"Acute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and there was a keen edge to their appetites, so that some of them became a little unruly, kicking, neighing, and nipping at their neighbors out of sheer sportiveness. "Napoleon," the ancient stallion, had been devoured by such an acute sensation of hunger that as soon as the fat guard aforementioned came near him with the measure he tore it out of the man's hands and gave him such a push against his paunch that the guard dropped the oats and, pressing both hands ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... apt to make slight mistakes, and these slight mistakes, as a result of their critical education, fill them with horror and dread. To discover blunders in their signed work when the time for correction is past, causes them acute suffering. They reach at length a state of morbid anxiety and scrupulosity which prevents them from doing anything at all, for fear of possible imperfections. The examen rigorosum to which they are continually ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... because he experiences no condemnation, though they are in opposition to the truth. There is great beauty in the thought, and gratification in the knowledge, that by obedience to the truth we can obtain a sound moral condition, whose conscientious principles are so acute that there is a timely warning at every approach ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... their form, and useful only in helping people to get on in their daily pursuits. But the eighteenth century was not a spiritual age, in comparison with the age which preceded it, either in Europe or America. The acute and exhaustive treatises of the seventeenth century on God, on "fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," on the foundation of morals, on consciousness as a guide in metaphysical speculation, had lost much of their prestige, if Jonathan Edwards' immortal ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... burning with an unusual colour. He cursed himself for coming, yet the sound of every carriage which turned the corner sent the blood leaping through his veins. He cursed himself for a fool, but waited with the eagerness of a boy, and when her brougham came into sight he was conscious of an acute thrill of excitement which turned him almost dizzy. Supposing—she were not alone? He forgot to draw back into the shadows, as at first had been his intention, but stood in the middle of the pavement, so that the footman, who jumped down to open the carriage door, looked at him curiously. She ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... nourished to preserve their efficiency. It is a gross libel to say that the Communists, or even the leading People's Commissaries, live luxurious lives according to our standards; but it is a fact that they are not exposed, like their subjects, to acute hunger and the weakening of energy that accompanies it. No tone can blame them for this, since the work of government must be carried on; but it is one of the ways in which class distinctions have reappeared where it was intended that they should be banished. I talked ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... and a man of talent. Genius grasps the idea, and works from it outward; talent moulds the form in which the already created idea may be embodied. Genius is creative, comprehensive, intuitive, all-seeing; talent is acute, one-sided, cumulative, inductive. The men of genius will ever be found to be gifted with this womanly quality of mind—the power of seizing truth, ideas, with the heart and soul, through love, rather than ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... no fool. His perceptions, in fact, became remarkably acute where his own interests were at stake, and he had the power of curbing that demoniacal temper of his, even in its maddest moment, if self-advantage ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... for prisoners had by this time become acute both for Austria and for Russia. According to the Russian Department of the Interior, which had charge of the maintenance of prisoners, there were then in Russia, exclusive of the Germans reported captured ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... alive. I was mistaken, however, and indeed had endangered what I desired should be considered as a secret; for I afterwards learned that a highly respectable gentleman, one of the few surviving friends of my father, and an acute critic, had said, upon the appearance of the work, that he was now convinced who was the author of it, as he recognised, in the "Antiquary," traces of the character of a very intimate friend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... by soprano solos, and listen to the refined tinkle of the sixpences and shillings, and the vulgar chink of the pennies and ha'pennies, in the contribution-boxes. Country ministers, I am told, develop such an acute sense of hearing that they can estimate the amount of the collection before it is counted. There is often a huge pewter plate just within the church door, in which the offerings are placed as the worshipers enter or leave; and one ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... those in the official 'Pilots' of to-day. This book, well called his Brief Recit et Succincte Narration, is quite as easy for an Englishman to read in French as Shakespeare is for a Frenchman to read in English. It abounds in acute observations of all kinds, but particularly so in its sailing directions. Compare, for instance, his remarks on Cumberland Harbour with those made in the latest edition of the St Lawrence Pilot after the surveys of four hundred years. Or take his few, exact, and graphic words about Isle-aux-Coudres ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... West the crisis did not seem so acute. But Clay, now seventy-four years old, and cured of his ambition to be President, was sent back to the Senate in the hope of averting the calamity of a disruption of the Union. Thomas H. Benton, though ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... are quite enough for their confutation with acute thinkers. If Christ had been a mere man, it would have been ridiculous in him to call himself the 'Son of Man;' but being God and man, it then became, in his own assumption, a peculiar and mysterious title. So, if Christ had been a mere man, his saying, 'My father is greater ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... higher impressive central paths are disturbed: centro-sensory dysphasia and aphasia, or word-deafness. Words are heard but not understood. The hearing is acute. "Patients may have perfectly correct ideas, but they lack the correct expression for them; not the thoughts but the words are confused. They would understand the ideas of others also if they only understood the words. They ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... acute rheumatism in his right hand, and being disabled from writing, he had, after consultation with his junior, delegated him to make the necessary disclosures to the absent doctor. Seabrooke was observed to be doing a great deal of ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... to worry about just then, something so acute that it could not be shared with another worry. His pitching was undergoing violent assault. He was sure he had plenty of stuff on the ball. Nevertheless, the rival team was lacing his best efforts to all ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... all the woods along roads and canals, in order to render travelling more secure. In Brabant, many villages had lost more than half their houses, the mills were destroyed and the flocks scattered. The conditions in several of the towns were still worse. At Ghent the famine was so acute among the poor that they even ate the garbage thrown in the streets. The population of Antwerp, from 100,000 in the fifteenth century, had fallen to 56,948 in 1645. Lille, on account of its industry, and Brussels, owing to the presence of the court, were the only centres which succeeded ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... not, as a rule, acute. Like sheep the three men proceeded to carry up from the water's edge Stanley's boat, which was required to carry the heavy case, their own dinghy being too small. This done, they rowed off silently to the yawl, which was rolling lazily in the ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... scientific abduction, compels the complex rayings of each soul-star to a singular simplicity, as by the spectrum analysis. The one, again, fulfils his aim by a broad synthesis based upon the vivid observance and selection of vital details: the other by an extraordinary acute psychic analysis. In a word, Shakspere works as with the clay of human action: Browning as with the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... goodness," his "constant peace," his "justice of heart," his "rectitude of soul." His conversation, so Marmontel reports to us, had something more animated, more delicate, than even his divine writings. The same acute observer noted that in the heart of Vauvenargues, when he reflected upon the misery of mankind, pity took the place of indignation and hatred. Sensitive, serene, compassionate, affable, he tried to conceal from his ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... me caution as to myself, that there are those that are my enemies as well as his, and by name my Lord Bruncker, who hath said some odd speeches against me. So that he advises me to stand on my guard; which I shall do, and unless my too-much addiction to pleasure undo me, will be acute enough for any of them. We rode to and again in the Parke a good while, and at last home and set me down at Charing Crosse, and thence I to Mrs. Pierces to take up my wife and Mercer, where I find her new picture by Hales do not please her, nor me indeed, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... In nine cases out of ten such women make their living in a manner they do not care to have known. They conduct themselves with the utmost propriety towards all persons living in the house with them, and are considered ladies by even acute judges. These same judges are sometimes a little startled to meet these virtuous dames in places where ladies are never seen. Of course the secret is kept, and the woman continues ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... worn and shabby, or such as would suit a virtuoso, but the whole arranged with taste and care that made the effect bright, pleasant, and comfortable. Lord Ormersfield stood on the hearth-rug waiting. His face was that of one who had learnt to wait, more considerate than acute, and bearing the stamp both of toil and suffering, as if grief had taken away all mobility of expression, and left ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sorts. The remainder of the Goethals program called for steel ships, of which he promised 3,000,000 tons in eighteen months. Another feature of the Goethals policy was the immediate commandeering of private ships in the stocks, whether owned by Americans, Allies, or neutrals. Acute friction arose between General Goethals and Mr. Denman, mainly over the question of the former's negotiations and plans with the steel interests. In the end President Wilson intervened by accepting the invited resignations of both, and placing the shipbuilding in the hands ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... may exist throughout life, is absent from the Southern system of education, both of the past and as proposed for the future. Education is in a broad sense a remedy for all social ills; but the disease we have to deal with now is not only constitutional but acute. A wise physician does not simply give a tonic for a diseased limb, or a high fever; the patient might be dead before the constitutional remedy could become effective. The evils of slavery, its injury to whites and blacks, and to ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... revealed the tender and high walk of his own mind and its near familiarity with heavenly things, that Eleanor thought her heart would break. The feeling, how far he stood above her in knowledge and in goodness, while it was a secret and deep joy, yet gave her acute pain such as she never had felt before. She would not weep; it was a dry aching pain, that took part of its strength from the thought of having done or shewn something that he did not like. But Mr. Rhys went on to pray for her alone; and Eleanor was conquered then. Tears came ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... "i" represents upside-down i (used in I.3.6). {gh} represents yogh (used in I.4.10). {L} represents the "pounds" symbol. Letters with diacritics are "unpacked" and shown within braces: {a'} {e'} a with acute accent, e with grave accent Irregularities in chapter numbering are explained at the end ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... has always appeared to me a very remarkable woman. She has no mediocrity in anything; understanding keen, perception wonderfully swift, heart large and sensitive, nerves high strung, sensibilities acute. A person of her sex, tuned so high as this, is always subject, more or less, to hysteria. It is controlled by her intelligence and spirit; but she is now, for the time being, in a physical condition that has often deranged less sensitive women than she ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... invited to dinner with his two constant quizzers, the fat doctor and the acute purser, just as we had made the east of Jamaica. I, it having been my forenoon watch, was consequently invited with the officer of it. We had lately been too much occupied to think of annoying each other; but those who unfortunately think that they have a prescriptive right to be disagreeable, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of the heart, which has to be considerable in man for him to be able to stand erect. So that size of the brain, by reason of its humidity, is an impediment to the smell, which requires dryness. In the same way, we may suggest a reason why some animals have a keener sight, and a more acute hearing than man; namely, on account of a hindrance to his senses arising necessarily from the perfect equability of his temperament. The same reason suffices to explain why some animals are more rapid in movement than man, since this excellence of speed is inconsistent with the equability ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... ground out Kennedy. "He lured his wife from Paris to New York, thinking the Paris police too acute for him, I suppose. Then by means of the treachery of the maid Louise and his friend Duval, a crook who would even descend to play the part of valet for him and fall in love with the maid, he has succeeded in removing the woman who stood between him ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... fervid truisms and hap-hazard generalities, as often disputable as not, if often acute and striking, always ingenuous and pleasant, was, like all his other writings, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... uncomfortable angles to our rest-seeking bodies. A man might imagine for a moment that he had found a position of ease, but always discovered quickly that some unyielding point was impinging on muscle or bone. The first night aboard the boat was one of acute discomfort for us all, and we were heartily glad when the dawn came and we could set about the preparation of a ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... the room. He stopped in his stride for half a second. So she had begun pestering him already! It is wonderful how acute any fool can be in the affairs ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... kindness of Count Waldstein, the explicit testimony of Junker, that he was not, could not have been, the young savage which some of his blind admirers have represented him. The bare supposition is an insult to his memory. That his sense of probity and honor was most acute, that he was far above any, the slightest, meanness of thought or action, of a noble and magnanimous order of mind, utterly destitute of any feeling of servility which rendered it possible for him to cringe to the rich and the great, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... through Russia to his mother's house without warning of his approach. He rushed precipitately into her presence; and she, who had stood the shocks of sorrow, was found unequal to the shock of joy too sudden and too acute. She died ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... Then in a few days his sight grew dim, and he had to clutch hold of the stair railings to prevent himself from falling. As for his health, he had abominable headaches and dizziness. All on a sudden he was seized with acute pains in his arms and legs; he turned pale; was obliged to sit down, and remained on a chair witless for hours; indeed, after one such attack, his arm remained paralyzed for the whole day. He took to his bed several times; he rolled himself up and hid himself ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... so challenged, answered, "When we were perishing of cold and there was a great depth of snow." Xenophon said: "Upon my word, with weather such as you describe, when our provisions had run out, when the wine could not even be smelt, when numbers were dropping down dead beat, so acute was the suffering, with the enemy close on our heels; certainly, if at such a season as that I was guilty of outrage, I plead guilty to being a more outrageous brute than the ass, which is too wanton, they ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... hairs, but the hairs, in this case, are turned away from the centre of the plant. The cavity of the side lobes is generally empty, but that of the central lobe is occupied by a very slender stalk, which is apparently the termination of the midrib, but which is bent inwards at an acute angle, so as to occupy the hollow space (figs. 90-91). On this slender axis are developed two florets, more or less imperfect in their structure. Only one of the florets that I have seen contained a perfect ovary. The tips of the lateral ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... shone red and yellow with turning foliage. There was a fresh breeze down the river and a thousand whitecaps gleamed in the sunlight. Overhead great white clouds moved majestically athwart the blue. But I took no pleasure in it all. I was suffering from an acute mental and physical depression. Like Hamlet I had lost all my mirth—whatever I ever had—and the clouds seemed but a "pestilent congregation of vapors." I sat in a sort of trance as I was whirled farther and farther away from ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... difference between the two families became more acute. They differed on every possible point. They wore different tartans, sat under different ministers, drank different brands of whisky, and upheld different doctrines in regard ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... the melody of her voice, and last, but not least, the maze of her rhetoric, as it glittered before his mind's eye like a cobweb diamonded with dew. A sea of new thoughts and questions, if not of doubts, came rushing in at every sentence on his acute Greek intellect, all the more plentifully and irresistibly because his speculative faculty was as yet altogether waste and empty, undefended by any scientific culture from the inrushing flood. For the first time in his life he found himself face to face ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... in close touch with Miriam, even in thought. He needed her more than ever in this sea of silence that was gathering everywhere about him. Gulf upon gulf it rose and folded over him. His anxiety became every moment more acute, and those black serpents of fear that he dreaded were not very far away. By every fiber in his being he felt certain that a test which should shake the very foundations of his psychical life was ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... grating, dim figures were moving. It was impossible to distinguish whether, behind the thick bars, three or five or twenty veiled women were flitting to and fro like startled ghosts. Indeed, none but Casanova, with eyes preternaturally acute to pierce the darkness, could discern that they were human ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... has happened either to-day or very recently—I am sure of it—that has stirred up within you this feeling of acute dissatisfaction. It was always there. But something has called it into the open. What has ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... the learned as for the sake of the people generally; that they may be rightly instructed in the doctrine of salvation and of Christian morals. In the meantime we must do our best to satisfy all; that the simple be not left without needful teaching; the more acute find no want of force and argument; nor the learned charge the preacher with a pride of knowledge foreign to the occasion and not ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... A. ACUTE Acute Laminitis Definition Causes Symptoms Pathological Anatomy Complications Diagnosis and Prognosis Treatment Broad's Treatment for Laminitis Smith's ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... that he might enjoy the advantages of the poet's conversation, read Latin to him every afternoon save Sunday. The whilst his voice rose and fell in regular monotony, the blind man drank his words with thirsty ears; and so acute were the senses remaining to him, that when Elwood read what he did not understand, Milton perceived it by the inflection of his voice, and stopped him to explain the passage. In fair weather the poet wandered abroad, enjoying the fragrance of sweet pasture land, and the warmth of glad sunlight he ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... crime by flogging, a sentence of one or two hundred—even more—blows would seem to be cruel and disgusting; happily, it may be taken for granted that such ferocious sentences are executed only in such cases as have been mentioned above. An acute observer, for many years a member of the municipal police force in Shanghai, whose duty it was to see that floggings were administered to Chinese criminals, stated plainly in a public report that ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... work with such acuteness. The organ by which women instinctively, as it were, know and feel how other women are regarded by men, and how also men are regarded by other women, is equally strong, and equally incomprehensible. A glance, a word, a motion, suffices: by some such acute exercise of her feminine senses the signora was aware that Mr. Arabin loved Eleanor Bold; therefore, by a further exercise of her peculiar feminine propensities, it was quite natural for her to entrap Mr. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... bird life; he chewed bark, and in the afternoon got a mouthful of foxbite, which made his throat swell until he could scarcely breathe. At night he made tea, but had nothing to eat. His hunger was acute and painful. It was torture the next day— the third— for the process of starvation is a rapid one in this country where only the fittest survive on from four to five meals a day. He camped, built ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... realized that he knew nothing of her life, her real inner life. She was a book written in characters unintelligible to him and to everybody. He was tortured with the problem of her till it became acute, and he felt as if his heart would burst inside him. As a boy he had experienced the same sort of feeling after wrestling for an hour with a problem in Euclid, for he ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... wonderful ways of conveying a prejudice. Warts? Well, there, at any rate, we have the advantage of old Noll." The Collector, whose sense of hearing was acute and fastidious, broke off with a sharp arching of the eyebrows and a glance up at the ceiling, or rather (since ceiling there was none) at the oaken beams which supported the floor overhead. "Manasseh," he said quickly, "be good enough to step upstairs and inform our landlady that the pitch ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the words, and would criticise the type or the handwriting. A line of a folded note pressed against the back of her neck, she read equally well: she called this sense-feeling. Contact was necessary for it. Her sense of smell was at the same time singularly acute; when out riding one day, she said, "There is a violet," and cantered her horse fifty yards to where it grew. Persons whom she knew she could tell were approaching the house, when yet at some distance. When persons ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... little arithmetic; and even that was abandoned as soon as Carmen had mastered the decimal system. Thereafter he wrote out each lesson for her, carefully wording it that it might contain nothing to shock her acute sense of the allness of God, and omitting from the vocabulary every reference to evil, to failure, disaster, sin and death. In mathematics he was sure of his ground, for there he dealt wholly with the metaphysical. But ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... entire tribe, many of the prayers being offered for the general welfare of the people rather than for the patient under immediate treatment. Nor, so far as the individual is concerned, is the ceremony designed necessarily for the cure of an acute ailment, but is for the treatment of long-standing chronic afflictions, mental or physical. Especially peculiar is the Navaho belief that many illnesses are the results of fright to which ancestors have been subjected during prenatal ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... acute and discerning mind, he witnessed the extending influence of the whites, with painful solicitude. Listening with melancholy rapture, to the traditionary accounts of the former greatness of his nation, and viewing in anticipation the exile or extinction ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... which alone can make them happy. Poor Oowikapun was now in this sad company. All his fears are aroused, and in his vain efforts to quiet them he is about to go through a most severe ordeal of fasting and acute physical suffering. How terrible is sin! How dreadful must be the goadings of the guilty conscience when men and women will so punish themselves, if thereby they can ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the door, after securing the handle, she found the carriage full of a pale twilight. The train was stealing into the gorge, following the caravan of camels which she had seen disappearing. She paid no more attention to her companion, and her feeling of acute irritation against him died away for the moment. The towering cliffs cast mighty shadows, the darkness deepened, the train, quickening its speed, seemed straining forward into the arms of night. There was a chill in the air. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... matter, dear lady," interrupted Murray, "and I haven't gone and got anything except an acute attack of early rising which is not in the least likely to become chronic. But at what hour of the night do you get up, you wonderful woman? Or rather do you ever go to bed at all? Here is the sun only beginning to rise and—positively yes, you have ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... irritability are not always so slow moving as to span over either months or years in their fell work. Instances of their sudden action have been sufficiently recorded as to warrant them as being classed as causative agents in acute affections that instantly threaten life. In the London Lancet of May 16, 1846, there is a record of a very peculiar case reported to the London Medical Society by Dr. Golding Bird: "The case was that of a child seven or eight weeks ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... egotism, and gratified vanity may have had a good deal to do with her unqualified admiration of Mrs. Thrale; for "Evelina" (recently published) was the unceasing topic of exaggerated eulogy during the entire visit. Still so acute an observer could not be essentially wrong in an account of her reception, which is in the highest degree favourable to her newly acquired friend. Of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... out Mr. Poyntz. "Foker, here is a considerable sum of money offered by a fair capitalist at this end of the table for the present emanations of your valuable and acute ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... over the "carte de Tendre," and their fingers crossed in following the windings of the amorous rivers. The young Poquelin ventured to raise a timid voice and his melancholy but acute glance, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... lacked in experience and the power to synthesise, he more than made up in the perfection of his senses and a certain natural instinct of the woods. He was a better trailer than Sam, his eyesight was keener, his hearing more acute, his sense of smell finer, his every nerve alive and tingling in vibrant unison with the life about him. Where Sam laboriously arrived by the aid of his forty years' knowledge, the younger man leaped by the swift indirection of an Indian—or a woman. Had he only possessed, as did Bolton, a keen ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... endeavor so to govern the passions (each of which combines in itself a masculine impetuosity with a feminine weakness) that they shall take the part of the reason instead of attacking it. Elsewhere Bacon gives (not entirely unquestionable) directions concerning the art of making one's way. Acute observations and ingenious remarks everywhere abound. In order to inform one's self of a man's intentions and ends, it is necessary to "keep a good mediocrity in liberty of speech, which invites a similar liberty, and in secrecy, which induces trust." "In order to get ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... David's friend Hushai, by his wily counsel at the time of Absalom's rebellion, saved the king's life. The narrative in II Samuel declares that the counsel of Ahithophel was esteemed almost as highly as the divine oracle. For his keen insight and acute decisions, as well as for his witty utterances, Solomon gained a reputation which made him in the thought of later generations the father of all wisdom literature. In a significant passage found in Jeremiah 18:18 the three classes of Israel's teachers are brought into sharp ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... thin and broad package, which had acute angles in different directions, flat upon the anvil, and the smith blew up the fire to give him more light. First, after untying the package, a sheet of brown paper was removed: this was laid flat. Then he unfolded a piece ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... violence, confesses his fears for the future. He places less reliance than I do upon the generosity or friendship of Aurelian. It is his conviction that superstition is the reigning power of his nature, and will sooner or later assert its supremacy. It may be so. Probus is an acute observer, and occupies a position more favorable to impartial estimates, and the formation of a dispassionate judgment, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... by four equal and parallel lines but not rectangular, two of its opposite angles being acute, and ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... yet it was wonderful that two such excellent persons should so thoroughly detest each other. Miss R.'s aversion was of the cold, phlegmatic, contemptuous, provoking sort; she kept aloof, and said nothing. Madame's was acute, fiery, and loquacious; she not only hated Miss R., but hated for her sake knowledge, and literature, and wit, and, above all, poetry, which she denounced as something fatal and contagious, ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... dealings with the hostile forces of surrounding nature, and nearly all the forces of evolution were brought to bear upon the organ of the mind, the body remaining practically unchanged. His senses became acute, his cunning and alertness high, his use of weapons skilful, but his field of mental exercise was still the outer world, and the inner world of thought remained in its embryo state. The more recent development of the mind has been in its intellectual ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... that the Colonel's party had strayed into that part by accident, it would have been passed unseen, as it was by the boys and Dinass, for the entrance was so like the rock on either side, and it turned off at such an acute angle, that it might have been passed a hundred times without its existence ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Some acute remarks of Mr. R. Taylor, in the Introduction to his edition of Tooke's "Diversions of Purley," modify this view. According to these, the -ing in words like rising is not the -ing of the present participle; neither has it originated in the Anglo-Saxon -end. It is rather the -ing in words like ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... be at the door in the carriage in which Maisie now rode on no occasions but these. There was no question at present of Miss Overmore's going back with her: it was universally recognised that her quarrel with Mrs. Farange was much too acute. The child felt it from the first; there was no hugging nor exclaiming as that lady drove her away—there was only a frightening silence, unenlivened even by the invidious enquiries of former years, which culminated, according to its stern nature, in a still more frightening old woman, a ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... always made a tremendous impression upon his vivid and uncommon imagination. The great pulses in his throat and temples leaped, and his ear became so keen that he seemed to himself to hear the fall of the leaf in the forest. It was this acute sharpening of the senses, the painting of pictures before him, that gave him the gift of golden speech that the Indians had first noticed in him. He saw and heard much that others could neither hear nor see, and the words to describe ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... though of someone insulted. And he realized that there were real people living here who, like people everywhere else, felt insulted, suffered, wept, and cried for help. The feeling of oppressive hate and disgust gave way to an acute feeling of pity and anger against the aggressor. He rushed into the room where there was weeping. Across rows of bottles on a marble-top table he distinguished a suffering face, wet with tears, stretched out his hands towards that face, took a step towards the table, but at once ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... before yesterday, we took in at the instance of Doctor Patel, a patient suffering from acute gastric trouble. The woman gave us for identification the name of Josephine, no calling, residing in Paris, Rue de Goutte d'Or, in furnished rooms. Some hours after her admission to the hospital, she received a letter, brought by a messenger, which ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... knowing nose to which the prudent observer of Mr. Ricketty would give his closest attention. He would look at the acute interior angle which it formed at the eyes, and think it much too acute to be pleasant and much too interior to be pretty. He would look at the obtuse exterior angle which it formed on its bridge, and wonder how any humane parent could have permitted such a development to ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... feelings, and made no visible attempt to ascertain his, but her bluff sagacious old father was not obtuse—neither was he reticent. He was a man of the world—at least of the back-woods world—and his knowledge of life, as there exhibited, was founded on somewhat acute experience. He knew that his daughter was young and remarkably pretty. He saw that Dick Darvall was also young—a dashing and unusually handsome sailor—something like what Tom Bowling may have been. Putting ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... so much—the great Lord Verulam declares, that if he were asked what is the first, second, and third thing necessary to success in public business, he should answer boldness, boldness, boldness. Success to the nation which possesses it in perfection! Bacon was too acute and candid a philosopher not to acknowledge, that like all the other goods of life this same ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... in him a strange interest, a curiosity that was almost acute; but beyond the fact that his name was Hazon, and the darkly veiled hints on the part of those who alluded to the subject, that he was a ruffian of the deepest dye, Laurence could learn nothing about ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Idees de Mms. Aubray," so subversive of general social feeling, and thereby to experience fully the great dramatic moment in each play, there had to go the effect of innumerable small impulses. And to realize some situations is even beyond the scope of a play's development. It is an acute remark of Mr. G.K. Chesterton's, that many plays nowadays turn on problems of marriage: which subject is one for slow years of adjustment, patience, adaptation, endeavor; while the drama requires quick decisions, bouleversements, ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Anteoni. "That word and its meaning lie like the shadow of a commanding hand on the soul of every Arab, even of the absinthe-drinking renegades one sees here and there who have caught the vices of their conquerors. In the greatest scoundrel that the Prophet's robe covers there is an abiding and acute sense of necessary surrender. The Arabs, at any rate, do not buzz against their Creator, like midges raging at the sun in ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... value to their silver value. A depreciated currency was bad enough when unavoidable, but the deliberate adoption of it would be frank repudiation. Continually, after 1890, popular apprehension of this grew more acute, discouraging the undertaking of new enterprises and leading to the insertion of "gold clauses" in contracts. Gold was hoarded whenever possible. The receipts at the New York Custom-House, which had been mostly gold before 1890, contained less than four per cent of gold in the winter of 1892-93. ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... behind the individual emerges. Divergences in face, in form and in mental characteristics become emphasized. The traits of race and family are manifested and self-consciousness becomes more acute. This period of development, bringing as it does so much disturbance to the vocal organs, is particularly inimical to singing; and yet public school music is expected to produce its most elaborate results ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... been reached by healthy normal processes, not by exaggerated claims or a spurious enthusiasm. The constitution has always been on trial, so to speak, because Canadians are prone to be critical of their institutions. But at every acute crisis popular discontent has been due to maladministration and not to defects of organization. The structure itself stands a monument to those ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... and leave a Swiss mountain. 2. Curtail a large country in Asia, and leave the point of the under jaw. 3. Curtail a scooping instrument, and leave to push. 4. Curtail acute and discerning, and leave a kind of mouse. 5. Curtail a raised floor or platform, and leave a horned animal. 6. Curtail an island on the Kentish coast, and leave ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... a Greek," I observed. "He is serene, clear, his characters are god-like; all they think of are their love affairs, their passions. They are never called upon to face the acute problem of subsistence, which ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... whose thought, and the movements of whose impulses render her at moments more prudent than the Servite Fra-Paolo, the most terrible adviser that the Ten at Venice ever had; more deceitful than a king; more adroit than Louis XI; more profound than Machiavelli; as sophistical as Hobbes; as acute as Voltaire; as pliant as the fiancee of Mamolin; and distrustful of no one in the whole wide world ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... brightness, were sunk deep in their sockets, and had lost much of their quick restlessness. The character of his mind had begun to stamp itself on the physiognomy, especially on the mouth when in repose. It was, a face striking for acute intelligence, for concentrated energy; but there was a something written in it which said, "BEWARE!" It would have inspired any one who had mixed much amongst men with a vague ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the collar as he rose again to the surface, for it was considerably out of his depth; while the deaf purser, whose eyes had been fixed on the ground, in deep attention to catch the doctor's words, and whose ears were not sufficiently acute to hear the splash, looked up as they were going to his assistance, and asked, with surprise, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... nonsense to you. You have trusted me in this matter, and admitted me largely into your confidence, and I shall speak to you in honest, plain English. Mrs. Hilland's symptoms are very serious. What I feared has taken place. From her acute and prolonged mental distress and depression, of which she would have died had you not come, she reacted first into mental lethargy, and now into almost complete mental inactivity. I cannot discover ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... must be found. Those childhood years of hard toil had resulted in remarkable progress, even with the sort of teaching he had received. The circumstances of the family had not improved, for poverty had become acute, as the father became more and more addicted to drink. Just at this time, a new lodger appeared, who was something of a musician, and arranged to teach the boy in part payment for his room. Ludwig ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... is a gift that I have; simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... use circumflex accents over vowels to mark long vowels. For ash, however, the actual character '' represents the long vowel. Short ash is rendered with a-umlaut (). The long diphthongs (eo, ea, etc.) are indicated with an acute accent over the second vowel (e, ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... already 'rent' and worn too thin to be capable of repair. The only thing to be done was 'as a vesture' to 'fold it up' and shape a new garment out of new cloth. What was true as to the supremely new thing which He brought into the world remains true, in less eminent degree, of the less acute differences between the Old and the New, within Christianity itself. There do come times when its externals become antiquated, worn thin and torn, and when patching is useless. Christian men, like others, constitutionally ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... became acute. "By George! Is that right, doc? Are we likely to learn what the next hundred years will do ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... flattered with your acute and polite attention, and can do no less than profit by it—so hand up the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... person of good height, originally slender, but gathering an appreciable plumpness as the years went on, and with good taste in dress when she chose to exert it, which on the present occasion she did. She possessed acute perceptions and a decided method of action. But whether or not the relation of her perceptions to her actions was always influenced by good judgment was a question with her neighbors. It never was, ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... so great as that of Magni, nor did his eloquence by any means compare with that of Petri. But in matters of diplomacy, in the art of comprehending human nature, he was unsurpassed by any prelate of the day. He was singularly acute in forming his conclusions. Rarely if ever did he express opinions that were not ultimately verified by facts. His versatility, moreover, was something marvellous. While weighted down with every sort of trouble and anxiety, he spent his leisure moments in writing perfectly delightful letters ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... Scotland, "November 25, 184—. "My Dearest Father: I wrote to you about six weeks ago, informing you that I was in sorrow and in danger, and imploring you to come and comfort and protect me. And since that time I have been waiting with the most acute anxiety to hear from you by letter or in person. Expecting this with confidence, I did not think it necessary to write again. But, as so long a time has elapsed, I begin to fear that you have not received my letter, and so I write again. Oh, my father! if you should ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... black, "I should consider you to be a philologist, who, for some purpose, has taken up a Gypsy life; but I confess to you that your way of answering questions is far too acute for ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... danger and the burden, but found no difficulty when the stress became acute in enacting that all infants should be ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... of regarding it, however imperfect, or cloudy, or unpractical they might find the development of his ideas, and his deductions from them. And in Oxford the questions which had stirred the friends at Hadleigh had stirred others also, and had waked up various responses. Whately's acute mind had not missed these questions, and had given original if insufficient answers to them. Blanco White knew only too well their bearing and importance, and had laboured, not without success, to leave behind him his own impress on the way in which they should be dealt with. ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... to Nan, went abruptly to his stateroom, and spent a night of feverish dreams. His exhaustion was so acute, restful sleep was impossible. Through the night his mind went over and over the horror of the moment on that marsh when he had looked into the depths of his own soul and seen the ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... vision, even when this is increased by the microscope. The smallest insects are also too small to be seen, yet they have organs of sense and motion, for they feel, walk, and fly. That they have brains, hearts, pulmonary pipes, and viscera, acute observers have discovered from their anatomy by means of the microscope. Since minute insects themselves are not visible, and still less so their component viscera, and since it is not denied that they are organized even to each single particle in them, how can it be said that the two ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... excuse. At the same time Americans suffered to such an extent that Mr. Norman W. Kittson at Pembina wanted permission to destroy all liquor and punish all offenders, promising "that very little would be introduced after a short time".[382] So acute was the difficulty that it became the subject of diplomatic correspondence with Great Britain; but the authorities of the Hudson's Bay Company retorted that "spirits are even clandestinely introduced into the Company's territories by ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... discredited, and discouraged, then, perhaps, he would turn to her as he had in the by-gone days. He was slipping away from her—this was her last chance. She began her duties easily, and her alertness stimulated Bronco till his senses, too, grew sharper, his observation more acute and lightning-like. Glenister swore beneath his breath that the cards were bewitched. He was like a drunken man, now as truly intoxicated as though the fumes of wine had befogged his brain. He swayed in his seat, the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... He was then told that the torture would soon restore him his voice, and some select gendarmes seized him and laid him on the rack; there he uttered no complaint, not even a sigh, though instruments the most diabolical were employed, and pains the most acute must have been endured. When threatened that he should expire in torments, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... becoming really acute—the village people are about starving in some sections and are not as well off as the people in the big towns; it is the policy to keep the people in the cities as content as possible in order to prevent ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... so acute, the analysis of motives and conduct so skilful, and, withal, the wit and satire so keen, that the reader does not tire.—Christian ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... Jordan couldn't help her teeth, and her sleeves were a distinct rise in the world. A thousand tulips at a shilling clearly took one further than a thousand words at a penny; and the betrothed of Mr. Mudge, in whom the sense of the race for life was always acute, found herself wondering, with a twinge of her easy jealousy, if it mightn't after all then, for her also, be better—better than where she was—to follow some such scent. Where she was was where Mr. Buckton's elbow could freely enter her ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... where it was not easily to be found, must be better prepared, than any other man, for the perusal of these ambiguous expressions; and that, besides, the explication of this stone, being a task which nothing could surmount but the most acute penetration, joined with indefatigable patience, seemed, in reality, reserved for those who have given proofs of both, in the highest degree, by reading and understanding ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... oxen on the other, and no Hercules had ever done duty in cleansing the stables. But there was a dry loft overhead with some straw, where we might get some sleep, in spite of the rain and the midges; a double layer of boards, standing at a very acute angle, would keep off the former, while the mingled refuse hay and muck beneath would nurse a smoke that would prove a thorough protection against the latter. And then, when Jim, the two-handed, mounting the trunk of a prostrate maple near ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... exhibited his usual energy, though it was thought by some he executed his duties with too great severity. Ever since receiving his wound, he had complained of severe neuralgic pains in the region of the heart. Except that this pain was slightly more acute than usual, the major retired to his tent on the night of the 3d, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... on,—the slow, penurious winter of exhaustion after the acute fury of the spring and summer. These were hard times in earnest, not with the excitement of failures and bankruptcies, but with the steady grind of low wages, no employment, and general depression. The papers said things ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... just our lives,' he concluded, in a silence so acute that the crackling of the logs startled the air like pistol-shots, 'for as Dick fell we went forward and gained the brushwood. Less than three hours afterwards the French arrived, and largely by the use of that bridge a heavy counter-attack was launched. We buried Dick where he fell—and, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Really acute inflammation of the brain is of so rare occurrence except as the result of accident or injury, and its symptoms are of so serious a character, even from the first, that medical advice is obviously needed at once. I shall, therefore, pass it over here, ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... his return to the house. About one o'clock he was seized with chilliness and nausea, but having changed his clothes he sat down to his indoor work. At night, on joining his family circle, he complained of a slight indisposition. Upon the night of the following day, having borne acute suffering with composure ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... that, had it not been for the cries he sent forth when any one approached near enough to touch him, for his peculiar dress, slight food, strange manner of eating, and sleeping in the air, or buried in straw, as we have related, no one could have supposed but that he was one of the most acute persons in ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
