Resemblance

“ There is a very remarkable resemblance, which preserves itself amidst all their variety; and this resemblance must very much contribute to make us enter into the sentiments of others, and embrace them with facility and pleasure. Accordingly we find, that where, beside the general resemblance of our natures, there is any peculiar similarity in our manners, or character, or country, or language, it facilitates the sympathy. ”

“ How mere resemblance without identity is to qualify the terms that resemble, is a problem which is not faced, and yet unsolved it threatens ruin. The use of this mere resemblance leads us in psychology to entertain gross and useless fictions, and in logic it entails immediate and irretrievable bankruptcy. ”

“ Resemblance is not always its end, but resemblance is a test that must be satisfied before any other quality may be admitted. Realism is not, of course, a matter of trousers, silk hats, and machinery. ”

“ So that all that was said of the dependence of analysis upon a preliminary separate acquaintance with the character to be abstracted, and upon its having varied concomitants, finds a place in the psychology of resemblance as well as in that of difference.
But when all is said and done about the conditions which favor our perception of resemblance and our abstraction of its ground, the crude fact remains, that some [Pg 530] people are far more sensitive to resemblances, and far more ready to point out wherein they consist, than others are. ”

“ Of how vast a variety of resemblances of parts must that resemblance be composed, which induces us to say that a portrait, or a landscape, is like its original. If one person mimics another with any success, of how many simple likenesses must the general or complex likeness be compounded: likeness in a succession of bodily postures ”

“ Two faces which resemble each other, neither of which alone causes our laughter, make us laugh, when together, by their resemblance. ”

“ The ground of the resemblance lies far deeper, in the inmost substance of the fictions and in the essential relations through which every deviation of form becomes a true requisite, which, together with its validity, has also its significance. ”

“ Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil rather than a mirror. ”

“ The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own features—mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her! ”

“ There is thus a genuine effect of the nature of pure similarity, or resemblance, and a mode of consciousness accompanying that effect; but there is not the full energy of reproduction without a concurring bond of pure contiguity. A portrait may fail to give us the consciousness of having ever seen the original. ”

“ All that I have seen and heard has tended to attach me more firmly to you by the double effect of resemblance and of contrast. Every agreeable person recalls you; every disagreeable, makes me exclaim, how different, etc. ”

“ If therefore it is merely an extraordinary degree of resemblance in the objects which produces an extraordinary degree of strength in the habitual affection, a more remote and imperfect resemblance in the objects ought to produce proportionable effects. ”

“ In like manner, when he has been heartily beat in any place, he will tremble on his approach to it, even though he discover no signs of any present danger. The effects of resemblance are not so remarkable; but as that relation makes a considerable ingredient in causation, of which all animals show so evident a judgment, we may conclude, that the three relations of resemblance, contiguity, and causation operate in the same manner upon beasts as upon human creatures. ”

“ She had a faculty for tracing resemblances in the material creation, akin to that, perhaps, which causes many to see points of likeness in faces, so that they, as it were, carry their home about with them, and see their friends in the new costume of every land. ”

“ A young face, hardly more than a boy—twenty-five at the most. Handsome, too, in a poetic and dreamy way; just the face, I thought, that a woman might have fallen in love with. He had dark hair, I remember, though his features have long ago faded from my memory. What will never fade, what I shall never forget, is the look he wore—the look he was still wearing when we laid him in the old graveyard next day—a look of mingled surprise, disbelief, terror, and indignation. ”

“ There was the same delicate modelling of lines, the same breadth between the eyes, the long, flowing locks, the full, sensitive lips, and in the eyes the same look of deep melancholy—touched with a subtle, changing, human smile that drew the beholder. It disarmed criticism and provoked it. Except for the halo of mocking and piercing thorns, the living face might have been the pictured one below it. The look of suffering in one was shadowed in the other. ”

“ A hundred times I've tried to picture the face, the form, the character of the girl I'd really come to love. Always there came to my mind a face—not a child's face, but a child's face grown to a woman's. ”

“ The face I could not describe since every feature seemed so complete that they blended into the one perfect character of a man. Forehead and eyes and mouth, I saw, and wavy hair flung back and beard enough, with heavy brows, but no feature stood out—all was subject unto the character, unto the face as a whole, unto the soul of the man who himself looked, subject unto nothing. My mind ran back through all the kingly souled men I have seen. ”

“ As a young and vivid force that might one day develop into symmetry and management of self, he was a charm to the speculating eye. But of finished beauty he had only two features—the eyes, big, bold, and gray, and the big, sweet mouth. ”

“ The most beautiful face may sometimes, by nature's indelible portrayer, reveal itself soulless in heart and mind; and the plainest face possess an irresistible charm, if it is allowed to interpret the emotions of a truly noble heart. ”

“ It is our secret, this beautiful face that we love, and we wonder how any one can be found to love the other faces. We even pity them, those rosy, rounded faces, with their bright unmysterious eyes and straight noses and dimpled chins. How fortunate for them that the secret of the beauty we love has been hidden from their lovers. ”

“ Your face is of the style Louis XII., hardly any color, well-formed nose; and you have the thing that pleases women, a something, I don't know what it is, which men take no account of themselves; it is in the air, the manner, the tone of the voice, the dart of the eye, the gesture,—in short, in a number of little things which women see and to which they attach a meaning which escapes us. ”

“ Have you ever beheld a more gay and charming face than that of your betrothed? Can one be more white and blonde? are not her hands perfect? and that neck—does it not assume all the curves of the swan in ravishing fashion? ”

“ I have been frequently asked to describe his personal appearance, and disappointment has frequently been expressed at the portrait which truth compels me to give of him. He is neither tall, black-haired, nor pale; he neither raises his eyes habitually to heaven, nor turns down his shirt-collar. He does not wear a look of melancholy resignation, neither does he live in love-gilded poverty, in a cottage embosomed in roses. ”

“ No; in that noble face, pale from illness or from sadness, with the traces of sorrow upon it, and the marks of long vigils by the bedside of her father—in that refined face, whose expression spoke only of elevation of soul, and exhibited the perfect type of manly beauty, there was certainly nothing that could excite repugnance, but every thing that might inspire confidence. ”

“ The fact is you resemble too much—you're always resembling. You resemble a man of fashion, and you're not; a wit, and you're not; a soldier, a sportsman, a hero—and you're none of 'em. Altogether, you're not in the least convincing. ”

“ Then I hate to see one, to whom heaven has given real beauty, settling her features at the glass of fashion, while she speaks—not thinking so much of what she says as how she looks, and more careful of the action of her lips than of what shall come from them. ”

“ The face is slightly bearded, the features massive but finely formed, and with a most noble expression. Indeed, where shall we find in classical art any head in which such majesty is combined with the traits of individual likeness? ”

“ But it is quite another thing to maintain that every appearance, when there, continues to keep its distinctive character. To be resolved rather and to be merged, each as a factor in what is higher, is the nature of such things as the body and the soul. ”

“ Without pretension to actual beauty or any kind of perfection, the face was one likely to attract and then to charm; gentleness, thoughtfulness, intellectual power, might be read in those fair features, as well as an almost infantine candor and innocence, and the subtle and all too-transient bloom of extreme youth. ”

“ In case your imagination should be at this moment dull, rest satisfied with a description of an image now before me, which I think, as a personification, answers the question admirably; for supposing it to be a portrait from nature, what a civilised people must they be among whom such a wonder was born—not only born, but sweetly nurtured, and arrayed in such a glory of dress! ”

“ Now weariness leaves him, and his main purpose, self-recorded on lips and brow, shines forth before us. Or we catch an ancestral likeness, or a broad humanity, hitherto unsuspected, even as we see the contour of some receding landscape, generalised and softened. ”

“ For what is one man’s appearance to another but the impact of personality upon personality, the coming together of two vitalities clothed in flesh and blood. But some there are who see only the clothes of another,—the very outward shell and husk; others who see only the flesh and blood,—the physical covering; others who get at the man and know him in part as he is. For whom shall the portrait be painted,—for those who see, or those who know, or those who love? ”

“ 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. ”

“ I wish that you would come to me, and that my face would be as your face. Your motions are gentle and full of grace. Come with me and we will be as one—and perfect. I know that even the worst people in all the world would have only to look at you and they would love you. ”

“ Never before in all his life had she seen him so beautiful—his broad, white forehead, his bright contemplative eyes, his sweet, loving, thoughtful face breaking into kind smiles, his gentle manner, and his scrupulously refined dress made a picture of manhood that appealed to her first, as a mother, and secondly, as a woman. ”

“ And yet, there is an individuality about the style, and the reflection is rather of the same nature as the patient likeness of expression which is to be seen in the faces of an aged pair, who have travelled in love and unity down the vale of years together. ”

“ Do not these ladies perceive that each style of personal beauty has a distinct character to support? That a tasteful adaptation will enforce the stamp which nature has impressed? Let us then admonish the female whose beauty is of the fair, pale, and interesting cast, not to render her appearance insipid by the overpowering hues of robes, mantles, pelisses, &c. of amber, orange, grass-green, crimson, or rose-color. ”

“ I am tired of the novelist's portrait of a gentleman, with gloves and hat, leaning against a pillar, upon a vague landscape background. I want the gentleman as he appears in a snap-shot photograph, with his every-day expression on his face, and the localities in which he spends his days accurately visible around him. ”

“ There was a memory of such a man seared into the girl's very soul;—a man whose head and shoulders resembled this man's,—who had the same bright hair, the same slim and powerful body,—and who moved, too, as this young man moved. ”

“ Nowadays we find it the fashion to give every kind of face just a ripple of a smile, to emphasize its amiability, a very questionable fashion indeed, and one hard to restrain within the limit imposed. ”

“ Within each of these general groupings the next consideration is the contour of the face. This may be round or oval. Yet there are, of course, countless variations within and between these types, and each woman should remember that her characteristics build up into a distinct and unique personality. It is that unique and precious whole which is herself that each woman should explore, so as to know her potentialities and her needs. ”

“ To our way of thinking, such a face could scarcely be described as beautiful; but how much prejudice there is in our ideas of beauty! I soon came to find these brown faces, gleaming with health and fat, really pleasing. ”

“ She came back to me with tale upon tale, and it all might be or mightn't. I never met my pretty model in the world—she moved, it appeared, in exalted circles—and could only admire, in her wealth of illustration, the grandeur of her life and the freedom of her hand. ”

“ At all events, the more familiar we become with any common face, the more astonishing the multitude of the transformations we observe in it,—the more indescribable and bewildering its fugitive subtleties of expression. ”

“ We had, in truth, some stronger terms to use with regard to this figure, but we forbear them now, and refer our male readers to the picture itself, to say whether they have seen any thing more handsome, more really beautiful, than that for a long time. And to the ladies we appeal with equal confidence, whether any one of them has seen so beautiful a representation of the female face and form for years—excepting only that which she sees reflected from her own mirror. ”