Literary notes about way (AI summary)
The word “way” serves as a flexible and multifaceted term in literature, operating on both literal and metaphorical levels. Authors employ it to denote physical direction or route—as when characters “find the matches” by feeling their way into a hall ([1]) or “lead the way” toward a strategic hill in battle ([2], [3])—while it simultaneously describes manner, method, and style. For example, it captures attitudes and behaviors in phrases like “the way you take it” ([4]) and “the doing of the thing is our great concern” ([5]), and it even gestures toward broader philosophical or moral journeys, as seen in expressions like “the old way” ([6]) or “the way of the world” ([7]). This diversity in usage highlights the word’s enduring ability to bridge the concrete and the abstract across genres and historical contexts.
- He felt his way into the hall and found the matches, after sending his hat down upon the floor with a noise like a drum.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. Wells - He therefore ordered the Tribunes to lead out the infantry at daybreak, while he, taking command of the cavalry, led the way towards the hill.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius - At 5 o’clock we set out again in a coach home, and were very merry all the way.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys - “Nothing could be more charming than the way you take it, for of course if we’re alone together now it’s you that are alone most.
— from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - I will not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great concern.
— from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle - This was the old way.'
— from The Analects of Confucius (from the Chinese Classics) by Confucius - Such is the way of the world.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. Andersen
