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More "Directness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... push and attention to duty had been noticed and had paid off. Three years it had taken, but he had made Team stature. Not that that meant anything now. Shann pulled his boots on over the legs of rough dried coveralls and glanced up, to find Thorvald watching him with a new, questioning directness the younger man could ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... about it to you," she interrupted with a directness that made him more uncomfortable than ever. "I know that you knew my father for what he really was. You knew how kind and good he was, and how nobly he befriended the Braddocks and all those wretched show people. You know how they treated him in return for his generosity. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... year, and have had none for several weeks. Step up to the room at the head of the stairs, and lay off thy things. Then, if thee is not tired, I will give thee a little job with me in the kitchen," said the old lady with a kindly directness which left no room for awkwardness ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... sweet serenity of her speech, because of the calm, unswerving directness of her gaze, my Beltane felt at sudden loss, his outstretched arms sank helplessly and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... delay. It is impatient of conventionalisms and shams. It breaks through the established order of things in matters both social and religious. It is dynamic, vivid, revolutionary. It goes to the root of things, with a startling directness, a kind of explosive force. It disturbs and shatters the customary placidities of men's lives. It forces them to face spiritual realities, to look the ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... immense cigar protruding from the bandage; or explaining how the legend of Lord KITCHENER'S survival arose from a trivial error that caused the news of the Hampshire disaster to reach Berlin a few minutes before it was published in London, he always writes with directness and verve. Admiral BROWNRIGG tells a good deal about the censorship, and illustrates his theme with some excellent reproductions of naval photographs before and after the Censor had "re-touched" them. He tells us even more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... with grave wonder, and then said with her old directness: "But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I should have told you." She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color. "I mean," she said hesitatingly, "of course you have acted nobly, generously, kindly, wisely—but ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the existence of the Church of England itself. The majority of the English clergy denounced the proposition, and some even declared its author a madman; but Mr. Gladstone pursued his chosen way with energy and directness. In one of those elevated speeches with which he was accustomed to ennoble debate, he laid the details of his plan open to the Commons. The Irish Church was to be disestablished and disendowed, its bishops were to lose their seats in Parliament, and it was to become a free and independent ecclesiastical ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... as Mandy's preference for a walk through the woods became more marked, Perkins, much to his disgust, found himself reduced to the attitude of a suppliant, urging the superior attraction of a swift drive behind Dexter as against a weary walk to the service. Mandy, however, with the directness of her simple nature, had no compunction in frankly maintaining her preference for a walk with Tim and Cameron through the woods; indeed, more than once she allowed Perkins to drive off with his fiery ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... swallow a few gnats a day, lest I should come to strain at them, and so bolt camels; but the whole question of lying is difficult. What is "lying"? Turning for moral guidance to my cousins the lower animals, whose unsophisticated nature proclaims what God has taught them with a directness we may sometimes study, I find the plover lying when she lures us from her young ones under the fiction of a broken wing. Is God angry, think you, with this pretty deviation from the letter of strict accuracy? or was it not He ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... pronunciation; in which two years of a child's school life are rescued from the needless and applied to the useful; in which the stenographer has to learn not two systems of spelling, but only two alphabets; in which the simplicity and directness of the English language, which fit it to become a world language, will not be defeated by a spelling that equals the difficulty of German grammar; in which the blundering of Dutch printers, like school, false etymologies, like rhyme, and French garnishes, as in tongue, no longer ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... nothing of the outer characteristics of this mysterious structure; but for this very reason, the imagination was the more active. Rebecca, with all her directness of nature and commonplace experience, felt in this unwonted presence that sense of awed mystery which she would have called a ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... knowledge of sexual normality. There are hundreds of books and pamphlets that deal with amazing boldness with the sexual mistakes of human life, but there is not in general circulation to-day any printed matter which deals with normal sexual life with anything like the frankness and directness that is common in widely circulated literature on social vice and its concomitant diseases. Likewise, it is difficult for women to get the true view of sexual life from personal sources, for the vulgar side ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... of motive and directness of execution which had been the strength of the Sung art gradually gave way during the Ming era to complicated conceptions and elaborate effects. The high glow of life faded; the lyrical temper and impassioned work of the Sung time were replaced ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Barbara. She regarded him with profound reverence, and his wife as most enviable of women: could she not learn from his mouth the rights of a thing, the instant she opened hers to ask them? Barbara did not know how much the sympathy, directness, and dear common sense of Helen, had helped to keep awake, support, and nourish the insight of her husband. She did not know, good and powerful as Wingfold must have been had he never married, how much wiser, more useful, and more aspiring he had grown because Helen was Helen, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... remained in England, there is little doubt that Anne Bradstreet's mind, sensitively alive as it was to every fine influence, would have developed in a far different direction to that which it finally took. The directness and joyous life of the Elizabethan literature had given place to the euphuistic school, and as the Puritans put aside one author after another as "not making for godliness," the strained style, the quirks and conceits ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... meet us, a small, short, spare body of about sixty-seven, with extremely frank and kind manners, but who always looks straight into your face with a pair of mild deep grey eyes whenever she speaks to you. With characteristic directness she did not take us into the library until she had told us that we should find there Mrs. Alison, of Edinburgh, and her aunt, Miss Sneyd, a person very old and infirm, and that the only other persons constituting ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... voice of Sister Louise. There was something refreshing in the very sight of this tall slight figure, in its blue-grey habit and dazzling white "cornette," from beneath which the dark eyes looked forth with sweet and almost childish directness. Sister Louise was not indeed much more than a child in years, and there were still certain inflections in her voice, an elasticity in her movements, a something about her very hands, with their little pink palms and dimpled knuckles, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... true of the dances. The sum of these influences, plus Purcell's innate tendencies, was a style "apt" (in the phraseology of the day) either for Church, Court, theatre, or tavern—a style whose combined loftiness, directness, and simplicity passed unobserved for generations while the big "bow-wow" manner of Handel was held to be the only ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... were Fawcett and Leslie Stephen. Both were profound believers in hard tonic discipline of mind and body, inculcating their belief by doctrine and example; and both, with great diversity of gifts, had the rough strong directness of intellectual attack which Cambridge, then perhaps more than at any other time, set in contrast to the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... murmur of long hours and low wages; the closest scrutiny revealed no strikes or internal clamorings about wrongs; and I unconsciously relaxed and breathed more deeply at the thought of this nature world, moving so smoothly, with directness and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... scoundrel from a summary vengeance; possibly I might not have done it, had I known what the alternative would be. Where is that man now?" he asked, with sudden directness. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... of the officers at South Norwalk had been fully exerted, and no result further than that already mentioned had been achieved. The evidence against Bucholz, although circumstantially telling against him, was not of sufficient weight or directness to warrant a conviction upon the charge preferred against him. He had employed eminent legal counsel, and their hopeful views of the case had communicated themselves to the mercurial temperament of the prisoner, and visions ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the eagerness of your appeal to me as to one experienced in these matters: "Can you encourage me to give my life to literature?" Indeed, my brave votaress, there is something that disturbs me in the directness of that question, something ominous in those words, give my life. Literature is a despised goddess in these days to receive ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... me gin your faither and you bide thegither withoot ony woman body, did I no hear that yince; is that the case na?" demanded the lady of Craig Ronald with astonishing directness. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... artifice immediately coalesce, as metals that are perfectly pure can be readily cemented together. Mr. Palmer and Mr. Walsingham were intimate in half an hour. There was an air of openness and sincerity about Mr. Walsingham; a freedom and directness in his conversation, which delighted ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... excellent way, at least a permissible short cut to heaven, it appears in modern times less as a separate school than as an aspect of most schools.[833] The simple and emotional character of Amidism, the directness of its "Come unto me," appeal so strongly to the poor and uneducated, that no monastery or temple could ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... lynch law (the use of the "birch seal" is familiar to readers of Vermont history) to protect their land titles in the troubled times when these "Green Mountain Boys" resisted New York's assertion of authority. They later became an independent Revolutionary state with frontier directness, and in very many respects their history in the Revolutionary epoch is similar to that of settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee, both in assertion of the right to independent self government and in a frontier separatism.[78:1] Vermont may be regarded ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... but insists that moralists and statesmen have always led us wrong by legislating and prescribing conduct on the false theory that man is bad, whereas he is in truth a creature endowed with natural probity. Then he strikes to the root of society with a directness that Rousseau could not imitate, by the position that "these laws by establishing a monstrous division of the products of nature, and even of their very elements—by dividing what ought to have remained entire, or ought to have been restored to entireness if any accident ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... she said. "In what are termed my escapades I am alone. You appealed to me," with a directness which amazed me, "because of your handsome face, your elegant form, your bright eyes. You are a man who loves adventure which has the spice of danger in it. My countrymen——." She crooked one of ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... ever loved?" asked Kilmeny, with the directness of phrasing necessitated by her mode of communication which was sometimes a little terrible. She asked the question simply and without embarrassment. She knew of no reason why love might not be discussed with Eric as other matters—music and ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... recovered himself and laughed. "You speak with directness." He suddenly turned solemn. He bent toward her and lowered his voice; his hand would have touched her arm, ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... of Iona that the English north country caught that intense glowing love of the Holy Faith, which even still, in a measure, differentiates the north of England from the south?[C] We must value very greatly the solid foundation of strength, sincerity, what we call grit, directness of expression, simplicity, to be found in early English work; all these being great things, yet capable of receiving into their fellowship and above it and beyond it, that which should give what we look for in a great literature; the power of appeal to various kinds of people, ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... the employment of the Fewest Parts, casting aside every detail not absolutely necessary, and guarding carefully against the intrusion of mere traditional forms and arrangements. The latter are apt to insinuate themselves, and to interfere with that simplicity and directness of action which is in all cases so desirable a quality in mechanical structures. PLAIN COMMON SENSE should be apparent in the general design, as in the form and arrangement of the details; and a general character of severe utility pervade the whole, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... do you think this is related to Wallingford's murder?" asked Hawthwaite with sudden directness. "Let's be plain, doctor—do ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... feel the pressure of these hands, this bold lover schemed with palpable directness, proposing that she should hear how their hunting songs were sung, with a chorus that signalled hands to be clasped. So his splendid voice gave the verses, and, as the chorus was taken up, he claimed her hands, and, even through the easy grip, felt, as he desired, the strength that was latent, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... face, when he awkwardly commenced to speak, made it unnecessary to put the story into words. Samson told how his mother had turned pallid, and stretched out her arm gropingly for support against the door-jamb. Then the man had found his voice with clumsy directness. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... with Miss Lord, and she was inclined to think that Patty needed chastisement of a rare sort; but it was her practice to hear both sides. She drew up a chair, and commenced with business-like directness. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... steps was relieved. An hour after the sapper spoke. The strain was ended. We had struck the sand hills of the Dujailar depression. Then we saw the flash of Townshend's guns at Kut, a comforting assurance of the directness of our line. That the surprise of the Turk was complete was shown by the fires in the Arab encampments, between which we passed silently in the false dawn. A mile or two to our north and west the campfires of the Turks were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... within the paragraph and in the succession of the paragraphs. A choice of subject suited to his audience, an excision of that which would have bored or bewildered it, a vividness of description wherewith to amuse and a directness of conclusion wherewith to arrest his readers —all these he had, beyond perhaps any ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... froze—and I thought I had once more "got upon" her nerves with my rude directness. How eagerly sensitive our nerves are to bad impressions of one we don't like, and how coarsely insensible to bad impressions of one ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... child is conscious of such a thing as purity, delicacy, directness, or strength of style, he has been acted upon unconsciously, so that when the period of conscious choice comes, he is either attracted or repelled by what is good, according to his training. Children are fond of vivacity and color, ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... you've come to me," replied James, visibly annoyed at the directness of the rough spaceman. ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... the form-rooms at the quarter to eleven interval, and in the houses after lunch it was the sole topic of conversation. Dunstable and Linton were bombarded with questions and witticisms of the near personal sort. To the latter they replied with directness, to ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... following citation is interesting as an illustration of the directness of descent from heathen manes-worship to Christian saint-worship: "It is well known that Romulus, mindful of his own adventurous infancy, became after death a Roman deity, propitious to the health and safety of young children, so that nurses and mothers would ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... magazine at page one, I came upon an editorial article. The rapid increase of the habit of talking tommyrot was dwelt upon and the necessity for prompt action was emphasized. The objects of the society were set forth with a naked directness, likely, I feared, to cause offence. Then came a paragraph, most disquieting to me, in which the generous gentleman whose aid had rendered the publication of the magazine possible was subjected to a good deal of praise. His name ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... she asked with a cool directness, which was like a sword-thrust in Iskender's heart. His ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... especially in my present frame of mind, ill-fitted for such a play. The blunt and awkward directness of the camp suited better my ways and speech. Though I might discreetly hold my tongue, I could never use it with the credit I could my sword. Nor could I rid my mind of the childish vision which for one short instant confronted me at the door. Even then I ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... instance perfectly intelligible. "To your bosom, professed to entertain so much love and care for our father, I commit him," seems to express the sense of the passage: a doubt is implied by the expression, but there is a directness of insult in the term professing quite inconsistent with the character ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... bossdom. This is his immortality. He was a chairmaker by trade, a vulgar good fellow by nature, a politician by circumstances, a boss by evolution, and a grafter by choice. He became grand sachem of Tammany and chairman of the general committee. This committee he ruled with blunt directness. When he wanted a question carried, he failed to ask for the negative votes; and soon he was called "the Boss," a title he never resented, and which usage has since fixed in our politics. So he ruled ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... was the practical aim and character of the religion he preached. It was no fanciful speculation nor airy dream. It was not a plaything of the imagination he had been holding up to our contemplation, but a series of truths and doctrines bearing with eminent directness, and with a perfect adaptation, upon human life, the effect and issue of which, widely and cordially received, must be to give birth to a condition of humanity not now any where to be found on the earth. I was startled by no confounding and overwhelming ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... of the whole community thus opened to us, we might overturn the world. Some ascribe this want of efficiency to human depravity. That is not the sole cause of it. The clergy want knowledge of human nature. They want directness of appeal. They want the same go-ahead common-sense way of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... said Billy hurriedly to the ladies, and being a young man of simple directness, undeterred by the glacial tinge of the ladies' response—they had not forgotten his defection of the evening before when they were entertaining him so nicely—he put the question which had been tormenting him all evening, "Where is Miss ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... was Phebe Marlowe, who believed that she knew the cause, and was drawn closer to her in the deepest sympathy and pity. It seemed to Phebe that Felicita was creating the obstacle, which existed chiefly in her fancy; and with her usual frankness and directness she went to Canon Pascal's abode in the Cloisters at Westminster, to tell him simply ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... generally abused, and even branded as an infidel. Dr. Arnold was indeed a noble teacher, and the very man to develop the best faculties in young Arthur Stanley; for one of the doctor's own strongest traits was this same open-mindedness. The frankness and candor, the directness and fearlessness with which Stanley ever gave expression to his views; the purity and "whiteness" of his mind, and the sweetness and tenderness of his disposition,—all these had a part in the building of his fame. But it was chiefly in his power to free himself from prejudice and to look fairly ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... work truly says that any designer who fairly tries the graphical method will be pleased with the simplicity and directness of the analysis, even for apparently complex forms. The hindrance to the general use of the method is the want of knowledge of the higher mathematics, which are largely used in most treatises on the subject. Professor Greene has avoided this stumbling block, and given ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... the least intrusive of women, who had heard the whispered colloquy, here interposed and said that, as she was very cold, she would much prefer to go home; and Sir John added with simple directness that he thought that, as the place was more or less shut up at present, the gardens had better wait for a ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... pity. He repulses her roughly, and in despair she tells Alfio the story of his wife's inconstancy. Alfio challenges Turiddu to mortal combat, and kills him as the curtain falls. Squalid as the story is, it is full of life and movement, and has that simple directness which is essential to success. The music is melodious, if not very original, and vigorous even to brutality. Mascagni here shows a natural instinct for the theatre. His method is often coarse, but his effects ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the enduring witness of persons, circumstances, customs, experiences utterly passed from the actual world, but recognizably true with every sincere reader. These tales of village life in England a hundred years ago are of an absolute directness and frankness. They blink nothing of the sordid, the mean, the vicious, the wicked in that life, from which they rarely rise in some glimpse of the state of the neighboring gentry, and yet they abound in beauty that consoles and encourages. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... not necessary to the full expression of the thought, or some redundance of epithet or detail too florid for the best taste, or, as in most of the Byzantine epigrams, a natural verbosity which affects the style throughout and weakens the force and directness of the epigram. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... francs by them. This caress of fortune gave him renewed self-confidence. He said to himself that he wanted nobody's help, and that all his embarrassments were the result of his timidity and indecision. He ought to have begun his intrigue with the Marechale with brutal directness and refused Hussonnet the very first day. He should not have compromised himself with Pellerin. And, in order to show that he was not a bit embarrassed, he presented himself at one of Madame Dambreuse's ordinary ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... person who cared much about the fate of a sheep-herder, who was also a foreigner. Every one else was chiefly interested in the gold mine. Ike offered a reward of five hundred dollars, and the obliging sheriff of the county had handbills printed in which, with characteristic directness, Louisiana was named as ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... you want me for, Jim?" the woman was again asking him. She spoke with an intimate directness, and yet in her attitude were subtle reservations, a consciousness of the thin ice on which they both stood. Each saw, only too plainly, the need for great care, in every step. In each lay the power to uncover, at a hand's turn, old mistakes ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... keep on with this way of makin' a livin' I don't 'low ever to let no slip-ups occur," he added with simple directness. There was no suggestion of the morbid in his voice or manner as he said this, but instead merely a deep ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and Jenny disappeared. Bendigo was pleased to see Brendon, but his interest in his brother had apparently waned. He avoided the subject of Robert Redmayne, though he revealed other matters in his mind which he approached with a directness that rather astonished ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... the Composite Tongue.—While we insist on the truth that Anglo-Saxon gained much of its wonderful directness and power from standing in close relations to earnest life, it is necessary to remember that many words of French origin did, by an apprenticeship at the fireside, in the field, the workshop, and the laboratory, equally fit themselves for taking their place in the language. Such ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... successful in his love affairs. It does not certainly read like a description of the hero of a novel written by The Duchess or even by Miss Jane Austen. Yet this is the picture of a man plentifully beloved, large-minded but strangely naif; a revolutionist of childlike directness. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... originality; that is just what I can't see. What he has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of touch—marvellous! ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Darwin's place in literature, that is due supereminently to his thoughts. In his expression of them he had the saving quality of directness, and usually wrote with simplicity. Incisive he was not ordinarily; caution of his type harmonises ill with incisiveness. But what he lost thereby he gained in solidity and in permanence. Sometimes, as we have pointed out, his imagination ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... too harshly described by Hallam as "bellowing in bad Latin," were well adapted to the spirit of the age. But nothing like his German writings had ever been seen before. In lucidity and copiousness of language, in directness and vigor, in satire and argument and invective, in humor and aptness of illustration and allusion, the numerous tracts, political and theological, which poured from his pen, surpassed all that had hitherto been written and went straight to the hearts of his countrymen. And he won his ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Sentences. So far as long and short sentences are concerned some general rules have already been hinted at in dealing with other kinds. The advantages of the short sentence are mainly those of clearness, directness, emphasis. Its dangers are monotony, bareness, over-compactness. The advantages of the long—that is, quite long—sentence, are rather difficult to comprehend. A wordy sentence is likely to defeat its own ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... criticism, of course, this is a grave fault. The Kipling-Wells style of swift, shouldering, button-holing writing has accustomed readers and critics alike to a straight course and a rapid tempo. Moreover, it has accustomed them to a forthright certainty and directness of statement; they expect an author to account for his characters at once, and on grounds instantly comprehensible. This omniscience is a part of the prodigality of moral theory that I have been discussing. An author who knows just what ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... upon the Lungs. It is a well recognized fact that alcohol when taken into the stomach is carried from that organ to the liver, where, by the baneful directness of its presence, it produces a speedy and often disastrous effect. But the trail of its malign power does not disappear there. From the liver it passes to the right side of the heart, and thence to the lungs, where its influence ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... love," said Peter to himself, with interest. "This is humility." A sympathetic liking for the self-distrustful lover surged hot and generous into Peter's heart, and he continued to himself: "Now that's what Judith would appreciate in a man, some directness, some humility!" Poor Judith! Poor burden-bearer! Who was to love her as she deserved to be loved, even as old man Kinson's girl, of the Basin, was loved? Yet suppose some one did love her in such fashion and she returned ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... his handsome exterior, his singing,—he was always a singer,—his drawing, his gaiety, and above all, however strange a thing it may seem to say, the directness of ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... embarrassing to the intruder. At the apparition of the woman, the unaffected and simple directness he had previously shown in his equally abrupt contact with Bradley had fled utterly; confused by the awkwardness of his arrival, and shocked at the idea of overhearing a private conversation, he ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... test the accuracy of the biographies he was reading. James A. Garfield was then spoken of for the presidency; Edward wondered whether it was true that the man who was likely to be President of the United States had once been a boy on the tow-path, and with a simple directness characteristic of his Dutch training, wrote to General Garfield, asking whether the boyhood episode was true, and explaining why he asked. Of course any public man, no matter how large his correspondence, is pleased to receive an earnest ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... the directness of the intuition by which we get this idea of our own personal identity, it would be found in the entire failure of all attempts to derive that idea from any other source. Comte, the founder of the Positive School, can do nothing with this idea but suggest that it is probably the result of some ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... Sandy!" Sheila interrupted authoritatively, with sisterly directness. "I'm quite able to look after my own affairs. Mr. Farwell is sorry. You be white enough to ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... ready for the rest. Here, mis'ess, take off your things, and help him out in his baking, or he won't get done to-night. I'll finish heating the oven, and set you free to go and skiver up them ducks." His eye had passed with pitiless directness of criticism into yet remote recesses of Winterborne's awkwardly built premises, where ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... had a certain shamefacedness about going through the streets in such a fashion. She avoided looking at the people whom she met, and kept her head slightly bent and averted, instead of carrying it with the proud directness which was her habit. She felt vaguely that this was the element of purely personal vanity which degrades a triumph, and the weakness of delight and gloating in the faces of her relatives irritated her. It ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... looked upon a well-built man five inches his inferior in stature, but a man of good proportions, with a pair of shoulders that suggested possibilities. But it was the steady look in the steel-blue eyes which told him most. There was a simple directness in them which told of a man unaccustomed to any browbeating; and, as he gazed into them, he made a mental note that this newcomer must be reduced to a proper humility at ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Aristippus. He was banished from the (supposed) place of his birth, and was shielded at Athens by Demetrius Phalerus, whose exile he is assumed to have shared. Whilst in the service of Egypt he was sent as an ambassador to Lysimachus, whom he offended by the directness and plainness of his speech. The offended monarch threatened him with crucifixion, and he replied in a phrase which became famous, "Threaten thus your courtiers, for it matters not to me whether I rot on the ground or in the air."[40] The king's threat was ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... up with surprising promptness, and returned the offending head-gear with force and directness. Wally caught it deftly and rammed it over his eyes. He smiled underneath it at the Hermit like ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... because you want to know?" inquired Sandy with the directness which characterized everything ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... encountered many such. Fellows of the kind are known as "gay young sparks," and, even in their boyhood and school days, earn a reputation for being bons camarades (though with it all they come in for some hard knocks) for the reason that their faces evince an element of frankness, directness, and enterprise which enables them soon to make friends, and, almost before you have had time to look around, to start addressing you in the second person singular. Yet, while cementing such friendships for ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... us, don't you see?" She makes her points with a directness and simplicity that should disarm even the diplomatic suavity of Uncle Sam when he meets her in Washington. "Year after year the Cherokees waited for the Government to pay. And at last, three years ago, it came to us—$133.19 to each Indian, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... with no fondness for luxury or dress, possessing simple and quiet tastes, never striving for effect, always preferring half-tints to a blaze of light, her expression and demeanor always had a quality of simplicity and directness which fascinated Napoleon, who was very glad to turn from experienced coquettes to a really ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... closet-verse, not theatre-verse. The poetic drama will be doomed to extinction on the modern stage unless our poets learn the lesson of simplicity. I shall append some lines of Shakespeare's to illustrate the ideal of directness toward which our latter-day poetic dramatists should strive. When Lear holds the dead Cordelia in his arms, ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... reception at the opening of the second act of the first part. But here we may assert with fair confidence that the first and the last scenes of the play bear the indisputable sign-manual of William Rowley. His vigorous and vivid genius, his somewhat hard and curt directness of style and manner, his clear and trenchant power of straightforward presentation or exposition, may be traced in every line as plainly as the hand of Middleton must be recognized in the main part of the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... influence of the wily and unscrupulous Murray, who flattered his weaknesses and assumed an air of deference to his opinions. Lord George Murray, on the other hand, was but too prone to give offence. He was haughty and overbearing in manner, expressed his opinions with a directness and bluntness which were very displeasing to the prince, and, conscious of his own military genius and experience, put aside with open contempt the suggestions of those who were in truth ignorant of military matters. Loyal, straightforward, ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... crossed the great prairie which lies north of Houwater, and the covering cloud of mounted eclaireurs was already disappearing into the shade of the mountain fastness in front of us. The giant outcrop of volcanic rock which is known as Minie Kloof rises, with that directness peculiar to the vast South African table-land, sheer from a prairie as level as a billiard-table. A succession of rocky flat-topped parallelograms, featureless save for the one sealed pattern of nature's architecture of the veldt. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... With insular directness he went straight to the point at the first interview, declared his love for Agatha, and proposed an exchange, which amused, but did not offend me, as I knew that such ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and this only, was what Rossetti aimed after, and entirely compassed in his fine works just mentioned. But (as Rossetti himself remarked to me in conversation when I repeated Mr. Symonds's criticism, and urged my own grounds of objection to it), that the poet was capable of the directness and simplicity which characterise the early ballad-writers, he had given proof in The Staff and Scrip and Stratton Water. Dennis Shand is valuable as evidence going in the same direction, but the author's objection to it, on ethical grounds, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... to refuse it," cut back Farquhar, eyes twinkling. For this bold directness pleased ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... express elevators, by which the visitor is shot up to the higher storeys of a sky-scraper, would suggest a certain directness and celerity in official methods that is calculated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... require protection from your importunities." She dropped her pretty head, and began plaiting with her fingers the silken gown over her knee. "Or how likely I would be to shriek for it even if"—she looked up with childlike directness—"even if ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... of August, Judge Thurman and I were invited to make brief addresses at the state fair in Columbus. After he had spoken with his usual ability and directness, I made a speech mainly about new devices ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... felt for a very few people, an affection which invariably mingled itself with a lively desire to bestir herself on their account, to be fully informed as to their circumstances, and above all to possess relations of absolute directness with them. She had an imperious successful strain which insisted upon all this. She was a capable creature of much perception for twenty-four, and she had a sense of injury when for any reason she was not allowed to use her faculties for the benefit of any ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... excess. When Gluck dared to move the hearts of his hearers instead of tickling their ears, he achieved his purpose by positive beauty, without actual loss. In this sense every work of art is a work of revolution. So Wagner, especially in his earlier dramas,[A] by sheer sincerity and poetic directness, corrected a frivolous tradition of opera. But when he grew destructive of melody and form, by theory and practice, he sank to the role of innovator, with pervading trait of stereotype, in the main merely adding to the lesser resources of the art. His later works, though they ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... know. I have never met one." She looked straight at Farnum with the directness characteristic of her. "Is the ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... it will not be matter for surprise that a man who thinks for himself can easily be distinguished from the book-philosopher by the very way in which he talks, by his marked earnestness, and the originality, directness, and personal conviction that stamp all his thoughts and expressions. The book-philosopher, on the other hand, lets it be seen that everything he has is second-hand; that his ideas are like the number ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... delineated. Self-will is normally developed, while Size, Form, Observation, Weight, Locality, Calculation, and Memory of various sorts are manifest. The signs of Language in the eye and mouth denote fluency, while the practical faculties, being dominant, would give clearness, perspicacity, and directness to his style of expression, either oral or written. Time, Order, Reason, and Intuition are well developed. The long-continued observation and experiments of this noble physician in his endeavor to protect humanity from the ravages of small-pox ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... he was for ever at his heels, like a dog; and if, by any chance, he became separated from his idol, he would make for him in a straight line, regardless of currant bushes, bean rows, cabbage patches or clothes-lines. This strenuous directness did not further endear him to Mrs. Smith. That good lady used to lie awake at night, angrily devising schemes for getting rid of the "ugly brute." These schemes of vengeance were such a safety-valve to her injured feelings that she would at last make up her ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... know how in her new sensitiveness this careless speech, which a day earlier would have passed unheeded, aroused all her instincts of defense. She was half-aware of the irony by which their talk about the nephews of Jack Holton had carried them with so fateful a directness to ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... clearly, logically, and to express himself intelligibly and earnestly, let him give his days and nights to WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. His ear will thus accustom itself to forms of phrase whose only mannerism is occasioned by the fulness of thought and the directness of expression; and he will not easily, through the habits which either his understanding or his ear will acquire, fall into the fluent cadences of that sort of writing in which words are used without discrimination of their nice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... they felt that she was in a measure theirs. There is a very sweet side, as well as an inconvenient and irritating one, to the old-fashioned rural notion that the parish has almost as much right to the minister's wife as to the minister. Draxy saw only the sweet side. With all the loyalty and directness which had made her, as a little girl, champion and counselor and comfort to her father, she now set her hand to the work of helping her husband do good to the people ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... heavy lashes studying everything about him, his face brightening when you addressed him. I discovered, too, a certain indefinable charm which won me to him at once. Perhaps it was his youth; perhaps it was a certain honest directness, together with a total lack of all affectation that appealed to me, but certain it is that not many minutes had passed before I saw why Peter liked him, and I saw, too, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Those who watched him until he turned out of Main Street into Fourth, and so toward the river, aver—marvelling duly at his powers of resistance—that the head of Potts was erect, his gaze bent aloft, and his gait one of perfect directness save that he ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... in silence for a moment, then with logical directness continued: "Perhaps the string that's mute upon Diotti's violin is mute for some ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... is the bit of evidence read by the White Rabbit at the Trial of the Knave of Hearts.[1] One charm of these verses is the serious air of legal directness which pervades their ambiguity, and another is the precision with which the metrical accent coincides exactly with the natural emphasis. They are marked, too, by the liquid euphony that always ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... waist and on her cheeks a warm red showed through the golden tan. Her slim straight figure was eloquent of suppleness and strength and her movements, quick, purposeful, showed decision and activity of mind. They were as characteristic as her directness of speech. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... which competed with each other for the superstition of the Greco-Roman world in the third century, he will find no vagueness at all in Dr. Jacks's interpretation of the teaching of Jesus. He may perhaps find in that interpretation a simplicity, a clarity, and a directness which are not wholly convenient to his idea of a God Who repents, is angry, ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... for you to kiss, lad," said simple John-James with directness, grinning as he took the mare's bridle to lead her to the stable. Ishmael had not yet the social cleverness to kiss Phoebe at once and without embarrassment or to laugh the suggestion away, but she, who had no social sense at all and never attained any, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... indescribable relief stole over Vanderlyn's wearied and yet alert senses. It was clear that the Prefect of Police knew nothing of the truth; the directness of his question proved it. Yet, even so, Vanderlyn felt that he must ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of debating, the judges are asked to consider both matter and form. Grasp of the question, accuracy of analysis, selection of evidence, and order and cogency of arguments should be considered in judging matter. Bearing, voice, directness, earnestness, emphasis, enunciation, and gesture should be considered ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... his turn for extracting information concerning his uninvited guest. He extracted it from herself, however, and with refreshing directness. At the advanced age of seven years, one sees no especial use in conventional beatings about the bush. One goes straight to the point, or else one keeps still entirely; and, at that phase of his existence, keeping still was not Scott Brenton's forte. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... in this phenomenon and no opinion about it. She recalled the conversation to the point at issue with her usual ruthless directness. "And you wouldn't know how to undress yourself if somebody didn't help you!" She went on loosening the laces in a contemptuous silence, during which the boy glowered resentfully at the back of her shining black hair. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... that appeared in Julia's pricked fingers made the serenity of her happy face more charming to her father-in-law. She had Jewel's own directness and simplicity, her appreciation and enjoyment of all beauty, the child's own atmosphere of unexacting love and gratitude. Every half hour that Mr. Evringham spent with her lessened his regret at having ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... you do not recollect?" The question was put politely, even sympathetically, yet with a certain uncomfortable directness. ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... display a haughty stand-offishness; but she went down before the sweet face and girlish voice, and, if the truth must be told, by a certain something in Nell's eyes, which shone there when the Annie Laurie was beating before a contrary wind; a directness of gaze which indicated a spirit, not easily quelled, lurking behind the ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... was but little enlarged since the reign of James, though profiting, of course, by improved cultivation and the different value of money. On the other hand, perhaps there were scarcely ten families in the country who could boast of a similar directness of descent on all sides from the proudest and noblest aristocracy of the soil; and Sir Miles St. John, by blood, was, almost at the distance of eight centuries, as pure a Norman as his ancestral William. His grandfather, nevertheless, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to disturb you, Uncle Cassius," Kit began, with the directness so characteristic of her, "but I really think I ought to go back home. You've been wonderful to give me such a long visit, and I've enjoyed the school work immensely, but somehow I begin to feel like a soldier who has been away on a furlough. It's time for me to get back to the firing line, ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... story is told with all the vivid directness of the Jewish scriptures, and every one must admire the poetic beauty so characteristic of oriental writings. David's compact with Jonathan, his sad lament over the death of his traitorous son, and the grand anthem which he sings in gratitude ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... way noted all of the essential features of the situation, and that his manner was extremely indicative of his mental attitude of limited trust. Both Julius and Skirrl went to the opposite extreme in the matter of directness, or as we should say in human relations, frankness. They would look the experimenter directly in the eye, and they usually gazed intently at anything, such for example as the bait, that interested them. Sobke, even when very hungry, instead of going directly toward the bait, ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... [taken aback by the directness of the attack] I married because I was so much in love with Alice that all the difficulties and doubts and dangers of marriage seemed ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... with simple, manly directness that he "was dam'd if he was. See?" Mr. Lewes began to discuss The Drama with Robert. Mrs. de Vere Carter ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... she replied with boyish directness, but in the same low tone. "Mother and father have spent a week with us. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... from me for a moment. My question seemed to disconcert her, perhaps by reason of its directness. ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thought that men living so far apart from the general paths, and pursuing purposes so remote from those of the trader, would become obnoxious to that bitterest of American reproaches, the charge of being unpractical. The directness of aim of scientific training and the lofty code of honor among students of science, with their fair share of cis-Atlantic pliability, makes them, however, most useful and trustworthy people whenever ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... indulge "in a little sally of gratuitous sauciness" (Quarterly Review, July, 1822, vol. xxvii, p. 480) at the expense of his own countrymen. But there were other influences at work. He had been powerfully impressed by the energy and directness of Alfieri's work, and he was eager to emulate the gravity and simplicity, if not the terseness and conciseness, of his style and language. The drama was a new world to conquer, and so far as "his own literature" was concerned it appeared that success might be attainable by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... retentive memory, acute observation, great fidelity of description and keeping in character, a power of working out an idea so as to make it painfully true and oppressive, and with great honesty and manliness of feeling, as well as directness of understanding: but with all this, he wanted, to my thinking, that genial spirit of enjoyment and finer fancy, which constitute the essence of poetry and wit.... There was nothing spontaneous, no impulse or ease about his genius: ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... water-grub conceive the notion of flying through the air? Supposing you able to talk with him, could you represent the same unto him other than by the conceit of gliding through water with most delightsome swiftness and directness? To talk of an element wherein he had no experience should be simply so much nonsense to him. Now, it may be—take me not, I pray you, as meaning it must be—that all that shall be found in Heaven differs as greatly from what ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... whole affair stuck in Lloyd's imagination. There was a primitiveness, a certain hideous simplicity in the way Bennett had met the situation that filled her with wonder and with even a little terror and mistrust of him. The vast, brutal directness of the deed was out of place and incongruous at this end-of-the-century time. It ignored two thousand years of civilisation. It was a harsh, clanging, brazen note, powerful, uncomplicated, which came jangling in, discordant and inharmonious with the tune of the age. It savoured ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... come into my art also, no less than into my life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and directness of impulse. Not width but intensity is the true aim of modern art. We are no longer in art concerned with the type. It is with the exception that we have to do. I cannot put my sufferings into any form they took, I need hardly ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... surrounded by a howling mob. A few had flowers that they threw at William Philander, while others had supplied themselves with stalks of celery, carrot and beet tops, and similar things, which they sent forward with force and directness. ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... I'll come. I can come now. But are you sure she will like it?" Dinah's bright eyes met his with frank directness. "I don't want to intrude on ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... of this passage is the explanation of the sound of the forest, and this idea Cary has preserved. But has he preserved it in its force and simplicity and Dantesque directness? We will not dwell upon the rendering of altezza by summit, although a little more care would have preserved the exact word of the original. But we may with good reason object to the expansion of Dante's three lines into four. We may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... similar kind, which, indeed, seemed to lack elements of attraction and interest; and the readers to whom the same man will tell even new things are apt to grow weary of his mode of saying, even though that mode have improved in directness and force; the tide of his small repute had already begun to take the other direction. Those who understood and prized his work, still holding by him, and declaring that they found in him what they found in no other writer, ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... lived among the peasants, he became familiar with their mode of thought and speech, and it entered into his being, and became his own natural mode of expression. There is in his daily conversation a certain grim directness, and a laconic weightiness, which give an air of importance and authority even to his simplest utterances. This tendency to compression frequently has the effect of obscurity, not because his thought is obscure, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... frock-coat, which he wore as a more ceremonious garment than the dress-coat of his every-day life. He seemed to take a special liking to Olive Halleck, whose habit of speaking her mind with vigor and directness struck him as commendable. It was Olive who made the time pass for him; and as the occasion was not one for personal sarcasm or question of the Christian religion, her task in keeping the old pagan out of rather abysmal silences must ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... we take "The Manxman" and "Trilby" as types of what specially appeals to the reading public of England and America, we should conclude that the Englishman calls for strength and directness, the American for delicacy and suggestiveness. The former does not insist so much on originality of theme, if the handling be but new and clever; there are certain elementary passions and dramatic situations of which the British public never wearies. The American ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the knowledge of our personal freedom rests on precisely the same grounds as the knowledge of our personal existence. The same "immediate consciousness" which attests that I exist, attests also, with equal distinctness and directness, that I ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We know his opinions, and we know his character. He would commence with his accustomed directness and earnestness. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... a hearty, wholesome, human spirit, sometimes overflowing into downright fun, and a straightforward directness always. It is a pleasant book, sure ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... Greene and his compeers; but the attacks which Nash directed against the Puritans and his rivals were the first English works which shook utterly off the pedantry and extravagance of Euphuism. In his lightness, his facility, his vivacity, his directness of speech, we have the beginning of popular literature. It had descended from the closet to the street, and the very change implied that the street was ready to receive it. The abundance indeed of printers and of printed books at the close of the Queen's reign shows that the ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... could be found, in spite of his impatience, restlessness, pugnacity, imprudence, and want of self-control; for he was intelligent, shrewd, high-spirited, and quick-sighted. The diplomatists could not stand before his blunt directness, and he generally carried his point by eloquence and audacity. His presence was commanding, and he impressed everybody by his magnetism and brainpower. So Congress, in 1785, appointed him minister to Great ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... revealed the same aims and is imbued with the same political philosophy as Bismarck, he has tried to attain his end by very different means. He has none of the cynical sincerity of his master. Bismarck carried into diplomacy the directness and brutality of the soldier. Buelow introduced into politics the tortuous practices of Italy. He reminds one of Cavour much more than of the master-builder of German unity. Whilst Bismarck won his spurs in the embassies of Germany ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... massacre, being by far the most important. Shelley attempted the composition of short popular songs which should stir the English people to a sense of what he felt to be their degradation. But he lacked the directness which alone could make such verses forcible, and the passionate apostrophe to the Men of England in his "Masque of Anarchy" marks the highest point of his ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... eyes with such intensity, with such directness, that he knew he was going to tell her everything. It seemed as if she must read whatever was ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... gathered around a hat found next the body of the murdered man, which was recognized as the hat of the prisoner. The lawyers tried to break down the evidence, confuse the testimony, and get some relief from the directness of the circumstances, but in vain, until at last they called for O'Connell. He came in, flung his riding-whip and hat on the table, was told the circumstances, and, taking up the hat, said to the witness, "Whose hat is this?" "Well, Mr. O'Connell, that is Mike's hat." "How ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... King's theatre. There were also Handel performances at Covent Garden. Such effects as that of the throbbing mass of vocal tone in the chorus from Joshua, "The people shall tremble," must have overwhelmed him, and the swift directness and colossal climaxes of the "Hallelujah" from the Messiah certainly impressed him. However great the revelation of Handel's supreme might, Haydn never imitated Handel's style or devices for getting huge effects; the artistic treatment he received in London, as well as the social ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... passed swiftly from incredulity to anger; then almost as swiftly came to a resolve, which was as mad and harebrained as could have been expected from a lad in his eighteenth year who held the reins of power. Yet by its very directness and its superb ignoring of all obstacles, legal and canonical, it was invested with ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... pebbles into suitable fragments to mend roads with. We halted, and M. asked her how much she received for that labor. She answered, "Six-pence a car-load." "How long will it take you to break a car-load?" "About a fortnight." Further questions respecting her family, &c., were answered with equal directness and propriety, and with manifest truth. Here was a mere child, who should have been sent to school, delving from morning till night at an employment utterly unsuited to her sex and her strength, and which I should consider dangerous to her eyesight, to earn for her poor parents a half-penny ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... ever in person and in mind—he is still a power in any direction wherever he chooses so to be. His broad, projecting brow, his direct and forcible speech and bearing, symbolize his character. They assure you of vital energy, strong, practical comprehension, directness and will. He may have more of the "fortiter in re" than of the "suaviter in modo" but all who know him have faith in his truth, implicit reliance upon the hearty fidelity of his friendships, and assurance, that he is always loyal to his convictions, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... directness of his honesty, and simplicity of his nature, cut through the gauzy wrappings of this delectable package and went straight to its heart. And there he found nothing, because what little of the deeply genuine there lay in this woman's restless nature was disguised ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... a moment later the light dazzled him as he looked up and met her china blue eyes. He was dazed as well as dazzled, for there had been an extraordinary directness and accuracy about the few questions and answers he had heard in the clear voice which was so utterly unlike Giuditta's, though quite human and natural. He was certain that he had not heard the door open after she had drawn the curtains. He looked about the scantily furnished room, in ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... of customs and the laws, written as well as unwritten, which had doomed to life-long degradation every member of the progeny of Ham. Recognizing in the erewhile bondman a born leader of men, America, with the unflinching directness that has marked her course, whether in good or in evil, responded with spontaneous loyalty to the inspiration of her highest instincts. Shamed into compunction and remorse at the solid fame and general sympathy secured for himself by a son of her ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... little enlarged since the reign of James, though profiting, of course, by improved cultivation and the different value of money. On the other hand, perhaps there were scarcely ten families in the country who could boast of a similar directness of descent on all sides from the proudest and noblest aristocracy of the soil; and Sir Miles St. John, by blood, was, almost at the distance of eight centuries, as pure a Norman as his ancestral William. His grandfather, nevertheless, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bored, and I do not like balls," she answered, her directness in nowise softened out of regard for Edgar as the giver of the feast or for Alick as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... shall be visited on the children." But for the fatal resemblance between the two daughters of one father, the conspiracy of which Anne had been the innocent instrument and Laura the innocent victim could never have been planned. With what unerring and terrible directness the long chain of circumstances led down from the thoughtless wrong committed by the father to the heartless injury inflicted ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... characters of plants, without uniting them by more general natural affinities. At the present time it is considered only as a stepping-stone to the "natural" system; but at the time of its promulgation it was epoch-marking in its directness and simplicity, and therefore superiority, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... The Kipling-Wells style of swift, shouldering, button-holing writing has accustomed readers and critics alike to a straight course and a rapid tempo. Moreover, it has accustomed them to a forthright certainty and directness of statement; they expect an author to account for his characters at once, and on grounds instantly comprehensible. This omniscience is a part of the prodigality of moral theory that I have been discussing. An author who knows just what is the matter with the world may ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... also by those qualifications which had made him so long a leader in the Faculties of the University. An unusually dignified presence and somewhat judicial manner only conceal a rare simplicity, directness, and kindliness revealed to every one with whom he comes into personal contact. He has the rare qualification of a real and sincere interest in the affairs of those with whom he is dealing, and the kindly sympathy, ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... to him, he had imagined he would pursue it with the same directness and persistence which had impelled the securing of whatever was determined upon, and instead he was that ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... was permitted to enlarge upon all the circumstances of the occasion, and to surround the execution of the assignment with the most ingenious plausibilities. He told his story with a fine show of candor, and with great directness and clearness, and undoubtedly made a profound impression upon the Court and the jury. Then Mr. Cavendish passed him into ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... scarcely any prelude and with almost brutal directness, said: "Mrs. Wells, I want you to tell me why you accused Captain ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... rendered most assistance. Rarely had he thanks for it, never halfpence, but not unfrequently blows and abuse. For the last he cared nothing; the former, owing to his great agility, seldom visited him with any directness. A certain reporter of humorous scandal, after his third tumbler, would occasionally give a graphic description of what, coming from a supper-party, he once saw about two o'clock in the morning. In the great street of the city, he ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... of the Christmas-tree and the Whitsuntide merry-making; it is the land of country inns and of student pranks. What more need be said to bring before one's mind the wealth of hearty joyfulness, jolly good-fellowship, boisterous frolic, sturdy humor, simple directness, and genuinely democratic feeling that characterizes social life ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... in cookery, beds, tone, and thought. We lost the Swiss simplicity (for there is still relatively a good deal of it), and Swiss directness, in politeness, finesse, and manner. We got "monsieur sait—monsieur pense—monsieur fera"—for ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... all the sensuous splendour of passionate life, form a melancholy and wonderful note of colour to which the eye continually returns as indicating the motive of the conception. Yet here I would dwell rather on two pictures which show the splendid simplicity and directness of his strength, the one a portrait of himself, the other that of a little child called Dorothy, who has all that sweet gravity and look of candour which we like to associate with that old-fashioned name: a child with bright rippling hair, tangled ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... suspected it before?" asked Susan as calmly as he had spoken. Emotionalism, she knew, she would never find in John Henry's wooing, and, though she could not have explained the reason of it to herself, she liked the brusque directness of his courtship. It was part of that large sincerity of nature which had first attracted her ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... difficulties in the way. He was led by her eagerness into a more detailed account of his differences with the rest of the board than he had ever given to any one, a fuller narrative than was perhaps consistent with entire prudence. Whenever he paused, she would insist with a woman's disconcerting directness: ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... from hers, but, to his annoyance, they met at Couthie's corner. He would have passed her with a distant bow, but she would have none of that. "You have followed me," said Grizel, with the hateful directness that was no part of ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... showing her neck and shoulders, which were her best points, for she was full bosomed and rounded without losing firmness of flesh. Nan was a trifle taken back at this gorgeousness, for she had not dressed. Keith, with his usual directness, made no secret of pretending ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... thought, Judge, what a particularly mean nigger I'd have been, myself," he said, and studied the judge with disconcerting directness. "If you'd been born a colored man, and some folks talked and behaved to you like some folks talk and behave to colored men, don't you reckon you'd be in jail right this ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... disrepute but since it was admitted by other sects to be, if not the most excellent way, at least a permissible short cut to heaven, it appears in modern times less as a separate school than as an aspect of most schools.[833] The simple and emotional character of Amidism, the directness of its "Come unto me," appeal so strongly to the poor and uneducated, that no monastery or temple ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... very stick which had been found among the remains of the dead man—these facts and events, and a host of minor circumstances besides, sworn to by witnesses whose credit was unimpeachable, pointed with terrible directness to the conclusion at ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... have any of your horrid New England directness, cousin," said St. Clare, gayly. "If I answer that question, I know you'll be at me with half a dozen others, each one harder than the last; and I'm not a going to define my position. I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... diversity, as to what is principal and what is subordinate, as to what is in the direct, main line of thought, and what is by the way, casual, or merely a connecting link. This sense of proportion, of close or remote relation, of directness and indirectness, the feeling for perspective, so-called, can be acquired only by continued practice, for sharpening the faculty of apprehension and appreciation. It is usually the last attainment in the student's work, but the neglect of it ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... expressive of dissatisfaction, and went forward, passing through the house in order to do so. Hetty's simple betrayal of her weakness in behalf of March gave him uneasiness on a subject concerning which he had never felt before, and he determined to come to an explanation at once with his visitor; for directness of speech and decision in conduct were two of the best qualities of this rude being, in whom the seeds of a better education seemed to be constantly struggling upwards, to be choked by the fruits of a life in which his hard struggles for subsistence ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... fraternities, calling themselves Disciplinati di Gesu Cristo. From the very outset these fraternities practised the singing of hymns in Italian, instead of Latin, the church language. These hymns dealt chiefly with the Passion. They were called "Lauds" and they had a rude directness and unlettered force which the Latin hymns never possessed. Presently the disciplinati became known as Laudesi. The master maker of "Lauds" was Jacopone da Todi and his most significant production took the form of a dialogue between Mary and the Savior on the cross, ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... With that characteristic directness which I have always thought accounted in large measure for his success, he wasted scarcely a word in coming straight to the object of his visit. "Professor Kennedy," he began, chewing his cigar and gazing about with evident interest at the apparatus Craig had collected in his warfare of ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... splendid fight has a fine disregard for the more pedantic rules of making verse, and the metre is a good example of what is called 'rugged'; but those who are superior to such details will appreciate the directness and air of enjoyment that are very appropriate to the song ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... common-sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,—that was what distinguished him. Not yielding to a whim or transient impulse, but carrying out the purpose of a life. I noticed ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... superstition of the Greco-Roman world in the third century, he will find no vagueness at all in Dr. Jacks's interpretation of the teaching of Jesus. He may perhaps find in that interpretation a simplicity, a clarity, and a directness which are not wholly convenient to his idea of a God Who repents, is angry, and can ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... was a wolf brindle, resembling a bunch of dry buffalo-grass, Bert was accustomed to say that he looked the father of the girl, for she had the same robust development, carried herself as erect, and looked everybody in the eye with the same laughing directness. ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... that had been brooding sullenly for a week. In annual town-meeting Smyrna and Vienna had voted to change over the inter-urban highway so that it would skirt Rattledown Hill instead of climbing straight over it, as the fathers had laid it out in the old days for the sake of directness; forgetting that a pail bail upright is just as long as a pail bail ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... thrusts, nearly all in the low line, without uttering the usual cries. Sperelli, nothing daunted by this onslaught, and wishing to avoid an actual hand-to-hand fight, parried vigorously, and returned with such directness that he might, had he so wished, have run his adversary through the body each time. Rutolo's leg was ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Marcella and Leven; but the new-comers took little notice of any one but their host, and were soon seated about him discussing a matter already apparently familiar to them, and into which Hallin had thrown himself at once with that passionate directness which, in the social and speculative field, replaced his ordinary gentleness of manner. He seemed to be in strong disagreement with the rest—a disagreement which troubled himself ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had in a marked degree. But the wit which plays while it wounds, which while saying one thing means another, which deals in far-off suggestion and remote allusion, this was something entirely unsuited to the directness and energy of his intellect. Moreover, some of his most marked literary defects were seen here exaggerated and unrelieved. In many of his novels there is prolixity in the introduction. Still in these it is often compensated by descriptions of natural scenery so life-like ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... remembered the day, the date, the clothes he wore, the horse he rode—and she told the story of those lonely years when his few letters were epochs, and the effect it had when they ceased. So, with simple directness, she went on to relate the downfall of her father and how the disgrace and heartbreak had killed her mother. When she finished her ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... Newgate Calendar—these twain were George Borrow's favourite reading, and all save the psychologist and the pedant will applaud the preference. For the annals of the 'family' are distinguished by an epic severity, a fearless directness of speech, which you will hardly match outside the Iliad or the Chronicles of the Kings. But the Newgate Calendar did not spring ready-made into being: it is the result of a curious and gradual development. The chap-books came first, with their bold type, their coarse paper, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... unity of sentiment. In the varied beauty of its language, its wealth of imagery, its depth of feeling and copiousness of incident the Iliad is superior to the Nibelungenlied with its language of simple directness, its few lyrical passages, its expression of feeling by deeds rather than by words. Homer, too, is in general buoyant, the Nibelungenlied is sombre and stern. And in one last respect the two epics differ ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... political bossdom. This is his immortality. He was a chairmaker by trade, a vulgar good fellow by nature, a politician by circumstances, a boss by evolution, and a grafter by choice. He became grand sachem of Tammany and chairman of the general committee. This committee he ruled with blunt directness. When he wanted a question carried, he failed to ask for the negative votes; and soon he was called "the Boss," a title he never resented, and which usage has since fixed in our politics. So he ruled Tammany ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... dining-room, on the ground-floor. Lesley looked after him helplessly, with a mingled feeling of offence and relief. She did not see him again, but was conveyed to her room by Miss Brooke, who spoke to her kindly indeed, but with a matter-of-fact directness which seemed hard and cold to the convent-bred girl, whose teachers and guardians had vied with one another in sugared sweetness and ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... which the first volume of Emily Dickinson's poems has been read shows very clearly that all our alleged modern artificiality does not prevent a prompt appreciation of the qualities of directness and simplicity in approaching the greatest themes,—life and love and death. That "irresistible needle-touch," as one of her best critics has called it, piercing at once the very core of a thought, has found a response as wide and sympathetic as it has been unexpected even to those ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... it is a great satisfaction to me to feel that I still retain your esteem and good-will. In a certain sense you are the manager's constituents. You cannot eject him from the office, perhaps, with that directness which distinguishes the Parliamentary operations. But you can stay away from the theatre, and so eject his play. [Laughter.] On the whole that is a more disconcerting process than the fiercest criticism. One can always argue with the critics, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the Ripley sisters well were aware that plain speaking never vexed them. Beating about the bush from artificiality or ignoring a plain issue was the sort of thing they resented. Consequently, the directness of David Walker's sally did not appear to them a liberty, but merely a legitimate summing up of the situation. Miss Rebecca was the spokesman as usual, though her choice was always governed by what she conceived to be the welfare of her sister, whom she still looked on as almost a very young ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... season of the year, and have had none for several weeks. Step up to the room at the head of the stairs, and lay off thy things. Then, if thee is not tired, I will give thee a little job with me in the kitchen," said the old lady with a kindly directness which left no room for awkwardness ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... disciple, chosen by him to continue the traditions of his policy. The new cardinal-minister, scion of an old Sicilian family, was a typical Italian; he had none of his predecessor's virile energy and directness of purpose, but ruled by his subtle wit and cool, calculating patience. "Time and I," was his device. He was an excellent judge of men, and profoundly distrusted "the unlucky," always satisfying himself that a man was "lucky," ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... words were a mistake; the whole dispatch, in its absurd homeliness and its pitiless directness, was the work of old Mrs. Knoxwell, the blacksmith's wife, used to hammers and nails, and believing in good, forceful, honest ways of doing things; feeling also a righteous and neighborly indignation ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and of underscoring in this letter, alone would have arrested his attention, for even men of a less severe education than himself were liberal in these resources, and women were prodigal. The directness and precision were also remarkable, and he recalled that she was but nineteen. The flattery touched him, no doubt, for he was very human; and despite the brevity of his leisure, he read the note twice, and devoted a ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... with engaging directness; "that is much better—Tommy." Then she sprang to her feet and hurried him out where some further wonders must be seen and exclaimed over without delay. But Lieutenant McGuire saw the pink flush that crept into ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... estimate of the good. The union of gentleness and courage in Book ii. at first seemed to be a paradox, yet was afterwards ascertained to be a truth. And Plato might also have found that the intuition of evil may be consistent with the abhorrence of it. There is a directness of aim in virtue which gives an insight into vice. And the knowledge of character is in some degree a natural sense independent of any special ...
— The Republic • Plato
... one immense rifled cannon. This was his mode of soliciting alms; and he reminded me of the old beggar who appealed so touchingly to the charitable sympathies of Gil Blas, taking aim at him from the roadside with a long-barrelled musket. The intentness and directness of his silent appeal, his close and unrelenting attack upon your individuality, respectful as it seemed, was the very flower of insolence; or, if you give it a possibly truer interpretation, it ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fantastic dream of genius—was never very much read; it was one of those books made to be talked of; her Lodore was more easily apprehended; it is a love story, from every-day life, but written with remarkable boldness and directness, and a real appreciation of the nature of both woman and man. The hero of this novel is the son of a gentleman ennobled for his services in the American war, and some of the scenes are in New-York. The Last Man has for its hero her husband, whose character is delineated in it with singular ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... experience in the ways and wiles of the domestic treasure, must be aware of the painful lack of consideration sometimes evinced by turkeys in this apparently simple matter of allowing themselves to be housed. Some evenings, they march straight into their apartment with the directness and precision of soldiers filing into barracks; on others the very Prince of Darkness, backed by the three Fates and the three Furies, apparently takes possession of the perverse, shallow-pated birds. They wander backward and forward, with an air of vacancy ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... too far spent for that. Mustering up all the remaining strength of his lungs, he sent pealing afar through the forest wilds the old familiar battle-cry, "I yi, you dogs!" at the same moment fetching the dam a poke of unusual vigor and directness, which brought her for once sprawling upon her back. But in the act, while yet his whole weight was thrown upon his right foot, one of the cubs, more sturdy than the rest, caught up his left foot by the top of the moccasin and continued to hold it up so stiffly as to reduce him to the necessity ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... such. Fellows of the kind are known as "gay young sparks," and, even in their boyhood and school days, earn a reputation for being bons camarades (though with it all they come in for some hard knocks) for the reason that their faces evince an element of frankness, directness, and enterprise which enables them soon to make friends, and, almost before you have had time to look around, to start addressing you in the second person singular. Yet, while cementing such friendships ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... business in view of the position, and the N.Z's. marched back. One of the officers, during the day, had called out to us in characteristic Colonial fashion, "Well, boys, are you going up to finish it?" whereupon one of the men replied with Lancashire directness, "Ay, we started it, so we may as well finish it." There was a good deal of peace-talk flying about. German prisoners had admitted that they could not go on much longer, while rumours about conferences were very prevalent. Still, until we got orders to stop fighting, this job had ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... nor gesture did she manifest the least consciousness of, or concern for, the inanimate form visible in the adjoining room. With sudden directness, and ignoring the implied threat in her last words, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... a smile transforming her grave, dark face and deep, sad eyes; the rare sweetness and directness of the young Queen's nature had already won her reverent love: but suddenly, as the Lady Margherita looked at her she grew aware of the unsuspected fund of strength beneath the gracious girlish exterior, realizing that the spring of her actions ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... he says, in the school of Aristotle or Plato, or any study of the great masters of literature, at one bound he leapt to a high level of thought and composition. His earliest book, "Some Gospel Truths Opened," "thrown off," writes Dr. Brown, "at a heat," displays the same ease of style and directness of speech and absence of stilted phraseology which he maintained to the end. The great charm which pervades all Bunyan's writings is their naturalness. You never feel that he is writing for effect, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... Spaniards. But the Celtic or Iberian brilliance was balanced by a classical delicacy and precision of feature. He had the brow, the nose, the upper lip, the finely-moulded chin, which belong to the more severe and spiritual Greek type. Certainly of Greek blitheness and directness there was no trace. The eye was wavering and profoundly melancholy; all the movements of the tall, finely-built frame were hesitating and doubtful. It was as though the man were suffering from paralysis of some moral muscle or other; as if some of the normal springs ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... considered a somewhat ungodly but a very just man, and while the Deacon most highly disapproved of his spiritual state, and doubted that he and 'vital piety' were strangers, he still respected Peter's rugged honesty and directness of purpose, and ranked him foremost among the 'world's people.' He was a man of powerful frame and strong impulses, and when his feelings were aroused he stood in awe of no man, high or low. When he forced his ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a man of a very brave, fearlessly outspoken character. Some of his practical applications in his sermons before the Magistrates are daring in their directness of reproof, and melting in their wistfulness ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... is a touch of melodrama; but it is the melodrama of a rhetorician, and, in that fine "She heard it with composure", genius has brushed aside the forced and the obvious, to express, with supreme directness, the ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... swathed in flannel and an immense cigar protruding from the bandage; or explaining how the legend of Lord KITCHENER'S survival arose from a trivial error that caused the news of the Hampshire disaster to reach Berlin a few minutes before it was published in London, he always writes with directness and verve. Admiral BROWNRIGG tells a good deal about the censorship, and illustrates his theme with some excellent reproductions of naval photographs before and after the Censor had "re-touched" them. He tells us even more about his work in a less familiar role, that of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... shaped his course in unhurried strokes toward the bar. This swimmer had come alone from the hotel bath-houses and had strolled down into the streaming bubbles of an outgoing wave without halting to inspect the other bathers. There was a businesslike directness in the way he kept onward and outward until a comber lifted him and ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Chrystal Croftangry, is a thing which I should be disposed to put on a level with his very greatest work. Much is admittedly personal reminiscence of himself and his friends, handled not with the clumsy and tactless directness of reporting, which has ruined so many novels, but in the great transforming way of Fielding and Thackeray. Chrystal's early thoughtless life, the sketch of his ancestry (said to represent the Scotts of Raeburn), the agony of Mr. Somerville, suggested partly by the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... the most beautiful pair of eyes that I ever saw in my life. I stared straight up into them and I stared straight down into them. They were as deep as a well and as gray as a cloud and as cold as ice. And they had lashes—" For a moment the quiet directness of Billy's narrative was disturbed by a whiff of inner tumult. "Whew! what eyelashes! Honey, did you ever come across a lonely mountain lake with high reeds growing around the edge? You know how ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... her own at last, and met them with brave directness. "You know, partner," she said, "it isn't very fair of you to ask me such a thing as that. You ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... this temper had his loves. He made no secret of them, and all the young people in the town knew his sweethearts and the precise time when his passion changed its course. If a girl pleased him he courted her with the utmost directness, but he was by no interpretation a love-sick youth. His likings were more in the nature of proprietary comradeship, and were expressed without caresses ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... turned abruptly at a point where an abandoned lot filled with stumps joined the area by the brook. She made her swift way among these stumps, Anthony following, his hope rising as he noted the directness of his wife's aim. At the biggest stump she came to a standstill, carefully swung out-ward like a door a great slab of bark, and disclosed a hollow. The sunlight streamed in upon a little heap of blue, and a tangled brown mass of hair. Anthony Robeson, Junior, ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... self-possession of Bishopriggs himself was shaken by the startling directness of that attack on it. His glib tongue was paralyzed for the moment. "I dinna ken what ye're drivin' at," he said, after an interval, with a sullen consciousness that he had been all but tricked ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... speaks to us with a living impression of unity and directness which we acknowledge without question. We admire and ask ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... to feel that there was anything out of the way in the question, and Ferris was too well used to the childlike directness of the most maneuvering of races to be surprised. Yet he was displeased, as he would not have been if Don Ippolito were not a priest. He was not of the type of priests whom the American knew from the ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... say not." Then she unpinned her hat and ran the pin through the crown with a vicious directness that bore out her words to ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... apt to echo in the ears of Scottish children, and to him, in view of his experience, must have found a special directness of address. But if he had no fine sense of poetry in letters, he felt with a deep joy the poetry of life. You should have heard him speak of what he loved; of the tent pitched beside the talking water; of the stars overhead at night; of the blest return of morning, the peep of day over the moors, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its members. It experimented considerably and blundered often. Excepting Holsten, whose gift was highly specialised, it is questionable whether there was a single man of the first order of human quality in the gathering. But it had a modest fear of itself, and a consequent directness that gave it a general distinction. There was, of course, a noble simplicity about Leblanc, but even of him it may be asked whether he was not rather good and honest-minded than in the fuller ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... precipices of carboniferous formation, limestone, about 1600 feet high. The canyon was surprisingly beautiful and romantic. The river seemed to change its mood here, and began to flow with an impetus it had exhibited nowhere above. It swept on with a directness and a concentration of purpose that had about it something ominous. And just here, at the foot of the right hand wall which was perpendicular for 800 feet, with the left more sloping, and clothed ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... sport, however, the writer of the article Chasse enumerates all the considerations which a patriotic minister could desire to see impressed on public opinion. Some of the paragraphs startle us by their directness and freedom of complaint, and even a very cool reader would still be likely to feel some of the wrath that was stirred in the breast of our shrewd and sober Arthur Young a generation later (1787). "Go to the residence of these great ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... as regards pronunciation; in which two years of a child's school life are rescued from the needless and applied to the useful; in which the stenographer has to learn not two systems of spelling, but only two alphabets; in which the simplicity and directness of the English language, which fit it to become a world language, will not be defeated by a spelling that equals the difficulty of German grammar; in which the blundering of Dutch printers, like school, false etymologies, like rhyme, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... its meaning, not its language; and that great writing is that in which much is said in few words, and those words the simplest that will answer the purpose. Having made this notable discovery, he became a great eraser of adjectives, and toiled after simplicity and directness. Mr. Everett quotes a few sentences from his Fourth-of-July oration of 1806, when he was twenty-four, which shows an amazing advance upon the effort of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... suddenly converted into a lady-in-waiting to a small German Grand-Duchess, was a terrible blow. But what was to be done? Lord Skye had drafted her into the service and she could not decently refuse to help him when he came to her side and told her, with his usual calm directness, what his difficulties were, and how he counted upon ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... whether I knew anything about the construction of protective booms. As it happened, I did, having once been actively employed upon the construction of an experimental boom which was afterward stretched across the mouth of Portsmouth harbour. When, therefore, I told the Admiral this, with his usual directness of purpose he at once appointed me to superintend the construction of the long boom; his orders being that I was to remain in hospital until the doctors should discharge me; when I was to resume the command of the Kasanumi, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... Mathieson's address taken, Archie lay silent for a little time. Swift glances at myself, swiftly withdrawn, denoted his desire to say something more. It came at length and with unmistakable directness. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... relieved. An hour after the sapper spoke. The strain was ended. We had struck the sand hills of the Dujailar depression. Then we saw the flash of Townshend's guns at Kut, a comforting assurance of the directness of our line. That the surprise of the Turk was complete was shown by the fires in the Arab encampments, between which we passed silently in the false dawn. A mile or two to our north and west the campfires of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... thanking the pastor, before leaving, Joe said with his usual directness, "Marcia was right, and here's where I begin to be a systematic Christian as far as my ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... Boston's past, the world of Emerson, Longfellow, Thoreau, was interested. Mr. Brisbane is a very distinguished man, quite over and above the fact that he is paid the greatest salary of any journalist in the world. He writes with a wit and directness that no other living man can rival, and he holds up constantly what is substantially the American ideal of the past century to readers who evidently need strengthening in it. It is, of course, the figure of a man and not of a State; it is a man, clean, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... said calmly, emotionlessly. He drew back instantly, chilled by her directness. "You came because there was promise of an interesting adventure, which you now are on the point of making impossible by a rather ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the intruder. At the apparition of the woman, the unaffected and simple directness he had previously shown in his equally abrupt contact with Bradley had fled utterly; confused by the awkwardness of his arrival, and shocked at the idea of overhearing a private conversation, he stepped hurriedly ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... admirable simplicity and directness of the suffering heroically endured by such numbers of poor fugitives, will instruct and inspire many who have regarded the American slave as a member of an ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... it all over. It had but one other occupant, a huge man with heavy shoulders who lowered the paper he had been reading and looked at Jimmy through a pair of clear, gray, appraising eyes that conveyed such a sense of directness as to slightly disconcert one with a ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... in the range of his genius, but there is something of the same magnanimity, directness, and unaffected character about him. With but little of Shakespeare's imagination or inventive power, he had the same life of mind; within the narrow circle of personal feeling or domestic incidents, the pulse of his poetry flows ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the "Discoveries," is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in the subtler ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... the numbers Rose had been working on. It refused to come out satisfactorily. Rose thought she saw a way of doing it that would work better and she had been telling him about it. Eagerly, at first, and with a limpid directness which, however, became clouded and troubled when she felt he wasn't paying attention. It was a difficulty with him she had encountered before. Some strong preoccupation she could neither guess the nature of ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... cruel, but he had felt something that was now giving his eyes their melancholy directness of gaze. He was looking at his Althea; he was not judging her; but he was wishing that she had been able to think of him a little more as mere friend, a little more as the man who, after all, had loved her all these years; wishing that she had not so completely forgotten him, so completely ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the door, and answered the mortgage jobber's somewhat embarrassed greeting with a frigid stare. Having some experience of Sally's uncompromising directness, he was inclined to fancy that the game was up, but he said nothing further, and she fixed her eyes ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... when he awkwardly commenced to speak, made it unnecessary to put the story into words. Samson told how his mother had turned pallid, and stretched out her arm gropingly for support against the door-jamb. Then the man had found his voice with clumsy directness. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... that I find no easier method of making my own view clear than that of contrasting with it what I regard as an erroneous view held by somebody else; and in the present case the doctrine which I shall choose as a foil to my own, is one which has been stated with the utmost force and directness by that brilliant and distinguished writer, Mr. Frederic Harrison. He has, as many of you know, recently given us, in a series of excellent essays, his opinion on the principles which should guide us in the choice of books. Against that part of his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... and the confusion of voices burst on the visitors' ears with startling directness. A girl, dressed as a Gypsy, gaudy of raiment and bejeweled with brilliantly colored glass beads, almost ran the chums down as she tried to pull the door to behind her. The girl's face was painted with heavy shadows and much white, and so oddly that it looked almost like ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... of this that it is the style of the time, modified inexplicably at almost every point by the writer's character. The Bible and the older-fashioned narrative English of Defoe and Smollett have obviously lent it some phrases, and also a nakedness and directness that is half disdainful of the emotions and colours which it cannot hide. Still further to qualify the Victorianism which he was heir to, Borrow took over something from the insinuating Sterne. Mr. Thomas Seccombe {250} has noticed Sterne particularly in Borrow's picture of his father, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... a dead silence. Then McLaws spoke with Roman directness. "In my opinion there are two Jacksons. The one that came down here left the other ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... room together. They had heard nothing but what they had been hearing all their lives; how was it, then, that they were so dumbfoundered by it? I suppose partly because they had lately begun to think more seriously, and were in a fit state to be impressed, partly from the greater directness with which each felt himself addressed, through the sermon being delivered in a room, and partly to the logical consistency, freedom from exaggeration, and profound air of conviction with which Mr Hawke had spoken. His simplicity and obvious earnestness had impressed them ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... "Why—" He recovered himself and laughed. "You speak with directness." He suddenly turned solemn. He bent toward her and lowered his voice; his hand would have touched her ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... public," said Kendrick evenly. "When do you expect him back?" and there was a directness in his look which Podmore found ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... necessary to the cohesion of the Order—he had expressed in strong terms his dread and horror of narcotism; the use for pleasure's sake, not to relieve pain or nervous excitement, of drugs which act, as he said, through the brain upon the soul. His judgment, expressed with unusual directness and severity and enforced by experience, has become with his followers a tradition not less imperative than the most binding of their laws. It was so held, above all, in that household in which Eveena and I had first learnt the "lore of the Starlight." Esmo, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... full of directness. Having made up her mind, she wasted no precious moments. The girls must be helped; she could only give them counsel, but others could do more. Miss Martineau determined to go at once to the fountainhead. In short, she would ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... end of his quill. In his ears still rang the acclamations that had greeted his brilliant speech in the Assembly that day. He was of the party of the Mountain—as was but natural in a protege of the Seagreen Robespierre—a party more famed for its directness of purpose than elegance of expression, and in its ranks there was room and to spare for such orators as he. The season was March of '93—a season marked by the deadly feud raging 'twixt the Girondins and the Mountain, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... to be heard, except for the quiet footsteps and gentle voice of Sister Louise. There was something refreshing in the very sight of this tall slight figure, in its blue-grey habit and dazzling white "cornette," from beneath which the dark eyes looked forth with sweet and almost childish directness. Sister Louise was not indeed much more than a child in years, and there were still certain inflections in her voice, an elasticity in her movements, a something about her very hands, with their little pink palms and dimpled ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... originality and peculiar felicity of expression. Our readers have been made acquainted with the high merits of Dr. Bethune as a poet, by his contributions to "Graham;" but highly as we appreciate his verse, there is a directness, an originality, an old-fashioned power in his prose which we prefer, and which we think place him in the first class of American writers. On subjects like that treated in the volume before us, his whole heart and mind seem to be poured ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... mother wit and practical sagacity, but, as a theologian, coarse, ignorant, narrow-minded, and strikingly deficient in fine spiritual perceptions. These qualities inhere in a nature of singular vigor, intensity, and directness, that sends out words like bullets. Warmth of feeling combined with narrowness of mind makes him a bigot; but his bigotry is not the sour assertion of an opinion, but the racy utterance of a nature. He believes in Spurgeonism so thoroughly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... unconventionality with the enforced reserve of the dulcineas who, custom decrees, may not be courted save in the presence of duennas. But the next instant he recalled that there were, in Sacramento, young women whose directness it would never do to mistake for boldness; and,—to his credit be it said,—he was quick to perceive that, however indifferent the Girl seemed to the customary formality of introduction, there was no suggestion ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... poor nut," said Miss Winch, for though she might wrap up her meaning somewhat obscurely in her telegraphic communications, when it came to the spoken word she was directness itself, "stop picking straws in your hair and listen to ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... I find it exceedingly difficult to answer. Hampered by circumstances, I cannot at present speak with the directness which is your due, but what I can say, I will. Know, then, that in my opinion Mr. Clavering did explain himself in an interview with me this morning. But it was done in so blind a way, it will be necessary ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... window and let the dove go, and she, rising swiftly into the air, remained poised on high for a time with fluttering pinions, and then, with the swiftness and directness of a well-aimed dart, she flew ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... his father's summons to draw the expert Westy to Miss Brent: he was already gravitating toward her, with the nonchalance bred of cosmopolitan successes, but with a directness of aim due also to his larger ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... life. None know better how difficult it is to find writers with a good narrative style than those editors whose training and experience have made them realize its value and importance. If we examine the experience of those who, in comparatively recent days, have stirred men with the force and directness of their simple speech, as Lincoln, for example, we find that as boys they were great readers of the Bible, and Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Shakespeare, Bunyan, and Scott. As examples of ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
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