All 15 Uses of

proportion

in

The Portrait of a Lady

So far I reasoned, and it took nothing less than that technical rigour, I now easily see, to inspire me with the right confidence for erecting on such a plot of ground the neat and careful and proportioned pile of bricks that arches over it and that was thus to form, constructionally speaking, a literary monument.†
Chpt Pref.

proportioned = made appropriate in size, amount, or degree

Such is the aspect that to-day "The Portrait" wears for me: a structure reared with an "architectural" competence, as Turgenieff would have said, that makes it, to the author's own sense, the most proportioned of his productions after "The Ambassadors" which was to follow it so many years later and which has, no doubt, a superior roundness.†
Chpt Pref.

The importance of what had happened was out of proportion to its appearance; there had really been a change in her life.†
Chpt 4 *

out of proportion = not appropriate in size, amount, or degree

He had been deeply affected—this she believed, and she was still capable of deriving pleasure from the belief; but it was absurd that a man both so intelligent and so honourably dealt with should cultivate a scar out of proportion to any wound.†
Chpt 21

Here we get exactly the high price of the novel as a literary form—its power not only, while preserving that form with closeness, to range through all the differences of the individual relation to its general subject-matter, all the varieties of outlook on life, of disposition to reflect and project, created by conditions that are never the same from man to man (or, so far as that goes, from man to woman), but positively to appear more true to its character in proportion as it strains, or tends to burst, with a latent extravagance, its mould.†
Chpt Pref.

The best were arranged in an oaken gallery, of charming proportions, which had a sitting-room at either end of it and which in the evening was usually lighted.†
Chpt 5

He surveyed the edifice from the outside and admired it greatly; he looked in at the windows and received an impression of proportions equally fair.†
Chpt 7

He had enjoyed the best things of life, but they had not spoiled his sense of proportion.†
Chpt 8

Her features were thick but in perfect proportion and harmony, and her complexion had a healthy clearness.†
Chpt 18 *

The windows of the ground-floor, as you saw them from the piazza, were, in their noble proportions, extremely architectural; but their function seemed less to offer communication with the world than to defy the world to look in.†
Chpt 22

But Lily knew nothing of these discriminations, and could only pronounce her sister's career a strange anti-climax—an impression confirmed by the fact that Isabel's silence about Mr. Osmond, for instance, was in direct proportion to the frequency with which he occupied her thoughts.†
Chpt 31

It had local colour enough, and though he knew less about architecture than about Limoges enamels he could see that the proportions of the windows and even the details of the cornice had quite the grand air.†
Chpt 36

Her attention, her sympathy were immediate and active; and they were in direct proportion to a sentiment with which they were in no way connected—a lively conjecture as to whether Lord Warburton might be trying to make love to her.†
Chpt 43

His present appearance, however, was not a confession of disappointment; it was simply a part of Osmond's habitual system, which was to be inexpressive exactly in proportion as he was really intent.†
Chpt 46

I really believe that's what he wants to marry me for—just to find out the mystery and the proportions of it.†
Chpt 53

Definitions:

(1) (proportion as in: the proportion of females)
relative amount, quantity, or collection
The exact meaning of this sense of proportion is subject to its context. For example:
- "The female proportion is 50%." -- percentage or share
- "The proportion of oil to vinegar." -- ratio (quantity of something relative to the quantity of something else)
- "In the survey, the female proportion said..." -- group
(2) (proportion as in: a problem of large proportion)
size or dimension
(3) (proportion as in: respond in proportion)
appropriate in size, amount, or degree