the book. A good delineation of an old man is sufficiently rare in fiction to make that of Uncle Piper notable. Tasma has not equalled this performance in any of her other works. Josiah Carp, the Melbourne merchant in In Her Earliest Youth, and Sir Matthew Bogg, another of the ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... regarded in France as a remarkable "impressionist" and praised by the critics for the realistic accuracy and minuteness of his delineation. Kipling frankly acknowledged the great debt that he owed him. Tennyson spoke in high praise of his finesse in the choice of words, his feeling for the just word to catch and, as it were, visualize the precise shade of meaning desired. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... with the ancients, and if ever introduced in a painting, was subordinate. The end and aim of painting among the ancients was to represent and illustrate the myths of the gods, the deeds of heroes, and important historical events, hence giving all prominence to the delineation of the human form. Landscape, on the other hand, illustrated nothing, represented no important event deserving of record, and was thus totally without significance in a Grecian temple or pinacotheca. In an age ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... things according to our wishes and fancies, without poetry; but poetry is the most emphatical language that can be found for those creations of the mind "which ecstacy is very cunning in." Neither a mere description of natural objects, nor a mere delineation of natural feelings, however distinct or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end and aim of poetry, without the heightenings of the imagination. The light of poetry is not only a direct but also a reflected light, that while it shews ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... this has already been adduced to make any protestation or appeal against such an estimate as preposterous in its superfluity as the misconception just mentioned is preposterous in its perversity. The great if not incomparable power displayed in Webster's delineation of such criminals as Flamineo and Bosola—Bonapartes in the bud, Napoleons in a nutshell, Caesars who have missed their Rubicon and collapse into the likeness of a Catiline—is a sign rather of his noble English loathing for the traditions associated with such names as Caesar and Medici and Borgia, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the acceptance thereof, by will, and he would not wholly believe, until there was no alternative. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, and quite naturally Dr. Hargrove began to discredit the entire narrative of wrongs, which had attained colossal proportions from her delineation, and to censure himself most harshly for having suffered this dazzling Delilah to extort from him a solemn promise of secrecy; for, unworthy of sympathy as he now deemed her, his rigid rectitude would not permit him to regard that unworthiness as sufficient justification for abrogating his plighted ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... your attention from these scenes of horror to others of a different kind, the delineation of which is absolutely necessary to complete the picture. Those hosts which had so long been the scourge of Germany and Europe, and had left us this last hideous monument of their presence, perhaps never to return, were now in precipitate flight, as though hurried away by an impetuous ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... Smith Russell, and very many of the latter's most successful recitations were written for him by Field. They talked them over together, compared their versions and methods, and stimulated each other to fresh feats of mimicry and eccentric character delineation. Many a night, and oft after midnight, in the rotunda of the Tremont House, when John A. Rice of bibliomaniac fame, was its lessee, I was the sole paying auditor of these seances, the balance of the audience ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... his broad, epical delineation of the American spirit ... It is an honest and fair story ...It is very interesting: and the heroine is a type of woman as fresh, original and captivating as any that has appeared in American novels for a long time past."—The Outlook, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... time? The physical form, instead of being adequate to the ideas expressed, and therefore helpful to the artist, is a positive embarrassment, a source of weakness. The most powerful pictorial or sculpturesque delineation of the Judgment, when compared with the pangs inflicted on the spirit by a guilty conscience, pangs whereof words may render some account, but which can find no analogue in writhings of the limbs or face, must of necessity ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... career was distorted, exaggerated, seemingly out of all proportion to the familiarities, the conventionalities, and even the possibilities of existence. As the ancient Greeks, in their sculpture, for the delineation of their gods permitted themselves the use of the heroic size and made their immortals and their demi-gods more than common tall, and more than common comely, so might the modern historian seem ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that Sesostris (by which is meant the Sethosians) drew upon boards schemes of all the countries, which he had traversed: and copies of these were given both to [204]the Egyptians, and to the Scythians, who held them in high estimation. This is a curious account of the first delineation of countries, and origin of maps; which were first described upon [205]pillars. We may from hence be enabled to solve the enigma concerning Atlas, who is said to have supported the heavens upon his shoulders. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... 1832. Sir Walter Scott, though he excelled all his cotemporaries in the humorous delineation of character, wrote little humorous verse. The two pieces published in this volume are so excellent that one is surprised to find no more of the same description ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the Maker of all things, he has received reward well worthy the sacrifice, I would not for an instant deny; but the sense of the loss is not less painful to him if his mind be rightly constituted; and it would be with infinite gratitude that he would regard the man, who, retaining in his delineation of natural scenery a fidelity to the facts of science so rigid as to make his work at once acceptable and credible to the most sternly critical intellect, should yet invest its features again with the sweet veil of their daily aspect; should ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of the three-hours' Sunday service of two centuries ago, lest that which was not called wearisome in the passing prove wearisome in the delineation now. It needed all this accumulation of small details to show how widely the externals of New-England church-going have changed since those early days. But what must have been the daily life of that Puritan minister ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... these Epistles was evident from the spirit with which they were written. In the first of the two, which he addressed to Sillar, he discovered and disclosed for the first time the distinctive individuality of his genius. It was a charming and touching piece of writing; charming as a delineation of his character, and touching as a confession of his creed,—the patient philosophy of the poor. As his social horizon was enlarged, his mental vision was sharpened; and before long, other interests than those which concerned ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... They look to its delineation of the operations of the Federal Government, and they must not exceed the limits it marks out, in their administration. The court have said "that Congress cannot exercise municipal jurisdiction, sovereignty, or eminent domain, within the ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... and figure are sufficiently portrayed without any set description. What could be more delicate than the intimation of the foregone 'good-night' between the sisters, or the scene of Lyddy plaiting Thyrza's hair? The delineation of the upper middle class culture by which this exquisite flower of maidenhood is first caressed and transplanted, then slighted and left to wither, is not so satisfactory. Of the upper middle class, indeed, at that time, Gissing ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Kean's superb delineation of the ruthless Richard in the scene where, in the illusion of his dying agony, swordless, he continues to lunge and feint, may comprehend the frightful mental overturn which prompted Raikes to sink inertly into a chair near the table, and with ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... of the philosophers, he will look for the broad foundation on which national character and institutions, for good or for evil, have been formed. Voltaire was of great service to history, by turning it from courts and camps to the progress of literature, science, and the arts—to the delineation of manners, and the preparation of anecdotes descriptive of character; but, notwithstanding all his talent, he never got a glimpse of the general causes which influence society. He gave us the history of philosophy, but not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... to escape the taint of degrading Plautus to the status of a petty moralizer[29]. In particular, he lauds the Aul unreservedly as a chef d'oeuvre of character delineation and pronounces it immeasurably superior to Moliere's imitation, "L'Avare."[30] This whole critique, while interesting, falls into the prevailing trend of imputing to Plautus far too high a plane ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... for his carelessness. He burns homesteads and villages, fusillades men and women, and makes the war a war without quarter or grace. Yet he is no swashbuckler of the melodramatic stage. There is a fine reserve, a brief gravity, in the delineation of him, his clear will, his quickness, his intrepidity, his relentlessness, which make of him the incarnation of aristocratic coldness, hatred, and pride. You might guillotine Lantenac with exquisite satisfaction, and ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... in this volume were written for celebrations or commemorations in which several persons took part. Each of them is, therefore, only a partial presentation of the life and character of its subject. The delineation in every case is not comprehensive and proportionate, but rather portrays the man in some of his aspects ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... has given most evidence of poetic power in the delineation of those dark characters who intrude like ghosts and demons upon the fair and healthy current of the book, and vanish anon into the caverns and cellars whence ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... which prompted Raphael's fondness for lovely women and happy children shows itself also in his delineation of angels. The archangel Michael, the angel visitors of Abraham, and the celestial spirits appearing to Heliodorus all follow closely upon the Madonnas in the purity and serenity of their beauty. In the same fellowship ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... from the letters. guildry and treasurer's accounts, forming 3 vols. of the Spalding Club; Cosmo Innes, Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, Spalding Club; Walter Thore, The History of Aberdeen (1811); Robert Wilson, Historical Account and Delineation of Aberdeen (1822); William Kennedy, The Annals of Aberdeen (1818); Orem, Descripjion of the Chanonry, Cathedral and King's College of Old Aberdeen, 1724-1725 (1830); Sir Andrew Leith Hay of Rannes, The Castellated Architecture of Aberdeen; Giles, Specimens of old Castellated Houses ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... less astonishing than Dickens's, less fertile, spontaneous, and inventive; but his art is sounder, and his delineation of character more truthful. After one has formed a taste for his books, Dickens's sentiment will seem overdone, and much of his humor will have the air of buffoonery. Thackeray had the advantage in another particular: he described the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... showed that the gods were no examples to follow. He ridicules their morals and their offices as severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. He shows the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the State; so that philosophers like Varro could pour contempt on players with impunity, while he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Stunsfield, near Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, (a large Pavement of rich Mosaick Work of the Ancient Romans, which is adornd with several Figures alluding to Mirth and Concord, in particular that of Bacchus seated on a Panther.) This is to give Notice the Exact Delineation of the same is Engraven and Imprinted on a large Elephant sheet of Paper, which are to be sold at Mr. Charles Lillies, Perfumer, at the corner of Beauford Buildings, in the Strand, at 1s. N.B. There are to be had, at the same Place, at one Guinea each, on superfine Atlas Paper, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... beauty, of masterly psychology, and finished artistic form, it is so rich in idea and life that one must refrain from touching on the contents in order to keep within the narrow limits of this essay. A most superbly delicate delineation of the feminine soul is here given in the drawing of Hanka and Aagot; nowhere else is woman's love in its dawn and growth described with such mastery, with a deftness and sureness of touch which reminds one of the very greatest passages in that ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... itself principally with a delineation of those phases of life which we condemn when they become reality, and the teaching power of the stage becomes a lesson in wrongdoing which to the young and inexperienced is potent ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... systems of character delineation and reading the horoscope for medical diagnosis yet ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... "Kirwan's Letters to Archbishop Hughes." She read it to her mother whenever a spare hour enabled her to run home. Biddy had been greatly interested in the appeals and arguments of her talented countryman, and deeply impressed by his life-like delineation of the follies and superstitions of ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... earth. He knew not she was there, for she rarely now asked a question respecting his engagements, or expressed any interest in his movements, yet how her ears drank in the music of his voice, and her eyes flashed back the proud light that shone in his! As she listened to his delineation of woman's claims to the sympathy and the defence of every generous heart, as she heard his biting sarcasm on the cowardly nature that, having wronged, would now crush into deeper ruin his fair client, as she saw kindling eyes fixed upon him, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... your chief characters is to show the cloven hoof. Once the initial scheme granted, the rest may be as bracing as an Alpine breeze; but the critics will scent brimstone. But to build an immoral play upon a "moral" basis—that way gladness lies. Critics, who would rage at the delineation of a character remotely resembling a human being's, will pat you on the back with a good-humoured smile, and at most a laughing word of reprobation for your azure audacities. Ladies, who, whether they are married or unmarried, are in England presumed to be agnostics in sexual matters, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill |
