Line

“ A line well expressed will send our hopes soaring high, and a line faulty and wrong will dash all those hopes to the ground. Never be daunted by mistakes, but take your courage in both hands and persevere. ”

“ A line, or the equivalent of a line, parting the quantities of the effects, must exist in nature, though not visible to the eye of the philosopher, and we are at liberty to reason respecting the quantities placed on each side of this line in the same manner as if its position were actually ascertained. ”

“ If you take the pains to scan the lines you must soon admit how subtle and delicate are the alternating measures, prepared purposely to create the very idea of age and coarseness and succeeding with every almost matchless line and selected word. ”

“ The line of life, the line of the head, the line of the heart, the line of fortune and that of the liver, figure freely in fortune-telling of modern drawing-rooms by women who ought to be in Holloway gaol, but are not. ”

“ The first line, undivided, shows its subject treading his accustomed path. If he go forward, there will be no error.
2. The second line, undivided, shows its subject treading the path that is level and easy;—a quiet and solitary man, to whom, if he be firm and correct, there will be good fortune.
3. The third line, divided, shows a one-eyed man (who thinks he) can see; a lame man (who thinks he) can walk well; one who treads on the tail of a tiger and is bitten. ”

“ But the very fact that a Line is visible implies that it possesses yet another Dimension. ”

“ The letter i is an indefinite line, representing man in his primitive state of innocence, as it does still his body, as a line, without its extension, and his head and senses by its dot; and in a secondary sense are expressed by this line and dot, length or heighth towards the sun, the sun-beams, fire, heat, and other qualities both spiritual and animal, as still flowing upon man, and other things as relative to him, and originally perhaps centering in himself, and since his fall only relatively. ”

“ To comprehend how I can become in any sense aware of the series of successive words that constitutes the line of verse, such students of our problem are accustomed to say that when any one word as passing, or day, is present to my mind, the other words, even of the same line, can be present to consciousness only as coexistent memories or images of the former words, or as images of the expected coming words. ”

“ Again, we are told that intricacy of lines is beautiful because "the active mind likes to be engaged," and the eye delights in being "guided in a sort of hunt." [7] A straight line has no beauty, and the pig, the bear, the spider and the toad are ugly because devoid of undulating lines. [8] The ancients showed much judgement in the management and grouping of lines, "varying from the precise line of grace only on those occasions when the character or action demanded." ”

“ And doubt and reverend use defied,
With a look that solved the sphere,
And stirred the devils everywhere,
Gave his sentiment divine
Against the being of a line.
'Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round ”

“ Tell me whether you agree in this statement of the matter. Every Line has a pair of directions, opposite to each other. And if two Lines be said to have 'the same direction,' we must understand 'the same pair of directions' ”

“ Here stand my books, line upon line
They reach the roof, and row by row,
They speak of faded tastes of mine,
And things I did, but do not, know:
Old school books, useless long ago,
Old Logics, where the spirit, railed in,
Could scarcely answer “yes” or “no”—
The many things I’ve tried and failed in! ”

“ That meaning, which things symbolize and express, it cannot be said too often, is not necessarily to be phrased in words. It is a meaning for the spirit. A straight line affects one differently from a curve; that is, each kind of line means something. Every line in the face utters the character behind it; every movement of the body is eloquent of the man's whole being. ”

“ I can look down the mentally seen page and see the words that commence all the lines, and from any one of these words I can continue the line. I find this much easier to do if the words begin as in a straight line than if there are breaks. ”

“ The rational sign, on the contrary, has a name because it has a direction and since all writing or design is nothing other than a composite of the diverse directions followed by a line, we must, before approaching what is commonly called writing, insist upon these notions of plane and line. ”

“ But in each of these lines the mind takes in a wide horizon, comprising a multitude of objects at once, as the eye takes in a picture, with scene, and action, and figures, fore-ground and background, all at once. ”

“ For example, a line with many sudden turns or changes of direction is an energetic and exciting line because it demands in perception a constant and difficult and shifting attention; a straight line, on the contrary, because simple and unvarying in its demands upon the attention, is monotonous and reposeful; while the curved line, with its lawful and continuous changes, at once stimulating yet never distracting attention, possesses the character of progressive and happy action. ”

“ We generally attach an importance to the third line, calling it the line "for change," and the fourth is the conclusion; the first line is, of course, the commencing of the subject, and the second is "to receive and develop." ”

“ In this example, before I come nearer to particulars in general, observe first, that those Characters you observe at the beginning of the Lines, are termed Cliffs or Claves, Keys to open and signify what part or pitch of Voice, viz. the Treble, Mean, or Basse properly the Notes belong to; as likewise on what Line or Space the Seven letters expressing the Notes is placed. ”

“ The preceding poem, while it places in a new light the immortal history of the hatchet, also illustrates the wonderful adaptability of the English language to the purposes of the poet. Thus, in the last stanza, a rhyme is required for “down,” while the sense demands the word “man” at the end of the corresponding line. ”

“ The text of the book is in German rhyme, but the lines follow each other, without break, as in a text of prose. A capital letter indicates the beginning of each line of poetry, and a lozenge-shaped period denotes its ending. ”

“ Naturally man tended to lose his sense of scale and relation. A straight line, or a combination of straight lines, may have still a sort of artistic unity, but what can be done in art with a series of negative symbols? Even if the negative were continuous, the artist might express at least a negation; ”

“ In form, simplicity and long, unbroken lines give dignity, while complicated and short lines express vivacity. Curves, particularly if long and sweeping, give grace while straight lines and angles indicate power and strength. ”

“ In a series of "Notes," following the poems, line by line, he asserted that the poet won her success by the simplest means and plainest words, as true genius always does, and that her pages were full of emotional and imaginative meaning. Nature and Poetry uniting in an indissoluble whole ”

“ In the writing of the lines of the face, in the motion of the lips, in the indefinable tones of voice, in the air and manner, there comes out constantly in all characters an atmosphere of the truth, which the words spoken, whether intended or not intended, do not convey. ”

“ If the eye must traverse great distances on the page, the reader is easily lost and must hunt for the beginning of the next line. Quantitative studies show that moderate line lengths significantly increase the legibility of text. ”

“ Thus in regarding the147 rapports of two lines in nature, one leaning to the right and one to the left, the highly sensitive person feels unrest and strife, and subconsciously produces order and calm by imagining a third line which harmonises the original two. ”

“ And this body will be beautiful if the lines which compose its surface are not continued, even so varied, in a manner that may weary or dissipate the attention. The variation itself must be continually varied. ”

“ Now, if these lines were written in prose, the words would stand in the following order: "O my God! when my rising soul surveys all thy mercies, I'm transported with the view of them, and lost in wonder, love and praise."
16. And now that I have explained to you a few of the points in which verse differs from prose, I will only add, that when you read verse, you must not stop at the end of every line, unless there is a pause or mark there; and that you must avoid reading it as if you were singing it to a tune. [Pg 121]
LESSON XXXII. God Present Everywhere. ”

“ It is as difficult, more difficult, perhaps, to put into words the temperamental quality of lines as to do the parallel thing with colors. Lines are infinite in their possible variations, and the fine shades of feeling which they may express exceed the number of words in the emotional vocabulary of any language. ”

“ But lines suggest to us not only the movements, but also the attitudes of our bodies. They may be straight and rising,—rigid or dignified or joyously expanding; they may be horizontal and lie down and rest; they may be falling and sorrowful ”

“ The dark of the bush on the sidings, the snow-crested mountains that loom
Golden and grey in the sunlight, far up in the cloud-fringed blue,
Are the threads with old memory weaving and the line of my life
running through;
And the wind of the morning calling has ever a song for me
Of hope for the land of the dawning in the golden years to be. ”

“ Rhetorical and bombastic, the lines are flung and hurried into existence and reach the same impromptu felicities, have the same lip-moulded profusion and unexpectedness, which speech sometimes achieves, but seldom in our day the deliberate, solitary pen. ”

“ If the straight lines spoken of are those contemplated in the definition--lines absolutely without breadth and absolutely straight--that such are incapable of inclosing a space is not proved by experience, for lines such as these do not present themselves in our experience. ”

“ How much of activity there is in the process by which we perceive the outlines of objects appears further from the language by which we describe their forms. We apply to them not merely adjectives of form, but verbs of motion. An abrupt hill starts out of the plain; a beautiful figure has a gliding outline. ”

“ So far we have established relations only to ourselves. We now compare the acts of extension one against the other, and we also measure the adjustment requisite to pass from one to another, continuing to refer them all to our own axis and centre; in everyday speech, we perceive that the various lines are similar and dissimilar in length, direction and orientation. ”

“ You think yourself the perfection of existence, while you are in reality the most imperfect and imbecile. You profess to see, whereas you can see nothing but a Point! You plume yourself on inferring the existence of a Straight Line; but I can see Straight Lines and infer the existence of Angles, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and even Circles. ”

“ Make your lines rather suggestively than literally, and the larger your brushes the finer your work will be; for if we look at nature we cannot find lines, or if there seem lines they are formed by many cross-divisions so minute and filled with gradations that the finest sable-hair is like rope-work beside them. ”

“ In some things their customs are exactly the opposite of ours. In writing they place their characters in vertical lines and move from right to left, while our letters are arranged on horizontal lines and read from left to right. ”

“ Of woes unnumbered, | heav’nly goddess sing! EXERCISES.
“The following verses in heroic measure—that is, consisting of ten syllables to each line, the syllables being (with occasional variations, which are allowed) alternately light and heavy—I have marked with the cæsural pause and rest at the end of the line. Let the student read them aloud, marking these pauses, and duly observing time, rhythm, and poetical intonation. ”

“ I used to say to these admirers, "wherever you like, or wherever it may chance, you will see that you will never find ten consecutive lines which are comprehensible, unartificial, natural to the character that says them, and which produce an artistic impression." ”

“ They form a continuous piece of narrative, and for that reason the extra two lines help the forward movement, where the formal sestet of the sonnet would have continually broken in with a misplaced sense of finality. Many a rule of rhetoric and prosody and technique may be broken—provided always that you have a reason that justifies you. ”

“ Very few lines are used in Figure 1, yet they are so placed that you know at once the animal that is represented, its attitude, and its shape. Lines that tell the important facts about an object are called leading lines. The skeleton figures we have been studying show us the leading lines in certain attitudes of people and animals. ”

“ And because I must continually base upon them that which I shall say, I have desired to set them down here together, to the end that all the substance of that which is to be written may be seen and comprehended together; although it will be fitting to set down each stanza separately before expounding it, and likewise the lines of each stanza, according as the matter and the exposition require. ”

“ The two lines, or half lines, which make the glory of this extract resemble perfectly, for vigorous grace and that subtle strength of interpretation which transfigures the external nature it explains, the living leader of English poets. Even he has hardly ever given a study of landscape more large and delicate, an effect of verse more exquisite and sonorous. ”