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Depict   Listen
verb
Depict  v. t.  (past & past part. depicted; pres. part. depicting)  
1.
To form a colored likeness of; to represent by a picture; to paint; to portray. "His arms are fairly depicted in his chamber."
2.
To represent in words; to describe vividly. "Caesar's gout was then depicted in energetic language."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Depict" Quotes from Famous Books



... fortune. As a matter of calculation and principle he had remained a bachelor and generally installed himself in the nests of others. In literature feminine frailty was his stock subject he had made it his specialty to depict scenes of guilty love amid elegant, refined surroundings. At first he had no illusions as to the literary value of his works; he had simply chosen, in a deliberate way, what he deemed to be a pleasant and lucrative trade. But, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... the alphabet, as if its natural place were as low down in the dregs of realism as it could find itself. This is the death-bed scene, where Madame Bovary expires in convulsions. The author must have visited the hospitals for the purpose of watching the terrible agonies he was to depict, tramping from one bed to another until he reached the one where the cries and contortions were the most frightful. Such a scene he has reproduced. No hospital physician would have pictured the straggle in such ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... identified with the life of man individually and with that of mankind collectively. As men die each day, and as every day men are born, this Deity is said to die and to be renewed each day; and as he is the sun, or the incarnation of the sun, the rising and setting of this luminary depict the constantly dying and regenerating God of Nature, the same as do the changing seasons. A similar idea reappears in their system of the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... John Esten Cooke (1830-1886) in The Virginia Comedians (1854), also won a passing reputation. The champion in the south, however, was William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870), born in Charleston, a voluminous writer of both prose and verse, who undertook to depict, on the same scale as Cooper and in his manner, the settlement of the southern territory and its Indian and revolutionary history; but of his many novels, of which the characteristic examples are The Yemassee ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... to argue with these gentry, it would be easy to show that popular authors are not 'worked out,' but only have the appearance of being so from their taking their work too easily. Those whose calling it is to depict human nature in fiction are especially subject to this weakness; they do not give themselves the trouble to study new characters, or at first hand, as of old; they sit at home and receive the congratulations of Society without paying due attention to that somewhat ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... this, for the pantomime, whose task it is to identify himself with his subject, and make himself part and parcel of the scene that he enacts. It is his profession to show forth human character and passion in all their variety; to depict love and anger, frenzy and grief, each in its due measure. Wondrous art!—on the same day, he is mad Athamas and shrinking Ino; he is Atreus, and again he is Thyestes, and next Aegisthus or ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... but will go on growing. The more the features of our 'Beautiful England,' to use his own phrase, are changed by the multitudinous effects of the railway system, the more attraction will readers find in books which depict her before her beauty was marred—books which picture her in those antediluvian days when there was such a thing as space in the island—when in England there was a sense of distance, that sense without ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt

... his cabin, I saw in the sunlight beyond the door his model in the life. Le Moine had not the brush to do her justice. Vanquished Often, as Hinatini means, was perhaps thirteen years old, with a grace of carriage, a beauty and perfection of features, a rich coloring no canvas could depict. Her skin was of warm olive hue, with tinges of red in the cheeks and the lips cherry-ripe. Her eyes were dark brown, large, melting, childishly introspective. Her hands were shapely, and her little bare feet, arched, rosy-nailed, were like flowers on ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... pleasures sadly. By way of compensation, apparently, we take our tragedies gaily. Under the heading "AMUSEMENT NOTES" in The Daily Mail we find the following announcement:—"At the Scala Theatre a new colour film is promised for Monday next, which is to depict in striking fashion the terrors ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various

... to our Lord's word, "I am the Door," we frequently find the tympana of church doors, particularly those of Norman date, adorned with representations of events from his life, but they often also depict the monsters, dragons and devils, that formed so strong an article in the faith of ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... with a few extracts from Elizabeth Yeardley's letters, which well depict her character and experience; and with a copy of the weighty and pertinent testimony regarding Joseph Wood which was ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... heart and purse; supplies were sent ensuring his present comfort, with the promise of their continuance for the future, and of a cordial welcome for the new daughter-in-law in his father's house. The following letters, chosen from among those written during the period in question, depict his way of life, and reflect at once the anxiety of his friends and the strain of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... dejected way. His present work, however, did not lose, but gained by such slipshod methods and by the dull, heavy colour scheme. The original idea of "Death" soon disappeared of itself; and so Yourii proceeded to depict "Old Age" as a lean hag tottering along a rough road in the dusk. The sun had sunk, and against the livid sky sombre crosses were seen en silhouette. Beneath the weight of a heavy black coffin the woman's bony shoulders were bent, and her expression was mournful and despairing, as with one ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... presentment of flesh, which had become transformed into gold and diamonds under his fingers, in his vain effort to make it live? He gasped and felt afraid of his work, trembling at the thought of that sudden plunge into the infinite, and understanding at last that it had become impossible for him even to depict Reality, despite his long effort to conquer and remould it, making it yet more real ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... invincible evil in the nature of the employment, but from a careless or penurious neglect on the part of their employers? Shall I go into a lengthened description of the habitations of the poor which will show that they are often worse housed than beasts of burden? Or need I depict at large the dark stream of profligacy which overflows and burns into those parts of the land where such Want ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... attention and industry, errors of an external character may be avoided, but if I had chosen to hold myself free from all consideration of the times in which I and my readers have come into the world, and the modes of thought at present existing among us, and had attempted to depict nothing but the purely ancient characteristics of the men and their times, I should have become unintelligible to many of my readers, uninteresting to all, and have entirely failed in my original object. My characters will therefore look like ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... not seek to depict a modern battlefield, knowing that Shakespeare himself must have waxed trite upon such a theme, the hell-pit of Flanders and the agony of France were draped behind his drama like a curtain. No man had come so near to the truth in naked words. His silence was the silence of genius. The tears of the ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... more than once painted; but it is due also, I think, to the shape and colour of the house, to the lake, to the extent of the lawn, to the disposition of the knolls, and to the deer. A scene-painter, bidden to depict an English park, would produce (though he had never been out of the Strand) something very like Petworth. It is the normal park of the average ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... be impossible to depict the confusion and distress of Francis Scrymgeour. He saw foul play going forward before his eyes, and he felt bound to interfere, but knew not how. It might be a mere pleasantry, and then how should ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... encourage professional clavier-playing among women. His daughter Marguerite was the first woman appointed official court clavier player. He composed for the clavier little picture tunes, designed to depict sentiments, moods, phases of character and scenes from life. He fashioned many charming turns of expression, introduced an occasional tempo rubato, foreshadowed the intellectual element in music and laid the corner-stone of modern piano-playing. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... intended to depict the ideas, manners, and conditions of men during the Middle Ages, it would be easy to add others, not less characteristic, and infinitely more minute. We should find poetry and literature, those beautiful ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... a passage-way or corridor of the house and gazing toward the sky, they saw as it were one fastened on a cross with a crown on his disfigured but beautiful head. His body and breast were brighter than the sun, white, and lovelier than words can depict. This [vision of the] Lord gradually receded from them, rising toward heaven, until it reached the moon, when it disappeared from their sight. This lovely vision aroused in them deep love, and, when it departed from them, sadness and sorrow. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... admitted that at this moment the iron nerves of Buonaparte were, for once, shaken. With the dangers of the field he was familiar—in order to depict the perfect coolness of his demeanour during the greater part of this very day, his secretary says—"he was as calm as at the opening of a great battle;" but he had not been prepared for the manifestations of this civil rage. He came out, staggering and stammering, among ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... sire?" exclaimed the astounded adjutant. "The courier who brings the intelligence has no words strong enough to depict the terror of the inhabitants. They were gathering their effects and flying to the interior, while the Prussian troops occupied the villages ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... could not possibly prove any such thing, because it would be easy to insert in a map various markings which, when viewed from a distance, would appear to form almost any design that one might choose to depict. Any desired effect might thus be obtained; and I have seen many pictures so formed in which the illusion was perfect. When viewed from a distance each appeared to be a picture of something entirely different from what was seen when it was viewed ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... crudity. She writes in red ink to express "the blushes of her cheek," when she sends a message of encouragement to the Conde d'Ossori. This and other puerile jests are more tolerable than Lewis's attempts to depict passion or describe character. Bold, flaunting splashes of colour, strongly marked, passionate faces, exaggerated gestures start from every page, and his style is as extravagant as his imagery. Sometimes ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... sense of its immensity and its meanness. It was, as it were, a base infinitude, a squalid eternity, and we felt the real horror of the poor parts of London, the horror that is so totally missed and misrepresented by the sensational novelists who depict it as being a matter of narrow streets, filthy houses, criminals and maniacs, and dens of vice. In a narrow street, in a den of vice, you do not expect civilization, you do not expect order. But the horror of this was the fact that there was civilization, ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... that it has undergone. There was a fist on a still larger scale, almost as big as a hogshead. Hideous, blubber-lipped faces of giants, and human shapes with beasts' heads on them. The Egyptian controverted Nature in all things, only using it as a groundwork to depict, the unnatural upon. Their mummifying process is a result of this tendency. We saw one very perfect mummy,—a priestess, with apparently only one more fold of linen betwixt us and her antique flesh, and this fitting closely to her person from head to foot, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the world, was first published in 1876. Its vivid, powerful story has made it a favorite with every red-blooded reader. Its two well-drawn female characters, the courageous hero- ine, and the stern, endurant, yearning mother, show how well Verne could depict the tenderer sex when he so willed. Though usually the rapid movement and adventure of his stories leave ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... depict a hero,—a man absolutely stainless, perfect as an Arthur,—a man honest in all his dealings, equal to all trials, true in all his speech, indifferent to his own prosperity, struggling for the general good, and, above all, faithful ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... peculiar vein of humour which has given him a free hand to produce those exquisitely subtle studies of character which are his especial province. As examples of what a humorous drawing should be they are well-nigh perfect. To Reynolds it is not enough merely to depict a laughable situation or superficially comic types. The humour of his drawings is inherent, not extraneous; his pictorial jests are self-contained, so to speak, and the printed legend beneath them is incidental only. Frank Reynolds produces a comedy where other ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson

... that prominence of what was called the "sub-fusc" colours which art-critics of a century ago judged essential to sublimity in all art. In Continental literature, and particularly in the very latest Russian drama, this determination to see blackness and blackness only, to depict the ordinary scene of existence as a Valley of the Shadow of Despair, has been painfully frequent. In England we had a poet of considerable power, whose tragic figure crossed me in my youth, in whose work there is not a single gleam of hope or dignity for man;—I mean the unfortunate ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... deal must he made out of the spiders, and their gloomy, dusky, flaunting tapestry. A web across the orifice of his inkstand every morning; everywhere, indeed, except across the snout of his brandy-bottle.—Depict the Doctor in an old dressing-gown, and a strange sort of a cap, like a wizard's.—The two children are witnesses of many strange experiments in the study; they see his moods, too.—The Doctor is supposed to be writing a work on the ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... thing has two sides, and both are true according to the stand-point from which one is looking at them. You have two sides yourself, sir, and they are contrasting very strangely with each other. You are a native of Switzerland, and yet you depict the Hapsburg princes in your works with more genuine enthusiasm than any of our Austrian historians. You are a republican, and yet you are serving a monarchy, the forms of which seem to agree with you exceedingly well. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... of this inversion of interest. Truth of outward Nature he respects; truth of the soul he reverences. He can really imagine men,—that is, can so depict them that they shall not be mere bundles of finite quantities, a yard of this and a pound of that, but so that the illimitable possibilities and immortal ancestries of man shall look forth from their eyes, shall show in their features, and give to them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... usual personal inquiries had been exchanged, "that the renowned Kin Yen, who is the object of the keenest envy among his brother picture-makers, so little regards the sacredness of his accomplished art that never by any chance does he depict persons of the very highest excellence. Let not the words of an impetuous maiden disarrange his digestive organs if they should seem too bold to the high-souled Kin Yen, but this matter has, since she has known him, troubled the eyelids of Tien. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... rising up and reaching forward to embrace him. The father put her to one side, at the same time tightly grasping her hand in his. For a moment he remained silent, bending his eyes upon me with an expression I cannot depict. There was in it a mixture of reproach, sorrow, and indignation. I had risen to confront him, but I quailed under that singular glance, and ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... has hardly time to love his own wife, let alone other people's. And the success with which nuptial estrangements are depicted in modern "problem plays" is due to the fact that there is only one thing that a drama cannot depict—that is a hard day's work. I could give many other instances of this plutocratic assumption behind progressive fads. For instance, there is a plutocratic assumption behind the phrase "Why should woman be economically ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... on a footing that is practical and sound. It presents a new field for effort, and one that is unexploited; while for the man who enters it—and this should be the attraction for youth—there are occupations as fascinating as one's imagination could depict. But one thing must be understood clearly. Flying is, of exact sciences, surely the most exact. The man who is only half-trained, who is more or less slovenly in his work, who will not bend his whole energies to his task, will find no ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White

... vestige of loyalty seems to have been swept away with the hated James II., the ancient Petit Point pictures came back into fashion. Very clever work was put into them, but, alas! their scope was purely to depict religious scenes of the rigorous kind. No dainty fairy-like little people now ruled in pictured story, but actual representations ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... would have avowed it." On the other hand, a German critic, cited by Holm, says that Thucydides is a poet who invents facts partly in order to teach people how things ought to be done and partly because he liked to depict certain scenes of horror. He says further, a narrative of certain occurrences is so full of impossibilities that it must be pure invention on the part of the historian. Another German maintains that Thucydides has indulged in "a fanciful and half-romantic picture of events." ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... especially its Royal Inauguration, which I have just returned from witnessing. There can be no serious doubt that the Fair has good points; I think it is a good thing for London first, for England next, and will ultimately benefit mankind. And yet, it would not be difficult so to depict it (and truly), that its contrivers and managers would never think of deeming the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... would be for the better; and so the ranks of Mormonism are numerically recruited, not from any religious impulse in the new disciples, but through the simple desire to better their physical condition in life. No portrait of Mormonism will prove to be a true likeness which does not depict its twofold features, its iniquity and its thrift. The conclusion forces itself upon the visitor that railroads and contact with the world will gradually obliterate the institution ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... Domine! Perhaps the piece itself was weak. At all events, "Masaniello" had but a brief run. A drunken man, a jealous man, a deaf man, a fool, a vagabond, a demon, a tyrant, Robson could marvellously depict: in the crazy Neapolitan fisherman he either failed or was unwilling to excel. I had been for a long period extremely solicitous to see Robson undertake the part of Sir Giles Overreach in "A New Way to pay Old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... apparent, for it is killing that conception of the Irishman as typically a boisterous buffoon with intervals of maudlin sentimentality which the stage and the popular song have so long been content to depict without protest from us, and which left Englishmen with feelings not more exalted than those of their sixteenth and seventeenth century ancestors, to whom "mere Irish" ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... children, and even to their sympathy and love. In subsequent books I shall describe the animals that prey upon others. As those animals are not lovable, it would be better for the child to read about them a year or two later. But even to those animals I shall be just, and shall depict their good qualities as well as their preying habits. How many people know that the very worst animal, the tiger, is a better husband and father than many men? Or that the ferocity of the tigress is prompted entirely ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh

... permitted to arise and second the work of the evangelist by showing our faith by our works, and giving to the Christians in this land of plenty and no poverty objects upon which to work out their love! Words fail to depict the extreme tenderness and delicate attention shown to us, for Jesus' sake, during the forty-eight hours we spent in the ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... and Spear'! Then I corrected them, living for the most part alone, walking on the heath at Weybridge in dewy autumn mornings, a good deal pleased with what I had done, and more appalled than I can depict to you in words at what remained for me to do. I was thirty-one; I was the head of a family; I had lost my health; I had never yet paid my way, never yet made 200 pounds a year; my father had quite recently bought back and cancelled a book that was judged a failure: was this ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... And the mother read the letter to me. "Leola has spoke in five cultured cities," she went on. "Arvasita can depict how she was encored at Albuquerque ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... best of times be elected from the North, will always give them the majority in Congress and in the Electoral College. They will, at the very first election, take possession of the White House and the halls of Congress. I need not depict the ruin that would follow. Assumption of the rebel debt or repudiation of the Federal debt would be sure to follow; the oppression of the freedmen, the reaemendment of their State constitutions, and the reestablishment of slavery would be ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... devil-worship of the Shanars of Tinnevelly (an important part of Ma'bar), says: "Where they erect an image in imitation of their Brahman neighbours, the devil is generally of Brahmanical lineage. Such images generally accord with those monstrous figures with which all over India orthodox Hindus depict the enemies of their gods, or the terrific forms of Siva or Durga. They are generally made of earthenware, and painted white to look horrible in Hindu eyes." (The Tinnevelly ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... and neighbourhood," indeed! To learn and be able to depict with faithful accuracy what people "were doing, how they were living, and what they were thinking about"—all this being best done (domestic circumstances, nay, soul-workings and all!) through fleeting glimpses of shifting [82] panoramas of intelligent human beings! What ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... railway or hotel. And we may be certain that business companies would not go to the expense of setting up these photographs and pictures if they did not think that people were influenced by them and would be tempted to travel to the scenes they depict. ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... depict Daniel, distinguished for his wisdom and piety, as the successful, though sorely tried, opponent of heathenism, and as the representative of the Living God. His character to a great extent resembles that pourtrayed ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney

... saloon is in light oak with all carvings worked in the wood. A children's nursery off the main stairway in the deck house is done in mahogany. Enameled white panels depict the old favorite of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... but sleepy eye, a slightly aquiline nose an extremely short upper-lip, a broad cheek, and a rounded chin. In character he was weak, irresolute, wanting in physical courage, yet, as so often happens with weak characters, harsh, oppressive, and treacherous. The monuments depict him as neither a soldier nor an administrator, but as "one whose mind was turned almost exclusively towards the chimeras of sorcery and magic," which he regarded as of the utmost importance. Still, had ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... perceived that there were painted on the scroll actual musical staves, bars, and notes; and my interest being excited, I stood upon a chair so as better to examine them. Though time had somewhat obscured this portion of the picture as with a veil or film, yet I made out that the painter had intended to depict some definite piece of music. In another moment I saw that the air represented consisted of the opening bars of the Gagliarda in the suite by Graziani with which my brother and I were so well acquainted. Though I believe that I had not ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... to be his castle, and himself called upon to defend it with his life. Might made right; the strong hand often carried it against the law, and justice often, slept. It sounds like romance indeed to depict those times." ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... slumbered and slept. "After a long time," we read in another parable, "the Lord of those servants cometh and maketh a reckoning with them." What is the significance of the parable of the leaven hid in three measures of meal, and still more, of that group of parables which depict the growth of the kingdom—the parables of the sower, the wheat and tares, the mustard-seed, and the seed growing gradually? Does not all this point not to a great catastrophe nigh at hand, which should bring to an end the existing order of things, but rather to just such a future for the kingdom ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... unfavourable view of the influences upon human development of the Christian belief, even in its least corrupt forms, was not by any means untenable. Nay, he was at liberty to go further than this, and to depict religion as a natural infirmity of the human mind in its immature stages, just as there are specific disorders incident in childhood to the human body. Even on this theory, he was bound to handle it with the same calmness which he would have expected to find in a pathological ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley

... made in the present collection to gather together the patriotic poems of America, those which depict feelings as well as those which describe actions, since these latter are as indicative of the temper of the time. It is a collection, for the most part, of old favorites, for Americans have been quick to take to heart a stirring telling of a daring and ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... thought as he banged on the piano—the chords intended to depict musically the armless wonder's cannibalistic proclivities. Bosco not only bit their heads off, she bit her lips with vexation. It was too late; not a hand applauded when she came on and the fat lady laughed aloud and fanned herself vigorously. She hated Miss Bosco, ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... the Refuge Camps established in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio and other open spaces depict the sorrow and the suffering of the stricken people in words that appeal to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... understand pictures. Then comes the desire to make these for himself. Give him pencil and paper, give him chalk, charcoal, a paint-box, and other suitable materials, and he will set to work of his own accord to depict what he sees or has seen, either with his outward or his inward eye. Give him a lump of clay, and he will try to mould it into the likeness of something that has either attracted his attention, or presented itself to his imagination. ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... struggle which was going on between the peasant of France and the bourgeoisie; that deadly fight for the possession of the soil which resulted, as the great voyant plainly descried it must, in the Revolution of 1848, and the victory of the peasant. Balzac also intended to depict the demoralisation of the people by their abandonment of the Catholic religion; and the novel, in emulation of Victor Hugo and of Dumas, was to fill many volumes. The first version of it, entitled "Le Grand Proprietaire," was begun ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... it was a favourite study; and the impression which it left on the retentive mind of Byron may have had some share, perhaps, in suggesting that curious research through all the various Accounts of Shipwrecks upon record, by which he prepared himself to depict with such power a scene of the same description in Don Juan. The following affecting incident, mentioned by the author of this pamphlet, has been adopted, it will be seen, with but little change either of phrase or ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... savoury choice of words, and a realistic design setting forth the life a lodger might expect to lead within the walls of that palace of delight: these, he perceived, must be the elements of his advertisement. It was possible, upon the one hand, to depict the sober pleasures of domestic life, the evening fire, blond-headed urchins, and the hissing urn; but on the other, it was possible (and he almost felt as if it were more suited to his muse) to set forth the charms of an existence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of his wildness, of his violence. It has gradually augmented, until it assumes the appearance of aberration of intellect. Scarcely a day passes, I assure Mr. Traddles, on which some paroxysm does not take place. Mr. T. will not require me to depict my feelings, when I inform him that I have become accustomed to hear Mr. Micawber assert that he has sold himself to the D. Mystery and secrecy have long been his principal characteristic, have long replaced unlimited confidence. The slightest provocation, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... it might be as well to observe that the pretty picture which childhood's memories depict as adorning a page in our Physical Geography, with its fur-clad traveler sitting comfortably on his sledge, brandishing his whip and dashing gaily along behind a row of trotting dogs, is more imaginative than accurate. ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs

... of fiction as I understand it, which is not to offer mock history or a substitute for fact, but to present a thought in the form of a story, with as much realism as the requirements of idealism will permit. In presenting the thought which is the motive of "The Christian" my desire has been to depict, however imperfectly, the types of mind and character, of creed and culture, of social effort and religious purpose which I think I see in the life of England and America at the close of the nineteenth century. For such a task my own observation and reflection could not be ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... write when they are in love! But no man in his senses ever thinks of printing them. Here one of the sorrows of life, in which there is real poetry, gave itself vent; not that barren grief which the poet may only hint at, but never depict in its detail—misery and want: that animal necessity, in short, to snatch at least at a fallen leaf of the bread-fruit tree, if not at the fruit itself. The higher the position in which one finds oneself transplanted, the greater is the suffering. Everyday necessity is the stagnant ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... turned to me, and sweetly smiling, embraced me in silence. A second and a third time, she repeated the same movements, filling my soul at each new embrace with an unction which no words can describe. She looked about sixteen years of age. I could never depict the enchanting beauty and sweetness of her countenance. My companion was standing at the distance of two or three steps, as if preparing to descend to the forlorn-looking land, and from where she stood, she had a side view of the Blessed Virgin. I awoke with an impression of extraordinary ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... of trading in ivory and slaves. It formed a complete contrast to the atrocious dealings of the Kilwa traders, who are supposed to be, but are not, the subjects of the same Sultan. If one wished to depict the slave-trade in its most attractive, or rather least objectionable, form, he would accompany these gentlemen subjects of the Sultan of Zanzibar. If he would describe the land traffic in its most disgusting phases he would follow the Kilwa traders along ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... have painted the battle of to-day so much in detail," said he, "you have certainly not forgotten to depict the gallant conduct of the Russian troops to describe that truly exalted movement, when the Russians threw themselves to the earth, as if dead, before advancing columns of the Prussian army, and allowed them to pass over them; then, springing up, shot ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... she continued gaily, in the tone of the director of an entertainment issuing invitations to a performance: "Your attention is requested! In this city of weavers the noble Thracian, Althea, will depict before you all the weaver of weavers, Arachne, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... that we do not feel the want of story, which is simple, yet enough. I wonder that you do not oftener unbend to more of the same kind. I have some sympathy with the softer affections, though very little in my way, and no one can depict them so truly and successfully as yourself. I have half a mind to pay you in kind, or rather unkind, for I have just 'supped full of horror' in two cantos of darkness ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... to be tinged with the ashen hue of the commonplace, though the scenes they attempt to depict are all ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... Thirteen had made easily the best newspaper fodder which the Luzon campaigns furnished, and the sparkling wine of recognition eventually found its own. It must be repeated that only a boy-mind can depict war in a way that ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... if we can forget for a moment, all that we in our youth learned to call beautiful, not less beautiful. A Finn is not a Greek, and Wainamoinen was not a Homer [Achilles?]; but if the poet may take his colors from that nature by which he is surrounded, if he may depict the men with whom he lives, the Kalevala possesses merits not dissimilar from those of the Illiad, and will claim its place as the fifth national epic of the world, side by side with the Ionian Songs, with the Mahabharata, the Shalinameth, and ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... which we have assumed, that we have even forgotten in whose name our labor is prosecuted; and the very people whom we have undertaken to serve have become the objects of our scientific and artistic activity. We study and depict them for our amusement and diversion. We have totally forgotten that what we need to do is not to study and depict them, but to serve them. To such a degree have we lost sight of this duty which ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... They try to depict golden lands of radiant sunshine, where beautiful couples stroll hand-in-hand for ever and the voice of the turtle replaces that of the raucous vendor of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various

... difficult it is even for great men to escape from being Snobs. It is very well for the reader, whose fine feelings are disgusted by the assertion that Kings, Princes, Lords, are Snobs, to say 'You are confessedly a Snob yourself. In professing to depict Snobs, it is only your own ugly mug which you are copying with a Narcissus-like conceit and fatuity.' But I shall pardon this explosion of ill-temper on the part of my constant reader, reflecting upon the misfortune ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... thunderings amongst the clouds, as the lightnings crown its summit, is far more grand and imposing, more sublime and inspiring, than are those subjects presented to us by pagan authors, however refined and elegant may be the language employed to convey their thoughts and depict their scenes. Wherefore, the Biblical narratives furnish the highest and best models and the richest sources of poetic inspiration; and "all great poets have had recourse to those ever-living fountains ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... a former famous Captain of the Herbal fleet? With the would-be Spectator's lament that Gerard's graphic drawings are regrettedly wanting here, the author is fain to concur. He feels that the absence of appropriate cuts to depict the various herbs is quite a deficiency: but the hope is inspired that a still future Edition may serve to supply this need. Certain botanical mistakes pointed out with authority by the Pharmaceutical Journal have here been ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... receive, is our wonder at the achievement; then, to such as so believe, this treatise is not written. But if, as the writer conceives, works of Fine Art delight us by the interest the objects they depict excite in the beholder, just as those objects in nature would excite his interest; if by any association of ideas in the one case, by the same in the other, without reference to the representations being other than the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... not right in saying that there is nothing in the writings of any former poetaster to equal the silly and conceited jargon of the present versifier? Having favoured us with the emphatic lines in italics, to depict the physical concomitants of Maud's guilt, he again has recourse to asterisks, to veil the mental throes by which her mind is tortured into madness by remorse: and very wisely—for they lead us to suppose that the writer could have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... which depict one side of provincial life in the time of the Empire and the Restoration, it would not be easy to understand the opening scene of this history, an incident which took place in the great salon one evening towards the end of October 1822. The card-tables were forsaken, the Collection of Antiquities—elderly ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... the variety of hill and valley, wood and lawn, rock and meadow, waterfall and lake, rose and vine, which the landscape artists also loved to depict, and which, together with ruined temples and castles, unknown in Paradise, became the cherished ideal of landscape gardening. By the influence of Paradise Lost upon the gardeners, no less than by the influence of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso upon ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... Roland Pertwee (Boni and Liveright, Inc.). This series of twelve short stories depict the life of an English touring actor with a quiet artistry of humor suggestive of Leonard Merrick's best work. They are quite frankly studies in sentiment, but they successfully avoid sentimentality for the most part, and in "Eliphalet ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... which I am endeavoring to depict is most distinctly to be met with in England: there laws are esteemed not so much because they are good as because they are old; and if it be necessary to modify them in any respect, or to adapt them the changes which time operates in society, recourse is had to the most inconceivable contrivances ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... distinguished being, Ultimus hominum venustiorum, will find the last remnants of the Gentlemanly Party in some Indian tribe, Apaches or Sioux. I see him raised to the rank of chief, and leading the red-skinned and painted cavaliers on the war-path against the Vulgarians of the ultimate Democracy. To depict this dandy chief would require the art at once of a Cooper and a Ouida. ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... Rhapsodies." They portray the life, the scenes, the mood of the Gypsy camp, vividly, brilliantly, yet with an undercurrent of tragedy—the tragedy of homeless wanderers. Because they represent life, because they are true to life, because they depict life with a wonderful union of realism and beauty, they will, in spite of critical detraction, live as long as the Bach fugues, the Beethoven sonatas or the Wagner ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb

... It is true that these were for the most part elderly dignitaries, distinguished military officers with blue-black whiskers, retired old Indian judges, and the like, occupied with their victuals, and generally careless to please. But that solemn happiness of the Colonel, who shall depict it:—that look of affection with which he greeted his daughter as she entered, flounced to the waist, twinkling with innumerable jewels, holding a dainty pocket-handkerchief, with smiling eyes, dimpled ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... frequently splinters into atoms our most compact theories, I thought I beheld a form moving slowly through the glades of one of the prismatic forests. I looked more attentively, and found that I was not mistaken. Words cannot depict the anxiety with which I awaited the nearer approach of this mysterious object. Was it merely some inanimate substance, held in suspense in the attenuated atmosphere of the globule, or was it an animal endowed with vitality and motion? It approached, flitting behind the gauzy, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... which Mr. TROWBRIDGE begins is followed through successive chapters by thousands who have read and re-read many times his preceding tales. One of his greatest charms is his absolute truthfulness. He does not depict little saints, or incorrigible rascals, but just boys. This same fidelity to nature is seen in his latest book, "The Scarlet Tanager, and Other Bipeds." There is enough adventure in this tale to commend it to the liveliest ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... and Light. The braziers and cauldrons symbolize Fire. The two sentinel columns, flanking the tower on either side, are Earth and Air. The eight paintings, by Frank Brangwyn of London, in the corridors in great richness of color depict Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Thus ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt

... scaffold; amid a hush, the tender love theme reappears, but is obliterated by a sudden crash of the full orchestra, and all is still. Berlioz, however, does not let his hero rest in the grave, but adds a fifth movement to show him in the infernal regions. Piccolo and other wild instruments depict the fury of the demons, a parody on the Dies Irae follows, and even the tender love-theme is not spared, but is turned into the most ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... is describing; but I think that a man of a naturally great, wise, and lofty spirit is so disposed as a rule to feel that his qualities are instinctive, and so ready to credit other people with them, that it does not occur to him to depict those qualities. I am not sure that the best equipment for an artist is not that he should see and admire great and noble and beautiful things, and feel his own deficiency in them acutely, desiring them with the desire of the moth for the star. The best characters in my own ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the potter no doubt intended to depict one of those many legends, still current, of the cultus hero and heroine of her particular family or priesthood. Supposing the reptilian figure to be a totemic one, our minds naturally recall the legend of the Snake-hero ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... Roland in full, and wondering what it was all about. My symphonic poem would tell them all, as I firmly believed in the power of music to portray definitely certain soul-states, to mirror moods, to depict, rather indefinitely to be sure, certain phenomena of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... reader will readily depict the state of mind in which the families of the arrested gentlemen were left after the midnight visit of Perez' band. That there was no more sleep in those households that night will be easily understood. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... living man. It is quite certain that, in obedience to the desire I felt of terminating my sufferings, even by my own hand, nothing could have been to me more welcome than death at that moment of anguish and despair. Religion itself could depict nothing more insupportable after death than the racking agony with which I was then convulsed. Yet, by a miracle, only within the power of omnipotent love, I soon regained strength enough to express my gratitude to Heaven for restoring me to ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... I have, from time to time, represented William as shabby, bulky, shapeless, hairy, and altogether impossible as far as appearance goes. Can any words depict my astonishment at seeing him so suddenly transformed, glorified, redeemed and clean-shaven? His figure, which once appeared so stodgy, now looked merely strong and athletic encased in a well-fitting morning coat, a waistcoat of a discreet shade of smoke grey, with ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... draped the walls, whereon the battles of Judas Maccabaeus were set forth, with the Jewish warriors in plate of proof, with crest and lance and banderole, as the naive artists of the day were wont to depict them. A few rich settles and bancals, choicely carved and decorated with glazed leather hangings of the sort termed or basane, completed the furniture of the apartment, save that at one side of the dais there stood a lofty perch, upon which a cast of three solemn Prussian gerfalcons sat, hooded ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle



Words linked to "Depict" :   sketch, artistic production, limn, delineate, render, map, depiction, show, depictive, draw, picture, represent, expound, exposit, illustrate, portray, artistic creation, adumbrate, set forth, art, interpret, outline



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