Figure (human)

“ We discern some of the roots of our own being, and appreciate one side of our own character better—both as loving it and as noting where its weak points lie—when we see it thus remotely working in a bygone world and under outlived fashions, yet keeping so intimately true to the genius of the type. We get a glimpse of our vocation, see that we stand for a spirit that human life will always need to have expressed. ”

“ It is therefore in the first place concerned to personify abstract conditions of a general character or similar qualities both from the human and the natural world, such as religion, love, justice, strife, fame, war, peace, the seasons, death, and the like, and conceive them under the mode of personality. ”

“ In this striking summing-up of a character, the penetrating observer of human nature—taking in at a glance and depicting by a few masterly touches all that helps to make up a picture of the real living being—begins to reveal herself. ”

“ So for a minute or two he stood, a figure instinct with passion, energy, vitality, before men who, God knows with reason, had lost all three for the moment. A colossal figure beyond them, ahead of them, asking more than mere ordinary men could do. ”

“ This is what I call ideal and imaginative representation, which marks the outlines and boundaries of character, not by arbitrary lines drawn at this angle or that, according to the whim of the tracer, but by those mountain-ranges of human nature which divide man from man and temperament from temperament. ”

“ For an instant it remains, gigantic, splendid, towering above mankind, as a symbol, a warning, a judgement, an ideal, a threat. Dimly you recognise that you have played some part in the creation of that figure, and that living for a moment, as you have done, in some force outside your individuality, you have yet expressed that same individuality more nobly than any poor assertion of your own small lonely figure could afford. ”

“ But it wants that yet higher excellence, which arises from a thorough knowledge of human nature—a graphic delineation of actual character, a faithful picture of the real passions and sufferings of mortality. ”

“ We turned humanity inside out, and then I walked in day-time in the streets with a lamp in my hand in search of a normal man, of a human being. If you vitriole a person's face or character first, how can you expect him to have unscathed features? ”

“ The champions of the theory, moreover, place it on a metaphysical basis, finding in the will the essence of human personality, and therefore of the art which shows human personality raised to its highest power. ”

“ With this great requisite of imaginative sympathy that sees value in all human beings, then, we set out on our chief task, to find the life-problem of our particular hero. This necessitates definition and analysis. Somehow we must find the sphere in which our hero moved, the group to which he belonged, and must then discover the qualities that he showed in the group which made him a real individual. Such definition and analysis will appear when we examine the character of the hero and the events in his life. ”

“ Thus the indications of character, of peculiarity, so predominate, the whole is so much of one colour, that the result resembles one of those allegorical personifications in which, as much as possible, everything human is eliminated except what belongs to the peculiarity, the personification. ”

“ Their might has, for the most part, been the might of goodness. The chief mark that Paul and Wesley and Wilberforce, and all the great have carried about in the body has been the mark of character. What beauty is to the statue; what ripeness is to the fruit; what strength is to the body; what wisdom is to the reason—that character is to the soul! ”

“ In keeping with this purpose the author says, “here is an attempt to make a picture in words of a man; to exhibit personality; to show that personality in touch with its human environment; to declare what manner of man was he whose name is on the title page. Not to chronicle events, therefore, but to describe a being; not to write a history of the time, but to give an impression of a period associated with its dominant personal force, has been my task.” Thus the work is an intimate personal sketch of the man, based upon years of study. ”

“ The superb figure, in attitude and resolute expression, impresses one with a strong sense of the divinity of a nature that even in all the stolidity and strength of the figure 'might soar but yet remain' to reflect upon a darkened world the light from her mirror. ”

“ The type of character,—the edition of human nature,—in which they take embodiment, becomes a distinct object of critical appreciation; and while all its deep expressive traits speak for the inner truth whence they are moulded, every mixture of disharmony or defect calls for some revision of idea. ”

“ The great object, where a character admits of it, should be to produce those sensations which resemblance of exalted characters never fail to do, even in persons most experienced in the human character ”

“ Busy men, moreover, are given to detail, and detail fills the eye and ear; men of reflection deal more with principles, and these lie beyond the range of ordinary vision.
The proposition which I here put forward, based on many years of observation and study, is fundamental, and affects, more or less, a wide range of character in every individual. ”

“ The first form in which a tale appeared to him was as the figure of an individual, or a combination of individuals, whom he wished to see in action, being sure that such people must do something very special and interesting. ”

“ For if we could not endure to make a ridiculous figure, such as we see some do in processions, how could we with any propriety bear to have the inner man made a ridiculous figure of, and that to one’s face? ”

“ He is identified in the mind with all select and holy images, with the supreme interests of the human race. If hereby we attain any more precision, we proceed to say that we think no man in these later ages, and few men ever, possessed so great a conception of the manly character. ”

“ And if we turn to that region where beauty is most subtly embodied, if we turn to human character, 150 we find the conditions not dissimilar. The character which impresses us most is that which has fully organized its powers, so that every ability finds its appropriate place without prominence ”

“ In order that the tendencies I have described should acquire their full force, it was necessary that they should be represented or illustrated in some great personage, who, by the splendour and the beauty of his career, could fascinate the imaginations of men. ”

“ I sometimes fancy that there are possibilities of human character much greater than have been realized, mysteries, as they may be called, of character and manner and style which remain to be called forth and explained. ”

“ The study of the human character opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul. ”

“ The essential character of any anthropomorphic or human attribute—power for example, or wisdom, or goodness—is that it is limited, imperfect, and liable to error. But when we conceive of these qualities as existing in absolute perfection and boundless capacity, while we retain the idea that they are personal qualities, we in fact divest them of their anthropomorphic or human character. ”

“ And as all the matter which the human Ego gathered to it retains the stamp or photographic impression of the human being, the matter transmigrates to the lower level when given an animal impress by the Ego. ”

“ What the eye of the senses discovered in the physical world, the eye of the soul discerned to be true of the inner life. Character was not the child of Destiny, the shadow of Circumstance, it was the one immortal creation of which man was capable. “What a man sows, that shall he also reap.” In character was the harvest of all that a man ever thought, or willed, or did. ”

“ Delineators of subjects of greater pretension are frequently content to throw all their sympathies, their energies, into the elaboration of their leading figure or figures: the attitude, the face, the features, the hands, the costume, leave nothing to be desired, while the rest of the composition is slurred or neglected. ”

“ Perhaps in every face, whether it has beauty of line or the homely ruggedness graved by generations of positive character, the dominant feature is a certain poise of mind: these men would think, and then judge ”

“ These reserves being made, our definition of character has the advantage of supplying us with a criterion which remarkably simplifies our task; for it is clear that, among the innumerable individuals of the human species, there must be some, and these by far the greater number, who have neither unity nor stability nor personal characteristics 386peculiar to themselves. ”

“ To arrive at a fair estimate of any man’s character, the primary necessity is to endeavour to realise his point of view, to appreciate his preconceptions. If we require of him that his preconceptions shall coincide with our own, we may reconstruct an interesting dramatic figure, but we shall not discover the man as he really was. ”

“ They have, in pursuance of their Theory, mapped out the human scull into compartments, to each of which they have assigned a particular faculty or sentiment, and they profess to tell, with some degree of accuracy, the individual character by the peculiar formation of the head. ”

“ Here, then, we have in one volume three aspects of human life as seen within the limits of one personality: the biographical facts, the supernal vision, and the ordered conclusions drawn from those facts and that vision, for the instruction of other men. ”

“ And an imperfect appearance of this character we were compelled, in our last chapter, to recognize in the individual habits of the soul. Further in the beauty which presents us with a realized type, we find another form of the union of fact with principle. ”

“ The human personification, in cases where a combination of qualities or functions was sought to be indicated, resulted in more or less abstruse literary fables; on the other hand the artist or symbol seeker found it easier to select a lower plane of thought for his embodiments. ”

“ Every figure is individual and true to life, with his or her special virtues and foibles, so that any grown person who picks up the volume will find it a world in miniature and will watch eagerly for the special characteristics of each child to reappear. ”

“ But indeed the same cause which renders personification a common figure not only with poets and orators, but in all empassioned and even in ordinary speech, leads men frequently both to speak and act as if they ascribed life and consciousness to inanimate things. ”

“ If we admit the existence of the temperate character, it ought to find its place here. Can we admit it, or ought it not rather to be looked on as a purely ideal category? Though we may admit that persons are actually to be found in whom feeling, thought, and action are present in strictly equal proportions, ought we not to consider this as the absolute suppression of character, i.e., of any marks of individuality? ”

“ But by the simple yet wonderful contrivance of causing the appearance to man that he lives of himself, thus hiding as it were the machinery from his view, lo! from a statue he becomes a man; acting, thinking, feeling, as if entirely of and from himself,—looking to the right or left, up or down, receiving impressions, forming conclusions, following those conclusions, and so by degrees bringing himself into a habit of mind, and thus at length forming a character, an individuality. ”

“ But then it must be confess’d, that as the great difficulty of Characteristic-Writing consists in this, so does the main Beauty and Force of it too: For Objects are apt to affect and move us according to their Presence or Absence; and a Character will naturally strike us more forcibly, the more the Images, which it consists of, are lively and natural; because the Object is then most present to our Mind. ”

“ Now, what is it that makes the great Character, but Knowledge in all its diversity, a Sollicitousness for the Spread of Arts and Sciences, excelling in one’s particular Station of Life, and being divinely forward to all the high Offices of Humanity? ”

“ He continued to observe, that what is usually called character in a face, is probably excess in some of its parts, and particularly of those which are under the influence of the mind, the leading passion of which marks some feature for its own. A perfectly symmetrical face bears no mark of the influence of either the passions or the understanding, and reminds you of Prometheus’s clay without his fire. ”

“ It is a figure of great idealism and significance, the most fitting and perfect tribute which any institution could erect. It is the figure of a young man clean-limbed and muscular, finely developed, a thoroughbred air about him, slender yet strong. ”

“ But now let us take this idea of a human being who has the power of emitting a visible substance in which are formed faces which appear to represent distinct individualities, and in extreme cases develop into complete independent human forms. ”

“ But I believe that, to a possible higher intelligence, any part of a man's body would reveal his character—since every specialized partial manifestation of himself must be correlated with every other part and the whole. ”

“ It is this variety of characterization, and this alone, which can give to a character the interest of life. At the same time this fulness of detail must really appear as included in the personality itself, that is, it must not strike us as the mere diversion, passing freak, or suggestion of an excited fancy, such as we see in the case of children who will take up everything in turn, and even make something out of it, yet, for all that, are without essential character. ”