"Symmetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... [Sameness of quantity or degree.] Equality. — N. equality, parity, coextension[obs3], symmetry, balance, poise; evenness, monotony, level. equivalence; equipollence[obs3], equipoise, equilibrium, equiponderance[obs3]; par, quits, a wash; not a pin to choose; distinction without a difference, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a party of English to see the Coliseum, but the moon was as English as the party, and gave a faint and feeble light. Still, with this dim moon it was inconceivably grand. The exquisite symmetry of the building appears better, and its vast dimensions are more developed by night. I long to see it with an Italian sky and full moon; but not with a parcel of chattering girls, who only ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... trappings of office, looked commonplace by comparison, while the jurymen, who turned to look at him, seemed like beings of an inferior order. It was not alone the distinction of the tall figure, erect and dignified, nor the power and massive composure of his face, but the actual symmetry and comeliness of the face itself that now arrested my attention; a comeliness that made it akin rather to some classic mask, wrought in the ivory-toned marble of Pentelicus, than to the eager faces that move around us in the hurry and bustle ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... not so handsome as I expected to find her, after the fuss that George Braconberry made about her the other night at Wymar's," said Godfrey, suddenly pulling up his horse, as they rode home, and addressing his cousin. "Her figure is delightful, symmetry itself; but her face, she has scarcely one good feature in it. There is nothing gay or joyous in her expression. There is an indescribable sadness about those blue eyes which makes one feel grave in a moment. I ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... know, Sir John," he observed, hitching the sea-lion skin into symmetry, "whether it is ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... small compared with the great machine that had just brought them east, but of the same swift type. It was a thing of graceful beauty even on the ground, its long curving streamlines giving it wonderful symmetry. They stood in thoughtful silence for a minute—the young men eager to hear the verdict of their prospective backer. Morey, always rather slow of speech, took an unusually long ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... fellow-workers in the scheme; and they had a sympathetic sister-in-law disengaged. Fate therefore seemed to designate her for Coleridge and with the personal attraction which she no doubt exerted over him there may well have mingled a dash of that mysterious passion for symmetry which prompts a man to "complete the set." After all, too, it must be remembered that, though Mrs. Coleridge did not permanently retain her hold upon her husband's affections, she got considerably the better of those who shared them with her. Coleridge found out the objections ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... to the tender human look with which the moon smiles upon the earth,—all this is education of a higher and altogether more real kind than it is possible to receive within the walls of a school; and lacking this, nothing shall have power to develop the faculties of the soul in symmetry and completeness. Hence a philosopher has said there are ten thousand chances to one that genius, talent, and virtue shall issue from a farmhouse rather than from a palace. The daily intercourse with Nature in childhood and youth intertwines with ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... gentleman's unspoken but sufficiently indicated opinion. His father was in everlasting torment—having been not only unbaptised, but godless and a scoffer. With a quickening sense of the majesty of that Spirit infinitely good, a new apprehension of His plan's symmetry, he read the words meant to explain, to comfort him, silently indicated one day ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... falling loosely about her pale face,—her eyes were dark and lustrous, but wild, and with a hunted expression in them,—and her dress was composed of the strangest remnants of oddly assorted materials and colours pinned about her without any order or symmetry, the very idea of decent clothing being hardly considered, as her bosom was half exposed and her legs were bare. She wore no head-covering, and her whole aspect was that of one who had suddenly awakened from a hideous dream and was striving ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the great magician of the shears and thimble is capable of effecting. If there be the most unpleasant disproportions in the turn of your limbs—any awkwardness or deformity in your figure, the enchantment of this mighty wizard instantly communicates symmetry and elegance. The incongruous and unseemly furrows of your shape become smooth and harmonized; and the total want of all shape is immediately supplied by the beautiful undulations of the coat, and the graceful fall of the pantaloons. And all this is by the potency ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... hundred years been quarrying out American law from the mine of the unwritten law of the people within their jurisdiction. It has been their natural endeavor to make each part of the new system of jurisprudence which they were gradually building up harmonious with every other and to give a certain symmetry to the whole. This has forced them to deduce rule from rule and principle from principle with a freedom for which in older countries of settled institutions there is less occasion. The process has gone on during the last fifty years with ever-increasing rapidity, ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... head, when Roderic approached. While he was yet at a distance, he appeared graceful and gay, as the messenger of the God that grasps the lightning in his hand. His stature was above the common size. His limbs were formed with perfect symmetry; the fall of his shoulders was graceful, and the whole contour of his body was regular and pleasing. Such was the general effect of his shape, that though his advance was hesitating and respectful, it was impossible to contemplate his person without the ideas being suggested of velocity and swiftness. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... a curious little green box on four wheels, with a low place like a wine-bin for two behind, and an elevated perch for one in front, drawn by an immense brown horse, displaying great symmetry of bone. An hostler stood near, holding by the bridle another immense horse—apparently a near relative of the animal in the chaise—ready saddled for ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... I did not think very much of Ninette then; but what would you have? It was such a change from the old vagrant days, that there is a good deal to excuse me. I was absorbed too in the new and wonderful symmetry which music began to assume, as taught me by the master Lady Greville procured for me. When the news was broken to me, with great gentleness, that my little companion had run away from the sisters with whom she had been placed—run away, and left no traces behind her, I hardly ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... not beauty's potent charm; For admiration followed her Unmindful of the rounded arm, The fair complexion's brilliancy, If form and features shapely were Or lacked the grace of symmetry. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... in the corps with myself who invariably dropped his head whenever our eyes met. His complexion was any thing but white, his features were rough and homely, and his person almost entirely without symmetry or beauty. From this singular circumstance and his physique, I draw the conclusion that he was more African than Anglo-Saxon. Indeed, I once heard as much insinuated by a fellow-cadet, to whom his reply was: "It's an honor ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... his compositions which might be quoted in point, particularly Biblical incidents, such as the Expulsion from Paradise, wherein appear undraped figures. Here are seen to advantage the generic form, the typical beauty, the harmony of line, the symmetry, which distinguish the Classic from the Gothic. Furthermore, Overbeck from first to last eschewed the dress actually worn in the Holy Land, and deliberately draped Christ and the Apostles as Greek sages and Roman senators. I believe in so doing he was on the whole wise, his motive being to ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... effect upon character. Consider, then, the American continent! How simple it is! How broad! How large! How grand in design! A strip of coast, a range of mountains, a plain, a second range, a second strip of coast! That is all! Contrast the complexity of Europe, its lack of symmetry, its variety, irregularity, disorder and caprice! The geography of the two continents already foreshadows the differences in their civilizations. On the one hand simplicity and size; on the other a hole-and-corner variety; there immense rivers, endless ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Darius lay, Tir'd with the toilsome pleasures of the day; Without Judaea's watchful sons await To guard the sleeping pageant of the state. Three youths were these of Judah's royal race, Three youths whom Nature dower'd with every grace, To each the form of symmetry she gave, And haughty Genius curs'd each favorite slave; These fill'd the cup, around the Monarch kept, Serv'd as he spake, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... in question; nor is it injustice to assert, that the minute and analytical spirit of a grammarian is not the best qualification for the profound feeling, the comprehensive conception of an harmonious whole. The most exquisite anatomist may be no judge of the symmetry of the human frame; and we would take the opinion of Chantrey or Westmacott on the proportions and general beauty of a form, rather than that of Mr. Brodie or Sir ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... measure; He from whom all nature, mean and excellent, all seeds of form, all forms of seed, all motion, both of forms and seeds, derive and have being; He that gave flesh the original beauty, strength, propagation, form and shape, health and symmetry; He that gave the unreasonable soul, sense, memory, and appetite; the reasonable, besides these, fantasy, understanding, and will; He, I say, having left neither heaven, nor earth, nor angel, nor man, no, nor the most base and contemptible ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... the house from the other side, they came out on a grassy little space on the far edge of the lawn. In the center of the space stood a giant live-oak towering as high as a royal palm, and with mighty boughs stretching out in vast symmetry on every side. It was a true forest monarch. And like many another monarch. it was only a ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... toward the zenith; but it is sadly maimed, nevertheless,—hardly more than a tall stick with a broom at the top. If you would see a typical white pine you must go elsewhere to look for it. I remember one such, standing by itself in a broad Concord River meadow; not remarkable for its size, but of a symmetry and beauty that make the traveler turn again and again, till he is a mile away, to gaze upon it. No pine-tree ever grew like that in ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... gloriously-finished true-blue-slightly- imbricated-with-red-flag coalition rose whose deep globular head with ornate decorative calyx retains its perfect exhibition-cross-question- hostile-amendment symmetry of form without blueing or burning in the hottest Westminster sun. Its smiling peach and cerise endearments terminating in black scarlet shell-shaped waxy Berlin ultimata are carried on an admirably rigid peduncle. Equally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... skirting dizzy precipices, feathered with light greenery and brightened with flowers, but awful notwithstanding, and in many places the stones have evidently been piled together rather for the sake of symmetry than from a sense of danger. The points thus protected were already impregnable. When we look more nearly we see that however much Nature may have aided these primitive constructors, the wall is mainly due to the agency ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Rome. But it seems that for a romance bearing upon a spiritual problem, the scenery, however tempting, is not really so serviceable as the less prepossessing surroundings of America. The objects have too great an intrinsic interest. A counter-attraction distorts the symmetry of the system. In the shadow of the Coliseum and St. Peter's you cannot pay much attention to the troubles of a young lady whose existence is painfully ephemeral. Those mighty objects will not be relegated to the background, and condescend to act as mere scenery. They are, in fact, too romantic ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Defoe is before its time by a hundred years; nothing can be found in the realm of the English prose short-story to approach it in symmetry until the Ettrick ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... and soar up into the cupola; while the grand but austere proportions of the arches and the piers compose a symphony of perfectly concordant lines. The music is grave and solemn, architecturally expressed in terms of measured space and outlined symmetry. The whole effect is that of one thing pleasant to look upon, agreeably appealing to our sense of unity, charming us by grace and repose; not stimulative nor suggestive, not multiform nor mysterious. We are reminded of the temples imagined by Francesco Colonna, and figured ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... creature, as such, naturally delights in construction, and adds decoration to construction as naturally. The cook, making little regular patterns around the edge of the pie, does so from a purely human instinct, the innate eye-pleasure in regularity, symmetry, repetition, and alternation. Had this natural social instinct grown unchecked in us, it would have manifested itself in a certain proportion of specialists—artists of all sorts—and an accompanying development of appreciation on the part of the rest of us. Such is the case in primitive ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... library floor. They seemed to consist of little ridges of dirt on either side of a series of regular round spots, some of the spots very clear and distinct on the sides, others quite obscure in the centre. Now and then where you would expect to see one of the spots, just for the symmetry of the thing, it was missing. As I looked at the line of photographs on the floor I saw that they were a photograph of the track made by the tire of an automobile, and I suddenly recalled what the gardener ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... establishment for life. Can a more interesting picture be drawn of virtuous exertion? Why have our poets failed to colour and finish it? More virtue never existed in their favourite Shepherdesses than in these Welsh and Shropshire girls! For beauty, symmetry, and complexion, they are not inferior to the nymphs of Arcadia, and they far outvie the pallid specimens of Circassia! Their morals too are exemplary; and they often perform this labour to support aged parents, or to keep their own children from the workhouse! In keen suffering, they endure ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... the horse gradually increase his pace, and steal forward with the lightest, freest action imaginable.' If he was but all right,' continued Sponge, with a shake of the head, 'he would be worth any money, for he has the strength of a dray-horse, with the symmetry and action of ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... shattered hopes and lives. More splendid success in pure dramatic dialogue has not been achieved by Shakespeare or by Webster than by Cyril Tourneur in his moments of happiest invention or purest inspiration: but the intensity of his moral passion has broken the outline and marred the symmetry of his general design. And yet he was at all points a poet: there is an accent of indomitable self-reliance, a note of persistence and resistance more deep than any note of triumph, in the very cry of his passionate and implacable ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... all-sustaining pressure of the atmosphere, from the soothing and restraining influence of systematic habits of monotonous regularity. Amid infinite anguish and errors, existence may preserve a species of outward symmetry and harmony from this strong band of minute observance keeping down and assisting the mind to master elements of moral and mental discord and disorder, for the due control of which the daily and hourly subjection to recurring rules is an invaluable auxiliary to higher influences. The external ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... attention has been paid, even in Europe, to historical sequence and special motives in the arrangement of galleries. As in the Pitti Gallery, pictures were generally hung so as to conform to the symmetry of the rooms,—various styles, schools, and epochs being intermixed. As the progress of ideas is of more importance to note than the variations of styles or the degree of technical merit, the chief attention in selection and position should be given to lucidly exhibiting ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... afternoon lounging through the principal bezestein or bazaar, when he was struck by the elegant form, imposing air, and rich apparel of a lady who rode slowly along upon a mule, attended by four female slaves on foot. The outlines of her figure shaped the most admirable symmetry he had ever beheld; and though her countenance was concealed by a thick veil, in accordance with the custom of the East, yet he seemed to have been impressed with an instinctive conviction that the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... all of them, the same dimension, and this dimension is determined by the general plan of the building; or else, as in the kind of work which is called 'pseud-isodomic,' the very irregularity of the courses is governed by a law of symmetry. The stones of the architrave, the metopes, the triglyphs, are, all of them, separate blocks, even when it would have been perfectly easy to have included in a single block all these various members. Such facts, as one observes frequently ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... seems to be that symmetry of phrases (the balancing of large blocks of syllables) is an essential and important part of modern Spanish versification; but that, in musical verse of the ordinary type, there is also a subtle and varied binary movement, while in some recitative verse (notably the dramatic ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... trifling irregularities in art at its vigorous periods, which seemed designed to hide the unpleasant monotony of absolute symmetry,' ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... like any of them. They were a distinct species of animals. They were Marmots, that species known by the fanciful appellation of "prairie-dogs," (Arctomys ludoviciana). Their tails were very short, and not bushy as those of squirrels; and altogether their bodies had not the graceful symmetry of these animals. In a short time every mound had two or three on its top—for several individuals dwell together in the same house. Some sat upon all fours, while others erected themselves on their hind-feet, and stood up like little bears or monkeys—all ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... mostly could not speak, or even stand, at the great Darenth Asylum, Dartford.) They are the same in clod-hoppers as in the upper classes, and yet they are as hereditary as other qualities, I think. Their tendency to symmetrical distribution on the two hands is marked, and symmetry is a form of kinship. My argument is that sexual selection can have had nothing to do with the patterns, neither can any other form of selection due to vigour, wits, and so forth, because they are not correlated ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Hylas, when you behold the picture of Julius Caesar, do you see with your eyes any more than some colours and figures, with a certain symmetry and ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... of architecture is the Church of Ivan Blajennoj, on the Red Square before the Kremlin. It cannot be described. This building stands on uneven ground, although the fine level Place is before it. It crouches on the edge of the hill, and leaves one leg hanging down. There is no trace of any symmetry. It has no central point, and no one part is like another. One cupola looks like an onion, another like a pineapple, an artichoke, a melon, or a Turkish turban. It contains nine different churches, each having its own altar, Ikonostase, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... value. It is of accidental value, and not of integral necessity. The virtual discovery of Japanese art, during the later years of the second French Empire, caused Europe to relearn how expedient, how delicate, and how lovely Incident may look when Symmetry has grown vulgar. The lesson was most welcome. Japan has had her full influence. European art has learnt the value of position and the tact of the unique. But Japan is unlessoned, and (in all her characteristic art) content with her ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... boy,—displacement of the heart; and it is n't every day you get a chance to overhaul such an interesting malformation. And so I managed to do my duty and satisfy my curiosity at the same time. The torso was slight and deformed; the right arm attenuated,—the left full, round, and of perfect symmetry. It had run away with the life of the other limbs,—a common trick enough of Nature's, as I told you before. If you see a man with legs withered from childhood, keep out of the way of his arms, if you have a quarrel with him. He has the strength ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... improvement upon the original house in the symmetry of the structure, but it is doubtless a truthful representation of its mechanism. It seems likely that a double set of upright poles were used, one upon the outside and one on the inside, between which ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... with German problems it is fair to give examples where her methods have been wholly and entirely successful. The man who does not know one tree or shrub from another cannot travel in trains, motor-cars, or afoot without remarking the neatness, symmetry, and the flourishing condition of the forests. In these matters Germany so far surpasses us that we may be said to be merely in a kindergarten stage of development. As early as 1783 a German traveller, Johann David ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... hair became anxious to distinguish himself by telling the Japanese student that Western art was symmetrical and Eastern art asymmetrical, and that among the higher organisms the tendency was toward an external symmetry veiling an internal want of balance. Ann Veronica decided she would have to go on with Capes another day, and, looking up, discovered him sitting on a stool with his hands in his pockets and his head a little on one ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... touch the smooth-trodden earth. Round and round, in a vortex of life, beauty, and brilliancy they go, a whirlwind of delight. Eyes sparkling, cheeks flushing, and gauzy draperies floating by; while the crowds outside gather in a ring, and watch the giddy revel. There are countless forms of symmetry and grace, faces of wondrous beauty, both among the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... flowing in an ever-thickening stream up that intangible crimson duct and into the capacious storage tanks of the Nevian raider; and wherever that flaming beam went there went also ruin, destruction, and death. Office buildings, skyscrapers towering majestically in their architectural symmetry and beauty, collapsed into heaps of debris as their steel skeletons were abstracted. Deep into the ground the beam bored; flood, fire, and explosion following in its wake as the mazes of underground piping disappeared. And the humanity of the buildings died: instantaneously ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... distinguish the group from other sub-orders, though there are other non-adaptive characters which indicate the relationship to other groups and which are not adapted to the horizontal position of the original median plane of symmetry. The principal adaptive characters are: both eyes and the pigmentation on the side which is uppermost in the natural position, lower side without eyes and colourless; dorsal and ventral fins continuous and extending nearly the whole length of the dorsal and ventral edges; ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... deliberations of his Council." "The judicious exercise of this right," concluded the Baron, "which certainly requires a master mind, would not only be the best guarantee for Constitutional Monarchy, but would raise it to a height of power, stability, and symmetry, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... Shone dimly through her form— 80 That form of faultless symmetry; The pearly and pellucid car Moved not the moonlight's line: 'Twas not an earthly pageant: Those who had looked upon the sight, 85 Passing all human glory, Saw not the yellow moon, Saw not the mortal scene, Heard ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... expedient is that of introducing a main central form, with others branching out on either side and symmetrically balancing each other. An example of this is given in fig. 16. The symmetry may be much more free than this; a tree is symmetrical taken as a whole, but the two sides do not exactly ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... by much companionship with horse and hound, and by the corresponding country pursuits of dowered daughters. At the time of her marriage she had no charms of person more remarkable than rosy comeliness and the symmetry of supple limb. As for the nurture of her mind, it had been intrusted to home-governesses of respectable incapacity. Martin Warricombe married her because she was one of a little circle of girls, much alike as to birth and fortune, with whom he had grown ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... person, extraordinary courage, great proficiency in eloquence and other branches of learning, both Greek and Roman; besides a singular humanity, and a behaviour so engaging, as to captivate the affections of all about him. The slenderness of his legs did not correspond with the symmetry and beauty of his person in other respects; but this defect was at length corrected by his habit of riding after meals. In battle, he often engaged and slew an enemy in single combat. He pleaded causes, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... acorns huge, straight, blunt, and unsightly. Round the southern door of the Florentine duomo runs a border of fig-leaves, each leaf modulated as if dew had just dried from off it—yet each alike, so as to secure the ordered symmetry of classical enrichment. But the Gothic fullness of thought is not therefore left without expression; at the edge of each leaf is an animal, first a cicala, then a lizard, then a bird, moth, serpent, snail—all different, and each wrought to the very life—panting—plumy—writhing—glittering—full ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the revolution. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... how hard it must be to secure unity and self-consistency in the revision of a book so complicated as the Common Prayer. It is like remodelling an old house. We think it a very easy matter, something that can be done in one's head, but the mistake is discovered when the new door designed to give symmetry to this room is found to have spoiled the looks of that, when the enlargement of the library turns out to have overtaxed the heating energy of the fireplace, and the ingenious staircase, instead of ending where it was expected ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... his spectacles, and surveyed the ass. The ass pricked up his other ear, and surveyed Dr. Riccabocca. In that mutual survey of physical qualifications, each being regarded according to the average symmetry of its species, it may be doubted whether the advantage was on the side of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... apprehension, and exhibition of that ideal harmony which he feels to be the root of all knowledge, the fountain of all pleasure, and the condition of all action. The mathematician has, above all things, an eye for symmetry; and Professor Sylvester has not only recognized the symmetry formed by the combination of his own subject with those of the former Presidents, but has pointed out the duties of his successor ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... want of it," she acknowledges, with a sort of complacency, "has always been my weak point." Thus whilst in many of her compositions, especially the shorter novels, the construction leaves little to be desired, Consuelo is only one among many instances in which all ordinary rules of symmetry and proportion are set at naught. Sometimes the leading idea assumed naturally and easily a perfect form; if simple, as in Andre and her pastorals, it usually did so; but if complex, she troubled herself little over the task of symmetrical arrangement. M. Maxime Du Camp reports that she said ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... the palace is the Banqueting-House of Inigo Jones, from which Charles I. passed to execution. Built in the dawn of the style of Wren, it is one of the most grandiose examples of that style, and is perfect alike in symmetry and proportion. That it has no entrance apparent at first sight is due to the fact that it was only intended as a portion of a larger building. In the same way we must remember that the appearance of two stories externally, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... Lane's Notes I have ever spoken highly: they are excellent and marvellously misplaced—non erat his locus. The text of a story-book is too frail to bear so ponderous a burden of classical Arabian lore, and the annotations injure the symmetry of the book as a work of art. They begin with excessive prolixity: in the Introduction these studies fill 27 closely printed pages to 14 of a text broken by cuts and vignettes. In chaps. i. the proportion is pp. 20, notes: 15 text, and in chaps. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... either rounded, or more generally elongated in the same direction with the group in which it stands, but sometimes transversely to it. Some of the groups which are not much elongated present little symmetry in their forms; M. Virlet ("Bulletin de la Soc. Geolog." tome 3 page 110.) states that this is the case with the Grecian Archipelago: in such groups I suspect (for I am aware how easy it is to deceive oneself on these points), that the vents are generally ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... originate in our love of the sex, and that we deem every object beautiful which is described by soft-waving lines, resembling those of the female neck and bosom. Her feet and arms, which were both bare, had a statue-like symmetry and marble-like whiteness; but it was on her expressive and lovely countenance, now lighted up by the glow of joyous feeling, that nature seemed to have exhausted her utmost skill. There was a fascinating mixture in the expression of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... to music lovers was a little difficult to follow. Thus, one was of "Jackson's patent enema machines, as patronised by the nobility (either sex) when travelling"; another of "Mrs. Rodd's anatomical ladies' stays (which ensure the wearer a figure of astonishing symmetry";) and another of a "Brilliant burlesque ballad, 'Get along, Rosey,' sung with the most positive triumph every ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... two outer, dynamically regarded, represent the extreme tendencies of expansion and contraction, whilst in the middle forms these are held more or less in balance. By adding Howard's nimbus formation to this system, we destroy its symmetry. Actually, in the nimbus we have cloud in such a condition that it ceases to be an atmospheric phenomenon in any real sense of the word; for it now breaks up into single drops of water, each of which, under the pull of gravity, makes its own independent way to the earth. (The symmetry is restored ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... name, Sammu-rammat, is believed to be derived from "Summat"—"dove", and to signify "the dove goddess loveth her". Simmas, the chief of royal shepherds, found the child and adopted her. She was of great beauty like Shakuntala, the maiden of "perfect symmetry", "sweet smiles", and "faultless features", with whom King Dushyanta fell in love and married ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... turn we once more to our dame. Enchanting, but unwittingly, At table she was sitting by The brilliant Nina Voronskoi, The Neva's Cleopatra, and None the conviction could withstand That Nina's marble symmetry, Though dazzling its effulgence white, Could not eclipse ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... spreads, and is expressed by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it moves eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east westward. In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with remarkable symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west, attracting to it, as the first movement had done, the nations of middle Europe. The counter movement reaches the starting point of the first ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... to-day in their completely perfected forms. To what extent would not the glories of Reims, of Amiens, of Beauvais, or of Rouen, be enhanced, were it possible for us to even imagine their splendour, were they possessed of the symmetry and well-favoured situation of the Dom at Cologne? And so it is that we can but feel regret when we mentally note the lack of nave at Beauvais, of spires at Bourges, and, yet again, regret even with more pain the monstrousness ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... jaws with strength, and says, "But if we give up the principle in the one case, if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order, for instance, that the greyhound, that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed; no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations alike in nature, and the results of the same general laws which have been the groundwork through Natural ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... in an apex above the heads of the party, and radiating towards all points of the compass. Sometimes these ribs would all shake, and then blend; but they would speedily rearray themselves in perfect and majestic symmetry. It was a most weirdly-beautiful sight, riding along the still and boundless prairie, when the merry dancing ceased for a moment, to see this stupendous dome of fluffy, ghost-like light suspended over their heads. For an hour they continued looking upon it; upon ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... more beautiful. Her eyes were of the deepest blue; her complexion of the most delicate carnation; her hair of the richest auburn: nor could even Mr. Wormwood detect the smallest fault in the rounded yet slender symmetry of her figure. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... grace of motion and of look, the smooth And swimming majesty of step and tread, The symmetry of form and feature, set The soul afloat, even like delicious ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... receive us, and quickly started for our destination over a natural road across the almost level prairie. At the expiration of about two hours we saw before us, at a distance of three miles, a mesa of such perfect symmetry and brilliant pinkish color, that it called forth a unanimous expression of enthusiasm. Although the form of this "noblest single rock in America" changes as one beholds it from different points of view, the shape which it presented, as we ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... causing many a passer-by to glance after them admiringly, and murmur sotto voce, "Splendid-looking fellows! ... not English!" For though Englishmen are second to none in mere muscular strength and symmetry of form, it is a fact worth noting, that if any one possessing poetic distinction of look, or picturesque and animated grace of bearing, be seen suddenly among the more or less monotonously uniform crowd in the streets of London, he or ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... legend have been carefully collected and woven into symmetry for preservation. Notes from authentic sources have been appended for the benefit of searchers into the historical basis of the poem, which is offered to the public with the hope that it may increase interest in the early history of our home ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... nearer to the intellectual sun, and ridding itself of the rust of human cares, it becomes a gold tried and pure, has the perception of divine and internal harmony, and its thoughts and acts accord with the symmetry of the law, innate in all things. Not, as drunk from the cups of Circe, does he go dashing and stumbling, now in this and then in that ditch, now against this or that rock, or like a shifting Proteus, changing now to this, now to ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... and cornices are covered with it. Every where the masterly workmanship and artistic skill of the old constructors compel admiration; Mr. Stephens going so far as to say of sculptured human figures found in fragments, "In justness of proportion and symmetry they must have ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... the public interests seem to require. Our Government is now undergoing its most trying ordeal, and my earnest prayer is that the peril may be successfully and finally passed without impairing its original strength and symmetry. The interests of the nation are best to be promoted by the revival of fraternal relations, the complete obliteration of our past differences, and the reinauguration of all the pursuits of peace. Directing our ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... be acquired. It is but opening the Eye, and the Scene enters. The Colours paint themselves on the Fancy, with very little Attention of Thought or Application of Mind in the Beholder. We are struck, we know not how, with the Symmetry of any thing we see, and immediately assent to the Beauty of an Object, without enquiring into the particular Causes and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... and also inlaid with minute stones of every shape and colour.[34] The queen, in whose honour the tomb was built, occupies the very centre of the enclosure, Shah Jehan's tomb being on one side of it, and larger in size, which rather spoils the symmetry of ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... breath. This is a real kindergarten, and it is like a little piece of the millennium. "Everything is so very pretty and charming," says the visitor. Yes, so it is. But all this color, beauty, grace, symmetry, daintiness, delicacy, and refinement, though it seems to address and develop the aesthetic side of the child's nature, has in reality a very profound ethical significance. We have all seen the preternatural virtue of the child who wears her best dress, hat, and shoes ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... who is in the dock there, on his trial for homicide or some such light peccadillo; loitering round the dog-pit institutions, where the quadrupeds look so amazingly like men and the men like quadrupeds,—especially in that one where the eye of taste may be gratified by the supernatural symmetry of the stuffed bull-terriers in glass cases, the enormity of which specimens is accounted for by the gentlemanly proprietor, who tells us that "the man as stuffed 'em never stuffed anythink else afore, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Maria Therese, has been destroyed: but the beautiful circular porch with its Doric columns and metopes and the stately courtyard where the architect, Jean Lepautre, has triumphed over the irregularity of the site and created a marvellous symmetry of form—all this still remains, together with the noble stairway on the L., decorated by the Flemish sculptor, Desjardins. In the house at the sign of the Falcon which formerly stood on this spot, Tasso in the splendour of his early years was lodged by his patron, the Cardinal ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... no way describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water—things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each other—forms like naught ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... things so easily, and gently, and naturally, without any trace of embarrassment or self-consciousness? He followed her, and knew not which to admire the more, the careless simplicity of her manner, or the singular symmetry of her tall and slender figure. He had never seen any statue or any picture in any book to be compared with this woman, who was so fine, and rare, and delicate that she seemed only a beautiful tall flower in this garden of flowers. There was a strange simplicity, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... practice: it militated against the curves of the leg, and destroyed all firmness and dignity of gait. Far better was the fashion of the middle ages, when the trouser became a real pantaloon—a pantalon collant, as modern artists call it, and when the full symmetry of the limb was displayed to the utmost advantage. This was, no doubt, the acme of perfection that the garment in question was capable of; and it is to be lamented that the mode has not kept its position in society ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... explorer of the depths of life. It can be read, re-read, learned by heart, and the more it is known the wider and more alluring are the avenues of imaginative thought which it discloses. It has, more than any other long composition by its author, that quality of symmetry, that symmetria prisca recorded of Leonardo da Vinci in the Latin epitaph of Platino Piatto; and, as might be expected, its mental basis, what Rossetti called fundamental brain work, is as luminous, depth within ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... sternness generally unassociated with conceptions of feminine loveliness one forgot it usually in contemplating the soft attractiveness of the shapely forehead, dashed beneath by straight eyebrows, and of the pronounced cheekbones that crossed the symmetry of a Saxon face. Mrs. Phillips was a drooping wearied woman but there was nothing drooping about Nellie and never could be. She might be torn down like one of the blue gums under which she had drawn in the fresh air of her girlhood, but she could no more ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... make all the pieces shown in the detail drawing and finish to the dimensions shown, being careful to make the corresponding pieces exactly alike in order to preserve the perfect symmetry which is necessary in work of this kind. In boring the holes care must be taken to keep both edges of the holes sharp and clean. The holes should each be bored until the spur shows; the bit should then be withdrawn ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor
... Irishman. His name says it for him. No doubt his countrymen will be not a little proud of him; for he is reported to possess, in no common measure, all the recommendations to the eye on which they nationally set such value—stature, bone, muscle, symmetry, and comeliness. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... important of all, the ear-tufts. The tufts between the toes and the flexibility of the tail are other important points. The shape of head, eyes, and body are also carefully noted. A short-haired cat is judged first for color, then for eyes, head, symmetry, and ears. ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... from use in giving meaning to what is blind and baffling, it drops out of consciousness entirely or else becomes an object of aesthetic contemplation. There is much emotional satisfaction to be had from a survey of the symmetry and order of possessed knowledge, and the satisfaction is a legitimate one. But this contemplative attitude is aesthetic, not intellectual. It is the same sort of joy that comes from viewing a finished picture or a well composed landscape. It would make no difference if ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... which Leila, vaguely averting herself from her mother's scrutiny, drifted toward the dressing-table and began to disturb the symmetry of the brushes and ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... pressing the legs well up against the shoulders. Its fellow on the other side of the legs is prepared in exactly the same manner; and the second trestle is a duplicate of the first, with the exception that the directions of the struts are reversed relatively to the C piece, to preserve the symmetry—which, however, is not an ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... masters of their own country, and divided into parties again on their own account, it was still largely a matter of lower limbs. The faction which stood nearest Old-World ideas and monarchical tastes are said to have had great delight in the symmetry of Mr. Adams's underpinning, so daintily displayed in satin and silk. And when the plainer majority finally triumphed with the induction of Mr. Jefferson, some fifteen years since, was it not truly a victory of republican trousers—a ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... as one enters on the main floor of the library and looks around is that of noble proportions and symmetry as a whole. The open central space of liberal dimensions and height, flanked by the galleries and relieved by four handsome electric-lighting fixtures suspended from the ceiling by long chains, conveys an idea of lofty spaciousness; ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... gigantic beryl at Grafton, N. H., is over 4 feet in length and 32 inches in diameter, and weighs not less than 5,000 pounds; but the most perfect specimens are of small size, as some accident is sure to overtake the larger ones before they acquire their growth, to interfere with their symmetry or transparency. This you will see abundantly illustrated by the examples which I have prepared, as also the constancy of the angles of like faces. Chemically speaking, the crystal is always a perfect ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... immediately follows, that pleasure and pain naturally have their seat in the third or mixed class: these two statements are unreconciled. In like manner, the table of goods does not distinguish between the two heads of measure and symmetry; and though a hint is given that the divine mind has the first place, nothing is said of this in the final summing up. The relation of the goods to the sciences does not appear; though dialectic may be thought to correspond to the highest good, the sciences and arts and true opinions ...
— Philebus • Plato
... public attention. The common law of England has fared like other venerable edifices of antiquity, which rash and unexperienced workmen have ventured to new-dress and refine, with all the rage of modern improvement. Hence frequently it's symmetry has been destroyed, it's proportions distorted, and it's majestic simplicity exchanged for specious embellishments and fantastic novelties. For, to say the truth, almost all the perplexed questions, almost all the niceties, intricacies, ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... convicted and how many acquitted, how large or how small had been the batch of the guillotine since the previous night. Across the breadth of the gardens, beyond their trees and fountains, stood the Monster itself, with its cruel symmetry, its colour as of the blood of the dead, its unheeding knife, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... one evening that he wished he had a racing car of a certain expensive type, and his mother had done no more than lecture him mildly on the tendency of youth toward recklessness, and wonder afterwards how in the world the garage was going to be made larger without altogether destroying its symmetry and throwing it out of proportion to the rest of the place. It would make the yard look very cramped, she complained, and she should be compelled to have her row of poinsettias moved. And she very much doubted whether Jack would exercise any judgment at all about speed. Boys were so wild ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... women cannot be considered pretty, generally speaking. In artistic symmetry of feature, in purity of complexion, they are not to be compared with our countrywomen. These can bear the searching light of day, when delicacy of detail can be distinguished and appreciated. Those look their best in the artificial light of the ball-room. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... hand is exemplified in the hands of Messrs. Joseph Arch and John Burns. Both of these belong to self-made men, accustomed to hard manual labour from childhood. Their powerful ruggedness is admirably set off by the exquisite symmetry and feminine proportions of the hand of John Jackson a Royal Academician and great painter of his time. For symmetry, combined with grace, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... is constantly groping for underlying simple truth. Such glimpses of order and symmetry in the distribution of ore around igneous rocks as are afforded by the facts above stated, tempt the imagination to a conception of a simple type or pattern of ore distribution around intrusions. For this reason we should not lose ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... roofs, and glazed at both ends, are better placed North and South,—that is, with the ends facing these points,—as nearly as a due regard to the positions of other buildings in the vicinity, and the general symmetry and apportionment of the grounds will permit. Each side of the roof will thus receive an equal amount of sun-light. For span-roofed Green-houses the rule is not so arbitrary, the glass not being lined with foliage, as in the case of graperies, the diffusion of light would not ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... of the principles of arrangement, with brief comment on the periods of design which have most influenced printing. Treats of harmony, balance, proportion, and rhythm; motion; symmetry and variety; ornament, esthetic and symbolic. 37 illustrations; 46 review questions; ...
— Capitals - A Primer of Information about Capitalization with some - Practical Typographic Hints as to the Use of Capitals • Frederick W. Hamilton
... Falls, beneath an aged pine, reclined a well- guarded, sorrowful, but haughty band. Their fine symmetry, noble height, and free carriage, were especially attractive. They were all young warriors, whose white paint presented emblems of peace: their plumes were from the beautiful white crane of the sunny forest, which designated the southern land ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... was led to contradict. For the notion of a huge mechanism like the celestial sphere, spinning round the terraqueous globe as its pivot looked unreasonable. To explain it in any way on mathematical principles needed a most complicated array of cycles and epicycles. Symmetry and simplicity were wanting in the theory. A priori objections started up against it. If the senses pointed to the earth as a centre, reason pointed to a centre elsewhere. Copernicus studied the works of ancient philosophers on the question. He examined ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... rhythmically for my own use, as if I hadn't made it on the spur of an inspired moment! They also told me that I couldn't write a fugue; that my orchestration was overloaded, and my work deficient in symmetry, repose, development and, above ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... almost endless investigation and delight. And the deeper we go into the hidden things of nature, and the more we unfold them, have we not a better belief of the existence of the Creator, and grander notions of the symmetry, order, beauty, and wisdom of his works? Such knowledge leads also, as it has always done, to discoveries, by which we may make ourselves useful to mankind. And, besides the utility, of which it may make us capable, can discoveries of the principles of nature lessen oar ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... of grease which is so common with silken-headed darlings. His eyes were long, brown in colour, and were made beautiful by the perfect arch of the perfect eyebrow. But perhaps the glory of the face was due more to the finished moulding and fine symmetry of the nose and mouth than to his other features. On his short upper lip he had a moustache as well formed as his eyebrows, but he wore no other beard. The form of his chin too was perfect, but it lacked ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... floor. The cane-seated chairs were completely gilded. There was an effect of spaciousness. And the situation of the bed between the two double-doors, with the three windows in front and other pairs of doors communicating with other rooms on either hand, produced in addition an admirable symmetry. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... surrounded by piles of cinders and angular fragments of lava. In the walls of this crater many caves are found, and here again a village was established, the caves in the scoria being utilized as habitations of men. These little caves were fashioned into rooms of more symmetry and convenience than originally found, and the openings to the caves were walled. Nor did these people neglect the gods, for in this crater town, as in the cinder-cone town, a place of ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... an immense advantage over all critics of his performance. Refined reasonings are impotent to overthrow it; epigrams glance off from it, as rifle-bullets rebound when aimed at a granite wall; and it stands erect long after the reasonings and the epigrams are forgotten. Even when its symmetry is destroyed by a long and destructive siege, a pile of stones still remains, as at Fort Sumter, to attest what power of resistance it opposed to all the resources of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... exclaimed Langdon. "Shall I try? Trust me to come back a specimen of sickening symmetry—the kind of man women write about and draw pictures of—pink and white and silky-whiskered! Shall I? And I'll bring you a net to catch her in! Is it ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... increasing croud, he on his stool, I seated uncapped in a cart by his side, who should I see approach, in a phaeton and pair, but Hector Mowbray? And by his side—! Yes!—Olivia! The beauteous Olivia! no longer a child, but tall, straight, perfectly formed; every limb in the most captivating symmetry, every feature in the full bloom of youth; intelligence in every look, grace in every motion, sweetness in every smile! Attracted by curiosity, her brother arrested his course, drew up, and placed the celestial ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the threshold of her drawing-room, Evelyn admired its symmetry and beauty. The wall paper, a delicate harmony in pale brown and pink roses, soothed the eye; the design was a lattice, through which the flowers grew. An oval mirror hung lengthwise above the white marble chimney piece, and the Louis XV. clock was a charming composition ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... bursting from the pile, And many a log and rifted trunk conveys, To heap the fire, and to extend the blaze That quiv'ring strong through every opening flies, Whilst smoaky columns unobstructed rise. For the rude architect, unknown to fame, (Nor symmetry nor elegance his aim) Who spread his floors of solid oak on high, On beams rough-hewn, from age to age that lie, Bade his wide Fabric unimpair'd sustain Pomona's store, and cheese, and golden grain; Bade from its central base, capacious ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... monodistichs; unity in such a work appearing to consist in a certain boundlessness of size, which should hide the heterogeneous nature of the individual parts: the whole were then to be arranged and elaborated, till they had acquired the proper degree of consistency and symmetry; each sacrificing something of its own peculiar spirit to preserve the spirit of the rest. This number never was completed: and, Goethe being now busy with his Wilhelm Meister, the project of completing it was at length renounced; ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... and mean, accompanied, indeed, with the sense of a falling short of perfection, and yet, at the same time, so promising of our social and individual progression, that we would not, if we could, exchange it for that repose of the mind which dwells on the forms of symmetry in the acquiescent admiration of grace. This general characteristic of the ancient and modern drama might be illustrated by a parallel of the ancient and modern music;—the one consisting of melody arising from a succession only of pleasing sounds,—the modern embracing harmony ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... designing of school buildings nowadays close attention is paid to beauty of architecture, symmetry of form, convenience of arrangement, and durable but artistic furnishings. All unwittingly the child receives an aesthetic training through his daily life in the ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... facts, then, you have to study in every flower: the symmetry or order of it, and the perfection of its substance; first, the manner in which the leaves are placed for beauty of form; then the spinning and weaving and blanching of their tissue, for the reception of purest colour, or refining to ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Browning's most perfect work, and here, more perhaps than in anything he ever wrote, he wrote to please himself. As a whole, he has never written anything to equal it in artistic symmetry; while a single scene, that between Ottima and Sebald, reaches the highest level of tragic utterance which he has ever attained. The plan of the work, in which there are elements of the play and elements of the masque, is a wholly original one: a series of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... and mortar, the grass of the fields, the shadows of trees, and bridges and rivers, which they call landscapes, and little figures here and there; and all this, although it may appear good to some eyes, is in truth done without reasonableness or art, without symmetry or proportion, without care in selecting or rejecting, and finally, without any substance or verve; and in spite of all this, painting in some other parts is worse than it is in Flanders. Neither do I speak so badly of Flemish painting because it is all bad, but because it tries to do ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... chosen; that the structure of the sentences should be correct and clear; and that, in the case of poetry, the laws of versification should be observed. These elements contribute to excellence of form. In addition to these external elements there should be unity of thought, symmetry of presentation, truth of statement, and sincerity and self-restraint in sentiment. These elements give substantial worth to the matter or content of literature. Besides all this there is a grace or elegance or force, proceeding from the personality of the writer and transcending ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... be noticed that the northern building does not stand in quite the same direction as the southern one, which detracts from the symmetry of the whole. It stands on a fourth terrace, twenty feet higher than the others. A grand, but ruined, staircase leads up the center of the terrace. At each end of this staircase built against the terrace, could be distinguished the ruins of a small ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... listening to abstract thought, warmed by the fire of abstract conviction. To see her was like looking at sheer marble, flame-lit. Many an orator sways an audience's mind by emotional appeal. Hers was the crowning achievement to sway an audience to emotion by the symmetry and force of her appeal to its mind. Again and again salvos of applause stopped her for a moment but again and again the steady rhythm of her strong voice regained control. At the end her grip on attention was so acute that a little ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... The horse had been running. His mane and tail were laced and knotted to keep their length out of reach of grasping cactus and brush. Clumsy home-made leather shields covered the front of his forelegs and ran up well to his wide breast. What otherwise would have been muscular symmetry of limb was marred by many a scar and many a lump. He was lean, gaunt, worn, a huge machine of muscle and bone, beautiful only in head and mane, a weight-carrier, a horse strong and fierce like the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... seeing the Rishi and addressed thus by her, beheld that the maiden was exceedingly beautiful and endued with perfect symmetry of shape. And he saw that she was of sweet smiles. And she stood decked with the beauty of her faultless features, her ascetic penances, and her humility. And he saw that she was in the bloom of youth. He therefore asked her, 'Who art thou? And ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... morn, and cut in those perfect lines of proportion which nature only bestows on a few chosen favorites at intervals to show the possibilities of feminine beauty, Amelie de Repentigny added a figure which, in its perfect symmetry, looked smaller than it really was, for she was a tall girl: it filled the eye and held fast the fancy with the charms of a thousand graces as she moved or stood, suggestive of the beauty of a tame fawn, that in all its ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Philadelphia, whose reputation as a medical man and an author is deservedly high, has written a volume, as the reader may already know, entitled, "Health and Beauty"—in which he endeavors to show that "a pleasing contour, symmetry of form, and a graceful carriage of the body," may be acquired, and "the common deformities of the spine and chest be prevented," by a due obedience to the "laws of growth and exercise." These laws he has endeavored—and with considerable ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... suspicion, combine to show that from the first he perceived its fulfilment would be hard, saw the obstacles in his way, and knew it would require both time and caution. That even in the first rush of his wrath he should thus be aware of difficulty, indicates moral symmetry; but the full weight of what lay in his path could appear to him only upon reflection. Partly in the light of passages yet to come, I will imagine the further course of his thoughts, which the closing couplet of the first act shows as having already begun to apale ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... would make any of their description or movement incongruous to any other part. Of course we shall expect to find in them the enlargement or exaggeration of poetic license. But so doing we must recall the characteristics of their great author, who with all exaggeration preserves harmony and symmetry of parts, and harmony and correspondence in all settings and surroundings. With such views of what is fair and helpful in interpretation, I propose to proceed to a closer view of the first one hundred and fifty-two of what are known as the ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... wisdom of two centuries, but a future system, to be produced when the rest have failed by an exhaustive series of vain experiments. We may regret to abandon many brilliant laws and attractive generalisations that have given light and clearness and simplicity and symmetry to our thought; but it is certain that Dr. Flint is a close and powerful reasoner, equipped with satisfying information, and he establishes his contention that France has not produced a classic philosophy of history, and is still waiting for its ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... then in the power of fortune, or of her caprice? No, I will have it lasting as it is pure; and I will make a Goddess of her, and build a temple to her in my heart, and worship her on indestructible altars, and raise statues to her: and my homage shall be unblemished as her unrivalled symmetry of form; and when that fails, the memory of it shall survive; and my bosom shall be proof to scorn, as hers has been to pity; and I will pursue her with an unrelenting love, and sue to be her slave, and ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... that take place in the state have their resulting analogies in every village, but no new England is created; new forms displace but do not destroy the old, and old rights remain, although changed in title and forced into symmetry with a new legal and pseudo-historical theory. The changes may not seem at first sight very oppressive, but they opened the way for oppression; the forms they had introduced tended, under the spirit of Norman legality ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various |
