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Portray   /pɔrtrˈeɪ/   Listen
Portray

verb
(past & past part. portrayed; pres. part. portraying)  (Written also pourtray)
1.
Portray in words.
2.
Make a portrait of.  Synonyms: depict, limn.
3.
Assume or act the character of.  Synonym: impersonate.  "The actor portrays an elderly, lonely man"
4.
Represent abstractly, for example in a painting, drawing, or sculpture.  Synonym: present.



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"Portray" Quotes from Famous Books



... little repast was over, she rested her head upon her hands, and from her soul went forth a prayer for guidance and protection,—more deep and earnest than words can portray. ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... all the Evangelists, was best qualified to do justice to this matchless picture. Baptized himself with the spirit of love, his inspired pencil could best portray the lights and shadows in this lovely and loving household. Pre-eminently like his Lord, he could best delineate the scene of all others where the tenderness of that tender Saviour shone most conspicuous. He was the disciple who had leant ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... this section of Whitman's work soon discovers that it is not the purpose of the poet to portray battles and campaigns, or to celebrate special leaders or military prowess, but rather to chant the human aspects of anguish that follow in the train of war. He perhaps feels that the permanent condition of modern society is that of peace; that war as a business, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... accountability for sin if it does not wholly excuse him as the victim of heredity, environment or society. Literature also, as reflected not only in the Greek tragedies but in the writings of authors from Shakespeare to Shaw portray the evil doer as the ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... a reflection similar to what is entertained by one who has dropped from a precipice to the midway ledge over the abyss, where caution of the whole sensitive being is required for simple self-preservation. How could she have been induced to study and portray him! It seemed a form ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... determined to do justice to the honesty of my object by speaking out. In drawing the two characters, whose actions bring about the darker scenes of my story, I did not forget that it was my duty, while striving to portray them naturally, to put them to a good moral use; and at some sacrifice, in certain places, of dramatic effect (though I trust with no sacrifice of truth to Nature), I have shown the conduct of the vile, as always, in a greater or less degree, associated ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... they wrote endures. They stood upon the heights and saw the struggles of man with himself, with other men, and with nature. This panorama generated thoughts and feelings in them, and these they could not but portray. And so literature and life are identical and not cooerdinates, as some ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... heart—viz. the introduction of the entire workshop. The second painting in the centre of the opposite wall, represented Mr Clayton. The likeness was a failure, and the colours were coarse and glaring; but there needed no instruction to know that the carefully framed production attempted to portray the unenviable man, who, in spite of his immorality and shameless life, was still revered and idolized by the blind disciples who had taken him for their guide. This portrait was Mrs Thompson's peculiar property. There were no other articles of virtu in the spacious apartment; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... of using them was matter for complaint when existence might have been so delightful a boon without it, full of affinities and communities in every direction. She had not, I am convinced, any of the notions of a crusader upon this popular subject, nor may I portray her either shocked or revolted, only rather bored, being a creature whom it was unkind to hamper; and she would have explained quite in these simple terms the reason why Stephen Arnold's saving neutrality ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... plain that no description, however minute and glowing, could perfectly represent the life and love of the Redeemer, as displayed in his own person. The imperfection of language rendered it impossible to portray the glorious reality. What inspired or seraphic pen, though dipped in heaven, could display all that was seen when they "beheld his glory?" Had Omnipotence remanded back the flood of ages, and recalled from the invisible state the illustrious saints that had been ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... hard. It was his fashion at this time to stand at his desk—a rude thing built for him by the village carpenter—and in the pauses which came in between his actual spells of writing, to stride about his limited territory, enacting the scenes he was striving to portray, and shaping his sentences in such an impassioned undertone as an actor will employ in the study of a part. He was at the limit of his walk from the window, thus engaged, when the door was violently and without warning broken open in such fashion that its edge struck him on the face. Here ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... was written for the Columbian by Jeremy Belknap, who sought to portray humorously in it the history of the country and ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... the Southern evening atmosphere in "Barbara Frietchie?" And in such a play as "Girls," did he not delight in the accessories, like the clatter of the steam-pipe radiator, for particular New York environment which he knew so graphically how to portray? ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch

... as yet begun. I see so many beautiful horizons, such infinitely varied tints, that the palette of the Divine Painter will alone, after the darkness of this life, be able to supply me with the colours wherewith I may portray the wonders that my soul descries. Since, however, you have expressed a desire to penetrate into the hidden sanctuary of my heart, and to have in writing what was the most consoling dream of my life, I will end this story of my soul, by an act of obedience. If you will allow me, it is to ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... word was said for some time after my entrance. Nothing broke the stillness but the regular click of the matron's knitting-needles. At times the fire threw out a brief and dusky gleam which twinkled on the old man's glasses and hovered doubtfully round our circle, but was far too faint to portray the individuals who composed it. Were we not like ghosts? Dreamy as the scene was, might it not be a type of the mode in which departed people who had known and loved each other here would hold communion in eternity? We were ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... he not say at St. Helena, in speaking of the negotiations at Chatillon, "A thunderbolt alone could have saved us: to treat, to conclude, was to yield foolishly to the enemy." These words forcibly portray Napoleon's character. It must also be borne in mind how much he was captivated by the immortality of the great names which history has bequeathed to our admiration, and which are perpetuated from generation to generation. Napoleon was resolved that his name should re-echo in ages to come, from ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... often caught. I may as well confess it—it was intoxicating liquor, and that mainly, which had led me into my various mad marrying schemes and made me the matrimonial monomaniac and lunatic lover that I was for years. What my folly, my insanity caused me to suffer, these pages have attempted to portray. I had grown older, wiser, and certainly better. I now only devoted myself strictly to my business, and I found profit as well as ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott

... tried the latch of the door. I hastened to prevent an intrusion, and then immediately returned to my dying antagonist. But what human language can adequately portray that astonishment, that horror which possessed me at the spectacle then presented to view? The brief moment in which I averted my eyes had been sufficient to produce, apparently, a material change in the arrangements at the upper or farther end of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... secular journals, and all the pulpits, denounced the proposition. It would be an outrage, a sacrilege, a blasphemy. I thought so then; I think so now. The attempt of ordinary play actors amid worldly surroundings, and before gay assemblages, to portray the sufferings of Christ and His assassination would have been a horrible indecency that would have defied the heavens and invoked a plague worse than that for the turning back of which the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau was established. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... magnificence, and the high breeding of the Lindons, but anything less high-bred than the head of the Lindons, in his moments of wrath, it would be hard to conceive. His language I will not attempt to portray,—but his observations consisted, mainly, of abuse of Paul, glorification of the Lindons, ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... attempt will be made to give the reasons for such assertions. The justification of such affirmations will, it is believed, become apparent later, when the organization of living beings shall have been portrayed as far as the space and the ability at the command of the writer may enable him to portray them. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... that fervor and unction of manner so indispensable to eloquence. His theme, perhaps, was intemperance; and with nerves tingling from the action of liquids which no swine will drink, and of the plant which no swine will eat, he would portray most vividly the terrible ruin wrought by intoxicating drink. Do not believe, however, that in all this he was dishonest or hypocritical; he was merely self-ignorant—blind to the fact that in condemning the alcoholic inebriate he was by every word condemning himself as well. This ignorance, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... has undergone modifications even more significant than those of hedonism, and involving at least one radically new group of conceptions. Among the Greeks rationalism and hedonism alike are eudaemonistic. They aim to portray the fulness of life that makes "the happy man." In the ethics of Aristotle, whose synthetic mind weaves together these different strands, the Greek ideal finds its most complete expression as "the high-minded man," with all his powers and trappings. But the great ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... which they call the Naguals. These writings are known as Repertories or Calendars, and they are also used to discover articles lost or stolen, and to effect cures of diseases. Some have a wheel painted in them, like that of Pythagoras, described by the Venerable Bede; others portray a lake surrounded by the Naguals in the form of various animals. Some of the Nagualist Masters claim as their patron and ruler Cuchulchan, and they possessed a certain formula of prayer to him, written in the Popoluca tongue (which was called Baha in their ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton

... bi-centenary of that event, the army of women who wield the pen will erect a statue to the memory of that courageous and brilliant pathfinder. When they do so, two memorable scenes in the life of their heroine will probably be represented in bas-relief upon the pedestal. The one will portray Miss Burney, hopeless of ever inducing a biased public to read a woman's work, making a bonfire of the manuscripts to which she had devoted such patient care. The other will illustrate the famous scene when Miss Burney danced a jig to Daddy Crisp round the great ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... not enough even to attempt a sketch of her lover's profile, that she might be detected in the design. There she fell miserably short of the true heroic height. At present she did not know her own poverty, for she had no lover to portray. There was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no, not even a baronet! There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door; no, not one young man whose origin was unknown. Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... your vivid imaginations will easily portray in far more glowing and picturesque colors than our poor pencil can paint. So we leave you to conjure up all the bright visions you choose with which to deck the futures of our young debutants in the great drama of ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... of smoke, the rattle of musketry, the shouts of the assailants, the shrieks of women and children, and the yells of the savage warriors, presented a picture of earthly woe which neither the pen nor the pencil can portray. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... holiness, Is a fair page to look upon with love In this world's volume oft defaced by sin, And marr'd with misery. And he, who laid His earthly vestments down this day, doth leave Such tablet for the heart. 'Twas good to see That what he preach'd to others, he portray'd Before them in example, that the eye Adding its stronger comment to the ear, Might lend new impulse to the flock he led Toward ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... the time of the lawn fete," she said. "That morning a woman begged to see me, sobbing so piteously I could not refuse her an audience. No power of words could portray the sad story of suffering and wrong she poured into my ears, of a niece—beautiful, young, passionate, and willful—and of her prayers and useless expostulations, and of a handsome, dissolute lover to whom the girl was passionately ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... military uniform, with white coat and tight breeches, high top boots, shining silver breastplate and silver helmet, surmounted by an eagle, the dress of the Prussian Guard Regiment so dear to those who portray romantic and kingly roles upon the stage, a figure on whom all eyes were fixed, as splendid as that of Lohengrin, drawn by his fairy swan, coming to rescue the unjustly accused Princess. And, alas, the Germans like all this pomp and splendour. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... same crayon an accurate outline of Massachusetts Bay, and finished up Champlain's own sketch by introducing the Merrimac River, which, not having been seen, owing to the presence of Plum Island, which stretches like a curtain before its mouth, he had omitted to portray. The intelligent natives volunteered a bit of history. By placing six pebbles at equal distances, they intimated that Massachusetts Bay was occupied by six tribes, and governed by as many chiefs. [45] He learned ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... a picture in which we have sought faithfully to portray the prominent features of those wild regions that lie to the north of the Canadas, and in which we have endeavoured to describe some of the peculiarities of a class of men whose histories seldom meet the public eye, we feel tempted to add ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... failed, he will record, indeed, all that is interesting and important in military and political transactions; but he will not think anything too trivial for the gravity of history which is not too trivial to promote or diminish the happiness of man. He will portray in vivid colours the domestic society, the manners, the amusements, the conversation of the Greeks. He will not disdain to discuss the state of agriculture, of the mechanical arts, and of the conveniences of life. The progress of painting, of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the weaker sex was punished. That attempts at abuse were frequent I know from allusions and direct statements made in the letters which passed by way of the sweeper from the girls to their captive admirers. I might say that the senders of these letters, whom I shall attempt to portray presently, have my unmitigated and unqualified admiration. By all odds they possessed the most terrible vitality and bravery of any human beings, women or men, whom it has ever been my extraordinary luck to encounter, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... comparison, we call sketches. Is not our would-be slight unwittingly the reverse? Is not a sketch, after all, fuller of meaning, to one who knows how to read it, than a finished affair, which is very apt to end with itself, barren of fruit? Does not one's own imagination elude one's power to portray it? Is it not forever flitting will-o'-the-wisp-like ahead of us just beyond exact definition? For the soul of art lies in what art can suggest, and nothing is half so suggestive as the half expressed, not even a double entente. To hint a great ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... Goncourt, "is secondary. The authors have rather preferred to paint the modern young woman as she is: the product of the artistic and masculine system of education in force during the last thirty years. We have also attempted to portray the modern young college man influenced by the republican ideas of the time since Louis Philippe." Edmond de Goncourt died on July ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... had retired from the world, and embraced this dismal life in expiation of some crime. He was a melancholy man, who pursued his art in the solitude of his cell, but made it a source of penance to him. His employment was to portray, either on canvas or in waxen models, the human face and human form, in the agonies of death and in all the stages of dissolution and decay. The fearful mysteries of the charnel house were unfolded in his ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... No words can portray the stupefaction and rage of Sir Rudolph when a man who had managed to slip unobserved from the castle at the time of its capture, bore the news to him in the forest. All opposition there had ceased, and the whole ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... as Hegel conceives it, is to portray in systematic form the evolution of the World-Spirit in all its necessary ramifications. These ramifications themselves are conceived as constituting complete wholes, such as logic, nature, mind, society, history, art, religion, philosophy, so that the universe ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... our comfortable tradition and sure faith. Would he not betray himself an alien cynic who should otherwise portray Main Street, or distress the citizens by speculating whether there may not be ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... to his it seemed to Darrell that he was looking into the face of one of the saints whom the old masters loved to portray centuries ago, so spiritual was it, so devoid of ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... Lewes was the author. Charles Dickens also saw through the disguise, and wrote to the publisher declaring his opinion that Adam Bede was written by a woman. When this was denied, he still persisted in his conviction, detecting the womanly insight into character, her failure adequately to portray men, while of women "she seemed to ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... voice that spoke next thrilled the listeners outside with an emotion that we shall not attempt to portray. Except that their ears could detect in it the faintest possible emotion of triumph, it was in all respects as cool, resolute, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... five verses of this chapter portray a dark list of eighteen sins which will characterize professed Christians in the last days; for those who bear the characters described, have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof. The three following verses plainly describe certain ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... delight the rents and breaks, and irregularities which, to another man, would have been offensive; and then, gifted with infinite readiness in composition, but also with infinite affection for the kind of subjects he had to portray, he was sent to preserve, in an almost innumerable series of drawings, every one made on the spot, the aspect borne, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, by cities which, in a few years more, rekindled ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... that I shall portray in the following pages is not a chapter of the world's past history; it is the picture as it clearly developed itself to my mind's eye, on the publication of the first despatch of the Viceroy Alexieff to the Tsar of Russia. And, simultaneously ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... altar. From the ceiling are suspended wax and plaster of paris reproductions called ex-votos of literally every portion of the body—feet, hands, limbs, heads, all portions—the ceiling space is completely covered with these uncanny figures. The wall is hung with pictures, which portray all sorts of scenes, such as a man in shipwreck, a carpenter falling down a ladder, a child falling out of a second-story window, death chambers of various people, etc. These figures and pictures are intended to represent miracles. When ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray

... Military Academy earned with it the temporary rank of Colonel of Engineers] and many think it a very good likeness. To me, the expression of strength peculiar to his face is wanting, and the mouth fails to portray that sweetness of disposition so characteristic of his countenance. Still, it was like him at that time. My father never could bear to have his picture taken, and there are no likenesses of him that really give his sweet expression. Sitting for a picture was such a serious business ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... we cannot accurately portray the anatomical details of a single ancestral stage, can we perhaps discover what function governed its life and was the aim of its existence? Did it live to eat, or to move, or to think? If we cannot tell exactly how it looked, can we tell what it lived for and what ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... lapse of sixty years, the historian who attempts to portray the era of Lincoln is still faced with almost impossible demands and still confronted with arbitrary points of view. It is out of the question, in a book so brief as this must necessarily be, to meet all these demands or to alter ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... I cannot portray the absurdity of the doctrine of gradual abolition, and the danger and folly of attempting to mitigate the system of slavery, more strikingly, than by presenting the following eloquent extracts from a speech of the Rev. Dr. Thomson of Edinburgh, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... significant of these is his discourse on Shakespeare. In the first volume of the Athenaeum, Shakespeare's universality had already been regarded as "the central point of romantic art." As Romanticist, it was Schlegel's office to portray the independent development of the modern English stage, and to defend Shakespeare against the familiar accusations of barbaric crudity and formlessness. In surveying the field, it was likewise incumbent upon him to demonstrate in what respects the classic ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... describe the looks or feelings with which the three friends received this information. Ebony's eyes alone would have taken at least half-an-hour of the pencil to portray. ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... dramatic series of events than it has occurred to an all-wise Providence to put into the lives of His creatures; that, by the exercise of that misleading faculty which the writer styles his imagination, he can portray phases of life which shall prove of more absorbing interest or of greater moral value to his readers than those to be met with in the every-day life ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs

... South has been noted for its beautiful Quadroon women. Bottles of ink, and reams of paper, have been used to portray the "finely-cut and well-moulded features," the "silken curls," the "dark and brilliant eyes," the "splendid forms," the "fascinating smiles," and "accomplished manners" of these impassioned and voluptuous daughters of the two races,—the unlawful product of the crime ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown

... narratives may be regarded as separate cantos of a war epic, which is fairly comparable for its vividness of portrayal to Stephen Crane's masterpiece, "The Red Badge of Courage." Few writers, other than these two, have been able to portray the naked ugliness of warfare, and the passions which warfare engenders, with more brutal power. Time alone will tell whether these stories have a chance of permanence, but I am disposed to rank them with that other ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... search was completely baffled. Dalton's silence was therefore taken as an evidence of guilt, and his refusal to confess on a friend was regarded as a silly attempt to excite public sympathy. When the counsel ventured to bring this forward to the jury, and tried to portray Dalton as a man who chose rather to suffer than to say that which might bring a friend to destruction, it was regarded as a wild, Quixotic, and maudlin piece of sentimentalism on the part of said counsel, and was treated by the prosecution with unspeakable scorn and ridicule. ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... Belles Demoiselles Plantation, in the marshy lowlands towards the mouth of the Mississippi. Cable was the leader in the noteworthy literary movement which has influenced nearly all southern writers since the war of 1861—a movement of which the chief importance lay in the determination to portray local scenes, characters and historical episodes with accuracy instead of merely imaginative romanticism, and to interest readers by fidelity and sympathy in the portrayal of things well known to the authors. Other ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... portray salient characteristics of the life on the island, to describe the various acts of the reigning government, to point out the evils of colonial rule, and to figure the general historical and geographical conditions in a manner that enables the reader to form a ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... so that by the time the dagoba at the top was reached they had passed through a course of religious instruction, as it were, and were ready, with enlightened eyes, to enter and behold the image of Buddha, symbolically left imperfect, as beyond the power of human art to realize or portray. From base to summit the whole hill is really a great picture-bible of the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... wild natives, rising by the influence of a few good Englishmen from lawless misrule to a settled government, where vice is punished without partiality, is very beautiful to philanthropists, and makes one think better of human nature and its capabilities. I wish I could portray the hilly and thorny road by which this has been attained! It would, methinks, create a new interest in Sarawak, if the past and the present could be fairly set before the discerning world; we should again hear of missionaries longing ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... God-persuading, divinely appointed to rule, fixed in their power, far above suspicion. Yet they were obsessed by the sensitive, covert dread of exposure that ever lurks spectrally under pharisaism's specious robe, so when there appeared this work of a "miserable Indian," who dared to portray them and the conditions that their control produced exactly as they were—for the indefinable touch by which the author gives an air of unimpeachable veracity to his story is perhaps its greatest artistic merit—the effect upon the mercurial Spanish temperament was, to say the least, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... shown the Socialists' actual position through their attitude towards progressive capitalism. An equally concrete method of dealing with Socialist actualities is to portray the various tendencies within the movement. The Socialist position can never be clearly defined except by contrasting it with those policies that the movement has rejected or is in the process of rejecting to-day. ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... did Washington, apparently from French sources, and read and reread elaborate "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation." In the fashion of the age of Chesterfield they portray the perfect gentleman. He is always to remember the presence of others and not to move, read, or speak without considering what may be due to them. In the true spirit of the time he is to learn to defer to persons of superior quality. Tactless laughter at his own wit, jests ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... Socialists are likely to agree with the presentation made of fundamental principles. But the same cannot be said on the subject of the manner in which we portray the ultimate aims to ourselves; how the measures and special institutions shall be shaped which will establish the aimed-at independence and equality of all members of the sexes, consequently that of man ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... Now, Fortunatus, bend thy happy course Unto thy father's house, to greet thy dearest friends; And if that still thy aged sire survive, Thy presence will revive his drooping spirits, And cause his wither'd cheeks be sprent with youthful blood, Where death of late was portray'd to the quick. But, soft; who comes ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... embody every beauty. The artist of the Renaissance on the other hand delighted not so much in the type as in the variation from it. Preoccupied with the unique mystery of the individual soul—a sense of which was Christianity's gift to Christendom—he endeavored to portray that wherein a particular person is unique and singular. Acutely conscious also of his own individuality, instead of effacing it he made his work the vehicle and expression of that individuality. The history of Renaissance architecture, as Symonds has pointed ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... to be controlled by Rome alone. Has not the exercise of it been exemplified in the inquisition? Was it not felt in the massacre of St. Bartholomew? I will not stop to ask the power and control of a Madame Maintenon, or Du Barry: nor whose influences controlled them. Does not all history portray ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... him to portray a Gretchen. All his pictures were Phryne,—Phryne in triumph, in ruin, in a palace, in a poor-house, on a bed of roses, on a hospital mattress; Phryne laughing with a belt of jewels about her supple waist; Phryne lying with the stones of the dead-house under ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... have successfully withstood the ravages of time, two apparently represent lizards, and the third seems to portray a monstrosity—a human being with a rudimentary tail. A German philosopher might possibly build upon this embryonic tail a theory to prove that the Australian aboriginal is indeed and in fact the missing link, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... perfectly legitimate for the animal story writer to put himself inside the animal he wishes to portray, and tell how life and the world look from that point of view; but he must always be true to the facts of the case, and to the limited intelligence for ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... also of pearls. She has large eyes, a candid expression. Cagnolo da Parma will say of her, when she goes to Ferrara, that she has 'il naso profilato e bello, li capelli aurei, gli occhi bianchi, la bocea alquanto grande con li denti candiaissimi.' Literature will portray this sweet-faced little blond girl as a Messalina, a poisoner, and incestuous with her brothers and her father. At this time Lucrezia had just married Giovanni Sforza, although as a matter of fact the two never lived together. Giovanni Sforza is the little young man who appears there in ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... aim of the little tale was to portray the horrors and sin of duelling, and she had written it with great care; but well aware of the vast, powerful current of popular opinion that she was bravely striving to stem, and fully conscious ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... motives prompting them. "They all hate me and treat me ill," he says, speaking of Spencer's and St. Vincent's administrations. "I cannot, my dear friend, recall to mind any one real act of kindness, but all of unkindness." It must, of course, be remembered that, while such expressions portray faithfully the working of the inner spirit, and serve, by contrast, to measure the Nelson of 1801 against the Nelson of 1796, they were addressed to the most intimate of friends, and do not necessarily imply a corresponding bearing before the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... one may describe an examination of this kind, a narrative can convey no more idea of the real scene than a heap of cold ashes can give the effect of a glowing fire. One can note down each word, each ejaculation, but phraseology is powerless to portray the repressed animation, the impassioned movements, the studied reticence, the varied tones of voice, the now bold, now faltering glances, full of hatred and suspicion, which follow each other in rapid succession, mostly on the prisoner's side, but not ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... imperceptibly march through the ravines and force their way to the sea, fills one with awe indescribable. The knowledge that the ice is moving from beneath one's feet thrills one with a curious sensation hard to portray. ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax

... fantasy, desolate and cold to the heart in an alien air, she sought for poppy and mandragora, and in some sort finding them dreamed again, though not for herself, not as before. It can hardly be said that she was unhappy. She walked in a pageant of strange miseries, and the pomp of woe was hers to portray. Those changelings from some fateful land, those passionate, pale women, the milestones of whose pilgrimage spelled love, ruin, despair, and death, they were her kindred, her sisters. Day and night they ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... of God" was written to express the truth as I see it—to portray life, not as we would like to have it, but ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis

... King, as we have intimated before, was a quaint-minded and ingenious person, modest in stature but with a twinkling and roving eye. He was one of the leading spirits of the OUDS, known in full as the Oxford University Dramatic Society, and his ability to portray females of the lower classes had been the delight of more than one Shakespearean rendering. No one who saw him as Juliet's nurse in a certain private theatrical performance in the hall of New College can ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley

... now the hour, when love of home melts through Men's hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu; And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way, Thrills, if he hears the distant vesper-bell, That seems to ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... endeavours to conceal, as being calculated to injure him in the opinion of others. Such persons consequently do not give themselves out for what they actually are; their secret escapes from them unwittingly, or against their will. Rightly, therefore, to portray such characters, the poet must lend us his own peculiar talent for observation, that we may fully understand them. His art consists in making the character appear through slight hints and stolen glimpses, and in so placing the spectator, that whatever delicacy of observation it may ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... reason for her agitation, based on her transient interest in Miss Tescheron, I imagined, for she had only met her for a few minutes at a time. It must have been my eloquence, the power of my dramatic art to so vividly portray the hideous Hosley that she became quite as much affected as if she had intimately known the criminal, and had followed his creeping, serpentine ways for bringing the next creature into his power. It rather pleased me to find that I could exercise this wonderful ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... her person try To image and portray? How paint the face, the form how trace In which those ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... Beaumont and Fletcher, more than "the master of the revels to mankind," and led critical opinion to the conclusion that he was the foremost man of his time and of all time, with power to search the secrets of all hearts, to measure the abysses of all passion, to portray the weakness of all human foibles, to create characters who act and speak and are as much alive to us as the men and women we daily meet, to teach mankind the profoundest philosophy, the littleness of the great, the greatness of humility and truth, and ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... caught his observant eye. However striking Ward Beecher's word-painting may be, it would I opine, have required the marvellous pencil of the author of "The House with the Seven Gables," Nathaniel Hawthorne, becomingly to portray all the arcana of such a building as the Chien d'Or (the old Post Office), with its ghastly memories ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... noble figures so exquisitely painted; typifying in the one on the right, the Goddess of Liberty watching over the destiny of the republic. In the one on the left, Liberty with her torch lighting the world. So perfectly did the painter's art portray the "Spirit of '76," that a new tide of patriotic devotion to the republic and its glorious flag, swelled the hearts of all who saw ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... my Howqua tea. And oh! leave it not without Ivory handle and a spout. Where thy curious hand must trace Father Mathew's temperate face, So that he may ever seem Spouting tea and breathing steam. On its sides do not display Fawns and laughing nymphs at play But portray, instead of these, Funny groups of fat Chinese: On its lid a mandarin, Modelled to resemble Lin. When completed, artisan, I will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various

... wished to portray a scene of superlative misery, which the pen cannot describe, the present might employ his strongest powers of pathos.—The pleading eye of Arthur fixed on the face of Isabel, while she gazed on her father with the blank features of astonishment and despair. Jobson now understood ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... artist Hoffmann, it is said, became In features like the features that he strove To paint,—those of his Lord. Unconsciously His thoughts developed in his face that which He sought upon the canvas to portray; And with the walls about him covered o'er With pictures he had made, he toiled and thought And gave the world his ideal of the Christ, Becoming more and ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... time the countenance of Mr. Samuel Weller had exhibited an expression of the most overwhelming and absorbing astonishment that the imagination can portray. After looking from Job to Jingle, and from Jingle to Job in profound silence, he softly ejaculated the words, 'Well, I AM damn'd!' which he repeated at least a score of times; after which exertion, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... followed what pen may portray! the wild anguish of some expressed in incoherent words, shrieks of terror, and cries for help, as they seemed to hear amid the roar of the elements the hurried footsteps of the assassins, and to see in the lightning's flash ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... out of sight; their footsteps seem to linger in the rooms where once they walked—their shades seem to protect the books they once handled. What Browning felt about frescoes may be applied—mutatis mutandis—to books in such an asylum as I am trying to portray: ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark

... portray Nature from any slight or transient acquaintance. A reporter cannot step out between the sessions of a caucus and give a racy abstract of the landscape. It may consume the best hours of many days to certify for one's self the simplest out-door ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... him the man and the poet were a single individuality, we shall also portray the latter when we speak of the former. Irritability and versatility, the accompaniments of poetical and of rhetorical talents, dominated him to a high degree, but an acquired rather than an innate moderation kept them in equilibrium. Our friend was capable of enthusiasm in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... of Day, this thing that had caused me such pain and perplexity and pleasure, with less envy and more joy than I thought myself capable of. The relief and buoyancy that seized me, as his hand closed upon it, I shall not attempt to portray. An abdicated ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... the pen refuses to portray in their fulness. One woman, driven mad with fear and despair, deliberately hung herself from the roof of the saloon. A man, taking out his penknife, dug it into his wrist and worked it about as long as he had strength, dying where he fell. Another, incoherently calling on the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... had he been taking his maiden aunt to the picture galleries between detective cases. Besides, he has three or four children, and I'm sure that when some lady writes the cinema of his life she will portray him as a hugely devoted papa with perfect young geniuses of children who yearn to spend papa's money upon the very luxuries against which he is warning the parents of ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... there have been historians of art and literature, so much fascinated with these ideas of classes, that they claimed to write the history, not of single and effective literary and artistic works, but of their classes, those empty phantoms. They have claimed to portray, not the evolution of the artistic spirit, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... outside the grounds, who kept an establishment which was divided into two departments. One was dignified by the word "Cafe" painted in black letters on the white ground of the painted pane, though on the door was the simple American word "Bar." Over the door of the other was an attempt to portray three gilded balls. The proprietor of this bifurcated establishment, a man with red hair, a low forehead, a broad chin, and brawny shoulders, a long lip and long arms, rejoiced in the name of Nicholas Crimins, though by most of his customers he was irreverently called by a diminutive of that name. ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... a bustle in the camp as no description could adequately portray. The elephants trumpeted and piped; the syces, or grooms, came rushing up with eager queries; the villagers bustled about like so many ants aroused by the approach of a hostile foe; my pack of terriers yelped out in chorus; the pony neighed; the Cabool stallion ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... sword, and drawing his bow, as his horses carry his car over the prostrate bodies of the slain, are drawn with much spirit, and the position of the arms gives a perfect idea of the action which the artist intended to portray; still, the same imperfections of style, and want of truth, are observed; there is action, but no sentiment, expression of the passions, nor life in the features; it is a figure ready formed, and mechanically varied into movement, and whatever position it is made to assume, the point of view ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail. The elements that unite to make the Grand Canyon the most sublime spectacle in nature are multifarious and exceedingly diverse. The Cyclopean forms which result from the sculpture ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... said, in a tone that thrilled her in connection with the image called up, "your own words seem to portray you standing on the brink of a fathomless abyss into which you are looking with ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... impossible to portray under a single image the ideal of to-day, because many ideals coexist. There is infinite difference of moral development, as many characters as there are men; the variety of the spiritual world is like that of the material world, and the diversity gives richness and charm. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... his personal prestige but of what he imagined, or pretended to imagine, were the rights of a small nation, Castro tried throughout to portray the situation in such a light as to induce the other Hispanic republics also to view foreign interference as a dire peril to their own independence and sovereignty; and he further endeavored to involve the United States in a struggle with European ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... justification of his act, except this extraordinary statement: "It was an ugly book; it hurt me. Ugly books ought to go in the fire." What the child suffered, and, still more, what the man suffered from this hatred of ugliness, no words could portray. Ever since he could remember, he had been unhappy from the lack of the beautiful in the surroundings of his daily life. His father had been poor; his mother had been an invalid; and neither father nor mother had a trace of the artistic temperament. From what long-forgotten ancestor in his plain, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men; and, while I endeavor by these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... however, when the mother's heart would almost overcome this resolve. In her lonely hours fancy would portray her son's future; and when does maternal hope discover aught but a glorious one? She thought of what he might be, could he go abroad to study the works of the old masters; how, with his genius (for she knew ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers



Words linked to "Portray" :   commend, portraiture, art, portrait, interpret, portraitist, represent, play, performing arts, artistic production, artistic creation, act



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