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More "Sharpness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to fight with sword only, and on foot, for he would not let her see Frontino, knowing that she would recognize the steed. Nor would he use Balisarda, for against that enchanted blade all armor would be of no avail, and the sword that he did take he hammered well upon the edge to abate its sharpness. He wore the surcoat of Prince Leo, and his shield, emblazoned with a golden, double-headed eagle. The prince took care to let ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... queer happened to me. You've seen a flash of sunlight reflected from a window, far off? Well, it wasn't like that, except in the sharpness of its effect. And I knew there was no house in all that waste of sand. It was just a flash, and was gone. I searched the horizon, and saw nothing but red dunes, and little puffs of sand kicked up ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... in a couple of strides to the edge of the little stream and there held her threateningly over the bank. The two young men shouted approval and Myrtle began to squirm. At first she demanded coyly to be set down, and then with more sharpness in her tone. Joe looked into her eyes. They were unfathomable. Her peach-bloom cheeks were quite pink. But there were a few tiny wrinkles about her mouth that he had never seen before. Made her look older, somehow. He softened, for the ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... isn't either wrong or right," Rachael said one autumn day when they were walking slowly to the beach. Over their heads the trees were turning scarlet; the days were still soft and warm, but twilight fell earlier now, and in the air at morning and evening was the intoxicating sharpness, the thin blue and clear steel color that mark the dying summer. Alice's three younger children were in school, and the family came to Clark's Hills only for the week- ends, but Rachael and her boys stayed on and on, enjoying the rare warmth and beauty of the Indian ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... tone, and old Oliver looked down upon him through his spectacles, with a closer survey than he had given to him before. The boy's face was pale and meagre, with an unboyish sharpness about it, though he did not seem more than nine or ten years old. His glittering eyes were filled with tears, and his colourless lips quivered. He wiped away the tears roughly upon the ragged sleeve ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... used to roor wi' laffin' At t' sharpness o' my wit, An' a joke I made one Kersmiss Threw my nuncle ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... that our wife or daughter should not lack intelligence, yet, for the life of me, I cannot bring myself to approve of a woman like this. And still less likely is it that such could be of any use to the wives of high personages like yourselves. Give me a lovable nature in lieu of sharpness! I quite agree with Sama-no-Kami ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... explosive anarchy of New York! I made for the river, as I always do wherever a river is, and watched it flowing down in the silver-gray light and catching bits of the rain-washed blue sky. The trees had lost the brittleness and sharpness of winter's drawing and their outlines were softening into greenish velvet. In the coverts, arbutus crept out with a hawthorn-like fragrance from patches of lingering snow. The main street leading into the town from the Massasoit House and the station also had an air of repose ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... not easily provoked. "It corrects a sharpness of temper, and sweetens and softens the mind." It does not take fire at the least opposition or unkindness, nor "make a man an offender for a word." One of the servants of Nabal described his character in this significant manner: "He is such a son of Belial that a man cannot ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... soft, quiet hand seems to begin to crumble them down and to wear them away to nothing. You write the principle which was so hard to receive upon the tablet of your memory; and day by day a gentle hand comes over it with a bit of india-rubber, till the inscription loses its clear sharpness, grows blurred and indistinct, and finally quite disappears. Nor is the gentle hand content even then; but it begins, very faintly at first, to trace letters which bear a very different meaning. Then it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... sellers, were nailed like base coin to the counter, there would be no room for the display of goods. It is considered no mean compliment to a business man to say that he is sharp at a bargain; yet this sharpness is rarely more than the faculty of ingenious lying. A man who sells to me an article worth only five dollars for twice that sum is a "sharp man;" but he cannot make such a sale to me without telling me, in some way, a lie. The price he ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... greatest interest and curiosity at the cottage; received the inquiring advances of Fido very graciously; made the boys tell her all the history of his attaching himself to them; and finally made herself the most entertaining and agreeable guest at the board, although the sharpness of her speech and the acid favour of some of her remarks bred a little uneasiness in some of ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... dignity, as Evelina had done before her. Perhaps the resemblance between this young girl and the young girl of the past was more one of mien than aught else, although the type of face was the same. This girl had the same fine sharpness of feature and delicately bright color, and she also wore her hair in curls, although they were tied back from her face with a black velvet ribbon, and did not veil it when she drooped her head, as Evelina's ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... drawers, and outside stockings were drawn on, and Edgar's brain worked the while like the great crank of his own engine; but no feasible plan of escape was evolved. Then the "crinoline" was drawn on, but it added no feminine sharpness to his wits, though it seriously modified and damaged the shape of his person. The crinoline, as we have said elsewhere, is seldom used except at great depths, where the pressure of water is excessive. It was put on Edgar at this time partly because it formed ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... everything was borne upon men's backs. In Central Africa the kinglet rides a slave, and on ceremonious occasions mounts his Prime Minister. I have often been reduced to this style of conveyance and found man the worst imaginable riding: there is no hold and the sharpness of the shoulder-ridge soon makes the legs ache intolerably. The classicists of course find the Shaykh of the Sea in the Tritons and Nereus, and Bochart (Hiero. ii. 858, 880) notices the homo aquaticus, Senex Judaeus and Senex Marinus. Hole (p. 151) suggests the inevitable ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... me, then nodded at my sharpness. "That's right, he's dead." He sighed heavily and tapped the folder with all those pudgy fingers. "Normally," he said, "that would be the end of it. File closed. However, ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake
... youth itself looked sapless and blasted. It was then March;—the third of March; the weather was unusually severe and biting, even for that angry month. There had been snow in the morning, and it lay white and dreary in various ridges along the street. But the wind was not still in the keen but quiet sharpness of frost; on the contrary, it howled almost like a hurricane through the desolate thoroughfares, and the lamps flickered unsteadily in the turbulent gusts. Perhaps it was the blasts which increased the haggardness of aspect in the young man I have mentioned. His ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... light eyes of M. Fleuriot there came a cold, bright gleam. He took a step forward. His face seemed to narrow to a greater sharpness. In a moment, to Mr. Ricardo's thought, he ceased to be the judge; he dropped from his high office; ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... with his tray. I turned away my head for the second time. He seemed beside himself. With his usual sharpness he had doubtless guessed that Pugatchef was not pleased with me. He regarded him with alarm and me with mistrust. Pugatchef asked him some questions on the condition of the fort, on what was said concerning the Tzarina's troops, and other similar ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... that shows so big throughout the Comedy, an unfaithful partner and lawyer introducing ruin into the house of the widow and orphan. The practice of legal ruse and robbery—in these things Balzac had rung the changes again and again. What Becque added were sharpness of contrast, dramatic concentration, bitterer satire, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the woods the Slate-colored Snowbird (Fringilla Hudsonia) starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed is almost metallic in its sharpness. He breeds here, and is not esteemed a snowbird at all, as he disappears at the near approach of winter, and returns again in spring, like the Song-Sparrow, and is not in any way associated with the cold and the snow. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Yet, even lacking sharpness, a head may be excellent if the forehead sink like a perpendicular wall upon horizontal eyebrows, and be greatly ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... that he was—and for the rest he could hardly get his words out with the sharpness of his hunger whetted still keener by the blessed smell of cooking. But he resisted ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... may be misled by mob prejudice or mob enthusiasm; but he is not likely to persist in a policy of crass blundering very long. King Demos may indeed rule a fallible human monarchy, but it is thanks to him, and to his high court held at the Pnyx, that Athens owes at least half of that sharpness of wit and intelligence which is ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... last, "I'm sorry you're such a simpleton. I had a higher opinion of your sharpness. I think Mr. Roberts meant to do well by you. Who has been filling your head with ...
— Three People • Pansy
... talents; had we employed our ridicule to strip the foolish faces of Superstition, Fanaticism, and Dogmatical Pride of the serious and solemn masks with which they are covered, at the same time exerting all the sharpness of our wit to combat the flippancy and pertness of those who argue only by jests against reason and evidence in points of the highest and most serious concern, we should have much better merited ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... exquisite surface with even such an insignificant breach and blemish as the shining steel betwixt his forefinger and thumb must occasion. But a slight tremble of the hand he held acknowledged the intruding sharpness, and then the red parabola rose from the golden bowl. He stroked the lovely arm to help its flow, and soon the girl once more opened her eyes and looked at him. Already her breathing was easier. But presently her eyes began ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... delicate shade of difference between civility and intrusiveness, familiarity and common-place, pleasantry and sharpness, the natural and the rude, gaiety and carelessness; hence the inconveniences of society, and the errors of its members. To define well in conduct these distinctions, is the great art of a man of the world. It is easy to know what to do; the difficulty ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... present that side of life in Canada which is not wintry and forbidding. There is warmth of summer in both tales, and thrilling air and the beauty of the wild countryside. As for the cold, it is severe in most parts of Canada, but the air is dry, and the sharpness is not felt as it is in this damper climate of England. Canadians feel the cold of a March or November day in London far more than the cold of a day in Winnipeg, with the thermometer many degrees below zero. Both these books present the summer side of Canada, which is as delightful as that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... seem to add more than a cubit to their stature; men endowed with certain gifts of personal—dignity I may perhaps call it, though the word rises somewhat too high. They look as though they would be able to say a clever thing; but their spoken thoughts seldom rise above a small, acrid sharpness. They respect no one; above all, not their elders. To such a one his horse comes first, if he have a horse; then a dog; and then a stick; and after that the mistress of his affections. But their fault is not altogether of their own making. It is the girls themselves who spoil them and endure their ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... and her father together, present the culmination at once of her trial and of her steadfastness. Hitherto she has made her choice, as it were, in the bodily absence of that love, the abnegation of whose every hope gives its sharpness to her crown of thorns. Now the light and the darkness, the joy and the sorrow, the love whose earthly life she is slaying, and the life of lonely, ceaseless, lingering pain before her, stand, as it were, visibly and tangibly side by side. On the one hand her father, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... of her majesty's mild and gracious clemency, and their slanderous lewdness to be the more condemned, that have in favor of heinous malefactors and stubborn traitors spread untrue rumours and slanders, to make her merciful government disliked, under false pretence and rumors of sharpness and cruelty to those against whom nothing can be cruel, and yet upon whom nothing hath been done but ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... raining. We were nearly naked, having only the remnant of the rags that had already served for more than their time. The bottoms were out of my shoes, and the water stood in the yard several inches deep. The cold, wet wind, swept down with biting sharpness, and almost robbed us of sensation. We paced the narrow bounds, through the mud and water, until too weary to walk any more, and then resigned ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... a streak of gray, was set on his shoulders at just the right poise for command. The high-bridged nose, inherited from the Umfravilles, was of the kind commonly considered to show "race." The eyes had the sharpness, and the thin-lipped mouth the inflexibility, that go with a capacity for quick decisions. While he was not so imposing in mufti as in his uniform, the trim traveling-suit of russet brown went well ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... blend them with the petty disappointments to which even the best of us are liable. The material thus obtained you temper with intentions that seem to be good, and eventually you forge out of it a weapon of marvellous point and sharpness, with which you mercilessly goad your victims along the path that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... of Religious Splendor, which has no examples, that remain in the memory with any sharpness in 1922, except The Faith Healer, founded on the play by William Vaughn Moody, the poet, with much of the directing and scenario by Mrs. William Vaughn Moody, and a more talked-of commercial film, The Miracle Man. But not until the religious film is ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... beforehand with the famous police, which I found not to merit its reputation for sharpness, and went at once, after establishing myself at the hotel, and before my name was reported to the authorities and a spy put on me, to the address of a republican, known to Kossuth, and to whom I was directed to apply for the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... sylvestris. COMMON MALLOW. Herb. L. E.—The leaves are ranked the first of the four emollient herbs: they were formerly of some esteem, in food, for loosening the belly; at present, decoctions of them are sometimes employed in dysenteries, heat and sharpness of urine, and in general for obtunding acrimonious humours: their principal use is in emollient ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... writing, she observed smilingly, as she addressed herself to all the young ladies: "I have all along lacked the quality of sharpness and never besides been good at verses; as you, sisters, and all of you have ever been aware; but, on a night like this I've been fain to do my best, with the object of escaping censure, and of not reflecting ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Honor was in the saddle—a gallant figure in well-cut brown habit and white helmet, the sunlight finding out gleams of bronze in her abundant hair, while all about her shone the uncompromising blue and gold of a mid-March morning—fresh without sharpness, and fragrant with the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... looking round her the while, in some perplexity, to see whether there was a spare chair and room to place it. She was a delicate, willowy woman, still young in figure, with a fresh colour, belied by the grey circles under the eyes and the pinched sharpness of the features. The upper lip, which was pretty and childish, was raised a little over the teeth; the whole expression of the slightly open mouth was unusually soft and sensitive. On the whole, Minta Hurd was liked in the ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the R-V line, V indicating valley and R ridge or hill. Note first the difference in sharpness in the contour bends; also how the valley contours point to the highland and the ridge ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... extreme affection and devotion, so that I passed four years in his service. When I first came there, I found two other pupils of mine own age newly arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill- fated Ben Sabbah. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the highest natural powers; and we three formed a close friendship together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me, and we repeated to each other the lessons we had heard. Now Omar was a native of Naishapur, while Hasan ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... door!" snapped Sinclair. Roger jerked back. Astro and Tom looked at the planter, startled by the sharpness in ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... gall, yet you expect, foolish man, that they will be read. Why, not even food is pleasant if wholly destitute of acid seasoning, nor is a face pleasing which shows no dimples. Give children your honey, apples, and luscious figs—the Chian fig, which has sharpness, pleases my taste." ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... with the Foreign Office, again, one still less knows. Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances of Britain in the character of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with big bully-voice, her huge sword-of-sharpness over field-mice, and in the air making horrid circles (horrid catherine-wheels and death-disks of metallic terror from said huge sword), to see how they will like it,—do from time to time astonish the world, in a not pleasant manner. Hercules-Harlequin, the Attorney Triumphant, the World's ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... out from the dust with the same hint of crushing force, the same die cut sharpness, the same METALLIC suggestion—and pointing toward the globes were the claw marks of the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... imagin'd, but onely a piece of a tapering body, with a great part of the top remov'd, or deficient. The Points of Pins are yet more blunt, and the Points of the most curious Mathematical Instruments do very seldome arrive at so great a sharpness; how much therefore can be built upon demonstrations made onely by the productions of the Ruler and Compasses, he will be better able to consider that shall but view those points and ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... you let us know?" It was Comrade Dr. Service of the Reception Committee who spoke, and with a decided sharpness in ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... the rain was still falling in the mountains, keeping the streams up to bank level. And Forrest was also on the move. After the Memphis raid there had been a second honing of his army into razor sharpness, a razor to be brought down with its cutting edge across those railroads which carried the lifeblood of supplies to the ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... the demons fled, And the fire went out and ended Then they brought me to a plain Where the blackened earth presented Fruits of thistles and of thorns, 'Stead of pink and rose sweet scented. Here a biting wind passed by, Which with subtle sharpness entered Even my bones, whose faintest breath Like the keenest sword-edge cleft me. Here in the profoundest depths Sadly, mournfully lamented Myriad souls, their parents cursing From whose loins they had descended. Such despairing shrieks and ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Shagpat and fix him for his operation; second, how the barber must be possessed of more than mortal strength to master him in so many strokes; third, how the barber must have a blade like no other blade in this world in sharpness, in temper, in velocity of sweep, that he may reap this crop which flourisheth on Shagpat, and with it the magic hair which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... child whom he met there did not drink it, and her father seemed but to wet his lips, so that Leila and he had all the rest. Rather a wonderful little scene it made in his mind, very warm, glowing, yet with a strange dark sharpness to it, which came ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... arrived. Elective affinity brought us at once to friendly intercourse. He was of the Hebrew race, as the larger half of the Warsaw population still are. He was a typical Jew (all Jews are typical), though all are not so thin as was Beninsky. His eyes were sunk in sockets deepened by the sharpness of his bird-of-prey beak; a single corkscrew ringlet dropped tearfully down each cheek; and his one front tooth seemed sometimes in his upper, sometimes in his lower jaw. His skull-cap and his gabardine might ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... with unusual care and tried to smile back the radiance of her face, and fixed her hair this way and that in a pitiful attempt to take away the sharpness of her expression, and when her little clock showed seven she put on hat and coat with trembling hands and went swiftly down and out at the front door. She was shaking with terrible emotions, fire ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... a good deal of her mother's sharpness in the way she said this, and plucked Bobby by the strings of his pinafore, until he took an uncomfortable seat ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... temperature that can be used in the furnace, and the quantity of clinker that can be left therein without interfering with its operation, thus permitting of having the grates always black. These latter in no wise change, and after five months of work the square bars still preserve their sharpness ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... so far lost and gained, in being transplanted from Europe to the New England soil and climate, is well illustrated by the writings of Emerson. There is greater refinement and sublimation of thought, greater clearness and sharpness of outline, greater audacity of statement, but, on the other hand, there is a loss of bulk, of unction, of adipose tissue, and shall we say ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... the refreshment and instruction, which the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest. Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physical superiority, raising his voice and rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not the least from unwillingness to allow freedom to others; on the contrary, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... any difference what the difference is," said Olive, speaking quickly and with perhaps a little sharpness in her voice, "all I want is for you to ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... what we are to digest into our Hearts, and work into our Thoughts and our Passions. And I would hope, that if we do in good earnest make the Attempt, we shall find this Discourse a cooling and sweetening Medicine, which may allay that inward Heat and Sharpness, with which, in a Case like ours, the Heart is often inflamed and corroded. I commend it, such as it is, to the Blessing of the great Physician, and could wish the Reader to make up its many Deficiencies, by ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... knife, and returning with it to Goisvintha, cut the rope that confined her wrists. Then she became silent when the first sharpness of her suffering was assuaged; he whispered softly in her ear, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... of the night before had vanished, giving place to her customary sharpness of tone. Lucy paid no heed ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... scarcely repress a gasp of surprise and apprehension. The trail was laid upon the merest granite shelf, above that terrible chasm. She was terrified, frankly. The man and pony in the lead were cut with startling sharpness against the gray of the rock—the calico coloring, the muscular intensity, the bending of the man to every motion—as they balanced with terrifying slenderness above ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... man-of-the-world, which he prided himself upon having become, was visible through all by certain indefinable trifles, and above all by those eyes, of a restlessness so singular in so wealthy a man, indicating an enigmatical and obscure past of dark and contrasting struggles, of covetous sharpness, of cold calculation and indomitable energy. Fanatical Montfanon, who abused the daughter with such unjustness, judged the father justly. The son of a Jew of Berlin and of a Dutch Protestant, Justus Hafner was inscribed on the civil state registers as belonging to his mother's faith. But the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... with a good deal of sharpness in her voice, "I want you to take down this hammock and carry it away. I can't stay here any longer. I thought that at least one quiet place out-of-doors could be found where I would not be disturbed, but it seems there is no such place. Perhaps you can hang the ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... its elements. In the latter, there is the capacity for the synthesis, for the discovery of far-reaching relationships. Again, we hear that the wise head invents, the acute mind discovers, the deep mind seeks out. The first combines, the second analyzes, the third founds. Wit blends, sharpness clarifies, deepness illuminates. Wit ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... breast, while He demands the release of the cowering flock, He is doing on a small scale what He did once and forever on Calvary; when, exposing Himself to the penalty due to sin, and braving the concentrated antagonism of a broken law, the drawn sword of inviolable justice, the sharpness of death, the shame of the cross, and the humiliation of the grave, He said, "If ye seek Me, let these ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... the sharpness of his penetrating gaze, which no secret was capable of resisting. "You are ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Senator, whose ideas of the Roumanian and Bulgarian neighbourhood were vague, and who had a general notion that all such people lived in tents, wore sheepskins with the wool inside, and ate curds: "Oh, they have politicians there! I would like to see them try their sharpness in the west." ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... rushing current of chilly water. Rauparaha said: "Here am I. What do you want with me?" Mr. Thompson said he must go to Nelson; and an irritating conversation ensued. Rangihaeata drew up his tall form, his curly black hair setting off a face of eagle sharpness, and from his eye there gleamed an angry light. Behind him stood his wife, the daughter of Rauparaha, and near them this latter chief himself, short and broad, but strong and wiry-looking, a man with a cunning face, yet much dignity of manner. ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... first place that God has endowed human intelligence with a native wit, sharpness and cunning that has its legitimate uses, the exercise of this faculty is evil only when its methods and ends are evil. Used along the lines of moral rectitude strategy and tact for profiting by circumstances are perfectly in order, especially when one acts in the defense of his natural rights. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... conversely ("cushion-shaped distortion'') (see fig. 7). Systems free of this aberration are called "orthoscopic'' (orthos , right, skopein to look). This aberration is quite distinct from that of the sharpness of reproduction; in unsharp, reproduction, the question of distortion arises if only parts of the object can be recognized in the figure. If, in an unsharp image, a patch of light corresponds to an object point, the "centre of gravity'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... many folds of muslin twisted round it. The flowing hair fell over his shoulders, above which he wore a soolham of red cloth, while gaily-worked yellow boots, and a pair of spurs of cruel length and sharpness, adorned his feet. He evidently felt his importance, as the protector and fighting-man of the party. Another personage followed, of inferior rank, with a mule, which carried the chief part of the baggage. The country through which they travelled was of ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... are false to me—to me, your lover, who had never a thought that was false to you!—to me, your mate of many years!—to me, your almost husband!" cried the youth, losing all self-command in the sharpness of his pain, and bursting into a tempest of grief and rage, and launching ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... cleverest tricks in the world. It is true I am quick-tempered, and now and then rather too hasty; but yet, when I have a mind to it, I can plan as many tricks as any man alive; even you shall own that what I have done shows an amount of sharpness ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... reached Tunbrook, and Richard was introduced to the terrible Colonel Brockridge. He was a little man of fifty, with great bushy red whiskers, whose whole face seemed to be eclipsed by the wonderful sharpness of his eyes. He shook hands with Richard, spoke to him very kindly, and hoped they should be good friends. The new recruit was shown to his quarters, as his room was called, and Mr. Grant took ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... distance, and their hearts the silence fills— Not long: for unto them, as unto all, Down from love's height unto the world of men Occasion called with many a sordid voice. So forth they fared with sweetness in their hearts, That took the sense of sharpness from the thorn. Sweet is love's sun within the heavens alone, But not less sweet when tempered by a cloud Of daily duties! Love's elixir, drained From out the pure and passionate cup of youth, Is sweet; but better, providently used, A few ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... me, boys!" Applehead's voice had a masterful sharpness that made the three tighten reins involuntarily. "You foller me and don't crowd up on me, neither. Send back a shot or two if ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... won't give him a farthing!" she said with a sudden sharpness that startled him—"not a farthing! If he wants money, let him work for it, as other people do; and then, when he has done that, if he is to have any of my money, he must be beholden for it to his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... easy to go."[6] "What may it be?" asked the lad. "Great cause have I. [7]The horses have become wild, so that I cannot go by them.[7] If I stir at all from where I am, the chariot's iron wheels will cut me down [8]because of their sharpness[8] and because of the strength and the power and the might of the career of the horses. If I make any move, the horns of the deer will pierce and gore me, [9]for the horns of the stag have filled the whole space between the two shafts of ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... Allen's words lasted long, and the sheriff fidgeted impatiently. When he again spoke there was the sharpness ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... look at all that sort of age?" was Lady Sellingworth's thought as, for a brief instant, she contemplated him, with an intensity, a sort of almost fierce sharpness which she was ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... of this book is so masterly that we make no apology for presenting it to our readers. "Bunyan conceals nothing, assumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing. He makes his bad man sharp and shrewd. He allows sharpness and shrewdness to bring him the reward which such qualities in fact command. Badman is successful; is powerful; he enjoys all the pleasures which money can bring; his bad wife helps him to ruin, but otherwise he is not unhappy, and he dies in peace. ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... piled artificial curls hiding bald spots and gray hairs. Her green pupils, when freed from their near-sighted glasses, had the tranquil opacity of ox-eyes; but the minute these gold-mounted crystals were placed between her and the outer world, the two glaucous drops took on a sharpness which fairly perforated persons and objects. At other times they appeared a glacial and haughty void, like the circle that a ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had committed, in view of his ambitions, though to the better ends of justice, the lawyer, in whom seven years' experience had perfected the sharpness that comes to a man who in his practice has had to measure his wits against the grisettes of Paris, was anxious to have some shield against the resentment of two women of fashion. The taper in which he had burned the note was still alight, and he used it to seal up the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse's ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... son of your father. I didn't give 'e credit for sharpness enough to perceive that. ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Reformation!" said the Bishop, with a new sharpness of note. "We should be here all night. But let me at least point out to you that the Church kept her Creeds!—the Succession!—the four great Councils!—the unbroken unity of essential dogma. But you"—he turned with renewed passion on his companion—"what have you done with the Creeds? Every ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but I went and pretended to be looking for rooms for a girl clerk I knew, and I saw—Oh! no end of rooms. And such poor old women, such dingy, worked-out, broken old women, with a kind of fearful sharpness, so eager, so dreadfully eager to get that girl clerk ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... on the deck close beside me, I could see that the shock had rendered him insensible; but I did not dare to quit the tiller for an instant, as it required all my faculties, bodily and mental, to manage the schooner. For an hour the blast drove us along, while, owing to the sharpness of the vessel's bow and the press of canvas, she dashed through the waves instead of breasting over them, thereby drenching the decks with water fore and aft. At the end of that time the squall passed away, and left us rocking on the bosom ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... if my papa tells it," spoke up the Daughter of the House. And John Gayther was pleased to note a sharpness in her voice. ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... to hear. Instead, he picked up a drill, looked at its point, then started toward the small forge which they had erected just at the foot of the little raise leading to the stope. There Harry joined him; together they heated the long pieces of steel and pounded their biting faces to the sharpness necessary to drilling in the hard rock of the hanging wall, tempering them in the bucket of water near by, working silently, slowly,—hampered by the weight of defeat. They were being whipped; they felt it in every ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... you have been Helen's constant companion. Do you think you have been as good friends as you were when you came to Briarwood, Ruth?" asked Mrs. Tellingham, with sharpness. ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... successful in all his undertakings, resolved not to be idle in future; he therefore furnished himself with a horse, a cap of knowledge, a sword of sharpness, shoes of swiftness, and an invisible coat, the better to perform the wonderful enterprises that ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... book comes hot from the fight. It is not a retrospect written in the calm after-years, when the outline of things has grown indistinct and the sharpness of life is blurred. There is nothing mellowed about a battle-field. Even as I write these words, the post comes in and brings two letters. One tells of a child of twelve in whom the first faint desires have awakened to lead a different life. "She is a Temple girl. Pray that she may have ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... world knows yours can see farther than other people's,' returned Richard. 'Heaven knows whence they have their sharpness. But suppose it were a heartache now, have you got e'er a charm to ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... the chisel mark with wonderful precision. It looks as though, when fresh, it must have had the pliancy of clay, so delicately are the finest curves in scroll or foliage scooped from its substance. And yet it preserves each cusp and angle of the most elaborate pattern with the crispness and the sharpness ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the little collection in this diminutive house a Gallery of Pictures, in the usual sense of that title, many would smile and remind me of what Foote said with his characteristic sharpness of David Garrick, when he joined his brother Peter in the wine trade: "Davy lived with three quarts of vinegar in the cellar, calling ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... what you think for yourself?" pursued the editor, giving sharpness and definition ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in church, and, like Anna, serves the Lord with fastings and with prayers. There she takes up the cross in the morning, bears it through the day, and returns at night to give thanks, and press it to her bosom with all its thorns and all its sharpness. ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... me dislike her. I never knew unkindness till I knew her. I never felt the sting of poverty till she made me feel all its sharpness. I never knew that I was steeped in sinful pride until she ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... pleasant rest; Here may a wretch have refuge from his pains. No gold, which Tagus' sands bestow, Nor which on Hermus' banks doth flow, Nor precious stones which scorched Indians get[138], Can clear the sharpness of the mind, But rather make it far more blind, And in the farther depth of darkness set. For this that sets our souls on work Buried in caves of earth doth lurk. But heaven is guided by another light, Which ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... been minutes or it may have been hours before I next came to myself, and then my arm lay bandaged by my side, and the sharpness ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Darwin and Haeckel conclusions to which they certainly do not lead. But in the majority of cases, his work is full of real convincing power, and with the breadth of its philosophical view and with the sharpness of its definitions, as well as with its abundance of philosophic and especially botanical teachings and their ingenious application, it is directly destructive to the use of the selection theory as the principal key to the solution of the problems. Eduard von Hartmann describes ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... the policy to be pursued in respect to the affiliated duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg.[782] During the (p. 557) later years of the reign successive ministries grappled vainly with this problem, and the political forces of the kingdom came to be divided with unprecedented sharpness by the conflict between the separatist tendency and the demand for immediate and complete incorporation. The king himself was brought eventually to consent to the framing of a constitution for the whole of his dominions, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... their imagination. The centre pier of the doorway is formed into a niche enclosing the basin for holy water, protected by a carved canopy of great beauty; but time and exposure have worn away much of the sharpness ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... said Colonel Woodville, his old sharpness returning, "we shall be on even terms, young sir. Your uniform bears a faint resemblance to that of your own army, and Slade, cunning and cruel, may have had you shot as a spy. You would be taken within our lines and this is no ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... heath. But she became gay. She could not keep in the medium, nor be, as was usual with her, placidly content. Every one remarked her exhilaration of spirits; as all actions appear graceful in the eye of rank, her guests surrounded her applaudingly, although there was a sharpness in her laugh, and an abruptness in her sallies, which might have betrayed her secret to an attentive observer. She went on, feeling that, if she had paused for a moment, the checked waters of misery ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... said, with a slight sharpness in his accent. Then he added quickly, "No, for I am a born shopkeeper in another sense than because I am one ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... hardly ever the practice of focussing their eyes sharply upon objects farther off than the length of the vessel or the top of the mast, say at a distance of fifty paces. The horizon itself as seen from the deck, [4] and under the most favourable circumstances, is barely four miles off, and there is no sharpness of outline in the intervening waves. Besides this, the life of a sailor is very unhealthy, as shown by his growing old prematurely, and his eyes must be much tried by ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... scanned most carefully as the boat skimmed along, my uncle steering, and after trying the sharpness of the hooks he performed what always seemed to me a conjuring trick, in bringing a couple of mother-of-pearl baits out of his waist-cloth, ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... domestic shrine; and this fitly marks her out as the centre of silent or unemphatic interest in her father's household. She is always thoughtful, never voluble; and when she speaks, there is no sting or sharpness in her tongue: she is even proud of her brilliant cousin, yet not at all emulous of her brilliancy; keenly relishes her popping and sometimes caustic wit, but covets no such gift for herself, and even shrinks from the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... this device of conversation, like the other best things—the beauty of woman, the strength of wine, the sharpness of steel, and red ink—is "open to abuse."[326] It has been admitted that even the fervency of the present writer's Alexandrianism cools at the "wall-game" of Montalais and Malicorne. There may be some who are ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... her sharpness jarred on Mona cruelly, and put all her new resolutions to flight. "No, I haven't," she said, sullenly. "There wasn't anything to break but the broom, and you saw me put that ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... together. It was early yet, and the city was veiled in fine mist through which the river gleamed here and there with a sharpness of steel. The dome of St Peter's was still dark against the greenish pallor ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... supremacy, of life. If Great Britain stood in our way, fight her. If Mexico made trouble about Texas, conquer her. War is the execution of the law of progress. Reason can go only so far, and then the sharpness ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... of considerable ability in him that haps to please this way: a slender faculty will serve the turn. The sharpness of his speech cometh not from wit so much as from choler, which furnisheth the lowest inventions with a kind of pungent expression, and giveth an edge to every spiteful word: so that any dull wretch doth seem to scold eloquently ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... a squatter. His high, oval head is bald very far up, but not benevolently so, and it is covered with light red hair, so thin as to contrast indifferently with the denseness of his beard and goatee. His nose would be insignificant but for its sharpness, and at the nostrils it is swelling and high-spirited. His eyes impinge upon his brows, and they are shining and rather dark, while the brows themselves are so scantily clothed with hair that they seem quite naked. Mudd is neatly dressed in a green-grass duster, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... want to kill him?" And at this moment Mrs. Archbold, who was on the watch, came in with Hannah and another nurse, and the three women at a word from their leader pinned Cooper simultaneously, and, taking him at a disadvantage, handcuffed him in a moment with a strength, sharpness, skill, and determination not to be found in women out of a madhouse—luckily for the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... I look at all that sort of age?" was Lady Sellingworth's thought as, for a brief instant, she contemplated him, with an intensity, a sort of almost fierce sharpness which she was scarcely ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... at sea from Port Royal, whence the details of the coast of Jamaica were losing their sharpness, the Arabella hove to, and the sloop she had ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... knitted, the din about them evidently adding to her perturbation, Mrs. Upton, with a sharpness of utterance that Jack had never heard from her, said: "Your sapphire ring? Your grandmother's ring? Indeed, indeed, Imogen, I must ask you not ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... him with a sharpness seldom seen on a woman's face when it bent toward Messer Guido of the Cavalcanti. Her smooth forehead wrinkled with an unfamiliar frown; her full lips seemed to tighten and narrow to a red thread; her eyes were ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... article, its air-drawn counterpart,—this you still had, or might get, and draw uses from, if you could. Wait till the Book on the Logos were done;—alas, till your own terrene eyes, blind with conceit and the dust of logic, were purged, subtilized and spiritualized into the sharpness of vision requisite for discerning such an "om-m-mject."—The ingenuous young English head, of those days, stood strangely puzzled by such revelations; uncertain whether it were getting inspired, or getting infatuated into flat imbecility; and strange effulgence, of new day or else ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... in the morning and his coming was unannounced. Before evening he had completed a stern inspection which had left only one impression in the minds of the inspected, and that impression was to the effect that more snap and pep, more sharpness and keenness ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... for the Rev. Mr. Pope's incumbency than for the fact of Rob Donn, the satirical Gaelic bard, being a native of the district. The author of the Dunciad is the greatest satirist in British Literature; Rob Donn is supreme among Gaelic bards for the sharpness of his tongue and his clever way of showing up his contemporaries to ridicule. He was in the habit of giving praise to people in order to make his satire more biting. Praise on his tongue was compared to oil on the edge of a razor: the cut was all the deeper. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... seeming not to wish that the governor should be present at the performance of the ceremony. But His Excellency was so struck with the fierce gestures, and wild demeanour of the other, who held in his hand one of our hatchets and frequently tried the sharpness of it, that he determined to accompany him, taking with him Mr. Collins and his orderly sergeant. On the road, Baneelon continued to talk wildly and incoherently of what he would do, and manifested such extravagant marks ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... Blasco Nunez may undoubtedly compare, if not in duration, at least in sharpness of suffering, with any expedition in the New World, - save, indeed, that of Gonzalo Pizarro himself to the Amazon. The particulars of it may be found, with more or less amplification, in Zarate, Conq. del Peru, lib. 5, cap. 19, 29. - ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... make it all seem unreal? Even the little one in her arms,—she too, seemed unreal! Ramona did not know it, but her nerves were still partially paralyzed. Nature sends merciful anaesthetics in the shocks which almost kill us. In the very sharpness of the blow sometimes lies its own first healing. It would be long before Ramona would fully realize that Alessandro was dead. Her worst ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... expressions for them: his successor appears to have no clue, no fixed or leading principles, nor ever to have thought on a question till he sits down to write about it; but then there seems no end of his matters of fact and raw materials, which are brought out in all their strength and sharpness from not having been squared or frittered down or vamped up to suit a theory—he goes on with his descriptions and illustrations as if he would never come to a stop; they have all the force of novelty with all the familiarity ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... persons with an imperfect rendering of that which might be pure and fine, as church-wardens are content to lose the sharp lines of stone carving under clogging obliterations of whitewash, and as the modern Italians scrape away and polish white all the sharpness and glory of the carvings on their old churches, as most miserably and pitifully on St. Mark's at Venice, and the Baptisteries of Pistoja and Pisa, and many others; so also the delight of vulgar painters in coarse and slurred painting, merely for the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... accepted monomania; which different thing could probably be a lighter and perhaps thereby a somewhat more boisterously refreshing form of sport. Such omens struck him as vivid, in any case, when Mr. Gutermann-Seuss, with a sharpness of discrimination he had at first scarce seemed to promise, invited his eminent couple into another room, before the threshold of which the rest of the tribe, unanimously faltering, dropped out of the scene. The treasure itself here, the objects on behalf of which Mr. Verver's interest ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... George's love for her. People had assured him since he was engaged that Marie Bromar was the handsomest girl in Lorraine or Alsace; and he felt it to be an injury that this handsome girl should prefer such a one as George Voss to himself. Marie, with a woman's sharpness, perceived all this accurately. 'Remember,' said she, 'that I had hardly seen you when George and I were—when he and ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... to a level with the saint her namesake, Mrs. Rachel Waverley gained some intimation which determined her to prevent the approaching apotheosis. Even the most simple and unsuspicious of the female sex have (God bless them!) an instinctive sharpness of perception in such matters, which sometimes goes the length of observing partialities that never existed, but rarely misses to detect such as pass actually under their observation. Mrs. Rachel applied herself with great prudence, not to combat, but to ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... done so at all with s's to it," exclaimed the Reverend OCTAVIUS, exasperated by so many plurals. "He did it but once, and then he was strongly provoked. EDWIN mentioned the sharpness of his sister's nose to him, and reflected casually upon ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... He remained staring at her throughout his reverie, which in fact related to her. He was thinking what sort of an old maid she would have become if she had remained in that village. He fancied elements of hardness and sharpness in her which would have asserted themselves as the joyless years went on, like the bony structure of her face as the softness of youth left it. She was saved from that, whatever was to be her destiny in Italy. From South Bradfield ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... the Water-Mother, East she swam, and westward swam she, Swam to north-west and to south-west, And around in all directions, In the sharpness of her torment, In her body's fearful anguish; Yet no child was fashioned from her, And no ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... Picture of Religious Splendor, which has no examples, that remain in the memory with any sharpness in 1922, except The Faith Healer, founded on the play by William Vaughn Moody, the poet, with much of the directing and scenario by Mrs. William Vaughn Moody, and a more talked-of commercial film, The Miracle Man. But not until the religious film is taken out of the commercial ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... my position for fear of disturbing Dicky, so I set my teeth and endured the discomfort. The sharpness of the pain gradually wore away as the minutes went by, and was succeeded by a distressing feeling of numbness extending all ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... new vexation that did not improve her temper. Chloe grumbled at the sharpness, but she was too old to think of another home. Faith was now a tall, thin ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... on her question his thought to the basis of life, as if on threads. Now he looked around, and his smile was bristling with pin-points of irony, increasing in sharpness. He thought a long time before he ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... definition and crisp sharpness of some of the results are entirely delightful. The bluntness and weariness of many of the later modelled Roman forms disappear in the new energy of workmanship which was engaged in exploring a fresh field of beauty. These brightly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... studies the New Testament with patient thoroughness and with honest sharpness will arrive at a distinction most important to be made and to be kept in view, namely, a distinction between the real meaning of Christ's words in his own mind and the actual meaning understood in them ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... such nonsense, Cecily," cried the Story Girl with unwonted sharpness, a sharpness we all understood. All of us, in our hearts, though we never spoke of it to each other, thought Cecily was not as well as she ought to be that spring, and we hated to hear anything said which seemed in any way to touch or acknowledge the ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... down. The sharpness had gone and her voice was shaking as she said: "You certainly must know, Ann, ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... Pl. XXXI, No. 2. In this plate the lines have unfortunately lost their sharpness, for the accidental loss of the negative has necessitated a reproduction from a positive. But having formerly published this sketch by another process, in VON LUTZOW'S Zeitschrift fur bildende Kunst (Vol. XVII, pg. 13) I have reproduced it here in the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... of the necessity of taking this method, let any one even below the skill of an astrologer, behold the turn of faces he meets as soon as he passes Cheapside Conduit, and you see a deep attention and a certain unthinking sharpness in every countenance. They look attentive, but their thoughts are engaged on mean purposes. To me it is very apparent, when I see a citizen pass by, whether his head is upon woollen, silks, iron, sugar, indigo, or stocks. Now this trace ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... cloud of darts and arrows was discharged from the flying squadrons; and a javelin, after razing the skin of his arm, transpierced the ribs, and fixed in the inferior part of the liver. Julian attempted to draw the deadly weapon from his side; but his fingers were cut by the sharpness of the steel, and he fell senseless from his horse. His guards flew to his relief; and the wounded emperor was gently raised from the ground, and conveyed out of the tumult of the battle into an adjacent tent. The ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... playing in the snow, stiff and blue with cold, scarcely able to stir a finger. They could go and warm themselves if they chose, but they do not choose; if you forced them to come in they would feel the harshness of constraint a hundredfold more than the sharpness of the cold. Then what becomes of your grievance? Shall I make your child miserable by exposing him to hardships which he is perfectly ready to endure? I secure his present good by leaving him his freedom, and his future good by arming him against the evils he will have to bear. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... cents a time to another set, often extending his business beyond the gates of Plumfield in spite of the rules. Mr. Bhaer put a stop to some of his speculations, and tried to give him a better idea of business talent than mere sharpness in overreaching his neighbors. Now and then Jack made a bad bargain, and felt worse about it than about any failure in lessons or conduct, and took his revenge on the next innocent customer who came along. His account-book was a curiosity; and his ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... made of comparisons taken from the pleasures of the senses when these are mingled with that which borders on pain, to prove that there is something of like nature in intellectual pleasures. A little acid, sharpness or bitterness is often more pleasing than sugar; shadows enhance colours; and even a dissonance in the right place gives relief to harmony. We wish to be terrified by rope-dancers on the point of falling and we wish that tragedies shall well-nigh cause us to weep. ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... invisible power raises and lays so suddenly the storms of that great fluid body, of which those of the sea are only consequences? From what treasury come forth the winds that purify the air, cool scorching heats, temper the sharpness of winter, and in an instant change the whole face of heaven? On the wings of those winds the clouds fly from one end of the horizon to the other. It is known that certain winds blow in certain seas, at some stated seasons. They continue a fixed time, and ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... the seeming deserter had been well received in New York. The sharpness of the pursuit and the orderly-book which he bore seemed satisfactory proofs of his sincerity of purpose. The captain of the galley sent him to New York, with a letter ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... down the cone by a spiral path. Our route lay amidst eruptive rocks, some of which, shaken out of their loosened beds, rushed bounding down the abyss, and in their fall awoke echoes remarkable for their loud and well-defined sharpness. ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... too thin for the climate of a Cumbria autumn, and round her singularly small and fleshless neck, a wisp of black velvet. The top of the head was rather flat, and the heavy dark hair, projecting stiffly on either side of the face, emphasized at once the sharpness of the little bony chin, the general sallowness of complexion, and the remarkable size and blackness of the eyes. There was something snakelike about the flat head, and the thin triangular face; an effect which certainly belied the little lady, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lived more in this last fortnight than in fourteen years; and not one of my long weeks of unhappiness has ever equalled in sharpness of torture this one short week of passion. My heart aches, my head swims; in the depths of my being, I feel a something obscure and burning—a something that has suddenly awakened in me like a latent disease, and now begins to creep through my blood and into my soul in spite of myself, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Young Man got to his feet and stood on the bulge of the rug. Then he jumped into the air and landed solidly on his heels. There was a sharp crack as the shell of the insect broke under the sharpness of his blow. ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... Gentleman, a very worthy friend." And this seeming to lay it on another man will be counted either modesty in you, or a sign that you are not ambitious of praise, or else that you dare not take it upon you, for fear of the sharpness it carries with it. ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the bear and lion, and followed the trumpet to the wars; and in those and in the depths of the forest she seemed a wild creature to mankind, and a man to the wildest creature. She had now come out of Persia to wreak her displeasure on the Christians, who had already felt the sharpness of her sword; and as she arrived near this assembled multitude, death was the first thing that met her eyes, but in a shape so perplexing, that she looked narrowly to discern what it was, and then spurred her ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... a man of some sharpness, the Sphinx displays his wiles; he spreads his wings and folds them up again; he shows you his lion's paws, his woman's neck, his horse's loins, and his intellectual head; he shakes his sacred fillets, he strikes an attitude and runs ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... is not, by nature, destined to devour animal food, is evident from the construction of the human frame, which bears no resemblance to wild beasts or birds of prey. Man is not provided with claws or talons, with sharpness of fang or tusk, so well adapted to tear and lacerate; nor is his stomach so well braced and muscular, nor his animal spirits so warm, as to enable him to digest this solid mass of animal flesh. On the contrary, nature has made his teeth smooth, his mouth narrow, and his tongue soft; and has contrived, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... itself among many districts. The same results, both good and bad, are observable in Thukydides, whom Dio follows in constructive theory as well as style. It has already been said that our historian sacrifices sharpness of dates to the Onkos, depending, doubtless, on his chronological arrangements to make good the loss. Usually it does so, but occasionally confusion arises. Whether because he noticed this or not, he begins ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... no poison, but an opiate. My intention in deceiving you was to make you feel the agonies of a guilty conscience, had Death overtaken you suddenly while your crimes were still unrepented. You have suffered those agonies: I have brought you to be familiar with the sharpness of death, and I trust that your momentary anguish will prove to you an eternal benefit. It is not my design to destroy your immortal soul; or bid you seek the grave, burthened with the weight of sins unexpiated. No, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... do thou make oath to me." And the folk said, "Indeed, this man doth justice upon himself."[FN483] Whereupon the merchant fell into that which he disliked[FN484] and came nigh upon loss and ill fame. Now he had a friend, who pretended to sharpness and intelligence; so he came up to him secretly and said to him, "Let me do so I may cheat this Cheat, for I know him to be a liar and thou art near upon having to weigh out the gold; but I will parry off suspicion from thee and say to him, The deposit ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... fact bit him, as he sat there in the shop, with sudden and acute sharpness. What a fool he had been, all this time, to let things slide! He should have been making connections, having irons in the fire, bustling about—how could he have sat down thus happily and easily for seven years, as though such a condition of things could continue for ever? He ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... had once been Latin, but of which original language few traces remained, excepting here and there the long rolling termination of some word or phrase, set example to his guest, by modestly putting into a very large mouth, furnished with teeth which might have ranked with those of a boar both in sharpness and whiteness, some three or four dried pease, a miserable grist as it seemed for so large ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... colour that never altered with circumstances. Her black wiry hair was ended in short crisp curls, which sat close to her head. It almost collected like a wig, but the hair was in truth her own. Her mouth was small, and her lips thin, and they gave to her face a look of sharpness that was not quite agreeable. Nevertheless she was not a bad-looking woman, and with such advantages as two hundred a year and the wardrobe which Mrs. Moulder had described, was no doubt entitled to look for ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... therefore her punishment shall be, as it is said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow in thy conception: in sorrow shall thou bring forth children—and thy husband shall rule over thee." But nevertheless, if thou shalt not survive the sharpness of thy sorrow, thy death shall be deemed to be such an alleviation of thy part of the entailed transgression, that thou shalt be saved, if thou hast CONTINUED in faith and charity, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... drew Dinah Morris from her favorite aunt, who was a Methodist exhorter, and the power and spontaneity of this novel came from the sharpness and clearness of her early impressions, joined to her love of living over again her girlhood days, before doubt had clouded her sky. Also read Silas Marner with its perfect picture of Raveloe, "an English village where many of the old echoes lingered, undrowned ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... D'Artagnan, quite amazed at the resources with which his companion's Gascon sharpness continually supplied him. D'Artagnan took up his camp tin cup, filled ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... senses are but little affected by a small amount of alcoholic drink. The sense of taste, after being accustomed to the sharpness of strong drink, may be less easily pleased with the taste ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... The first sharpness of the edge worn off, Arthur Channing partially recovered his cheerfulness. The French have a proverb, which is familiar to us all: "Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute." There is a great deal of truth in it, as experience teaches us, and as Arthur found. "Of ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... which we left in the ship in the meantime to keep it, in their going up only from their cabins to the hatches, had their breath oftentimes so suddenly taken away, that they eftsoons fell down as men very near dead, so great is the sharpness of that cold climate; but as for the south parts of the country, they are ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... comfortably; but the spouse of the operator appeared to be much disturbed by the frequent and capricious opening of the door by the other passengers, which let in torrents of intensely cold air from without, and chid the offenders with a wholesome sharpness. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... unusually severe and biting, even for that angry month. There had been snow in the morning, and it lay white and dreary in various ridges along the street. But the wind was not still in the keen but quiet sharpness of frost; on the contrary, it howled almost like a hurricane through the desolate thoroughfares, and the lamps flickered unsteadily in the turbulent gusts. Perhaps it was the blasts which increased ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... helpfulness she manifested in the oft-times painful labor of gathering and arranging the thorn bushes which constituted the temporary protection against roaming carnivores. Her hands and arms gave bloody token of the sharpness of the numerous points that had lacerated her soft flesh, and even though she were an enemy Tarzan could not but feel compunction that he had permitted her to do this work, and at last he bade ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to attack Mr. Darwin has only to read his works with a desire to observe, not their merits, but their defects, and he will find, ready to hand, more adverse suggestions than are likely ever to have suggested themselves to his own sharpness, without Mr. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... sensational items in newspapers had prepared him in some measure for the story of her wanderings since last they met in quiet, old-fashioned Bootle. He felt that she was altered, that their ways in life had deviated with a sharpness that was not to be brought back into parallel grooves simply because he had traveled many thousands ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... been tolerably sure of a win in any class. The Dandie Dinmont had the most delightful eyes imaginable, and was a good-bodied dog, faulty only in tail and in a tendency to be leggy. The Welshman was a little miracle of Celtic grace—the very incarnation of doggy sharpness. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... and had two children; and the most distressing thought of all was that I saw my children predestined to the same fate. I saw them growing up in complete destitution of those country sights and sounds which had made my own youth delightful; acquiring the superficial sharpness of the city child and his slang; suffering at times by the anaemia and listlessness bred of vitiated air; high-strung and sensitive as those must needs be whose nerves are in perpetual agitation; and when, in chance excursions to the country, I compared ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... Miss Loomis to whom he delivered himself of the last mentioned. He liked them both, which was more than he did most people, for this AEsculapian countryman of Carlyle had much of that eminent writer's sharpness of vision and bluntness of speech together with even more of his contempt for the bulk of his fellow-men. "No, Mrs. Cranston," said he, "don't wait a day for her. Start just as soon as you are ready, and don't give a thought to this little flibberty ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... hide itself no longer: to answer Joan's mother with anything like temper was impossible, and, knowing this, her only refuge was in flight. "I don't want to hear any more you may have to say, Mrs. Tucker;" and though Eve managed to keep under the sharpness of her voice, she could not control the indignant expression of her face, which Mrs. Tucker fully appreciating, she speeded her departure by the inspiriting prediction that if Eve didn't sup sorrow by the spoonful before her hair was gray her name ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... seize her for ourselves, and use her for our own purposes. You will ask, how were we to get rid of our manacles? Well, it was thus arranged, sirs. Jose Leirya had brought on board, cunningly concealed in his clothing, a number of small saws, of exceeding fine temper and sharpness. They would cut through our manacles as a knife cuts through wood. These he gave out to some of the slaves, and on the night arranged they were to cut the links of their iron manacles and pass the tools ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... was hardly prepared to find it so ready to flash forth on the most inexplicable provocations. It is like walking on a volcano. I have seen him two or three times draw himself up, bite his lip, and answer with an effort and a sharpness that shows how thin a crust covers the burning lava; but I acknowledge that he has been very civil and attentive, and speaks most properly of what he owes to you. I only hope he will not be hurt by the possession of so large a property so early in life, and I have an ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he had plunged into the fire until it had begun to char. He had scraped away the charring with a piece of broken glass, and, as a result of his endeavors, had really a spear with a point of undoubted sharpness and great hardness. He took huge pride in his new weapon, and carried it to school with him for days and on his various woodland expeditions, but there had come no chance to rescue any distressful maiden anywhere, and the envy and admiration of the other boys had but resulted in emulation and ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... you quite get me, Helen," he heard himself say, with icy sharpness. "I wanted to see Hilmer myself! I had a business proposition to put up to him. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... manifested in the three previous chapters now begins to take more definite thought form. The intellect seeing more clearly, appeals to the intellects of those who listen that they may think with greater sharpness and distinctness the thoughts presented. By aiming to present these thoughts so as to be clearly understood, distinctness and precision of utterance are gained. The elements of speech become more perfectly ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... follow the R-V line, V indicating valley and R ridge or hill. Note first the difference in sharpness in the contour bends; also how the valley contours point to the highland and the ridge contours to ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... Chatham County. He was a gallant trencherman, and the strange tropic viands tickled his palate. Heavy, commonplace, almost slothful in his movements, he appeared to be devoid of all the cunning and watchfulness of the sleuth. He even ceased to observe, with any sharpness or attempted discrimination, the two men, one of whom he had undertaken with surprising self-confidence, to drag away upon the serious charge of wife-murder. Here, indeed, was a problem set before him that if wrongly solved would have amounted to his serious discomfiture, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... sentence" [209] upon the excellent works of Young, he allows them the high praise to which they are justly entitled. "The Universal Passion (says he) is indeed a very great performance,—his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment, and his points the sharpness of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... forest was broken by the sweet note of some singing bird or the harsh croak of the raven. At night the savage cry of the wolf too often disturbed the rest of the scattered dwellers in that vast forest, and made a belated traveller look well to the sharpness of his weapons and the temper of his bowstring; but by day and in the sunlight the forest was beautiful and quiet enough — something too quiet, perhaps, for the taste of the two handsome lads who were pacing the dim aisles together, their arms entwined and their curly ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... deny that he was—and for the rest he could hardly get his words out with the sharpness of his hunger whetted still keener by the blessed smell of cooking. But he ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... house, rode shortly before nightfall the jester and his companion. During the day the young girl had seemed diffident and constrained; she who had been all vivacity and life, on a sudden kept silence, or when she did speak, her tongue had lost its sharpness. The weapons of her office, bright sarcasm and irony, or laughing persiflage, were sheathed; her fine features were thoughtful; her dark eyes introspective. In the dazzling sunshine, the memory of their ride through the gorge; the awakening at the shepherd's ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... he gave a high idea of his departed gallantry, but he never so much as alluded to the deeds of surpassing bravery which had astonished the doughty old admiral, Comte d'Estaing. Though his manner was that of an invalid, and he walked as if stepping on eggs and complained about the sharpness of the wind or the heat of the sun, or the dampness of the misty atmosphere, he exhibited a set of the whitest teeth in the reddest of gums,—a fact reassuring as to his maladies, which were, however, rather expensive, consisting as they did of four daily meals of monastic amplitude. His ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... to the particular purpose of my visit at this time to himself, he assumed a little more of his official stateliness. He condescended to say that it would have given him pleasure to reckon me amongst his flock; "But, sir," he said, in a tone of some sharpness, "your guardians have acted improperly. It was their duty to have given me at least one year's notice of their intention to place you at Christ Church. At present I have not a dog- kennel in my college untenanted." Upon this, I observed that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... swindle, and, borrowing one of my friend Squire Leach's forcible expressions, I may say we "started with good intentions, whatever came out of 'em." Perhaps I may be excused for introducing the following verses of my own, entitled "Haworth Sharpness," to close ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... principally by voluntarily committing his life and liberty into his enemies' hands, by that action manifesting that he had absolute confidence in them, to the end they might repose as great an assurance in him. Caesar only opposed the authority of his countenance and the haughty sharpness of his rebukes to his mutinous legions ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... word of advice; indeed, in such cases advice is always useless, for the very man whom you may seek to save is exceedingly likely to swear, or even to strike at you. He thinks you impugn his wisdom and sharpness, and he loves, above all things, to be regarded as an acute fellow. A few favoured gentry almost lived on Bob, and scores of outsiders had pretty pickings when he was in a lavish humour, which was nearly every day. He betted on races, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... portion of the ink. This is the reason of the dirty appearance of printed music. A new process has recently been invented by Mr Cowper, by which this inconvenience will be avoided. The improved method, which give sharpness to the characters, is still an art of copying; but it is effected by surface printing, nearly in the same manner as calico-printing from blocks, to be described hereafter, 96. The method of printing music from pewter plates, although by far the most ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... was in progress, and if it could have been transcribed then, no doubt it would have proved to be of the most intense interest; but unfortunately it had to be recalled the next morning when its clearness was muddled, the sharpness ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... admit, however, that there is no sharpness in Georgiana's pleasantry. The child-nature in her is so sunny, sportive, so bent on harmless mischief. She still plays with life as a kitten with a ball of yarn. Some day Kitty will fall asleep with the Ball poised in the cup of one foot. Then, waking, when her dream is over, ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... of course, led his reflective. His sharpness and quickness of eye surprised even the Indians. He says: "My observatory ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... the wit which I can well observe To-day in our young lords; but they may jest Till their own scorn return to them unnoted, Ere they can hide their levity in honour So like a courtier: contempt nor bitterness Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were, His equal had awak'd them; and his honour, Clock to itself, knew the true minute when Exception bid him speak, and at this time His tongue obey'd his hand: who were below him He us'd as creatures of another place; And bow'd his eminent top ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... dissimilarity, if he could have analyzed it, would have struck him as amounting to a difference of soul. Or rather, it was as if Violet's face had never given up her soul's secret until now; never until now had it so much as hinted that Violet had any soul at all. The comparative fineness and sharpness of outline might have reminded him of his wife as she had looked when she came out of her torture after the birth of her first child, but that no implacable resentment and no revolt was there. It was plainly to be seen (nor did Ransome altogether miss it) that ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... pasted with a brush, and are united by successive processes of cold-drying, hot-drying, and hydraulic pressure. Each sheet is large enough for forty cards. The outer surfaces of the outer sheets are prepared with a kind of flinty coating, which gives sharpness to the outline of the various coloured devices. Most packs of cards are now made with coloured backs. The ground-tint is laid on with a brush, and consists of dis-temper colour, or pigments mixed with warm melted ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... he. "To-night at two—by the little door in the garden wall. And he's coming with us. The young fool is coming with us.... So she and I go out of each other's lives.... Coira!" he cried, with a sudden sharpness. "Coira, I won't have it! Am I going to lose you ... like this? Am I going to lose you, after all ... ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... spiritual indifference as are to be seen on every hand? This question may pave the way for others:—Is there anything amiss with the substance of my preaching, with its methods, with its spirit? If there be weakness here or there; if it lack the true note; if it have lost strength to grip, sharpness to probe, power to heal; if, in short, it lacks aught of being the means of grace it was designed to be, can it be brought, once more, on to the right lines? Our words may be as a river refreshing ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... touch of sharpness will help us to make sure of what's what and who is who. Any one can contribute such a definition, and, without it, no one knows exactly where he stands. If I offer my own provisional definition of humanism now and ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... spinster seemed tall from the length and angularity of her face, which recalled the exaggerated proportions of certain Swiss heads. The character of their countenance—the features being marked by a total want of harmony—was that of hardness in the lines, sharpness in the tones; while an unfeeling spirit, pervading all, would have filled a physiognomist with disgust. These characteristics, fully visible at this moment, were usually modified in public by a sort of commercial smile,—a bourgeois smirk which mimicked good-humor; ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the famous surgeon, Professor MacDonald. He was elderly, with the broad high forehead, dignity of poise, and sharpness of glance which bespeaks the successful scientist. His face, to-night, was chalky and the firm, full mouth twitched with nervousness. He greeted Shirley abstractedly. The criminologist's manner was that of ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... eye and lip, as we meet some long cherished friend who passes us by with a cold, scornful glance. O this is poverty's bitterest curse, and this too must be met. Those who might have removed many a sharp thorn from the pathway of the lonely Henriette, but added sharpness to their point, and made ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... the force were river steamboats, whose machinery was protected with cotton, and their stems shod with one-inch iron, clamped in place by straps of the same material extending a few feet aft. Thus strengthened, it was hoped that with the sharpness of their bows and the swiftness of the current they could, notwithstanding the exceeding lightness of their structure, penetrate the hulls of the United States ships. Resolutely and vigorously handled, there can be little doubt that they might have sunk one or two of their assailants; ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... the matron, with impatient sharpness. "I know what you are aiming at. But to conceive of eternity is the prerogative of the immortals; our intellect is wrecked in the attempt. Our wings melt like those of Ikarus, and we fall into the ocean—the ocean of madness, to which I have often been near enough. You Christians fancy you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which lay a drawbridge. So Jack employed men to cut through this bridge on both sides, nearly to the middle; and then, dressing himself in his invisible coat, he marched against the giant with his sword of sharpness. Although the giant could not see Jack, he smelt his approach, and cried out in ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... together could not send a bullet through him unless God wished it. And if it were the God's decree that he should die, what could be the use of rebelling against it? The two converts, like good Christians, were more practical, and lost no time in grinding the huge blades of their kukris to the sharpness of razors. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Canada which is not wintry and forbidding. There is warmth of summer in both tales, and thrilling air and the beauty of the wild countryside. As for the cold, it is severe in most parts of Canada, but the air is dry, and the sharpness is not felt as it is in this damper climate of England. Canadians feel the cold of a March or November day in London far more than the cold of a day in Winnipeg, with the thermometer many degrees below zero. Both these books present the summer ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... first sharpness of death had passed from Ansdore, Joanna's sanguine nature, her hopeful bumptiousness, revived. Her pity for the dead lambs and her fellow-feeling of compassion for the ewes would prevent her ever dreaming of a new experiment, but already she was dreaming of a partial justification ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... was in hopeless peril. He knew that he was physically defenceless and at the mercy of twelve armed and lawless men. But he retained a preternatural clearness of perception, and audacity born of unqualified scorn for his antagonists, with a feminine sharpness of tongue. In a voice which astonished even himself by its contemptuous distinctness, he said: "My name IS Ford, but as I only SUPPOSE your name is Harrison perhaps you'll be fair enough to take that rag from your face and show it ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... they were: for they were hammer-headed sharks! Both were conspicuously seen: for they had risen to the surface, and were swimming with their dark dorsal fins protruded above, and set with all the triangular sharpness of staysails. Although they had not been observed before by those on the Catamaran, they appeared to have been swimming in the proximity of the gig,—on which, beyond doubt, they had been for ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... rather not; and yet, how was he to avoid it? On a sudden he became very crafty. Had it not been for the sharpness of his mother wit, he would certainly have been landed at that moment. "As you truly observed just now," he said, "the tongues of people are so malignant. There are little birds that ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... relate. Our lads were too sharp for them, and dropped at once. My heart rose to my mouth, sir, for I thought three of ours were hit; but it was only their sharpness, for they were returning the fire the next moment, and we kept it up as hot as the enemy did ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... the Middle Age explain themselves as a masked or frolic expression of that which in grave earnest the mind of that period toiled to achieve. Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science. The shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the power of subduing the elements, of using the secret virtues of minerals, of understanding the voices of birds, are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right direction. The preternatural prowess of the hero, the gift of perpetual youth, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... it was not to be compared with the drifts on the line. The wind now, as they started off, was whipping away the loose top layers of snow in cold white clouds, which stung the face and ears with their icy sharpness; but, with caps well down and coats buttoned up to the ears, the two trudged on. The snow had ceased, but it was plain, by the dark and lowering sky, that this might only be temporary, and Acton kept up as smart a pace as he could, heading right for ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... before the besieged outworks of Badajoz. During the darkness of night the siege was renewed with a terrific vigour that was not to be resisted, and the "unconsidered voluntaries" of Estramadura tasted the sharpness of English steel. The town was taken—but at what a cost! If any one wishes to know more of that fearful carnage let him read the description of it in the pages of Colonel Napier, and he will acquiesce in the chronicler's assertion that, ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... with him; and if that woman proved to be Miriam Strange, one could only say that the unexpected had happened, as it often does. If, in view of all the circumstances, he dressed better than ever, and gave his little dinners more frequently, while happiness toned down the sharpness of his handsome profile to a softer line, he had little in ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... we are right; it is an intellectual difficulty; but frequently it is simple mushiness of character, the same defect which tempts us, when we know a thing is true, to whittle it down if we meet with opposition, and to refrain from presenting it in all its sharpness. Cowardice of this kind is not only injustice to ourselves, but to our friends. We inflict a grievous wrong by compromise. We are responsible for what we see, and the denial or the qualification should be left to take care of itself. Our duty is, if possible, to give a distinct ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... on a Riverside Drive bus at Seventy-ninth Street and rode in the mellow gold of autumn up to Broadway and 168th. Serene, gilded weather; sunshine as soft and tawny as candlelight, genial at midday as the glow of an open fire in spite of the sharpness of the early morning. Battleships lay in the river with rippling flags. Men in flannels were playing tennis on the courts below Grant's Tomb; everywhere was a convincing appearance of comfort and prosperity. The beauty of the children, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... last—and you have waited—and there has been no other, not the thought of another, not the passing image of another between us. For I know there has not been that and I should have known it anywhere in all these years, the chill of it would have found me, the sharpness of it would have been in my heart—no matter where, no matter how far—yet say it, say it once—say that you have loved ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... are a mistake." Mr. Saffron spoke with a sudden sharpness, in pointed rebuke. "If I form a right idea of that woman, she's quite capable of going to Mudie's ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... just man, ventured to represent that Trafton did not foresee the result of his action; but, in the sharpness of her bereavement, Mrs. Trafton would ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... directors of the Company. One of the principal practical objections to this locomotive was the enormous quantity of coke consumed or wasted by it—about 692 lbs. per hour when travelling—caused by the sharpness of the steam-blast in the chimney, which blew a large proportion of the burning coke ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... their personal demeanour towards him—so respectfully distant to the Queen, yet so patient of her harassing displeasure—that Elizabeth changed her manner to him, and, though cold and distant, ceased to offer him any direct affront. She intimated also with some sharpness to others around her, who thought they were consulting her pleasure in showing a neglectful conduct to the Earl, that while they remained at Kenilworth they ought to show the civility due from guests to the Lord of the Castle. In short, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... a feature of Polchester life, and those who were old enough to understand pitied her and offered her many remedies. But the young cannot be expected to realise that there can be anything physically wrong with the old, and Mrs. Sampson's sharpness of manner, her terrifying habit of rapping out a "Yes" or a "No," her gloomy view of boisterous habits and healthy appetites, made her one most truly to be avoided. Before to-day Joan would have willingly ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... of the crowd had already passed. 'Looky there, Ted,' quoth the younger of the detectives, with the sharpness of surprise in his voice, and pointed straight to my feet. I looked down and saw at once the dim suggestion of their outline sketched in splashes of mud. For ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... that by nine o'clock it was hardly possible to stand in the open. The sky was like iron, and the dull red which had appeared in the West at sundown changed to a cold, neutral dimness. The birds were in great trouble, the gulls especially wailing with a peevish sharpness that made the skin creep. I looked out twice into the roaring darkness, and could see nothing except the flash of the "white horses" as they trampled and reared far out at sea. The fire was better than that wild company, so I sat a little, and then ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... unlike his own in extent and sharpness, the girl with the violin-case had paused just perceptibly in an unconscious attitude which kept in the lamplight her bust, tightly encased in a faded but elegant Genoa brocade jacket, with copper lace ornamentation, coming down upon a ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... to the Moloch of Legitimacy, which then skulked behind a British throne, and had not yet dared to stalk forth (as it has done since) from its lurking-place, in the face of day, to brave the opinion of the world. If it had then glutted its maw with its intended prey (the sharpness of Mr. Godwin's pen cut the legal cords with which it was attempted to bind them), it might have done so sooner, and with more lasting effect. The world do not know (and we are not sure but the intelligence may startle Mr. Godwin himself), that he is the author of a volume of Sermons, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... acted more wisely," said the Princess to Bianca, with some sharpness, "if I had let thee converse with this peasant; his inquisitiveness seems of a piece ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... of our civil war, certain truths, hitherto unobserved or guessed at merely, have been brought out with extraordinary sharpness of relief; and two of them have been specially impressive, the one for European observers, the other for ourselves. The first, and perhaps the most startling to the Old World watcher of the political skies, upon whose field of vision the flaming ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Edith Southey (now W.), of Dora, and of myself. There is truth in the sketch of Dora, poetic truth, though such as none but a poet-father would have seen. She was unique in her sweetness and goodness. I mean that her character was most peculiar—a compound of vehemence of feeling and gentleness, sharpness and lovingness, which is not often seen' ('Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge, edited by her Daughter,' 2 vols. 8vo, 3d edition, 1873, p. 68). Later: 'I do confess that I have never been able to rank "The Triad" among Mr. Wordsworth's ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the average mediaeval tomb, of interest chiefly for its age. These figures are slightly defaced, the sharp edges worn smooth by time, and scores of initials have been scratched roughly on the surface of his armour or her mantle; but there is a certainty of line, a sharpness, and at the same time a suavity of angle, a way of disposing the head and hands and body, all within the stiff convention of rigid tomb carving, that to any lover of sculpture reveals the sure hand of a master, whether he were a nameless stonemason, working in a secluded village, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... him to take him by the hand, he made great mistakes. His wife and he cared nothing for one another, but she was jealous to the last degree. I never saw such jealousy. It was strange that, although she almost hated him, she watched him with feline sharpness and patience, and would even have killed any woman whom she knew had won his affection. He, on the other hand, openly avowed that marriage without love was nothing, and flaunted without the least modification the most ideal theories ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... making her queer, for she's changed from sharpness to tearfulness, and she weeps any time. A thing I never ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... woods the Slate-colored Snowbird (Fringilla Hudsonia) starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed is almost metallic in its sharpness. He breeds here, and is not esteemed a snowbird at all, as he disappears at the near approach of winter, and returns again in spring, like the Song-Sparrow, and is not in any way associated with the cold and the snow. So different are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... sharply to the hatchway and descended, wondering why one of the sailors had not been sent down to quiet Bruff, and of course ignorant of the fact that they had one and all declined to go and face him, for certain reasons associated with the sharpness of his teeth and strength of his jaws, while the mate felt that it would be an easier way of solving the difficulty to send down the dog's ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... are such characteristic antitheses as: "Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13), and "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it" (Matt. 16:25), coming with a spontaneous flash, and answering in their sharpness to the sharp edges of fact. His words caught the attention, and lived in the memory; they revealed such a nature; they ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg.[782] During the (p. 557) later years of the reign successive ministries grappled vainly with this problem, and the political forces of the kingdom came to be divided with unprecedented sharpness by the conflict between the separatist tendency and the demand for immediate and complete incorporation. The king himself was brought eventually to consent to the framing of a constitution for the whole of his dominions, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... average height, slim and elegant. He wore a full beard, dark and carefully tended, and had the long face and pronounced nose of the Boccaneras, but the impoverishment of the family blood over a course of centuries had attenuated, softened as it were, any sharpness ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... elements. In the latter, there is the capacity for the synthesis, for the discovery of far-reaching relationships. Again, we hear that the wise head invents, the acute mind discovers, the deep mind seeks out. The first combines, the second analyzes, the third founds. Wit blends, sharpness clarifies, deepness illuminates. Wit persuades, sharpness instructs, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... to find the hour late, and was going to make inquiry about her brother when a voice arrested her. She recognized Miss Kingsley's voice addressing some one outside, and it had a sharpness she ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... of the cowering flock, He is doing on a small scale what He did once and forever on Calvary; when, exposing Himself to the penalty due to sin, and braving the concentrated antagonism of a broken law, the drawn sword of inviolable justice, the sharpness of death, the shame of the cross, and the humiliation of the grave, He said, "If ye seek Me, let these ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... offensive weapons consisted of swords, battle-axes, and spears; but the Macedonian pike was shortened a fourth of its length, and reduced to the more convenient measure of twelve cubits or feet. The sharpness of the Scythian and Arabian arrows had been severely felt; and the emperors lament the decay of archery as a cause of the public misfortunes, and recommend, as an advice and a command, that the military youth, till the age of forty, should ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... breathes an air of melancholy, an expression which is somewhat rare among the Pharaohs of the best period: the thin and straight nose is well set on the face, the elongated eyes have somewhat heavy lids; the large, fleshy lips, slightly contracted at the corners of the mouth, are cut with a sharpness that gives them singular vigour, and the firm and finely modelled chin loses little of its form from the false beard depending from it. Every detail is treated with such freedom that one would think the sculptor must have had some soft material to work ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... this delicious dissipation until past midnight; and at every seance Aleck lavished millions upon great charities and religious enterprises, and Sally lavished like sums upon matters to which (at first) he gave definite names. Only at first. Later the names gradually lost sharpness of outline, and eventually faded into "sundries," thus becoming entirely—but safely—undescriptive. For Sally was crumbling. The placing of these millions added seriously and most uncomfortably to the family expenses—in tallow candles. For a while Aleck was worried. ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... common yellow ferro-cyanate of potass. As soon as the liquid is applied, the negative picture vanishes, and is replaced by a positive one, of a violet blue color, on a greenish yellow ground, which at a certain time possesses a high degree of sharpness, and ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... was more. He had some sharpness and some taste. But the former was all brought out in sneers, and the latter in snuff-boxes. His whole mind could have been put into one of these. He had a splendid collection of them, and was famous for the grace ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... is generally of the most surface kind—she skims the cream off each item of news, and serves it up to you in her own fashion, caring little whether it be correct or the reverse. And the more vivaciously she talks, the more likely she is to be dangerously insincere and cold-hearted, for the very sharpness of her wit is apt to spoil the more delicate perceptions of her nature. Show me a brilliant woman noted for turning an epigram or pointing a satire, and I will show you a creature whose life is a masquerade, full of vanity, sensuality ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... contino), because he was always cordial and kind, and never crossed Saint Mark's Square without speaking a word of comfort to those in need of good advice, or giving a few sequins[8] to those who were in want of money. And as every blow is wont to fall with double sharpness upon those who are discouraged by misfortune, when at other times they would hardly have felt it at all, so now, when the people heard the bells of Saint Mark's proclaim in solemn muffled tones the death of their Duke, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... flash and his heart softened. Poor thing, poor creature! She was old and feeble, and crippled. He had forgotten. He had only thought of her, Kaya, the girl with the flower-like face. He shook himself, as if out of a dream, and his hand patted the woman's shoulder soothingly. His voice lost its sharpness. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... those who had charge of that house and its supper table. And thus the time was excellently improved till the table was spread, while the short delay and the successive exercises whetted to an extraordinary sharpness the pilgrim's hunger for the supper. Piety and Charity, who had joint charge of the house from the Master of the house, held each a characteristic conversation with Christian, but it was left to Prudence to hold the most particular discourse with ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... honest, or he was patient as well as cunning. In no other way could Basterga explain his dupe's inaction. And presently, when he had almost brought himself to accept the former conclusion, on an evening something more than a week later, a thing happened that added sharpness to his anxiety. He was crossing the bridge from the Quarter of St. Gervais, when a man cloaked to the eyes slipped from the shadow of the mills, a little before him, and with a slight but unmistakable gesture of invitation proceeded in front of him without ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... volatile young savage entertained me all through the dinner, utterly superficial herself, yet possessed of a singular sharpness and wit, mostly at my expense; yet she was so charming I forgave her. There is no denying that you become enraged, insulted, chagrined by these women, who, however, by a look, dispel your annoyance. I do not understand it. I found that while an author of a novel she was grossly ignorant of the ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... how many days intervened between that last breaking off of our engagement and Marion's surrender. But I recall now the sharpness of my emotion, the concentrated spirit of tears and laughter in my throat as I read the words of her unexpected letter—"I have thought over everything, and I was selfish...." I rushed off to Walham Green ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... remnant of heavenly innocence still clings to him, for, though fallen, he is still an angel! Mephistopheles in his real nature is without any higher aspirations, he argues with a sarcastic smile on his lips, he is ironical with sophisticated sharpness. Satan has unconsciously gigantic ideas, he is ready to wrestle with God for the dominion of heaven. Mephistopheles is perfectly conscious of his littleness as opposed to our better intellectual nature, and does evil for evil's sake. Satan is sublime through the grandeur ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... in Little Dorrit, and always afterwards that connection remained with him. Her thin, spare figure had something intense, almost burning, in its immobility, in the deep black of her dress and hair, in the white sharpness of the outline of ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... thick-headed boy, the third in the family, and the one of her children who seemed to have inherited Annie's peasant blood undiluted. He supplied the restful element in a house where the eldest-born was hot-tempered and revengeful and the second son more like a girl-child for sharpness and a woman grown for scheming. Tom had already made up his mind to be Mr. Tonkin's office boy, and from that he meant to become articled clerk, and from that—who could tell? Tom remained quiet on the subject of his ultimate intentions, but he was fighting his mother's apathy and natural habit ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... make his acquaintance in order to learn his business in the town. He had come early, hoping to find footprints that might give him a hint, but was disappointed. There were a number of marks, but they had lost their sharpness and he could not tell which had been ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... STRANGER: Too great sharpness or quickness or hardness is termed violence or madness; too great slowness or gentleness is called cowardice or sluggishness; and we may observe, that for the most part these qualities, and the temperance and manliness of the opposite characters, are arrayed as enemies on opposite sides, and do ...
— Statesman • Plato
... a singularly intelligent child, and so must often have wondered what has become of all the interesting things that you read about in the old fairy-tales—the shoes of swiftness, and the sword of sharpness, and the cloak that made its wearer invisible, and things like that. Well, the fact is all these things are still in the world, hidden about somewhere, only people are so busy with new inventions, wireless telegraphs and X rays, and air-ships, that ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... ground supplants the shepherd, as the shepherd supplants the hunter; and the like holds also in the history of the branch of art we are discussing—representations of animals are the first to make their appearance, and they are at this period remarkable for a wonderful sharpness of characterization. At a later stage man first begins to exhibit a preference for plant-forms as subjects for representation, and above all for such as can in any way be useful or hurtful to him. We, however, meet such ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... sky thus with meek words address'd:— "Much I have learn'd; but tell me this—why of our copper coin Does one side bear a ship, and one a double head like thine?"[17] "That head is mine; you might have known the likeness of the face But that hoar age and wear have dull'd the sharpness of the trace. As for the ship, attend: the god that bears the scythe whilcome Far-wandering in the Tuscan flood at length had ceased to roam.[18] Well I remember when he came, and hold the memory dear— Saturn, by Jove expell'd from heaven, and kindly welcom'd here. Thence was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... song breathe forth a flame of minstrel fire. O happy tribe of choristers! no interruption mars The concert of your harmony, nor ever harshly jars A string of all your harping, nor of your voices trill Notes that are weak for tameness, that are for sharpness shrill. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... churches on the Coelian; the low villa-covered ridges to the right melting into the Campagna; and far away, the blue, Sabine mountains—'suffused with sunny air'—that look down with equal kindness on the refuge of Horace, and the oratory of St. Benedict. What sharpness of wall and tree against the pearly sky—what radiance of blossom in the neighbouring gardens—what ruin everywhere, yet ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... face still bore the stamp of a simple and severe beauty, but time and grief had dealt ungently with it. The lips were pale and anaemic, two or three folds, sharp as if made with a knife, surrounded them. About the eyes, whose soft and lambent light of other days had turned into a hard and troubled sharpness, spread concentric rings, united by a ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair within was thrown in hard, black outline upon the luminous screen of the window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... child cleanly, and secondly, take off the sharpness of its urine. As to keeping it cleanly, she must be a sorry nurse who needs to be taught how to do it; for if she lets it but have dry, warm and clean beds and cloths, as often and as soon as it has fouled and wet them, either by ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... fire, by which not much execution was done. At length one of these parties, led by Captains Waggoner and Porterfield, engaged the British flank guard very closely, killed a captain with ten or fifteen privates, drove them out of the wood, and were on the point of taking a field piece. The sharpness of the skirmish soon drew a large body of the British to that quarter, and the Americans were again driven over ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Kate. Joan awoke with a start at the sharpness of this voice. "Don't shoot, Buck. See that bit of paper under his throat. He's bringing ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... and agony was mine. I was the horse, hanging poised on the verge of the giddy tower, the next moment to be borne sheer down to destruction. Involuntarily, I raised my hand to feel the leanness and sharpness of my face. Oh horror! the flesh had fallen from my bones, and it was a skeleton head that I carried on my shoulders! With one bound I sprang to the parapet, and looked down into the silent courtyard, then filled with the shadows thrown into it by the sinking moon. Shall I cast myself ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
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