"Acute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... becoming firmly fixed in the acute mind of the young adventurer, and it tended to make him both watchful and silent. Not only was he in a country which was at war with his own, but he was in a land where men were apt to be more or ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... are totally foreign. He thoroughly enjoys country loitering, and when he gets a hint of anything interesting or new going on among the birds and little creatures of the fields, he likes to stop and investigate. His ears are remarkably quick and his eyes and sense of smell phenomenally acute, and much which to most of us would be unperceived or meaningless he reads as if it were an open book. Best of all, he has the power of imparting his enjoyment, and what he writes is full of outdoor fragrance, racy, piquant, and individual. His snap and vivacity ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... the doctor, cheerfully. "Oh no! I was present. Acute double pneumonia! Sometimes happens like that! I can give a certificate. But of course you will have to go to the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... host, the guests were silent for a while—all watching his movements and the play of his features; but the impassible countenance of Don Estevan did not betray a single emotion that was passing his mind, even to the most acute observer around the table. In truth he was a man who well knew how to dissemble his thoughts, and perhaps on that very occasion, more than any other, he required all ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... cure; though confined to his bed, his mind, ever active, still allowed him time to continue the exercise of his intellectual powers, and afforded him leisure for contemplation. Medical men are too often called upon to witness the effects of acute rheumatism in the young subject: in some, the attack is on the heart, and its consequences are immediate; in others, it leaves behind bodily sufferings, which may indeed be palliated, but terminate only in a ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... The alteration made obtuse or outside a square, in hewing timber, as opposed to acute, or under-bevelling, which is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... examined, and an operation performed, one of a very simple nature, but sufficient to give instant relief; while the Hakim's instructions that the lad was to remain lying down for a month were not hard for one who had not stood up, save in acute ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... An acute melancholy seized him. Absently, he sat down at the piano. The prejudices of literary Mr Prosser had slipped from his mind. Softly at first, then gathering volume as the spirit of the song gripped him, he began to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... boks/ n. 1. A computer sufficiently small, primitive, or incapable as to cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought of developing software on or for it. Especially used of small, obsolescent, single-tasking-only personal machines such as the Atari 800, Osborne, Sinclair, VIC-20, TRS-80, or IBM PC. 2. [Pejorative] More generally, ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... upon the Divine immanence must have for one of its effects that of raising the problem of evil afresh, and in a particularly acute form, will be obvious to anyone who has thought out for himself the implications of that doctrine. Dark and pressing enough before, this particular problem has, in appearance at least, been both complicated and accentuated ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... conclusion in questions of sentiment, of love of faith, as it is to measure the logical value of a conclusion in geometrical problems. In the questions which interest us the logical process is hidden. Surely my dear friend Marinier, one of the most acute-minded men I know, when he answered my dear friend Selva, did not intend to imply that when a person very dear to us falls ill, it is necessary for us to decide what method of treatment to adopt before hastening ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... circular movement over the stomach. VIBRATE THE SOLAR PLEXUS with short, sharp vibrations far up into the chest, this will cover the muscles of the lungs and of the heart. This is a very essential work as it gives new strength to those muscles of the heart and lungs to ward off acute attacks of any kind. ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... year 1802 Napoleon began to feel acute pains in his right side. I have often seen him at Malmaison, when sitting up at night, lean against the right arm of his chair, and unbuttoning his coat and waistcoat exclaim,—"What pain I feel!" I would then ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... at our supper that night, 'Miss Fareway is remarkably beautiful, sir, remarkably engaging. Don't you think so?' 'I think so,' said I. And I stole a glance at him, and saw that he had reddened and was thoughtful. I remember it most vividly, because the mixed feeling of grave pleasure and acute pain that the slight circumstance caused me was the first of a long, long series of such mixed impressions under which ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... whence this fine species of camel is supposed originally to have been brought into The Desert. The Touaricks, of course, have very curious legends about their peculiar camel. We have, however, the Arabic مهر, "to be diligent," "acute-minded," and the term مهاراة, "flying away," from which مهري may probably be derived. At least there is no apparent objection to such derivation. The Hebrew cognate dialect has the word also. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... we do not call a host a guest, nor a guest a host. The ancient Romans did so. They, with a language that was as lucid as their climate and was a perfect expression of the sharp hard logical outlook fostered by that climate, had but one word for those two things. Nor have their equally acute descendants done what might have been expected of them in this matter. Hate and spite are as mysteriously equivocal as hopes. By weight of all this authority I find myself being dragged to the conclusion that a host and a guest must be the same thing, after all. Yet in a dim and muzzy ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... support. But the most uncomfortable feature of his predicament was a marlinespike which was stuck into his mouth like a bit provided for a fractious horse, and was secured by lashings behind his head. He was effectually gagged. Furthermore, the back of his head ached in most acute fashion. He rolled his eyes about and discovered that he had a companion in misery. A very pretty young woman was seated on a camp-chair across the cabin. Her face ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... be compared with that of Laura Bridgman, who possessed mental powers of a higher order. She had not got the benefit of early, assiduous, and special care that was given to the latter, and probably she had a much less acute mental constitution at the outset of her education. Her education began late, and at a time when very little was known of the proper way of education for a case like hers; and she consequently did not make much progress in language. However, it has been found quite easy to ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... stimulates us to all our great undertakings. Without pride, and the secret persuasion of extraordinary talents, what man would take up the pen with a view to produce an important work, whether of imagination and poetry, or of profound science, or of acute and subtle reasoning and intellectual anatomy? It is pride in this sense that makes the great general and the consummate legislator, that animates us to tasks the most laborious, and causes us to shrink from no difficulty, and to be confounded and overwhelmed with no obstacle that can be interposed ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... court outside, or, at farthest, in the bar of the King's Arms, to be asked a multitude of questions, almost certain to include that interesting question, what would he take to drink? Then would Mr Perch descant upon the hours of acute uneasiness he and Mrs Perch had suffered out at Balls Pond, when they first suspected 'things was going wrong.' Then would Mr Perch relate to gaping listeners, in a low voice, as if the corpse of the deceased House were lying unburied in the next room, how Mrs Perch had first come to surmise ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... and thin and pale, with large black eyes raised heavenwards, and hair curling naturally on a forehead shadowed by melancholy! In reality, Monsieur Jules Sandeau is a good stout fellow, with broad, stalwart shoulders, a tendency to premature obesity, small, bright, gentle, acute eyes, a head as bald as my knee, rather thick lips, and a rubicund complexion; he has an air of good-nature and simplicity which excludes everything like sentimental exaggeration; he wears a black cravat tied negligently around a muscular neck; in fine, he looks like ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... which the United States has in this particular phase of space research is illustrated by the acute photographic talents of the Tiros satellite and their meaning to weather experts. The following description of some of the earliest pictures by the Director of the Office of Meteorological Research, U.S. Weather ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... withdraw. This he was hastily doing, when I hailed him, and desired him to honour us with his company a few minutes longer, as I wished just to ask him a question or two. The impartial judge, Mr. Tinney, said he should protect the witness from answering any improper questions. In reply to this very acute remark, I observed, that it would be quite in good time to do that when any improper question was put. After a great deal of squabbling with the worthy judge upon this occasion, I got the worthy witness, although he had ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... vary so rapidly and so continually, that a contemporary record of opinion, honestly preserved, differs very widely from the final and mature judgment of history: yet the judgment of history must be based upon contemporary evidence. It was remarked by an acute observer to Mr. Greville himself, that the nuances in political society are so delicate and numerous, the details so nice and varying, that unless caught at the moment they escape, and it is impossible to collect them again. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... soon makes it mortal: that is, if the living do not indulge grief, grief destroys itself by its own excess. By the word mortal I understand that which dies, and Dr. Warburton, that which destroys. I think that my interpretation gives a sentence more acute and more ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... acute enough," asks Hegel, "to see a great deal in his surroundings which is really far from being what it ought to be?" And who also, we may add, has not enough of the generalizing faculty, often mistaken for a philosophical one, to extend this condemnation over the whole ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... "they laugh at it because I have to change Vioget's acute and obtuse angles. They call it 'O'Farrell's Swing.' You see, I've had to change the direction of some streets. There are many more now. Eight hundred acres ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... hastening decisions. Carlisle winced visibly. In her mood of acute sensitiveness, she was for not answering at all. But Mrs. Heth, the fighting man now in full possession of her, tossed off the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... admitted of it, transcribe into this chapter the whole of what has been said upon the morality of the Gospel by the author of The Internal Evidence of Christianity; because it perfectly agrees with my own opinion, and because it is impossible to say the same things so well. This acute observer of human nature, and, as I believe, sincere convert to Christianity, appears to me to have made out satisfactorily ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... acute to accept anything in such a case; she answered the Princess that her generosities, to please the King, should be offered to M. le Duc du Maine, and that, by assuring a part of her succession to that young prince, she had a sure method of moving the monarch, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... taught him long ago that every affair of that kind, at first a divine diversion, a delicious smooth adventure, is in the end a source of worry for a decent man, especially for men like those at Moscow who are slow to move, irresolute, domesticated, for it becomes at last an acute and extraordinary complicated problem and a nuisance. But whenever he met and was interested in a new woman, then his experience would slip away from his memory, and he would long to live, and everything would ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... part in the revelation prepared and announced. When an instrument of more than ordinary intelligence was required for a purpose divine; when the Gospel, recorded by the simple, was to be explained by the acute, enforced by the energetic, carried home to the doubts of the Gentile, the Supreme Will joined to the zeal of the earlier apostles the learning and genius of Saint Paul,—not holier than the others, calling ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by the caprices of the human mind, which it is impossible for reasonable people to solve. Even Sismondi, who was well acquainted with the age in which Pulci wrote, and who, if not a profound, is generally an acute and liberal critic, confesses himself to be thus confounded. "Pulci," he says, "commences all his cantos by a sacred invocation; and the interests of religion are constantly intermingled with the adventures of his story, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... of suspense was so great, that I leaned against the wall, and laughed till I cried. A noise, from somewhere away in the basement, calling me to myself, I went downstairs and investigated. Again a shock—this time more sudden, more acute. Pressed against the window-pane of one of the front reception-rooms was the face of a man—with corpse-like cheeks and pale, malevolent eyes. I was petrified—every drop of my blood was congealed. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... may say, was acute, but it certainly broke the spell, and I turned and ran as I have never ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... think its machinery complete unless it has a mission in India. The point of view from which she may be said to have gained from this is, that where the need of workers is so great, any Christian teachers who are in earnest are, in a sense, welcome. Nor are theological differences so acute in the pioneer stage of work, when only elementary principles are being taught. But, on the other hand, the result is a bewildering multiplication of missionary efforts. Apart from the amount of conflicting and erroneous teaching which is ultimately the inevitable outcome, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... we hold this argument to be unanswerable and conclusive. But is it not wonderful that it did not occur to so acute a mind as Foster's, that the same premises would furnish a valid argument against the justice of all punishment, as well as against the justice of eternal punishments? Surely, if the utter inability of man to do good without divine ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... deformations to which a body must be subjected in order to obtain comparable experiments. With regard to the slight oscillations of torsion which he has specially studied, M. Bouasse arrives at the conclusion, in an acute discussion, that we hardly know anything more than was proclaimed a hundred years ago by Coulomb. We see, by this example, that admirable as is the progress accomplished in certain regions of physics, there still exist many over-neglected regions which ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... was the use of all these conjectures? There was but one certain and positive thing, and this was that the money he had counted upon had escaped him; and he experienced as acute a pang as if he had lost forty thousand francs a second time. Perhaps, at that moment, he was sorry that he had severed his connection with the marquis. Still, he was not the man to despond, however desperate his plight might appear, without an ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... father had to turn back on account of acute illness. From New York my father and Uncle were accompanied by my cousin Edward Snyder. He was a grand man. He had tried several times to enter the service, but was rejected. For years he had been in the employ of the American Express Co. and knew ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... home, and made a feast in honor of my success, and invited a great many guests. I was told to eat sparingly, and to take nothing too hearty or substantial; but this was unnecessary, for my abstinence had made my senses so acute, that all animal food had ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... metre was a source of acute satisfaction. It is said of me, indeed, that when, at a little more than two and a half years old, we were starting for a long journey to Pau, where my mother had been ordered to winter, I insisted on my father not packing, but ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... languages of which her teachers had given her a smattering. It pleased her best when she could learn from conversation. In this way she obtained some insight into her father's favourite sciences, occasionally making suggestions or inquiries which revealed a subtle if not an acute intelligence. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... listened. A faint rhythmical roll, rising and falling in long undulations against the invisible horizon, to his accustomed ears told him the wind was blowing among the pines in the valley. Yet, mingling with this familiar sound, his ear, now morbidly acute, seemed to detect a stranger inarticulate murmur, as of confused and excited voices, swelling up from the mysterious depths to the stars above, and again swallowed up in the gulfs of silence below. He was roused from a consideration of this phenomenon by a faint glow ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... acute, my dear. You see the puzzle from all sides. But I won't go into that just now. What I want to show you is, that our interests are the same. We should both dearly like to see a certain person shown up. I begin to see my way to do it very thoroughly. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... she could laugh, and the humor presently became an acute infection for every one was shouting at the comedy of the rocks. And Kitty looked so funny. She was dressed up, had shoes and stockings on, and a "warmed over" hat, with pathetically drooping roses around it; and then the bag, with ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... interest, against the sweep of his passions and appetites? Besides, a master can inflict upon his slave horrible cruelties without perceptibly injuring his health, or taking time from his labor, or lessening his value as property. Blows with a small stick give more acute pain, than with a large one. A club bruises, and benumbs the nerves, while a switch, neither breaking nor bruising the flesh, instead of blunting the sense of feeling, wakes up and stings to torture all the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of gas impinge at an angle of 90 deg., twin-injector burners for acetylene appear to work best when the gas enters them at a pressure of 2 to 2.5 inches; for a higher pressure the angle should be made a little acute. Large burners require to have a wider distance between the jets, to be supplied with acetylene at a higher pressure, and to be constructed with a smaller angle of impingement. Every burner, of whatever construction and size, must always be supplied with gas at its proper pressure; a pressure ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... as a class had been exclusively confined to the occupation of house-service since history began, they would be similarly unlikely to manifest an acute political intelligence. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... say, you think just the contrary. But mind what I now tell you, gal, and pretend not to know it," continued this being, who was so obtuse on a point on which men are usually quick enough to make discoveries, and so acute in matters that would baffle the observation of much the greater portion of mankind, "I see how it is, with them vagabonds. Rivenoak has left us, you see, and is talking yonder with his young men, and though too ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... an acute sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and no saint had suffered more severely from despair. One of his great objects, in most of his works, is to arm poor pilgrims against desponding fears. Thus, in his first treatise on Gospel Truths-"He ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... grandiose vision of the future she had cherished suddenly rolled aside and vanishing, more and more splendid as it grew more and more remote—like a dream at the waking moment. The vision of her inevitable loneliness came to replace it, clear and acute. She saw herself alone and small in a huge desolation—infinitely pitiful, Lewisham callously receding with "some shop girl." The tears came, came faster, until they were streaming down her face. She turned as if looking for something. She flung herself upon her knees before the little arm-chair, ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... occupied by the consideration of the Secret Societies in Ireland, Tithes, Municipal Corporations, and such matters; the Marriage Act, and the Act for the Registration of Births have probably been the most important measures of the year to the country. Troubles which were destined to become more acute arose in Lower Canada and Jamaica, both taking the form of disputes between the executive and ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... of spirit—one of the brightest and most marked elements of his character—never failed to sustain him between the recurrences even of his most acute suffering; and the pursuit of his most beloved Art became every year more determined and independent. The first beginnings in landscape study were made in happy truant excursions, now fondly remembered, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... This was rather acute reasoning for a boy of twenty who had spent his life in the Boston and New Haven of those early days. The fact that he had never seen a great painting, whereas he had greedily read the poets, will probably account ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... A most acute Iuuenall, voluble and free of grace, By thy fauour sweet Welkin, I must sigh in thy face. Most rude melancholie, Valour giues thee place. My Herald is return'd. Enter Page ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... nauseous to most healthy people when they first taste it; and during the next four or five days, while Feist appeared to be improving faster than might have been expected, he was in reality acquiring such a craving for his daily dose of smoke that it would soon be acute suffering to be deprived of it; and this was what Logotheti wished. He would have supplied him with brandy if he had not been sure that the contraband would be discovered and stopped by the doctor; but opium, in the hands of one who knows exactly how it is used, is ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... extent of practice or eminence of popularity. A physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation is, for the most part, totally casual—they that employ him know not his excellence; they that reject him know not his deficience. By any acute observer who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for half a century a very curious book might be written on ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... years. I gained upon my pupils, and was in particular intimate and affectionate with two of our probationer fellows, Robert I. Wilberforce (afterwards archdeacon) and Richard Hurrell Froude. Whately then, an acute man, perhaps saw around me the signs of an incipient party of which I was not conscious myself. And thus we discern the first elements of ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... blazing sun and cutting winds and excessive cold of the Dakota winters has produced acute inflammation of the eyes, so that Mr. Riggs is entirely blind. We trust this is only temporary, but the pain and confinement in a dark room, and necessary retirement from the active work which Supt. Riggs so energetically carries on, are a painful trial, and will awaken the sympathy ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 49, No. 02, February, 1895 • Various
... in secret what should be resolved upon openly, it must necessarily be for the purpose of concealing from Your Majesty either his ignorance or his wickedrnpss." [Memoires de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 349.] Prudent rules and acute remarks, which Richelieu, when he became all-powerful, was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... And as she so uttered his name twice, there came a look of acute distress and then of sudden resolution on her face. "I wish you to know," she exclaimed, "that—that—if I were a wicked woman I should perhaps be to you a better wife!" Thanks to the language in which she spoke, there was a play on the word—that ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... with a little scream. Her lodger's rocking-chair, with its occupant, had suddenly tilted over backward. Fortunately his proximity to the wall had prevented a complete overturn, but there sat Galusha, the back of the chair against the wall and his knees elevated at a very acute angle. The alarming part of it was that he made no effort to regain his equilibrium, but remained in the unusual, not to ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the prospect, feeling his grievance against his employers and the world at large become more acute. He considered himself ill-used, slighted, and he registered a mental vow to rush his work and be quit of the accursed place ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... melancholy enough to watch the mottled, wet, green walls of their tents and to hear the everlasting patter of the falling snow and the ceaseless rattle of the fluttering canvas, but when the prospect of failure of their cherished plan was added to the acute discomforts of the situation, it is scarcely possible to imagine how totally miserable they must have been both in body and mind. Nevertheless in the midst of these distressing conditions Scott managed to write, 'But yet, after all, one can go on striving, endeavoring to find a stimulation ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... the shepherd in As You Like It—"a natural philosopher"—an observer by light of nature, an acute expositor of phases of human life and feeling. Character, thought, passion, emotion, form the raw material of which ethical or metaphysical systems are made. The poet's contempt for formal ethical or metaphysical theory co-existed with a searching knowledge of the ultimate ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... for the rendering of fine shades of expression is seen in a high degree in all he wrote, and his work has the merits and defects that accompany this extreme preoccupation with style. But he had also great virtues of matter. He was a superb story-teller, an acute and sensitive critic, a genial and whole-hearted lover of life. In the essay on "Truth of Intercourse" will be found an example of his gracious and tactful moralising; In "Samuel Pepys," a penetrating interpretation of one of the most ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... too acute and the distance too great for accuracy," he said with an air of disappointment. "The beam comes from the roof of a house down along Pennsylvania Avenue, but I can't tell from here which one it is. Take ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... the people, an assumption at variance with the present theory of democratic government, and in contradiction to the constitutional practice of the Crown. The great size of the House of Lords makes the difficulty of dealing with this majority so acute. In 1831 the creation of forty peerages would have been sufficient to meet the Tory opposition to the Reform Bill; to-day it is said that about four hundred are required to give the Liberals a working ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... phenomenon of "adaptation": where is the adaptation, where is the pressure of external circumstances? There is no striking utility in sexual generation; it has been interpreted in the most diverse ways; and some very acute enquirers even regard the sexuality of the plant, at least, as a luxury which nature might have dispensed with.[23] But we do not wish to dwell on facts so disputed. The ambiguity of the term "adaptation," and the necessity of transcending both the point of view ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... intent, as the operator's acute ears recognized, was identical in each instance. Frequently the word was incoherent altogether, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... magnetic somnambulism. He informed the Academy that he had under his care a young woman, whose powers of divination when in the somnambulic state were of the most extraordinary character. He invited the members of that body to go into any hospital, and choose persons afflicted with any diseases, acute or chronic, simple or complex, and his somnambulist, on being put en rapport, or in magnetic connexion, with them, would infallibly point out their ailings and name the remedies. She, and other somnambulists, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... thousand millions of dollars, the French ministry, with a view to reduce it, ordered a re-coinage of the louis-d'or. An edict was promulgated, calling in the coin at sixteen livres, to be issued again at twenty; but Law, an acute and enterprising Scotchman, suggested that the end might be more happily accomplished by a project for a bank, which he carried in his pocket. He proposed to buy up the old coin at a higher rate than the mint allowed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... people is exquisitely subtile, without being at all acute: hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, profound, and sensual, but not subtile; hence what they think to ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... the sound of bitter, genuine weeping, as 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 ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... closely science, which is knowledge, is interwoven on many sides with art, it is needless here to say. In the name of letters I have to call upon one of the most versatile of their votaries, a man whose nimble intellect plays with luminous ease round many and various subjects; delicate as a poet, acute and picturesque as a critic, a sparkling journalist, no one has pursued with more earnest and more fruitful zeal the graver study of the birth and evolution of natural myths than Mr. Andrew Lang, to whom I turn ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... has commenced. Heaven knows that I did everything to prevent it which human being could do. The capitalists seem to have made up their minds to force civil war and all its horrors upon the country. The spectacle of little children starving causes me acute distress. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... S.Pollaiolo (d. 1509), and owes its erection in a very great measure to the liberality of an English gentleman, the late Francis Sloane, who died at Florence in 1871. The interior is divided into a nave and two aisles by seven acute Gothic arches. The pilasters, supporting columns as well as the roof, are of rude work, while the side chapels are not inclosed, but spread out on the walls of the aisles, an arrangement which greatly favours the display of the magnificent monuments ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... their special training and profession, and which marks the manners, the language and looks of a lawyer. They have the excellence of the lawyer, and also his defects. Commonly they are learned in their profession, acute and sharp, circumspect, cautious, skilful in making nice technical distinctions, and strongly disposed to adhere to historical precedents on the side of arbitrary power, rather than to obey the instinctive promptings of the moral sense ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... chum, Lad's dislike for that pestilential bag grew sharper. True, it held squares of fried liver;—liver whose heavenly odor penetrated through the musty leather smell of the suitcase and to the dog's acute senses. Also, it held a doll which exuded thrilling squeaks when gently bitten. But these things, he knew full well, were designed as show-ring baits; not as ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... Harrison and Sharp 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 ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... Mr. Ames," the lawyer continued, "the situation is fast becoming acute. The mill hands don't believe now that you were ever justified in shutting down, or putting them on half time. And, whether you reduce wages or not, they are going to make very radical demands upon you ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... guard in the market-place, makes but a pitiful figure. I do not believe that there is in the world another statue of a man of letters that is, like this, neglected by the passer-by, despised by those about it, commiserated by those who look at it. But who knows whether Erasmus, acute philosopher as he was, and must be still, be not contented with his corner, the more that it is not far from his own house, if the tradition is correct? In a small street near the market-place, in the wall of a little house now occupied as a tavern, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... the leg was a little swelled, but the patient did not complain of any acute pain but only of a sense of stiffness. An adherent and perfect eschar was found to be formed over the whole extent of the ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... of hearing to a very high degree: so acute was this sense, that it was said he could hear the grass grow. He took a fond leave of all at home, and rode away, provided with good abilities and good intentions. The swallows escorted him, and he followed the swans till he found himself out in the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... caution. The common applicants at our doors and in our streets, are in general, undeserving of the alms which they entreat. This however, is by no means uniformly their character, for I have known the most worthy objects, those whom modesty and a laudable pride had restrained, until acute distress had fairly driven them forth to seek needful comforts for the destitute sick, or perhaps, bread for their famishing children. We must not, with cruel indifference, drive such away in the common herd of undeserving beggars. We must ...
— A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of the Boston Female Asylum for Destitute Orphans, September 25, 1835 • Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright
... vivid sense of contrast between Him and you never grows less, but more acute and deeper. Even when you come to know Him better, and the sweet peace comes with its untellable balm to your spirit, yet you are always conscious of the contrast, and you know that you are not pure; only He is; and all you can do is to keep under the ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... touch" memorandum of 9 October and the whole plan of the battle have been, and still are, the subject of acute controversy, the various phases of which it would be far too long to discuss. It is strange that after the lapse of a hundred years and the publication of a vast mass of detailed evidence—British, French, and ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... was quite deserted, and Andres was walking slowly away, when the apparition of a man, wrapped in a cloak, beneath which the handle of a guitar formed an acute angle, excited his curiosity, and he stepped into the dark shadow of a low archway. The man threw back the folds of his cloak, brought his guitar forward, and began that monotonous thrumming which serves as accompaniment to serenades and seguidillas. The object of this prelude evidently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... both in conjunction, but we must be careful to praise Hebraism most. "Culture," says an acute, though somewhat rigid critic, Mr. Sidgwick, "diffuses sweetness and light. I do not undervalue these blessings, but religion gives fire and strength, and the world wants fire [172] and strength even ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... it to paralyse the prey destined for their offspring; and only in the last extremity do they employ it in self-defence. Moreover, the lack of agility in their movements nearly always enables us to avoid their sting; and, even if we be stung, the pain is almost insignificant. This absence of any acute smarting as a result of the poison is almost constant in the Hunting Wasps, whose weapon is a surgical lancet and devised for the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... was wearing 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 ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... received a vast impression of space and multitude and opportunity; intimate things also were suddenly dragged from neglected, veiled and darkened corners into an acute vividness of perception. Close at hand in the big art museum I came for the first time upon the beauty of nudity, which I had hitherto held to be a shameful secret, flaunted and gloried in; I was made aware of beauty as not only permissible, but desirable and frequent and of a thousand ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... felt horribly brutal, as if he were going to mutilate and maltreat a creature that could feel; but he nerved himself to tap the back of Aphrodite's hand at the dimpled base of the third finger. The shock ran up to his elbow, and gave him acute "pins and needles," but the stone hand was still intact. He struck again—this time with all his force—and the poker flew from his grasp, and his arm dropped paralyzed ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... invariably was, awkwardness could not fasten upon her; her colour might come and her timid eye fall it often did; but Fleda's wits were always in their place and within a call. She would shrink from a stranger's eye, and yet when spoken to her answers were as ready and acute as they were marked for simplicity and gentleness. She was kept to dinner; and though the arrangement and manner of the service must have been strange to little Fleda, it was impossible to guess from word or look that it was the first time within her ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... events related in it to say that they are improbabilities: they are simply impossibilities. The "Ways of the Hour" was, however, like the preceding novels, often full of suggestive remarks, on many other points than trial by jury. It showed in numerous instances the working of an acute, vigorous, and aggressive intellect. The good qualities it has need not be denied: only they are not the good qualities that belong ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... had moved, their acute ears had caught the sound of his footsteps. They rose, still holding what they were eating in their hands, and, grasping their stone spears, moved in three separate ways toward the edge of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... time it was directly overhead Sime had stopped sweating. The dry atmosphere was sucking the moisture out of his body greedily, and his skin was burned red. His suffering was acute. ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... camp through a whole week of fine weather could such a week ever be counted upon. Higher than any point in the United States, the top of the Browne Tower probably on a level with the top of Mount Blanc, it is yet not so high as to induce the acute breathlessness from which the writer suffered, later, upon any exertion. The climbing of the tower, the traversing to the other side of it, the climbing of the ridge, would afford pleasant excursions, while the opportunity for careful though difficult photography ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... when I had penetrated some considerable distance into the bush, farther indeed than any of our party had strayed before, I saw a large bustard, but was unable to get a shot at him; his anxious and acute gaze had detected me, at the same moment that I had discovered him, and he was off. I thought at the time that he bore a strong resemblance to the wild turkey of the colonists in the southern parts ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... that owing to the sanguinolent and putrescent character of these in the cases first examined, no conclusion was arrived at for some time. Thus he found multitudes of bacteria of various kinds, rendering it impossible to distinguish any special forms, and it was not until he had examined two acute and uncomplicated cases, before haemorrhage had occurred, and where the evacuation had not decomposed, that he found more abundantly the kind of organism which had been seen so richly in the intestinal mucosa. He then proceeded ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... myself—"I wish you would show me a little of it. If no rabbit with acute melancholia comes along to commit suicide by hanging on that gallows of yours, I ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... vision broke the strong, rather harsh voice that filled her for an instant with a curious hate so acute that if she had been large enough, strong enough, she would have thrust the woman out ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... 1880, quickly, of an attack of pneumonia or acute bronchitis. She died a most edifying death, in perfect consciousness, assisted by the Confessor ... and the Community around her, and having received the last Sacraments only a few hours before she expired. As to her appearance, she ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... seat at his side, agitated, crestfallen. Coignard's discourse caused me acute pain. I cursed Fate for having given my place to a brute at the very moment when my beloved mistress had come to bring me her most passionate tenderness, expecting to find me in my bed, the while I had to throw logs of wood on the fire in ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... into it. The clothes with which Lady Halberton supplied her helped her to realise the character that she was expected to assume. Sometimes she felt so pleased with her performance that she was tempted to overdo it and suddenly found herself presenting a caricature of Halberton manners that was so acute as to be cruel. And sometimes, when she felt that she couldn't keep it up, she would suddenly drop the whole pretence and relapse into the insinuating brogue of Biddy Joyce; an amazing trick that she employed with scandalous ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... to treat any one suffering from fever or any acute condition, we give the soothing, or peace treatment as it is sometimes called. Little children may be compared to mirrors, reflecting every thought around them. In treating them it is necessary to make the law—and the true word is always law—that they do not or can not reflect fear or ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... doubtless, was the corner of the hive allotted to the community's working-bees. An old fibster, Hmid el-F'idi, declared that he would bring us from the adjacent hills a stone which, when heated, would pour forth metal like water—and never appeared again. It was curious to remark how completely the acute Furayj believed him, because both were Arabs ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... Lord Mayor of London. This lady had gone to bed and stopped there for a month at the end of Sir Henry's year of office, in sheer chagrin that "Othello's occupation" was gone, and her crown of glory set upon another's head, while she must retire to the obscurity of Bayswater. Being threatened with acute melancholia, a specialist had advised a change of air; and Lady Meason had begun once more to blossom like a rose—of the fully developed, cabbage order—in the joy of being "one of the most notable, popular and successful hostesses of the season at Mentone." ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... all acute sufferers will be of the greatest service to us in this consideration. In intense pain a point is reached where it is indistinguishable from its opposite, pleasure. This is indeed so, but few have the heroism or the strength to suffer to such ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... and Philadelphia both fail in developing the true character-stamp-work (character-stampfen-werk) of the day. To see the Fourth of July in its glory, one should visit New-York. To my senses, which are uncommonly acute, there is a peculiar smell about the Fourth of July in New-York, which differs in toto from that of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... acquaintance with his fellow student, Mr. Topham Beauclerk; who, though their opinions and modes of life were so different, that it seemed utterly improbable that they should at all agree, had so ardent a love of literature, so acute an understanding, such elegance of manners, and so well discerned the excellent qualities of Mr. Langton, a gentleman eminent not only for worth and learning, but for an inexhaustible fund of entertaining conversation, that they ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... sake Arthur had perilled so much, and inflicted such acute pain on her, what were her merits? A complexion of lilies and roses, a head like a steel engraving in an annual, a face expressing nothing but childish bashfulness, a manner ladylike but constrained, and a dress of studied ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him a Persian merchant had arrived very late the day before, who had a slave to sell, so surprisingly beautiful that she excelled all the women his eyes had ever beheld; "And for wit and knowledge," added he, "the merchant engages she shall match the most acute and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... Bassett 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 is. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... be told, the more Hodder became absorbed in these activities of the parish house, the greater grew his perplexity, the more acute his feeling of incompleteness; or rather, his sense that the principle was somehow fundamentally at fault. Out of the waters of the proletariat they fished, assiduously and benignly, but at random, strange specimens! brought ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... boards placed longitudinally, led on to steps that plunged headlong from one terrace to another. From the veranda of one house one might have leaped to the roof of the house just below—if so disposed,—for the houses seemed to be set one upon another, so acute was the angle of their base-line. The town stood on end just there, and at the foot of it ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... region of pure thought, pure science, accessible only to intelligences refined by nature, and enriched by superior culture. In addition, therefore, to the intrinsic interest of the problem, and the solid satisfaction arising from acute intellectual activity, I could, in pursuit of this theme, experience all the subtle pleasure derived from a consciousness of personal superiority—pleasure as attainable in solitude as elsewhere since the superiority was too real and unquestionable to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... whether the machine intends to renominate me next fall or not. If for some reason I should be weak, whether on account of faults or virtues, doubtless the machine will throw me over, and I think I am not uncharitable when I say they would feel no acute grief at so doing. It would be very strange if they did feel such grief. If, for instance, we had strikes which led to riots, I would of course be obliged to preserve order and stop the riots. Decent citizens would demand that I should do it, and in any event I should do it ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt |
