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More "Inquisitiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elegant language possess, and afterward, when you some thing say will, will you at least yourself understand what you said had. But often nowadays, when you a mile-long sentence from you given and you yourself somewhat have rested, then must you have a touching inquisitiveness have yourself to determine what you actually spoken have. Before several days has the correspondent of a local paper a sentence constructed which hundred and twelve words contain, and therein were seven parentheses ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... admit that my curiosity was immensely piqued; though I flatter myself that my interest was quite legitimate, that it contained no element of vulgar inquisitiveness. Nevertheless, I did want to know—the outcome, at least—and I could decide upon no intermediary who would give me ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... roused Matt Peasley's curiosity. He could not rest until he had interviewed the agent—and after that sop to his inquisitiveness he returned to the Retriever a broken man. The loyal and disgusted Murphy read the trouble ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... expected, had now all the benefit of these jokes, and in the eldest of them they raised a curiosity to know the name of the gentleman alluded to, which, though often impertinently expressed, was perfectly of a piece with her general inquisitiveness into the concerns of their family. But Sir John did not sport long with the curiosity which he delighted to raise, for he had at least as much pleasure in telling the name, as Miss Steele had ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... "As for your inquisitiveness, Jack, it don't become you," said Flower, with severity; "but I don't suppose it'll be necessary to trouble you ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... a longer detour in the gardens than Lady Falconer would have cared to make had she not been interested in the man by her side, whose inquisitiveness was based upon friendship, and whose most persistent interrogations had been touched with a quiet and sober tact which contrasted pleasantly with Mr. Lawrence's dictatorial manner. That genial and rubicund person was now seen approaching with Sir John, and suggested that they ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... other company than his own, for there was in him something of the sensitiveness of a dreamer who is easily jarred. He had said to himself that the all-knowing one would only preach again about the evils of solitude and worry his head off in favour of some forlornly useless protege of his. Also the inquisitiveness of the Editor had irritated him and had closed his lips in ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... that pale, thoughtful-looking orb, which has watched the changing aspects of this scene for so many thousand years, could tell if it had a tongue! We gazed inquiringly at it; but as it rose higher and higher, and poured down more light on all objects around, it seemed to smile at our inquisitiveness, and to bid us turn less eager glances towards the dust and rubbish of old times, where perchance we may find a precious stone, perchance a bit of broken glass—but bend our eyes more steadfastly to the future, the centuries unborn, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... one fault I find with American women, if it can be so called, and that is their inquisitiveness; I know that this is a common fault with all women, but it is most conspicuous in the Americans. They have the knack of finding out things without your being aware of it, and if they should want to know your history they will learn all ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... the sarcasm glide over them, unhit by its truth. Inez herself, indeed, was inclined to consider the governess's taunt a compliment, as proving that she was incapable of a vulgar inquisitiveness. But Laura, though she laughed docilely with the rest, could not forget the incident—words in any case had a way of sticking to her memory—and what Miss Hicks had said often came back to her, in the days that followed. And then, all ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... want of confidence among the Brethren themselves; those who had not been present wished to know what he had said, while those who had, gave evasive answers. There was much inquisitiveness and a great desire both among friends and foes to learn if there was really anything against so respected and well-known a ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... us that he publishes the book 'as a warning to all Christians and sensible people to avoid the terrible example of Doctor Faustus.' He evidently takes the thing very seriously and has purposely (as he says) omitted all 'magic formulae,' lest 'any should by this Historia be incited to inquisitiveness and imitation.' Johann Faust, according to this version, was born at Roda, a village near Weimar. (Other versions say at Knittlingen in Wuertemberg.) His parents were honest God-fearing peasants. His great ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... Mrs. Folliot's inquisitiveness had been aroused, and that her tongue would not be idle: Mrs. Folliot, left to herself, had the gift of creating an atmosphere, and if she once got it into her head that there was some mysterious connection between ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... of knowledge.] Curiosity. — N. interest, thirst for knowledge, thirst for truth; curiosity, curiousness; inquiring mind; inquisitiveness. omnivorous intellect, devouring mind. [person who desires knowledge] inquirer; sightseer; quidnunc[Lat], newsmonger, Paul Pry, eavesdropper; gossip &c. (news) 532; rubberneck; intellectual; seeker[inquirer after religious knowledge], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... meaning of the situation. The vixen growled, and, picking up her prey, carried it to the bramble-clump. The cubs followed, making all sorts of curious noises in mimicking their dam, and evincing the utmost inquisitiveness as to the reason of her unexpected conduct. Presently, having succeeded in arousing their inborn passion for flesh, the vixen resorted to a neighbouring mound, and left her offspring in possession of the dead animal, on which they immediately pounced, tooth and ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... the swans into this somewhat unwieldy craft, so that he might take the air as a Venetian. The idea tickled him, and our progress along the disused canals was always a matter of interest to the towns-people, who showed an unappeasable inquisitiveness ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... the pony. Baldy stopped and eyed the foreman with vapid inquisitiveness. "Now, son, I got three things to tell you," and the foreman gathered up the reins. "First—keep on keepin' your mouth shut and tendin' to business. It pays. Second—always drop your reins over a hoss's head when you get off, whether he's trained that way or not. And last—always figure ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... and now lay where it had been carelessly toss'd amid the coarse gravel. The boy twirl'd it a moment in his fingers—the bruis'd fragments gave out a momentary perfume, and then fell to the edge of the pit, over which the child at that moment lean'd and gazed in his inquisitiveness. As they dropp'd, they were wafted to the bottom of the grave. The last look was bestow'd on the dead girl's face by those who loved her so well in life, and then she was softly laid away to her sleep beneath that green ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... pardon," continued Dashall—"my motives originate not in idle inquisitiveness; if I can be of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... attention by the trembling care with which he re-read a perfect mountain of notes in a feminine hand, which he burnt one by one in a basin, gathering up the ashes and preserving them in a bottle—not a bad way of keeping tender memories quite safe from any inquisitiveness But all these warlike preparations were thrown away. When the Belle Poule cast anchor at Cherbourg on November 3Oth, the storm had passed by. My mission closed at Cherbourg, but I found orders there to tranship the coffin on to a steamboat, and then take it round to Paris by the Seine, my ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... door was timorously unbarred and opened. A hard-featured hag, in a faded suit of an obsolete fashion—the genius loci—received the party. She scrutinized Lucille with a protracted stare of audacious inquisitiveness, and when she had quite satisfied her curiosity, she led the way through several halls and lobbies up the great staircase, along a corridor, through a suite of rooms, upon another lobby up a second staircase, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... one of the simplest and most remunerative of industries, is almost unknown. The market grower already engaged in growing mushrooms appreciates his situation and zealously guards his methods of cultivation from the public. This only incites interest and inquisitiveness, and the people are becoming alive to the fact that there is money in mushrooms and an earnest demand has been created for information about ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... discover your coming. Often, when you think yourself quite alone in the woods, Mooween is there. The wind has told your story to his nose; the clatter of your heedless feet long ago reached his keen ears, and he vanishes at your approach, leaving you to your noise and inquisitiveness and the other things you like. His gifts of concealment are so much greater than your powers of detection that he has absolutely no thought of ever seeing you. His surprise, therefore, when you do meet unexpectedly is correspondingly ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... made us tell him all our strange though brief history, as the reader already knows it. If he asked us questions, however, it was evidently not for the sake of inquisitiveness, but to exchange experiences, and support the conversation. He was quite as ready to impart as to solicit information; but somehow we felt towards him as if he were an elder brother or uncle; and this only proves the hermit ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... answer or satisfy his inquisitiveness, the door of the carriage was opened in haste, and the landlord sprang to offer his shoulder. A tall young man whose shaped riding-coat failed to hide that which his jewelled hands and small French hat would alone have betrayed—that he was dressed ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... quality, indeed, in him that still continued to jar upon them was his phenomenal inquisitiveness. He appeared not to know the meaning of rudeness or impertinence; he sought to pry into everything, and seemed genuinely surprised and puzzled when Sir Reginald somewhat curtly yet courteously excused himself from complying with his request to be shown all ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... another in silence. Not a word escaped them, the Chiefs viewing with each other in betraying no symptom of idle curiosity or impatience. At length a Chief turned his eyes slowly towards the old Sachem, and in a low voice, with great delicacy in excluding all inquisitiveness, addressed him: ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... with a strong predilection for study; and in the next place there was little else for you to do on this group but learn, until we started to build the cutter. Now, Billy, what you have told me relative to Van Ryn's inquisitiveness and his cross-questioning of you has greatly interested me, for a reason which I will explain later on; therefore, while I am not as a rule inquisitive, I will ask you to make a point of reporting to me the substance of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... the hands of a hoodlum, but it does not make its target playful. To the Chinaman in America the situation is new and grave, and he looks sober and holds his peace. Even the funny-looking, be-cued little Chinese children wear a look of solemn inquisitiveness, as they toddle along the streets of San Francisco by the side of their queer-looking mothers. In his own land, overpopulated and misgoverned, the Chinaman has a hard fight for existence. In these United States his advent is regarded somewhat in the same spirit as that of ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... then so great was her fright, so deep was the terror which the recollection of the mysterious man inspired, that despite the permission to tell what had happened she mentioned her adventure to no one, and did not even complain to her neighbour, Madame Rapally, of the inquisitiveness which had led the widow ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... superficial opinion. He must have been an intelligent and cultivated man. It seems that he was near being a Fellow of his college at Oxford—Brasenose, as I judge from the Calendar. His besetting fault was pretty clearly that of over-inquisitiveness, possibly a good fault in a traveller, certainly a fault for which this traveller paid dearly enough ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... of Orland, on a certain day in December some years ago, he was at a decided loss to understand what caused such an excitement among them before they had walked the short length of the playground. The deacon had a very large bump of inquisitiveness on his bald head, which, perhaps, accounted for his great desire to know why nearly all the boys and girls had stopped beside the tiny brook that scolded and fretted all the long summer days away, ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... spite of their weaknesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer. Without all the qualities which made him the jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and garrulity ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... stood upon the wharf, the curiosity and inquisitiveness of the New England people would naturally lead them into the midst of the poor Acadians. Prying busybodies thrust their heads into the circle wherever two or three of the exiles were conversing together. How puzzled did ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were observers of nature who argued that since birds could raise themselves by flapping their wings, man had only to make suitable wings, flap them, and he too would fly. As early as the thirteenth century Roger Bacon, the scientific friar of unbounded inquisitiveness and not a little real genius, announced that there could be made 'some flying instrument, so that a man sitting in the middle and turning some mechanism may put in motion some artificial wings which may beat the air like ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... body which drivers of elegant equipages affect when their attention is called to something trifling behind them. The mule also looked round—it was a habit of the mule's—and if the dog had been there the dog would have shown an even livelier inquisitiveness; but Denry had left the ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... chirruping chafe of bamboo shoots were so many voices that hummed in harmony with the cries of birds and the chattering of monkeys. In among the tall, golden stems, short-statured brown ghosts moved, sarong clad; little people whose eyes gazed at the intruder with soft inquisitiveness as he strode sturdily forward. And a patch of gorgeous jungle was entered to the whisk and flirt of graceful heads and slim, swift legs, all the visible signs revealed by ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... money's easy enough to come at by a fellow like you when he needs it. You haven't come across all square with me yet!" It was not mere inquisitiveness; it was the insistence of a plain man who wanted a definite peg on which to hitch the first warp of association. "You've got to handle money of mine," he went on. "I'm in a tight place and I have got to have the right men tied up with me. I wouldn't have to ask ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... my first day and evening in Linrock it appeared, despite my vigilance and inquisitiveness, that here was to be ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... proprietor clever enough not to be inquisitive, with a genius for minding his own business. A man who has a genius for that thing always carries it in his face, just as his opposite—the busybody—carries the traces of his restless inquisitiveness in ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... broadly on it, and he could detect the very shape and size of its lock. It might be as well to try that lock, but he would have to cross a very wide strip of moonlight in order to do so, and he feared to attract attention to his extreme inquisitiveness. Yet who was there to notice him at this hour? Mr. Cumberland had not moved, the girls were upstairs, Zadok was busy with his paper, and the footman dozing over his pipe in his room over the stable. Sweetwater had just come from that ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... outward, with the inquisitiveness of a land to which few strangers come, did not see that recognition of a Nemesis, and quickly, in order that the stranger himself might not see it, the man drew a long breath into his chest and schooled himself to the stoic bearing of one who ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... a person in whose character caution and curiosity were oddly mingled; in his sober moments he thought of the unusual and the eccentric with undisguised aversion, and yet, deep in his heart, there was a wide-eyed inquisitiveness with respect to all the more recondite and esoteric elements in the nature of men. The latter tendency had prevailed when he accepted Raymond's invitation, for though his considered judgment had always repudiated the doctor's theories as the wildest nonsense, yet he ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... felt her fingers quiver under his grasp, but the next moment he had turned away, and her companions noticed there was a faint pink tinge in her cheeks when she rejoined them. But being wise young women, they restrained their natural inquisitiveness, ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... child than three years (now five years), but his height, dentition, and general appearance indicate the truthfulness of the age assigned. An evidence of his symmetrical mental development appears in his extreme inquisitiveness. He wants to understand the meaning of what he is taught, and some kind of an explanation must be given him for what he learns. Were his memory alone abnormally great and other faculties defective, this would hardly be the case; but if so, it ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... this obvious device never seems to have occurred to Reynard. Among slightly teachable mammals, however, there is one group more teachable than the rest. Monkeys, with their greater power of handling things, have also more inquisitiveness and more capacity for sustained attention than any other mammals; and the higher apes are fertile in varied resources. The orang-outang and gorilla are for this reason dreaded by other animals, and roam the undisputed lords of their native forests. ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... reason, or at least prepared the way for the victory of this principle. Even the deformities and unfavorable side of scholasticism, the many absurd questions upon which the scholastics divided, even their thousandfold unnecessary and accidental distinctions, their inquisitiveness and subtleties, all sprang from a rational principle, and grew out of a spirit of investigation, which could only utter itself in this way under the all-powerful ecclesiastical ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... regarded me with increased suspicion, doubtless imagining me to be enumerating themselves and reins for the purpose of taxation, or something worse. Several came close up to me, and peered over the cabalistic signs on my paper with a sort of gloomy inquisitiveness. I spoke to the Lap who understood Norwegian, and he acted as tolk in interpreting anew to his brethren the purely amicable nature of my intentions. As to the half-dozen of little wild imps of children, I had already won their confidence by distributing among them large rye cakes, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... miles from the divide I am greatly amused, and not a little astonished, at the strange actions of a coyote that comes trotting in a leisurely, confidential way toward me; and when he reaches a spot commanding a good view of my road he stops and watches my movements with an air of the greatest inquisitiveness and assurance. He stands and gazes as I trundle along, not over fifty yards away, and he looks so much like a well-fed collie, that I actually feel like patting my knee for him to come and make friends. Shoot at him . Certainly not. One never abuses a confidence like that. He can come ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... my tale, I came to notice that over the countenance of Prince Zaleski there grew little by little a singular fixed aspect. His small, keen features distorted themselves into an expression of what I can only describe as an abnormal inquisitiveness —an inquisitiveness most impatient, arrogant, in its intensity. His pupils, contracted each to a dot, became the central puncta of two rings of fiery light; his little sharp teeth seemed to gnash. Once before I had seen him look thus greedily, when, grasping a Troglodyte tablet covered with half-effaced hieroglyphics—his ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... my customary channel of communication with the public. I hope I shall not be misunderstood as implying any reproach against the inquirers who, in order to get at facts which ought to be known, apply to all whom they can reach for information. Their inquisitiveness is not always agreeable or welcome, but we ought to be glad that there are mousing fact-hunters to worry us with queries to which, for the sake of the public, we are bound to give our attention. Let me ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that he will burn himself, command him to desist; and in case of non-compliance will snatch the paper from him. But, should he be fortunate enough to have a mother of some rationality, who knows that this interest with which he is watching the paper burn, results from a healthy inquisitiveness, and who has also the wisdom to consider the results of interference, she will reason thus:—"If I put a stop to this I shall prevent the acquirement of a certain amount of knowledge. It is true that I may ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... been engaged in the trade, and as I had, with the inquisitiveness of youth, observed the process, ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... inquisitiveness now returned. There was no servant—that was a settled point. I looked, therefore, for the extra baggage. After some delay, a cart arrived at the wharf, with an oblong pine box, which was every thing that seemed to be expected. Immediately ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... whit dismayed by the rebuke and the air of rather contemptuous disdain with which it was uttered. He waved his revolver toward Mary, merely as a gesture of inquisitiveness, without any threat. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... at the diving-suit in Grant's hand, stared at Grant's face with a sharp, penetrating, unashamed inquisitiveness that made Grant use all of his will-power to stare back. The kid ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... forms no live feature of the language-mechanism and must be ignored in defining the general form of the language. The caution is all the more necessary, as it is precisely the foreigner, who approaches a new language with a certain prying inquisitiveness, that is most apt to see life in vestigial features which the native is either completely unaware of or ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... sometimes feel that the responsibility of me makes him treat me as if he were my step-grandfather-in-law. But all in all, though stiff in its knees with aristocracy, Hillsboro is lovely and loving; and couldn't inquisitiveness be called just real affection with a kind of ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... earth. It had courage, enterprise, intelligence, perseverance, faith in itself, the instinct of self-government and self-help, hatred of tyranny, the disposition to domineer, aggressiveness, greediness, inquisitiveness, insolence, the love of science, of liberty, and of money—all this in unlimited extent. It had one great defect, it had no country. Upon that meagre standing ground its hand had moved the world with an impulse ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bullets that violated my person left me as many scars and at the same time completely satisfied my curiosity. I think now if I can ever muster up enough courage to drink a glass of buttermilk, I shall have bereft myself of my last inquisitiveness. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... followed Agias did not know; his little affair with Artemisia had taught him that his Hellenic inquisitiveness sometimes would do more harm ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... new recruit was not made an exception. He was given to understand that certain duties devolved upon him. The language perplexed his little brain. He had heard nothing like it before, but he determined to avail himself of every opportunity of learning. His inquisitiveness was a trouble to the men; they rebuked him for bothering them; but by steady plodding he began to learn the names of the multiplicity of ropes, and the different things he would have to do when the ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... to plead guiltless to the charge of ever having made such an insinuation," said the captain; "and do now confess to having a full share of inquisitiveness." ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... her decks were littered with poultry and domestic animals, her cordage flapped loosely in the breeze, and every thing about her bespoke the merchant-vessel. Her captain, being hailed by the dock-loafers, and made the victim of the proverbial Yankee inquisitiveness, stated that he had just come from the West Indies with a load of lignum-vitae, pineapples, and hides, which he hoped to sell in Boston. The self-constituted investigating committee seemed satisfied, and the captain strolled on into ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... never realized the full extent of his powers because he spent his time almost entirely amongst politicians of the same school. His mind, though by no means closed against new ideas, lacked the eager inquisitiveness of that of Napoleon, who, before the process of imperial fossilization set in, welcomed discussions with men of all shades of opinion, and encouraged in them that frankness of utterance which at once widens and clarifies the views of the disputants. It is true that Pitt's private conversations ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... proof of his devotion and honesty of purpose which must at once annihilate all your doubts. The prince was watched; measures were being taken to gain information regarding his mode of life, associates, and general habits. I know not with whom this inquisitiveness originated. Let me beg your attention, however, to what ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... take much content in that phase of the situation, feeling that mere personal inquisitiveness was dignified in this case under the aegis of law and authority. It was exactly this view of the matter that most disturbed Cap'n Aaron Sproul, for that hateful Pharisee, Squire Reeves, had supplied the law to compel ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... of bombs." The hair crinkled upwards into the lad's steel helmet and he carried that box to its destination with all the lavish care and tenderness of a mother for her babe. Placing it gingerly down and unable to overcome the strong trait of inquisitiveness latent in all soldiers, he forced up the lid and peeped upon—two heavy sets of large ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... went to the smoking-compartment, which was in the forward end of the car; and when next Lidgerwood broke Miss Doty's eye-hold upon him, Miss Brewster had also disappeared—into her state-room, as he supposed. Taking this as a sign of his release, he gently broke the thread of Miss Carolyn's inquisitiveness, and went out to the rear platform for a breath of fresh air and surcease from the fashery of a neatly ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... so sorry," answered Miss Smith contritely. "But please believe me—it was not mere cheap inquisitiveness that made ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... discovered my pursuers had been in quest of me since early morning, though it was hardly believed I had either escaped the shot, or swam fully a mile amid sharks during the darkness. Upon this, I ventured to put some ordinary questions, but was quickly informed that inquisitiveness was considered very unwholesome on the sand ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... is a thorough acquaintance with the capabilities of the law. I saw honest Tom Wealdon about a fortnight ago—grown stouter and somewhat more phlegmatic by time, but still the same in good nature and inquisitiveness. From him I learned that Jos. Larkin is likely to figure once more in the courts about some very ugly defalcations in the cash of the Penningstal Mining Company, and that this time the persecutions of that eminent Christian are likely to take a different ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... religious prize-fighter, drawing round him an auditory as a means of subsistence, instead of instructing a congregation in their duty to God. So there would be endless dispute, nice sifting of abstract ideas, and censorious inquisitiveness into the spiritual state of our neighbours, but little humility, charity, or true piety; which consist in grateful adoration of, and sincere obedience to our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, and not in speculations on the incomprehensible nature and unfathomable purposes ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... tries vainly to ban the new inquisitiveness. The intercourse with familiar spirits is condemned as a theological offence, a vainglorious and futile storming of the citadel of God. The secret of the tomb must be preserved, though the masses of Christendom have ceased to believe in the long and mouldering ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... senseless order conceivable— always prevented the son from working. Likewise, the old man occasionally arrived there drunk. Gradually, however, the son was weaning his parent from his vicious ways and everlasting inquisitiveness, and teaching the old man to look upon him, his son, as an oracle, and never to ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... King Richard.' William of Newburgh, indeed, the best historian of these reigns, wrote in a small Yorkshire monastery, but Roger of Hoveden and Ralph de Diceto pursued their historical work under the influence of the court. Still more striking is the universality of the intellectual inquisitiveness of Walter Map. On the one hand, in his De Nugis Curialium he chattered over the manners of his contemporaries, and in his satirical poems scourged the greed and vices of the clergy, whilst on the other hand he took a principal part in spreading a knowledge of the legend of the high-souled ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... surveyor, who seemed in an admirable humor, stepped just outside the tent to look at the fish, and in that little interval his assistant, seized with inquisitiveness, stole up to his table, and picked up the tiny object lying there under the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... persuaded Sir Charles Horner to let to the Abbey rent free on condition that they were put back into cultivation. The patron himself had gone away for the winter to Rome and Florence, and Mark was glad that he had, for he was sure that otherwise his inquisitiveness would have been severely snubbed by the Prior. Father Burrowes went away as usual to preach after Christmas; but before he went Mark was clothed as a novice together with two other postulants who had been at Malford since September. Of these Brother Giles was a former school-master, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... was sweet and thoughtful, with a certain keen inquisitiveness about the eyes. The mouth was firm; yet there were gentle lines of grace about it. In spite of her coarse, dark calico garb, made in no particular fashion except with an eye to covering with the least possible fuss and trouble, she was graceful. Every ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... spur to my curiosity was found in the fact, that the lady in passing had eyed me with a glance of more than ordinary inquisitiveness. Do not be too hasty in blaming me for this declaration. Hear me first. I did not for a moment fancy that that glance was one of admiration. I had no such thoughts. I was too young at the time to flatter myself with such ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... slowly, almost lingeringly, and she spoke with the precision and slight accent of a well-educated foreigner. Her eyes seemed to be wandering all over me and my possessions, yet her interest, if it amounted to that, never even suggested curiosity or inquisitiveness. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... (p. 108). And in another place (p. 15) he suggests that "our God, the Captain of Mankind," may one day enable us to "pierce the black wrappings," or, in other words, to get behind the veil. There is nothing, then, unreasonable or absurd in man's incurable inquisitiveness as to God, in the non-Wellsian sense of the term. God simply means the key to the mystery of existence; and though the keys hitherto offered have all either jammed or turned round and round without unlocking anything, it does ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... the humble complaint that the Hon'ble Coach was defective in courteous attention to my inquisitiveness, which he totally ignored. For I could not prevail upon him to explain what thing it was that he directed the oarmen to "wait for," to "spring at from a stretcher," and "catch at the beginning;" nor why they were forbidden to row with their ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... other things?" I said, peering into the secret drawer with a child's inquisitiveness. ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... enough to excite the interest of almost all the inhabitants of Tours, who make a regular promenade of the bridge. Still, in spite of a kind of spy system, by which no harm is meant, a provincial habit bred of want of occupation and the restless inquisitiveness of the principal society, nothing was known for certain of the newcomer's rank, fortune, or real condition. Only, the owner of La Grenadiere told one or two of his friends that the name under which the stranger had signed the lease (her real name, therefore, in all probability) was Augusta ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... first witness called for the prosecution. She was quite used to legal inquisitiveness by this time, but did not appear ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... South for the benefit of my health, I arrived at Savannah, in Georgia, on the 10th of February, 1834; and, indulging the common inquisitiveness of a stranger about the place, was informed that just one hundred and one years had elapsed since the first settlers were landed there, and the city laid out. Replies to other inquiries, and especially a perusal of McCall's ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... came irreverently above the wheels and flowed with graceful inquisitiveness over the blades, but the brisk little man pushed heartily and the mechanism revolved with a barely audible clicking. It did not balk, complain or hesitate. Cleanly severed ends of grass whirled into the air and floated down on the neat smooth swath left behind. Everyone smiled relievedly ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... killed. We must except one buck who started in to investigate an unexploded shell. That buck was going to "get 'um powder and lead out" with file and hatchet, and was scattered out over the rocks for his inquisitiveness. But the other Indians were nowhere to be seen. They had passed out under the line of troops as ants would pass through a sponge. The troops took possession of the lava beds, the stronghold, but the Indians were gone. It yet remained ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... an assured, not unkindly inquisitiveness, the girls fresh and bright-faced, with crisp lovely clothes; their mother, in a smart mantle and little bonnet with knots of French flowers, greeted her with a direct question tempered by a smile. William Ammidon, smoking, was unconcerned; ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... she undertook to pick out of her daughter all that had occurred, down to the most insignificant detail. Lorelei had always made a confidant of her mother in such cases, even to the repetition of whole conversations; but this time the latter's inquisitiveness grated on her, and she answered the questions put to her grudgingly. Just why she felt resentful she scarcely knew. Certainly she had no interest in Mr. Merkle, nor suffered the least embarrassment over their exploit. Rather, on this afternoon, she beheld with unusual ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... a terrible time of it, Mr. McGaw," stated Mayo, avoiding the mate's inquisitiveness. "I am going to take these folks on board and set ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... were not sooner successful than they were is due to a combination of small things—each perhaps trivial in itself, but the whole most efficacious in perpetuating Napoleon's hold on the French. During his presence in Paris all the old inquisitiveness and boundless concern for detail seemed to return without diminution of force. Before his last departure he had won the popular heart by the model family life of the Tuileries, which, though never ostentatiously displayed, was yet seen ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the danger which the secrecy of his connection with her must incur by his communicating with her, even through a public office, where their letters might be permitted to lie longer than the gossiping inquisitiveness of a country town would warrant him ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... towards his judges, or towards the spectators, without betraying any emotion. Once he rose; turned his back upon the court to see what was passing behind him, and again sat down with an expression at once of inquisitiveness and indifference in his manner. Upon hearing the words: "Charles Stuart, a tyrant, traitor, and murderer," he laughed, though ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... I knew inquisitiveness to be the Superintendent's besetting sin, and, up to a certain point, I had an interest in tempting ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... to execute a work, whether it be "to build a tower," or drain a field, "sitteth down first and counteth the cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it." There is good sense and discretion in the inquisitiveness which suggests so often the inquiry, "How much does it cost to drain an acre?" or, "How much does it cost a rod to lay drains?" These questions cannot be answered so briefly as they are asked; yet much information can be given, which will aid one ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... state of things, Arthur Gride was appealed to. The robbery, partly owing to the inquisitiveness of the neighbours, and partly to his own grief and rage, had, long ago, become known; but he positively refused to give his sanction or yield any assistance to the old woman's capture, and was seized with such a panic at the idea of being called upon to give evidence against her, that he shut ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... at Shanghai their hearts were gladdened by seeing "on the quay a French custom-house official, with his kepi over his ear, his rattan in his hand, dressed in a dark-green tunic, and full of the inquisitiveness of the customs inspector—as martial and as authoritative as in his native land." The appearance of the population here struck our travelers as different from that of the native Chinese farther south. Those were yellow, copper-colored, lean, and slightly clad in garments of cotton ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... He even confessed that he could not fly—yet. There was something pathetic in his eagerness and his trustfulness, though Bland Halliday seemed to miss altogether the pathos, in his greed for technical details of the damage to the plane, and a crafty inquisitiveness ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... answer. It is a curious inquisitiveness which it would do no one any good to gratify. I did not think it necessary to the happiness of my friends that they should know, and if it would afford me any satisfaction, it was far better that ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... biographer keep his fingers off that sacred and merciful deposit, and not renew for us the bores of a former generation as if we had not enough of our own. But if he cannot forbear that unwise inquisitiveness, we may fairly complain when he insists on taking us along with him in the processes of his investigation, instead of giving us the sifted results in their bearing on the life and character of his subject, whether ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... of cool speech that showed the cowboy in control of himself and master of the situation—not an easy speech to follow up with undue inquisitiveness. There was a ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... nearly filled with young females, fancifully decorated with flowers, who gazed upon me as I rose with faces in which childish delight and curiosity were vividly portrayed. After waking Toby, they seated themselves round us on the mats, and gave full play to that prying inquisitiveness which time out of mind has been ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Betsy Thoughtless" (1751) she reached the full fruition of her powers as a novelist. Her heroine, like Natura, is little more than a "humour" character, whose prevailing fault is denoted by her surname.[4] Though not fundamentally vicious, her heedless vanity, inquisitiveness, and vivacity lead her into all sorts of follies and embarrassments upon her first entry into fashionable life in London. Among all the suitors who strive to make an impression upon her heart Mr. Trueworth alone succeeds, but her levity and her disregard of appearances force ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... rejoice in the thought that one was certainly speeding homewards; and experience was no longer a blind conflict of forces, but a joyful nearing of the central sum of things. At all events, what a blitheness, what a zest it gave to the genius of Plato himself! With what eager inquisitiveness, in a sort of childlike gaiety, he hurried hither and thither, catching at every point some bright indication of the delightful mystery. Plato seemed to differ from the serious and preoccupied philosophers in this, that while they were lost in a grave and anxious scrutiny of phenomena, he ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... twenty-three, of German aspect, and I think his face was somewhat seamed with small-pox. But his sweet and candid expression, his gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then publishing in ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... in the world till our present enlightened and glorious day of progress; he is a new-grafted type of nomad, like and yet unlike a man. The Darwin theory asserts itself proudly and prominently in bristles of truth all over him—in his restlessness, his ape-like agility and curiosity, his shameless inquisitiveness, his careful cleansing of himself from foreign fleas, his general attention to minutiae, and his always voracious appetite; and where the ape ends and the man begins is somewhat difficult to discover. The "image of God" wherewith he, together with his ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... perhaps sharpened by curiosity, since every one desired to know who the knight was that had gained so many laurels, yet had refused, even at the command of Prince John, to lift his visor or to name his name. But their officious inquisitiveness was not gratified. The Disinherited Knight refused all other assistance save that of his own squire, or rather yeoman—a clownish-looking man, who, wrapped in a cloak of dark-colored felt, and having his head and face half buried in a Norman bonnet made of black fur, seemed to affect the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... he thought the city, with its quaint Dutch houses, its magnificent trees, and these brilliant northern birds, quite like a picture book. They looked high-bred and intelligent, these animated saunterers, and Alexander regarded the women with deep inquisitiveness. Women had interested him little, with the exception of his mother, who he took for granted sui generis. The sisters of his friends were white delicate creatures, languid and somewhat affected; and he had always felt older than either of his aunts. In consequence, he had meditated little ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... letter, her reticent soul shrinking from the frank inquisitiveness. "I don't know anybody," she said honestly. "I ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... people, that an outward manifestation of surprise [FN: See Appendix L.] is considered a want of etiquette and good breeding, or rather a proof of weakness and childishness. The women, like other females, are certainly less disposed to repress this feeling of inquisitiveness than the men, and one of their great sources of amusement, when Catharine was among them, was examining the difference of texture and colour of her skin and hair, and holding long consultations over ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... on which they poked out their seven noses, and I ran at them with my spines, for a father who is not an Encyclopaedia on all fours must adopt some method of checking the inquisitiveness of the young. ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... to the raptures all over again. The eager interest of the wife disturbed her. She doubted whether Frau Manske had any real sympathy with her plan. Her inquisitiveness was unquestionable; but Anna felt that opening her heart to the parson and opening it to his wife were two different things. Though he was wordy, he was certainly enthusiastic; his wife, on the other hand, appeared to be chiefly interested in the question ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... that, in some vague way, the clean-cut face was familiar. His curiosity thus aroused, he perceived the tenseness of expression and attitude, and shrewdly suspected the truth. It was with benevolent intent, rather than for the gratification of inquisitiveness, that he finally got up and seated himself in the vacant place alongside the ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... natural bent declared itself in "figures"; in the operations, as she discovered them, of commerce; in the mysterious powers, as they appealed to her, developed in countinghouses and exerted by countinghouses. The romance of commerce! A mind double-edged, with inquisitiveness the one edge and acquisitiveness the other (as certainly Rosalie's) is a sword double-edged that will cut through the tough shell and into the lively heart of anything. No more is required than to give the young mind a glimpse of the lively ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... his head, he tried to find out whether David had any money with him; he wanted to be paid something on account. The old man's inquisitiveness roused his son's distrust; David remained close ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... crestfallen not to be a news-bearer. My inquisitiveness about saints was well-known among my friends; they delighted in setting me ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the first leg of the journey would be the same for all of us we bought other kit, packed it, and booked passages for British East Africa. Between then and the next afternoon when the British India steamboat sailed we were fairly bombarded by inquisitiveness, but contrived not to tell much. And with patience beyond belief Monty restrained us from ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... myself the impression left on me by this singular style, with its mixture of gravity and affectation, of carelessness and precision, of strength and delicacy; so full of sly intention for all its coldness, expressing at once inquisitiveness and indifference, abrupt, piecemeal, like notes thrown together haphazard, and yet deliberate. I seem to see an intelligence naturally grave and austere donning a dress of wit for convention's sake. The author desires to entertain as much as to teach, the thinker is also ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had anticipated, from his eagerness to get hold of the watch, that he would be equally as eager for a share of the gold, and Mr. Brown and myself were both aware that he deserved a handsome reward for the dangers through which he had passed to free us from the inquisitiveness of the bushrangers. Therefore, the more backward Day appeared the more firmly did we insist upon doing justice ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... natives arrived, with news that the buffalo was killed and dragged into a dry bed of a rocky nullah within the jungle; and from the high bank they had seen the tiger devouring the hind-quarters. This was satisfactory, although I was afraid that the tiger might have been disturbed by the inquisitiveness of the people; however, they laughed at the suggestion, and the beaters being ready, we sallied out to make a drive for a hopeless beast that ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... consciousness sufficiently to be able to see them. It was known that she had sent for me on being taken ill, and that I remained at Roughborough, and I own I was angered by the mingled air of suspicion, defiance and inquisitiveness, with which they regarded me. They would all, except Theobald, I believe have cut me downright if they had not believed me to know something they wanted to know themselves, and might have some chance of learning from me—for it was plain I had been in some way concerned with the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... its lusty, naked infancy and bellowing hungrily for the pap of knowledge, and for other things. You shall infer something of the passionate mettle of this infant: his tempestuous mirth, his fierce rages, his simplicity, his naivete, his inquisitiveness, his cunning, his deceit, his cruelty, his love of sunshine ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... off, followed by a crowd of runners, eager out of pure inquisitiveness to see the matter through. They passed Government House, turned into dusty Macleod Road, and in five or six minutes reached the Custom House, where, turning to the left for a short distance along the Napier Mole, the driver pulled up at a ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... had observed that the windows next to mine were covered only by long lace curtains; and as the two balconies were connected, my neighbor, whether man or woman, had no doubt a wish to prevent any indiscreet inquisitiveness on my part, and therefore had always put out the light on hearing me come in. To verify this supposition, I tried a very simple experiment, which succeeded perfectly. I had a cold supper brought ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... of this gentleman, he felt convinced that there was no chance for a situation on board. Captain Slowly was one of those mahogany-faced, moderate, slow-moving, slow-speaking, slow-eating people, that one occasionally meets with in New England, who are the very reverse of Yankee inquisitiveness, and never answer the most ordinary question, not even "What o'clock is it?" in less than half an hour; men who, in short, as they never ask any questions themselves, think it not worth their while to answer any. We have been several times horrified by such people, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... has been engaged in researches respecting the text of Shakespeare he has had frequent occasion to acknowledge the kindness of many literary gentlemen who have directed his attention to many books auxiliary to his labors. But notwithstanding his own inquisitiveness and the aid of others, he still has not had the good fortune to find the following, for the whole or any one of which he will be particularly obliged:—'Remarks on Shakespeare's Tempest,' 'An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff, by Mr. Maurice Morgan, ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... justified in the utterer's opinion as a repulse to Mr. Mardon's vulgar inquisitiveness, such inquisitiveness as might have been expected from a fellow who tucked his serviette under his chin. Peel-Swynnerton knew exactly how long he would stay. He would stay until the day after the morrow; he had only about fifty francs in his pocket. He had been making ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the children of Western emigrants to whom the difference between Sioux and Pawnee had once meant life or death. "What's your business, stranger, in these parts?" was an instinctive, because it had once been a vital, question. That it degenerates into mere inquisitiveness is true enough; just as the "acuteness," the "awareness," essential to the existence of one generation becomes only "cuteness," the typical tin-pedler's habit of mind, in ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... soldierly smartness, though it had evidently borne the brunt of a very filthy campaign. He stood erect, and talked freely with those who addressed him, telling them his place of residence, the number of his regiment, the circumstances of his capture, and such other particulars as their Northern inquisitiveness prompted them to ask. I liked the manliness of his deportment; he was neither ashamed, nor afraid, nor in the slightest degree sullen, peppery, or contumacious, but bore himself as if whatever animosity he had felt towards his enemies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... departure of the good Hungarian, who sometimes dined with us; I do not reckon De la Haye, who was a daily guest at our table. Dubois felt great curiosity about us, but he was cunning and did not shew his curiosity; we were reserved without affectation, and his inquisitiveness was at fault. One day he mentioned to us that the court of the Infante of Parma was very brilliant since the arrival of Madame de France, and that there were many foreigners of both sexes in the city. Then, turning towards Henriette, he ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... took daring leaps from one branch to the other. The approach of the soldiers did not appear to cause these lively creatures any appreciable fear, for they often remained seated directly over their heads and regarded the unaccustomed military display with as much inquisitiveness as they evidently did with delight. Parrots in gay plumage filled the air with shrill cries, while here and there herds of antelopes were visible, who, however, always dashed away in rapid flight, in which their strange manner of springing from all fours ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... had somehow given herself a scratch upon the tip of this odd, investigating member; and it blushed for its inquisitiveness under a scrap of thin ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... stars, and read in the real spectacle of life with as profound emotion as in the miraculous page of Vergil; and no scholar ever read Vergil with such feeling—no astronomer ever watched the stars with more eager inquisitiveness. The whole man opens to the world around him; all affections and powers, soul and sense, diligently and thoughtfully directed and trained, with free and concurrent and equal energy, with distinct yet harmonious purposes, seek out their respective ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... what he published to all the world; secondly, that his conduct was perfectly consistent throughout. He had challenged Scott, who had declined to go out. Having offered his adversary satisfaction, he was not bound to let him take it with a proviso, or to satisfy his private inquisitiveness. But if not under menace, but considering Scott after his refusal as unworthy the notice of a gentleman, and not further to be taken into account, he chose to inform the public of the truth, he had a perfect right to do so. And it is hardly necessary to say that it was the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... justice was impossible, that we had to look at the great mass of things generally. And then, having said this, I became embarrassed in face of the stubborn inquisitiveness, clumsily strict, of this comrade who was seeking ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... heroes stopped in their imaginary fury, and, as the dust of conflict cleared away, recognized little Johnny Peters gazing at them with mingled inquisitiveness and envy. ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... at last, with the same untouched calm. And then in a tone of whimsical inquisitiveness: 'What ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the Kansan confessed that the two tribes had been a bit hostile of late, but what with raiding, razing, and murdering, he guessed they'd laid the foundation for a mutual self-respect, as behooved valiant redskins. So she often got strange answers for her inquisitiveness, but she had grown wary among Westerners, and she usually paid them back. They were a happy party. But Driscoll wanted a more definite focusing of the joy. And at times, indeed, yielding to temptation herself, she permitted him to lose his heart deliciously over ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... amiable qualities, and did not want for sense, but every better feeling was lost in her extreme inquisitiveness. Her faculties were all occupied in peeping and prying about, and, provided she could gratify her own curiosity, she never cared how much vexation ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... which there was not the slightest foundation, Mistress Pauncefort, after duly flouncing about with every possible symbol of pettish agitation and mortified curiosity, her cheek pale with hesitating impertinence, and her nose quivering with inquisitiveness, condescended to admit with a sceptical sneer, that, of course, no doubt her ladyship knew more of such a subject than she could; it was not her place to know anything of such business; for her part she said nothing; it was not her place, but if it were, she certainly ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Square, conscious only that Carmen was probably watching him through the narrow pane beside the door. How well he knew her expression of mean inquisitiveness. He was marching into blackness. He was incapable of thinking consecutively. What was left of his faculties was concentrated to the sole end of concealing ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... wrote it out, so he says, in imperishable form, in a place where he conceived it would pass down through the centuries absolutely undisturbed. I am not quite so confident about that as he is, as I know the inquisitiveness of the present generation better than he could imagine it. But to cut the story short, he found a way into one of the Talayots of Minorca, carved his secret upon the plaster of the interior, hid the entrance again, and came away. He says that the ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... my machine were continually bandying secrets. Now one and then the other would look around to make sure that the contractor was not watching, and then she would bend over and whisper something into her chum's ear. This would set my blood tingling with a peculiar kind of inquisitiveness. It was reasonable to suppose that their whispered conferences mostly bore upon such innocent matters as their work, earnings, lodgings, or dresses. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that their whispers, especially when accompanied by a smile, a giggle, or a wink, conveyed some ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... manifestation of surprise is considered a want of etiquette and good-breeding, or rather a proof of weakness and childishness. The women, like other females, are certainly less disposed to repress this feeling of inquisitiveness than the men; and one of their great sources of amusement, when Catharine was among them, was examining the difference of texture and colour of her skin and hair, and holding long consultations over them. The young girl and her mother, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... would I unfold in calm degrees a natural history of the intellect, but what man has yet been able to mark the steps and boundaries of that transparent essence? The first questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child. How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... simplest and most remunerative of industries, is almost unknown. The market grower already engaged in growing mushrooms appreciates his situation and zealously guards his methods of cultivation from the public. This only incites interest and inquisitiveness, and the people are becoming alive to the fact that there is money in mushrooms and an earnest demand has been created for information about ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... took it off and gave it to him without demur. That meant that there would be time; yet her very docility frightened him. She seemed quite relaxed now that her head could lie back against the leather cushion, and her gaze traveled about the dingy littered room with a kind of tender inquisitiveness as if she were memorizing ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... a hygienic value, as well as a spiritual significance, far beyond its influences in allaying the natural inquisitiveness of the young or acting as a preventative of morbid emotion. It is an inspiration to adults who have long outgrown any youthful curiosities. The vision of the essential and eternal human form, the nearest thing to us in all the world, with its vigor and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... My old inquisitiveness now returned. There was no servant—that was a settled point. I looked, therefore, for the extra baggage. After some delay, a cart arrived at the wharf, with an oblong pine box, which was everything ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the staring of the citizens, who pondered as to my purposes and pursuits, as only villagers can do. There is a quiet pleasure in being a strange person in a country town, and so far from objecting to the inquisitiveness of the folk, I rather like it. One may be passing for a young duke, or tourist, or ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... matter as the conquest of the air. Yet there were observers of nature who argued that since birds could raise themselves by flapping their wings, man had only to make suitable wings, flap them, and he too would fly. As early as the thirteenth century Roger Bacon, the scientific friar of unbounded inquisitiveness and not a little real genius, announced that there could be made 'some flying instrument, so that a man sitting in the middle and turning some mechanism may put in motion some artificial wings which may beat the air like a bird flying.' But being a cautious man, with a natural dislike for ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... weaknesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer. Without all the qualities which made him the jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled to repay the most liberal ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... did not know; his little affair with Artemisia had taught him that his Hellenic inquisitiveness sometimes would do ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... pony. Baldy stopped and eyed the foreman with vapid inquisitiveness. "Now, son, I got three things to tell you," and the foreman gathered up the reins. "First—keep on keepin' your mouth shut and tendin' to business. It pays. Second—always drop your reins over a hoss's head when you get off, whether he's trained that way or ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... fast as they arrived at the fort, were eager to gratify their curiosity by a sight of the man whose name and exploits had already been the theme of many a conversation among them. If ever Yankee, or American, (which is the more appropriate term, we will not attempt to decide) inquisitiveness was exhibited, it certainly could be then seen at Fort Laramie. The large majority of those who were thus anxious to see the famous guide, were led astray by the descriptions which they had heard and read, and picked ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... upon his mission. There, however, a familiar voice hailed him, and turning about in his saddle he saw an old padre who had once gained a small prize for logic at the University of Barcelona, and who had since made his inferences and deductions an excuse for a great deal of inquisitiveness. Shere had no option but to stop. He broke in, however, at once on the inevitable questions as to his uniform with the statement that he must ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... office he took the precaution to baffle any inquisitiveness on the part of his landlady by locking his sitting-room door and carrying away the key, but it was in a very different mood from his former light-hearted confidence that he sat down to his drawing-board in Great Cloister ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... to satisfy his cross-bred inquisitiveness which, with the curiosity of Egypt entire, had been aroused by the strange rumours of some catastrophe happened in his host's household, had not the slightest desire for bed, rather would he have sat up for an entire week of nights, if only be could have got an inkling of the ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... essential an ingredient of Prussian character as conceit, indifference to the feelings of others, jealousy, envy, self-satisfaction, conceit, industry, inquisitiveness, veneration for officialdom, imitativeness, materialism, and the other national attributes that will occur to those who know Prussia, as distinct from the ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... hidden" (p. 108). And in another place (p. 15) he suggests that "our God, the Captain of Mankind," may one day enable us to "pierce the black wrappings," or, in other words, to get behind the veil. There is nothing, then, unreasonable or absurd in man's incurable inquisitiveness as to God, in the non-Wellsian sense of the term. God simply means the key to the mystery of existence; and though the keys hitherto offered have all either jammed or turned round and round without unlocking anything, it does not follow that no real key exists within ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... confidential undertone, that one of these days she would tell her something,—and then there would come a wink of her blue eyes and a fluttering of the pink ribbons in her cap quite stimulating to youthful inquisitiveness, though we have never been able to learn by any of our antiquarian researches that the expectations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... if Eden had been located in some calm and tranquil land—like Ireland. There would at least have been no snakes there to get into the garden. Now woman in her thirst after knowledge, showed her true female inquisitiveness in her cross-examination of the serpent, and, in commemoration of that circumstance the serpent seems to have been curled up and used in nearly all languages as a sign of interrogation. Soon the domestic troubles of our first parents began. The first woman's favorite son was killed with ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... vainly to ban the new inquisitiveness. The intercourse with familiar spirits is condemned as a theological offence, a vainglorious and futile storming of the citadel of God. The secret of the tomb must be preserved, though the masses of Christendom have ceased to believe in the long ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... these traits have, while softening down, still persisted as survivals in the place of their origin, even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy;[37:1] ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... confounded, as the reader may suppose, yet not with an irrecoverable confusion; being conscious that it was from no emotion of incautious admiration, nor yet in a spirit of unjustifiable inquisitiveness, that I had incurred this reproof. I might have cleared myself on the spot, but would not. I did not speak. I was not in the habit of speaking to him. Suffering him, then, to think what he chose and accuse me of what he would, I ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... glancing at the rather peculiar hand, she recognised it at once. She remembered likewise, to account for the black seal, that one of the Miss Harpers had died within the year. So, whether from the spice of malice in her composition she wished to disappoint the polite inquisitiveness of the Iansons, or whether from more generous reasons of her own, Miss Bowen left her letter unopened until the meal was done; when, carelessly taking it up, she adjourned to ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... these reigns, wrote in a small Yorkshire monastery, but Roger of Hoveden and Ralph de Diceto pursued their historical work under the influence of the court. Still more striking is the universality of the intellectual inquisitiveness of Walter Map. On the one hand, in his De Nugis Curialium he chattered over the manners of his contemporaries, and in his satirical poems scourged the greed and vices of the clergy, whilst on the other hand he took a principal part in spreading a knowledge of the legend ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... At the time I speak of I had come upon the cemetery for the first time. I had Neche with me. I paused at the broken fence which surrounded it, and surveyed the overgrown graves. While I did so, Neche mouched about among them with canine inquisitiveness. Suddenly he became agitated, and showed signs of having hit upon a hot scent. I watched him curiously. He ran up a path and then paused at one of the stone-marked graves. Here he began to tear wildly ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... cablegram roused Matt Peasley's curiosity. He could not rest until he had interviewed the agent—and after that sop to his inquisitiveness he returned to the Retriever a broken man. The loyal and disgusted Murphy read the trouble ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... specific field of scientific industry the colored man has, contrary to the belief of many, made his entry, and has brought to his work in it that same degree of patient inquisitiveness, plodding industry and painstaking experiment that has so richly rewarded others in the same line of endeavor, namely, the endeavor both to create new things and to effect such new combinations of old things as will adapt them to new uses. We know that the colored man has accomplished ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... their inquisitiveness about ancestry to the breaking-point Patsy blinked a pair of steely-blue eyes while she wrinkled her forehead into a speculative frown: "Faith! I can hearken back to Adam the same as yourselves; but if it's some one more modern you're asking for—there's that rascal, ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... meddling inquisitiveness goaded the chatty little woman beyond the bounds of ministerial decorum, and, having rashly wagered a pair of gloves that she would gain an entrance to the parlors (whereof the upholsterer's wife told marvellous tales), she armed herself with a pathetic ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... endeavoured to do you some justice in the first paragraph [of the Journey].' The day before he started for Scotland he wrote to Dr. Taylor:—'Mr. Boswell, an active lively fellow, is to conduct me round the country.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 422. 'His inquisitiveness,' he said, 'is seconded by great activity.' Works, ix. 8. On Oct. 7 he wrote from Skye:—'Boswell will praise my resolution and perseverance; and I shall in return celebrate his good humour and perpetual cheerfulness.... It is very convenient to travel ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... definite as any of our urges. We wonder what is in a sealed telegram or in a letter in which some one else is absorbed, or what is being said in the telephone booth or in low conversation. This inquisitiveness is vastly stimulated by jealousy, suspicion, or any hint that we ourselves are directly or indirectly involved. But there appears to be a fair amount of personal interest in other people's affairs even when ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... His intellectual inquisitiveness was likewise, with him, a precocious passion, and circumstances stood so well in the way to serve this craving, that when fifteen years of age (incredible as it seems), he had already perused two thousand volumes, among which his powerful and vivid intellect had been able to weigh the contradictions ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... elegant equipages affect when their attention is called to something trifling behind them. The mule also looked round—it was a habit of the mule's—and if the dog had been there the dog would have shown an even livelier inquisitiveness; but Denry had left the faithful ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the walls, till the young man said: 'I fear I may be making some mistake: but I am sure you will pardon my inquisitiveness ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... combing out the fringe on tea-napkins. Every afternoon we are 'entertained' or give an entertainment. Of course we meet the same people over and over, but truly I like the cordiality. Even the inquisitiveness has an affectionate quality to it. I'm determined to enjoy my village and I do appreciate the homely niceties of the life here. Of course I have to 'pretend' rather hard at times—pretend, for example, that I care about certain things which are really of ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... lie, justified in the utterer's opinion as a repulse to Mr. Mardon's vulgar inquisitiveness, such inquisitiveness as might have been expected from a fellow who tucked his serviette under his chin. Peel-Swynnerton knew exactly how long he would stay. He would stay until the day after the morrow; he had only about fifty francs in his pocket. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... listen to the raptures all over again. The eager interest of the wife disturbed her. She doubted whether Frau Manske had any real sympathy with her plan. Her inquisitiveness was unquestionable; but Anna felt that opening her heart to the parson and opening it to his wife were two different things. Though he was wordy, he was certainly enthusiastic; his wife, on the other hand, appeared to be chiefly interested in the question of cost. "The cost will ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... the recollection of the mysterious man inspired, that despite the permission to tell what had happened she mentioned her adventure to no one, and did not even complain to her neighbour, Madame Rapally, of the inquisitiveness which had led the widow to spy ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with a few whose evident incompetency seemed to make them safe confidants. One, a man who during his life had more than once been committed to an institution, took a very evident interest in me and persisted in talking to me, often much against my will. His persistent inquisitiveness seemed to support his own statement that he had formerly been a successful life-insurance agent. He finally gained my confidence to such a degree that months before I finally began to talk to others I permitted myself to converse frequently with him—but ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... echoed, her narrow, sun-dried face wrinkling into new lines of inquisitiveness. "They said you had a piano in your bedroom, but I thought they were just foolin' me! Seems I never heard of havin' a piano upstairs. Most folks like to show 'em off in the parlor. Must be kind of ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... goin'," she said, replacing her shawl and standing in embarrassed indecision. "I only run in fur a minute. I hope you 'ain't got no hard feelin's at my inquisitiveness." ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... rolled off, followed by a crowd of runners, eager out of pure inquisitiveness to see the matter through. They passed Government House, turned into dusty Macleod Road, and in five or six minutes reached the Custom House, where, turning to the left for a short distance along the ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... continued seated, directing his eyes towards his judges, or towards the spectators, without betraying any emotion. Once he rose; turned his back upon the court to see what was passing behind him, and again sat down with an expression at once of inquisitiveness and indifference in his manner. Upon hearing the words: "Charles Stuart, a tyrant, traitor, and murderer," he laughed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... very general dissatisfaction among the Laps, who regarded me with increased suspicion, doubtless imagining me to be enumerating themselves and reins for the purpose of taxation, or something worse. Several came close up to me, and peered over the cabalistic signs on my paper with a sort of gloomy inquisitiveness. I spoke to the Lap who understood Norwegian, and he acted as tolk in interpreting anew to his brethren the purely amicable nature of my intentions. As to the half-dozen of little wild imps of children, I had already ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... hedges and trees took dim, mysterious shape; the edge of the moon peeped with glorious inquisitiveness over the clouds. Calmly, royally the moon rose. So deliberately was she unveiled, that it seemed as if she were revealing her beauty to the world for the first time, like a proud, adored mistress ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... naturally a sharp, intelligent lad, with a strong predilection for study; and in the next place there was little else for you to do on this group but learn, until we started to build the cutter. Now, Billy, what you have told me relative to Van Ryn's inquisitiveness and his cross-questioning of you has greatly interested me, for a reason which I will explain later on; therefore, while I am not as a rule inquisitive, I will ask you to make a point of reporting to me the substance of any further conversations which ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... made such excursions, and his clerk had learned not to ask questions. Diplomacy in such matters was partly what the clerk was paid for. A good fellow to work for was Bill Talpers if no one got too curiously inclined. One or two clerks had been disciplined on account of inquisitiveness, and they would not be as beautiful after the Talpers methods had been applied, but they had gained vastly in experience. Some day he would do even more for this young Indian agent. Bill's cracked lips were stretched in a grin of satisfaction at the ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... are likewise a relief to that large class of persons who by sealed envelope are roused to inquisitiveness. As such a closed letter lies on the mantel-piece unopened, they wonder whom it is from, and what is in it, and they hold it up between them and the light to see what are the indications, and stand close by and look ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... here is explained as ananusandhana or the absence of inquisitiveness or curiosity. By pratibha is meant inquiry after improper things or things that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... notion in his head, he tried to find out whether David had any money with him; he wanted to be paid something on account. The old man's inquisitiveness roused his son's distrust; David remained close buttoned ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... of Jones, as surprize for a moment did that of Partridge; but he soon recovered the use of speech, and after a short preface, in which he declared he had no inquisitiveness in his temper, enquired what Jones meant by a considerable sum—he knew not how much—and what ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... and questions— questions of the most vapid and senseless order conceivable— always prevented the son from working. Likewise, the old man occasionally arrived there drunk. Gradually, however, the son was weaning his parent from his vicious ways and everlasting inquisitiveness, and teaching the old man to look upon him, his son, as an oracle, and never to ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Thoughtless" (1751) she reached the full fruition of her powers as a novelist. Her heroine, like Natura, is little more than a "humour" character, whose prevailing fault is denoted by her surname.[4] Though not fundamentally vicious, her heedless vanity, inquisitiveness, and vivacity lead her into all sorts of follies and embarrassments upon her first entry into fashionable life in London. Among all the suitors who strive to make an impression upon her heart Mr. Trueworth alone succeeds, but her levity ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... get hold of the watch, that he would be equally as eager for a share of the gold, and Mr. Brown and myself were both aware that he deserved a handsome reward for the dangers through which he had passed to free us from the inquisitiveness of the bushrangers. Therefore, the more backward Day appeared the more firmly did we insist upon ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Nicholas Copernicus furnishes a signal example of the accordance between profound religious sentiment and the utmost inquisitiveness respecting the secrets of nature and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... Dashall, "without the imputation of impertinent inquisitiveness, what has been the nature of your pursuits ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... with news that the buffalo was killed and dragged into a dry bed of a rocky nullah within the jungle; and from the high bank they had seen the tiger devouring the hind-quarters. This was satisfactory, although I was afraid that the tiger might have been disturbed by the inquisitiveness of the people; however, they laughed at the suggestion, and the beaters being ready, we sallied out to make a drive for a hopeless beast that was possessed by ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... run a golden finger along the beautiful wrinkles of old faces and light up the noble hollows of age-worn eyes; the sunlight that loves to fall with transfiguring beam on the once dear book we never read, or, with malicious inquisitiveness, expose to undreamed-of detection the undusted picture, or the gold-dusted legs of remote chairs, which the poor housemaid ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... what the moribund administration of the discredited Polk would do. Douglas shared this inquisitiveness. He had parted with the President in August rather angrily, owing to a fancied grievance. On his return he called at the White House and apologized handsomely for his "imprudent language."[261] The President was more than glad to patch up ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... they lay down and watched in silence the unconscious pair who were now about two furlongs distant. The shorter of the two still loitered behind his companion, and inspected the ground with particular interest. The leader of the band, who went by the name of Black Will, muttered a curse upon his inquisitiveness. The others assented all but one, a huge fellow whom the others addressed as Jem. "Nonsense," said Jem, "dozens pass this way ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... solemnity as in the old school days when he had to meet his teacher after some of his occasional mischiefs. With these and other agreeable memories relishing my time in that office, I heard a loud applause in the store and the words "Father is here," aroused my inquisitiveness and before I could leave my chair, there was at the door of the office standing the man whom I wanted to see. Sturdy and resolute with two slow steps he now extends a welcome hand to me and as he called me by my childish nickname in response said, I, my teacher! Yes, said he, How do you ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... the brunt of a very filthy campaign. He stood erect, and talked freely with those who addressed him, telling them his place of residence, the number of his regiment, the circumstances of his capture, and such other particulars as their Northern inquisitiveness prompted them to ask. I liked the manliness of his deportment; he was neither ashamed, nor afraid, nor in the slightest degree sullen, peppery, or contumacious, but bore himself as if whatever animosity he had felt towards his enemies was left upon the battle-field, and would not be resumed till ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... she had somehow given herself a scratch upon the tip of this odd, investigating member; and it blushed for its inquisitiveness under a scrap of ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... pictures seen at school; indeed, there is nothing of the sort to be learnt at home, where there are no books, and where the parents, themselves limited to so narrow a range of experience and therefore of ideas, are not apt to encourage inquisitiveness in their children. A man who lived near me a few years ago could often be heard, on Sundays and on summer evenings, chiding his little son for that fault. "Don't you keep on astin' so many questions," was ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... the diving-suit in Grant's hand, stared at Grant's face with a sharp, penetrating, unashamed inquisitiveness that made Grant use all of his will-power to stare back. ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... think that if you were not just what you are I'd care a hang. Other people's affairs don't excite me. I've outgrown mere inquisitiveness." ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... courses of the stars, and read in the real spectacle of life with as profound emotion as in the miraculous page of Vergil; and no scholar ever read Vergil with such feeling—no astronomer ever watched the stars with more eager inquisitiveness. The whole man opens to the world around him; all affections and powers, soul and sense, diligently and thoughtfully directed and trained, with free and concurrent and equal energy, with distinct yet harmonious purposes, seek out ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sometimes dined with us; I do not reckon De la Haye, who was a daily guest at our table. Dubois felt great curiosity about us, but he was cunning and did not shew his curiosity; we were reserved without affectation, and his inquisitiveness was at fault. One day he mentioned to us that the court of the Infante of Parma was very brilliant since the arrival of Madame de France, and that there were many foreigners of both sexes in the city. Then, turning towards Henriette, he ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... when he has finished he does not remain a minute longer, but goes without asking if she desires to continue the conversation. For thirty years he has had the same duties and has fulfilled them in the same manner. He has never been accused of a mistake—he has never been guilty of inquisitiveness or intrigue. Thus the empress has great and firm confidence in him. She is so convinced of his truth, disinterestedness, and probity, that he has gained a sort of influence over her, and as she knows that he is to be won neither by gold, flattery, promises of position and rank, she constantly asks ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... competition, some inaccurate conclusion, or some example implicitly reverenced. Such are often the first causes of our resolves; for it is necessary to act, but impossible to know the consequences of action, or to discuss all the reasons which offer themselves on every part to inquisitiveness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... silence. Not a word escaped them, the Chiefs viewing with each other in betraying no symptom of idle curiosity or impatience. At length a Chief turned his eyes slowly towards the old Sachem, and in a low voice, with great delicacy in excluding all inquisitiveness, addressed him: ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... fancifully decorated with flowers, who gazed upon me as I rose with faces in which childish delight and curiosity were vividly portrayed. After waking Toby, they seated themselves round us on the mats, and gave full play to that prying inquisitiveness which time out of mind has been attributed ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... answered Miss Smith contritely. "But please believe me—it was not mere cheap inquisitiveness that ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... half-breed desired to know concerning the history of these English people, who, being poor, were yet gentle, and spoke French with a grace and accent which was to the French-Canadian patois as Shakespeare's English is to that of Seven Dials. Pierre's methods of inquisitiveness were not strictly dishonest. He did not open letters, he did not besiege dispatch-boxes, he did not ask impudent questions; he watched and listened. In his own way he found out that the man had been a soldier in the ranks, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... something of the sensitiveness of a dreamer who is easily jarred. He had said to himself that the all-knowing one would only preach again about the evils of solitude and worry his head off in favour of some forlornly useless protege of his. Also the inquisitiveness of the Editor had irritated him and had closed his lips ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... essence of a common humanity that the heart that beats, the tears which start, the blood which courses through them, keep time with our own. The desire to penetrate still further into the intimacy to which they admit us is quite distinct from the vulgar inquisitiveness which pursues celebrity, or merely notoriety, into privacy. His biography has lately been published by one who recognizes the true nature of this curiosity: Paul de Musset has reserved the right of telling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... just attained her twentieth birthday, the apparitions had taken place six years previously, and she had astonished him by her candid and sensible air, her perfect modesty. The Sisters of Nevers, who had taught her to read, kept her with them at the asylum in order to shield her from public inquisitiveness. She found an occupation there, helping them in sundry petty duties; but she was very often taken ill, and would spend weeks at a time in her bed. The doctor had been particularly struck by her beautiful eyes, pure, candid, and frank, like those of a child. The rest ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... prepared the way for the victory of this principle. Even the deformities and unfavorable side of scholasticism, the many absurd questions upon which the scholastics divided, even their thousandfold unnecessary and accidental distinctions, their inquisitiveness and subtleties, all sprang from a rational principle, and grew out of a spirit of investigation, which could only utter itself in this way under the all-powerful ecclesiastical ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... An apt name, you have a prying temper. I mean, some little curiosity, a sort of inquisitiveness ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and as the days passed by he spoke freely of himself and his affairs, obeying unconsciously the rudder of my tactful inquisitiveness. By the end of the first week I knew as much about him as he ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... would become, as it were, a religious prize-fighter, drawing round him an auditory as a means of subsistence, instead of instructing a congregation in their duty to God. So there would be endless dispute, nice sifting of abstract ideas, and censorious inquisitiveness into the spiritual state of our neighbours, but little humility, charity, or true piety; which consist in grateful adoration of, and sincere obedience to our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, and not in speculations on the incomprehensible nature and unfathomable purposes of God. From such ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... a most precocious child, and he received an excellent education. At the age of seven he was confirmed by a cardinal, but his childhood was difficult of control, and chastisement from his father and tutor was continual. His inquisitiveness was irrepressible. He relates that at the family supper after his confirmation, "they explained to me that God could not make contradictions—for instance, a stick with only one end. I asked whether a stick which had but one end ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... let the sarcasm glide over them, unhit by its truth. Inez herself, indeed, was inclined to consider the governess's taunt a compliment, as proving that she was incapable of a vulgar inquisitiveness. But Laura, though she laughed docilely with the rest, could not forget the incident—words in any case had a way of sticking to her memory—and what Miss Hicks had said often came back to her, in the days that followed. And then, all of a sudden, just as if an invisible hand had opened ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... hearts were gladdened by seeing "on the quay a French custom-house official, with his kepi over his ear, his rattan in his hand, dressed in a dark-green tunic, and full of the inquisitiveness of the customs inspector—as martial and as authoritative as in his native land." The appearance of the population here struck our travelers as different from that of the native Chinese farther south. Those were yellow, copper-colored, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... their power or their influence; he watched their looser moments, and examined their domestic behaviour with that acuteness which nature had given him, and which the uncommon variety of his life had contributed to increase, and that inquisitiveness which must always be produced in a vigorous mind by an absolute freedom from all pressing or domestic engagements.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... recovered consciousness sufficiently to be able to see them. It was known that she had sent for me on being taken ill, and that I remained at Roughborough, and I own I was angered by the mingled air of suspicion, defiance and inquisitiveness, with which they regarded me. They would all, except Theobald, I believe have cut me downright if they had not believed me to know something they wanted to know themselves, and might have some chance of learning from me—for it was plain I had been in some way concerned with ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... doctor did not relish being called, by the remotest implication, an Athenian. As inquisitive as the most prying Yankee is said to be, he stoutly repelled the imputation of inquisitiveness, as applied to himself or to his countrymen. "It was," he was in the habit of saying, "a slander invented by your porter-guzzling Englishmen and smoking Dutchmen. What can you expect of people who are involved in a perpetual cloud either of their own raising or of the making of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... schemers were not sooner successful than they were is due to a combination of small things—each perhaps trivial in itself, but the whole most efficacious in perpetuating Napoleon's hold on the French. During his presence in Paris all the old inquisitiveness and boundless concern for detail seemed to return without diminution of force. Before his last departure he had won the popular heart by the model family life of the Tuileries, which, though never ostentatiously ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... once the summons was repeated, and at last a faint light gleamed upon the windows, and the door was timorously unbarred and opened. A hard-featured hag, in a faded suit of an obsolete fashion—the genius loci—received the party. She scrutinized Lucille with a protracted stare of audacious inquisitiveness, and when she had quite satisfied her curiosity, she led the way through several halls and lobbies up the great staircase, along a corridor, through a suite of rooms, upon another lobby up a second staircase, into a great dreary passage, through ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... described as the Paul Pry of canine society. His insatiate inquisitiveness induces him to poke his nose into everything; every strange object excites his curiosity, and he will, if possible, look behind it; the slightest noise arouses his attention, and he wants to investigate its cause. There is no end to his liveliness, but he moves about with almost catlike agility ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... acknowledgment, which was returned in the same coin, when I proceeded to inform them that our cattle crossed the railroad at Little Missouri ten days before, and that we were only waiting the return of Mr. Lovell from the Crow Agency before proceeding to our destination. With true Yankee inquisitiveness, other questions followed, the trend of which was to get us to admit that we had something to do with the present activities in quarantining Texas cattle. But I avoided their leading queries, and looked appealingly at Sponsilier, who came to my rescue ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... passed through a stage of profound melancholy; but this has at length dissipated, and he is at present perfectly re-established. He talks now as much as ever, on the same trifling subjects, and has recovered even his habitual inquisitiveness into the small news of the families about him. His health is also good, though he is not as fleshy as he used to be. I have multiplied my letters to you lately, because the scene has been truly interesting; so much so, that had I received my permission to pay my projected visit to my own country, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... I said, peering into the secret drawer with a child's inquisitiveness. "Have they a ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... to screen her inquisitiveness, plunged into a description of Petershof life, speaking enthusiastically about everything, except the scenery, which she did not mention. After a time she ventured to begin once more taking soundings. But some how or other, ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... her brother, and Evadne had answered simply, "Louis took a fancy to put it on my finger: I am wearing it to please him, that is all:" and even Isabelle found her cousin's sweet dignity an effectual bar against her morbid inquisitiveness. ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... best known to myself, Ewart," he snapped; for he never approved of inquisitiveness when ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... was not a whit dismayed by the rebuke and the air of rather contemptuous disdain with which it was uttered. He waved his revolver toward Mary, merely as a gesture of inquisitiveness, without any threat. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... idle. The keen inquisitiveness of his nature was now shown in a very different way, for his eyes were searching the depths of the forest as he peered through the gloom among the dimly-seen trunks again, and he fired twice in the direction from which the splashing ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... car took much interest in the Bunkers' trouble. Most of the men and women had grown fond of Violet, in spite of her inquisitiveness, and all admired Laddie Bunker. It seemed a really terrible thing that the two should have become separated from their parents ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... likely that Evelyn would make the first sign. Her pride was equal to, if not greater, than Jean's. She, who abhorred prying and inquisitiveness, had been accused by Jean of meddling in her affairs. Evelyn vowed inwardly never to forgive Jean. So these two young girls, each stiff-necked and implacable, dressed, studied and slept in the same room in stony silence, passing in ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... poetess had become dear friends. There is in the nature of a woman (and especially of a woman at once so gifted and so childlike as Isaura, combining an innate tendency towards faith with a restless inquisitiveness of intellect, which is always suggesting query or doubt) a craving for something afar from the sphere of her sorrow, which can only be obtained through that "bridal of the earth and sky" which we call religion. And hence, to natures like Isaura's, that link between the woman ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little shy notwithstanding the friendly disposition of the other, answered him smilingly, aware somehow that there was something marked in this inquisitiveness, natural, after all—something anxious. His name was Powell, and he was put in the way of this berth by Mr. Powell, the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... works of Montesquieu, and cannot yet make plain to myself the impression left on me by this singular style, with its mixture of gravity and affectation, of carelessness and precision, of strength and delicacy; so full of sly intention for all its coldness, expressing at once inquisitiveness and indifference, abrupt, piecemeal, like notes thrown together haphazard, and yet deliberate. I seem to see an intelligence naturally grave and austere donning a dress of wit for convention's sake. The author desires to entertain as much as to teach, the thinker ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at their appearance was intense. They were chiefly fishermen or husbandmen, and notwithstanding the uncouth and remarkable dress of the Landers, they behaved to them without rudeness and even with civility, so that their inquisitiveness was not disagreeable. Speaking trumpets, it was imagined, were quite a novelty with the men at Brass, by the extraordinary rapture which they displayed for their music, which certainly was anything but melodious. It has been ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... very sensitive to any such inquisitiveness on the part of the opposite sex. To this cause, perhaps, and possibly, also, to the fear of causing disgust, may be ascribed the objection of men to undress before women artists and women doctors. I am told there is often difficulty in getting men to pose nude to women artists. Sir ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... execute a work, whether it be "to build a tower," or drain a field, "sitteth down first and counteth the cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it." There is good sense and discretion in the inquisitiveness which suggests so often the inquiry, "How much does it cost to drain an acre?" or, "How much does it cost a rod to lay drains?" These questions cannot be answered so briefly as they are asked; yet much information can be given, which will aid one who will investigate ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... loneliness. In one, on a dresser, Kirkwood found a stump of candle in a china candlestick; the two charred ends of matches at its base were only an irritating discovery, however—evidence that real matches had been the mode in Number 9, at some remote date. Disgusted and oppressed by cumulative inquisitiveness, he took the candle-end back to the hall; he would have given much for the time and means to make a more detailed investigation into the ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... publishes the book 'as a warning to all Christians and sensible people to avoid the terrible example of Doctor Faustus.' He evidently takes the thing very seriously and has purposely (as he says) omitted all 'magic formulae,' lest 'any should by this Historia be incited to inquisitiveness and imitation.' Johann Faust, according to this version, was born at Roda, a village near Weimar. (Other versions say at Knittlingen in Wuertemberg.) His parents were honest God-fearing peasants. His great abilities induced a rich relation ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... leg of the journey would be the same for all of us we bought other kit, packed it, and booked passages for British East Africa. Between then and the next afternoon when the British India steamboat sailed we were fairly bombarded by inquisitiveness, but contrived not to tell much. And with patience beyond belief Monty restrained us from paying court to ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... what was their native country, they said they were men of Sleswik, and had left their land "for manslaughter". The king thought that this statement referred not to their vow to commit the crime, but to the guilt of some crime already committed. For they desired by this deceit to foil his inquisitiveness, so that the truthfulness of the statement might baffle the wit of the questioner, and their true answer, being covertly shadowed forth in a fiction, might inspire in him a belief that it was false. For famous men of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... than three years (now five years), but his height, dentition, and general appearance indicate the truthfulness of the age assigned. An evidence of his symmetrical mental development appears in his extreme inquisitiveness. He wants to understand the meaning of what he is taught, and some kind of an explanation must be given him for what he learns. Were his memory alone abnormally great and other faculties defective, this would hardly be the case; but if so, it cannot ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... alteration in my way of thinking. For this time I could not get it out of my mind for a moment: "Mr. Falkland is the murderer! He is guilty! I see it! I feel it! I am sure of it!" Thus was I hurried along by an uncontrollable destiny. The state of my passions in their progressive career, the inquisitiveness and impatience of my thoughts, appeared to ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... say, the sudden extinction of the light at the moment when I entered the house. I had observed that the windows next to mine were covered only by long lace curtains; and as the two balconies were connected, my neighbor, whether man or woman, had no doubt a wish to prevent any indiscreet inquisitiveness on my part, and therefore had always put out the light on hearing me come in. To verify this supposition, I tried a very simple experiment, which succeeded perfectly. I had a cold supper brought in one day about noon by my servant, and that evening I ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... rapidity and stillness suggestive of a desire not to be observed. When the men were gone Cecily sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands for a minute. She looked up to find Mina regarding her, still with mingled inquisitiveness and hostility. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... about among the palms, and took daring leaps from one branch to the other. The approach of the soldiers did not appear to cause these lively creatures any appreciable fear, for they often remained seated directly over their heads and regarded the unaccustomed military display with as much inquisitiveness as they evidently did with delight. Parrots in gay plumage filled the air with shrill cries, while here and there herds of antelopes were visible, who, however, always dashed away in rapid flight, in which their strange manner ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... on camping here for a time, and looking the country over. What's your business?" asked Garry, with the true Yankee inquisitiveness. ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... to take much content in that phase of the situation, feeling that mere personal inquisitiveness was dignified in this case under the aegis of law and authority. It was exactly this view of the matter that most disturbed Cap'n Aaron Sproul, for that hateful Pharisee, Squire Reeves, had supplied the law to compel his ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... his bottle of red ink in the chiffonnier—that was what her poor, foolish gentleman had done; and it was owing to her inquisitiveness, her restless wish to know things she would be none the better, none the happier, for knowing, that this accident ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... is correct," assented Chester, uncertain whether Blennerhassett was speaking in earnest or in irony. "I confess I am not a literary student. Pardon the interruption and my inquisitiveness, but am I correctly informed that the young lady to whom I was introduced, a few weeks ago, when I called here, is related to Mr. Hale ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... It is a curious inquisitiveness which it would do no one any good to gratify. I did not think it necessary to the happiness of my friends that they should know, and if it would afford me any satisfaction, it was far better that they should name the amount ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... appearance, in the open front doors, of a strange creature with a bright pink ribbon arranged as a sort of cockade around and above its left ear—a brown, hairy, unclean-looking thing that gazed with human inquisitiveness at the approaching figures. As the elder Ranger drew down his eyebrows the creature gave a squeak of alarm and, dropping from a sitting position to all fours, wheeled and shambled swiftly along the wide hall, walking ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... and did not want for sense, but every better feeling was lost in her extreme inquisitiveness. Her faculties were all occupied in peeping and prying about, and, provided she could gratify her own curiosity, she never cared how much vexation she caused ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... frown on Jimmie Dale's forehead deepened, then he nodded his head quickly. If he could find Curley, or Haines, or even Patsy Marles, the clerk who worked in the liquor store—which might possibly still be open for another hour or so yet—it should not, after all, and without even any undue inquisitiveness on the part of Smarlinghue, prove very difficult to obtain the necessary information, for, if Curley had been in a deal involving fifteen thousand dollars, he was much more likely to be boastful than reticent about it. It resolved itself ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... before her in an assured, not unkindly inquisitiveness, the girls fresh and bright-faced, with crisp lovely clothes; their mother, in a smart mantle and little bonnet with knots of French flowers, greeted her with a direct question tempered by a smile. William Ammidon, smoking, was unconcerned; while ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the bold dissent and creative self-assertion of the earliest emigrants to Massachusetts; from the statesmen who made, and the philosophers who expounded, the revolution of England; from the liberal spirit and analyzing inquisitiveness of the eighteenth century; from the cloud of witnesses of all the ages to the reality and the rightfulness of human freedom. All the centuries bowed themselves from the recesses of the past to cheer in their sacrifice the lowly men who proved themselves worthy of their forerunners, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the child's voice, something in her manner, warned the spinster that her well-meaning inquisitiveness had received a set-back and that it would be dangerous to press it forward again. What she had termed illuminative now appeared to be only another phase of the mystery which enveloped the child. A sinister thought edged in. Who could say that the girl's father ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... thus stood upon the wharf, the curiosity and inquisitiveness of the New England people would naturally lead them into the midst of the poor Acadians. Prying busybodies thrust their heads into the circle wherever two or three of the exiles were conversing together. How puzzled did they look at the outlandish sound of the French tongue! There ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you an elegant language possess, and afterward, when you some thing say will, will you at least yourself understand what you said had. But often nowadays, when you a mile-long sentence from you given and you yourself somewhat have rested, then must you have a touching inquisitiveness have yourself to determine what you actually spoken have. Before several days has the correspondent of a local paper a sentence constructed which hundred and twelve words contain, and therein were seven parentheses smuggled in, and the subject seven times changed. Think you only, my gentlemen, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... served, and as I carried my spoon to my mouth I examined her furtively. My hostess had excused me from dressing, but her daughter, neat in her widow's collar and cuffs, sat prim and upright, her eyes now and then raised to mine in undisguised inquisitiveness. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... approach, now stopping, now drawing nearer, till the hunter would suddenly lift his bow, drawing his arrow to let it fly at the nearest animal, which would in most instances suffer the penalty of its inquisitiveness. Still they often missed. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... had essayed to dig for the hidden thing there had been too much frost in the ground. Besides, doubtless Ruth and Helen's inquisitiveness had frightened the strange girl away. Now she was back again—somewhere now on Bliss Island. She had not accomplished her purpose as yet. Ruth smote the hard ground at her feet with all her strength. The pick sunk to its helve in the earth, now ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... him that still continued to jar upon them was his phenomenal inquisitiveness. He appeared not to know the meaning of rudeness or impertinence; he sought to pry into everything, and seemed genuinely surprised and puzzled when Sir Reginald somewhat curtly yet courteously excused himself from complying with his request to be shown ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... watched the changing aspects of this scene for so many thousand years, could tell if it had a tongue! We gazed inquiringly at it; but as it rose higher and higher, and poured down more light on all objects around, it seemed to smile at our inquisitiveness, and to bid us turn less eager glances towards the dust and rubbish of old times, where perchance we may find a precious stone, perchance a bit of broken glass—but bend our eyes more steadfastly to the future, the centuries unborn, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... the bright-eyed young woman facing me, and not sorry to escape the Major's inquisitiveness, at once begged for the remainder of the waltz. The request was laughingly granted, and in another moment we were threading our way amid the numerous couples upon the floor. She proved so delightful a dancer that I simply yielded myself up to full enjoyment of ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... "Pardon my inquisitiveness, madam, but I am in search of a friend, who, I was told, was sent here nearly three years ago, being at that time the unfortunate victim ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... a purely personal touch of inquisitiveness!" he answered—"It is quite human and natural, of course, but not always wise. In every great lesson of life or scientific discovery people ask first of all 'How can I benefit by it?' or 'How will it ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... braggadocio in an opposite direction, when he calls the "present with its political disorders simply an intermediate state,—the transmission of the natural or unconscious wisdom of the fathers, through the inquisitiveness of their children to the rational acknowledgment of that wisdom by their grandsons." (Theorie des ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... St. Croix;" her decks were littered with poultry and domestic animals, her cordage flapped loosely in the breeze, and every thing about her bespoke the merchant-vessel. Her captain, being hailed by the dock-loafers, and made the victim of the proverbial Yankee inquisitiveness, stated that he had just come from the West Indies with a load of lignum-vitae, pineapples, and hides, which he hoped to sell in Boston. The self-constituted investigating committee seemed satisfied, and the captain strolled on ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... short on the threshold as she caught sight of a stranger, and she glanced with sharp inquisitiveness at Copplestone as he rose from ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... and indocility of this maid are surprising, considering that she wants not inquisitiveness, appears willing to learn, and, in other respects, has quick parts. This confirms to me what I have heard remarked, That there is a docible season, a learning-time, as I may say, for every person, in which the mind may be led, step by step, from the lower to the higher, (year by year,) ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... hummed in harmony with the cries of birds and the chattering of monkeys. In among the tall, golden stems, short-statured brown ghosts moved, sarong clad; little people whose eyes gazed at the intruder with soft inquisitiveness as he strode sturdily forward. And a patch of gorgeous jungle was entered to the whisk and flirt of graceful heads and slim, swift legs, all the visible signs revealed ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
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