"Acute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... acute sense of listening; but there was a storm outside, and the wind cried in the chimney and rattled the windows, and a branch of a tree tapped against the shutters—that ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... remembered how many times she had gone to him for help like that. In panicky moments when the new world she had been transplanted into seemed terrible to her; in moments when she feared she had made hideous mistakes; and, most notably, during the three or four days of an acute illness of her mother's, when she had been brought face to face with the monstrous, incredible possibility of losing her, how she had clung to him, how his tenderness had soothed and quieted her—how his strength and steady confidence ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... me these letters, died at a hospital in Stuttgart on the morning of August 8th, 1914, of acute double pneumonia. I have kept the letters private for nearly three years, because, apart from the love in them that made them sacred things in days when we each still hoarded what we had of good, they seemed to me, ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... Scotland, "November 25, 184—. "My Dearest Father: I wrote to you about six weeks ago, informing you that I was in sorrow and in danger, and imploring you to come and comfort and protect me. And since that time I have been waiting with the most acute anxiety to hear from you by letter or in person. Expecting this with confidence, I did not think it necessary to write again. But, as so long a time has elapsed, I begin to fear that you have not received my letter, and so I write again. Oh, my father! if you should ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... birds sleep on biting winter nights it would be difficult to say, but the acute little juncos lease the farmer's corn shocks hard by the woods. At dusk you may startle a dozen of them from a single shock. They dart pellmell from their hiding places, chippering their protest, and when you examine the shock you find cozy ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... attitude to him, in fact to the rest of the world, was that of a superior being looking down upon those immeasurably beneath him. For him, a Prussian nobleman, to be spoken to in this way by one of a lower sphere was bad enough, but when that one was of the very lowest of spheres, an American, it was acute pain. He looked upon Edestone as a low comedian rather than as a gentleman in the hands of a chivalrous enemy, which the officer ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... and which was carried with them on their first emigration from England. Law, also, he said, had fostered this high spirit of liberty, since the study of it was more universal in America than in any other country in the world, and since that study made them acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, and full of resources. Burke next dwelt on the enlarged population of America, and the increased importance of her commerce, both in exports and imports, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... acute, he waited. He had decided that if the incident were repeated, he would make an effort to get the fellow from behind, but there was no return. The wind had died again, and there was no longer even the rustling of the leaves to ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Mrs. Prentiss the year 1870 was marked with a white stone as one of great happiness, the two following years were marked by unusual and very acute suffering. Perhaps something of this was, sooner or later, to have been looked for in the experience of one whose organization, both physical and mental, was so intensely sensitive. Tragical elements are latent in every human life, especially in the life of woman. And the finer qualities ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... reach the flame with my hands, and the fire extinguisher was by the pilot's seat. I called for it into the speaking-tube. The pilot made no move. Once more I shouted. Again no answer. V.'s earpiece had slipped from under his cap. A thrill of acute fear passed through me as I stood up, forced my arm through the rush of ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... had a sense of hearing that was preternaturally acute. The most distant step in the corridors was audible. Was it a reprieve? One such sound multiplied itself into the footsteps of two men walking, coming ever nearer—nearer—nearer till they stopped outside her cell door. With a clank it was opened. She sprang up. Fortunately she ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... was a thorough-going Yankee from Maine, who had been both a peddler and a pedagogue in his day. He had all manner of stories to tell about nice little country frolics, and would run over an endless list of his sweethearts. He was honest, acute, witty, full of mirth and good humour—a laughing philosopher. He was invaluable as a pill against the spleen; and, with the view of extending the advantages of his society to the saturnine Nord, I introduced them to each other; but Nord ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... admiral bore his sufferings with serenity, and, far from needing any comfort his friends could give him, himself administered consolation to the noblemen around his bed. His sufferings were acute. Amboise Pare, the famous surgeon of the king, himself a Huguenot, was called in; but the instruments at hand were dull, and it was not until the third attempt that he could satisfactorily amputate the wounded finger. "My friends," said Coligny to Merlin, his minister, and to other ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... idea was becoming firmly fixed in the acute mind of the young adventurer, and it tended to make him both watchful and silent. Not only was he in a country which was at war with his own, but he was in a land where men were apt to be more or less suspicious of each other. It was also quite the correct thing in good manners for him to ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... magnificent kind. He attempts to create out of the myths of a people a mythology which provides gods to be worshipped, faiths to be organised, and beliefs to be the standards of life and conduct. Thus, as I have pointed out elsewhere,[154] Sir John Rhys has, in his acute identification of the worship of the water-god Lud on the Thames and of Nod on the Severn,[155] introduced the idea of a great Celtic worship established on these two great rivers as parts of a definite system of Celtic religion, whereas examination proves that ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... youth two years older than himself, very gay and dissipated, and wondered what sympathies could draw two young men together of such opposite characters. On becoming acquainted with Beauclerc he found that, rake though he was, he possessed an ardent love of literature, an acute understanding, polished wit, innate gentility and high aristocratic breeding. He was, moreover, the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerc and grandson of the Duke of St. Albans, and was thought in some particulars to have a resemblance to Charles the Second. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... learned as for the sake of the people generally; that they may be rightly instructed in the doctrine of salvation and of Christian morals. In the meantime we must do our best to satisfy all; that the simple be not left without needful teaching; the more acute find no want of force and argument; nor the learned charge the preacher with a pride of knowledge foreign to the occasion ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... us see the view taken of the matter by Mr Baron Parke—a man undoubtedly of acute and powerful mind, as well as accurate and extensive learning. It is impossible not to be struck by the tone of diffidence which pervades his judgment; and it was delivered in a very subdued manner, not usual with that learned judge; occasioned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... differences in classification already referred to, which imply also more radical differences in opinion and practice, has led one of the most acute minds among our foreign colleagues to express the hope that one of the permanent results of this exposition may be an effort toward international unity, or at least agreement in respect to classification and nomenclature. Undoubtedly such agreement ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... he circled carefully about the outside of the enclosure until, opposite a break in the thorny wall, he came to indications that something had recently passed into the jungle. His acute sense of smell told him that both of those he sought had fled from the camp in this direction, and a moment later he had taken up the trail and ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mellow, golden stonework of the long range of buildings, from the sound of a chime of bells that came wonderfully sweetly over the soft swelling of the close turf. The feeling came not from any sense of prospective ownership, but from the acute consciousness of what these things stood for. I did not recognise it then, but later I understood; for the present it was enough to have again the power to set my foot on the ground, heel first. In the streets of the little ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... went on. Jude was thrown into such acute sorrow that he almost felt he would try to get the man to accede. But it could do no good, and might make her still worse; and he saw that it was imperative to get her home at once. So he coaxed her, and whispered tenderly, and put his arm round her to support ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... She remembered now, as if they had been uttered yesterday, the cruel words he had flung at her during their last hour together when he had taunted her with not giving up everything and going off with him—and that though she had known that there was, even then, a part of his acute, clever brain telling him insistently that she would be a drag on him in his new life.... She had also been cut to the heart that Godfrey had not written to her father when his one-time closest friend, her twin-brother, George, ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... passer-by to write beneath it the Delphic sentiment: "May the man who shall read this never read anything else." The symptoms of the ailment in its most acute form are described by some Roman lover in the verses which he has left us on the wall of ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... about three barrels of water in the cockpit. I bailed out with a grocery box, kept under the seat for that purpose. It had been growing quite cold, and Emery's indisposition—or what was really acute indigestion—had weakened him for the past two days, but he pluckily declined to stop. I was soaked with my last immersion and chilled with the wind, so concluded there was no use having him go through the same experience and I ran his boat while ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... Mr. Goodchild tried to rise and cry out. But, the two fiery lines extending from the old man's eyes to his own, kept him down, and he could not utter a sound. His sense of hearing, however, was acute, and he could hear the clock strike Two. No sooner had he heard the clock strike Two, than he saw before ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... as I do it is a pleasant task! Just now a very acute thought also occurred to me concerning the cat's boots, and in them I admire the genius of the actor. You see, at first be is a cat; for that reason he must lay aside his natural clothing in order to assume the appropriate ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was thankful to have a girl at last whom she could name without regard to her own relations or anybody else's. I have skipped about a good deal, but I have only left out two, the boys who came between Abby and Stella. In their names the contemporary observer need not be too acute to discover both an avowal and to some extent an enforcement of Mr Murchison's political views; neither an Alexander Mackenzie nor an Oliver Mowat could very well grow up into anything but a sound Liberal in that part ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... would dress quickly and emerge into the open air. Meanwhile, however, he gasped in the heat and the heavy odour of the place; his head ached with an intolerable pain round his temples and at the back of his eyeballs; and acute nervousness gripped his vitals. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... How strangely acute were my perceptions of everything before me! I looked from face to face and analyzed the expressions, counted the lines down the corduroy pantaloons, measured the heavily-shod English feet, numbered the rows of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... His sorrow for Beatrice had disturbed all his thoughts. Food and sleep were alike abominable to him. His fine-strung nerves and delicate organization, in which every feeling had been rendered more acute by his mode of life, were of that kind which could feel intensely wherever the affections were concerned. His material frame was too weak for the presence of such an ardent soul. Whenever any emotion of unusual power appeared ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... when fuller occupation of the land had reduced the opportunities for the hunt to an inconsiderable residue, the pressure of energy seeking purposeful employment was left to find an outlet in some other direction. The ignominy which attaches to useful effort also entered upon a less acute phase with the disappearance of compulsory labor; and the instinct of workmanship then came to assert itself with more ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... "The angle is too acute and the distance too great for accuracy," he said with an air of disappointment. "The beam comes from the roof of a house down along Pennsylvania Avenue, but I can't tell from here which one it is. Take ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... in the Christian Church is now so acute that we may well seek for some mode of escape from its pressure. The Old Broad Church position is no longer adequate to English circumstances, and there is not yet in existence a thoroughly satisfactory new ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... eagerness, told him a Persian merchant had arrived very late the day before, who had a slave to sell, so surprisingly beautiful that she excelled all the women his eyes had ever beheld; "And for wit and knowledge," added he, "the merchant engages she shall match the most acute and learned persons ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... during the last two centuries, for up to that time the forests touched the outskirts of the town and regulated the Crati-bed, preventing the formation of marshes. The literary record of Cosenza is one of exceptional brilliance; for acute and original thought this town can hardly be surpassed by any other of its size on earth. Were statistics available, I have not the slightest doubt that fever could be shown to be largely responsible for the withering of its ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... possible lines of conduct suggest themselves; what kind of success will one choose, what kind of pleasure? Choice, personal choice, will be forced upon the individual. This problem does not usually grow acute until early adolescence, although it may along some lines present itself earlier. When it appears will depend to a large extent on the environment. For some people in some directions it never comes. It should come gradually and spontaneously. This period is the period of transition, ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... uniform, or that M. de Cymier, who led the cotillon so divinely. Yes! No doubt it was he—the last-comer. And once more Fred suffered all the pangs of jealousy. It seemed to him that in his loneliness, between sky and sea, those pangs were more acute than he had ever known them. His comrades teased him about his melancholy looks, and made him the butt of all their jokes in the cockpit. He resolved, however, to get over it, and at the next port they put into, Jacqueline's letter was the cause of his entering for the first time ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... acute despair. "God of my fathers!" he groaned, changing color. "It can't be. Garry, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... looking at Ulick, she felt the thrill of liberation; it was like a ray of light dividing the dark. Looking at Ulick, she was startled by the conviction of his indispensability in her life, and the knowledge that she must repel him was an acute affliction, a desolate despair. It seemed cruel and disastrous that she might not love him, for it was only through love that she could get to understand him, and life without knowledge of him ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... another world, supposing there is another world, where ledgers and mills are out of date? Or what has a scholar or scientist to do in a state of things where there is no place for dictionaries and grammars, for acute criticism, or for a careful ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... equally important sway. An order in council authorized an army of 22,218 officers and men and the recruiting officers wasted no time in setting about their work. All over the Dominion men had been drilling ever since the danger of war became acute. The organized militia was hard at work. Volunteers were being rapidly gathered and after a thorough medical examination were put in charge of a drill sergeant. There was no difficulty in getting men and the recruiting officers from the first were overwhelmed ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... hillocks, hued by the dying day, the dark forms, slender and graceful both, coming nearer and nearer, until in startled recognition of one at least, he halted in dumb amaze, and therefore caught but flitting glimpse of the other as it whisked jauntily away. He had his suspicions, strong and acute, yet with nothing tangible as yet on which to base them, and if he breathed them, what would be the result? The girl whose identity he had promised not to betray "until sister Naomi could be heard from," would beyond all question be called to account. To ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... little in front of the ear and stopping on a level with the upper part of it; and the fissure of Sylvius, beginning at the base of the brain somewhat in front of the ear and extending upward and backward at an acute angle with the base ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... controversy about the rights of the church, and necessity of episcopacy, he declared himself a presbyterian, and an enemy to bishops, liturgies, ceremonies; and was considered, as one of the most learned and acute of his party; for, having spent much of his life in a college, it cannot be doubted that he had a considerable knowledge of books, which the vehemence of his temper enabled him often to display, when a more timorous man ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... leisure left in the busy life of a dramatist and a poet of officialdom—that his most charming and delicate work is to be found. In a way they begin modern English prose; earlier writing furnishes no equal to their colloquial ease and the grace of their expression. And they contain some of the most acute criticism in our language—"classical" in its tone (i.e., with a preference for conformity) but with its respect for order and tradition always tempered by good sense and wit, and informed and guided throughout by a taste whose catholicity and sureness was unmatched in ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... single one wants to possess your ear and do in secret what should be resolved upon openly, it must necessarily be for the purpose of concealing from Your Majesty either his ignorance or his wickedrnpss." [Memoires de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 349.] Prudent rules and acute remarks, which Richelieu, when he became all-powerful, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... an acute sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and no saint had suffered more severely from despair. One of his great objects, in most of his works, is to arm poor pilgrims against desponding fears. Thus, in his first treatise on Gospel Truths-"He (the devil) ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lost one Tooth and a half on the left Side, and two and a half precisely on the right; and I have two more that stand somewhat out of their Ranks. My Legs and Thighs, in the first place, compose an obtuse Angle, then a right one, and lastly an acute. My Thighs and Body make another; and my Head, leaning perpetually over my Belly, I fancy makes me not very unlike the Letter Z. My Arms are shortened, as well as my Legs; and my Fingers as well as my Arms. In short, I am a living Epitome of human Misery. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... us next attend to the chronic effects of ardent spirits upon the body and mind. In the body they dispose to every form of acute disease; they moreover excite fevers in persons predisposed to them from other causes. This has been remarked in all the yellow-fevers which have visited the cities of the United States. Hard-drinkers seldom escape, and rarely recover from them. The following diseases ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... acute and valuable Prolegomena of F. A. Wolf, turning to account the Venetian Scholia, which had then been recently published, first opened philosophical discussion as to the history of the Homeric text. A considerable part of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... a dozen of these powders, will you, Wyatt? Here's the full prescription. Squire Shirley has got one of his acute attacks of neuralgia again, and my medicine-chest was empty. I'll call for them in ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... had died in October of acute rheumatism, and her son continued to reside in the same apartment. He had this night been sitting ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... following variations: (1) In the length of the petiole, as one to three; (2) in the form of the leaf, being either elliptical or obovoid; (3) in the margin being entire, or notched, or even pinnatifid; (4) in the extremity being acute or blunt; (5) in the base being sharp, blunt, or cordate; (6) in the surface being pubescent or smooth; (7) the perianth varies in depth and lobing; (8) the stamens vary in number, independently; (9) the anthers are mucronate ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Hugh and his pretty, fair-haired, gentle wife. No; she ought never to have married him at all. It was but the night before her wedding that she walked in the garden of her father's old manor-house with a bright, open-hearted, handsome youth, whose brow wore that expression of acute agony which it is so pitiable to witness on a young countenance—that look almost of physical pain, which betokens how the iron has indeed "entered the sufferer's soul." "Ah, you may plead, 'Cousin Edward;' but we women are of a strange mixture, and the weakest of us may ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... was in bed with influenza, she said, but it was quite evident that acute distress of mind had a large ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... went quickly out of the room. Presently she came back with a very large decanter in one hand and a plate in the other, on which was placed a big, round cake with a frosted top. Gertrude, in taking the cake from the closet, had had a moment of acute consciousness that it composed the refection of which her sister had thought that Mr. Brand would like to partake. Her kinsman from across the seas was looking at the pale, high-hung engravings. When she came in he turned and smiled at her, as if they ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... very vividly. His remark was really another effort to keep in close touch with Miriam, even in thought. He needed her more than ever in this sea of silence that was gathering everywhere about him. Gulf upon gulf it rose and folded over him. His anxiety became every moment more acute, and those black serpents of fear that he dreaded were not very far away. By every fiber in his being he felt certain that a test which should shake the very foundations of his psychical life was slowly ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... Behind a low counter he saw ceiling-high shelves stocked with labeled bottles, cans and cartons, and square glass jars containing odd bits of leaves, twigs, and fungus. In back of the counter was a small shelf of books with titles like Quick Diagnosis in Acute Poisoning Cases; The Arsenic Family; ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs. Snagsby the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on British jurymen. "Now, ma'am, perhaps you'll have the kindness ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Grateful tears sprang to her eyes; tears which acute suffering could not wring from her. He saw the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... hot temptation in his brain, required an effort scarcely to be achieved, if this man had not himself summoned him to stop: and that, with an assumed compassion in his voice which drove him well-nigh mad, and in an instant routed all the self-command it had been anguish—acute, poignant anguish—to sustain. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... philosophy, and dominated their speculations. The teaching of these bold pioneers was inevitably coloured and limited by their social environment; but it was also so shot through with flashes of intuition and acute reasonings, that it anticipated many of the latest developments of modern research. A study of its main features will occupy us at a later stage, when we come to deal with certain of nature's most striking phenomena. The simple fact is here emphasised that the earliest effort of human ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... remarkably winning in his compliments; but when she pleased her imperial lover, the acknowledgment was very different. Then there was no mere praise clad in the form of enthusiastic homage, but in addition always acute remarks. With the recognition blended opinions which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... called thin-skinned, but the citizens of the Union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if a breeze blows over them, unless it be tempered with adulation. It was not, therefore, very surprising that the acute and forcible observations of a traveler they knew would be listened to should be received testily. The extraordinary features of the business were, first, the excess of the rage into which they lashed themselves; and, secondly, the puerility of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which said as plainly as face could say, "Sir, do you know that up to this moment I have had a certain opinion of you, and that I begin to think I have been mistaken or misled?" I not only know that she had heard evil reports of me, but I know who told her—one of those acute fellows, my dear brethren, of whom we spoke in a previous sermon, who has found me out—found out actions which I never did, found out thoughts and sayings which I never spoke, and judged me accordingly. Ah, my lad! have I found you ...
— English Satires • Various
... cynical laugh jarred on young Wetherby's finer feelings, shaken as he was by the acute agony he was suffering, and he dragged himself on again, the cold sweat standing in great beads on ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... of acute discriminations, who has done more justice to the Irish problem than any ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... her swiftly and suddenly, and she saw that his agony of sorrow was acute beneath all his attempts at superiority, his courteous fractiousness, and his set face. She was filled suddenly with an ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... down on the dusty floor. Expert hands tied his wrists and ankles tight and lashed them together, with his knees bent at an acute angle and his shoulders pulled back. Next to him he sensed that Scotty was getting ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... and Tones of the Voice, answer, like Strings upon musical Instruments, to the Impressions made on them by the Mind. Thus the Sounds of the Voice, according to the various Touches which raise them, form themselves into an Acute or Grave, Quick or Slow, Loud or Soft Tone. These too may be subdivided into various kinds of Tones, as the gentle, the rough, the contracted, the diffuse, the continued, the intermitted, the broken, abrupt, winding, softned, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... thoroughly enjoys country loitering, and when he gets a hint of anything interesting or new going on among the birds and little creatures of the fields, he likes to stop and investigate. His ears are remarkably quick and his eyes and sense of smell phenomenally acute, and much which to most of us would be unperceived or meaningless he reads as if it were an open book. Best of all, he has the power of imparting his enjoyment, and what he writes is full of outdoor fragrance, racy, piquant, and individual. His snap and vivacity are wholly ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... suffering for several years, from a disease of the bladder, which frequently caused him most acute anguish, and several times threatened his life. The severe pain attending the disease, and the frequent surgical operations it rendered necessary, undermined his naturally strong constitution, so that when he was prostrated by his last illness, grave fears were entertained of a fatal result. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... there is already a commencement of the polygonal form, but the angles are much rounded. It is in Ag. sericeus, Ag. rubellus, &c., that the polygonal form becomes most distinct. In Dermini the angles are more or less pronounced, and become rather acute in Ag. murinus, Sow., and Ag. ramosus, Bull. The passage from one to the other may be seen in the stellate form of the conidia ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... My hearing is very acute, and not a word of that Bad Boy's brutal intentions was lost on me. I shrunk among my feathers and shivered with despair; but when I heard the voice of Little Miss I ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the most searching analysis of the present state of Jamaica, and, moreover, the most sagacious prognostications of the future prospects of the island that have ever been published. Mr. Bigelow is an accomplished, acute, and liberal American. As such, an eye-witness and a participator of the greatest and most successful colonial experiment which the world has ever seen, he is, necessarily, a better and more impartial judge ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Florence, in the year 1240, there was born, to give the first light to the art of painting, Giovanni, surnamed Cimabue, of the family, noble in those times, of Cimabue. He, while growing up, being judged by his father and by others to have a beautiful and acute intelligence, was sent, to the end that he might exercise himself in letters, to a master in S. Maria Novella, his relative, who was then teaching grammar to the novices of that convent; but Cimabue, in place of attending to his letters, would spend the whole day, as one who ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... Brillat-Savarin, from a sprightly, acute, brilliant Belles-letteriste, turned, for an hour, honest antiquary, lets us know how, upon the southern bank of the Rhone, flowing out from Switzerland, in the narrowly-bounded and, when he first quitted it, yet hidden valley of his birth:—The FAIRIES—elderly, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... The critics have, I think, been weaker in dealing with the fifth book than with any of the others. Prof. Tyrrell is too violent in his contempt for it to admit of quotation here. Heinze has some good and acute remarks on Virgil's motive in placing the book where it is, but seems to me to miss the real importance of it (op. cit. 140 foll.). Even Boissier, whose delightful account of the scenery of Eryx should be read by every one who would appreciate this ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... of a coming British Expedition were prevalent, but they were of the vaguest and most contradictory character. On 25th November Gordon learnt that it was still at Ambukol, 185 miles further away from Khartoum than he had expected, and his only comment under this acute disappointment was, "This ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the fact that horses are not often good self-nurses at best, and that it is difficult to enforce proper care for the parts affected, one can not wisely state that resolution will promptly follow in an acute involvement, nor can he predict that the case will or will not become chronic. Experience has proved that complete or partial recovery may result, or again, that no change may occur in any given case, and that ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... live still, let them come and take Thy slave in my despite, drink from thy cup, Speak in my place. Thou diest while I survive? Say rather that my fate is deadlier still, In this, that every day my sense of joy 310 Grows more acute, my soul (intensified By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen; While every day my hairs fall more and more, My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase— The horror quickening still from year to year, 315 The consummation ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... had seen them from her upper window, and the sight of them walking about in the field had produced an acute physical feeling of nausea and faintness; for her fear lest the field should be built upon and the last seclusion spoilt, had already made one of those deep ruts in the mind along which every thought runs when not actually driven in another direction. And each time Miss Ethel's thoughts ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... Light of Hayneville, when only five or six years old began to make figures in clay, and now (1885) has a large collection of mud cats, hogs, dogs, cows, horses, and men. The figures are declared to be not childish imitations, but remarkably acute likenesses. Her best piece represents a negro praying, and is said to be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... appearance in the Miocene epoch to the present time, and Professor Ruetimeyer has drawn up similar schemes for the Oxen and other Ungulata—with what, I am disposed to think, is a fair and probable approximation to the order of nature. But, as no one is better aware than these two learned, acute, and philosophical biologists, all such arrangements must be regarded as provisional, except in those cases in which, by a fortunate accident, large series of remains are obtainable from a thick and widespread series of deposits. It is easy to accumulate ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... presentative cognition is, in truth, partly representative. A feeling as pure feeling is not known; it is only known when it is distinguished, as to quality or degree, and so classed or brought under some representation of a kind or description of feeling, as acute, painful, and so on. The accurate recognition of an impression of colour depends, as we have seen, on this process of classing being correctly performed. Similarly, the recognition of internal feelings implies ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... of May the Emperor Alexander dined with Josephine at Malmaison. Grief, and a season unusually damp and cheerless, had seriously undermined her health. Notwithstanding acute bodily suffering, she exerted herself to the utmost to entertain her guests. At night she was worse and at times was delirious. Not long after this, Alexander and the King of Prussia were both guests to dine at Malmaison. The health of Josephine was such that she was urged by her friends ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... did not ask definitely about the reaction of trees to the use or non-use of lime. Puzzled by this comparative neglect of lime as a corrective on acid soils, we asked Mr. H. F. Stoke, of Roanoke, Va., a very accurate and acute observer, who had reported plantings in both kinds of soils, what his experience had been. Also we asked Miss Mildred Jones, whose experience with nut trees is second to none, the same ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... and he recognized the necessity of vanishing. He at first thought that his life as a legislator might be allowed to come to a natural end, that he might die as it were in his bed, without suffering the acute pain of applying for the Chiltern Hundreds. In this, however, he found himself wrong. The injured honour of all the Tillietudlemites rose against him with one indignant shout; and a rumour, a horrid rumour, of a severer fate met his ears. He applied at once for the now coveted sinecure,—and was ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... could take a basket in my arms—and I have had no chance for school since.'" Now this is fallacious and dangerous reasoning, my friends; nevertheless, it is reasoning, and shows that the mind of the poor boy is not inactive as to the problems of life. And the intellect which is so acute in theory will soon drive to practice. Stimulated by that selfish instinct which, as I have shown, will under pressure absorb every other consideration, he speedily commences the career of crime. And ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... practical effects. The Christian doctrine had relapsed into a system almost identical with Manicheism. Wierus thus describes Satan, as he was regarded in the prevalent theology: "He possesses great courage, incredible cunning, superhuman wisdom, the most acute penetration, consummate prudence, an incomparable skill in veiling the most pernicious artifices under a specious disguise, and a malicious and infinite hatred towards the human race, implacable and incurable." Milton merely responded to the popular sentiment in making Satan a character ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... thing up in a package and hand it to 'em on a platter. Not only the fuel, but whole new fields of science. And we've got plenty of time to do it in. They equipped us for ten years. They aren't going to start worrying about us for at least six or seven; and the fuel shortage isn't going to become acute for about twenty. Expensive, admitted, but not critical. Besides, if you send in a report now, you know who'll come out and grab all the glory in sight. Five-Jet ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... to the modern Plato, the leader at Concord. The Herald has informed us that on another day "the school listened with great satisfaction to Prof. Harris, who is constantly adding to the deep impression he has already made, and to the high opinion in which he is held as the most acute and profound thinker of the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... Nature. Every one felt the wind blow, saw water boil, and heard the thunder crash, but never thought of investigating the forces here at play. Up to the middle of the fifteenth century the most acute observer could scarcely have seen the ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... regency, in the 60th year of his reign. Over the last nine years of his reign a dark and mysterious veil had been drawn. In the periods of the deepest national solicitude his mind had felt no interest; and in the hour of the most acute domestic feeling his eye had not been wet with the tears of affection. All was dark within and without, for both reason and sight had departed from him. It does not appear, indeed, that any temporary ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... inflammatory fever burned him out of this life in three days. He died last night at nine o'clock, not deprived of his senses entirely at last, and possessing them perfectly till within five hours. He asked of you a few hours before, when in acute torment by the inflammation in his bowels and breast. His effects are in the Duke of Queensberry's custody. His sisters, we suppose, will be his heirs, who are two widows; as yet it is not known whether or no ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... similarly pleasing characteristics of this amusing work, being most imperfectly conveyed. By permitting myself a reasonable freedom of rendering—in many cases boldly supplying that "missing link" between the sublime and the ridiculous which the author, writing for the acute monkish apprehension of the 13th century, did not deem it necessary to insert—I have hoped at least partially to liberate the lurking devil of humor from his fetters, letting him caper, not, certainly, as he does in the Latin, but as he probably would have done ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... the matter, dear lady," interrupted Murray, "and I haven't gone and got anything except an acute attack of early rising which is not in the least likely to become chronic. But at what hour of the night do you get up, you wonderful woman? Or rather do you ever go to bed at all? Here is the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... elder Edwards, was born at the opening of the eighteenth century. The oldest and most eminent of his disciples and successors, Bellamy and Hopkins, were born respectively in 1719 and 1721, and entered into the work of the Awakening in the flush of their earliest manhood. A long dynasty of acute and strenuous argumentators has continued, through successive generations to the present day, this distinctly American school of theological thought. This is not the place for tracing the intricate history of their discussions,[182:1] but the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... that Glynn Proctor saw nothing of his comrades,—although he gazed earnestly all round the camp—for the very good reason that it was almost pitch-dark; but although his eyes were useless, his ears were uncommonly acute, and through their instrumentality he became cognisant of a sound. It might have been distant thunder, but was too continuous and regular for that. It might have been the distant rumbling of heavy wagons or artillery over a paved road; but there were ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... insisted, for cocktails of Bacardi rum, fragrant with fresh limes and sweet with a crust of sugar that remained at the bottoms of the glasses. In the night—their beds were separated by the width of the balcony doors—she called for him, acute with fright. "What is it?" she cried. "Hark, Lee, that horrible sound." The air was filled with a drumming wail, a dislocated savage music, that affected him like a ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hands Stanton searched the pockets of her dressing-gown, to find, at length, a little account-book with pencil attached. Then, with stiffened fingers, but acute mind, she began to write to Neale. As she wrote into each word went something of the pang, the remorse, the sorrow, the love she felt; and when that letter was ended she laid the little book on her breast and knew for the first time in ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... which on the one side ran the warrior blood of Claudius Gothicus and Constantius Chlorus, on the other, the refinement and culture of the senatorial house of the Anicii. Two such streams, coming together, might well need some harmonizing: might well produce, for example, an acute self-consciousness,—to be mastered. What he got from them, for world-service, was on the one hand his superb military leadership and mastery of affairs; on the other, his intense devotion to learning and culture. Thus the two streams of heredity ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... severe anaemias that are the result of trauma, inanition or organic disease of some kind. They are however mostly rather scanty, so that a preparation must be searched for some time before an example is found. But occasionally, most often in acute, but also in chronic anaemias, and even in cachectic conditions, every field ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... I had preserved self-control enough to hide the real state of my feelings from our guest; but the arrival of the tenth day, and the unexpected trial it had brought with it, found me at the end of my resources. Jessie's acute observation soon showed her that something had gone wrong, and she questioned me on the subject directly. My mind was in such a state of confusion that no excuse occurred to me. I left her precipitately, and entreated Owen and ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... time of disorder and violence all other questions sink into abeyance until order has been restored. In the District of Columbia and in the Territories the Federal law covers the entire field of government; but the labor question is only acute in populous centers of commerce, manufactures, or mining. Nevertheless, both in the enactment and in the enforcement of law the Federal Government within its restricted sphere should set an example to the State governments, especially in a matter ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... are not worth one pain, he establishes an ideal of value deeper than either pleasure or pain, an ideal which makes a life of satisfaction marred by a single pang an offence and a horror to his soul. If our demand for rationality is less acute and the miscellaneous affirmations of the will carry us along with a well-fed indifference to some single tragedy within us, we may aver that a single pang is only the thousandth part of a thousand pleasures and that a life so balanced is nine hundred and ninety-nine times ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... by reason. Thus this sort of exaggeration must be called to order, but it is not contemptible: and those who ridicule it would do well to find out if the wisdom on which they pride themselves is not want of heart, and if it is not through want of reason that they are so acute. The exaggerated delicacy in gallantry and honor which characterizes the chivalrous romances, especially of Spain, is of this kind; also the refined and even ridiculous tenderness of French and English sentimental romances of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... increase—that smell—during the night, probably because their strength was returning and all their senses grew more acute. It was a torrid night, without moon, so that the blanket of dark pressed the heat down upon them and seemed ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... Stonehenge to Winterbourne Stoke. It was glaring, and I could not do much sketching, but the drive over the downs was like drinking in life at some primeval spring. (And this though the wind did give me acute neuralgia in my right eye, but yet the air was so exquisitely refreshing that I could cover my eye with a handkerchief and still enjoy!) The charm of these unhedged, unbounded, un-"cabined, cribbed, confined" prairies is all their own, and ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... him upon most of the acute and epidemic diseases of the country where he lives. I expected to have suggested some new medicines to him, but he suggested many more to me. He is very modest and engaging in his manners. He speaks French fluently, and has some knowledge ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... acute spasm of delight at seeing his own physiognomy reflected in a mirror had passed, I suggested to the king that if he would like to try on his new garments I should be very pleased to instruct him as to the proper ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... sharp breath and her eyes blazed. He moved forward suddenly in his chair, and she saw that this display of her quality had drawn him to her, as always the moon of her being had drawn the fluid tides of his, and that he wanted to touch her. Nearly he desired her. That also was insolence. Her acute hating glance recorded that whereas desire had used to make his face hard and splendid like a diamond, like a flashing sword, it now made it lax, and she realised with agony, though, of course, without ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... suffered to such an extent that Mr. Norman W. Kittson at Pembina wanted permission to destroy all liquor and punish all offenders, promising "that very little would be introduced after a short time".[382] So acute was the difficulty that it became the subject of diplomatic correspondence with Great Britain; but the authorities of the Hudson's Bay Company retorted that "spirits are even clandestinely introduced into the Company's territories by citizens of the ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... part inspired by sympathy, Gwynne having told them the story of his cousin's tragic experience; although they did in truth regard him as a possibly heaven-sent solution of a problem that was causing them all, even Mrs. Hunter, acute anxiety. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... Rheumatism is believed to be produced by the machinations of some enemy. Seeing a Tatungolung very lame, I asked him what was the matter? He said, 'Some fellow has put bottle in my foot.' I asked him to let me see it. I found he was probably suffering from acute rheumatism. He explained that some enemy must have found his foot track, and have buried in it a piece of broken bottle. The magic influence, he believed, caused it to enter his foot.... Phthisis, pneumonia, bowel complaints, and insanity are supposed to be ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... being well aware of the importance of not offending their Indian allies, on whose support their very existence depended, now interfered and tried to soothe the angry priest as well as Tecumah. The latter, however, felt more scorn than anger towards the man whom he, with his acute and unprejudiced mind, looked upon as guilty of practising a gross imposture, and he was therefore quickly pacified; but the priest, grinding his teeth, continued to mutter threats of vengeance, till the governor, drawing him aside, reminded ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... acute mania, it is the | |proper thing to take the music cure. Miss| |Jessie A. Fowler says so, and she knows. | |Miss Fowler discussed "Music | |Hygienically" before the "Rainy Daisies" | |at the Hotel Astor yesterday and | |prescribed musical treatment ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... returned, bringing in some venison of the red deer, or stag, which is sometimes killed at the distance of about ten or twelve miles from the Colony. It is astonishing with what keenness of observation they pursue these animals: their eye is so very acute, that they will often discern a path, and trace the deer over the rocks and the withered leaves, which an European passes without noticing, or being at all aware, that any human being or game have directed their course before him. They distinguish the cardinal points by the terms, sun-rise, sun-set, ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... Bull Run campaign, he had devoted every spare moment of his time to the study of such military books and leading principles of the art of war as would aid him in solving questions that must necessarily come to himself for final decision. His acute perceptions, retentive memory, and unusual power of logic enabled him to make rapid progress in the acquisition of the fixed and accepted rules on which military writers agree. In this, as in other sciences, the main difficulty, of course, lies in applying fixed ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... he was going back from the cemetery he was overcome by acute depression. He didn't feel quite well: his breathing was laboured and feverish, his legs felt weak, and he had a craving for drink. And thoughts of all sorts forced themselves on his mind. He remembered again that all his life he had never felt ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... his daughter and his sister, and a hopeless attachment to his wife, Majendie's misery became so acute that it told upon his health. His friends, Gorst and the Hannays, noticed the change and spent themselves in persistent efforts to cheer him. And, at times when his need of distraction became imperious, he declined from Anne's lofty domesticities upon ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... There, where life forever bubbles a cheap and exceedingly dry champagne of a very doubtful exhilaration, he did now and again find a poor respite from regret till time blunted the edge of his sorrows. And when his sorrow was no longer acute, he had formed a reckless and extravagant habit of life from which, even when the reason for it had passed, he never sought to free himself: indeed, it never occurred to ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... an aesthete at all; he is too Voltairian for that. As a critic he is learned, scholarly, clear-sighted and acute; but his sense of the humorous inconsistencies of normal flesh and blood is too habitually present with him to admit of that complete abandonment to the spirit of his author, which, accompanied by interpretative subtlety, secures ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... but that, mia bella. The least light on my eyes gives me the most acute pain—pain that irritates my nerves for hours afterward. Be satisfied with me as I am for the present, though I promise you your wish ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... little animosity. Brownell's criticism of Thackeray is very suggestive, and brushes away a deal of trash that has been written about his lack of artistic method. But I never supposed such loose sentences would be characteristic of so acute a critic. They do not stick together naturally, but merely logically. And I am sure you would not tolerate them from me. But of all the books you have given me I like best George Santayana's Poetry and Religion. Who is he ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... die. She had for some time been failing from a disease of the lungs, and she was now rapidly declining. Her sufferings, as she took her chamber and her bed, became very severe; but the stoicism of her character remained unshaken. In one of her seasons of acute agony she exclaimed, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... not physically ill; the trouble was deeper—soul sickness, acute, threatening to become chronic, that defied allopathic doses of favorite and other philosophers, that would not yield even to hourly repetition of the formula handed down from her grandmother—"If you can not have what you ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... the new gospel had, as I have said already, been vouchsafed to me at Littlehampton by Mr. Philpot. I now saw what logically the new gospel implied. The sense of impending catastrophe became more and more acute. I felt like a man on a ship, who, having started his voyage in an estuary, and imagining that a deck is by nature as stable as dry land, becomes gradually conscious of the sway of the outer sea, until, when he nears the bar, showers of spray fall on him, he perceives that the bows ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... can think of one thing only. Fear is an acute form of negative concentration—worry its chronic form. If you learn how to place your mind upon a particular subject and inhibit or "shut off" all other thoughts, the fascination of fear and worry ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... so long been devoted to the Franco-Russian Alliance, have followed with acute distress the intrigues of Bismarck in Bulgaria (intrigues of which the Nouvelle Revue revealed one proof in the letters of Prince Ferdinand of Coburg to the Countess of Flanders). I have known that William, in spite of his actual dislike for ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... he is of an acute turn of mind,) will easily perceive that two distinct emotions fill the bosom of plain Mr. P., and are hitting out at each other with extreme liveliness. He desires for the Crispins all the wages they can manage to get. He desires for his friend ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... and that there is abundant room for improvement; but if they go further than that, if for them there exists not on this round globe a cock whose voice would fail to irritate, then I have not shown consideration enough, and something is still owing to their feelings, which are very acute. It is possible that one of these sensitive persons may take up my book, and, attracted by its title, dip into this paper, hoping to find in it a practical suggestion for the effectual muzzling of the obnoxious bird. The only improvement which would ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson |
