"Sharpness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this device of conversation, like the other best things—the beauty of woman, the strength of wine, the sharpness of steel, and red ink—is "open to abuse."[326] It has been admitted that even the fervency of the present writer's Alexandrianism cools at the "wall-game" of Montalais and Malicorne. There may be some who are ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... her sharpness jarred on Mona cruelly, and put all her new resolutions to flight. "No, I haven't," she said, sullenly. "There wasn't anything to break but the broom, and you saw me put that ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... together. It was early yet, and the city was veiled in fine mist through which the river gleamed here and there with a sharpness of steel. The dome of St Peter's was still dark against the greenish pallor ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... supremacy, of life. If Great Britain stood in our way, fight her. If Mexico made trouble about Texas, conquer her. War is the execution of the law of progress. Reason can go only so far, and then the sharpness ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... of considerable ability in him that haps to please this way: a slender faculty will serve the turn. The sharpness of his speech cometh not from wit so much as from choler, which furnisheth the lowest inventions with a kind of pungent expression, and giveth an edge to every spiteful word: so that any dull wretch doth seem to scold eloquently ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... a squatter. His high, oval head is bald very far up, but not benevolently so, and it is covered with light red hair, so thin as to contrast indifferently with the denseness of his beard and goatee. His nose would be insignificant but for its sharpness, and at the nostrils it is swelling and high-spirited. His eyes impinge upon his brows, and they are shining and rather dark, while the brows themselves are so scantily clothed with hair that they seem quite naked. Mudd is neatly dressed in a green-grass duster, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... want to kill him?" And at this moment Mrs. Archbold, who was on the watch, came in with Hannah and another nurse, and the three women at a word from their leader pinned Cooper simultaneously, and, taking him at a disadvantage, handcuffed him in a moment with a strength, sharpness, skill, and determination not to be found in women out of a madhouse—luckily for the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... I look at all that sort of age?" was Lady Sellingworth's thought as, for a brief instant, she contemplated him, with an intensity, a sort of almost fierce sharpness which she was scarcely ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... at sea from Port Royal, whence the details of the coast of Jamaica were losing their sharpness, the Arabella hove to, and the sloop she had ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... knitted, the din about them evidently adding to her perturbation, Mrs. Upton, with a sharpness of utterance that Jack had never heard from her, said: "Your sapphire ring? Your grandmother's ring? Indeed, indeed, Imogen, I must ask you not ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... him with a sharpness seldom seen on a woman's face when it bent toward Messer Guido of the Cavalcanti. Her smooth forehead wrinkled with an unfamiliar frown; her full lips seemed to tighten and narrow to a red thread; her eyes were ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... article, its air-drawn counterpart,—this you still had, or might get, and draw uses from, if you could. Wait till the Book on the Logos were done;—alas, till your own terrene eyes, blind with conceit and the dust of logic, were purged, subtilized and spiritualized into the sharpness of vision requisite for discerning such an "om-m-mject."—The ingenuous young English head, of those days, stood strangely puzzled by such revelations; uncertain whether it were getting inspired, or getting infatuated into flat imbecility; and strange effulgence, of new day or else ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... in the morning and his coming was unannounced. Before evening he had completed a stern inspection which had left only one impression in the minds of the inspected, and that impression was to the effect that more snap and pep, more sharpness and keenness ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... for the Rev. Mr. Pope's incumbency than for the fact of Rob Donn, the satirical Gaelic bard, being a native of the district. The author of the Dunciad is the greatest satirist in British Literature; Rob Donn is supreme among Gaelic bards for the sharpness of his tongue and his clever way of showing up his contemporaries to ridicule. He was in the habit of giving praise to people in order to make his satire more biting. Praise on his tongue was compared to oil on the edge of a razor: the cut was all the deeper. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... seeming not to wish that the governor should be present at the performance of the ceremony. But His Excellency was so struck with the fierce gestures, and wild demeanour of the other, who held in his hand one of our hatchets and frequently tried the sharpness of it, that he determined to accompany him, taking with him Mr. Collins and his orderly sergeant. On the road, Baneelon continued to talk wildly and incoherently of what he would do, and manifested such extravagant marks ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... Blasco Nunez may undoubtedly compare, if not in duration, at least in sharpness of suffering, with any expedition in the New World, - save, indeed, that of Gonzalo Pizarro himself to the Amazon. The particulars of it may be found, with more or less amplification, in Zarate, Conq. del Peru, lib. 5, cap. 19, 29. - ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... make it all seem unreal? Even the little one in her arms,—she too, seemed unreal! Ramona did not know it, but her nerves were still partially paralyzed. Nature sends merciful anaesthetics in the shocks which almost kill us. In the very sharpness of the blow sometimes lies its own first healing. It would be long before Ramona would fully realize that Alessandro was dead. Her worst ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... expressions for them: his successor appears to have no clue, no fixed or leading principles, nor ever to have thought on a question till he sits down to write about it; but then there seems no end of his matters of fact and raw materials, which are brought out in all their strength and sharpness from not having been squared or frittered down or vamped up to suit a theory—he goes on with his descriptions and illustrations as if he would never come to a stop; they have all the force of novelty with all the familiarity ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... persons with an imperfect rendering of that which might be pure and fine, as church-wardens are content to lose the sharp lines of stone carving under clogging obliterations of whitewash, and as the modern Italians scrape away and polish white all the sharpness and glory of the carvings on their old churches, as most miserably and pitifully on St. Mark's at Venice, and the Baptisteries of Pistoja and Pisa, and many others; so also the delight of vulgar painters in coarse and slurred painting, merely for the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... accepted monomania; which different thing could probably be a lighter and perhaps thereby a somewhat more boisterously refreshing form of sport. Such omens struck him as vivid, in any case, when Mr. Gutermann-Seuss, with a sharpness of discrimination he had at first scarce seemed to promise, invited his eminent couple into another room, before the threshold of which the rest of the tribe, unanimously faltering, dropped out of the scene. The treasure itself here, the objects on behalf of which Mr. Verver's interest ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... George's love for her. People had assured him since he was engaged that Marie Bromar was the handsomest girl in Lorraine or Alsace; and he felt it to be an injury that this handsome girl should prefer such a one as George Voss to himself. Marie, with a woman's sharpness, perceived all this accurately. 'Remember,' said she, 'that I had hardly seen you when George and I were—when he and ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... to a level with the saint her namesake, Mrs. Rachel Waverley gained some intimation which determined her to prevent the approaching apotheosis. Even the most simple and unsuspicious of the female sex have (God bless them!) an instinctive sharpness of perception in such matters, which sometimes goes the length of observing partialities that never existed, but rarely misses to detect such as pass actually under their observation. Mrs. Rachel applied herself with great prudence, not to combat, but to ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... done so at all with s's to it," exclaimed the Reverend OCTAVIUS, exasperated by so many plurals. "He did it but once, and then he was strongly provoked. EDWIN mentioned the sharpness of his sister's nose to him, and reflected casually upon ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... He remained staring at her throughout his reverie, which in fact related to her. He was thinking what sort of an old maid she would have become if she had remained in that village. He fancied elements of hardness and sharpness in her which would have asserted themselves as the joyless years went on, like the bony structure of her face as the softness of youth left it. She was saved from that, whatever was to be her destiny in Italy. From South Bradfield ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... the Water-Mother, East she swam, and westward swam she, Swam to north-west and to south-west, And around in all directions, In the sharpness of her torment, In her body's fearful anguish; Yet no child was fashioned from her, And no ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... Picture of Religious Splendor, which has no examples, that remain in the memory with any sharpness in 1922, except The Faith Healer, founded on the play by William Vaughn Moody, the poet, with much of the directing and scenario by Mrs. William Vaughn Moody, and a more talked-of commercial film, The Miracle Man. But not until the religious film is taken out of the commercial ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... my position for fear of disturbing Dicky, so I set my teeth and endured the discomfort. The sharpness of the pain gradually wore away as the minutes went by, and was succeeded by a distressing feeling of numbness extending all ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... new vexation that did not improve her temper. Chloe grumbled at the sharpness, but she was too old to think of another home. Faith was now a tall, thin ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... on her question his thought to the basis of life, as if on threads. Now he looked around, and his smile was bristling with pin-points of irony, increasing in sharpness. He thought a long time before he ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... definition and crisp sharpness of some of the results are entirely delightful. The bluntness and weariness of many of the later modelled Roman forms disappear in the new energy of workmanship which was engaged in exploring a fresh field of beauty. These brightly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... studies the New Testament with patient thoroughness and with honest sharpness will arrive at a distinction most important to be made and to be kept in view, namely, a distinction between the real meaning of Christ's words in his own mind and the actual meaning understood in them ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... such nonsense, Cecily," cried the Story Girl with unwonted sharpness, a sharpness we all understood. All of us, in our hearts, though we never spoke of it to each other, thought Cecily was not as well as she ought to be that spring, and we hated to hear anything said which seemed in any way to touch or acknowledge the ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... down. The sharpness had gone and her voice was shaking as she said: "You certainly must know, Ann, ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... Pl. XXXI, No. 2. In this plate the lines have unfortunately lost their sharpness, for the accidental loss of the negative has necessitated a reproduction from a positive. But having formerly published this sketch by another process, in VON LUTZOW'S Zeitschrift fur bildende Kunst (Vol. XVII, pg. 13) I have reproduced it here in the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... of the necessity of taking this method, let any one even below the skill of an astrologer, behold the turn of faces he meets as soon as he passes Cheapside Conduit, and you see a deep attention and a certain unthinking sharpness in every countenance. They look attentive, but their thoughts are engaged on mean purposes. To me it is very apparent, when I see a citizen pass by, whether his head is upon woollen, silks, iron, sugar, indigo, or stocks. Now this trace ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... cloud of darts and arrows was discharged from the flying squadrons; and a javelin, after razing the skin of his arm, transpierced the ribs, and fixed in the inferior part of the liver. Julian attempted to draw the deadly weapon from his side; but his fingers were cut by the sharpness of the steel, and he fell senseless from his horse. His guards flew to his relief; and the wounded emperor was gently raised from the ground, and conveyed out of the tumult of the battle into an adjacent tent. The ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... playing in the snow, stiff and blue with cold, scarcely able to stir a finger. They could go and warm themselves if they chose, but they do not choose; if you forced them to come in they would feel the harshness of constraint a hundredfold more than the sharpness of the cold. Then what becomes of your grievance? Shall I make your child miserable by exposing him to hardships which he is perfectly ready to endure? I secure his present good by leaving him his freedom, and his future good by arming him against the evils he will have to bear. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... cents a time to another set, often extending his business beyond the gates of Plumfield in spite of the rules. Mr. Bhaer put a stop to some of his speculations, and tried to give him a better idea of business talent than mere sharpness in overreaching his neighbors. Now and then Jack made a bad bargain, and felt worse about it than about any failure in lessons or conduct, and took his revenge on the next innocent customer who came along. His account-book was a curiosity; and his ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... made of comparisons taken from the pleasures of the senses when these are mingled with that which borders on pain, to prove that there is something of like nature in intellectual pleasures. A little acid, sharpness or bitterness is often more pleasing than sugar; shadows enhance colours; and even a dissonance in the right place gives relief to harmony. We wish to be terrified by rope-dancers on the point of falling and we wish that tragedies shall well-nigh cause us to weep. ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... invisible power raises and lays so suddenly the storms of that great fluid body, of which those of the sea are only consequences? From what treasury come forth the winds that purify the air, cool scorching heats, temper the sharpness of winter, and in an instant change the whole face of heaven? On the wings of those winds the clouds fly from one end of the horizon to the other. It is known that certain winds blow in certain seas, at some stated seasons. They continue a fixed time, and ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... the seeming deserter had been well received in New York. The sharpness of the pursuit and the orderly-book which he bore seemed satisfactory proofs of his sincerity of purpose. The captain of the galley sent him to New York, with a letter ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... down the cone by a spiral path. Our route lay amidst eruptive rocks, some of which, shaken out of their loosened beds, rushed bounding down the abyss, and in their fall awoke echoes remarkable for their loud and well-defined sharpness. ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... too thin for the climate of a Cumbria autumn, and round her singularly small and fleshless neck, a wisp of black velvet. The top of the head was rather flat, and the heavy dark hair, projecting stiffly on either side of the face, emphasized at once the sharpness of the little bony chin, the general sallowness of complexion, and the remarkable size and blackness of the eyes. There was something snakelike about the flat head, and the thin triangular face; an effect which certainly belied the little lady, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lived more in this last fortnight than in fourteen years; and not one of my long weeks of unhappiness has ever equalled in sharpness of torture this one short week of passion. My heart aches, my head swims; in the depths of my being, I feel a something obscure and burning—a something that has suddenly awakened in me like a latent disease, and now begins to creep through my blood and into my soul in spite of myself, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Young Man got to his feet and stood on the bulge of the rug. Then he jumped into the air and landed solidly on his heels. There was a sharp crack as the shell of the insect broke under the sharpness of his blow. ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... Gentleman, a very worthy friend." And this seeming to lay it on another man will be counted either modesty in you, or a sign that you are not ambitious of praise, or else that you dare not take it upon you, for fear of the sharpness it carries with it. ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the bear and lion, and followed the trumpet to the wars; and in those and in the depths of the forest she seemed a wild creature to mankind, and a man to the wildest creature. She had now come out of Persia to wreak her displeasure on the Christians, who had already felt the sharpness of her sword; and as she arrived near this assembled multitude, death was the first thing that met her eyes, but in a shape so perplexing, that she looked narrowly to discern what it was, and then spurred her ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... a man of some sharpness, the Sphinx displays his wiles; he spreads his wings and folds them up again; he shows you his lion's paws, his woman's neck, his horse's loins, and his intellectual head; he shakes his sacred fillets, he strikes an attitude and runs ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... is not, by nature, destined to devour animal food, is evident from the construction of the human frame, which bears no resemblance to wild beasts or birds of prey. Man is not provided with claws or talons, with sharpness of fang or tusk, so well adapted to tear and lacerate; nor is his stomach so well braced and muscular, nor his animal spirits so warm, as to enable him to digest this solid mass of animal flesh. On the contrary, nature has made his teeth smooth, his mouth narrow, and his tongue soft; and has contrived, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... itself among many districts. The same results, both good and bad, are observable in Thukydides, whom Dio follows in constructive theory as well as style. It has already been said that our historian sacrifices sharpness of dates to the Onkos, depending, doubtless, on his chronological arrangements to make good the loss. Usually it does so, but occasionally confusion arises. Whether because he noticed this or not, he begins ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... no poison, but an opiate. My intention in deceiving you was to make you feel the agonies of a guilty conscience, had Death overtaken you suddenly while your crimes were still unrepented. You have suffered those agonies: I have brought you to be familiar with the sharpness of death, and I trust that your momentary anguish will prove to you an eternal benefit. It is not my design to destroy your immortal soul; or bid you seek the grave, burthened with the weight of sins unexpiated. No, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... do thou make oath to me." And the folk said, "Indeed, this man doth justice upon himself."[FN483] Whereupon the merchant fell into that which he disliked[FN484] and came nigh upon loss and ill fame. Now he had a friend, who pretended to sharpness and intelligence; so he came up to him secretly and said to him, "Let me do so I may cheat this Cheat, for I know him to be a liar and thou art near upon having to weigh out the gold; but I will parry off suspicion from thee and say to him, The deposit ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... fact bit him, as he sat there in the shop, with sudden and acute sharpness. What a fool he had been, all this time, to let things slide! He should have been making connections, having irons in the fire, bustling about—how could he have sat down thus happily and easily for seven years, as though such a condition of things could continue for ever? He ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... had once been Latin, but of which original language few traces remained, excepting here and there the long rolling termination of some word or phrase, set example to his guest, by modestly putting into a very large mouth, furnished with teeth which might have ranked with those of a boar both in sharpness and whiteness, some three or four dried pease, a miserable grist as it seemed for so large ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... colour that never altered with circumstances. Her black wiry hair was ended in short crisp curls, which sat close to her head. It almost collected like a wig, but the hair was in truth her own. Her mouth was small, and her lips thin, and they gave to her face a look of sharpness that was not quite agreeable. Nevertheless she was not a bad-looking woman, and with such advantages as two hundred a year and the wardrobe which Mrs. Moulder had described, was no doubt entitled to look for ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... therefore her punishment shall be, as it is said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow in thy conception: in sorrow shall thou bring forth children—and thy husband shall rule over thee." But nevertheless, if thou shalt not survive the sharpness of thy sorrow, thy death shall be deemed to be such an alleviation of thy part of the entailed transgression, that thou shalt be saved, if thou hast CONTINUED in faith and charity, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... drew Dinah Morris from her favorite aunt, who was a Methodist exhorter, and the power and spontaneity of this novel came from the sharpness and clearness of her early impressions, joined to her love of living over again her girlhood days, before doubt had clouded her sky. Also read Silas Marner with its perfect picture of Raveloe, "an English village where many of the old echoes lingered, undrowned ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... D'Artagnan, quite amazed at the resources with which his companion's Gascon sharpness continually supplied him. D'Artagnan took up his camp tin cup, filled ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... senses are but little affected by a small amount of alcoholic drink. The sense of taste, after being accustomed to the sharpness of strong drink, may be less easily pleased with the taste ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... The first sharpness of the edge worn off, Arthur Channing partially recovered his cheerfulness. The French have a proverb, which is familiar to us all: "Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute." There is a great deal of truth in it, as experience teaches us, and as Arthur found. "Of ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... which we left in the ship in the meantime to keep it, in their going up only from their cabins to the hatches, had their breath oftentimes so suddenly taken away, that they eftsoons fell down as men very near dead, so great is the sharpness of that cold climate; but as for the south parts of the country, they are ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... comfortably; but the spouse of the operator appeared to be much disturbed by the frequent and capricious opening of the door by the other passengers, which let in torrents of intensely cold air from without, and chid the offenders with a wholesome sharpness. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... unusually severe and biting, even for that angry month. There had been snow in the morning, and it lay white and dreary in various ridges along the street. But the wind was not still in the keen but quiet sharpness of frost; on the contrary, it howled almost like a hurricane through the desolate thoroughfares, and the lamps flickered unsteadily in the turbulent gusts. Perhaps it was the blasts which increased ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... helpfulness she manifested in the oft-times painful labor of gathering and arranging the thorn bushes which constituted the temporary protection against roaming carnivores. Her hands and arms gave bloody token of the sharpness of the numerous points that had lacerated her soft flesh, and even though she were an enemy Tarzan could not but feel compunction that he had permitted her to do this work, and at last he bade ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to attack Mr. Darwin has only to read his works with a desire to observe, not their merits, but their defects, and he will find, ready to hand, more adverse suggestions than are likely ever to have suggested themselves to his own sharpness, without Mr. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... sensational items in newspapers had prepared him in some measure for the story of her wanderings since last they met in quiet, old-fashioned Bootle. He felt that she was altered, that their ways in life had deviated with a sharpness that was not to be brought back into parallel grooves simply because he had traveled many thousands ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... been tolerably sure of a win in any class. The Dandie Dinmont had the most delightful eyes imaginable, and was a good-bodied dog, faulty only in tail and in a tendency to be leggy. The Welshman was a little miracle of Celtic grace—the very incarnation of doggy sharpness. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... and had two children; and the most distressing thought of all was that I saw my children predestined to the same fate. I saw them growing up in complete destitution of those country sights and sounds which had made my own youth delightful; acquiring the superficial sharpness of the city child and his slang; suffering at times by the anaemia and listlessness bred of vitiated air; high-strung and sensitive as those must needs be whose nerves are in perpetual agitation; and when, in chance excursions to the country, I compared ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... Miss Loomis to whom he delivered himself of the last mentioned. He liked them both, which was more than he did most people, for this AEsculapian countryman of Carlyle had much of that eminent writer's sharpness of vision and bluntness of speech together with even more of his contempt for the bulk of his fellow-men. "No, Mrs. Cranston," said he, "don't wait a day for her. Start just as soon as you are ready, and don't give a thought to this little flibberty ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... hide itself no longer: to answer Joan's mother with anything like temper was impossible, and, knowing this, her only refuge was in flight. "I don't want to hear any more you may have to say, Mrs. Tucker;" and though Eve managed to keep under the sharpness of her voice, she could not control the indignant expression of her face, which Mrs. Tucker fully appreciating, she speeded her departure by the inspiriting prediction that if Eve didn't sup sorrow by the spoonful before her hair was gray her name ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... seize her for ourselves, and use her for our own purposes. You will ask, how were we to get rid of our manacles? Well, it was thus arranged, sirs. Jose Leirya had brought on board, cunningly concealed in his clothing, a number of small saws, of exceeding fine temper and sharpness. They would cut through our manacles as a knife cuts through wood. These he gave out to some of the slaves, and on the night arranged they were to cut the links of their iron manacles and pass the tools ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... was hardly prepared to find it so ready to flash forth on the most inexplicable provocations. It is like walking on a volcano. I have seen him two or three times draw himself up, bite his lip, and answer with an effort and a sharpness that shows how thin a crust covers the burning lava; but I acknowledge that he has been very civil and attentive, and speaks most properly of what he owes to you. I only hope he will not be hurt by the possession of so large a property so early in life, and I have an ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he had plunged into the fire until it had begun to char. He had scraped away the charring with a piece of broken glass, and, as a result of his endeavors, had really a spear with a point of undoubted sharpness and great hardness. He took huge pride in his new weapon, and carried it to school with him for days and on his various woodland expeditions, but there had come no chance to rescue any distressful maiden anywhere, and the envy and admiration of the other boys had but resulted in emulation and ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... you quite get me, Helen," he heard himself say, with icy sharpness. "I wanted to see Hilmer myself! I had a business proposition to put up to him. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... manifested in the three previous chapters now begins to take more definite thought form. The intellect seeing more clearly, appeals to the intellects of those who listen that they may think with greater sharpness and distinctness the thoughts presented. By aiming to present these thoughts so as to be clearly understood, distinctness and precision of utterance are gained. The elements of speech become more perfectly ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... follow the R-V line, V indicating valley and R ridge or hill. Note first the difference in sharpness in the contour bends; also how the valley contours point to the highland and the ridge contours to ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... Chatham County. He was a gallant trencherman, and the strange tropic viands tickled his palate. Heavy, commonplace, almost slothful in his movements, he appeared to be devoid of all the cunning and watchfulness of the sleuth. He even ceased to observe, with any sharpness or attempted discrimination, the two men, one of whom he had undertaken with surprising self-confidence, to drag away upon the serious charge of wife-murder. Here, indeed, was a problem set before him that if wrongly solved would have amounted to his serious discomfiture, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... sentence" [209] upon the excellent works of Young, he allows them the high praise to which they are justly entitled. "The Universal Passion (says he) is indeed a very great performance,—his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment, and his points the sharpness of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... forest was broken by the sweet note of some singing bird or the harsh croak of the raven. At night the savage cry of the wolf too often disturbed the rest of the scattered dwellers in that vast forest, and made a belated traveller look well to the sharpness of his weapons and the temper of his bowstring; but by day and in the sunlight the forest was beautiful and quiet enough — something too quiet, perhaps, for the taste of the two handsome lads who were pacing the dim aisles together, their arms entwined and their curly ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... deny that he was—and for the rest he could hardly get his words out with the sharpness of his hunger whetted still keener by the blessed smell of cooking. But he ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... house, rode shortly before nightfall the jester and his companion. During the day the young girl had seemed diffident and constrained; she who had been all vivacity and life, on a sudden kept silence, or when she did speak, her tongue had lost its sharpness. The weapons of her office, bright sarcasm and irony, or laughing persiflage, were sheathed; her fine features were thoughtful; her dark eyes introspective. In the dazzling sunshine, the memory of their ride through the gorge; the awakening at the shepherd's ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... he gave a high idea of his departed gallantry, but he never so much as alluded to the deeds of surpassing bravery which had astonished the doughty old admiral, Comte d'Estaing. Though his manner was that of an invalid, and he walked as if stepping on eggs and complained about the sharpness of the wind or the heat of the sun, or the dampness of the misty atmosphere, he exhibited a set of the whitest teeth in the reddest of gums,—a fact reassuring as to his maladies, which were, however, rather expensive, consisting as they did of four daily meals of monastic amplitude. His ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... to the particular purpose of my visit at this time to himself, he assumed a little more of his official stateliness. He condescended to say that it would have given him pleasure to reckon me amongst his flock; "But, sir," he said, in a tone of some sharpness, "your guardians have acted improperly. It was their duty to have given me at least one year's notice of their intention to place you at Christ Church. At present I have not a dog- kennel in my college untenanted." Upon this, I observed that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... swindle, and, borrowing one of my friend Squire Leach's forcible expressions, I may say we "started with good intentions, whatever came out of 'em." Perhaps I may be excused for introducing the following verses of my own, entitled "Haworth Sharpness," to close ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... principally by voluntarily committing his life and liberty into his enemies' hands, by that action manifesting that he had absolute confidence in them, to the end they might repose as great an assurance in him. Caesar only opposed the authority of his countenance and the haughty sharpness of his rebukes to his mutinous legions ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... word of advice; indeed, in such cases advice is always useless, for the very man whom you may seek to save is exceedingly likely to swear, or even to strike at you. He thinks you impugn his wisdom and sharpness, and he loves, above all things, to be regarded as an acute fellow. A few favoured gentry almost lived on Bob, and scores of outsiders had pretty pickings when he was in a lavish humour, which was nearly every day. He betted on races, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... portion of the ink. This is the reason of the dirty appearance of printed music. A new process has recently been invented by Mr Cowper, by which this inconvenience will be avoided. The improved method, which give sharpness to the characters, is still an art of copying; but it is effected by surface printing, nearly in the same manner as calico-printing from blocks, to be described hereafter, 96. The method of printing music from pewter plates, although by far the most ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... was in progress, and if it could have been transcribed then, no doubt it would have proved to be of the most intense interest; but unfortunately it had to be recalled the next morning when its clearness was muddled, the sharpness ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... admit, however, that there is no sharpness in Georgiana's pleasantry. The child-nature in her is so sunny, sportive, so bent on harmless mischief. She still plays with life as a kitten with a ball of yarn. Some day Kitty will fall asleep with the Ball poised in the cup of one foot. Then, waking, when her dream is over, ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... of course, led his reflective. His sharpness and quickness of eye surprised even the Indians. He says: "My observatory ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... the wit which I can well observe To-day in our young lords; but they may jest Till their own scorn return to them unnoted, Ere they can hide their levity in honour So like a courtier: contempt nor bitterness Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were, His equal had awak'd them; and his honour, Clock to itself, knew the true minute when Exception bid him speak, and at this time His tongue obey'd his hand: who were below him He us'd as creatures of another place; And bow'd his eminent top ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... dissimilarity, if he could have analyzed it, would have struck him as amounting to a difference of soul. Or rather, it was as if Violet's face had never given up her soul's secret until now; never until now had it so much as hinted that Violet had any soul at all. The comparative fineness and sharpness of outline might have reminded him of his wife as she had looked when she came out of her torture after the birth of her first child, but that no implacable resentment and no revolt was there. It was plainly to be seen (nor did Ransome altogether miss it) that ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... pasted with a brush, and are united by successive processes of cold-drying, hot-drying, and hydraulic pressure. Each sheet is large enough for forty cards. The outer surfaces of the outer sheets are prepared with a kind of flinty coating, which gives sharpness to the outline of the various coloured devices. Most packs of cards are now made with coloured backs. The ground-tint is laid on with a brush, and consists of dis-temper colour, or pigments mixed with warm melted ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... he. "To-night at two—by the little door in the garden wall. And he's coming with us. The young fool is coming with us.... So she and I go out of each other's lives.... Coira!" he cried, with a sudden sharpness. "Coira, I won't have it! Am I going to lose you ... like this? Am I going to lose you, after all ... ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... spiritual indifference as are to be seen on every hand? This question may pave the way for others:—Is there anything amiss with the substance of my preaching, with its methods, with its spirit? If there be weakness here or there; if it lack the true note; if it have lost strength to grip, sharpness to probe, power to heal; if, in short, it lacks aught of being the means of grace it was designed to be, can it be brought, once more, on to the right lines? Our words may be as a river refreshing ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... touch of sharpness will help us to make sure of what's what and who is who. Any one can contribute such a definition, and, without it, no one knows exactly where he stands. If I offer my own provisional definition of humanism now and ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... spinster seemed tall from the length and angularity of her face, which recalled the exaggerated proportions of certain Swiss heads. The character of their countenance—the features being marked by a total want of harmony—was that of hardness in the lines, sharpness in the tones; while an unfeeling spirit, pervading all, would have filled a physiognomist with disgust. These characteristics, fully visible at this moment, were usually modified in public by a sort of commercial smile,—a bourgeois smirk which mimicked good-humor; ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the famous surgeon, Professor MacDonald. He was elderly, with the broad high forehead, dignity of poise, and sharpness of glance which bespeaks the successful scientist. His face, to-night, was chalky and the firm, full mouth twitched with nervousness. He greeted Shirley abstractedly. The criminologist's manner was that of ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... eye and lip, as we meet some long cherished friend who passes us by with a cold, scornful glance. O this is poverty's bitterest curse, and this too must be met. Those who might have removed many a sharp thorn from the pathway of the lonely Henriette, but added sharpness to their point, and made ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... the force were river steamboats, whose machinery was protected with cotton, and their stems shod with one-inch iron, clamped in place by straps of the same material extending a few feet aft. Thus strengthened, it was hoped that with the sharpness of their bows and the swiftness of the current they could, notwithstanding the exceeding lightness of their structure, penetrate the hulls of the United States ships. Resolutely and vigorously handled, there can be little doubt that they might have sunk one or two of their assailants; ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... the matron, with impatient sharpness. "I know what you are aiming at. But to conceive of eternity is the prerogative of the immortals; our intellect is wrecked in the attempt. Our wings melt like those of Ikarus, and we fall into the ocean—the ocean of madness, to which I have often been near enough. You Christians fancy you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which lay a drawbridge. So Jack employed men to cut through this bridge on both sides, nearly to the middle; and then, dressing himself in his invisible coat, he marched against the giant with his sword of sharpness. Although the giant could not see Jack, he smelt his approach, and cried out in ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... together could not send a bullet through him unless God wished it. And if it were the God's decree that he should die, what could be the use of rebelling against it? The two converts, like good Christians, were more practical, and lost no time in grinding the huge blades of their kukris to the sharpness of razors. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Canada which is not wintry and forbidding. There is warmth of summer in both tales, and thrilling air and the beauty of the wild countryside. As for the cold, it is severe in most parts of Canada, but the air is dry, and the sharpness is not felt as it is in this damper climate of England. Canadians feel the cold of a March or November day in London far more than the cold of a day in Winnipeg, with the thermometer many degrees below zero. Both these books present the summer ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... first sharpness of death had passed from Ansdore, Joanna's sanguine nature, her hopeful bumptiousness, revived. Her pity for the dead lambs and her fellow-feeling of compassion for the ewes would prevent her ever dreaming of a new experiment, but already she was dreaming of a partial justification ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... was in hopeless peril. He knew that he was physically defenceless and at the mercy of twelve armed and lawless men. But he retained a preternatural clearness of perception, and audacity born of unqualified scorn for his antagonists, with a feminine sharpness of tongue. In a voice which astonished even himself by its contemptuous distinctness, he said: "My name IS Ford, but as I only SUPPOSE your name is Harrison perhaps you'll be fair enough to take that rag from your face and show it ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... they were: for they were hammer-headed sharks! Both were conspicuously seen: for they had risen to the surface, and were swimming with their dark dorsal fins protruded above, and set with all the triangular sharpness of staysails. Although they had not been observed before by those on the Catamaran, they appeared to have been swimming in the proximity of the gig,—on which, beyond doubt, they had been for ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... rather not; and yet, how was he to avoid it? On a sudden he became very crafty. Had it not been for the sharpness of his mother wit, he would certainly have been landed at that moment. "As you truly observed just now," he said, "the tongues of people are so malignant. There are little birds that ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... relate. Our lads were too sharp for them, and dropped at once. My heart rose to my mouth, sir, for I thought three of ours were hit; but it was only their sharpness, for they were returning the fire the next moment, and we kept it up as hot as the enemy did ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... the Middle Age explain themselves as a masked or frolic expression of that which in grave earnest the mind of that period toiled to achieve. Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science. The shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the power of subduing the elements, of using the secret virtues of minerals, of understanding the voices of birds, are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right direction. The preternatural prowess of the hero, the gift of perpetual youth, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... it was not to be compared with the drifts on the line. The wind now, as they started off, was whipping away the loose top layers of snow in cold white clouds, which stung the face and ears with their icy sharpness; but, with caps well down and coats buttoned up to the ears, the two trudged on. The snow had ceased, but it was plain, by the dark and lowering sky, that this might only be temporary, and Acton kept up as smart a pace as he could, heading right for ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... before the besieged outworks of Badajoz. During the darkness of night the siege was renewed with a terrific vigour that was not to be resisted, and the "unconsidered voluntaries" of Estramadura tasted the sharpness of English steel. The town was taken—but at what a cost! If any one wishes to know more of that fearful carnage let him read the description of it in the pages of Colonel Napier, and he will acquiesce in the chronicler's assertion that, ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... with him; and if that woman proved to be Miriam Strange, one could only say that the unexpected had happened, as it often does. If, in view of all the circumstances, he dressed better than ever, and gave his little dinners more frequently, while happiness toned down the sharpness of his handsome profile to a softer line, he had little in ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... we are right; it is an intellectual difficulty; but frequently it is simple mushiness of character, the same defect which tempts us, when we know a thing is true, to whittle it down if we meet with opposition, and to refrain from presenting it in all its sharpness. Cowardice of this kind is not only injustice to ourselves, but to our friends. We inflict a grievous wrong by compromise. We are responsible for what we see, and the denial or the qualification should be left to take care of itself. Our duty is, if possible, to give a distinct ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... on a Riverside Drive bus at Seventy-ninth Street and rode in the mellow gold of autumn up to Broadway and 168th. Serene, gilded weather; sunshine as soft and tawny as candlelight, genial at midday as the glow of an open fire in spite of the sharpness of the early morning. Battleships lay in the river with rippling flags. Men in flannels were playing tennis on the courts below Grant's Tomb; everywhere was a convincing appearance of comfort and prosperity. The beauty of the children, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... last—and you have waited—and there has been no other, not the thought of another, not the passing image of another between us. For I know there has not been that and I should have known it anywhere in all these years, the chill of it would have found me, the sharpness of it would have been in my heart—no matter where, no matter how far—yet say it, say it once—say that you have loved ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... are a mistake." Mr. Saffron spoke with a sudden sharpness, in pointed rebuke. "If I form a right idea of that woman, she's quite capable of going to Mudie's ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... just man, ventured to represent that Trafton did not foresee the result of his action; but, in the sharpness of her bereavement, Mrs. Trafton would ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... directors of the Company. One of the principal practical objections to this locomotive was the enormous quantity of coke consumed or wasted by it—about 692 lbs. per hour when travelling—caused by the sharpness of the steam-blast in the chimney, which blew a large proportion of the burning coke ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... their personal demeanour towards him—so respectfully distant to the Queen, yet so patient of her harassing displeasure—that Elizabeth changed her manner to him, and, though cold and distant, ceased to offer him any direct affront. She intimated also with some sharpness to others around her, who thought they were consulting her pleasure in showing a neglectful conduct to the Earl, that while they remained at Kenilworth they ought to show the civility due from guests to the Lord of the Castle. In short, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... a feature of Polchester life, and those who were old enough to understand pitied her and offered her many remedies. But the young cannot be expected to realise that there can be anything physically wrong with the old, and Mrs. Sampson's sharpness of manner, her terrifying habit of rapping out a "Yes" or a "No," her gloomy view of boisterous habits and healthy appetites, made her one most truly to be avoided. Before to-day Joan would have willingly ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... of the crowd had already passed. 'Looky there, Ted,' quoth the younger of the detectives, with the sharpness of surprise in his voice, and pointed straight to my feet. I looked down and saw at once the dim suggestion of their outline sketched in splashes of mud. For ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... that by nine o'clock it was hardly possible to stand in the open. The sky was like iron, and the dull red which had appeared in the West at sundown changed to a cold, neutral dimness. The birds were in great trouble, the gulls especially wailing with a peevish sharpness that made the skin creep. I looked out twice into the roaring darkness, and could see nothing except the flash of the "white horses" as they trampled and reared far out at sea. The fire was better than that wild company, so I sat a little, and then ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... unlike his own in extent and sharpness, the girl with the violin-case had paused just perceptibly in an unconscious attitude which kept in the lamplight her bust, tightly encased in a faded but elegant Genoa brocade jacket, with copper lace ornamentation, coming down upon a ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... to the Moloch of Legitimacy, which then skulked behind a British throne, and had not yet dared to stalk forth (as it has done since) from its lurking-place, in the face of day, to brave the opinion of the world. If it had then glutted its maw with its intended prey (the sharpness of Mr. Godwin's pen cut the legal cords with which it was attempted to bind them), it might have done so sooner, and with more lasting effect. The world do not know (and we are not sure but the intelligence may startle Mr. Godwin himself), that he is the author of a volume of Sermons, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... acted more wisely," said the Princess to Bianca, with some sharpness, "if I had let thee converse with this peasant; his inquisitiveness seems of a piece ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... Eastern dress was far beyond their imagination. The centre pier of the doorway is formed into a niche enclosing the basin for holy water, protected by a carved canopy of great beauty; but time and exposure have worn away much of the sharpness of the work. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... of our civil war, certain truths, hitherto unobserved or guessed at merely, have been brought out with extraordinary sharpness of relief; and two of them have been specially impressive, the one for European observers, the other for ourselves. The first, and perhaps the most startling to the Old World watcher of the political skies, upon whose field of vision the flaming ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Edith Southey (now W.), of Dora, and of myself. There is truth in the sketch of Dora, poetic truth, though such as none but a poet-father would have seen. She was unique in her sweetness and goodness. I mean that her character was most peculiar—a compound of vehemence of feeling and gentleness, sharpness and lovingness, which is not often seen' ('Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge, edited by her Daughter,' 2 vols. 8vo, 3d edition, 1873, p. 68). Later: 'I do confess that I have never been able to rank "The Triad" among Mr. Wordsworth's ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the average mediaeval tomb, of interest chiefly for its age. These figures are slightly defaced, the sharp edges worn smooth by time, and scores of initials have been scratched roughly on the surface of his armour or her mantle; but there is a certainty of line, a sharpness, and at the same time a suavity of angle, a way of disposing the head and hands and body, all within the stiff convention of rigid tomb carving, that to any lover of sculpture reveals the sure hand of a master, whether he were a nameless stonemason, working in a secluded village, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... him to take him by the hand, he made great mistakes. His wife and he cared nothing for one another, but she was jealous to the last degree. I never saw such jealousy. It was strange that, although she almost hated him, she watched him with feline sharpness and patience, and would even have killed any woman whom she knew had won his affection. He, on the other hand, openly avowed that marriage without love was nothing, and flaunted without the least modification the most ideal theories ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... making her queer, for she's changed from sharpness to tearfulness, and she weeps any time. A thing I never ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... woods the Slate-colored Snowbird (Fringilla Hudsonia) starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed is almost metallic in its sharpness. He breeds here, and is not esteemed a snowbird at all, as he disappears at the near approach of winter, and returns again in spring, like the Song-Sparrow, and is not in any way associated with the cold and the snow. So different are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... the sharpness of word and tone of this speech, her niece could somehow read that Miss Eliza was glad ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... sharply to the hatchway and descended, wondering why one of the sailors had not been sent down to quiet Bruff, and of course ignorant of the fact that they had one and all declined to go and face him, for certain reasons associated with the sharpness of his teeth and strength of his jaws, while the mate felt that it would be an easier way of solving the difficulty to send down the dog's ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... are such characteristic antitheses as: "Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13), and "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it" (Matt. 16:25), coming with a spontaneous flash, and answering in their sharpness to the sharp edges of fact. His words caught the attention, and lived in the memory; they revealed such a nature; they ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg.[782] During the (p. 557) later years of the reign successive ministries grappled vainly with this problem, and the political forces of the kingdom came to be divided with unprecedented sharpness by the conflict between the separatist tendency and the demand for immediate and complete incorporation. The king himself was brought eventually to consent to the framing of a constitution for the whole of his dominions, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... average height, slim and elegant. He wore a full beard, dark and carefully tended, and had the long face and pronounced nose of the Boccaneras, but the impoverishment of the family blood over a course of centuries had attenuated, softened as it were, any sharpness ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... elements. In the latter, there is the capacity for the synthesis, for the discovery of far-reaching relationships. Again, we hear that the wise head invents, the acute mind discovers, the deep mind seeks out. The first combines, the second analyzes, the third founds. Wit blends, sharpness clarifies, deepness illuminates. Wit persuades, sharpness instructs, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... to find the hour late, and was going to make inquiry about her brother when a voice arrested her. She recognized Miss Kingsley's voice addressing some one outside, and it had a sharpness she ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... of the cowering flock, He is doing on a small scale what He did once and forever on Calvary; when, exposing Himself to the penalty due to sin, and braving the concentrated antagonism of a broken law, the drawn sword of inviolable justice, the sharpness of death, the shame of the cross, and the humiliation of the grave, He said, "If ye seek Me, let these ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... offensive weapons consisted of swords, battle-axes, and spears; but the Macedonian pike was shortened a fourth of its length, and reduced to the more convenient measure of twelve cubits or feet. The sharpness of the Scythian and Arabian arrows had been severely felt; and the emperors lament the decay of archery as a cause of the public misfortunes, and recommend, as an advice and a command, that the military youth, till the age of forty, should ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... breathes an air of melancholy, an expression which is somewhat rare among the Pharaohs of the best period: the thin and straight nose is well set on the face, the elongated eyes have somewhat heavy lids; the large, fleshy lips, slightly contracted at the corners of the mouth, are cut with a sharpness that gives them singular vigour, and the firm and finely modelled chin loses little of its form from the false beard depending from it. Every detail is treated with such freedom that one would think the sculptor must have had some soft material to work ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... this delicious dissipation until past midnight; and at every seance Aleck lavished millions upon great charities and religious enterprises, and Sally lavished like sums upon matters to which (at first) he gave definite names. Only at first. Later the names gradually lost sharpness of outline, and eventually faded into "sundries," thus becoming entirely—but safely—undescriptive. For Sally was crumbling. The placing of these millions added seriously and most uncomfortably to the family expenses—in tallow candles. For a while Aleck was worried. ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... common yellow ferro-cyanate of potass. As soon as the liquid is applied, the negative picture vanishes, and is replaced by a positive one, of a violet blue color, on a greenish yellow ground, which at a certain time possesses a high degree of sharpness, and ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... was more. He had some sharpness and some taste. But the former was all brought out in sneers, and the latter in snuff-boxes. His whole mind could have been put into one of these. He had a splendid collection of them, and was famous for the grace ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... is generally of the most surface kind—she skims the cream off each item of news, and serves it up to you in her own fashion, caring little whether it be correct or the reverse. And the more vivaciously she talks, the more likely she is to be dangerously insincere and cold-hearted, for the very sharpness of her wit is apt to spoil the more delicate perceptions of her nature. Show me a brilliant woman noted for turning an epigram or pointing a satire, and I will show you a creature whose life is a masquerade, full of vanity, sensuality ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... contino), because he was always cordial and kind, and never crossed Saint Mark's Square without speaking a word of comfort to those in need of good advice, or giving a few sequins[8] to those who were in want of money. And as every blow is wont to fall with double sharpness upon those who are discouraged by misfortune, when at other times they would hardly have felt it at all, so now, when the people heard the bells of Saint Mark's proclaim in solemn muffled tones the death of their Duke, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... flash and his heart softened. Poor thing, poor creature! She was old and feeble, and crippled. He had forgotten. He had only thought of her, Kaya, the girl with the flower-like face. He shook himself, as if out of a dream, and his hand patted the woman's shoulder soothingly. His voice lost its sharpness. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... those who had charge of that house and its supper table. And thus the time was excellently improved till the table was spread, while the short delay and the successive exercises whetted to an extraordinary sharpness the pilgrim's hunger for the supper. Piety and Charity, who had joint charge of the house from the Master of the house, held each a characteristic conversation with Christian, but it was left to Prudence to hold the most particular discourse with ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... honest, or he was patient as well as cunning. In no other way could Basterga explain his dupe's inaction. And presently, when he had almost brought himself to accept the former conclusion, on an evening something more than a week later, a thing happened that added sharpness to his anxiety. He was crossing the bridge from the Quarter of St. Gervais, when a man cloaked to the eyes slipped from the shadow of the mills, a little before him, and with a slight but unmistakable gesture of invitation proceeded in front of him without ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... volatile young savage entertained me all through the dinner, utterly superficial herself, yet possessed of a singular sharpness and wit, mostly at my expense; yet she was so charming I forgave her. There is no denying that you become enraged, insulted, chagrined by these women, who, however, by a look, dispel your annoyance. I do not understand it. I found that while an author of a novel she was grossly ignorant of the ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... how many days intervened between that last breaking off of our engagement and Marion's surrender. But I recall now the sharpness of my emotion, the concentrated spirit of tears and laughter in my throat as I read the words of her unexpected letter—"I have thought over everything, and I was selfish...." I rushed off to Walham Green ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... remnant of heavenly innocence still clings to him, for, though fallen, he is still an angel! Mephistopheles in his real nature is without any higher aspirations, he argues with a sarcastic smile on his lips, he is ironical with sophisticated sharpness. Satan has unconsciously gigantic ideas, he is ready to wrestle with God for the dominion of heaven. Mephistopheles is perfectly conscious of his littleness as opposed to our better intellectual nature, and does evil for evil's sake. Satan is sublime through the grandeur ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... in Little Dorrit, and always afterwards that connection remained with him. Her thin, spare figure had something intense, almost burning, in its immobility, in the deep black of her dress and hair, in the white sharpness of the outline of ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... thick-headed boy, the third in the family, and the one of her children who seemed to have inherited Annie's peasant blood undiluted. He supplied the restful element in a house where the eldest-born was hot-tempered and revengeful and the second son more like a girl-child for sharpness and a woman grown for scheming. Tom had already made up his mind to be Mr. Tonkin's office boy, and from that he meant to become articled clerk, and from that—who could tell? Tom remained quiet on the subject of his ultimate intentions, but he was fighting his mother's apathy and natural habit ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... make his acquaintance in order to learn his business in the town. He had come early, hoping to find footprints that might give him a hint, but was disappointed. There were a number of marks, but they had lost their sharpness and he could not tell which had been ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... STRANGER: Too great sharpness or quickness or hardness is termed violence or madness; too great slowness or gentleness is called cowardice or sluggishness; and we may observe, that for the most part these qualities, and the temperance and manliness of the opposite characters, are arrayed as enemies on opposite sides, and do ...
— Statesman • Plato
... a singularly intelligent child, and so must often have wondered what has become of all the interesting things that you read about in the old fairy-tales—the shoes of swiftness, and the sword of sharpness, and the cloak that made its wearer invisible, and things like that. Well, the fact is all these things are still in the world, hidden about somewhere, only people are so busy with new inventions, wireless telegraphs and X rays, and air-ships, that ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... ground supplants the shepherd, as the shepherd supplants the hunter; and the like holds also in the history of the branch of art we are discussing—representations of animals are the first to make their appearance, and they are at this period remarkable for a wonderful sharpness of characterization. At a later stage man first begins to exhibit a preference for plant-forms as subjects for representation, and above all for such as can in any way be useful or hurtful to him. We, however, meet such ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... sky thus with meek words address'd:— "Much I have learn'd; but tell me this—why of our copper coin Does one side bear a ship, and one a double head like thine?"[17] "That head is mine; you might have known the likeness of the face But that hoar age and wear have dull'd the sharpness of the trace. As for the ship, attend: the god that bears the scythe whilcome Far-wandering in the Tuscan flood at length had ceased to roam.[18] Well I remember when he came, and hold the memory dear— Saturn, by Jove expell'd from heaven, and kindly welcom'd here. Thence was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... song breathe forth a flame of minstrel fire. O happy tribe of choristers! no interruption mars The concert of your harmony, nor ever harshly jars A string of all your harping, nor of your voices trill Notes that are weak for tameness, that are for sharpness shrill. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... churches on the Coelian; the low villa-covered ridges to the right melting into the Campagna; and far away, the blue, Sabine mountains—'suffused with sunny air'—that look down with equal kindness on the refuge of Horace, and the oratory of St. Benedict. What sharpness of wall and tree against the pearly sky—what radiance of blossom in the neighbouring gardens—what ruin everywhere, yet ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... face still bore the stamp of a simple and severe beauty, but time and grief had dealt ungently with it. The lips were pale and anaemic, two or three folds, sharp as if made with a knife, surrounded them. About the eyes, whose soft and lambent light of other days had turned into a hard and troubled sharpness, spread concentric rings, united by a ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair within was thrown in hard, black outline upon the luminous screen of the window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... child cleanly, and secondly, take off the sharpness of its urine. As to keeping it cleanly, she must be a sorry nurse who needs to be taught how to do it; for if she lets it but have dry, warm and clean beds and cloths, as often and as soon as it has fouled and wet them, either by ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... fire, by which not much execution was done. At length one of these parties, led by Captains Waggoner and Porterfield, engaged the British flank guard very closely, killed a captain with ten or fifteen privates, drove them out of the wood, and were on the point of taking a field piece. The sharpness of the skirmish soon drew a large body of the British to that quarter, and the Americans were again driven over ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Kate. Joan awoke with a start at the sharpness of this voice. "Don't shoot, Buck. See that bit of paper under his throat. He's bringing ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... and agony was mine. I was the horse, hanging poised on the verge of the giddy tower, the next moment to be borne sheer down to destruction. Involuntarily, I raised my hand to feel the leanness and sharpness of my face. Oh horror! the flesh had fallen from my bones, and it was a skeleton head that I carried on my shoulders! With one bound I sprang to the parapet, and looked down into the silent courtyard, then filled with the shadows thrown into it by the sinking moon. Shall I cast myself ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor |
