"Keenness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discussion was resumed after a week (Lady Tristram had spent the interval in bed) on a business footing. She found in him the same carelessness of the world and its obligations that there was in herself, but found it carried to the point of scorn and allied to a tenacity of purpose and a keenness of vision which she had never owned. Not a reproach escaped him—less, she thought, from generosity than because he chose to concentrate his mind on something useful. It was no use lamenting the past; it might ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... the Duke of Cumberland and ten thousand English troops. Battle seemed imminent, yet again the Scots force pushed by. The 4th of December found this strange wedge, of no great mass, but of a tested, rapier-like keenness and hardness, at the town of Derby, with London not a hundred and thirty miles away. And still no English rising for the rightful King! Instead Whig armies, and a slow Whiggish buzzing beginning through all ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... Impossible! it shall not be!' And the poor soul struggles and wrestles in the grasp of the mighty demon which has hold of it, and whose every touch is torment. 'Oh, atrocious!' it shrieks, in agony, and in anger too, as if the very keenness of the infliction were a proof of its injustice. 'A second! and a third! I can bear no more! Stop, horrible fiend! give over: I am a man, and not such as thou! I am not food for thee, or sport for thee! I have been taught religion; I have had a conscience; I have a cultivated ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... assured of Lady Saumarez's welfare, I should feel more tranquil, but I know too well the keenness of her feelings. The anxiety she suffers on my account will, I fear, put to the test her practice of those pious virtues we all know her to possess, and of which she sets so bright an example. James's presence is of the greatest comfort to me, and alone ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... seems so hard to part—, To part with those we love so dearly, That, though the keenness of the smart Is gone through ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... afternoon when you and I sat on the stoep of the schoolhouse, and talked of the Kaffirs and our future. I had about a dozen pupils then, and now I have nearly three thousand; and in place of a tin-roofed shanty and a yard, I have a whole countryside. You laughed at me for my keenness, Davie, but I've seen it justified. I was never a man of war like you, and so I had to bide at home while you and your like were straightening out the troubles. But when it was all over my job began, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... passed during the interval that followed before Burke's return. As in a dream she heard Kelly still talking about the Brennerstadt diamond, and Guy was asking him questions with a keenness of interest that seemed strange to her. She herself was waiting and watching for Burke, dreading his coming, yet in a fashion eager for it. For very curiously she had a feeling that she needed him. For the first time she wanted to lean ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... edge of the bright weapon, and said, "This seems, indeed, a fair fire edge. Let us make a trial of its keenness." ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... Clarendon, 'was a life by night more than by day, in all the liberties that nature could desire and wit invent,' it was astonishing how extensive an influence he had in both Houses of Parliament. 'His rank and condescension, the pleasantness of his humours and conversation, and the extravagance and keenness of his wit, unrestrained by modesty or religion, caused persons of all opinions and dispositions to be fond of his company, and to imagine that these levities and vanities would wear off with age, and that there would be enough of good left to make him ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... the matter, but should doubtless receive full instructions in a day or two; and he had called to-day more to keep his word with Bart than to enter upon an actual business transaction. Nothing could be franker and more open than his way and manner in saying this; and as he was trained to keenness of observation, he may have detected the flitting smile that just hovered on Bart's lips. After a little pleasant commonplace talk of common things, the leisurely Greer took a cordial leave, and never approached Bart but ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... anthropologists showing how superior unspoiled savages are to civilized man in correct or esthetic proportions of body, in many forms of endurance of fatigue, hardship, and power to bear exposure, in the development and preservation of teeth and hair, in keenness of senses, absence of deformities, as well as immunity to many of our diseases. Their women are stronger and bear hardship and exposure, monthly periods and childbirth, better. Civilization is so hard on the body that some have called it a disease, despite ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... conceiving. This is a drawback perhaps common to every struggle so important and fundamental as was the strife which began to rage in Scotland. Had we a history compiled by the spectators to whom we have referred it would probably, unless nature gave them an exceptional keenness of vision, be wanting in those qualities of animation and force which he who is confident of having every good influence on his side, and nothing but the powers of evil against him, is likely to possess. Major indeed was a historian, but he did not meddle with the history ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel. Nor yet does mere knowledge create beauty. Nature sings her most exquisite songs to those who love her. She does not unfold her secrets ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... quickly the time passed. I had to practise the bombers (nineteen from each company) in throwing dummy grenades each morning on the mud flat (it was once a field) outside the huts. In order to stimulate keenness I organised a competition and gave one franc each day as a prize for the best score. I soon found out who were ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... it is accompanied by the more or less complete inhibition of the senses, and by a kind of sleep in which the relations of the subject with the physical world are wholly or partially suspended. The characteristics of this state are greater keenness of the normal faculties, and the appearance of new ones, which are often inexplicable and extraordinary and the more remarkable in proportion as sleep is more profound, the brain calmer, or the physiological state ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... heard and comprehended, And without alarm she answered, "Where my pinions have conveyed me, There I scattered feathers from me; Where I sailed above the country, There I scattered silken feathers; Where I shook and flapped my pinions, From my tail I dropped the feathers: What I saw with marten keenness, Might be told in seven narrations, Or in eight tales be recounted. Long I flew on path of thunder, On the roadway of the rainbow, And the hailstone's toilsome pathway; Onwards thus I sailed light-hearted, Heedless, far into the distance, And at length three worlds discovered, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... in have been those at Bourton-on-the-Water. Owing to the very soft wicket which he found on arriving, this place was once christened by a well-known cricketer Bourton-on-the-Bog. Indeed, it is often a case of Bourton-under-the-Water; but, in spite of a soft pitch, there is great keenness and plenty of good-tempered rivalry about these matches. Bourton is a truly delightful village. The Windrush, like the Coln at Bibury, runs for some distance alongside ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... of the affair, he felt no shame in it. The moment of childish gayety had been but a passing mood. It had in no way slackened his tense enthusiasm, dulled the keenness of his spirit, lowered his high flight. He knew that well enough. But he wondered if she would understand, and he could not believe it possible. The mood of exaltation in which they had parted that afternoon came to him, and then the sight of her shocked ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Fields and Long Acre, towards Piccadilly and Hyde Park. It was by no means a typical November afternoon: the sky was a delicate blue and the air mild, with just enough of autumn keenness in it to remind one, not unpleasantly, of the real time ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... one would call a man of the world: he had always felt a terrible responsibility for other people's actions, and this particular action was, to put it mildly, certainly rather unusual. But I had under-estimated both Tip's keenness and the effect of Roger's big, quiet personality. For Tip stared hard at his pipe a moment, then at Roger, then back at the pipe, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... has others less noble. Our modern repugnance to the vulture as feeding on carcasses was probably not felt by the singer of this song. What he brings into view are the characteristics common to the eagle and the vulture; superb strength in beak and claw, keenness of vision almost incredible, magnificent sweep of pinion and power of rapid, unwearied flight. And these characteristics, we may say, have their analogues in the divine nature, and the emblem not unfitly shadows forth one aspect of the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... reason of its keenness, as stated above (I-II, Q. 48, AA. 2, 3, 4), produces a great change in the nature of the body, wherefore it conduces very much to the folly which results from a bodily impediment. On the other hand the folly which is caused by a spiritual impediment, viz. by the mind being plunged ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... them to death with the butt-ends of their rifles the moment they came upon them. Such an episode as this did not improve the feelings of either the British or French soldiers towards their German foes, and went far to explain to Max and Dale the keenness and zest of the men for yet other encounters, notwithstanding that their foes now had all the points of the play so strongly in ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... years past, it has seemed to me that my mind is so detached and absent from the body, that I do things as if I did them not. If I eat, or refresh myself, it is done with such an absence, or separation, as I wonder at, with an entire mortification of the keenness of sensation in all ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... thou?—draw not nigh! 5 Go, carry to some fitter place The keenness of that practised eye, The hardness of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... two young uninvited guests with new keenness in the morning light. Molly was demure enough, though there was a lurking gleam in her dark eye which suggested rather armed truce than accepted peace. As for Madeleine, though to be serene was an actual necessity ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... took up his game with renewed keenness. It was a game which attracted him immensely because it called upon his imagination and held his audience spellbound, besides plunging him into ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the spectator of a different scene. There was passion and resentment, the keenness of rivalry and the ardour of triumph—but there was no affectation. Men spoke as men speak when their essential interests are engaged—plainly, boldly, and directly—vigorously always, sometimes vehemently; but with that strong sincerity which administers eloquence to even the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... That second had been enough. She had seen his face. She had seen—and it was not her imagination, but a real and bitter irony—that of all the people in the room she alone had been the object of his quiet greeting. She knew then—for her eyes had not lost their keenness—that the eighteen months in which they had scarcely met had made no difference to him. He still reverenced and loved her. For him she was still "Lakshmi," the goddess of beauty and perfection; for him she was still the ideal, the woman of goodness ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... write; upon the perception of demons, genii, or familiar spirits; upon the second sight; upon magic in all its branches; and upon the laws against false diviners and soothsayers. Beside showing the keenness of his interest in the supernatural, the author deliberately avoided any occasion for talking gossip or for indulging "persons of airy tempers" with sentimental love-tales. "Instead of making them a bill of fare out of patchwork romances and polluting scandal," reads ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... commerce by which every maritime power sought to promote its own navigation, and that part of the European system in particular, by which each aimed at a monopoly of the trade of its colonies, were felt with peculiar keenness when enforced by England. The people of America were perhaps the more sensible to the British resolutions on this subject, because, having composed a part of that empire, they had grown up in the habit of a free intercourse with ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... in this worthless pretender, Maria! I love you myself, and with the keenness of love I have watched you follow him with your eyes, have seen the growing warmth in your voice—all through those days on the ocean, aboard the Mauretania. I warn you—royal princesses must aim higher ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... emotion, which can make huge drains upon the system. Now he was in the keeping of nature which was restoring all his powers of both mind and body, and keeping him there until he should again have all his strength and all the keenness of his faculties, needful for the great work that ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were afraid of you, sir, as it was you who proposed me.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, they knew, that if they refused you, they'd probably never have got in another. I'd have kept them all out. Beauclerk was very earnest for you.' BOSWELL. 'Beauclerk has a keenness of mind which is very uncommon.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, sir; and every thing comes from him so easily. It appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing.' BOSWELL. 'You are loud, sir; but it is not an effort ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... would have built another dam the next morning. He was out of the race forever. In the English mission he had touched the highest mark of his success. He mourned in quiet. Life had still enough for him, but oh! the keenness of his regret. ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... marked his illustrious father, Lord Chatham. Such powers, evinced by one who was but just stepping upon the stage of public life, first excited surprise, which was quickly followed by admiration. That strength of thought and keenness of analysis, which, seizing upon a subject, bring out at once its real elements of importance, and present them in their practical bearings, deducing the course dictated by a wise policy, had hitherto been regarded, by those who found themselves the willing auditors of a youth, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... move graciously and harmoniously both in itself and in relation to those around him, finally, to make his whole life rhythmic—such an ideal is not only possible but almost inevitable to the pupil at Hellerau. The keenness which possesses the whole College, the delight of every one in their work, their comradeship, their lack of self-consciousness, their clean sense of the beauty of natural form, promises a new and more harmonious race, almost a realization of Rousseau's ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... Barrington's, and he felt her fingers tighten. To her the house was as still as death, the blackness of it empty; but to her companions whose ears were trained to keenness, there was movement in the air ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... was young and I sympathized with his keenness. Looked as if it was his first important job and he meant to ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... before Andrea's eyes wide vistas of distant lands and seas. On his part, he did his utmost to show himself to the best advantage, to impress upon her the wide range of his culture, the refinement of his taste, the exquisite keenness of his susceptibilities, and his heart swelled with pride when she said in tones of unfeigned sincerity after reading his Story of ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... habit was modest and his looks were not of a kind at once to tickle the fancy of such as she. Yet Dante looked at her curiously, though without ostentation, as one whose way it is instinctively to observe all men and all women with an exceeding keenness and ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... predominance of Gaston, but with a professional keenness of eye began to point out minor points in which the baby ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... pass upon the contracts, to follow up the negotiations already under way, and to conclude them; in short, she represented her son in all respects in his badly involved business relations. From a distance he supervised operations, with a mathematical keenness of vision, and his mother assumed the responsibility of carrying out his wishes, bringing to the contest all her qualities of vigour, clear perception and crafty dealings. Honore de Balzac did not spare her. For ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... been ashamed to expose, I contrived to take the lead and almost grew voluble in the frequency of my utterance. Perhaps, if Kingsley failed in any respect as a philosopher, it was in forbearing to look with sufficient keenness of observation into the heart of his neighbor. He evidently did not see into mine. He was deceived by my manner. He credited all my fun to good faith, and gravely pronounced me to be ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... loaded with provisions. This was welcome intelligence, as their provisions were nearly exhausted. Deeming this too important a business to trust to foreign hands, Roberts, with forty men in the sloop, gave chase to that sail. In the keenness of the moment, and trusting in his usual good fortune, Roberts supposed that he had only to take a short sail in order to bring in the vessel with her cargo; but to his sad disappointment, he pursued her during eight ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... hunger is among the hardest to endure, though there is still a harder—that of thirst. In the first hours of either, it is doubtful which of the two kinds of suffering is the more severe; but, prolonged beyond a certain point, hunger loses its keenness of edge, through the sheer weakness of the sufferer, while the agony of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... le plus grand plaisir, Monsieur," and she looked so happy, there was so much sun in her eyes, so many divine little dimples in her cheek, in contemplation of all the promised happiness, that it would not require much keenness to discover the secret of ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the elder was what is termed a lucky man. In other words, he had that keenness of intellect which enables the possessor to seize opportunities and ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... valour, and inwardly applauded it, although himself in woeful state. For he was hard hit, badly upset. Conscious of waste of tissue, he set about to restore it without apology or hesitation, trouble putting an edge to appetite in his case also, and that of formidable keenness. Bitterly he grieved, since bearing the patient, he feared very certainly to lose, an uncommon affection. He loved Charles Verity; while, from the worldly standpoint, his dealings with The Hard meant very much to him—made ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... even that it was her more acute intelligence, blind in one direction only, which suggested the opinion or course of action that he quite unconsciously afterwards offered to the world as his own. It was she who infused into his life every possibility beyond the obvious. It was her keenness, her ardent interest in those possibilities, that urged him on. When she finally persuaded him to stand for Parliament as member for their county town, it was in a great measure her popularity that won ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... favourite themes with the delightful audacity of the talker who is born, not made. She spoke of her own youth, of historic flirtations in the early twenties, of great beaux she had known, and of famous recipes that had been handed down for generations. Everywhere he felt her wonderful keenness of perception, that intuitive understanding of men and manners which had kept her for so long the reigning belle among ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... did that showed his keenness and coolness and that elicited Grief's admiration. Under the Rattler's rifle fire Raoul compelled the fleeing Fuatino men to come in and surrender. And at the same time, dispatching half his cutthroats in the Rattler's boat, he threw them ashore and across the peninsula, preventing Brown from ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... with a great shaking of excitement and expectation upon me, that the Master-Word came not from the Great Pyramid, which should have power to send it as a Great Force across the everlasting Night; whilst that this that throbbed about me was faint and scarce to be known even unto the keenness of the ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... of day Baree resumed the trail. He was not so alert this morning. There was the disconsolate droop to his tail which the Indians call the Akoosewin—the sign of the sick dog. And Baree was sick—not of body but of soul. The keenness of his hope had died, and he no longer expected to find the Willow. The second cabin at the far end of the trap line drew him on, but it inspired in him none of the enthusiasm with which he had hurried to the first. He traveled slowly and spasmodically, his suspicions of the ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... no wish to use the last moments of their companionship in adding fresh words to what he had already said. Since they had stopped talking, she had become to him not so much a real person, as the very woman he dreamt of; but his solitary dreams had never produced any such keenness of sensation as that which he felt in her presence. He himself was also strangely transfigured. He had complete mastery of all his faculties. For the first time he was in possession of his full powers. The vistas which opened ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... patience. The word "sagacitas," originally meant only the faculty of scenting, now it means the power of seeing or perceiving anything easily. In old literature we may read of the sagacity of dogs; keenness of scent. But it is now sharpness of wit; keenness of perception, subtilty, shrewdness, acuteness, penetration, ingenuity. The terms, "attentio," "intentio," "comprehensio," "apprehensio," "penetratio," and understanding are all just so many bodily actions transferred to the expression ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... consciences suffer personally for personal sins, with morbid keenness, but are stone blocks of indifference to the collective sins which are the major evils of life to-day. A man may pointed out to us as a wholesale malefactor, a dealer in bad meat, a poisoner of the public mind through a degraded press, an extortioner, liar, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... inevitable. Mr. Durant hovered about, excited, anxious, yet reassured by the enthusiasm of the students, who entered with eagerness into the new world. He superintended feeding the hungry, answered questions, and studied with great keenness the faces of the girls who were entering Wellesley College. In the middle of the afternoon it had been discovered that no bell had been provided for waking the students, so a messenger went to the village to beg help of Mrs. Horton (the mother of the professor of Greek), ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... but a certain keenness in her eyes, which did not escape Geoffrey's notice, betrayed more than a casual interest. Thurston afterwards decided that the shock of the unexpected meeting had the effect of ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... extreme Calvinism and intolerance of the dominant "Auld Lichts." The fact that Burns had personally suffered from the discipline of the Kirk probably added fire to his attacks, but the satires show more than personal animus. The force of the invective, the keenness of the wit, and the fervor of the imagination which they displayed, rendered them an important force in ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... a deep peat-hag, down which trickled a little stream of rain-water—that Lionel discovered two things: first, that he was wet to the skin, and, second, that the wind in these altitudes was of an Arctic keenness. So long as he had been kept going, he had not paid much attention; but now this bitter blast seemed to pierce him to the very marrow; and he began to think that these were very pleasant conditions for a professional singer ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... from Flavia proved the keenness of her eyes. "Where is Giralda?" she exclaimed. "Where is ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... but the same old theory, but he urged it with a force and keenness that impressed me more ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... the nobler instincts had been long sleeping in the breasts of these men. They hated and distrusted their old lord with a hatred he had well merited; and degraded as they had become in his service, they had not yet sunk so low but that they could feel with the keenness of instinct, rather than by any reasoning powers they possessed, that this young knight was a man to be trusted and be loved — that if they became his vassals they would receive vastly different treatment from any they had received ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... ago". But since that time a whole era seems to have passed—that heart-breaking era of the Great War. And now the Native Son has entered into and emerged from a new and terrible game. He has needed—and I doubt not displayed—all that he has of strength, natural and developed; of keenness and coolness; of bravery and fortitude; of capacity to endure ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... could watch it as it drew nearer and nearer the illuminated vessel, and our excitement grew more and more intense. For once Mr. Harland and his daughter had forgotten all about themselves,—and Catherine's customary miserable expression of face had altogether disappeared in the keenness of her interest for something more immediately thrilling than her own ailments. So far as I was concerned, I could hardly endure the suspense that seemed to weigh on every nerve of my body during the few minutes' interval that elapsed between the departure of the boat and its drawing up ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... the one blackball necessary to exclude had been given, they knew they never would have got in another member. Yet even from this rebuff he managed to deftly extract a compliment. Beauclerk, the doctor said, had been very earnest for the admission, and Beauclerk, replied Boswell, 'has a keenness of mind which is very uncommon.' The witty Topham, along with Reynolds, Garrick, and others, is immortalized in the pages of the man who was not thought by the wits of Gerrard Street fit ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... we had long known each other. What especially struck me in the youth was a kind of sweetness and innocence—perhaps what some would call "greenness"—that at home I had associated only with country boys, and not even with them latterly. The smartness and knowingness and a certain hardness or keenness of our city youths,—there was no trace of it at all in this young Cockney. But he liked American travelers better than those from his own country. They were more friendly and communicative,—were not so afraid ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... only great man in Paris at this period. There was another as great as he, but great in a very different fashion,—Benjamin Franklin, the American philosopher and statesman, as famous for common sense and public spirit as Voltaire was for poetical power and satirical keenness. These two great men met, and their meeting is worthy of description. The American envoys had asked permission to call on the veteran of literature, a request that was willingly granted when Voltaire learned that Franklin ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... earned a tremendous income. I have heard some of the cleverest counsel of our time, but I never heard one to be compared with him in grasp, subtlety and agility. He could examine and cross-examine with consummate dexterity. In arguing points of law he had the tenacity of a bull-dog and the keenness of a sleuth-hound. He always fortified himself with a plethora of "cases." The table in front of him groaned with a weight of law. Here as elsewhere he was "thorough." An eminent jurisprudist once remarked to me, "there is little gleaning to be done ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... even if the buffalo-steak had not given their mouths other occupation. They saw the vultures speeding from out the uttermost reach of the blue vault to feed upon the carcass of the dead monarch, the whereabouts of the feast having been detected from their distant haunts by a keenness of sight which for swiftness outdoes wireless telegraphy. They swept on like frigates of the sky, heads thrust down, and the vast wings seeming to bear them on without beat ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Notwithstanding his keenness of judgment and sobriety in action, Malcolm had yet a certain love for effect, a delight, that is, in the show of concentrated results, which, as I believe I have elsewhere remarked, belongs especially to the Celtic nature, and is one form in which the poetic element vaguely embodies itself. Hence ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... be various: it may be genial and pleasant; it may be earnest and just; or it may be personal, unjust, and malicious. Any species of satire may exhibit keenness of wit, but satire reaches its highest excellence only when it springs from upright motives and confines itself to truth. If there is exaggeration or caricature, as is generally the case, there still must be a substantial basis of fact. No amount of intellectual brilliancy or artistic ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... region in the Great Bear, which forms a sort of rectangle, of which the stars a b g d are the corners. The next fine night try to count how many stars are visible within that rectangle. On a very fine night, without a moon, perhaps a dozen might be perceived, or even more, according to the keenness of the eyesight. But when the opera-glass is directed to the same part of the constellation an astonishing sight is witnessed. A hundred stars can now be seen ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... be learned with facility in proportion to the power of dropping at the time all impressions of previous movements. Quickness and keenness of sense are gained only in proportion to the power of quieting the senses not in use, and erasing previous impressions upon the sense which is active at ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely: but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an austere little Joan ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... discern the outline of his horse, with head lowered, evidently dozing. Having in mind the keenness of desert-bred stock, he watched the horse. The minutes drifted by. The horse seemed more distinct. Waring thought he could discern the picket rope. He endeavored to trace it from horse to picket. Foot by foot his eyes followed its slack outline across the ground. The head of ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... its wooded course; the range greenly aflame with new foliage rose into radiant space; flickers hammered on resonant, dead wood. Gordon banished the somber memory of the priest. He was conscious of a sudden excitement, a keenness of response to living like a renewal of youth. He wished that Meta Beggs would appear; his direction to her had been vague; she might easily go astray and miss him. But he saw her, after what seemed an interminable period, leaving the road and crossing the strip of sod that bordered ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... my first sensation of fear admiration irresistibly stirred. The superb freedom of their unbridled heads, the sun-nurtured arrogance of their eyes, the tumultuous, sea-like tossing of crest and tail, their keenness and ardour and might, and also in simple truth their numbers—how could one marvel if this solitary fanatic dreamed they heard ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... congregation had filled every seat and were lined up against the walls, a number of Indians, all relatives of Pocahontas, slipped in and stood silently with faces that seemed not alive except for the keenness of their curious eyes. Them through the doorway came Pocahontas ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... of human pity overswept Ellis's stimulated journalistic keenness. "You don't have to do this, Hal," he ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... good-humoured tone imaginable. The speaker was a spare, straight, neatly dressed individual of middle age. His face was of a dark bronze hue, lit up by a pair of keen black eyes, and his beard was prematurely gray, almost white. The expression of keenness on a deal was not characteristic of him alone. Everyone wore it ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... doating heart, that had driven him to surrender himself. If in no other way he could reach Miss Walladmor's neighbourhood, it seemed that he was determined to reach it in the character of prisoner. To every door that he passed on his road to the Falcon Tower he looked with a wild keenness of eye, in the hope that he might obtain some glimpse of her. And, fantastic as such comfort seemed, the unhappy prisoner felt a deep joy even in his solitary prison on feeling that for the first time in his life he was passing the night under the same ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... She said, in reply, that this might do for men, but that women were far more conscientious, and, if they were once compelled to vote, they would wish to know what they were voting for. This seemed to me to contain the whole philosophy of the matter; and I respected the keenness of her suggestion, though it led me ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... avoided than encouraged him. Her woman's keenness of observation showed her that he sympathised with her and admired her—in fact, that he was deeply in love with her, though he strenuously endeavoured not ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... shrinking, was possessed by a sense of anti-climax. Life had a brassy ring. She had come home with at least something of her mother's military keenness for the "campaign" of vindication, but within a day or two she was thinking, rather cynically and cheaply, that the game was not worth the candle. What difference did it all make, in her actual life? People might whisper and nudge behind her back, but their invitations ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... come the workers in brass and metals; then the jewelers, and following these may be dealers in shawls and in curios of various kinds. The native shopkeeper sits cross-legged amid his stock and, although he shows great keenness in getting you to examine his wares, he never reveals any haste ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... proverbially embodied in himself this quality of wisdom. "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord searching out the innermost parts." The allusion is clearly to intellectual powers. There is in man the same quality of mental keenness that searches into things as is in God. It is often dulled, gripped by a sort of stupor, so overlaid you would hardly guess it was there. But, too, as we all know, it often shines out with a startling brilliance. It is less in degree ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... the boy took out his pocket-knife and felt the small blade. It was of a razor keenness. Then he went through the yard behind the house to the big henhouse, where the chickens sat perched in dense rows. He raised his lantern; at once scores of tiny, bright eyes flashed ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... experiments are of interest, as yielding us a measure of the excellence of HERSCHEL'S telescopes, and a measure which is quite independent of the keenness of his vision. From them we may be sure that the efficiency of the nine-inch mirror used was not sensibly less than that of the highest theoretically attainable excellence. In this connection, too, we may refer to the Philosophical Transactions for 1790, pp. 468 ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... county. John was about thirty years of age, ordinary size, full black and clear-headed. In physical appearance he would have readily passed for a superior laborer. The keenness of his eyes and quickness of his perception, however, would doubtless have rendered him an object of suspicion in some parts of the South. The truth was that the love of liberty was clearly indicated in his expressive countenance. William ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... painful to bear when the body is quiescent, than when it is in motion. In any great trouble, any terrible suspense, look at our sleepless nights! We lie, and toss, and turn; and say, When will the night be gone? In the day we can partially shake it off, walking hither and thither; the keenness of the anguish ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... aggregate of suffering among lower, any more than among higher, organisms; and the amount of pain which individual animals have to endure—even animals of those species which we can suppose to possess a certain keenness of sensibility—is probably, in the vast majority of cases, very trifling. Half the anguish of humanity proceeds from the power of looking before and after. The animal, though he may suffer from fear of imminent, visible danger, cannot know ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... nearer, stealthily. He had learned the craft of the woods years ago, and made no sound. He stalked that grove with the keenness of a deerslayer, moving around through the undergrowth until he was quite near the rocks. He could hear no voices as yet, but something told him that they must be there. It was a very secluded spot; it would have been a pity to have had to go on to ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... intensely more cold than, that of England. The thermometer is frequently at 30 deg. and 40 deg. below zero, when it is only about freezing point in the latter place. This difference is probably occasioned by the prevailing north-westerly wind, that blows with piercing keenness over the rocky mountains, or Andes, which run from north to south through the whole Continent, and over a country which is buried in ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... what was amiss and questioning them on what they told him, he would say: "Give me a plan of your day. What is your work? When do you take your meals? Of what do they consist? What time do you get up, and when do you go to bed?" Notwithstanding the keenness of his eye and natural intuition, which found out instantly far more than was told, he not only eagerly and attentively listened, but remembered what his patient said. Sir Henry Roscoe gave me a striking instance of this, and I cannot do better ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... Hitty hurried into the house to give him to the servant's charge, while she returned to the sitting-room, where the old man had seated himself in the rocking-chair, and was taking a mental inventory of the goods and chattels with a momentary keenness in his look that no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... ended. Felgate, to all appearance docile and penitent, nursed his wrath within him, and kept his eye open, with all the keenness of a sportsman, to the slightest opening for a revenge. In a quiet way he continued to do a great deal in the house to thwart the spirit of enterprise which was at present knitting all factions together. He sneered in a superior way at the enthusiasm all round him, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... circumstances which endeared Harry to our singular monarch, his skill and keenness as a sportsman were not inconsiderable: he knew where all the game in the island was to be found; so that, when his good old patron was permitted by the gout to take the field, Harry's assistance saved ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... I remember; and Horace and Martial cry "Carpe rosas" perpetually. Are the modern inhabitants still more refined than they in their researches after pleasure? and are the present race of ladies capable of increasing, beyond that of their ancestors, the keenness of any corporeal sense? I should think not. Here are however amusements enough at Rome without trying for ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of opinion was seen in the added keenness of party strife and in the disturbances of 14th July 1791. The occasion of these last was the celebration by a subscription dinner of the second anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Both at Manchester ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... uncourtly opinions could express those opinions without resorting to illegal expedients and employing the agency of desperate men. The consequence was that the dispute was carried on, though with sufficient keenness, yet, on the whole, with a decency which would have been thought extraordinary in the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wondered things which all her sisterhood have long ached over, she saw Osborn looking at the black-haired woman too, and in his eyes there was a light of admiration, a keenness, a speculation which drew the tired lines from his face and left it eager once more. It was the male look which once he had looked only for her. With a heart beating sharply she recognised and wanted it again, but she felt strangely impotent. She in her dyed gown, her gamin of a ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... I expected every day to receive an agonised message from Mrs. Boyce announcing his death. Then, as is the way of humans, the keenness of my apprehension grew blunted, until, at last, I took his continued existence as a matter of course. I wrote him a few friendly letters, to which he replied in the same strain. And so ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... witness his arrival. You ask me what was his appearance as he ran, or rather flew, up the steps of the hotel, and sprang into the hall. He seemed all on fire with curiosity, and alive as I never saw mortal before. From top to toe every fibre of his body was unrestrained and alert. What vigor, what keenness, what freshness of spirit, possessed him! He laughed all over, and did not care who heard him! He seemed like the Emperor of Cheerfulness on a cruise of pleasure, determined to conquer a realm or two of fun every hour of his overflowing existence. That ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... I hope—that I may always hereafter look charitably upon the hard, savage acts of peasants, and the cruelties of a “brutal” soldiery. God knows that I strived to melt myself into common charity, and to put on a gentleness which I could not feel, but this attempt did not cheat the keenness of the sufferer; he could not have felt the less deserted because ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... subtle intellect, high scholastic and professional attainments, a style of eloquence which was at once ornate and logical, a noble and handsome countenance, a voice of silvery sweetness and great power of modulation, and an address at once impressive, dignified and ingratiating. His keenness of perception and his faculty for detecting the weak point in an argument were almost abnormal, while his power of eloquent and subtle exposition had no rival among the Canadian public men of those times. His famous speech—to be hereafter more particularly referred ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the noble horse under her, stirred Helen as with the excitement of a mighty hunting, a positively royal sport. While the close presence of the young man riding beside her sharpened the edge of that excitement to a perfect keenness ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... young people are thus induced to acquire knowledge, without study and labor, is not education. It occupies but does not enrich the mind. It imparts a stimulus for the time, and produces a sort of intellectual keenness and cleverness; but, without an implanted purpose and a higher object that mere pleasure, it will bring with it no solid advantage. In such cases knowledge produces but a passing impression; a sensation, gut no more; it is, in ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... recognized me with the keenness of a Venetian. He accosted me and congratulated me on my luck, but I gave him no answer, and seeing that I wished to remain ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... ambling aimlessly about Chicago's teeming, gritty streets, was a tragedy. Those big, capable hands, now dangling so limply from inert wrists, had wrested a living from the soil; those strangely unfaded blue eyes had the keenness of vision which comes from scanning great stretches of earth and sky; the stocky, square-shouldered body suggested power unutilized. All these spelled tragedy. Worse ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... research, and it requires much experience in selecting suitable men and in training them to the desirable degree of efficiency, after having determined the special qualities required. Important qualifications in industrial researchers are keenness, inspiration and confidence; these are often unconsidered by manufacturers, who in endeavoring to select, say, a research chemist, are likely to regard every chemist as a qualified ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... great future before them. The pupils I have had have invariably been ones who progress with astonishing rapidity. They show keenness and good taste, and are willing to work faithfully and conscientiously, and that, after all, is the true ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... long and died slowly, and the Christian hymn-writers wrote in its decadence. It was then an instrument that has lost its fineness, and keenness, and polish—worn out and ineffective,—not the language of the men whose thoughts still charm the world, and who by its deft use gained for themselves and for their work immortality. It has little of the subtilty of expression, the variety of cadence, or the intellectual possibility, of ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... beings, why do we not see It? Because the ordinary man's vision is too dull and distracted. It is visible to those alone whose intellect has been purified by constant thought on the Supreme, and whose sight therefore has become refined and sharpened. This keenness of vision comes only when all our forces have been made one-pointed through steadfast practice ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... forges rang to the making of sword-blades, many smiths had essayed to imitate the falchions of Damascus, their trenchant keenness and their wondrous golden inlaying. But numerous as were the attempts made to recapture the ancient secret of the East, they all signally failed, and brought about the ruin of many masters ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... deliberately; for he was loth, to be thought prone to lying about any matter, and wished to be held a stranger to falsehood; and accordingly he mingled craft and candour in such wise that, though his words did lack truth, yet there was nothing to betoken the truth and betray how far his keenness went. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... brotherhood of humanity that every one of us holds his possession as trust property for the use and behoof of others, and in the present case that which we have received, and the price at which we have received it, give an edge to the keenness of the obligation, and add a new grip to the stringency of the command. It is because Christ has given Himself thus to us that the possession of Him binds us to the imitation of His example, and the impartation of Him to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Bordeaux upon the table so that the one I had marked stood by my plate. Eight o'clock struck during these preparations; supper was brought and we immediately took our places. The crew lay about on the deck, and seemed very good humored. When the keenness of their appetite was appeased, they began to drink, and the officers broke the necks of ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... those well-poised pinions Faltered, and beat the air unevenly; Nor shall the Bird maintain its proud dominions If those wings lapse from rhythm, pulse awry. Vain power of beak and claw, keenness of eye, Or pride of crested head, if those broad vanes Beat without balance true the clouded sky. The lord of those etherial domains, Once wing-maimed, pitiless fate ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... which was less to the credit of the acumen of Tsiskwa than a full confession of his breach of etiquette in tormenting his young "grandfather" might have been. At the time Savanukah felt a certain, malicious pride in the old man's keenness and poise and capacity, and he said apart to the inquisitive bystanders that, as might have been expected, the big bird, Tsiskwa-yah, had pounced upon the little bird, Tscholen-tit—for the name of each signifies a bird in their respective ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Melinoff of old, then a sprightly enough man for his years, was no more, and it was a decrepit, stoop-shouldered, dirty and grey-bearded figure that shuffled now around the old-clothes shop, apathetic of "bargains," where before it had been a man whose keenness was matched only by the sort of eager craft and low cunning with which he ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... world—and his books of travel were uniformly interesting and successful. They do not attract to-day, not, as Park Benjamin put it, because Taylor travelled more and saw less than any other man who ever lived, but because they lack the charm of style, depth of thought, and keenness of observation which the present generation has ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... in France, and another girl's brother Will a doctor in the American Hospital at Neuilly, near Paris, Grace was heart and soul with the Allies. Harry might have done much in other lines without attracting her attention, but his keenness to become a flier at the front had appealed to her pride, and she felt deeply any attempt to belittle the spirit that animated the boys, however remote might be the possibility ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... this chapter has walked all through this park carrying the clothing, food and equipment just described. Every day of the journey found her in better physical trim, vigor, strength, and with keenness of vision and joy of life ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... Frere bitterly. "You do not know the Baggaras. They are keenness itself. It is real enough, but I am well paid ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer's assumption ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... only to the detached spirit, which is indeed doing nothing to nature, but only letting nature do her work. In the sharp outline of this imagery, and in the mind that saw and the heart that felt it, there is something of the keenness of the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... at that moment, was as happy as human creature could be, with a keenness of happiness that children who have never been made to turn sheets of a bright afternoon can never realize. The sun was yet an hour high, as she saw, by the flash of her shrewd, time-keeping eye, and she could bear her little prize down to the cove, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... acquired, they could not be retained. The British had reduced to ashes every village, and almost every house within their power; but this wanton and useless destruction served to irritate, without tending to subdue. A keenness was given to the resentment of the injured, which outlasted the contest between the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... to be desired in those who have to do with children is what may—for want of a better word—be called vitality, not the fatiguing artificial animation which is sometimes assumed professionally by teachers, but the keenness which shows forth a settled conviction that life is worth living. The expression of this is not self asserting or controversial, for it is not like a garment put on, but a living grace of soul, coming from within, born of straight thinking ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... everywhere. He was in the Admiral's vessel, and although sometimes hardly able to drag himself upon deck, he would note with all his old keenness every nook and cranny in the precipitous shores, every movement of the enemy, every natural advantage which could possibly be made use ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... loungers stared with frank admiration at the young fellow who came out smiling from the door of the Phoenix Hotel, big and handsome in his riding clothes, his eyes taking in the details of girths and bits and straps with the keenness of a horseman. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the constant flight of her thoughts to him that now made her picture him at table with the others. Her heart was down below, and there was nothing there that she could not see, and hear, and smell, with such keenness of the senses did her love endow her. "Giacomo," she resumed, "you are to go down and tell his Eminence that we are longing to taste his figs, and that it will be very kind of him if he will send us such as ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... poet has dissociated into colorful beauty should recombine in the reader's brain into a new intensity of unified brilliance. The reflex of the poet's sight should sustain the original perception with a haunting keenness. The insubstantiality of the poet's spectres should touch with a tremulous vibrancy of ultimate fact the reader's sense ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... as wireless operator was swift of the swiftest; he despatched with a lightning lilt, and the keenness of his ears, for which he was famous on more than one ocean, made it possible for him to receive signals with rarely the necessity for ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... scantily-furnished rooms, the furniture itself, the food, the nuns' perpetual black dress, and ungraceful headgear,—Madelon hated them all, as she gradually recovered from her first desolation, and became alive again to external impressions; and, as the first keenness of her sorrow wore off, this vague sense of general unhappiness and discomfort showed itself in an attitude of opposition and defiance to every one and everything around her. From being helplessly wretched and cross, she became distinctly ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... ready to return to the fold, and certify the delusions practised upon him by these wolves in sheeps clothing? Even Mr. Thompson, whose attention is apt to be otherwise directed, the moment he falls in conversation with Palmer and Bunce, scents out the fraud with all the instinctive keenness of a blood hound—Mr. Kasson on the same track, hardly the length of a nose behind, and unwilling to be outdone in sagacity, echoes the howlings of his leader. Judge Stillwell, tho' it seems the dullest ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... shooting, but work which carried the men far from home, and enabled Sir Harry to look after his cousin. George, so looked after, did not dare to say that on any day he would shirk the shooting. But Sir Harry, as he watched his cousin, gradually lost his keenness for watching him. Might it not be best that he should let matters arrange themselves? This young squire from Lincolnshire was evidently an oaf. Sir Harry could not even cherish a hope on that side. His girl ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... and a noble one it was too. Its fulfilment now, I suppose, lies well within your reach? You have the means to carry it out, eh? You have indeed been truly blessed.' He eyed him again with uncommon keenness, though a smile ran from the eyes and mouth even up to the forehead and silvery hair. 'The world, I see, has not yet poisoned you. To carry it out as you once explained it to me would be indeed success. If I remember rightly,' he added, 'it was ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... is in charge of a quick-eyed little woman of six and thirty perhaps, and she regards us with a certain keenness of scrutiny. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... of day you've had, she puts all right." The man was right—the most delightful conversation that can be held is between a rational man and woman who love each other, who understand each other, and who have sufficient worldly keenness to keep clear of lowering cares. A man rightly mated feels it an absolute delight to confide the innermost secrets of life to his wife; and the woman would feel almost criminal if she kept the pettiest of petty secrets from her partner. They are friends, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... more and they separated. Pawnee Brown was on his mettle and followed Yellow Elk's trail with all the keenness of an Indian himself. In half an hour he had reached the brook. Here he came to a series of rocks and was forced to come to ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... fruit and garden produce societies (but not nearly enough), besides a thousand or so societies of allotment holders which, thanks largely to our friend, George Nicholls, set all the others an example in keenness and loyalty to ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... alarmingly difficult to arouse them. When the gray evening twilight drew its deepening curtain over the cold glittering heavens and the icy waste, and when the famishing bodies had been covered from the frost that pinched them with but little less keenness than the unrelenting hunger, the solitude seemed to rend her very brain. Her own powers faltered. But she said her prayers over many times in the darkness as well as the light, and always with renewed trust in Him who had not yet forsaken her, and thus she sat out her weary ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... matter being by no means case-hardened. A similar instance, further removed from his immediate circle, might have called forth a strong, angry denunciation; but he felt too deeply anything affecting his own family or friends to be able in the first keenness of his grief and ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... in his hand, regarding it earnestly, addressed it in these words: "O sword of unparalleled brightness, excellent dimensions, admirable temper, and hilt of the whitest ivory, decorated with a splendid cross of gold, topped by a berylline apple, engraved with the sacred name of God, endued with keenness and every other virtue, who now shall wield thee in battle? who shall call thee master? He that possessed thee was never conquered, never daunted at the foe; phantoms never appalled him. Aided by Omnipotence, with thee did he destroy the Saracen, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... subtracted, the sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired intensity. At last nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract Self. The universe became without form and void of content. But Self persisted, formidable in its vivid keenness, feeling the most poignant doubt about reality, ready, as it seemed, to find existence break as breaks a bubble round about it. And what then? The apprehension of a coming dissolution, the grim conviction that this state was the last state of the conscious Self, the sense that I had followed ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... few friends—no bosom-companion; he lived by himself, and among his books and maps. M. Bourienne, whose friendship for him commenced thus early, says—"Buonaparte was noticeable at Brienne for his Italian complexion, the keenness of his look, and the tone of his conversation both with masters and comrades. There was almost always a dash of bitterness in what he said. He had very little of the disposition that leads to attachments; which I can only attribute to the misfortunes of his family every since ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... of her mind seemed read by Mrs Delvile, who examined her with eyes of such penetrating keenness, that they rather made discoveries than enquiries. She was silent some time, and looked irresolute how to proceed; but at length, she arose, and taking Cecilia by the hand, who almost drew it back from her dread of what would follow, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... white, and she conceived a sudden and violent dislike to him. She never before had appreciated fully the weakness in that beautiful high-bred intellectual face. It was old-fashioned and dreamy. It had not a suggestion of modern grip and keenness ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... analysis of their contents, or by such extracts as can be given from them. No English can convey the exquisite fitness of French polemical expression in its highest form, its mingled force and delicacy, its keenness and yet its lightness. We shall, however, endeavour to give as clearly as we can an account, first, of the controversy out of which the ‘Letters’ originated, and then of the consummate skill ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... nothing in the future, so far as health and disease are concerned, so much as excessive alimentation. To this evil—and it is a most serious and common one in this land of abundance and busy activity—I am much exposed, both from the keenness of my appetite, and the exceeding richness of the simple vegetables and fruits of which I partake. But, within a few years past, I seem to have gotten the victory, in a good measure, even in this respect. By eating ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... conceal from Mr. Pantin for a single instant the real purpose of his call by irrelevant talk and solicitous inquiries about his health. In the present instance it did not require great acumen to guess that something urgent had brought Mrs. Toomey out on a day like this, nor any particular keenness to detect the signs of agitation which Mr. Pantin noted in his swift glance. She was coming to borrow—he was as sure of that as though she already had asked, and if any further confirmation were needed, her unnatural gayety when he admitted her and the shortness of her breath ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... establishes a connection with the history of kingdoms, and the ambitions, passions, or fortunes of mankind; so that men may pore over a map with more eagerness than the greatest of romances can excite, or scan a countryside with a keenness that the beauty of no picture could evoke. To Captain Dieppe, a soldier, even so much apology was not necessary for the careful scrutiny of topographical features which was his first act on reaching ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope |
