Literary notes about manifest (AI summary)
The word “manifest” has long served as a versatile term in literature, functioning both as an adjective meaning “obvious” or “clear,” and as a verb denoting the act of making something evident. In classical texts, authors like Victor Hugo use it to emphasize the unmistakable nature of events or conditions—for example, describing a coup as “manifest to all” ([1]) or noting a “manifest distraction” in a character’s behavior ([2]). Philosophers and psychoanalysts such as Nietzsche and Freud further expand its usage; Nietzsche speaks of the “manifest” expression of intellectual power ([3]), while Freud contrasts the latent with the manifest content of dreams ([4], [5], [6]). Beyond these, literary works employ the term to signal overt emotional states, social conditions, or metaphysical declarations, whether in historical narratives ([7]), political treatises ([8], [9]), or poetic reflections on nature and fate ([10], [11]). Overall, the term “manifest” is a powerful linguistic tool that bridges the gap between inner experience and external expression, rendering the unseen into the plainly observable.
- The material and moral impossibility of the coup d'état was manifest to all.
— from The History of a Crime by Victor Hugo - The continual efforts he made to conceal his vexation produced a manifest distraction in his behaviour and discourse.
— from The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete by T. Smollett - The strength, the freedom which proceed from intellectual power, from a superabundance of intellectual power, manifest themselves as scep ticism.
— from The Antichrist by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - The first thing that the dreamer has to testify is that the occasion for the dream is touched upon in its manifest content.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud - Let me remind you once more that this process, which changes the latent into the manifest dream, is called dream-work .
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud - Work which proceeds in the opposite direction, from the manifest dream to the latent, is our work of interpretation .
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud - And indeed, as these things became gradually manifest, the character of the Puritans began to clear itself.
— from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle - Should any opposition manifest itself, the Society will suppress it.
— from The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl - A certain strategical plan became manifest.
— from The History of a Crime by Victor Hugo - The truly wise man, we are told, can perceive things before they have come to pass; how much more, then, those that are already manifest!'
— from The Art of War by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi - Now will I seek again to bring to mind How porous a body all things have—a fact Made manifest in my first canto, too.
— from On the Nature of Things by Titus Lucretius Carus
