Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Individuality   Listen
noun
Individuality  n.  (pl. individualities)  
1.
The quality or state of being individual or constituting an individual; separate or distinct existence; oneness; unity. "They possess separate individualities."
2.
The character or property appropriate or peculiar to an individual; that quality which distinguishes one person or thing from another; the sum of characteristic traits; distinctive character; as, he is a person of marked individuality.
3.
A habit of thinking and acting in one's own distinctive manner and as one believes appropriate, not being heavily influenced by the opinions of others; of people.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Individuality" Quotes from Famous Books



... designed specially to meet the requirements of book-lovers in search of appropriate yet distinctive souvenirs. Each volume has its own individuality in coloured illustrations and the effect is ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... so the poet of a certain order grows cynical for the sake of many poets' old loves. Not otherwise will the resultant verse succeed in implying so much—or rather so many, in the feminine plural. The man of very sensitive individuality might hesitate at the adoption. The Franciscan is understood to have a fastidiousness and to overcome it. But these poets so triumph over their repugnance that it does not appear. And yet, if choice were, one might wish rather to make ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... interest, weighed on my soul. The one quality that this equable and judicious critic was on the look-out for was the power of being approved. Foster's view seemed to knock the bottom out of life, to deprive everything equally of charm and individuality. ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Limited, as he was, in his most important commissions, to the well-worn cycle of ecclesiastical themes, he could not work out all the possibilities of his genius. Nevertheless, he infused into the old themes an altogether new spirit, the spirit of his own individuality. It is a spirit which we call distinctly modern, yet it is as ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... had been pensioned off to an undisturbed old age in the garret,—not common blankets or bed-spreads, either,—bought, as you buy yours, out of a shop,—spun or woven by machinery, without individuality or history. Every one of these curtains had its story. The one on the right, nearest the window, and already falling into holes, is a Chinese linen, and even now displays unfaded, quaint patterns of sleepy-looking Chinamen, in conical hats, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... occupied with their situation and the change in their prospects. Others were busy making their little arrangements with their wives or relations; while the mass of the seamen, not yet organised by discipline or known to each other, were in a state of disunion and individuality, which naturally induced every man to look after himself without caring for his neighbour. We therefore could not expect, nor did we receive, any sympathy; we were in a scene of bustle and noise, yet alone. A spare topsail, which had been stowed for the present ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... his voice down the centuries as a great individuality. He has spoken as a man of God, as a man of ideas, a man of energy. He has made his influence felt throughout the universe, not only in the civilized world, but in the uncivilized portion, to bring it into civilization, or to bear to it the ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola

... to have led to externalism; in fact, it did not, for somehow excessive scrupulosity in rite and pietistic exercises went hand in hand with simple faith and religious inwardness. So, too, the expression of ethics and religion as Law ought to have suppressed individuality; in fact, it sometimes gave an impulse to each individual to try to impose his own concepts, norms, and acts as a Law upon the rest. Each thought very much for himself, and desired that others should think likewise. We have already seen that in matters ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... in the first instance, in regard to Charles Dickens, that he had in an extraordinary degree the dramatic element in his character. It was an integral part of his individuality. It coloured his whole temperament or idiosyncracy. Unconsciously he described himself, to a T, in Nicholas Nickleby. "There's genteel comedy in your walk and manner, juvenile tragedy in your eye, and touch-and-go farce in your la'ugh," ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... relationship between officers and men in the 1st line Territorial unit of 1914-1915 was the despair of the more crusted Regular martinet. Its joyous amateurism freed it from every trace of the mental servitude which is the curse of militarism, and stimulated initiative and individuality. Long before the War, most Territorials believed in universal training, not so much on account of the German peril, which to too many Englishmen seemed a mere delusion, as on account of its social value. It is pleasant to remember how solidly Lord Roberts ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... calmly told herself that the present tranquillity should last. She solemnly resolved to guard against every possible contingency that might lead to a "situation." She did not purpose to surrender her individuality; she would not become a dummy. But there must be a middle ground where she could blend service to herself with service to her family. Life should be rich, but it ought also to be tactful. Surely this ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... such days everything stands out in sharp outline. A street is no longer a congery of houses huddling shamefully together and terrified lest any one should look at them and laugh. Each house then recaptures its individuality. The very roadways are aware of themselves and bear their horses, and cars, and trams in a competent spirit, adorned with modesty as with a garland. It has a beauty beyond sunshine, for sunshine is only youth and carelessness. The impress of a thousand memories, ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... conventional talent. Even among men of genius up on the heights it is the personality of each that enters largely into the equation of their work. No one can confuse Whistler the etcher with the etcher Rembrandt; the profounder is the Dutchman. Yet what individuality there is in the plates of the American! What personality! Now, Felicien Rops, the Belgian etcher, lithographer, engraver, designer, and painter, occupies about the same relative position to Honore Daumier as Whistler does ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... when I mentioned this impression, and said I ought to try the climate of America before I judged; but he admitted the extraordinary, yet almost indefinable individuality of the landscape as well as the architecture, which struck the eye instantly on crossing ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... out their unfitness and unwholesomeness, and betray their dishonesty, shame and sacrifice." Clothes show silliness, conceit, and selfishness more than any other thing, and often they shame a home, so a colored girl should study her individuality and her life position and dress accordingly. She should wear only becoming colors, and she might affect a certain color to her advantage. She should "cling" to what is becoming rather than follow exaggerated fashions. The exclusive dressers in high society study to get simple lines; with them severity ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... the hospitality we had received exacted it. We found him receiving visitors in a plain, but comfortable room, in a distant part of the building. He was a man of fifty-five, frank and self-possessed in his manners, and of an evident force and individuality of character. His reception of the visitors, among whom was a lady, was at once courteous and kindly. A younger monk brought us glasses of tea. Incidentally learning that I had visited the Holy Places in Syria, the abbot sent for some pictures ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... a very young and somewhat plain girl. Now he was surprised to find that the more it was studied in detail, the more favorable was the impression produced. Though childish and immature, there was not a weak line in the face. The nose and mouth were especially fine, the former denoting distinct individuality, the latter marked strength and sweetness of character; and while the upper part of the face indicated keen perceptions and quick sympathies, the general contour showed a nature strong either to do or to endure. The eyes were large and beautiful, but ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... distinguish between voices even of the same range, than between instruments of the same kind, because there is strong individuality in voices. This is due to the fact that structural differences between the vocal tracts of individuals are far more numerous and far more minute than possibly can be introduced into instruments. Moreover, ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... legislating for those who were not Christians. The question is, "Will you put an end to all religious distinctions?" There could never be a thorough community between Christians and Jews; there was a marked line of distinction between them; a complete individuality in the Jewish character. The bill was supported by Sir James Mackintosh, Dr. Lushington, and Messrs. Macauley and Smith, on the ground that it was persecution to look at a man's religion when speaking of his fitness for civil rights; and that from the introduction of Jews, no danger ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... woman who holds a job feels that she is a better companion for her husband because she has more individuality and comes to him more full of different interests when they meet. She may not have the kind of temperament which makes it possible for her to bring up her children herself. She may find that even with less time to give them, she ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... of sunsets and the impulses from vernal woods. And the essence of the whole experience, when the individual swept through it says finally 'I believe,' is the intense concreteness of his vision, the individuality of the hypothesis before him, and the complexity of the various concrete motives and perceptions that issue in ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... forty years has been the study of character in handwriting. It is pretty much with the various forms of caligraphy as it is with the human face or with the human voice. The vast majority of faces that one sees are essentially commonplace, but each has somehow an individuality of its own. Handwriting has its physiognomy, and everybody who has been accustomed to a large correspondence knows how instinctively and unfailingly he recognises a caligraphy which has been presented to him only twice or thrice. It was as a ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... reality one person, and unite to form a body corporate, of whose existence, however, they are unconscious. There is an obvious analogy between this and the manner in which the component cells of our bodies unite to form our single individuality, of which it is not likely they have a conception, and with which they have probably only the same partial and imperfect sympathy as we, the body corporate, have with them. In the articles above alluded to I separated ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... Ammophiles, of all the inhabitants of the garden, hold the first place in our affections. Not so beautiful as the blue Pelopaeus nor so industrious as the little red-girdled Trypoxylon, their intelligence, their distinct individuality, and their obliging tolerance of our society make them an unfailing source of interest. They are, moreover, the most remarkable of all genera in their stinging habits, and few things have given us deeper pleasure than our success in following the activities and ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... increase the confusions resulting from our resemblance. We did not lie, but we dodged and pretended, questioned and looked mysterious, till I verily believe the person concerned, having in himself so vague an idea of our individuality, not unfrequently forgot which he had blamed, or which he had wanted, and ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... is true that I should never have mistaken Mr. IRVING for a fighting Roundhead, and he might well have sacrificed something of his personality for the sake of illusion. It is true, too, that he was more concerned about dramatic than poetic effects; yet, within the limitations of a very marked individuality, he did justice to the author by a performance that was most sincere and persuasive. Miss LEWES played her more difficult part with great charm and delicacy. Her manner, even under stress of passionate feeling, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various

... secondary love. The comparison annoyed her daily, hourly, and it did not fail to become a real wound. Returned to Paris, where they spent almost three years, that wound was increased by the sole fact that the puissant individuality of the painter speedily relegated to the shade the individuality of his wife, simply, almost mechanically, like a large tree which pushes a smaller one into the background. The composite society of artists, amateurs, and writers who visited Lincoln came there only for him. The ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... piano-playing machine may easily boast of a mechanism as wonderful as that of a Liszt, a d'Albert or a Bachaus, but it can no more claim personality than the typewriter upon which this article is being written can claim to reproduce the individuality which characterizes the handwriting of myriads of different persons. Personality, then, is the virtuoso's one great unassailable stronghold. It is personality that makes us want to hear a half dozen different renderings of a single Beethoven ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... equally shiny pate of the managing clerk, and then to the drab-looking girl typist, pale-faced and narrow-chested, who seemed to finger the key-board as though the maddening click of her abominable machine had killed any individuality she might once have had, and turned her into a mere part of the mechanism of the City. The one spot of colour in the office was an insurance company's calendar, and, even on that, the design was crude and the inscription little more than ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... past effect of ownership and individuality in Lynn as clearly as you can catch affection or menace in a human voice. The outward expression is most manifest, and to pass in and out along the lanes in front of the old houses inspires in one precisely those emotions which are ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... departments of nature. Their names are general, not proper. Their attributes are generic, rather than individual; in other words, there is an indefinite number of spirits of each class, and the individuals of a class are all much alike; they have no definitely marked individuality; no accepted traditions are current as to their origin, life, adventures, and character. (b) On the other hand gods, as distinguished from spirits, are not restricted to definite departments of nature. It is true that there is ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... off at Brook Farm, for the nonce. What anyone did that was out of the common, might cause smiles and laughter but no frowns or scoldings. Each felt and believed in the demonstration of his or her own individuality, and, as a first consequence, there was something that was often mistaken, by strangers, for rudeness and want of order. Some forgot that it was especially work they came for, and were anxious to have their theories discussed. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... simpler citizens, to the gradual sapping of the precious national roots, of the internal debasement that may be going on through the process of "infiltration." They are too prosperous, too cosmopolitan to feel losses in national individuality. They realize merely the better hotels, the better railways, the improved plumbing in their country. Their souls ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... multitude. The individual citizen is made free from the interference of a single master only that he may be the more dependent on that corporate despot who is to control his every action and his very thoughts. Manners, customs, above all public opinion, are declared to be the most important of laws. Individuality is, therefore, to be absolutely banished. Nor is security provided for. It is the advantage of a stationary system that a man may know this year what the world will expect of him ten years hence and may lay his plans accordingly. Human laws may sometimes be pardoned for being as inflexible as ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... had caused him to retain her name, but lacked the temerity to ask. She would have been amazed, unbelieving, had he told her that it was her beauty; that he was clinging rather desperately to the unlovely number, which had no individuality and whose features were altogether neutral ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... struck in the words of Wordsworth cited on its title-page:—" We live by admiration."[35] Religion he understands to be an "ardent condition of the feelings," "habitual and regulated admiration" (p. 129), "worship of whatever in the known Universe appears worthy of worship" (p. 161). "To have an individuality," he teaches, "is to have an ideal, and to have an ideal is to have an object of worship: it is to have a religion" (p. 136). "Irreligion," on the other hand, is defined as "life without worship," and is said to consist in "the absence of habitual admiration, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... all ancient Oriental writings must be to get their full significance, it is an inspiration to woman to-day to stand for her liberty. The bondwoman must be cast out. All that makes for industrial bondage, for sex slavery and humiliation, for the dwarfing of individuality, and for the thralldom of the soul, must be cast out from our home, from society, and from our lives. The woman who does not claim her birthright of freedom will remain in the wilderness with the children that she has borne in degradation, heart starvation, and anguish ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... addressed her only as "Sarah Walker"; two animals that were occasionally a part of this passing pageant were known as "Sarah Walker's dog" and "Sarah Walker's cat," and later it was my proud privilege to sink my own individuality under the title of ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... monks possessing any individuality were extremely rare. At the very most, a few pages of his pupil, the Abbe Peyreyve, merited reading. He left sympathetic biographies of his master, wrote a few loveable letters, composed treatises in the sonorous language of formal discourse, and delivered panegyrics ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... always what most easily lose individuality, and become those of the owner's class; and if Clement was all chorister, Fulbert and Lancelot were all schoolboy. The two little fellows were a long way apart in height, though there were only two years between them, for Lance was on a much smaller scale, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... apparition, is attached to the phenomena. No doubt, in these days where the individuals who perceive the phenomena have a wider experience, such a variety of persons appear that the ghostly appearance loses its individuality if not its authenticity. Mr. Podmore discusses such cases.[20] In Mr. Podmore's book when Poltergeists, Cock-lore ghost affairs, are discussed, it appears that genuine hallucinations may be ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris

... soon learned that by merely enlarging these little pictures, he could not succeed in giving them even that individuality to which he was led by natural taste and mode of life. In fact, what a difference lies between the figures of the Linen Weavers' Tabernacle painted in 1433, and those of the picture in the church of San Marco done ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... every fresh attempt at translation affords a new proof of the truth of his assertion. Each language exhibits its own special genius in its poetic forms. Even when they are closely similar in rhythmical method their poetic effect is essentially different, their individuality is distinct. The hexameter of the Iliad is not the hexameter of the Aeneid. And if this be the case in respect to related forms, it is even more obvious in respect to forms peculiar to one language, like the terza rima of the Italian, for which it is impossible to find a satisfactory ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... and bright, rhythmical in sound, and perfect realizations of their sense; in reading you often think that never before was such definiteness united to such poetry of expression; every page and every sentence rings of its individuality. Mr. Stevenson's style is over smart, well-dressed, shall I say, like a young man walking in the Burlington Arcade? Yes, I will say so, but, I will add, the most gentlemanly young man that ever walked ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... cases was the same, namely, the inward tumult of her awakening womanhood, and still more, perhaps, the tumult of awakening talent which had not as yet found its appointed means of expression. She was driven hither and thither by the push of her individuality to disengage itself from adventitious surroundings and circumstances, and realize its independent existence.—A somewhat perilous crisis of development, fruitful of escapades and unruly impulses which may leave their mark, and that a disfiguring one, upon the whole of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... composer on account of the startling effects produced. The solo part is very unusual, the long pauses and unusual loud chords make it unlike other music. It has a pleasing effect on the audience, probably due to its individuality. Mrs. Epstein has the reputation of being able to sing this kind of a solo. The foremost critics of the largest musical world pronounce Mrs. Epstein as an ideal in ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... let off, has fizzled off, and cannot be repeated with its first effect. Now the honest historian of this, or of any pun, must reproduce in his narrative all the circumstances of time, place, and individuality that gave it its point; but the effect of the pun, the Baron ventures to think, it is impossible to convey in print to the reader, read he never so wisely, nor however vividly graphic may be the description. Yet if this same reader possesses the art of reading aloud, with some approach ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various

... interest was the narrow escape of Miss Allis; but the individuality of discussion gradually merged into a crusade against racing, led by the zealous clergyman. John Porter viewed this trend with no little ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... professors from various colleges. While the editor, I believe, retained, and sometimes exercised, the right to omit parts of the review and make some additions, yet writers drawn from so many sources must have preserved their own individuality. I have heard it said that The Nation gave you the impression of having been entirely written by one man; but whatever there is more than fanciful in that impression must have arisen from the general agreement between the editor and the contributors. Paul Leicester Ford once told me ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... "what-'ll-Mrs.-Grundy-say" devotion to conformity in small things and great, which pervades the American body-social from the matter of church-going to the trimming of women's petticoats,—this dread of singularity, which has eaten up all individuality amongst them, and makes their population like so many moral and mental lithographs, and their houses like so ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... remembrance, then the singer has found the secret of success and earns the reputation that no one can deny or take away from him or her. Riches, influence, envy, jealousy can never buy that which the singer has not. It must rest with the individuality and musical temperament of the artist and the art of giving to the hearer what the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... city; he was famous in his day for marvellous rapidity of workmanship, but this fluency combined with a too slavish adherence to the methods of the great masters has somewhat robbed his work of individuality; his frescoes in the Escurial at Madrid and others in Florence and Rome are esteemed ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... pageantry. Morals, interludes, and masques were gradually brought upon the scene. Dancers, singers, jugglers, and minstrels became indispensable to the performances. The Church and the Theatre drifted apart; were viewed in time as wholly independent establishments. The actor asserted his individuality; his profession was recognised as distinct and complete in itself; companies of players began to stroll through the provinces. The early moral-play of the "Castle of Perseverance," which is certainly as old as the reign of Henry VI., was represented ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... Greeley's name had not been seriously discussed until the members assembled in Cincinnati, and no scheme of the Liberal managers had contemplated his nomination. It was evident from the first that with his striking individuality, his positive views, and his combative career, he had both strength and weakness as a candidate; but whatever his merits or demerits, his selection was out of the reckoning of those who had formed the Liberal organization. It was certainly a singular and unexpected result, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... in this respect as among that number of cows in regard to the milk they yield. I have in my mind now a "sugar-bush" nestled in the lap of a spur of the Catskills, every tree of which is known to me, and assumes a distinct individuality in my thought. I know the look and quality of the whole two hundred; and when on my annual visit to the old homestead I find one has perished, or fallen before the axe, I feel a personal loss. They are all veterans, and have ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... of this perennial greenery the people dwell. The foreign houses show a very various individuality. The peculiarity in which all seem to share is, that everything is decorated and festooned with flowering trailers. It is often difficult to tell what the architecture is, or what is house and what is vegetation; for all angles, and lattices, and balustrades, and verandahs are hidden by ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... and soul,—and in a peculiar way he could pour out himself. In short, to be an Essayist was the bent of his nature and genius. English literature is rich in such men,—in men whose works are cherished for the individuality they reveal. What the Song is in poetry the Essay is in prose. The producer pours out himself in his own way, and cannot be separated even in thought from that which he has produced. Jerrold's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... doubtful value. It might, in many cases, be wiser to warn the aspirant to keep himself unspotted from the playhouse. To send him there is to imperil, on the one hand, his originality of vision, on the other, his individuality of method. He may fall under the influence of some great master, and see life only through his eyes; or he may become so habituated to the current tricks of the theatrical trade as to lose all sense of their conventionality and falsity, and find himself, in the end, better ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... pictures arranged rather like a museum. There is never a look of the mistress of the house having settled anything herself, or chosen a pillow because the colours in a certain sofa required it; or, in fact, there is never the expression of any individuality of ownership; anyone could have just such another house if he or she were rich enough to give carte blanche to the best antique art shop; but the things all being really good and beautiful do not jar like the mixture at the Spleists did. Often whole rooms have ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... some particular subject, when he enters on his public career, he becomes hopelessly inefficient in all subjects after a few years of public life, and then, void of all individuality, he remains nothing but a public man, that is, a man representing the popular will and never thinking, or able to think, of anything but how to make ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... consequence of the charms of the merry widow, or because of a certain distinctive individuality that belongs to her, Miss Cassandra attracted even more attention than usual this morning. While we were admiring the noble Thorwaldsen reliefs, that form the frieze of the entrance hall, and the exquisite marble of Cupid and Psyche by Canova, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... drawing were correct it would be wrong? Solid painting; good heavens! Do they suppose that there is one sort of painting that is better than all others, and that there is a receipt for making it as for making chocolate! Art is not mathematics, it is individuality. It does not matter how badly you paint, so long as you don't paint badly like other people. Education destroys individuality. That great studio of Julien's is a sphinx, and all the poor folk that go there for artistic ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... From Occipital Spine to Individuality, over the top of the head, 14 ... Ear to Ear vertically over the top of the head, 13 ... Philoprogenitiveness to Individuality (greatest length), 8 ... Concentrativeness to Comparison, 7-1/8 ... Ear to Philoprogenitiveness, 4-7/8 ... Ear to Individuality, ...
— Phrenological Development of Robert Burns - From a Cast of His Skull Moulded at Dumfries, the 31st Day of March 1834 • George Combe

... centered on a masked woman, a woman whom no one else could identify. They, and certain habitual frequenters of the opera balls, could alone recognize under the long shroud of the black domino, the hood and falling ruff which make the wearer unrecognizable, the rounded form, the individuality of figure and gait, the sway of the waist, the carriage of the head—the most intangible trifles to ordinary eyes, but to them the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... thick layers of sleep, out of the imaginary beginnings of all things. He lifted a pseudopod from primordial ooze, and the pseudopod was him. He became an amoeba which contained his essence; then a fish marked with his own peculiar individuality; then an ape unlike all other apes. And finally, ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... 'A Tale of Two Cities' Dickens has struck a graver note. This is peculiarly emphasized in 'Great Expectations.' This story is 'characterized by a consistency and quietude of individuality which is rare in Dickens.' It is really a book with a moral—that life in the limelight is not always synonymous with getting the best out of it. Really, the hero behaves in a sneakish manner. Probably Dickens doesn't like him, and the writer is ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... interesting novel; indeed, I suspect that the writer is often no better off than the reader in the dreary middle of the story, when his characters have all made their appearance, and before they have reached near enough to the denoument to have fixed their individuality by the position they have arrived at in the chain of ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... should lend her ear for an instant. If she had ever entertained "opinions" hinting at the allegorical nature of the Mosaic account of the Fall, her theory would unquestionably have been that Satan's insidious whisper to the First Mother prated of the beauties of feminine individuality, and enlarged upon the feasibility of an elopement from Adam and a separate maintenance upon the knowledge-giving, forbidden fruit. Upon second marriages—supposing the otherwise indissoluble tie to have been cut by Death—she was a trifle less severe, but ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... that the slightest change in their walk, or in their looks was readily observed; and the state of their health anxiously interpreted. Every bullock, every horse, had its peculiar character, its well defined individuality, which formed the frequent topic of our conversation, in which we all most willingly joined, because every one was equally interested. My readers will, therefore, easily understand my deep distress when I saw myself, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... ruins of the old. Thus they partake of the nature of many different trees; and even their prickly top-knots, seen near at hand against the sky, have a certain palm-like air that impresses the imagination. But their individuality, although compounded of so many elements, is but the richer and the more original. And to look down upon a level filled with these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old unconquerable chestnuts ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... every scrap and fragment of his inditing. They cannot let oblivion have the lease "notelet" or "essaykin" of his. For, however inferior to his best productions these uncollected articles may be, they must contain more or less of Lamb's humor, sense, and observation. Somewhat of his delightful individuality must be stamped upon them. In brief, they cannot but contain much that would amuse and entertain all admirers of their author. For myself, I would rather read the poorest of these uncollected essays of Elia ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... individuality, drags genius down to the dead level of average ideas, tends to produce an unprogressive uniformity of practice. It imposes the conceptions of the past upon the future. "If the measures have any effect at all, the effect must in part be that of causing some likeness among ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... but who, as soon as they cease to agree like two clocks keeping exactly the same time, create a disputation, or intellectual contest. Regarded as purely rational beings, the individuals would, I say, necessarily be in agreement, and their variation springs from the difference essential to individuality; in other words, it is drawn ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer

... dislike which one woman might feel for another who wore a better gown. "Yet if I give my whole life to it there will always be someone who is richer, who is better dressed and more beautiful than I," she thought. "Though my individuality wins to-day, to-morrow I shall meet a woman beside whom I shall be utterly extinguished. And there is no escape from this; it is inevitable and must happen." A shiver of disgust went through her, and ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... nothing so much as the tameness of the general scene; as if Shakspeare's genius were vivid enough to have wrought pictorial splendors in the town where he was born. Here and there, however, a queer edifice meets your eye, endowed with the individuality that belongs only to the domestic architecture of times gone by; the house seems to have grown out of some odd quality in its inhabitant, as a sea-shell is moulded from within by the character of its inmate; and having ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... had sought when he had enlisted, he said to himself. It was in this that he would take refuge from the horror of the world that had fallen upon him. He was sick of revolt, of thought, of carrying his individuality like a banner above the turmoil. This was much better, to let everything go, to stamp out his maddening desire for music, to humble himself into the mud of common slavery. He was still tingling with sudden anger from the officer's voice ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... human weakness he is lenient and often tender, and even when weakness passes into wickedness, he is just and compassionate. He saw human nature "steadily and saw it whole," and paints it with a light but sure hand. He was master of a style of great distinction and individuality, and ranks as one of the very greatest of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... without a sign upon them that portrayed their author. This is as true of the lesser arts as of the greater. It was not the fashion in the days of Giotto, nor of Raphael, to sign a painting in vermillion with a flourished underscore. The artist was content to sink individuality in the general good, to work for art's ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... the dominating influence nip every bud of individuality that the girl ventured to put forth, and he determined to interfere. During the long months he had spent with Mrs. Gusty he had discovered a way to manage her. The weak spot in her armor was pride of intellect; she acknowledged no man her superior. By the use of figurative ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... however, will not constitute, in the ordinary sense, a series. I shall add the name, as a Trade Mark, to any story, by whomsoever published, which I have written as the expression of my own individuality. Nor will they necessarily appear in the first instance in volume form. If ever I should be lucky enough to find an editor sufficiently bold and sufficiently righteous to venture upon running a Hill-top ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... Colonel Faversham, stamping about the room, "it has come to this! I mustn't go to the play without begging my children's permission. I haven't a scrap of individuality of my own left! I am compelled to ask Lawrence before ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb

... August I took leave of Newport and its pleasant atmosphere and sociable visitors; and certainly think that it would be difficult to select a place better adapted for a summer's residence, were there any means of conserving one's individuality a little: the situation ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... morbid perhaps, superstitious and overwhelming, took possession of her mind; also, perhaps, far back in the innermost recesses of her heart, a pride in her own importance, her mission in life, her individuality: for she was a girl after all, a mere child, about ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... separate from us as we are, or imagine ourselves to be, separate from each other. That which He took of the Virgin Mary, and took in the only way in which it could have been taken, by the Virgin Birth, was not a separate human individuality, but human nature; that nature which we all share. It was in that nature that He ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz

... well as its appearance. Its movements, its individuality, its posing as a little furry mass of concealed mysteries, its elfin-like elusiveness, all combined to justify its name; and a subtle painter might have pictured it as a wisp of floating smoke, the fire below betraying itself at two points only—the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... stature;—outside the prison, a freeman, his presence would have been commanding. But he needed the free air for his lungs, and the light to surround him,—the light to set him in relief, the sense of life to compel him to stand out in his own powerful individuality, distinct from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged upon. It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically considered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the one then known in ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... citizens of the Terran Federation. These men were too self-interested to follow the group-thoughts which controlled the centers of empire, and the seams and wrinkles of their faces stamped a rough kind of individuality even ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr

... visitors come here too. I often hear our good town will lose its individuality with ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen

... nervous reaction from tenderness. All at once, without transition, he detested her. But only for a moment. He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites—and escapes. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... country's was still a half-fledged literary life, found ready to his hand masterpieces of artistic maturity, lofty in conception, broad in bearing, finished in form. There still remain, for summary review, the elements proper to his own poetic individuality—those which mark him out not only as the first great poet of his own nation, but as a ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... heavy hip and protruding stomach, quivering breasts and bellowing and frothing at the mouth, and colored light effects and risque posing in scant attire, coupled with a display of attractive lingerie. But Blanch forgot, or rather did not know, that she had to do with genius over whose individuality most men are ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... moment of death Edward had had no intimation, no message from the passing spirit, and this apparent neglect, so to speak, was another deep wound in Edward's breast. Do the affections cease with life? Was it contrary to the will of the Almighty that the mourner should taste this consolation? Did individuality lose itself in death, and with it memory? Or did one stroke destroy spirit and body? These anxious doubts, which have before now agitated many who reflect on such subjects, exercised their power over Edward's mind with an intensity that none can imagine save ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various

... Loevdahl, a well-endowed, healthy, and altogether promising boy who, by the approved modern educational process, is mentally and morally crippled, and the germs of what is great and good in him are systematically smothered by that disrespect for individuality and insistence upon uniformity, which are the curses of a small society. The revolutionary discontent which vibrates in the deepest depth of Kielland's nature; the profound and uncompromising radicalism which smoulders under his polished exterior; the philosophical pessimism which ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... should have blended such extravagancies and presumptuous prophesyings with his support and vindication of the Millennium, and the return of Jesus in his corporeal individuality, —because these have furnished divines in general, both Churchmen and Dissenting, with a pretext for treating his doctrine with silent contempt. Had he followed the example of his own Ben Ezra, and argued temperately and learnedly, the controversy must have forced the momentous question ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... fear of the god of the tribe, the overpowering influence of custom and the unswerving directness of the punishment of the man who violates it tend to prevent the development of individuality and of independent thinking; and the normal attitude of practically every person is to obey the customs and the laws, although often those laws leave to the individual a range of action not found in later civilized states. But as the sense of right and ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks

... as the Germans themselves not very happily call it, and the lyric—the second is always, and the third to no small extent, what might punningly be called in copyhold of France. But even the borrowed material is treated with such intense individuality of spirit that it almost acquires independence; and part of the matter, as has been said, is not ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... that Jew, Reform Judaism does not suffice; he goes a step farther, the step that leads to the baptismal font. Still less does it satisfy the Jew who desires to guard Jewdom against destruction and to preserve it as an ethnical individuality. For to him an openly expressed abandonment of all national aspirations is synonymous with a self-condemnation of the Jewish people to a perhaps slow, but sure, death. Reform Judaism without Zionism, that is to say, without the wish and the hope for ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau

... ingredients which go to make up each man. When you have carried to him that much of yourself which is common to you both, you will, by this, be qualified to detect that in him which is himself strictly and not yourself; and so to a man you will add the individuality of the man and have what you seek.... Nowhere more than in history does it 'take a thief to catch ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... do you know, dearest man, that I was not right in making the Alton of the second volume different from the first? In showing the individuality of the man swamped and warped by the routine of misery and discontent? How do you know that the historic and human interest of the book was not intended to end with Mackay's death, in whom old radicalism dies, 'not having received the promises,' ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... future, they are useless if they stand alone. The whole nature of man must be used wisely by the one who desires to enter the way. Each man is to himself absolutely the way, the truth, and the life. But he is only so when he grasps his whole individuality firmly, and, by the force of his awakened spiritual will, recognises this individuality as not himself, but that thing which he has with pain created for his own use, and by means of which he purposes, as his growth slowly develops his intelligence, to reach to the life beyond individuality. When ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... individuality and in personal initiative, heredity restores to him in the form of instinct which is, as it were, the condensed and accumulated intelligence of his ancestors. He himself no longer needs to take thought either to preserve his life or to assure ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... comes rolling along the road. This, of lighter build, and proceeding at a more rapid rate, is a barouche, drawn by a pair of large Kentucky horses. As the night is warm, and there is no need to spring up the leathern hood—its occupants can all be seen, and their individuality made out. On the box-seat is a black coachman; and by his side a young girl whose tawny complexion, visible in the whiter moonbeams, tells her to be a mulatto. Her face has been seen before, under a certain forest tree—a magnolia— its owner depositing ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid



Words linked to "Individuality" :   single, singularity, gender identity, identification, peculiarity, individualism, distinctiveness, personal identity, speciality, identity



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com