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More "Fixedness" Quotes from Famous Books



... only removes the hindrances of reason, but positively helps reason. It makes even the speculative notions the more lively. It engages the attention of the mind, with the more fixedness and intenseness to that kind of objects; which causes it to have a clearer view of them, and enables it more clearly to see their mutual relations, and occasions it to take more notice of them. The ideas themselves that otherwise are dim ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... open up the subject with a full acknowledgment, and would offer any gradual settlement within my power. He paid his bill (doing what was right by attendance) with his eye rolling about him to the last for any tokens of his Luggage. One only time our gaze then met, with the lustrous fixedness (I believe I am correct in imputing that character to it?) of the well-known Basilisk. The decisive moment ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens

... husbands, fathers, brothers, or some one dearer, do not directly or indirectly aid them. So far from alienating the married pair, so far from creating domestic disturbance, the discussion of this question has called into activity faculties men never dreamed woman possessed. She has shown more fixedness of purpose, sagacity, and sound judgment, than have ever been attributed to her. Excepting the religion of Christ, which first broke the chains binding woman to a mere animal existence, and sent gleams of love and hope through ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... till then, had hidden nature from her. The Little Virgin still existing in the beautiful young girl thought on the morrow that her flowers had never been so beautiful; she heard their symbolic language, she looked into the depths of the azure sky with a fixedness that was almost ecstasy, and tears without a cause rolled down ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... potations of the Chinese leaf the night before. She told me quite frankly that she 'declined being lectured on the food or beverage she saw fit to take;' which was but reasonable in one who had arrived at her maturity of intellect and fixedness of habits. So the subject was thenceforth tacitly avoided between us; but, though words were suppressed, looks and involuntary gestures could not so well be; and an utter divergency of views on this and kindred themes created a perceptible distance ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... ever so little, and she kept her eyes on the questioner with involuntary fixedness. The last shadow of doubt regarding Sibyl having disappeared (no woman with an uneasy conscience, she said to herself, could talk in this way), she had now to guard herself against the betrayal of suspicious sensibilities. Sibyl, of course, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... render home the all-powerful magnet of attraction, and the focal point of domestic enjoyment—to make my welfare and happiness at all times a matter of tender solicitude—and to demonstrate the depth and fixedness of that love which you so long ago plighted to me.... Whatever of human infirmity we may have seen in each other, I believe few have enjoyed more unalloyed bliss in wedded life than ourselves." For ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... one Common Form; upon which Dissolution the Component Particles of the Mixt, being Freed and set at Liberty, do Naturally, and oftentimes without any Operation of the Fire, Associate themselves each with its Like, or rather do take those places which their Several Degrees of Gravity and Levity, Fixedness or Volatility (either Natural, or Adventitious from the Impression of the Fire) Assigne them. Thus in the Distillation (for Instance) of Man's Blood, the Fire do's First begin to Dissolve the Nexus or Cement of the Body; and then the Water, being the ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... which a full, graceful drapery is requisite; but when, as is often the case, the sculptor is required to reproduce the actual costume of the day, what can we look for? The truth is, it has no grace in itself; what, then, must it be when put into the fixedness of bronze or marble? Yet where is the remedy for this? We do not wish to see the men whom we have known and who have moved among us in the dress of other men put into an antique disguise by the sculptor; the incongruity of this is too apparent. Much has been written and said ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... whether, in the utterance of such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but with the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light, and far enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... associate arrangements, modes of life, have their characteristic imperfections. The natural, perhaps the necessary defect of ours, is their instability, their want of fixedness, not in form only, but even in spirit. The face of physical nature in the United States shares this incessant fluctuation, and the landscape is as variable as the habits of the population. It is time for some abatement in the restless love of change which characterizes us, and makes us almost ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... consciousness of the difference in himself between the possible and the actual, the hoped-for and the existent. He feels that duty is the highest law of his own being; and knowing how it bids the waves be stilled into an icy fixedness and grandeur, he trusts (but with a boundless inward misgiving) that there is a principle of order which will reduce all confusion to shape and clearness. But wanting peace himself, his fierce dissatisfaction fixes on all that is weak, corrupt and imperfect around him; and instead of ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... critic, almost the discoverer, of Webster, a dramatist of genius so sombre, so heavily coloured, so macabre. Rosamund Grey, written in his twenty-third year, a story with something bitter and exaggerated, an almost insane fixedness of gloom perceptible in it, strikes clearly ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... could be plainly seen in the distance, while close upon our left were the Sweetwater Mountains. The difference in scenery after leaving the river and plains was such as to awaken new emotions and fire one with a new kind of admiration. The immensity and fixedness of the mountains awakened a keener sense of stability, of firmness of purpose, and a sort of expect great things and do great things spirit; while the sense of beauty appreciation was in no wise narrowed as it followed ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole

... I found that she breathed more regularly and distinctly—presently her eyes lost that fixedness which had made them so painful to look upon. Then she recognised me, and took hold of my hand, regarding me with the sweet smile with which I ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... But they have quietly taken things as they are. They have wanted Luther's substitute for superstition—a fervently religious spirit. They have had only worldly and political motives, for wishing to see the old imposition done away; and these have been powerless against natural apathy, and the fixedness of old establishment. Infidelity and indifferentism ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington

... him tired to see the fixedness, the apathy, and lifelessness of this rich and populous world, which should be up and stirring by rights—trading, organising, inventing, building new towns, making the old ones keep up with the procession, laying new railroads, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... all his outburst, a certain independence and a fearlessness and a certain fixedness of purpose that sent an exultant thrill through her even when her heart was burdened with the thought of this new danger that threatened him. She had sent him away for the fault of instability, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... was conscious of a degree of pain and sorrow for which she could not readily account. If Clara loved Dr. Hartwell, why should it grieve her? Her step grew nervously rapid, and the eyes settled upon the carpet with a fixedness of which she was unconscious. Suppose he was double her age, if Clara loved him notwithstanding, what business was it of hers? Besides, no one would dream of the actual disparity in years, for he was a very handsome man, and certainly did not look more than ten years older. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... the scriptures, and, like another young Samson, the Spirit of God began very early to move him, there being such a delightful gravity in his young conversation, that what Gregory Nazianzen once said of the great Bazil, might be applied to him,—"That he held forth learning beyond his age, and fixedness of ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... a farewell address to his country, and retired to private life at the Hermitage, where he lived until his death in 1845. There is much in the life of Andrew Jackson that can be profitably copied by the American youth of to-day; notably his fixedness of purpose, indomitable will, and great love of truth. There are other things that would be well to pass by and give little promise, such as his sporting propensities. Lossing says: 'The memory of that great and good man is revered by his countrymen ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... for the salvation thus obtained. They were exerting all their powerful influence to increase the chance, already alarmingly great, of making a Democrat the next President of the United States. Nevertheless Mr. Lincoln, with his wonted imperturbable fixedness when he had reached a conviction, did not modify his ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... propagate them by "root-joints," whereas, the variegated Tussilago farfara can thus be safely propagated;[879] but this latter plant may have originated as a variegated seedling, which would account for its greater fixedness of character. The Barberry (Berberis vulgaris) offers an analogous case; there is a well-known variety with seedless fruit, which can be propagated by cuttings or layers; but suckers always revert to the common form, which ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... more gross and sensual in its lines, and the look of low admiration and eagerness which it now wore, was well calculated to bring out the sensuality in its most repulsive form. Marcia felt her cheeks burning under the fixedness of the man's gaze, and, looking down, she struggled to compose herself by a close study of the gorgeous coverlid of the couch,—a fine Campanian texture, dyed scarlet, and heavily embroidered with figures of birds and beasts and flowers, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... receiver, it resembles the leg of the compasses which rests in the centre of a circle; and then the poet's expressions, 'restless, resigned' ("Restless, resigned, for God I wait; for God my vehement soul stands still."—Wesley), describes its fixedness in God. But when your heart swiftly moves towards God by faith, as it acts the part of a diligent worker; when your ardent soul follows after God, as a thirsty deer does after the water-brooks, it may be compared to the leg of the compasses which ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... her seat and looked around with something like dismay; but as she only encountered Van Berg's slightly humorous expression, she colored more deeply than before, and recalled her eyes to the farther angle of the stage with a fixedness and rigidity as great as if it had contained ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... not think you would come," he repeated, halting to rest on his crutches. He stood, balanced, staring dreamily into the dim perspective; and again her fascinated eyes ventured to rest on the worn, white face, listless, sombre in its fixedness. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... only safety was in controlling the circumstances which tended to excite them. This was specially true, he said, in respect to the passion of love. The experience of mankind, he said, had shown that no strength of moral principle, no firmness of purpose, no fixedness of resolution, no degree of suffering, no fear of shame, was sufficient to control, in the hearts of men, the impetuosity of the passion of love, when it was once fairly awakened. In a word, Araspes advocated, on the ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... his head, saw Therese mute and motionless opposite, gazing at him with ardent fixedness. Her dull black eyes seemed like two fathomless holes, and through her parted lips could be perceived the rosy tint of the inside of her mouth. She seemed as if overpowered by what she heard, and lost ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... known in the life of nations. An easy-going traditionalism can be overturned in a single blast. Conventional standards, which seemed to have the fixedness of the stars are blown to the winds. Political and economic safeguards go down like wooden fences before an angry sea. The customary foundations of society are shaken. We must surely have had such experiences as these during the past weeks and months. What was unthinkable has become a commonplace. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... immediately after breakfast. He went to the door to open it for her, and she, as she gave him her hand, told him that she came up to speak to him. There was no hesitation in her manner, nor any look of anger in her face. But there was in her gait and form, in her voice and countenance, a fixedness of purpose which he had never seen before, or at any rate ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various

... local paper put it. He was a young man, younger than his cousin, but he looked older. He had a handsome face, under the most complete control as to its muscles. When he laughed he gave the impression of the fixedness of merriment of a mask. He looked keenly at Nahum Beals with that immovable laugh on his face, and spoke with perfectly good-natured sarcasm. "All very well for the string-pieces of the bridge from oppression to ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... The fixedness of their looks directed the eyes of Tom Brown and his comrades towards a neighbouring thicket, where they beheld an object that was well calculated to inspire dread. It appeared to be a living skeleton covered with a black skin of the most ghastly appearance, and came staggering towards ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne

... of witty sophistical disputations; when those who endeavored to lead an earnest Christian life met with nearly as much to oppose them as in periods of active persecution; such were her environments. They were little favorable to the strength of mind, the fixedness of purpose, the self-denial and Christian devotion that marked this noble deaconess. Born in 368 A.D. of a heathen family of rank, owing to her parents' early death she was educated a Christian. In her seventeenth year she married Nebridius, the prefect of the city, but after a married life ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... it is all very well. But there is something mysterious and unaccountable in the strength of the obstinacy sometimes manifested in such cases, and the degree of endurance which it will often inspire, even in children of the most tender age. We observe the same inexplicable fixedness sometimes in the lower animals—in the horse, for example; which is the more unaccountable from the fact that we can not suppose, in his case, that peculiar combination of intelligence and ill-temper which we generally consider the sustaining power of the protracted obstinacy ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... action implies a principle from which it proceeds. Fluctuating opinions and feelings produce fickleness of conduct; while settled convictions, stability of affections, and fixedness of purpose, give birth to persevering and methodical action. A system of beneficence must be founded on abiding principles ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark

... cross as showing a God who will not be disturbed by any merely "personal" considerations. We behold the Almighty's use of power for the advance of a moral kingdom. The Almighty is set before us as exerting all his power for the relief of men. The cross makes the profoundest revelation of the moral fixedness and self- control of God so long as we hold to the scriptural representation. It is to be regretted that many theological theories break away from the Scripture basis and build upon assumptions which are artificial, ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell

... had a look superior to simple strength and grace; the look of a great sky-bird about to mount, a fountain-like energy of stature, delightful to her contemplation. And he had the mouth women put faith in for decision and fixedness. She did, most fully; and reflecting how entirely she did so, the thought assailed her: some one ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... two principles leads to the theory that for the production of gold it was necessary to get from metals the purest possible sulphur and mercury, in order to produce gold by the union of both. Paracelsus now adds to the two principles a third, salt, as the element of fixedness or palpability, as he terms it. According to my notion, Paracelsus has not introduced an essential innovation, but only used in a new systematic terminology what others said before him, even if they did not follow it out so consistently. The principles ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... time. A Negro porter passing through a coach set apart for white passengers noted the fixedness with which a young woman with a pretty face and a pair of beautiful blue eyes was regarding him. Her head was inclined to one side, her hand so supporting her face that a prettily shaped ear peeped out from between ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... himself, it is said, on more than one occasion. Above all, he displayed that inflexible constancy, which enables the strong mind in the hour of darkness and peril to buoy up the sinking spirits around it. A remarkable instance of this fixedness of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... had not yet suffered the last withering change. Her young countenance was hushed and serene, and but for the fixedness of the smile, you might have thought the lips moved. So delicate, fair, and gentle were the features that it was scarcely possible to believe such a scion could spring from such a stock; and it seemed no longer wonderful that a thing so young, so innocent, so lovely, and so early ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... learned the fixedness of her ideas, the rigidity of her type of mind, the relentlessness of her will; and that independence on my part survived was due to sturdy stubbornness, to a refusal to be dominated, and an incapacity for subjection. But this, too, she ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... directly or indirectly aid them. So far from alienating the married pair, so far from creating domestic disturbance, the discussion of this question has called into activity faculties men never dreamed woman possessed. She has shown more fixedness of purpose, sagacity, and sound judgment, than have ever been attributed to her. Excepting the religion of Christ, which first broke the chains binding woman to a mere animal existence, and sent gleams of love ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." We see the lying down, the fixedness of the posture, the utter disregard, in the cold remains, of every thing which passes before them; and these remains are like the channels of a river, or the flats of the sea, when the tide has utterly forsaken them. ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... not entirely without support in the realm of observed facts. How simply it explains the fixedness of the differences of closely related species arising from their geographical and climatical home! how simply the similarity of the color of many animals from the color of their abode, through which they have protection against persecution! how simply the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... the Constitution intended that the supreme law of the land, when once agreed to, should have within it a principle of fixedness almost invincible. At any rate, the process by which alone alterations can be made, involves so wide an area of territory, so many distinct groups of population, and is withal, in itself, so manifold and complex, so slow, and so liable to entire stoppage, that any ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... Negroes were not a live issue in Cincinnati. The question of their settlement in that community was debated but resulted in great diversity of opinion rather than a fixedness of judgment among the citizens. The question came up in the Constitutional Convention of 1802 and provoked some discussion, but reaching no decision, the convention simply left the Negroes out of the pale ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... laboring oar. The sail, at length, arose and spread its wings to the wind. Still he had no power to direct his course when the lofty promontory sunk from sight, or the orbs above him were lost in clouds. But the secret of the magnet is, at length, revealed to him, and his needle now settles, with a fixedness which love has stolen as the symbol of its constancy, to the ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... spiritual world that do this, bringing that image with them, and clothing it with the forms of uses of the vegetable kingdom. The heat, light, and atmospheres of the natural world simply open the seeds, keep their products in a state of expansion, and clothe them with the matters that give them fixedness. And this is done not by any forces from their own sun (which viewed in themselves are null), but by forces from the spiritual sun, by which the natural forces are unceasingly impelled to these services. Natural forces contribute nothing whatever towards forming this image of creation, ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg

... language of the human countenance which we all understand without an interpreter, though the lineaments belong to the rudest savage that ever stammered in an unknown barbaric dialect. By the stillness of the sharpened features, by the blankness of the tearless eyes, by the fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the deadening tints, by the contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we know that the soul is soon to leave its mortal tenement, and is already closing up its windows and putting out its fires.—Such was the aspect of the face upon which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of the nerves though it was evident, by his attitude of thought and the momentary fixedness of his eye, that he foresaw danger was near. Moving to the window, he looked out on the water, and instantly drew back, like one who ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... stirs up a reposing community, and overthrows a deeply-rooted system, may be a very depraved man; but he can scarcely be destitute of some moral qualities, which extort even from enemies a reluctant admiration, fixedness of purpose, intensity of will, enthusiasm, which is not the less fierce or persevering because it is sometimes disguised under the semblance of composure, and which bears down before it the force of circumstances and the opposition of reluctant minds. These qualities, variously combined with all ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... at him, with a quiet fixedness. I no longer feel the slightest embarrassment in his presence; it no longer disquiets me, that he should ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... his life, ceased to be mobile and became fixed, but even so it was none the less impossible to render; it was a drill sounding the heart of whosoever he looked upon, the deepest, the most secret thought of which he meant to sound. Marble or painting might render the fixedness of that look, but neither the one nor the other could portray its life—that is to say, its penetrating and magnetic action. Troubled ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... rather, perhaps, an intuition—of the true state of things when she heard him speak, and at the same time noticed the abnormal flush on his face, and his rolling eyes. There was a certain want of fixedness of purpose which she had certainly not noticed before—a quick, spasmodic utterance which belongs rather to the insane than to those of intellectual equilibrium. She was a little frightened, not only by his thoughts, but by his staccato way ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... devouring, of a translated copy of "Robinson Crusoe" (and it is a most remarkable circumstance that the book which has for its avowed purpose the disheartening of restless adventurers, should have made wanderers and voyagers innumerable), gave form and fixedness to his purpose of rambling; and, in company with his youngest brother, the boy set out one fine morning, without any intention but the somewhat vague one of "traveling to seek their fortune." The young fugitives walked several miles, without knowing, in the least, whither ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... Bowl, next day, they found the pair: Adam M'Adam and his Red Wull, face to face; dead, not divided; each, save for the other, alone. The dog, his saturnine expression glazed and ghastly in the fixedness of death, propped up against that humpbacked boulder beneath which, a while before, the Black Killer had dreed his weird; and, close by, his master lying on his back, his dim dead eyes staring up at the heaven, one hand still clasping a crumpled photograph; ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... regard to the Protestants is more interesting, because more characteristic of the time in which he lived. France in the seventeenth century had become convinced that harmony, unity, fixedness, are the clearest manifestations of truth, the best guarantees of peace, happiness, and prosperity; that variety and change are signs of error and harbingers of disaster. Bossuet's whole effort in his controversy with Protestantism was directed towards demonstrating that Protestantism lacks ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... order. Next she changed her dress and gave some careful attention to her personal appearance. The cold pallor which had been on her face all the afternoon gave way to a faint tinge of color, her eyes lost their stony fixedness and became restless and alert. But the trouble did not go out of her face or eyes; it was only more active in expression, more ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur









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