Literary notes about portion (AI summary)
In literature, the word "portion" functions as a versatile term that moves effortlessly between the literal and the metaphorical. At times it designates a measurable part of a tangible whole, as when it describes a section of a wall [1] or a geographic segment [2, 3, 4]. In other contexts, it signifies a share or allotment that carries symbolic weight, such as a share in divine favor or personal essence [5, 6, 7]. Authors also employ "portion" to articulate divisions within a broader narrative or argument, whether delineating parts of historical discourse [8, 9] or expressing abstract qualities of human nature and experience [10, 11, 12].
- The remains of this abandoned portion of wall are, however, still in existence, approaching 30 feet in height all round.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Marco Polo and da Pisa Rusticiano - 1. We shall next describe Africa, which is the remaining portion of the whole description of the earth.
— from The Geography of Strabo, Volume 3 (of 3) by Strabo - A curtain was drawn across the lower portion of the window, and he could not see into the room.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens - They found the house, read the brass plate, walked round the wall, and stopped at that portion of it which divided them from the bottom of the garden.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens - For thee my flesh and my heart hath fainted away: thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion for ever.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - He inquires into a portion of knowledge only, because the whole has grown too vast to be embraced by a single mind or life.
— from The Republic by Plato - A portion of my own spirit seemed to pass into that little stream.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie - The decline of ancient prejudice exposed a very numerous portion of human kind to the danger of a painful and comfortless situation.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - In the later portion of the text he makes a new division of books, and essays also to assign the early fragments to their respective books.
— from Dio's Rome, Volume 1 by Cassius Dio Cocceianus - It was the natural yearning of that portion, any portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau - In fact, it is on the mystic body of the ancestor that the ratapa is formed; it comes from this; it is like a detached portion of it.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim - That is clearly the remaining portion of our subject.
— from The Republic by Plato
