"Directness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whatever we may think of judging systems by the directness or indirectness of those who advance them, biologists, having committed themselves too rashly, would have been more than human if they had not shown some pique towards those who dared to say, first, that the theory of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... talk was not to be stayed. She was excited and keyed up high. There was a simplicity and directness about this Judd woman that made her think of Mrs. Benjamin, so she told all about Hill Top and her life there, her love of it, her despair ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... that time there were strange rumours in Brunford. It was said that the financial position of Stepaside and Preston was not safe. They were only rumours at first, and people paid little attention to them, but they grew in volume, grew in directness of statement. Five days before the election Preston came to Paul with a white face. He looked as though he had spent a sleepless night. "Look here, Paul," he said. "You must give ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... what she meant. "Always. I shall see all the people who come. It will be a great thing for me. I want to hear all the talk. Mr. Mitchett says I ought to—that it helps to form the young mind. I hoped, for that reason," she went on with the directness that made her honesty almost violent—"I hoped there would be more ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... break out in prayer after such an abrupt fashion—in the presence of an older minister than himself—and praying for him too! But there was such an appearance of reality about the man! such a simplicity in his look! such a directness in his petitions! such an active fervor of hope in his tone—without an atom of what she had heard called unction! His thought and speech appeared to arise from no separated sacred mood that might be assumed and laid aside, but from present ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... push and attention to duty had been noticed and had paid off. Three years it had taken, but he had made Team stature. Not that that meant anything now. Shann pulled his boots on over the legs of rough dried coveralls and glanced up, to find Thorvald watching him with a new, questioning directness the younger man could ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... about it to you," she interrupted with a directness that made him more uncomfortable than ever. "I know that you knew my father for what he really was. You knew how kind and good he was, and how nobly he befriended the Braddocks and all those wretched show people. You know how they treated him in return for his generosity. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... year, and have had none for several weeks. Step up to the room at the head of the stairs, and lay off thy things. Then, if thee is not tired, I will give thee a little job with me in the kitchen," said the old lady with a kindly directness which left no room for awkwardness ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... sweet serenity of her speech, because of the calm, unswerving directness of her gaze, my Beltane felt at sudden loss, his outstretched arms sank helplessly and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... delay. It is impatient of conventionalisms and shams. It breaks through the established order of things in matters both social and religious. It is dynamic, vivid, revolutionary. It goes to the root of things, with a startling directness, a kind of explosive force. It disturbs and shatters the customary placidities of men's lives. It forces them to face spiritual realities, to look the ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... immense cigar protruding from the bandage; or explaining how the legend of Lord KITCHENER'S survival arose from a trivial error that caused the news of the Hampshire disaster to reach Berlin a few minutes before it was published in London, he always writes with directness and verve. Admiral BROWNRIGG tells a good deal about the censorship, and illustrates his theme with some excellent reproductions of naval photographs before and after the Censor had "re-touched" them. He tells us even more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... with grave wonder, and then said with her old directness: "But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I should have told you." She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color. "I mean," she said hesitatingly, "of course you have acted nobly, generously, kindly, wisely—but ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the existence of the Church of England itself. The majority of the English clergy denounced the proposition, and some even declared its author a madman; but Mr. Gladstone pursued his chosen way with energy and directness. In one of those elevated speeches with which he was accustomed to ennoble debate, he laid the details of his plan open to the Commons. The Irish Church was to be disestablished and disendowed, its bishops were to lose their seats in Parliament, and it was to become a free and independent ecclesiastical ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... as Mandy's preference for a walk through the woods became more marked, Perkins, much to his disgust, found himself reduced to the attitude of a suppliant, urging the superior attraction of a swift drive behind Dexter as against a weary walk to the service. Mandy, however, with the directness of her simple nature, had no compunction in frankly maintaining her preference for a walk with Tim and Cameron through the woods; indeed, more than once she allowed Perkins to drive off with his fiery ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... swallow a few gnats a day, lest I should come to strain at them, and so bolt camels; but the whole question of lying is difficult. What is "lying"? Turning for moral guidance to my cousins the lower animals, whose unsophisticated nature proclaims what God has taught them with a directness we may sometimes study, I find the plover lying when she lures us from her young ones under the fiction of a broken wing. Is God angry, think you, with this pretty deviation from the letter of strict accuracy? or was it not He ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... pronunciation; in which two years of a child's school life are rescued from the needless and applied to the useful; in which the stenographer has to learn not two systems of spelling, but only two alphabets; in which the simplicity and directness of the English language, which fit it to become a world language, will not be defeated by a spelling that equals the difficulty of German grammar; in which the blundering of Dutch printers, like school, false etymologies, like rhyme, and French garnishes, as in tongue, no longer ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... nothing of the outer characteristics of this mysterious structure; but for this very reason, the imagination was the more active. Rebecca, with all her directness of nature and commonplace experience, felt in this unwonted presence that sense of awed mystery which she would have called a ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... knowledge of sexual normality. There are hundreds of books and pamphlets that deal with amazing boldness with the sexual mistakes of human life, but there is not in general circulation to-day any printed matter which deals with normal sexual life with anything like the frankness and directness that is common in widely circulated literature on social vice and its concomitant diseases. Likewise, it is difficult for women to get the true view of sexual life from personal sources, for the vulgar side ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... of motive and directness of execution which had been the strength of the Sung art gradually gave way during the Ming era to complicated conceptions and elaborate effects. The high glow of life faded; the lyrical temper and impassioned work of the Sung time were replaced ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Barbara. She regarded him with profound reverence, and his wife as most enviable of women: could she not learn from his mouth the rights of a thing, the instant she opened hers to ask them? Barbara did not know how much the sympathy, directness, and dear common sense of Helen, had helped to keep awake, support, and nourish the insight of her husband. She did not know, good and powerful as Wingfold must have been had he never married, how much wiser, more useful, and more aspiring he had grown because Helen was Helen, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... remained in England, there is little doubt that Anne Bradstreet's mind, sensitively alive as it was to every fine influence, would have developed in a far different direction to that which it finally took. The directness and joyous life of the Elizabethan literature had given place to the euphuistic school, and as the Puritans put aside one author after another as "not making for godliness," the strained style, the quirks and conceits ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... meet us, a small, short, spare body of about sixty-seven, with extremely frank and kind manners, but who always looks straight into your face with a pair of mild deep grey eyes whenever she speaks to you. With characteristic directness she did not take us into the library until she had told us that we should find there Mrs. Alison, of Edinburgh, and her aunt, Miss Sneyd, a person very old and infirm, and that the only other persons constituting ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... voice of Sister Louise. There was something refreshing in the very sight of this tall slight figure, in its blue-grey habit and dazzling white "cornette," from beneath which the dark eyes looked forth with sweet and almost childish directness. Sister Louise was not indeed much more than a child in years, and there were still certain inflections in her voice, an elasticity in her movements, a something about her very hands, with their little pink palms and dimpled knuckles, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... true of the dances. The sum of these influences, plus Purcell's innate tendencies, was a style "apt" (in the phraseology of the day) either for Church, Court, theatre, or tavern—a style whose combined loftiness, directness, and simplicity passed unobserved for generations while the big "bow-wow" manner of Handel was held to be the only ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... were Fawcett and Leslie Stephen. Both were profound believers in hard tonic discipline of mind and body, inculcating their belief by doctrine and example; and both, with great diversity of gifts, had the rough strong directness of intellectual attack which Cambridge, then perhaps more than at any other time, set in contrast to the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... murmur of long hours and low wages; the closest scrutiny revealed no strikes or internal clamorings about wrongs; and I unconsciously relaxed and breathed more deeply at the thought of this nature world, moving so smoothly, with directness and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... scoundrel from a summary vengeance; possibly I might not have done it, had I known what the alternative would be. Where is that man now?" he asked, with sudden directness. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... of the officers at South Norwalk had been fully exerted, and no result further than that already mentioned had been achieved. The evidence against Bucholz, although circumstantially telling against him, was not of sufficient weight or directness to warrant a conviction upon the charge preferred against him. He had employed eminent legal counsel, and their hopeful views of the case had communicated themselves to the mercurial temperament of the prisoner, and visions ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the eagerness of your appeal to me as to one experienced in these matters: "Can you encourage me to give my life to literature?" Indeed, my brave votaress, there is something that disturbs me in the directness of that question, something ominous in those words, give my life. Literature is a despised goddess in these days to receive ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... me gin your faither and you bide thegither withoot ony woman body, did I no hear that yince; is that the case na?" demanded the lady of Craig Ronald with astonishing directness. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... artifice immediately coalesce, as metals that are perfectly pure can be readily cemented together. Mr. Palmer and Mr. Walsingham were intimate in half an hour. There was an air of openness and sincerity about Mr. Walsingham; a freedom and directness in his conversation, which delighted ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... excellent way, at least a permissible short cut to heaven, it appears in modern times less as a separate school than as an aspect of most schools.[833] The simple and emotional character of Amidism, the directness of its "Come unto me," appeal so strongly to the poor and uneducated, that no monastery or temple could ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... lynch law (the use of the "birch seal" is familiar to readers of Vermont history) to protect their land titles in the troubled times when these "Green Mountain Boys" resisted New York's assertion of authority. They later became an independent Revolutionary state with frontier directness, and in very many respects their history in the Revolutionary epoch is similar to that of settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee, both in assertion of the right to independent self government and in a frontier separatism.[78:1] Vermont may be regarded ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... but insists that moralists and statesmen have always led us wrong by legislating and prescribing conduct on the false theory that man is bad, whereas he is in truth a creature endowed with natural probity. Then he strikes to the root of society with a directness that Rousseau could not imitate, by the position that "these laws by establishing a monstrous division of the products of nature, and even of their very elements—by dividing what ought to have remained entire, or ought to have been restored to entireness if any accident ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... she said. "In what are termed my escapades I am alone. You appealed to me," with a directness which amazed me, "because of your handsome face, your elegant form, your bright eyes. You are a man who loves adventure which has the spice of danger in it. My countrymen——." She crooked one of ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... ever loved?" asked Kilmeny, with the directness of phrasing necessitated by her mode of communication which was sometimes a little terrible. She asked the question simply and without embarrassment. She knew of no reason why love might not be discussed with Eric as other matters—music and ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... recovered himself and laughed. "You speak with directness." He suddenly turned solemn. He bent toward her and lowered his voice; his hand would have touched her arm, ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... of Iona that the English north country caught that intense glowing love of the Holy Faith, which even still, in a measure, differentiates the north of England from the south?[C] We must value very greatly the solid foundation of strength, sincerity, what we call grit, directness of expression, simplicity, to be found in early English work; all these being great things, yet capable of receiving into their fellowship and above it and beyond it, that which should give what we look for in a great literature; the power of appeal to various kinds of people, ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... the employment of the Fewest Parts, casting aside every detail not absolutely necessary, and guarding carefully against the intrusion of mere traditional forms and arrangements. The latter are apt to insinuate themselves, and to interfere with that simplicity and directness of action which is in all cases so desirable a quality in mechanical structures. PLAIN COMMON SENSE should be apparent in the general design, as in the form and arrangement of the details; and a general character of severe utility pervade the whole, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... do you think this is related to Wallingford's murder?" asked Hawthwaite with sudden directness. "Let's be plain, doctor—do ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... feel the pressure of these hands, this bold lover schemed with palpable directness, proposing that she should hear how their hunting songs were sung, with a chorus that signalled hands to be clasped. So his splendid voice gave the verses, and, as the chorus was taken up, he claimed her hands, and, even through the easy grip, felt, as he desired, the strength that was latent, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... face, when he awkwardly commenced to speak, made it unnecessary to put the story into words. Samson told how his mother had turned pallid, and stretched out her arm gropingly for support against the door-jamb. Then the man had found his voice with clumsy directness. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... with Miss Lord, and she was inclined to think that Patty needed chastisement of a rare sort; but it was her practice to hear both sides. She drew up a chair, and commenced with business-like directness. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... steps was relieved. An hour after the sapper spoke. The strain was ended. We had struck the sand hills of the Dujailar depression. Then we saw the flash of Townshend's guns at Kut, a comforting assurance of the directness of our line. That the surprise of the Turk was complete was shown by the fires in the Arab encampments, between which we passed silently in the false dawn. A mile or two to our north and west the campfires of the Turks were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... within the paragraph and in the succession of the paragraphs. A choice of subject suited to his audience, an excision of that which would have bored or bewildered it, a vividness of description wherewith to amuse and a directness of conclusion wherewith to arrest his readers —all these he had, beyond perhaps any ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... froze—and I thought I had once more "got upon" her nerves with my rude directness. How eagerly sensitive our nerves are to bad impressions of one we don't like, and how coarsely insensible to bad impressions of one ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... child is conscious of such a thing as purity, delicacy, directness, or strength of style, he has been acted upon unconsciously, so that when the period of conscious choice comes, he is either attracted or repelled by what is good, according to his training. Children are fond of vivacity and color, ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... you've come to me," replied James, visibly annoyed at the directness of the rough spaceman. ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... the form-rooms at the quarter to eleven interval, and in the houses after lunch it was the sole topic of conversation. Dunstable and Linton were bombarded with questions and witticisms of the near personal sort. To the latter they replied with directness, to ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... following citation is interesting as an illustration of the directness of descent from heathen manes-worship to Christian saint-worship: "It is well known that Romulus, mindful of his own adventurous infancy, became after death a Roman deity, propitious to the health and safety of young children, so that nurses and mothers would ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... magazine at page one, I came upon an editorial article. The rapid increase of the habit of talking tommyrot was dwelt upon and the necessity for prompt action was emphasized. The objects of the society were set forth with a naked directness, likely, I feared, to cause offence. Then came a paragraph, most disquieting to me, in which the generous gentleman whose aid had rendered the publication of the magazine possible was subjected to a good deal of praise. His name ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... she asked with a cool directness, which was like a sword-thrust in Iskender's heart. His ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... especially in my present frame of mind, ill-fitted for such a play. The blunt and awkward directness of the camp suited better my ways and speech. Though I might discreetly hold my tongue, I could never use it with the credit I could my sword. Nor could I rid my mind of the childish vision which for one short instant confronted me at the door. Even then I ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... instance perfectly intelligible. "To your bosom, professed to entertain so much love and care for our father, I commit him," seems to express the sense of the passage: a doubt is implied by the expression, but there is a directness of insult in the term professing quite inconsistent with the character ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... bossdom. This is his immortality. He was a chairmaker by trade, a vulgar good fellow by nature, a politician by circumstances, a boss by evolution, and a grafter by choice. He became grand sachem of Tammany and chairman of the general committee. This committee he ruled with blunt directness. When he wanted a question carried, he failed to ask for the negative votes; and soon he was called "the Boss," a title he never resented, and which usage has since fixed in our politics. So he ruled ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... was the practical aim and character of the religion he preached. It was no fanciful speculation nor airy dream. It was not a plaything of the imagination he had been holding up to our contemplation, but a series of truths and doctrines bearing with eminent directness, and with a perfect adaptation, upon human life, the effect and issue of which, widely and cordially received, must be to give birth to a condition of humanity not now any where to be found on the earth. I was startled by no confounding and overwhelming ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... of the whole community thus opened to us, we might overturn the world. Some ascribe this want of efficiency to human depravity. That is not the sole cause of it. The clergy want knowledge of human nature. They want directness of appeal. They want the same go-ahead common-sense way of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... said Billy hurriedly to the ladies, and being a young man of simple directness, undeterred by the glacial tinge of the ladies' response—they had not forgotten his defection of the evening before when they were entertaining him so nicely—he put the question which had been tormenting him all evening, "Where is Miss ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... was Phebe Marlowe, who believed that she knew the cause, and was drawn closer to her in the deepest sympathy and pity. It seemed to Phebe that Felicita was creating the obstacle, which existed chiefly in her fancy; and with her usual frankness and directness she went to Canon Pascal's abode in the Cloisters at Westminster, to tell him simply ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... generally abused, and even branded as an infidel. Dr. Arnold was indeed a noble teacher, and the very man to develop the best faculties in young Arthur Stanley; for one of the doctor's own strongest traits was this same open-mindedness. The frankness and candor, the directness and fearlessness with which Stanley ever gave expression to his views; the purity and "whiteness" of his mind, and the sweetness and tenderness of his disposition,—all these had a part in the building of his fame. But it was chiefly in his power to free himself from prejudice and to look fairly ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... work truly says that any designer who fairly tries the graphical method will be pleased with the simplicity and directness of the analysis, even for apparently complex forms. The hindrance to the general use of the method is the want of knowledge of the higher mathematics, which are largely used in most treatises on the subject. Professor Greene has avoided this stumbling block, and given ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... the least intrusive of women, who had heard the whispered colloquy, here interposed and said that, as she was very cold, she would much prefer to go home; and Sir John added with simple directness that he thought that, as the place was more or less shut up at present, the gardens had better wait for a ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... pity. He repulses her roughly, and in despair she tells Alfio the story of his wife's inconstancy. Alfio challenges Turiddu to mortal combat, and kills him as the curtain falls. Squalid as the story is, it is full of life and movement, and has that simple directness which is essential to success. The music is melodious, if not very original, and vigorous even to brutality. Mascagni here shows a natural instinct for the theatre. His method is often coarse, but his effects ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the enduring witness of persons, circumstances, customs, experiences utterly passed from the actual world, but recognizably true with every sincere reader. These tales of village life in England a hundred years ago are of an absolute directness and frankness. They blink nothing of the sordid, the mean, the vicious, the wicked in that life, from which they rarely rise in some glimpse of the state of the neighboring gentry, and yet they abound in beauty that consoles and encourages. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... not necessary to the full expression of the thought, or some redundance of epithet or detail too florid for the best taste, or, as in most of the Byzantine epigrams, a natural verbosity which affects the style throughout and weakens the force and directness of the epigram. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... francs by them. This caress of fortune gave him renewed self-confidence. He said to himself that he wanted nobody's help, and that all his embarrassments were the result of his timidity and indecision. He ought to have begun his intrigue with the Marechale with brutal directness and refused Hussonnet the very first day. He should not have compromised himself with Pellerin. And, in order to show that he was not a bit embarrassed, he presented himself at one of Madame Dambreuse's ordinary ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... person who cared much about the fate of a sheep-herder, who was also a foreigner. Every one else was chiefly interested in the gold mine. Ike offered a reward of five hundred dollars, and the obliging sheriff of the county had handbills printed in which, with characteristic directness, Louisiana was named as ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... you want me for, Jim?" the woman was again asking him. She spoke with an intimate directness, and yet in her attitude were subtle reservations, a consciousness of the thin ice on which they both stood. Each saw, only too plainly, the need for great care, in every step. In each lay the power to uncover, at a hand's turn, old mistakes ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... keep on with this way of makin' a livin' I don't 'low ever to let no slip-ups occur," he added with simple directness. There was no suggestion of the morbid in his voice or manner as he said this, but instead merely a deep ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and Jenny disappeared. Bendigo was pleased to see Brendon, but his interest in his brother had apparently waned. He avoided the subject of Robert Redmayne, though he revealed other matters in his mind which he approached with a directness that rather astonished ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... the Composite Tongue.—While we insist on the truth that Anglo-Saxon gained much of its wonderful directness and power from standing in close relations to earnest life, it is necessary to remember that many words of French origin did, by an apprenticeship at the fireside, in the field, the workshop, and the laboratory, equally fit themselves for taking their place in the language. Such ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... successful in his love affairs. It does not certainly read like a description of the hero of a novel written by The Duchess or even by Miss Jane Austen. Yet this is the picture of a man plentifully beloved, large-minded but strangely naif; a revolutionist of childlike directness. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... originality; that is just what I can't see. What he has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of touch—marvellous! ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Darwin's place in literature, that is due supereminently to his thoughts. In his expression of them he had the saving quality of directness, and usually wrote with simplicity. Incisive he was not ordinarily; caution of his type harmonises ill with incisiveness. But what he lost thereby he gained in solidity and in permanence. Sometimes, as we have pointed out, his imagination ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... too harshly described by Hallam as "bellowing in bad Latin," were well adapted to the spirit of the age. But nothing like his German writings had ever been seen before. In lucidity and copiousness of language, in directness and vigor, in satire and argument and invective, in humor and aptness of illustration and allusion, the numerous tracts, political and theological, which poured from his pen, surpassed all that had hitherto been written and went straight to the hearts of his countrymen. And he won his ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Sentences. So far as long and short sentences are concerned some general rules have already been hinted at in dealing with other kinds. The advantages of the short sentence are mainly those of clearness, directness, emphasis. Its dangers are monotony, bareness, over-compactness. The advantages of the long—that is, quite long—sentence, are rather difficult to comprehend. A wordy sentence is likely to defeat its own ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... criticism, of course, this is a grave fault. The Kipling-Wells style of swift, shouldering, button-holing writing has accustomed readers and critics alike to a straight course and a rapid tempo. Moreover, it has accustomed them to a forthright certainty and directness of statement; they expect an author to account for his characters at once, and on grounds instantly comprehensible. This omniscience is a part of the prodigality of moral theory that I have been discussing. An author who knows just what ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... upon the Lungs. It is a well recognized fact that alcohol when taken into the stomach is carried from that organ to the liver, where, by the baneful directness of its presence, it produces a speedy and often disastrous effect. But the trail of its malign power does not disappear there. From the liver it passes to the right side of the heart, and thence to the lungs, where its influence ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... love," said Peter to himself, with interest. "This is humility." A sympathetic liking for the self-distrustful lover surged hot and generous into Peter's heart, and he continued to himself: "Now that's what Judith would appreciate in a man, some directness, some humility!" Poor Judith! Poor burden-bearer! Who was to love her as she deserved to be loved, even as old man Kinson's girl, of the Basin, was loved? Yet suppose some one did love her in such fashion and she returned ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... his handsome exterior, his singing,—he was always a singer,—his drawing, his gaiety, and above all, however strange a thing it may seem to say, the directness of ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... embarrassing to the intruder. At the apparition of the woman, the unaffected and simple directness he had previously shown in his equally abrupt contact with Bradley had fled utterly; confused by the awkwardness of his arrival, and shocked at the idea of overhearing a private conversation, he ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... test the accuracy of the biographies he was reading. James A. Garfield was then spoken of for the presidency; Edward wondered whether it was true that the man who was likely to be President of the United States had once been a boy on the tow-path, and with a simple directness characteristic of his Dutch training, wrote to General Garfield, asking whether the boyhood episode was true, and explaining why he asked. Of course any public man, no matter how large his correspondence, is pleased to receive an earnest ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... the directness of the intuition by which we get this idea of our own personal identity, it would be found in the entire failure of all attempts to derive that idea from any other source. Comte, the founder of the Positive School, can do nothing with this idea but suggest that it is probably the result of some ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... Sandy!" Sheila interrupted authoritatively, with sisterly directness. "I'm quite able to look after my own affairs. Mr. Farwell is sorry. You be white enough to ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... ready for the rest. Here, mis'ess, take off your things, and help him out in his baking, or he won't get done to-night. I'll finish heating the oven, and set you free to go and skiver up them ducks." His eye had passed with pitiless directness of criticism into yet remote recesses of Winterborne's awkwardly built premises, where ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... had a certain shamefacedness about going through the streets in such a fashion. She avoided looking at the people whom she met, and kept her head slightly bent and averted, instead of carrying it with the proud directness which was her habit. She felt vaguely that this was the element of purely personal vanity which degrades a triumph, and the weakness of delight and gloating in the faces of her relatives irritated her. It ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... looked upon a well-built man five inches his inferior in stature, but a man of good proportions, with a pair of shoulders that suggested possibilities. But it was the steady look in the steel-blue eyes which told him most. There was a simple directness in them which told of a man unaccustomed to any browbeating; and, as he gazed into them, he made a mental note that this newcomer must be reduced to a proper humility at ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Aristippus. He was banished from the (supposed) place of his birth, and was shielded at Athens by Demetrius Phalerus, whose exile he is assumed to have shared. Whilst in the service of Egypt he was sent as an ambassador to Lysimachus, whom he offended by the directness and plainness of his speech. The offended monarch threatened him with crucifixion, and he replied in a phrase which became famous, "Threaten thus your courtiers, for it matters not to me whether I rot on the ground or in the air."[40] The king's threat was ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... up with surprising promptness, and returned the offending head-gear with force and directness. Wally caught it deftly and rammed it over his eyes. He smiled underneath it at the Hermit like ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... because you want to know?" inquired Sandy with the directness which characterized everything ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... encountered many such. Fellows of the kind are known as "gay young sparks," and, even in their boyhood and school days, earn a reputation for being bons camarades (though with it all they come in for some hard knocks) for the reason that their faces evince an element of frankness, directness, and enterprise which enables them soon to make friends, and, almost before you have had time to look around, to start addressing you in the second person singular. Yet, while cementing such friendships for ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... us, don't you see?" She makes her points with a directness and simplicity that should disarm even the diplomatic suavity of Uncle Sam when he meets her in Washington. "Year after year the Cherokees waited for the Government to pay. And at last, three years ago, it came to us—$133.19 to each Indian, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... with no fondness for luxury or dress, possessing simple and quiet tastes, never striving for effect, always preferring half-tints to a blaze of light, her expression and demeanor always had a quality of simplicity and directness which fascinated Napoleon, who was very glad to turn from experienced coquettes to a really ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... closet-verse, not theatre-verse. The poetic drama will be doomed to extinction on the modern stage unless our poets learn the lesson of simplicity. I shall append some lines of Shakespeare's to illustrate the ideal of directness toward which our latter-day poetic dramatists should strive. When Lear holds the dead Cordelia in his arms, ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... reception at the opening of the second act of the first part. But here we may assert with fair confidence that the first and the last scenes of the play bear the indisputable sign-manual of William Rowley. His vigorous and vivid genius, his somewhat hard and curt directness of style and manner, his clear and trenchant power of straightforward presentation or exposition, may be traced in every line as plainly as the hand of Middleton must be recognized in the main part of the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... influence of the wily and unscrupulous Murray, who flattered his weaknesses and assumed an air of deference to his opinions. Lord George Murray, on the other hand, was but too prone to give offence. He was haughty and overbearing in manner, expressed his opinions with a directness and bluntness which were very displeasing to the prince, and, conscious of his own military genius and experience, put aside with open contempt the suggestions of those who were in truth ignorant of military matters. Loyal, straightforward, ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... crossed the great prairie which lies north of Houwater, and the covering cloud of mounted eclaireurs was already disappearing into the shade of the mountain fastness in front of us. The giant outcrop of volcanic rock which is known as Minie Kloof rises, with that directness peculiar to the vast South African table-land, sheer from a prairie as level as a billiard-table. A succession of rocky flat-topped parallelograms, featureless save for the one sealed pattern of nature's architecture of the veldt. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... With insular directness he went straight to the point at the first interview, declared his love for Agatha, and proposed an exchange, which amused, but did not offend me, as I knew that such ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and this only, was what Rossetti aimed after, and entirely compassed in his fine works just mentioned. But (as Rossetti himself remarked to me in conversation when I repeated Mr. Symonds's criticism, and urged my own grounds of objection to it), that the poet was capable of the directness and simplicity which characterise the early ballad-writers, he had given proof in The Staff and Scrip and Stratton Water. Dennis Shand is valuable as evidence going in the same direction, but the author's objection to it, on ethical grounds, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... to refuse it," cut back Farquhar, eyes twinkling. For this bold directness pleased ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... express elevators, by which the visitor is shot up to the higher storeys of a sky-scraper, would suggest a certain directness and celerity in official methods that is calculated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... require protection from your importunities." She dropped her pretty head, and began plaiting with her fingers the silken gown over her knee. "Or how likely I would be to shriek for it even if"—she looked up with childlike directness—"even if ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... of August, Judge Thurman and I were invited to make brief addresses at the state fair in Columbus. After he had spoken with his usual ability and directness, I made a speech mainly about new devices ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... felt for a very few people, an affection which invariably mingled itself with a lively desire to bestir herself on their account, to be fully informed as to their circumstances, and above all to possess relations of absolute directness with them. She had an imperious successful strain which insisted upon all this. She was a capable creature of much perception for twenty-four, and she had a sense of injury when for any reason she was not allowed to use her faculties for the benefit of any ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... excess. When Gluck dared to move the hearts of his hearers instead of tickling their ears, he achieved his purpose by positive beauty, without actual loss. In this sense every work of art is a work of revolution. So Wagner, especially in his earlier dramas,[A] by sheer sincerity and poetic directness, corrected a frivolous tradition of opera. But when he grew destructive of melody and form, by theory and practice, he sank to the role of innovator, with pervading trait of stereotype, in the main merely adding to the lesser resources of the art. His later works, though they ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... know. I have never met one." She looked straight at Farnum with the directness characteristic of her. "Is the ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... it will not be matter for surprise that a man who thinks for himself can easily be distinguished from the book-philosopher by the very way in which he talks, by his marked earnestness, and the originality, directness, and personal conviction that stamp all his thoughts and expressions. The book-philosopher, on the other hand, lets it be seen that everything he has is second-hand; that his ideas are like the number ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... delineated. Self-will is normally developed, while Size, Form, Observation, Weight, Locality, Calculation, and Memory of various sorts are manifest. The signs of Language in the eye and mouth denote fluency, while the practical faculties, being dominant, would give clearness, perspicacity, and directness to his style of expression, either oral or written. Time, Order, Reason, and Intuition are well developed. The long-continued observation and experiments of this noble physician in his endeavor to protect humanity from the ravages of small-pox ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... he was for ever at his heels, like a dog; and if, by any chance, he became separated from his idol, he would make for him in a straight line, regardless of currant bushes, bean rows, cabbage patches or clothes-lines. This strenuous directness did not further endear him to Mrs. Smith. That good lady used to lie awake at night, angrily devising schemes for getting rid of the "ugly brute." These schemes of vengeance were such a safety-valve to her injured feelings that she would at last make up her ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... know how in her new sensitiveness this careless speech, which a day earlier would have passed unheeded, aroused all her instincts of defense. She was half-aware of the irony by which their talk about the nephews of Jack Holton had carried them with so fateful a directness to ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... clearly, logically, and to express himself intelligibly and earnestly, let him give his days and nights to WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. His ear will thus accustom itself to forms of phrase whose only mannerism is occasioned by the fulness of thought and the directness of expression; and he will not easily, through the habits which either his understanding or his ear will acquire, fall into the fluent cadences of that sort of writing in which words are used without discrimination of their nice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... they felt that she was in a measure theirs. There is a very sweet side, as well as an inconvenient and irritating one, to the old-fashioned rural notion that the parish has almost as much right to the minister's wife as to the minister. Draxy saw only the sweet side. With all the loyalty and directness which had made her, as a little girl, champion and counselor and comfort to her father, she now set her hand to the work of helping her husband do good to the people ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... heavy lashes studying everything about him, his face brightening when you addressed him. I discovered, too, a certain indefinable charm which won me to him at once. Perhaps it was his youth; perhaps it was a certain honest directness, together with a total lack of all affectation that appealed to me, but certain it is that not many minutes had passed before I saw why Peter liked him, and I saw, too, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Those who watched him until he turned out of Main Street into Fourth, and so toward the river, aver—marvelling duly at his powers of resistance—that the head of Potts was erect, his gaze bent aloft, and his gait one of perfect directness save that he ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... in silence for a moment, then with logical directness continued: "Perhaps the string that's mute upon Diotti's violin is mute for some ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... is the bit of evidence read by the White Rabbit at the Trial of the Knave of Hearts.[1] One charm of these verses is the serious air of legal directness which pervades their ambiguity, and another is the precision with which the metrical accent coincides exactly with the natural emphasis. They are marked, too, by the liquid euphony that always ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... waist and on her cheeks a warm red showed through the golden tan. Her slim straight figure was eloquent of suppleness and strength and her movements, quick, purposeful, showed decision and activity of mind. They were as characteristic as her directness of speech. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... which competed with each other for the superstition of the Greco-Roman world in the third century, he will find no vagueness at all in Dr. Jacks's interpretation of the teaching of Jesus. He may perhaps find in that interpretation a simplicity, a clarity, and a directness which are not wholly convenient to his idea of a God Who repents, is angry, ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... for you to kiss, lad," said simple John-James with directness, grinning as he took the mare's bridle to lead her to the stable. Ishmael had not yet the social cleverness to kiss Phoebe at once and without embarrassment or to laugh the suggestion away, but she, who had no social sense at all and never attained any, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... indescribable relief stole over Vanderlyn's wearied and yet alert senses. It was clear that the Prefect of Police knew nothing of the truth; the directness of his question proved it. Yet, even so, Vanderlyn felt that he must ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of debating, the judges are asked to consider both matter and form. Grasp of the question, accuracy of analysis, selection of evidence, and order and cogency of arguments should be considered in judging matter. Bearing, voice, directness, earnestness, emphasis, enunciation, and gesture should be considered ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... his turn for extracting information concerning his uninvited guest. He extracted it from herself, however, and with refreshing directness. At the advanced age of seven years, one sees no especial use in conventional beatings about the bush. One goes straight to the point, or else one keeps still entirely; and, at that phase of his existence, keeping still was not Scott Brenton's forte. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... in this phenomenon and no opinion about it. She recalled the conversation to the point at issue with her usual ruthless directness. "And you wouldn't know how to undress yourself if somebody didn't help you!" She went on loosening the laces in a contemptuous silence, during which the boy glowered resentfully at the back of her shining black hair. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... that appeared in Julia's pricked fingers made the serenity of her happy face more charming to her father-in-law. She had Jewel's own directness and simplicity, her appreciation and enjoyment of all beauty, the child's own atmosphere of unexacting love and gratitude. Every half hour that Mr. Evringham spent with her lessened his regret at having ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... you do not recollect?" The question was put politely, even sympathetically, yet with a certain uncomfortable directness. ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... display a haughty stand-offishness; but she went down before the sweet face and girlish voice, and, if the truth must be told, by a certain something in Nell's eyes, which shone there when the Annie Laurie was beating before a contrary wind; a directness of gaze which indicated a spirit, not easily quelled, lurking behind the ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... was but little enlarged since the reign of James, though profiting, of course, by improved cultivation and the different value of money. On the other hand, perhaps there were scarcely ten families in the country who could boast of a similar directness of descent on all sides from the proudest and noblest aristocracy of the soil; and Sir Miles St. John, by blood, was, almost at the distance of eight centuries, as pure a Norman as his ancestral William. His grandfather, nevertheless, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to disturb you, Uncle Cassius," Kit began, with the directness so characteristic of her, "but I really think I ought to go back home. You've been wonderful to give me such a long visit, and I've enjoyed the school work immensely, but somehow I begin to feel like a soldier who has been away on a furlough. It's time for me to get back to the firing line, ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... story is told with all the vivid directness of the Jewish scriptures, and every one must admire the poetic beauty so characteristic of oriental writings. David's compact with Jonathan, his sad lament over the death of his traitorous son, and the grand anthem which he sings in gratitude ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... way noted all of the essential features of the situation, and that his manner was extremely indicative of his mental attitude of limited trust. Both Julius and Skirrl went to the opposite extreme in the matter of directness, or as we should say in human relations, frankness. They would look the experimenter directly in the eye, and they usually gazed intently at anything, such for example as the bait, that interested them. Sobke, even when very hungry, instead of going directly toward the bait, ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... [taken aback by the directness of the attack] I married because I was so much in love with Alice that all the difficulties and doubts and dangers of marriage seemed ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw |
