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More "Quickness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expression in her long dark eyes which was new to him, which he felt to be ominous to him. But he was no untried boy to be cast down or disconcerted by sudden alterations of mood in a woman. He was a man, with a man's trained tenacity of purpose and experienced quickness of resource. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... He had a quickness of apprehension, and vivacity of understanding, which easily took in and surmounted the most subtile and knotty parts of mathematicks and metaphysicks. His wit was prompt and flowing, yet solid and piercing; his taste delicate, his head clear, and his ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... courtroom, and three tremendous cheers and a tiger told where the sympathies of the court and people were. Then a hundred pursed lips were advanced to kiss the liberated prisoner, and many a hand thrust out to give him a congratulatory shake—but presto! with a maniac's own quickness and a maniac's own fury the lunatic assassin of Richardson fell upon his friends with teeth and nails, boots and office furniture, and the amazing rapidity with which he broke heads and limbs, and rent and sundered bodies, till nearly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is sensibility? "Quickness of sensation; quickness of perception; delicacy." Thus is it defined by Dr. Johnson; and the definition gives me no other idea than of the most exquisitely polished instinct. I discern not a trace of the image of God in either ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... have marched against the foe with the stoutest of his father's men-at-arms, and doubtless have acquitted himself as well as any; for what the lads lacked in strength they made up in their marvellous quickness ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... pressed Fannikin to send him full accounts of her father's evening parties. A few of her letters to him have been published; and it is impossible to read them without discerning in them all the powers which afterwards produced Evelina and Cecilia, the quickness in catching every odd peculiarity of character and manner, the skill in grouping, the humour, often richly comic, sometimes ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... spectator of the scene, and she could not but admire the quickness of the ambitious Eiko, and in order to pacify the rivals she determined to appoint them both to the Generalship of the ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... him. They have more vitality, more spiritual force, than any other creature; of a fiery nature, shown by the rapidity of their motions, without the limbs of other animals. They assume many shapes and attitudes, and dart with extraordinary quickness and force. When they have reached old age, they throw off that age and are young again, and increase in size and strength, for a certain ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... a woman of such vivacity and wonderful quickness," replied Abou Hassan, "that you scarcely give me time to explain my design. Have but a little patience, and you shall find that you will be ready enough to die such a death as I intend; for surely you could not think I meant a real death?" "Well," said his wife, "if it is but ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... wonderful training of this little family in the perils of the frontier more strikingly than did their actions at this moment. Not a word was spoken, but almost at the instant the alarming occurrence took place, the captain, his wife, and his nephew leaped backward with lightning-like quickness. The movement took the three out of range of the two windows at the front of the house, with the door midway between, those being the only openings on ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... as they were deliberate. Sally was not withholding from coquetry, but from dread lest she should give herself away and show herself over-willing. She noticed everything he did, without watchful scrutiny, and with the merest quickness of her caressing glance. She loved everything in him, his speech and his movements, his strength, his stubbornness, his rough carriage and silence. She loved him. She feared him. She did not dare to risk losing him. Above all, she longed to be in Toby's ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... twirling his cigar with nervous fingers, his eyes growing keener in proportion as his face became more gray. It was part of his professional acquirement to be able to draw his deductions from some snatch of human drama as he listened to its unfolding. His quickness and accuracy of judgment had, indeed, been a large element in his success; so that the habit of years enabled him to preserve a certain calmness of comprehension now. It lost nothing in being a studied calmness, since the forcing ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... house. The name Abaelardus (also written Abailardus, Abaielardus, and in many other ways) is said to be a corruption of Habelardus, substituted by himself for a nickname Bajolardus given to him when a student. As a boy, he showed an extraordinary quickness of apprehension, and, choosing a learned life instead of the knightly career natural to a youth of his birth, early became an adept in the art of dialectic, under which name philosophy, meaning ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the spine is another disease originating from the innutrition or softness of the bones. I once saw a child about six years old with palpitation of heart, and quickness of respiration, which began to have a curvature of the spine; I then doubted, whether the palpitation and quick respiration were the cause or consequence of the curvature of the spine; suspecting either that nature had bent the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... idea, must rise ever fresh, ever displaced, like the leaves of a tree, from out of the quickness of the sap, and according to the forever incalculable effluence of the great dynamic centers of life. The tree of life is a gay kind of tree that is forever dropping its leaves and budding out afresh, quite different ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... cost her most was the kiss she felt bound to offer Agatha. She had been jealous of her at college, where she had esteemed herself the better bred of the two; but that opinion had hardly consoled her for Agatha's superior quickness of wit, dexterity of hand, audacity, aptness of resource, capacity for forming or following intricate associations of ideas, and consequent power to dazzle others. Her jealousy of these qualities was now ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the channel that we had to traverse, winding hither and thither through that vast expanse of reef, my heart almost quailed within me, and I felt inclined to doubt whether we three males possessed the ability, the skill, the quickness of eye, the readiness and strength of hand, to take the ship in safety through that apparently endless, twisting channel. But the feeling was merely momentary; an old adage flashed into my mind to the effect that ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... still be that great differences in mental efficiency existed between different groups of men. Probably no single test could do justice to so complex a trait as intelligence. Two important features of intelligent action are quickness in seizing the key to a novel situation, and firmness in limiting activity to the right direction, and suppressing acts which are obviously useless for the purpose in hand. A simple test which calls for these qualities is the so-called "form test." There are a number of blocks of different ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... about me I saw at once. From the signs of his mind, I often recognized the character of what was in my own; and thus seeing myself through him, I gathered reason to be ashamed; while the refinement of his criticism, the quickness of his perception, and the novelty and force of his remarks, convinced me that I could not for a moment compare with him in mental gifts. The upper hand of influence I had over him I attribute to the greater freedom of my training, and the enlarged ideas which had led my uncle to avoid enthralling ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... worthy of my regard.' Thinking so, that scorcher of foes, the heroic Vibhatsu, that foremost of car-warriors, showed mercy to the son of Bharadwaja. Avoiding the son of Drona, Kunti's son endued with great prowess and having white steeds (yoked unto his car), began to fight, displaying great quickness of arms and causing a great carnage of thy troops. Duryodhana then pierced that great bowman Bhima with ten shafts winged with vulturine feathers, adorned with gold, and whetted on stone. Thereupon Bhimasena, excited with wrath, took up a tough and well-adorned bow capable of taking the life of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... world of the ghosts. The troops passed down in it, moving pretty briskly, lest the mist should lift before they were in position. Most of them knew the country, so that they could well walk confidently; but their quickness had something nervous in it, as though they were ill at ease. Very soon they were out of sight, out of hearing, swallowed up in ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... Chloes, Clarissas, and Pastorellas come down. One of these two is excessively in pain, that the ugly being called Time will make wrinkles in spite of the lead forehead-cloth; and therefore hides, with the gaiety of her air, the volubility of her tongue, and quickness of her motion, the injuries which it has done her. The other lady is but two years behind her in life, and dreads as much being laid aside as the former, and consequently has taken the necessary precautions ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... himself immediately of a decisive moment, when the enemy exposes a weak point, or when disorder appears in his ranks. But this requires a bold and active spirit, which shrinks not from responsibility, and is able to avail itself with quickness and decision of every opportunity. If it be remembered that it is essential that this coup d'oeil, so rare and so difficult to acquire, be accompanied by a courage and vigor of execution which nothing can shake, we shall not be astonished that ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... foresight.] This rapidity of growth has entailed some important consequences. In the first place it obliges the city to make great outlays of money in order to get immediate results. Public works must be undertaken with a view to quickness rather than thoroughness. Pavements, sewers, and reservoirs of some sort must be had at once, even if inadequately planned and imperfectly constructed; and so, before a great while, the work must be done over again. Such conditions of imperative haste increase the temptations to dishonesty ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... energy. His Spanish soldiers called him the new Hannibal, and not merely because he had, like that hero, lost an eye in war. He in reality reminds us of the great Phoenician by his equally cunning and courageous strategy, and by the quickness of his ingenuity in turning to good account his victories and averting the consequences of his ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... number and greatness of his books, will admire he should ever write so many; and those who have read them, considering the skill and method they are written in, will admire he should write so well. Nor is he less happy in verse than prose, which for elegance of language, and quickness of invention, deservedly entitles him to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... can be explained by the quickness of perception acquired by constant exposure to danger. The mind takes cognizance unconsciously of trifling incidents, the sum of which leads it to a conviction which the individual regards almost as an inspiration. This is the explanation of presentiments. But this does not apply ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... books counted. The last figure in the counter's memorandum will represent the number of hundreds of volumes the library contains. Thus, if the last figure is 92, the library has just 9,200 volumes. This rapid, and at the same time accurate method, by which any one of average quickness can easily count two hundred volumes a minute, saves all counting up by tallies of five or ten, and also all slow additions of figures, since one figure at the end multiplied by one hundred, expresses ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... logical type. In learning French vocabularies he may have only a good immediate memory, whereas his memory for faces may be most lasting. His ability to learn facts in history may class him as a quick learner, whereas his slowness in learning music may be proverbial. The degree to which quickness of learning or permanence of memory in one line is correlated with that same ability in others has not yet been ascertained. That there is some correlation is probable, but at present the safest way is to think in terms of special memories and special ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... he was very clever with the bow and arrow. I remember an exhibition, of his quickness and skill that almost amazed me. I had taken him with me on a shooting excursion to a place which was called the Old Fort. It was so named from the fact, that many years before, the Hudson Bay Company had a trading post there for traffic with the Indians. ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... was made with quickness and precision; friends and strangers crowded around Jack with kind words and questions; and he was surprised to find himself all at once a person ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... that I saw with a stranger sharpness. The gold was still in the sky, the clearness in the air, and the man who looked at me over the battlements was as definite as a picture in a frame. That's how I thought, with extraordinary quickness, of each person that he might have been and that he was not. We were confronted across our distance quite long enough for me to ask myself with intensity who then he was and to feel, as an effect of my inability to say, a wonder that in a ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... more successful labourers in the cause, and the indignation with which he regards the sluggish and retrograde, are charming. His kindliness, his keen interest in the prosperity of all men, rich or poor, his ardent belief in progress, combined with his quickness of observation, give a charm to the writings which embody his experience. Tours in England and a temporary land-agency in Ireland supplied him with materials for books which made him known both in England and on the Continent. In 1779 he returned to Bradfield, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Jules Simon observes that heretofore the manual labourer has been an intelligent force, but by means of machinery he is converted into an intelligent director of force. It is by the speed of the English machinery, and the intelligent quickness of the workmen, that his master makes a profit, and himself such high wages as compared with continental workmen. In France, one person is employed to mind fourteen spindles; in Russia, one to twenty-eight; in Prussia, one to thirty-seven; and in Great Britain, one ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... the spirit, by stimulating the nerves, increases the action of the muscles; and the heart, which is one of the strongest muscular organs, beats with augmented vigour, and propels the blood with accelerated quickness. After such a strong excitation the frame naturally suffers a proportional degree of depression, so that a state of debility and languor is the invariable consequence of intoxication. But though these circumstances are well ascertained, they are far from explaining why alcohol should ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... quickness of long practice. Gold-pan, coffee-pot, and cooking-pail were soon thawing the heaped frost-crystals into water. Smoke extracted a stick of beans from the sled. Already cooked, with a generous admixture of cubes of fat pork and bacon, the beans had been frozen into this portable immediacy. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... is aroused you see a fighter with all his wits about him and of utter fearlessness. He would have made a first-class soldier, with his quickness and dash and the pluck that was born in him, and has not to be summoned by ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... not a little risk, depending on their quickness of eye and nimbleness of wing to escape their predatory foes. In a tall sycamore tree standing alone at the fringe of a piece of woodland, sparrow hawks, red-breasted woodpeckers, and nuthatches, a pair of each, had set up their household gods. The tree was ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... part of the drill, a part of man's mastery of his emotions. None were under any illusions as soldiers of other days had been. Few nursed the old idea of being the lucky man who would escape. They knew the chances they were taking, the meaning of frontal attacks and of the murderous and wholesale quickness of machine gun methods. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the table, with which we commenced, were unusually rapid and lively. "I am convinced," said Mr. Stilton, "that we shall receive important revelations to-night. My own mind possesses a clearness and quickness, which, I have noticed, always precede the visit of a superior spirit. Let us be passive and receptive, my friends. We are but instruments in the hands of loftier intelligences, and only through our obedience can this second advent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... run beside road and rail, doing the office of nerves in transmitting intelligence with thrilling quickness from the extremities to the head and from the head to the extremities of our State, are now so familiar an object, and their operations, such mere matters of every day, that we do not often recall how utterly ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... on foot in the fields, on these occasions, he was ever foremost in the march; and he delighted to test the prowess of his companions by a good jump at any hedge or ditch that lay in their way. His companions used to remark his singular quickness of observation. Nothing escaped his attention—the trees, the crops, the birds, or the farmer's stock; and he was usually full of lively conversation, everything in nature affording him an opportunity for making some striking remark, or propounding some ingenious theory. When taking a flying survey ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... to watch the quickness of all their motions, the politeness with which they received so many complicated orders, and the noiseless celerity with which they were performed. This cost them no effort, but seemed natural to them. There were a dozen of these blacks in attendance, all of them young, and some, in ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... nationalities. Therefore you must use skill to soothe those [the Greek merchants and sailors from the Levant] whose characters are unstable as the winds, and who, unless you bring their minds into a state of calm, will, with their natural quickness of temper, fly out into the ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... effect. Our horses are undoubtedly first-rate, having more quality and greater speed than foreigners. We have in our officers the exact stuff we want. Their very sports and amusements start them with all the makings of cavalry soldiers. But the quickness of eye, the self-confidence and readiness that these sports and games may give, require nowadays more than ever something beyond this to produce the trained cavalry leader. Cavalry is an arm of opportunity, and above all others depends greatly on its leaders, but with the chances ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... to take an interest in the fate of six young ladies all at once! That's too much! But he wishes to know, Leo, whether you have a chance of inheriting anything from a rich aunt," she said, displaying a quickness of perception peculiar to her. "Isn't ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... that a French fleet was sailing for Chesapeake Bay, and he determined to make a grand French-American attack on the British in the south. He made his plans very secretly, and leaving General Heath with four thousand men to guard the Hudson, he marched southwards, moving with such quickness that he had reached the Delaware before Clinton in New York knew what he was about. His army now consisted of two thousand Americans, and four thousand French, and this was the only time throughout the war that French ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... violence beyond the power of words to express. A great roar, which shook the very heavens, went up from the cavernous throat, and well it was for Sigurd that he darted aside with the quickness of light. The huge coils unwound and contracted again in the monster's agony, and the furious lashing of his enormous tail utterly destroyed the surrounding vegetation, while his cruel talons, all powerless ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... guard and take his place in the empty chair. He may not go if he be tagged by his guard. The object of the guards should be to avoid being the keeper of an empty chair, and therefore the one who has to wink. The players try to evade the vigilance of the guards by the quickness and unexpectedness of their movements. The guards may not keep their hands on their prisoners, but must have them hanging at their sides until they see their players winked at. They may not dash around the sides of the chairs which they guard, but must ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... unobjectionable sort of psychology is biological, and studies life from the outside. The other sort, relying on memory and dramatic imagination, reproduces life from the inside, and is literary. If the literary psychologist is a man of genius, by the clearness and range of his memory, by quickness of sympathy and power of suggestion, he may come very near to the truth of experience, as it has been or might be unrolled in a human being.[9] The ideas with which Locke operates are simply high lights picked out by attention in this nebulous continuum, ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... preparatory school and at the Penzance Grammar School Humphry Davy was a noticeable boy. He read eagerly and showed great quickness of imagination, delighted in legends, when eight years old told stories to his companions, and as a boy wrote verse. There was a Quaker saddler who made for himself an electrical machine and mechanical models, in which young Davy ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... reached, and the little fleet gathered itself more compactly together, and the muffling of the oars was carefully looked to. Directions as to the order to be observed had been given before, and the boats fell into their appointed position with quickness and accuracy. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in courage; but no man from the moon could have been more an alien on those sidewalks. He was naturally diligent, active, quick-witted, and of good, though maybe a little too scholarly address; quick of temper, it is true, and uniting his quickness of temper with a certain bashfulness,—an unlucky combination, since, as a consequence, nobody had to get out of its way; but he was generous in fact and in speech, and never held malice a moment. But, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... weary fight went on that the colonists learned, little by little, the greatness of their leader—his clear judgment, his calmness in the hour of danger or defeat; the patience with which he waited, the quickness and hardness with which he struck, the lofty and serene sense of duty that never swerved from its task through resentment or jealousy, that never, through war or peace, felt the touch of a meaner ambition; that knew no aim save that of guarding the freedom of ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... camp-followers, and the deserted works in which they stood. To grasp so surely the happy chance of wind and weather and make such a retreat as this was a feat of arms as great as most victories, and in it we see, perhaps as plainly as anywhere, the nerve and quickness of the man who conducted it. It is true, it was the only chance of salvation, but the great man is he who is entirely master of his opportunity, even if he have ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... account. This, and my being esteem'd a pretty good riggite, that is, a jocular verbal satirist, supported my consequence in the society. My constant attendance (I never making a St. Monday) recommended me to the master; and my uncommon quickness at composing occasioned my being put upon all work of dispatch, which was generally better paid. So I went ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... way than nature does. For nature loves God above all things inasmuch as He is the beginning and the end of natural good; whereas charity loves Him, as He is the object of beatitude, and inasmuch as man has a spiritual fellowship with God. Moreover charity adds to natural love of God a certain quickness and joy, in the same way that every habit of virtue adds to the good act which is done merely by the natural reason of a man who has not the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... I had left the gipsy camp, I was overtaken by a girl of fifteen, the quickness of whose breathing indicated excessive alarm. "O, sir," said she, "I'm so glad to come up with you—I'm so frightened—I've been standing this quarter of an hour on the other side of the stile, waiting for somebody to come by."—"And ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... is, hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of John." The terrible verdict of his contemporaries has passed into the sober judgement of history. Externally John possessed all the quickness, the vivacity, the cleverness, the good-humour, the social charm which distinguished his house. His worst enemies owned that he toiled steadily and closely at the work of administration. He was fond of learned men like Gerald of Wales. He had a strange gift of ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... with the open hand, [Greek: ourania], the flinging of the ball in the air to be caught by two or more players; [Greek: phaininda] would seem to be a game of catch played by two or more, where feinting is used as a test of quickness and skill. Pollux (i. x. 104) mentions a game called [Greek: episkuros], which has often been looked on as the origin of football. It seems to have been played by two sides, arranged in lines; how far there was any form of "goal" seems uncertain. Among the Romans there appear ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... swear an oath, or drink a drop of spirits. As to his ignorance, he certainly never had the advantages of education, but he can read and write (it was taught him by his parents) and for natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension, is surpassed by few men I have ever seen. As to his being a coward, his reason as given for not resisting Mr. Phipps shows the decision of ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... these pages of yours are truly promising young fellows. They detected that rascally Dutchman who was betraying us. I noticed them several times in the thick of the fray at the breach; and now they have saved the city by their quickness and presence of mind; for had these Spaniards once got possession of this warehouse they would have speedily broken a way along through the whole tier, and could then have poured in upon us with ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... in the wooden handle, dip it into the molten glass, and pick up a small portion, and "prick it into the wood, that the glass may be pierced through, and instantly warm it in the flame, and strike it twice upon the wood, that the glass may be dilated, and with quickness revolve your hand with the same iron;" when the ring is thus formed, it is to be quickly thrown into the trench. Theophilus adds, "If you wish to vary your rings with other colours... take... glass of another colour, surrounding the glass of the ring with ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... intently riveted on the clear distant horizon, as, carried away by the inspiration and fervour of the great prophet, a messmate, who reads with energy of gesture, ever and anon raises his voice, which, by its tremulous intonation, tells the deep feeling of his heart, and the quickness with which its pulse vibrates in answer to the burning ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... you had been in our service," he said, "instead of that of Sweden. You would have mounted fast. You have all the requisites for success, above all, promptitude of decision and quickness of invention. You did well in getting away from that Jewish scoundrel in the hut, and in killing his master, but it was your adventure with the wolves that showed your quality. That idea of setting fire to the tree in which you were sitting, in order at once to warm yourself and to frighten ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... would fester if left within. His comedies of "The Malcontent," "The Fawn," and "What You Will," have no genuine mirth, though an abundance of scornful wit,—of wit which, in his own words, "stings, blisters, galls off the skin, with the acrimony of its sharp quickness." The baser its objects, the brighter its gleam. It is stimulated by the desire to give pain, rather than the wish to communicate pleasure. Marston is not without sprightliness, but his sprightliness is never the sprightliness of the kid, though it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... stir and speed of the journey, and the restlessness that goes to bed with him as he tries to sleep between two days of noisy progress, fever him, and stimulate his dull nerves into something of their old quickness and sensibility. And so he can enjoy the faint autumnal splendour of the landscape, as he sees hill and plain, vineyard and forest, clad in one wonderful glory of fairy gold, which the first great winds of winter will transmute, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the revolting thing. He was scarcely a yard distant when the neck of the snake arched like a swan's, and the head was drawn far back to strike. In an instant the stock of his rifle swept over the top of the log with the quickness of lightning. There followed a sharp, cracking noise, like the explosion of a percussion-cap, and the head of the rattlesnake spun twenty feet or more out over the swamp. It struck the branch of a tree, and, dropping to the water, sunk out of sight. ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... the ancients, which encouraged dancing, did it upon the principle, that it led to an agility of body, and a quickness of motion, that would be useful in military evolutions and exploits. Hence swiftness of foot was considered to be an epithet, as honourable as any that could be ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... a magnificent show of strength, quickness and accuracy. The sparks hissed and crackled from ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... character as a soldier one of his former companions writes thus: "I always regarded Beckwith as an officer of very brilliant promise, for he embodied all the requisites of a great commander: remarkable quickness in conception, imperturbable coolness in the time of action, admirable power of organization, with indomitable courage. When he was major he always left a position of safety to mix in the thick of the fight, and I remember meeting him in the breach of Ciudad Rodrigo at the head of an attacking ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... presently flames burst out. Now they ran up the trees, now along the tall lank grass dried by the heat. They darted from tree to tree—the bush (as the forest is called) was on fire. The flames spread with fearful quickness. ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Fancy, stirring in it some Wonder, and breeding some Delight thereto. It raiseth Admiration, as signifying a nimble Sagacity of Apprehension, a special Felicity of Invention, a Vivacity of Spirit, and Reach of Wit, more than vulgar; it seeming to argue a rare Quickness of Parts, that one can fetch in remote Conceits applicable; a notable Skill that he can dextrously accommodate them to the Purpose before him; together with a lively Briskness of Humour, not apt to damp those Sportful Flashes of Imagination. (Whence in Aristotle such Persons are termed "epidexioi", ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... fast, threw it aside, and took up another. All thus was done with such swiftness, with such intentness, as it is impossible to describe to a man who has never seen it done. I expressed my surprise at their quickness. ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... remembered the place being thus, and it seemed to him the night had passed with unnatural quickness. But he thought more of the fact that he had been beguiled into spending his wedding-night in a graveyard, in such questionable company, and of what explanation he could ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... grief. The yards were again squared, the ropes hauled taut, working dresses resumed, and all was activity and bustle. The fact is, that sailors and soldiers have no time for lamentation, and running as they do from clime to clime, so does scene follow scene in the same variety and quickness. In a day or two, the captain appeared to be, although he was not, forgotten. Our first business was to water the ship by rafting and towing off the casks. I was in charge of the boat again, with Swinburne as coxswain. As we pulled in, there were a number of negroes bathing in ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... appointment of the new permanent and skilled authority at the Bank is the greatest reform which can be made there, and that which is most wanted. I believe that such a person would give to the decision of the Bank that foresight, that quickness, and that consistency m which those decisions are undeniably now deficient. As far as I can judge, this change in the constitution of the Bank is by far the most necessary, and is perhaps more important even than ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... when given up as a milker, and the proportion of food requisite to keep her in full milk or to fatten her when dry. The grazier will consider the kind of beast which his land will bear—the kind of meat most in demand in his neighborhood—the early maturity—the quickness of fattening at any age—the quality of the meat—the parts on which the flesh and fat are principally laid—and more than all the hardihood and the adaptation to ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... bound like a tiger cat's, flung himself on the door, slammed it shut, and locked it. And he had need of all his quickness, for he was playing fast and loose with death. Hito yelled and started for the second door through which he had come and near which the girl was crouching. But again Nicanor was too quick. He got between Hito and the door and stood ready to shut it,—erect, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... easy and informal for her as possible. He had no objections to make, and we began a task which proved to be much simpler than we had imagined. Mona had heard us talk so much that she had half-learned a great many words and expressions, and her remarkable quickness of intellect helped her to pick up their meaning rapidly as soon as we gave her systematic aid. Hence it was not long before she began to ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... appeared in different Forms. Some had only a Quickness of the Pulse, attended with a slight Head-ach and Sickness, Whiteness of the Tongue and Thirst, and a Lowness and Languor; which continued for a Week or more, and then went off, either insensibly, or ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... such selective tact and variety of gaiety. She comes to the complete understanding of Henrietta by illuminating all the facets in her character and all the threads of her destiny, and this is an unusual achievement, made all the more remarkable by a brightness and quickness of mind which give delightful life to a multitude of incidents which are in themselves new to fiction. Her touch upon all her world is both swift and unerring; but the great charm of her work is its brightness and unexpectedness; it lights ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... bull whip, and without abating his speed a particle the man leaped into the midst of the wicked blades that menaced him. Right and left with the quickness of thought the heavy lash fell upon heads, shoulders and sword arms. There was no chance to wield a blade in the face of that terrific onslaught, for the whip fell, not with the ordinary force of a man-held lash, but with all the stupendous ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no words alone with Beatrice that afternoon. Indeed, a certain coldness seemed to have sprung up between them. With the almost supernatural quickness of a loving woman's intuition, she had divined that something was passing in his mind, inimical to her most vital interests, so she shunned his company, and received his conventional advances with a politeness which was as cold as it was crushing. This did not please ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... Luther's stirring hymn, and an ode composed by the king himself: "Fear not, thou little flock." They were strongly contrasted with the army of their foe, being distinguished by the absence of armor, light colored (chiefly blue) uniforms, quickness of motion, exactness of discipline, and the lightness of their artillery. The imperialists, on the contrary, wore old-fashioned, close-fitting uniforms, mostly yellow in color, cuirasses, thigh-pieces, and helmets, and were marked ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... ago, when I heard your footstep." As this appeared to surprise him still more, she added, "You have, whether you know it or not, a noticeable footstep, and I a quick ear. Shall I tell you where, unless fancy played me a trick, I last proved its quickness?" ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and he believed he ought for Edie's sake to give the situation a fair trial, as long as he was able, or at least till he saw some other opening, which might make it possible within some reasonable period to marry her. In the second place, Lady Hilda had perceived with her intuitive quickness the probability that a cause of dispute might arise between her father and Ernest, and had made up her mind as far as in her lay to prevent its ever coming to a head. She didn't wish Ernest to leave ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... minister should have, and more fullness of blood than is good for any man, spent the half of his life in the joy of being near to her. She was full in the face and slow with a sleek languor, but on his coming there was to see a quickness of welcome spread itself in her. She would flush warmly, and her eyes would cry to him. Their love glowed between them; they were children together in that mighty bond. So when a spring that came down with chill rains smote Paula with a fever, and laid her weakly on ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... with some little inward chuckle at her husband's assumed quickness of apprehension, reminded herself that the same idea had occurred to her some time ago. Mrs. Heathcote gave her husband full credit for more than ordinary intelligence in reference to affairs appertaining to the breeding of sheep and the growing of wool, but she did not think highly of his ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... found Mr. Farnham in his private room, looking cold and weary. The greatest retribution that had fallen upon this man for his evil act had been the effect it had produced upon his own son. Frederick had known and loved Chester. With his energy and quickness of character, it was impossible that he should not have gathered all the facts regarding his trial and death. The very silence which he maintained on the subject was a proof of this. His manner too had changed so completely that it was a constant reproach to the suffering man. There had ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... nervous is indicated by fine, thin hair, small muscles, thin skin, pale countenance, brilliant eyes, with great quickness and sensitiveness to impressions, and is really ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... ready, orders were given: the column marched forward at midnight. At that moment a courier rode up at full speed with dispatches from Potemkin. Suwarrow was no sooner apprised of his arrival than he guessed with his usual quickness the nature of the dispatches, and he determined not to receive them till the fate of the enterprise was decided. He ordered his horse to be brought round to the door of his tent; he sprang on it and galloped off, without seeming to observe the courier. After a desperate resistance ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... coughing and sputtering, as Jimmy came up to a sitting posture with a quickness that was quite foreign ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... are telling lies; for see, it was the good brook there that saved me, and not you, you miserable wight! And at the same time I dropped a piece of gold into his grotesque cap, which he had taken off in his begging. I then trotted on; but he screamed after me, and suddenly with inconceivable quickness was at my side. I urged my horse into a gallop; the imp ran too, making at the same time strange contortions with his body, half-ridiculous, half-horrible, and holding up the gold-piece, he cried, at every ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... to keep a correct count of time, for water is apportioned by the hour, and his memory for all the details of change, sale, and transfer must be good and unchallenged. When he becomes too old, or otherwise incapacitated for the performance of his work with the necessary quickness, he avails himself of the assistance of a son or someone whom he proposes with the village approval to bring up as his successor. The old man is then to be seen going leisurely along the water-courses which issue from the underground channels, accompanied by his young ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... the prince asked when Ned had concluded his story. "It seems to me that this lad has shown a courage, a presence of mind, and a quickness of decision that would be an honour to older men. The manner in which he escaped from the hands of Von Aert, one of the craftiest as well as of the most cruel of the Council of Blood, was excellent; and had he then, after ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... along the Square with her bird-like quickness. She detested that woman now whom in happier days she had been accustomed to think so kind. Was she always to be put off thus, and forced to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... duly laced and buttoned up, equipped, as it were, in a twinkle. Her rosy face did not even show traces of the water, her thick hair was twisted in a knot at the back of her head, not a single lock out of place. And Claude remained open-mouthed before that miracle of quickness, that proof of feminine skill ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... but in his thick-set broad shoulders and knotted arms there lurked the strength of a bull and the quickness of a tiger. Zoroaster had the advantage, for his right arm was round Darius's neck, but while one might count a score, neither moved a hairbreadth, and the blue veins stood out like cords on the tall man's arm. The fiery might of the southern prince was matched against the stately ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... man saw and understood before it was too late. Marshall Sothern who had followed Drennen with long strides, was now close to his side. The old man's stalwart form moved swiftly, coming between Drennen and Sefton. With a quickness which men did not look for in a man of his age, with a strength which drove up from those who saw a little grunt of wonder, he put out his great arms so that they were about Drennen's body, below his shoulders, catching his arms ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... related to Indian sagacity, border life, or the tactics of the skillful hunter, he excelled. The successful training of a hunter, or woodsman, is a kind of education of mental discipline, differing from that of the school-room, but not less effective in giving vigor to the mind, quickness of apprehension, and habits of close observation. Boone was regularly trained in all that made him a successful backwoodsman. Indolence and imbecility never produced a Simon Kenton, a Tecumthe, or a Daniel Boone. ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... proceeded Imlac, "originally intended that I should have no other education than such as might qualify me for commerce; and discovering in me great strength of memory and quickness of apprehension, often declared his hope that I should be some time ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... action of a shepherd or one considered under that character. The form of this imitation is dramatic, or narrated, or mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners not too polite nor too rustic; the thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and passion.... If we would copy Nature, it may be useful to take this Idea along with us: that Pastoral is an image of what they call the Golden Age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Quickness had died out of her under the influence of the night. But already she felt a slight yet decided sense of relief, almost of peace. She drew that from Ruffo. And, standing very close to him, she watched his eager face, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... I've heard the Revelly From Birr to Bareilly, from Leeds to Lahore, Hong-Kong and Peshawur, Lucknow and Etawah, And fifty-five more all endin' in "pore". Black Death and his quickness, the depth and the thickness, Of sorrow and sickness I've known on my way, But I'm old and I'm nervis, I'm cast from the Service, And all I deserve is a shillin' a day. (Chorus) Shillin' a day, Bloomin' good pay— Lucky to touch ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... horizons were infinitely extended. Not only did this system of Falbe's of flying at new music, and going recklessly and regardlessly on, give quickness to his brain and finger, make his wits alert to pick up the new language he was learning, but it gloriously extended his vision and his range of country. He ran joyfully, though with a thousand falls ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... The intuitive quickness with which O'Connell conjectured the cause of the fellow's always swearing that "life was in him," obtained for him the admiration of every one in Court, and very materially assisted in securing ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... his bearing were threatening. He advanced as if to seize her in his great hands, and only her quickness saved her. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... incompetence, but with a shrewdness that enabled him to combine other people's suggestions, constantly asked the opinion of the assistants in his department in making up new designs; and he had the quickness to see that Philip's criticisms were valuable. But he was very jealous, and would never allow that he took anyone's advice. When he had altered some drawing in accordance with Philip's suggestion, he always finished ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... are out of positions, and cannot keep places when they get them, because of this weakness. Many a good business man has been kept back, or even ruined, by his quickness to take offense, or to resent a fancied slight. There is many a clergyman, well educated and able, who is so sensitive that he can not keep a pastorate long. From his distorted viewpoint some brother or sister in the church is always hurting him, saying and thinking unkind ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... mysterious circle of stocks and stones on the other side? Such will be the question of many a lover of fun, novel, fiction, and romance; and though we cannot settle their origin with the quickness or the humour of Munden's Cockletop, we will try to let our inquirer into the secret with the smallest show of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... counted much with her, knew that it was not always wise to judge by appearances, for she had seen the successful development of the most unlikely material. There was the case of Tom, Dick, and Harry. No one would ever have supposed in seeing them, so alert and with the quickness and grace of a cat in their movements, that in their feeble mangy infancy they had only been saved from drowning by their excellent family connections, and their appealing charm of responsiveness. A responsiveness that in maturity made them favorites ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... Hall and the Fourteenth Street skyscrapers, and out Broadway to Mountain View. Turning to the right at the cemetery, they climbed the Piedmont Heights to Blair Park and plunged into the green coolness of Jack Hayes Canyon. Saxon could not suppress her surprise and joy at the quickness with which they covered ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... is still alive. He, by the quickness of the faculties of the mind, and the activity of the organs of his body, shows the great benefit of a low diet—living altogether on vegetable food and pure water. Henry Jenkins lived to one hundred and ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... quite charming in his manner as they drove along the road to the house; he expressed astonishment at the height of the trees, the excellence of the crops, and the quickness of ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... In contrast my own big prominent muscles, trained by heavy farm work of my early youth, seemed to move slowly, to knot sluggishly though powerfully. Nevertheless I judged at a glance that my strength could not but prove greater than his. In a boxing match his lithe quickness might win—provided he had the skill to direct it. But in a genuine fight, within the circumscribed and hampering dimensions of our little room, I thought my own rather unusual power must crush him. The only unknown quantity was the ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... already been warned by the Police sergeant) merely glared and gurgled impotently. Private Nigg, who, as already mentioned, was slightly wanting in quickness of perception, was led away by the faithful Buncle, to have the outrage explained to him at leisure. It was Private Bogle who intervened, and brought the intellectual Goliath crashing to ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... industrious adaptation to circumstances. The regularity and tidiness are conspicuous, and have been noted by me with great satisfaction. I need not say how much neatness of arrangements must conduce to quickness and ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... have seen him turn tail to a Swallow, and have known the little Pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the Great Crested to the Little Green Flycatcher, their ways and general habits are the same. Slow in flying from point to point, they yet have a wonderful quickness, and snap up the fleetest insects with little apparent effort. There is a constant play of quick, nervous movements underneath their outer show of calmness and stolidity. They do not scour the limbs and trees like the Warblers, but, perched upon the middle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... blank astonishment at the quickness with which he had been caught up left him staring for a moment at the speaker, before ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... by with wonderful quickness, and when tea-time arrived Stephen insisted upon his right to help his hostess to clear away the meal, and when they returned to the sitting-room, lo! Pat had fallen asleep, and there was nothing to do for it but to return ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... a man of a feeling heart, always sensibly affected at the sight of human suffering. His sensibility knew no bounds. He exhibited quickness of perception and had the advantage of a never-failing memory. The confidence generally reposed in him by both ministers and the people credit him with having mature judgment. Although lacking in what is commonly known as classical ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... dissimilitude of examples, it teacheth men the force of circumstances, the errors of comparisons, and all the cautions of application; so that in all these it doth rectify more effectually than it can pervert. And these medicines it conveyeth into men's minds much more forcibly by the quickness and penetration of examples. For let a man look into the errors of Clement VII., so lively described by Guicciardini, who served under him, or into the errors of Cicero, painted out by his own pencil ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... over to himself while he wrote his dispatch to the station-master at Wellwater, asking him to secure a chair in the Pullman. He was pleased with the choice he had made; it seemed like his own name when spoken, and yet very unlike when written. But while he congratulated himself on his quickness and sagacity, he was aware of something detached, almost alien, in the operation of his mind. It did not seem to be working normally; he could govern it, but it was like something trying to get away from him, like a headstrong, restive horse. The notion suggested the colt that had fallen lame; he ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... country. Having secured a liberal money contribution from Calvert the night before at the Inn, he invited him to stay and witness the great struggle between the Boothbay nine and the Squirrel Islanders. Westerfield was to act as umpire, his impartiality and quickness of perception having won the confidence of all parties; but of course Calvert had to decline under the ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... alternately upon the scalps and upon the prisoner. She, poor girl, is calm now; there is but one thought that makes her tired limbs shake with terror. She sees with a woman's quickness that there is no female among those who are looking at her as beautiful as she is. It may be that she may be required to light the household fires for one of her enemies. She sees the admiring countenance of one of the young Chippeway warriors fixed upon her; ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... the Philosopher (Ethic. vi, 9), "one should take counsel in thought, and do quickly what has been counseled." But daring helps this quickness in doing. Therefore daring is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... there are no abscissae and ordinates; circles and ellipses are not described by means of their algebraical formulae. The actor in War therefore soon finds he must trust himself to the delicate tact of judgment which, founded on natural quickness of perception, and educated by reflection, almost unconsciously seizes upon the right; he soon finds that at one time he must simplify the law (by reducing it) to some prominent characteristic points which form his rules; that at another the adopted method must become the staff ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... time, advancing with their cross-bows presented and began to shoot. The English archers then advanced one step forward and shot their arrows with such force and quickness that it seemed as if it snowed. When the Genoese felt these arrows, which pierced their arms, heads, and through their armor, some of them cut the strings of their cross-bows; others flung them on the ground ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... danger of discovery, and attack from the shore batteries," he added. "Success will depend upon your quickness and skill." ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... with quickness and bent her head sidelong as though listening intently for what else he might have to say. Her lips were set close and narrow. She had listened to him like this, almost breathlessly, ever since her sudden ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Marquis lost not a moment in sending to all the inns in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the Hague, but in vain—he could find no trace of them. He began to despair of success, when the idea struck him that a young French page of his, remarkable for his quickness and intelligence, might be employed with advantage. He promised to reward him handsomely if he succeeded in finding the young woman, who was the cause of so much anxiety, and gave him the description ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... been left absolutely unprotected and unprovided for among the remnants of what had once been their homes. It was certain that Miss Hobhouse's pamphlet revealed a parlous state of things, but did she realise that wood, blankets, linen and food were not things which could be transported with the quickness that those responsible heartily desired? Did she remember that the British troops also had to do without the most elementary comforts, in spite of all the things which were constantly being sent from home for the benefit of the field forces? Both had in South Africa two enemies ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... improvvisazione:—how it would stand the test of cool criticism I cannot tell; nor is that any thing to the purpose: these extemporaneous effusions ought to be judged merely as what they are,—not as finished or correct poems, but as wonderful exercises of tenacious memory, ready wit, and that quickness of imagination which ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Master. "Quel lourdaud! But why do I trouble you with French expressions, which are lost on such an ignoramus? A lourdaud, my dear brother, is as we might say a bumpkin, a clown, a clodpole: a fellow without grace, lightness, quickness; any gift of pleasing, any natural brilliancy: such a one as you shall see, when you desire, by looking in the mirror. I tell you these things for your good, I assure you; and besides, Square-toes" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from his friend, Senator Foster. To Mrs. Whitney's dismay they found the gallery filled; but fortune favored them, for just after their entrance three women seated in the front row rose and made their way out. With a quickness which showed her familiarity with conventions Mrs. Whitney pounced upon the seats, and sank into hers with a sigh of thankfulness. She had overcome a number of obstacles that morning to get there, and though it was a small matter she ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... as a proof of the natural inferiority of the blacks, on the little comparative progress they have made in those States where they enjoy their freedom, and the fact that, whatever quickness of parts they may exhibit while very young, on attaining maturity they invariably sink again into inferiority, or at least mediocrity, and indolence. But surely there are other causes to account for this besides natural deficiency, which must, I think, be ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... a story, or etch out a character, or condense an argument or statement. Beyond all men I have ever known, he had the gift of seizing rapidly in every question the central argument, the essential fact or distinction; and of all his mental characteristics, quickness and soundness of judgment seemed to me the most conspicuous. I have never met with anyone with whom it was so possible to discuss with profit many great questions in a short time. No one, too, could know him intimately without being impressed with his high ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... the door and stood motionless by the jamb, waiting, ethereally white in the moonshine. Suddenly upon the gallery pillars flashed yellow light. She should have gone back to bed, but a thrill of unknown fear held her. By and by the yellow light went out with that quickness which tricks the hearing into believing that the vanishing had been accompanied by sound. She saw Warrington, fully dressed, issue forth cautiously, glance about, then pass down the gallery, stepping with the ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... house with McGregor during those first years in the city might have thought his life stupid and commonplace but to him it did not seem so. It was for the miner's son a time of sudden and tremendous growth. Filled with confidence in the strength and quickness of his body he was beginning to have also confidence in the vigour and clearness of his brain. In the warehouse he went about with eyes and ears open, devising in his mind new methods of moving goods, watching the men at work, marking the shirkers, ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... as usual on these occasions, the first that opened; for this sound reason, that Natalie's quickness was the quickness to be depended on in case ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... like a tiger cat's, flung himself on the door, slammed it shut, and locked it. And he had need of all his quickness, for he was playing fast and loose with death. Hito yelled and started for the second door through which he had come and near which the girl was crouching. But again Nicanor was too quick. He got between Hito and the door and stood ready to shut ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... doubt the Athenian public was by no means so learned as we moderns are; they were ignorant of many sciences, of much history,—in short of a thousand results of civilization which have since accrued. But in civilization itself, in mental power, in quickness of comprehension, in correctness of taste, in accuracy of judgment, no modern nation, however well instructed, has been able to equal by labored acquirements the inborn genius of the Greeks." (Mahaffy, J. P., ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... With the quickness of lightning Esperance thrust out his hand, seizing the Sultan's jeweled yataghan and drawing it from its scabbard. At the same time he raised it above his head and brought it down, aiming it straight at Maldar's heart. The ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... the beginning that Crab Wilson meant to throw no chance away, and that he would trust to his lightness of foot and quickness of hand until he should see something of the tactics of this rough-looking antagonist. He paced swiftly round several times, with little, elastic, menacing steps, whilst the smith pivoted slowly ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I'll swear!" I retorted. "You took the poor devil's balls, and left him at the gate! Ay, it is rogues like you get me a bad name!" I continued, affecting more anger than I felt—for, in truth, I was rather pleased with my quickness in discovering the cheat. "You steal and I bear the blame, and pay to boot! Off with you and find the fellow, and bring him to me, or it will be the worse ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... sort of psychology is biological, and studies life from the outside. The other sort, relying on memory and dramatic imagination, reproduces life from the inside, and is literary. If the literary psychologist is a man of genius, by the clearness and range of his memory, by quickness of sympathy and power of suggestion, he may come very near to the truth of experience, as it has been or might be unrolled in a human being.[9] The ideas with which Locke operates are simply high lights picked out by attention ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... fast mule?—the very best mule from the stables of Don Balthasar himself—that murdered saint. The Captain-General had no such mules. His late excellency owned a sugar estate halfway between Rio Medio and Havana, and a relay of riding mules was kept there for quickness when His Excellency of holy memory found occasion to write his commands to the capital. The news of our escape would reach the Juez next day at the latest. Manuel would take care of that—unless he were drowned. But he could swim ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... bear her indorsement. She pursued her studies in my office, by my side, sat with me, walked with me, was my inexpressibly sweet and inseparable companion,—never left me but to go and sit with her mother. We knew all her intelligence, all her pure and delicate sensibility, the quickness and power of her perceptions, her seraphic love. She was all love, and loved all God's creation, even the animals, trees, and plants. She loved her God and Saviour with an angel's love, and died like ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... accepted, he retired in good order. He had, too, a half-defined feeling that in thus tempting fate still further, he made a sort of expiatory offering for his actual guilt. He said to himself, with that lightning-like quickness which thought possesses in a crisis, that since the principle for which he contended stood above the question of his individual transgression, it was but just that the motion should have been carried, and that now he was ready to take his punishment by losing his membership in ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... up and down, in a wild trance of feeling. Half a mile away was he sitting with Father Benecke?—winning perhaps their poor secret from the priest's incautious lips'? With what eagle-quickness could he pounce on a sign, an indication! And then the flash of those triumphant eyes, and the onslaught of ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of every other form, with as little of their inconveniences as the imperfection attendant on all human inventions will admit: it has the monarchic quickness of execution and stability, the aristocratic diffusive strength and wisdom of counsel, the democratic freedom ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... us consider the goods of the soul: they are temperance, justice, courage, quickness of apprehension, ...
— Meno • Plato
... little unruly; brave, and such excellent horsemen, as almost to realise the fable of the Centaurs, charging an enemy with the impetuosity of lightning and disappearing with the quickness of thought, they requested me every moment to engage; but I know too well the value of regular infantry, and how ineffectual would be the efforts of light cavalry against their bayonets. I was obliged to restrain their ardour by every argument I could muster, principally by ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... and even when adult, on the hunting ground, that great non-sexual field in which their highest mental and physical activities are displayed, there is little or nothing which distinguishes materially between the male and female; in method, manner, and quickness they are alike; in devotion to man, they are psychically identical. (It is often said the female dog is more intelligent than the male; but I am almost inclined to doubt this, after long and close study of both forms.) It is at the ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... for you to do until we see exactly how things stand. I shall use you as my staff officer—that is, if you are willing, Sir Cyril. I have carried you off without asking whether you consented or no; but, knowing your spirit and quickness, I felt sure ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... women lacking this quality, have an intricacy of thought. There are those who think women can be taught logic; this is a mistake. They can never by any power of education arrive at the same mental status as that enjoyed by men, but they have a quickness of apprehension, which is usually called leaping at conclusions, that is astonishing. There, then, we have distinctive traits of a woman, namely, endurance, loving submission, and quickness of apprehension. Wifehood is the crowning glory of a woman. In ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fifty, with a smooth-shaven face wrinkled at the corners of the mouth and eyes. His voice was the most curious thing about him; it was high and piping, more like a woman's than a man's. Yet his words and manner were masculine enough, and he moved and spoke with a nervous, jerky quickness. ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the presence of this man who, though German-born, had elected to become an Englishman, and devote his very considerable intelligence—the Dean prided himself on his knowledge of human nature, and on his quickness in detecting humble talent—to the service of his adopted country, the sermon was perhaps a thought more fair, even cordial, to Britain's formidable enemy, than it would otherwise ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... head of such as we are, before the Chloes, Clarissas, and Pastorellas come down. One of these two is excessively in pain, that the ugly being called Time will make wrinkles in spite of the lead forehead-cloth; and therefore hides, with the gaiety of her air, the volubility of her tongue, and quickness of her motion, the injuries which it has done her. The other lady is but two years behind her in life, and dreads as much being laid aside as the former, and consequently has taken the necessary ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... conscious of his incompetence, but with a shrewdness that enabled him to combine other people's suggestions, constantly asked the opinion of the assistants in his department in making up new designs; and he had the quickness to see that Philip's criticisms were valuable. But he was very jealous, and would never allow that he took anyone's advice. When he had altered some drawing in accordance with Philip's suggestion, he always finished ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... large wooden vats are considered the best sort of vessels for holding this solution, as well as for making and preparing it; hogsheads, on a small scale, may be made to answer. It is particularly in the use of this solution that Mr. S——'s method consists; the quickness with which the solution acts is truly astonishing, and when we see it, there is cause of surprise in thinking why it was not found out before. As soon as the hides are taken out of the water, impregnated with sulphuric acid, Mr. S—— puts them into ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... hardly any more of him. He got his things together with a quickness that astonished me, and he and the Graf, who was going to Berlin by the same train, motored to Stettin to catch the last express. Just before they left he caught hold of my hand and pulled me into the library where no one was, and told me how he thanked God I was English. "Chris, ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... in such Foibles, as each of the Company thinks himself superior to.—Whereas WIT shews the Quickness and Abilities of the Person who discovers it, and places him superior to the ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... bear the impress of an older time, and that vaguely recall scenes in the Bible. Nature has traced out a line over our mountain ranges; the whole appearance of the country is different on either side of it. You will find strength of character up above, flexibility and quickness below; they have larger ways of regarding things among the hills, while the bent of the lowlands is always towards the material interests of existence. I have never seen a difference so strongly marked, unless it has been in the Val d'Ajou, where the northern side is peopled ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... of mine is a person of great quickness and talent, who, if she were not a beauty and a woman of fortune—that is to say, if she were prompted by either of those two powerful stimuli, want of money or want of admiration, to take due pains—would ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... perhaps, fortunate for the liberties of Greece that Themistocles, instead of Aristides, was left in full power at Athens. "The peculiar faculty of his mind," says THIRLWALL, "which Thucydides contemplated with admiration, was the quickness with which it seized every object that came in its way, perceived the course of action required by new situations and sudden junctures, and penetrated into remote consequences. Such were the abilities which were most ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... this answer, he marvelled at the Wazir's quickness of wit and would never again lend ear to aught of insinuations against him. Then said he to him, "How didst thou escape falling into the net?" And he replied, "Because my reason is unentangled in the toils of passion." And they also ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... think I have forgotten them,' she said, looking up with eager quickness; 'I do not regret his attempt because it was wrong!—O no! on that point I am armed—but because it was impossible it could end ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... with them regularly every day," Barnabas continued, "and I have learned that strength of arm, quickness of foot, and a true eye are all unavailing unless they be governed by a calm, unruffled temper, for passion clouds the judgment, and in fighting as in all else, it is judgment that tells ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... his self-composure with wonderful quickness. The mask of reticence dropped over his face again, and it was in the smooth deferential tones of a well-trained servant that ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... cook, a negro not remarkable for quickness of apprehension or general intelligence, received such an unmerciful beating from the captain that he was unable to attend to his manifold duties, and a portion of them fell to my share. Among them was the task of drawing off the regular allowance of rum, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... men: the teacher of carpentry must be more than a carpenter, and the teacher of the domestic arts more than a cook; for such teachers must instruct, not simply in manual dexterity, but in mental quickness and moral habits. In other words, they must be teachers as well as artisans. It thus happens that college-bred men and men from other higher schools have always been in demand in technical schools. If the college graduates were to-day withdrawn from the teaching force of the chief Negro industrial ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Valleys, with the greater quickness of women, divining already something of the reason, had flushed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... murmured the detective with an uncontrolled quickness which wakened Audrey's old suspicions afresh—and which created a new suspicion, the suspicion that the fellow was simply playing with her. "I assure you I came here to recover; I'd heard it was the ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... new, most of the houses being substantial bricks. Here we met General Fry, the man who slewed Zollicoffer. The General is of plain, unostentatious appearance, a keen eye, lips compressed, the whole countenance denoting determination and quickness of perception. ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... now, but it was so dark at first," whispered Mr. Sinclair in reply—adding with that quickness of perception and readiness of invention which danger supplies to some minds—"I have come to watch him—you ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... more things, flattering and echoed by his followers. It made the blood tingle in David's veins to know that these men of plain, honest, country stock, like himself, believed in him and in his honor. In kaleidoscopic quickness there passed in review his life,—the days when he and his mother had struggled with a wretched poverty that the neighbors had only half suspected, the first turning point in his life, when he was taken unto the hearth and home of strong-hearted people, his years ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... a step towards the house, and Warner was about to follow him, when the glass doors were opened again and Diana Duke came out with more than her usual quickness across the lawn. Her face was aquiver with worry and excitement, and her dark earnest eyes fixed ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... The quickness of the conversions effected by the dragoons is easily to be accounted for. The principal cause was the free quartering of soldiers in the houses of the Protestants. The soldiers knew what was the object for which they were thus quartered. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... interest on the other, a considerable time elapsed before the public at large were really impressed by the invention. Perhaps the uncanny and mysterious results of Rontgen's discovery, which seem to link it with the "black arts," have something to do with the quickness of its reception by all ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... blue-hatted men walked together; the red hats formed another party; the yellow hats a third; and so on. Each corps carried large yet shallow trays suspended from their shoulders—two men to a tray—and falling upon the piles of cheeses they gathered them up with incredible quickness. Then, when the trays were loaded with a pyramid of cheeses, off rushed the men to a wonderful Weigh House which Mr. van Buren says is famous throughout all North Holland. Inside were many men, busy as bees, weighing cheeses with enormous scales. Down dropped the trays; ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... Hiltners Frau Sabina bent down to her mother-in-law's ear—though she had lost her quickness of hearing, she had retained her sight perfectly—and, raising her voice, told her the name of the young lady who had just left them. Then she asked if she, too, did not admire Barbara's beauty, and what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the same qualities. His brain is exceedingly fertile of ideas, his memory perfectly marvelous, his language pointed, easy-flowing and abounding in wit and humor. He exhibits singular quickness at repartee; he is fond of a joke, and will give and take with the keenest sense of enjoyment. His familiarity with standard literature serves him many a good turn; he makes it a duty to read thoroughly or to "dip into" every new book that is talked ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... widow's cap in honour of uncle's marriage,' observed Arthur, reading my looks with a child's mingled simplicity and quickness of observation. Mamma looked grave and Mrs. Maxwell shook her head. 'And aunt Maxwell is never going to leave off hers,' persisted the naughty boy; but when he saw that his pertness was seriously displeasing and painful to his aunt, he went and silently put his arm round her neck, kissed her ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... of her eagle ambition. Conscious that she was the favorite of the teacher, she disdained to cultivate the love and good-will of her companions. With a keen, bright intelligence, and remarkable retentiveness of memory, she mastered her studies with surprising quickness, and distanced all her competitors. Had she been amiable, her young classmates would have been proud of the honors she acquired, for it is easy to yield the palm to one always in the ascendant, but she looked down with contempt on those of inferior attainments, and claimed as a right ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... was beautifully done," said Yolanda. "You sprang upon the rock with the quickness of a panther, and the blow was dealt with the strength of a lion. I saw it all. When your battle-axe rose above the robber's head, death was written on the steel. It was beautiful to see you kill him, Sir Max. Strength is always beautiful in the eyes of a woman, but it ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... her own, Nor would that one, for scenes for action strong, Should let a life evaporate in song. As health and strength the brightest charms dispense, Wit is the blossom of the soundest sense: Yet few, how few, with lofty thoughts inspir'd, With quickness pointed, and with rapture fir'd, In conscious pride their own importance find, Blind to themselves, as the hard world is blind! Wit they esteem a gay but worthless power, The slight amusement of a leisure hour; ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... some tea and toast, and now she is trying to sleep. She does not wish to be disturbed—she asked me to tell you so." Miss Heredith glanced at her watch. "Dear me, it is nearly half-past six! I must go. Tufnell is so dilatory when quickness ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... line of its curve traced for him by the architect: the masons are dexterously handling and fitting their bricks, or, by the help of machinery, carefully adjusting stones which are numbered for their places. There is probably in their quickness of eye and readiness of hand something admirable; but this is not what I ask the reader to admire: not the carpentering, nor the bricklaying, nor anything that he can presently see and understand, but the choice of the curve, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... whoop of the warriors, a yell of rage and disappointment. A dozen shots were fired, but the bullets either flew over their heads or dropped short. The five did not take the trouble to reply. Confidence had returned to them with amazing quickness, and the most confident and joyous of all was ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... foolishly tickled, and they have been urged to mix themselves up with public affairs, and give their opinion on the universe. They can naturally have but scattering views on such subjects, and in default of personal judgment, they drift with the current, reacting with extreme quickness to any shock, for they are ultra-sensitive, with a morbid vanity which exaggerates the thoughts of others when it cannot express their own. This is the only originality at their disposal, and God knows they ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... Rupert lit the gas again. The little old lady turned her bird-like head as we all stumbled forward in the strong gaslight. Then, with a quickness that almost made me jump, she sprang up and swept a sort of old-fashioned curtsey or reverence. I looked quickly at Greenwood and Burrows, to whom it was natural to suppose this subservience had been offered. I felt ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... universality. In him nature had, so to speak, identified the individual with the nation, bestowing on him a character in the highest degree elastic, having lively sensibility but no depth of passion, little system of principle or conduct, but that promptitude of self- direction which supplies its place, a quickness of perception amounting almost to intuition, and an unexampled degree of activity, by which he was in some sort many men at once. No writer, even in the eighteenth century, knew so many things or treated so many subjects. That which was the ruin of some minds was the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... stenches arising from the gases of the belly and from outhouses, which to their smell are more fragrant than thyme. The approach and touch of these close up the interiors of their mind, and open the exteriors pertaining to the body, from which come their quickness in worldly things and their dullness ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... voraciously[14] and seems to have pounced on any new publication that came to the palace, among them the works of two slightly later Spanish playwrights, Lucas Fern['a]ndez and Bartolom['e] de Torres Naharro. With the quickness of genius and spurred forward by the malicious criticism of his audience, their love of new things and the growing opposition of the introducers of the new style from Italy, he picked up a little French and Italian, while Church Latin and law Latin early began to creep into his ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... good for the half-crazed runner, for it cleared his mind. But it made him no less desperate or careless. With strength almost maniacal he leaped at what he would have fled from at any other time, and, swinging his ax with the quickness of light, struck tremendously at the great lowering head. He yelled again as he felt stone cut and crash into bone, though himself swept aside once more as a great paw, sidestruck, hurled him into the bushes. He bounded to ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... growing keener in proportion as his face became more gray. It was part of his professional acquirement to be able to draw his deductions from some snatch of human drama as he listened to its unfolding. His quickness and accuracy of judgment had, indeed, been a large element in his success; so that the habit of years enabled him to preserve a certain calmness of comprehension now. It lost nothing in being a studied calmness, since ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... by a Numidian who was crowned with a diadem of plumes. He hurled javelins with frightful quickness, giving at intervals a long shrill whistle. The great beasts, docile as dogs, kept an eye on him ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... wait. With the quickness born of many a hard won victory on the polo ground, his free left hand flew out and grasped the wrist behind one of the pistols. He pulled fiercely and irresistibly. An arm appeared, and a yell of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... were awakened by a horrible, screeching yell. They started up in terror only to fall victims to the tomahawk of their merciless foe, or to hear a rifle shot and get a glimpse of a form with flying black hair disappearing with wonderful quickness in the forest. Wetzel always left death behind him, and he was gone before his demoniac yell ceased to echo throughout the woods. Although often pursued, he invariably eluded the Indians, for he was the fleetest runner on ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... Exposition," said Willy. "A Viking ship is coming over from Norway. The last descendant of Christopher Columbus, a knock-kneed Spaniard, is to be passed around for show, a tremendous humbug, always an acceptable dish to the Americans. Ritter owes this big order to his monkey-like quickness. The building commission applied to various sculptors, and Ritter sent them sketches for all the statues before the other artists had even wet ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Sfax go through the day now with the directed activity of those who once had got the worst of it, but have a hope of doing better next time. They gave me a lively and adventurous scene. They moved with silent and stealthy quickness. Their eyes glanced sideways from under their cowls. Their hands were hidden under their jibbahs. A few of them stared with the hate of the bereft. It is not possible to face everybody in a press which moves in all directions, and I was the only ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... annals of the histrionic art more illustrative of the infinite versatility of the human faculties, both physical and mental, and of the amazing extent to which cunning, ingenuity, contrivance, quickness of invention, and presence of mind can be cultivated, even in very young persons, than such cases as this just related. It seems, at first, incredible that a mere child could carry on such a complex piece ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... said as calmly as possible although she was conscious of a curious pride in him. "Somehow I knew if there was need for quickness you would act like that. I believe I was stupid enough to stand still until you jumped. Well, of course, you know ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... it," cried Cecilia, with quickness, "but is not any thing preferable to dwelling with ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... shall describe in more detail the suffrage campaigns and the National and International councils in which we took part; now it is of her I wish to write—of her bigness, her many-sidedness, her humor, her courage, her quickness, her sympathy, her understanding, her force, her supreme common-sense, her selflessness; in short, of the rare beauty of her nature as I learned ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an almost infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to INVENT or FRAME one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before mentioned: nor can any force of the understanding DESTROY those that are there. The dominion of man, in this ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... telegraph-jee is temporarily absent when I arrive, but his farrash lets me inside the office yard, spreads a piece of carpet for me to sit on, and with commendable thoughtfulness shuts out the crowd, who, as usual, immediately begin to collect. The quickness with which a crowd collects in a Persian town has to be seen to be fully comprehended. For the space of half an hour, I sit in solitary state on the carpet, and endure the wondering gaze and the parrot-like chattering of a thin, long row of villagers, sitting ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... into the aged vehicle, and Hop Sing, with a quickness that was in surprising contrast to the indolence of the Mexican agent, put their ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... the Liberty party alike. And although a non-resistent, in that he eschewed the use of physical force, yet there never was born among the sons of men a more militant soul in the use of moral force, in the quickness with which he would whip out the rapiers, or hurl the bolts and bombs of his mother tongue at opponents. The pioneer must have been an unconscious believer in the annihilation of the wicked, as he must have been an unconscious believer in the wickedness of all ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... better.—Because its role is one of movement, of morale, of morale and movement so united, that movement alone, often without a charge or shock action of any sort can drive the enemy into retreat, and, if followed closely, into rout. That is a result of the quickness of cavalry. One who knows how to make use of this quickness ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... him to see the changes in Daisy's face. Light and shadow came and went with struggling quickness. He expected her to speak, but she waited for several minutes; then she said in a troubled voice, "Papa, I will think ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... were under any illusions as soldiers of other days had been. Few nursed the old idea of being the lucky man who would escape. They knew the chances they were taking, the meaning of frontal attacks and of the murderous and wholesale quickness of machine ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... compound adjectives, are generally disapproved by good writers; yet we sometimes meet with them: as, hard-heartedness, for hardness of heart, or cruelty; quick-sightedness, for quickness of sight, or perspicacity; worldly-mindedness, for devotion to the world, or love of gain; heavenly-mindedness, for the love of God, or true piety. In speaking of ancestors or descendants, we take the noun, father, mother, son, daughter, or child; prefix the adjective grand; for ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and in this picturesque attitude her eyes met those of Arden Lacey. The sudden remembrance of the unkind return made to him, and the fact that she had therefore dreaded meeting him, caused her to blush deeply. Her feminine quickness caught his expression, a timid questioning look, that seemed to ask if she would act the part of the others. Edith was a society and city girl, and her confusion lasted but a second. Policy whispered, "You can still keep him as a useful friend, though you must keep him at a distance, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... and above the natural ease and dignity which accompanies physical beauty, and the modesty, self-restraint, and deep earnestness which he had acquired under the discipline of the Laura, his Greek character was developing itself in all its quickness, subtlety, and versatility, until he seemed to Hypatia some young Titan, by the side of the flippant, hasty, and insincere talkers who made ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... moral judgment, has been an invaluable stimulus and comfort to me. Your uncle had retained that fruit of experience which makes a man of the world, as opposed to the narrow man of literature. He judged well of writing, because he had learned to judge well of men and things, not merely through quickness of observation and insight, but with the illumination of a heart in the right place—a thorough integrity ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... twigs; the leaves are laid one over another horizontally, forming a smooth bottom or interior. In external form it is a shapeless ball about 8 or 10 inches in diameter, and has an unfinished opening at the side. The birds build with astonishing quickness, picking up the leaves one after another from the ground just beneath the nest. When fresh the eggs are fleshy white, becoming pure white when emptied; they are large for the size of the bird, rather stumpy ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... neighbouring streets resounded with the clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl, and the winnowing of many bushels of words, Madame Defarge's frequent expressions of impatience were taken up, with marvellous quickness, at a distance: the more readily, because certain men who had by some wonderful exercise of agility climbed up the external architecture to look in from the windows, knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as a ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... expediency, let us see whether reason will not furnish a like answer. The great majority of women in this country already possess sufficient intelligence to enable them to vote judiciously on nearly all questions of a local nature. I think this will be conceded. Secondly, with their superior quickness of perception, it is fair to assume that when stimulated by a demand for a knowledge of political principles—such a demand as a sense of the responsibility of the voter would create—they would not be slow in rising to at least the rather low level at ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... not serve with equal propriety for a slow movement as for a quick one; but to acquire both at once with the same trouble, begin with an open string, either the first or second, it will be equally useful; sustain the note in a swell, and begin the shake very slow, increasing in quickness, by insensible degrees, till it becomes ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... abundant than most people had supposed. They were somewhat surprised when these marvels were wrought by professedly green hands, but were given to suppose that these green hands must have had some remarkable quickness or aptitude for acquiring. That sparkling jelly, well-flavored ice-creams, clear soups, and delicate biscuits could be made by a raw Irish girl, fresh from her native Erin, seemed to them a proof of the genius of the race; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had done, his mind ran with lightning quickness to face this new emergency. But he was puzzled and helpless, for now her hands fell and she laughed weakly, almost hysterically. He searched for the key to this unnatural behaviour. He began, hesitatingly, expecting some word from her to ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... place being thus, and it seemed to him the night had passed with unnatural quickness. But he thought more of the fact that he had been beguiled into spending his wedding-night in a graveyard, in such questionable company, and of what explanation ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... tortuousness of the channel that we had to traverse, winding hither and thither through that vast expanse of reef, my heart almost quailed within me, and I felt inclined to doubt whether we three males possessed the ability, the skill, the quickness of eye, the readiness and strength of hand, to take the ship in safety through that apparently endless, twisting channel. But the feeling was merely momentary; an old adage flashed into my mind to the effect that one need ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... was neither clever nor gifted, but that I was merely skilful at not letting myself be caught out, and had a certain quickness of ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... are so elevated above the common understanding of their fellow-creatures, that they are by many charged with enthusiasm, and even with madness. When George II. was once expressing his admiration of Wolfe, some one observed that the general was mad. "Oh! he is mad, is he?" said the king with great quickness; "then I wish he would bite some other of my generals."—Thackery's Life ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... been allowed for the ruffian who stood beside the carriage to receive the plunder, when several voices, loud, clamorous, and eager, were heard in the quarter whence the traveller had come. By trampling with quickness, it was easy to imitate the sound of many feet. The robbers were alarmed, and one called upon another to attend. The sounds increased, and, at the next moment, they betook themselves to flight, but not till a pistol was discharged. ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... he always arranged what he intended to say, before he spoke; his quickness in conversation contradicts this notion: but it is very true, that before he sat down to write a note or letter, he completely arranged in his mind what he meant to express. He pursued the same method in respect to other composition; and he occasionally would walk several times about his ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... down the candles, my brain was all in a whirl with trying to think how I could get possession of the old cravat without exciting any suspicion. Chance, and a little quickness on my part in taking advantage of it, put the object within my reach in a moment. The man, having counted out the candles, asked the woman for some paper to wrap them in. She produced a piece much too ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... turned to greet a tall, lean individual more tanned than himself, with little, fine, weather lines about his eyes and an abrupt quickness of gesture which denoted his hair-triggered nerves. "What are you ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... having disappeared in a look of settled and abstracted care. His companion appeared little disposed to interrupt his meditations, but stood leaning against the naked walls, himself the subject of deep and sorrowful reflection. At length the former shook off his air of thought, with that startling quickness which seemed common to his manner; he approached a window, and, directing the attention of Wilder to the ship in the outer ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Macedonian kings crushed the liberties of Greece, the Roman Republic was ruined, not by its enemies, for there was no enemy it did not conquer, but by its own vices. It was free from many causes of instability and dissolution that were active in Greece—the eager quickness, the philosophic thought, the independent belief, the pursuit of unsubstantial grace and beauty. It was protected by many subtle contrivances against the sovereignty of numbers and against legislation by surprise. Constitutional battles had ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... coast, meeting the deep blues and greens of the Atlantic. On the headland across the Bay there are barrows that tell of days before the coming of Saxon and Norman; and among these sport numberless rabbits, vanishing with marvellous quickness at the slightest movement. In storm all is magnificence; in calm there is the brooding of a fathomless peace. It is a perfect rest to lie on the sandy dunes or breezy warrens, gazing dreamily at sky and ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... hunter, on projecting the lazo, had wheeled, with the quickness of thought; and, driving his sharp spurs into the ribs of his horse, caused the latter to gallop in the opposite direction. One might have supposed that he had taken fright at the bear, and was endeavouring to get out ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... all that the Herald of the Weather has to do, the care and quickness with which it must be done, and the excellent results he obtains, everybody who is at all interested in the changes of the weather ought to be grateful to him for his faithfulness ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... with statesmanlike energy. His Spanish soldiers called him the new Hannibal, and not merely because he had, like that hero, lost an eye in war. He in reality reminds us of the great Phoenician by his equally cunning and courageous strategy, and by the quickness of his ingenuity in turning to good account his victories and averting the consequences of ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... the exception of acetone and methyl-alcohol, for use upon the large scale.) These liquids not only dissolve the nitro-cellulose in the cold, but render the resulting gelatine compound less sensitive to concussion, and reduce its quickness of explosion (as in cordite). They also lower the temperature at which the nitro-glycerine becomes congealed, i.e., they lower the freezing point[A] of ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... health as not the least fortunate accident of his life. Nor is he immediately undeceived. The stir and speed of the journey, and the restlessness that goes to bed with him as he tries to sleep between two days of noisy progress, fever him, and stimulate his dull nerves into something of their old quickness and sensibility. And so he can enjoy the faint autumnal splendour of the landscape, as he sees hill and plain, vineyard and forest, clad in one wonderful glory of fairy gold, which the first great winds of winter will transmute, as in the fable, into withered ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pluck in his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a swallow, and have known the little pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the great-crested to the little green flycatcher, their ways and general habits are the same. Slow in flying from point to point, they yet have a wonderful quickness, and snap up the fleetest insects with little apparent effort. There is a constant play of quick, nervous movements underneath their outer show of calmness and stolidity. They do not scour the limbs and trees like the warblers, but, perched upon the middle branches, wait, like true hunters, ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... up on the beach and grounded her. Harry Underwood stepped forward to assist me ashore, but Dr. Pettit, with unobtrusive quickness, was before him. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances; Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." We see in this simile that the lesson of the Spanish Armada had not been forgotten, and that its appearance was still vividly ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... many of his friends knew he had, though I never perceived it. I supposed him to be only near-sighted; and indeed I must observe, that in no other respect could I discern any defect in his vision; on the contrary, the force of his attention and perceptive quickness made him see and distinguish all manner of objects, whether of nature or of art, with a nicety that is rarely to be found. When he and I were travelling in the Highlands of Scotland, and I pointed out to him a mountain which I observed resembled a cone, he ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... place; that which shall not be may yet come to a bad pass, and the blind race of man watches helpless the trammels it could shake off did it but greatly dare. My business, ladies and gentlemen, now is, as I have just explained to you, to attempt to puzzle your eyes by the quickness of my fingers. Yours, on the other hand, will be to detect the way—or modus operandi, as old Simon Magus used to say—in which I perform my little wonders—if you can. Will any gentleman lend me a ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... His quickness of wit was often shown. One day I saw him flying down the ravine with a large piece of bread in his bill. The stream below him was at this time being bricked over as a sewer. There was one part of two hundred ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... rise, let in the moonlight for a moment upon a small white speck across the road. He thought so: something whiter than a wet stone or a bleached stick,—or it might be fancy. Noiselessly and almost invisibly, for Dane could move like an Indian, and with such quickness, he was over the road and at the spot. There was no mistaking the token—it was a little glove of Wych Hazel's. Evidently dropped in haste; for one of her well-known jewelled fastenings lay glittering in his hand. But—Mrs. Gen. Merrick lived quite in another quarter of ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... the correspondent's movements—the quickness with which he took in the military situation, may be inferred from the dates of his letters. On January 6, 1862, he wrote a letter detailing affairs at St. Louis. On the eighth, he described affairs at ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... would have to stay behind. I relied upon him to hold the party together while I was away and to make the best of his way to Deception Island with the men in the spring in the event of our failure to bring help. Worsley I would take with me, for I had a very high opinion of his accuracy and quickness as a navigator, and especially in the snapping and working out of positions in difficult circumstances—an opinion that was only enhanced during the actual journey. Four other men would be required, and I decided to call for volunteers, although, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... century, represented as an Englishman, a man of great wit and humor, but ignorant and hypocritical. His popularity excites the envy of the superior clergy, who seek to depose him from the priesthood by making public exposition of his ignorance, but by his quickness at repartee he always manages to turn the laugh against them.—Ascribed ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... deserve and should not receive." On the contrary, however, Mr. Gray, his attorney and confessor who did not write from long range, said: "As to his ignorance, he certainly had not the advantages of education, but he can read and write and for natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension is surpassed by few men I have ever seen. Further the calm, deliberate composure with which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions, the expression of his fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm; still bearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... muscular and of the chief nervous system, by means of both of which qualities we keep our equilibrium. The more massive cerebellum with woman, together with the comparative shortness and tenderness of her bones, explains her comparative quickness and easiness of motion, her quicker and higher co-ordination of the muscles for their functions, and her knack of quickly sizing up a situation, and finding her way in the midst of a confusion of associations. Woman is furthermore aided in the latter faculty through the greater ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... sword-fish, with its long, narrow, conical sword, with which it cleaves the ice, was chasing the more timid cetacea; numberless spouting whales were clearly to be heard. The sword-caper, with its delicate tail and large caudal fins, swam with incomprehensible quickness, feeding on smaller animals, such as the cod, as swift as itself; while the white whale, which is more inactive, swallowed peacefully ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... availed himself of the liberty which then existed of working as fast and as much as he chose. On this point he says: "My constant attendance (I never making a St. Monday) recommended me to the master; and my uncommon quickness at composing occasioned my being put upon all work of dispatch, which was generally better paid. So I went on now ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... they flee from it in terror; and when they do, after due deliberation, take it in, their rise is so quiet, that you can seldom tell whether your fish weighs half a pound or four pounds and a half—unless you, like most beginners, attempt to show your quickness by that most useless exertion, a violent strike. Then, the snapping of your footlink, or- -just as likely—of the top of your rod, makes you fully aware, if not of the pluck, at least of the brute strength, of ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... that my mind was far superior to my sickly frame, and feared they should never raise me to manhood; contrary, however, to their expectations, I surmounted all these untoward appearances, and attracted much notice from my liveliness, quickness of repartee, and impudence: qualities which have been of much ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Clean-cut, calm, and dignified; it was singularly fascinating, not only by reason of its beauty, which was undeniable, but owing to the calm, almost superhuman power that lay in the gaze of the velvety eyes. There was no keenness of expression, no quickness of glance, and no seeking after effect by mobility of lash or lid. When he raised his eyes, the lower lid was elevated simultaneously, which peculiarity, concealing the white around the pupil, imparted an uncomfortable sense of inscrutability. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... Devons perhaps excel all other races in quickness, docility, beauty, and the ease with which they are matched. With a reasonable load, they are said to be equal to horses as walkers on the road, and when they are no longer wanted for work they fatten ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... his mouth was handsome in its curve, and his teeth were good, and his chin was divided by a deep dimple. His figure was not only short, but stouter than that of the Ormes in general. He was very strong on his legs; he could wrestle, and box, and use the single-stick with a quickness and precision that was the terror of all the freshmen who had come in ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... fierce, brave bird. Then he pushed his way to the front of the company and looked up at Simone steadfastly, and his arms were still folded across his body and his sharp-featured face was tense with suppressed rage, and he spoke very quickly but clearly, too, for all the quickness ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... these days, however, the distinctions of master and servant are less broad than before, and in the field we shall be companions rather than master and follower. So, if you like to cast in your fortunes with mine, here is my hand on it. You have already proved your friendship to me as well as your quickness and courage, and believe me, you will not find me or my father ungrateful. But for you, I should now be in the cells, and your old master in no slight danger of finding himself in prison, to say nothing of the upset of the negotiations for which I came to London. ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the rest, he punched the swinging ball and worked with the dumb-bells for an hour every morning and evening, and boxed twice a day with Ted Barton in the gymnasium, gaining as much profit as could be got from a rushing, two-handed slogger. Barton was full of admiration for his cleverness and quickness, but doubtful about his strength. Hard hitting was the feature of his own style, and ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the quickness of long practice. Gold-pan, coffee-pot, and cooking-pail were soon thawing the heaped frost-crystals into water. Smoke extracted a stick of beans from the sled. Already cooked, with a generous admixture of cubes of fat pork and bacon, the beans had been ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... always to be coaxed to go into company. Later in life, however, she was much more socially inclined, and took pleasure in making and receiving visits. She could neither dance nor sing, but in all amusements which require quickness and a ready wit she was very happy. She was very fond of children, and knew how to amuse them and to take care of them. As she had half a dozen younger brothers and sisters, she had ample opportunity to make ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... more compactly together, and the muffling of the oars was carefully looked to. Directions as to the order to be observed had been given before, and the boats fell into their appointed position with quickness and accuracy. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... supply a father's place to the orphans of Alexander de Beauharnais, and a husband's to his widow. I admire the General's courage, the extent of his information, for on all subjects he talks equally well, and the quickness of his judgment, which enables him to seize the thoughts of others almost before they are expressed; but, I confess it, I shrink from the despotism he seems desirous of exercising over all who approach him. His searching glance ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... same family was named Celer (the Swift), because of the wonderful quickness with which he provided a show of gladiators on the occasion of his father's funeral. Some even to the present day derive their names from the circumstances of their birth, as for instance a child is named Proculus if his father be abroad when ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Judas he represents, in every wrinkle of his face, and in every curl of his hair, and in every glare of his eye, and in every knuckle of his hand with which he clutches the money bag, hypocrisy and avarice and hate and low strategy and diabolism. The quickness with which he grabs the bribe for the betrayal of the Lord, the villainous leer at the Master while seated at the holy supper, show him to be capable of any wickedness. What a spectacle when the traitorous lips are pressed against the pure cheek of the Immaculate One, the disgusting smack ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... In these perilous achievements, wonder is excited less by the surpassing agility of these little creatures, frequently encumbered as they are by their young, which cling to them in their career, than by the quickness of their eye and the unerring accuracy with which they seem almost to calculate the angle at which a descent will enable them to cover a given distance, and the recoil to ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... such that he could go there. It was then given me to tell him that perhaps this was a sign that he would soon be received. The angels then told him to cast off his raiment, which, from the ardency of his desire, he did with a quickness that could scarcely be surpassed. By this was represented the character of the desires of those who are in the province to which the seminal vesicles correspond. It was said that such spirits, when prepared for heaven, are stripped of their ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... years, living part of the time with him at Sidney in Australia, and that at a subsequent visit to the island, the captain had, at his own request, permitted him to remain among his countrymen. The natural quickness of the savage had been wonderfully improved by his intercourse with the white men, and his partial knowledge of a foreign language gave him a great ascendancy over ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... my vanity was stronger than my good taste for a while, the quickness of childish instinct soon convinced me that Miss Burton had no real affection for me. Then I was puzzled by her spasmodic attentions when my father was in the room, and her rough repulses when I "bothered" her at less appropriate moments. ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
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