"Sensitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... connection used in telegraphy, including a local battery, with a short circuit normally open, but closed by a switch and a sounder or other appliance. The latter is made very sensitive so as to be worked by a feeble current, and is connected to the main line. A very slight current closes the switch and the local battery comes into operation to work a sounder, etc. When the current ceases on the main line the switch opens and throws the local battery out of action. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... after, to say that the king had sent him to show the party where to camp: and he led the way to a pleasant little grove, where there was a pool of water, and ample grass for the cattle; and after the new arrivals were settled down—far too near the "naygurs" to satisfy Dinny's sensitive nature, a return visit was paid to the king, who readily gave his permission for the party to hunt when and where ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... standing beside me a thin, shrinking figure, drenched like myself by the salt mist. From under a coarse, dark straw hat, a small, delicate face regarded me shyly, yet calmly. It was very pale, a little sunken, and surrounded by a cloud of light, curling hair, blown loose by the wind; the wide sensitive lips were almost colorless, and the peculiar eyes, greenish and great-pupiled, were surrounded by stained, discolored rings that might have been the result of weary vigils, or of ill-health. The ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... the perception, considered as passive and merely recipient, I have adopted from our elder classics the word sensuous; because sensual is not at present used, except in a bad sense, or at least as a moral distinction; while sensitive and sensible would each convey a different meaning. Thus too have I followed Hooker, Sanderson, Milton and others, in designating the immediateness of any act or object of knowledge by the word intuition, used sometimes ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I always understood that that Dulwich Gallery was famous for great works—you surprise me! And for painters ... their badness is more ostentatious than that of poets—they stare idiocy out of the walls, and set the eyes of sensitive men on edge. For the rest, however, I very much doubt whether they wear their lives more to rags, than writers who mistake their vocation in poetry do. There is a mechanism in poetry as in the other art—and, to men not native to the way of it, it runs hard and heavily. The 'cudgelling ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... her that you would come back at Christmas?' observed Jasper. 'I see! Mr. Grewgious, as you quite fairly said just now, there is such an exceptional attachment between my nephew and me, that I am more sensitive for the dear, fortunate, happy, happy fellow than for myself. But it is only right that the young lady should be considered, as you have pointed out, and that I should accept my cue from you. I accept it. I understand that at Christmas they will complete their ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... well done. She did not look at Marco as she poured forth her words. She spoke with the abruptness and impetuosity of a person whose feelings had got the better of her. If Marco was sensitive about his father, she felt sure that his youth would make his face reveal something if his tongue did not—if he understood Russian, which was one of the things it would be useful to find out, because it was a fact which would verify ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sincerely loving virtue, were afraid of their own weakness, as it appeared to me easy to make of it a book as agreeable to read as it was to compose. I have, however, applied myself but very little to this work, the title of which was to have been 'Morale Sensitive' ou le Materialisme du Sage. —[Sensitive Morality, or the Materialism of the Sage.]—Interruptions, the cause of which will soon appear, prevented me from continuing it, and the fate of the sketch, which is ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... certainly vexed and disappointed with his son, and showed it a little in his manner, which was, however, quite useless as far as Johnnie was concerned, for he never even remarked it. There are children so sensitive, that the faintest shade of sadness or disapproval in the manner of their elders towards them will suffice to make them unhappy for days; there are others who, unless they are actually scolded or punished, never perceive that anything is amiss: and Johnnie was one of ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... Brackenhill was a miserable man, who went through the world with a morbidly sensitive spot in his nature. A touch on it was torture, and unfortunately the circumstances of his daily life ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... usually more will be found at the top than at the bottom of a room. This gas is, however, not the sole cause of disease. From both lungs and skin, matter is constantly thrown off, and floats in the form of germs in all impure air. To a person who by long confinement to close rooms has become so sensitive that any sudden current of air gives a cold, ventilation seems an impossibility and a cruelty; and the problem becomes: How to admit pure air throughout the house, and yet avoid currents and draughts. ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... from college to his uncle's domicil, now his only home. The circumstances of his father's fate and fortune, continually acting upon his mind and sensibilities from boyhood, had made his character a marked and singular one—proud, jealous, and sensitive, to an extreme which was painful not merely to himself, but at times to others. But he was noble, lofty, sincere, without a touch of meanness in his composition, above circumlocution, with a simplicity of character strikingly great, but without anything ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... motion by his very artistic truthfulness and objectiveness, became so loud and unanimous, that he contemplated giving up literature altogether. He could not possibly have held to this resolution. But it is surely an open question whether, sensitive and modest as he was, and prone to despondency and diffidence, he would have done so much for the literature of his country without the enthusiastic encouragement of various great foreign novelists, who were his friends and admirers: ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... swish of the paddles, was brooding and full of menace. Paul, so sensitive to circumstance, felt as if it were a sullen sky, out of which would suddenly come a blazing flash of lightning. But to Henry the greatest anxiety was the narrowing of the river which must come before long. The Ohio was not a mile wide everywhere, and when that straightening of the stream ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... may be seen when well-proportioned limbs are trained to every kind of athletic exercise. His face, however, was that of the dreamer, not of the athlete. He had a fine brow, thoughtful brown eyes, a somewhat long nose with sensitive nostrils, a stern-set mouth, and resolute chin. The spare outlines of his face, well defined yet delicate withal, sometimes reminded strangers of Giotto's frescoed head of Dante in his youth. But the mouth was partly ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the negroes had risen, and, taking possession, had carried her into an English port in the West Indies, where assistance was refused to the crew, and where the slaves were allowed to go free. This was an act of very doubtful legality, it touched both England and the Southern States in a very sensitive point, and it required all Mr. Webster's tact and judgment to keep it out of the negotiation until the ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... John Herschel made famous under the name of the debillissima. They are of the twelfth or thirteenth magnitude, and possibly variable to a slight degree. If you can not see them at first, turn your eye toward one side of the field of view, and thus, by bringing their images upon a more sensitive part of the retina, you may glimpse them. The sight is not much, yet it will repay you, as every glance into the depths of ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... Among the anecdotes told of Handel's passion is one growing out of the composer's peculiar sensitiveness to discords. The dissonance of the tuning-up period of an orchestra is disagreeable to the most patient. Handel, being peculiarly sensitive to this unfortunate necessity, always arranged that it should take place before the audience assembled, so as to prevent any sound of scraping or blowing. Unfortunately, on one occasion, some wag got access to the orchestra where the ready-tuned instruments ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... first of all, a messenger of spirit, and illustrates this in that quality which has given rise to the expression "borne on the wings of song." Ultimately the whole body will be conceived to be a sensitive vibrator responding with dramatic sympathy and returning vital radiance to the tones. The rightly cultivated expressive voice ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... left for good?" Luther asked hesitatingly. He knew John's unpopularity with the men who worked for him and was a little afraid to ask Elizabeth, who might be sensitive about it. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... and, cosmopolitan as is the blend of our public schools today, in the recreation period is found an opportunity for universal expression not afforded in other activities of the day. Keenly sensitive to their surroundings, they are quick to catch ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... insensitive mass of horn, to be cut, rasped, burned, nail-pierced, and hammered without causing pain or injury. It is a thin mass of horn overlying and intimately attached to a sensitive, blood and nerve-endowed tissue called the "quick" which is capable of suffering ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... often most humiliating by reason of the conscious contrast suggested by the reader's unbelief and unfaithfulness. This man lived peculiarly with God and in God, and his senses were exercised to discern good and evil. His conscience became increasingly sensitive and his judgment singularly discriminating, so that he detected fallacies where they escape the common eye, and foresaw dangers which, like hidden rocks ahead, risk damage and, perhaps, destruction to ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... having placed his sensitive ear to the tree, detected a rich, harmonious sound issuing from it. This surprising thing was tested and enjoyed by each scholar in turn, and great was the gladness and astonishment of all. Professor Woodlouse was requested to add to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the sick child that Lucy nurses in the Pensionnat: "Little Georgette still piped her plaintive wail, appealing to me by her familiar term, 'Minnie, Minnie, me very poorly!' till my heart ached." ... "I affected Georgette; she was a sensitive and loving child; to hold her in my lap, or carry her in my arms, was to me a treat. To-night she would have me lay my head on the pillow of her crib; she even put her little arms round my neck. Her clasp and the nestling action with which she pressed her cheek ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... began to get pretty rough before He had quite gotten here. The pure gentle virgin-mother was under cruelly hurting suspicion on the point about which a woman is properly most sensitive, and that too by the one who was nearest to her. I've wondered why Joseph, too, was not told of the plan of God when Mary was, and so she be spared this sore suspicion. I think it was because he simply ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... paid him by Larsen, Comet would have gotten over his homesickness. He was no milksop. He was like an overgrown boy off at college, or in some foreign city, sensitive, not sure of himself or his place in the order of things. Had Larsen gained his confidence, it would all have been different. And as for Larsen, he ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... day, whether the judges should sit and vote in Parliament, whether the Assembly could communicate directly with the Home Government—these were but the occasions of an antagonism really due to diversity of race and temperament; for, as Lord Durham discovered a generation later, "this sensitive and polite people" revolted, not so much against political disability, as against the exclusive manners and practices of a ruling class far removed from themselves by language and mode and code, who ruffled their ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the spirit of the man," remarked Harry, "he is sensitive to dishonor, no matter in what form or shape it may come, and the knowledge that his wife was charged with robbery would be a fearful blow to his pride, stern and unyielding as ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... "But woman's a riddle indeed if Elizabeth would give her shoe-tie for Cecil." Lady Angleby was so amazed and shocked that she made no answer whatever. The squire went on: "The farce had better pause—or end. Elizabeth is sensitive and shrewd enough. Cecil has no heart to give her, and she will never give hers unless in fair exchange. I have observed her all along, and that is the conclusion I have come to. She saw Miss Julia Gardiner at Ryde, and fathomed that old story: she supposes them to be engaged, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... distinction; and the knowledge had been forced upon her by all the obsequious flattery of society that she was, as a great heiress, something apart from others. This position, so much envied, may be to a sensitive soul an awful isolation. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... came home with especial force to Jackson. After the unfortunate episode in the pursuit from Middletown, he had rated his cavalry leader in no measured terms for the indiscipline of his command; and for some days their intercourse, usually most cordial, had been simply official. Sensitive in the extreme to any reflection upon himself or his troops, Ashby held aloof; and Jackson, always stern when a breach of duty was concerned, made no overtures for a renewal of friendly intercourse. Fortunately, before the fatal fight near Harrisonburg, they had been fully reconciled; and with ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... sensibilities would not be likely to suffer outrage at my hands. In every other respect our moods and tempers were utterly unlike. I thought him dull, very frequently, when he was only balancing between jealous and sensitive tastes;—and ignorant of the actual, when, in fact, his ignorance simply arose from the decided preference which he gave to the foreign and abstract. He was contemplative—an idealist; I was impetuous ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... mention here, that apples are said to 'shrump up' in Devonshire if picked when the moon is waning." [331] A writer of miscellaneous literature tells us that "it has been demonstrated that moonlight has the power, per se, of awakening the sensitive plant, and consequently that it possesses an influence of some kind on vegetation. It is true that the influence is very feeble, compared with that of the sun; but the action is established, and the question remains, what is the practical value of the fact? ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... detective wore were subjected to gentle examination by the sensitive fingers of the Chinaman, and those same fingers ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... statements advanced by the oldsters. And we had no reply for their argument, or if we had one could not find the language in which to couch it. Besides there was another and a deeper reason. A boy, being what he is, the most sensitive and the most secretive of living creatures regarding his innermost emotions, rarely does bare his real thoughts to his elders, for they, alas, are not young enough to have a fellow feeling, and they are too old and they know too much ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... three hours in the unwearied train descending from the Eismeer to Interlaken, and was back in my hotel in comfortable time for dinner, "mightily content with the day's journey," as Mr. Pepys would have said. I have always been sensitive to the action of diminished pressure, which produces what is called "mountain sickness" in many people. Many years ago I climbed by the glacier-pass known as the Weissthor from Macugnaga to the Riffel Alp, with a stylographic pen in my pocket. The reservoir of the pen ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... an old story. Nor, as we must confess again, were these tastes redeemed by very amiable qualities beneath the smooth external surface. There was plenty of feminine spite as well as feminine delicacy. To the marked fear of ridicule natural to a sensitive man Walpole joined a very happy knack of quarrelling. He could protrude a feline set of claws from his velvet glove. He was a touchy companion and an intolerable superior. He set out by quarrelling with Gray, who, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... occasional recklessness was only pluck and love of adventure; not imprudence; it was always guided by reason and an instinctive sense of self-preservation. She was a little experimental, that was all. Madeline was more timid and sensitive; though not nearly so quick to see things as Bertha she took them to heart more, far more;—was far less lively ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... attuned to the harmony of the world that a touch of his hand or a turn of his head may send a thrill vibrating through the universal framework of things; and conversely his divine organism is acutely sensitive to such slight changes of environment as would leave ordinary mortals wholly unaffected. But the line between these two types of man-god, however sharply we may draw it in theory, is seldom to be traced with precision in practice, and in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... particular youth was a great success—in the beginning. Every door was open to him. He had position, brains, and popularity to boot. He married brilliantly. And then The Past, a trivial, unimportant Detail, lifted its head and barked at him. He was too sensitive to bark back. Thereupon it bit him and ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... joint autocracy accorded at Bologna to two cosmopolitan but non-national forces in their midst. An alien monarchy greedy for gold, a panic-stricken hierarchy in terror for its life, warped the tendencies and throttled the energies of the most artistically sensitive, the most heroically innovating of the existing races. However we may judge the merits of the Spaniards, they were assuredly not those which had brought Italy into the first rank of European nations. The events of a single century proved that, far from ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... more than natural that such a strange, unattractive-looking child should be made fun of by the prosaic, commonplace people of his neighborhood, and this was untold pain to the sensitive boy. There were, however, in the town, people of a higher class, who perceived in the boy something beyond the ordinary, and who interested themselves in his behalf. They had him sent to school, but he preferred to dream away his time rather ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... what are sympathy and imagination? Precious little, unless the person for whom we feel sympathy happens to be closely involved in our affections; and even then they don't go very far. And a good thing too; for if one had an imagination vivid enough and a sympathy sufficiently sensitive really to comprehend and to feel the sufferings of other people, one would never have a moment's peace of mind. A really sympathetic race would not so much as know the meaning of happiness. But luckily, as I've already said, we aren't a sympathetic race. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... another week," was Hennessy's answer. "She's well broke now, just the way Mrs. Forrest wanted, but she's over-strung and sensitive and I'd like the week more to ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... selected "Virginia," and none can deplore the graceful choice. She remembered her own unmarried state; and connecting, it may be, with this the virgin purity which yet seemed to linger amid this favored region, she bestowed a name which has since interwoven itself with the most sensitive chords of a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... was, and a striking contrast to the first one, for it was a blooming, smiling face, full of girlish spirit and health, with no sign of melancholy, though the soft eyes were thoughtful, and the lines about the lips betrayed a sensitive nature. ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... small minority, with few here to whom I can look for sympathy or support. Full well I know that I must utter things unwelcome to many in this body, which I cannot do without pain. Full well I know that the institution of Slavery in our country, which I now proceed to consider, is as sensitive as it is powerful, possessing a power to shake the whole land, with a sensitiveness that shrinks and trembles at the touch. But while these things may properly prompt me to caution and reserve, they cannot change my duty, or my determination to perform it. For this I willingly forget ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... line between right and wrong, that line which should be strongly marked, was effaced: so delicately had sentiment shaded off its boundaries. These female metaphysics, this character of exalted imagination and sensitive softness, was not quite so cheap and common some years ago, as it has lately become. The consequences to which it practically leads were not then fully foreseen and understood. At all times a man ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Nonworking hooligans acted as voting-bloc bosses ordered; voting-bloc bosses acted on orders from the political manipulators of Cartels and pressure-groups, and action downward through the nonworkers was usually accompanied by action upward through influences to which ministers were sensitive. ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... of which about one hundred species exist; but, alas! none to our traveller's joy, that flings out the right hand of good fellowship to every twig within reach, winds about the sapling in brotherly embrace, drapes a festoon of flowers from shrub to shrub, hooks even its sensitive leafstalks over any available support as it clambers and riots on its lovely way. By rubbing the footstalk of a young leaf with a twig a few times on any side, Darwin found a clematis leaf would bend to that side in the course of a few hours, but ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... Jimmy and Mrs. Carew cared for each other, Pollyanna became peculiarly sensitive to everything that tended to strengthen that belief. And being ever on the watch for it, she found it, as was to be expected. First in Mrs. ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... proprietor Daily "Enterprise"), and "Dan de Quille" and myself, reporters for same; remnants of the feast thin and scattering, but such tautology and repetition of empty bottles everywhere visible as to be offensive to the sensitive eye; time, 2.30 A.M.; Artemus thickly reciting a poem about a certain infant you wot of, and interrupting himself and being interrupted every few lines by poundings of the table and shouts of "Splendid, by Shorzhe!" Finally, a long, vociferous, poundiferous and vitreous ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... under the flames of Mount Sinai, his passing unhurt the darts from Beelzebub's castle, and his finding refuge at the Wicket Gate. It is true, that the most delicate Christian must become a stern warrior—the most sensitive ear must be alarmed with the sound of Diabolus' drum, and at times feel those inward groanings which cannot be uttered—pass through 'the fiery trial,' and 'endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ'; while at other periods of his experience, flushed with victory, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... did not possess that peculiar and common form of vanity which makes a man sensitive about doing badly what he has never learned to do at all. He laughed when Ruggiero advised him to luff a little, and he did as he was told. But Ruggiero came aft and perched himself on the stern in order to be at hand in case his master ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... from home, the peasant coat, the pistol, and his announcement to the Rostovs that he would remain in Moscow would all become not merely meaningless but contemptible and ridiculous, and to this Pierre was very sensitive. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... seen—not easily perhaps, but certainly by an observer reasonably close at hand and on the lookout. It is especially liable to detection from an airship. Moreover, the noise of its propellers can be heard at a considerable distance, and a very sensitive microphone has been developed as a submarine detector. The waters about Great Britain are now patrolled by hundreds of small, fast craft—destroyers, trawlers, motor boats—always on the lookout for a periscope ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... Schopenhauer the world possesses a personality the richer; a somewhat garrulous personality it may be; a curiously whimsical and sensitive personality, full of quite ordinary superstitions, of extravagant vanities, selfish, at times violent, rarely generous; a man whom during his lifetime nobody quite knew, an isolated creature, self-absorbed, solely concerned in his ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... figure as Lloyd, although she was nearly twice as old. She had kept the timid, shrinking manner that she had when a child. That and her appealing big blue eyes, and almost babyish complexion, made her seem much younger than she was. It was a sensitive, refined face that Lloyd kept glancing at, one that would have been remarkably pretty had ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... she soon realized that he knew no better, and responded with the weapons of woman. The man, inured to cold and pain and fatigue, yet was sensitive as a child when it came to his feelings. When she learned this, she kept his nerves quivering with quiet smiles, soft and sarcastic little speeches, and deadening silences, the meaning of which did not strike him at the time because of his ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... milk-white, his tall, broad frame gaunt as a January wolf. Two years had written in his face two years' experience—fully written, for he was sensitive to every wind of experience. "Excellency!"—"Juan Lepe, I am as glad of you as of a brother!—And what ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... be perfected in spite of this relative mutilation in her lot. The growing desire in our time for show and luxury, the increase of the excitements of publicity, the sensational literature of fiction, which is absorbing an ever-larger share of attention from the more sensitive portion of the feminine public, these causes are concentrating an undue interest on the passion of love. It is the almost exclusive theme of plays, novels, poems. One consequence is an exaggeration of the part that should be played by this sentiment in the experience of the individual. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... fellow," said Martin, "why do you give way to so much useless regret? You are so morbidly sensitive that you seem to blame yourself as though you had been guilty of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... far behind us. He remembered plunging into the snow-drift and struggling on until he fell on his face, and then all was a blank. None of the Indians were with him in the drift; he felt sure they were all behind him, which was likely enough, as Gahra, though sensitive to cold, was a man of exceptional bodily strength. It was beyond a doubt ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... Only, all at once I realized that he had a sensitive nature. I don't know why I shouldn't have realized it before. I had somehow taken it for granted that he was a self-conscious hermit, who lived in a squalid seclusion because he liked being wondered at. But he did not seem to be anything of the kind. I don't ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... from his dreaming state and shook his head, but the vision did not depart. The ship was coming and it was for him to receive it. The news of it had been written too deeply upon the sensitive plate of his brain to be effaced, and, as he walked back toward the house, it seemed to grow more vivid. He was too much excited to study that day, and he spent the time building a great heap of wood upon the beach. Even if one were helped by good spirits he must do his own part. They ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lithemia or of imperfect oxidation of albumen; emaciation, fatigue, depression, headache, buzzing in the ears and deafness, disturbance of sight, loss of memory, faintness and vertigo, very marked in some cases; sometimes tenderness and pain under the cartilages of the right ribs; the fretting of the sensitive surface of the bowels by imperfectly digested, semi-putrescent food, resulting sometimes in convulsions, coma, paralysis, or in fetid diarrhea of an acid character producing a burning sensation or pain of the anus ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... stirred Overland's sensitive pride in his horsemanship. "'Course I broke and rode hundreds like her, down in Mex. But then I was paid for doin' it. It was my business then. Now, minin' and educatin' Collie is my business, and a busted ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of compassion the sensitive landlord Hermann I trust will find them and give them refreshment and clothing. I should unwillingly see them: I grieve at the eight of such sorrow. Touch'd by the earliest news of the sad extent of the suffering, Hastily sent we a trifle from out of our superabundance, Just to ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... might have cried, with Miss Evelina Anvill, "Oh, my dear sir, I am shocked to death!" He did not. He did not even say, "Why did you stamp us like that?" He would not for the world have hurt Hilary's feelings, and vaguely he knew that this splendid, unusual half-brother of his was in some ways a sensitive person. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... eyes did not wander far from the main chance. You will think of many exceptions; but this comes as near truth, probably, as a generalization may. We should understand their temperament; quick and sensitive, capable of inspiration to high deeds; but, en masse, rarely founded on enduring principles. That jumping into the seas was nothing to the Persians; they were not sung to it; it was not done in defense of home, or upon a motive ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... be candid? Mellasys per se was a pill, Mrs. Mellasys was a dose, and Saccharissa a bolus, to one of my refined and sensitive taste. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... "inconsiderable suite," at Aachen, was Prince Henri (his youngest Brother, age now sixteen, a small, sensitive, shivering creature, but of uncommon parts); and another young man, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, his Wife's youngest Brother; a soldier, as all the Brothers are; soldier in Friedrich's Army, this one; in whose fine inarticulate eupeptic character ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... not creative, it is only reportorial. Ideals are realities; imagination is seeing. The musician, the artist, the poet, discover life which others have not discovered, and each with his own instrument interprets that life to those less sensitive than himself. Observe a musician composing. He writes; stops; hesitates; meditates; perhaps hums softly to himself; perhaps goes to the piano and strikes a chord or two. What is he doing? He is trying to express ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... who is not highly sensitive is an amusement that it is possible to exhaust, and Tom by and by began to look round for some other mode of passing the time. But in so prim a garden, where they were not to go off the paved walks, there was not a great choice ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of his tub with webbed hands and swung his webbed, yellow-skinned feet free from the water which kept the sensitive membranes from drying, and at the same time supplied his body tissues with liquid. Falling upon all fours, like a great, misshapen pet, he ...
— The Indulgence of Negu Mah • Robert Andrew Arthur
... sonic control," Brucco answered with a sober face. "It is much more precise than that. Here, take your left hand and grasp an imaginary gun butt. Tense your trigger finger. Do you notice the pattern of the tendons in the wrist? Sensitive actuators touch the tendons in your right wrist. They ignore all patterns except the one that says hand ready to receive gun. After a time the mechanism becomes completely automatic. When you want the gun—it is in your hand. When you don't—it ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... like the smell of blood," quickly answered the sensitive maid. "The Black Snake is a boy, and does not know his friends ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... rather increasing than diminishing, notwithstanding the fact that the quantity which the abdominal pressure has furnished the vocal cords from the supply chamber is a very small one. That it may not hinder further progression, the form must remain elastic and sensitive to the most delicate modification of the vowel sound. If the tone is to have life, it must always be able to conform to any vowel sound. The least displacement of the form or interruption of the breath breaks up the whirling currents and vibrations, and ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... absurd, therefore, to say that the world, which is endued with a perfect, free, pure, spirituous, and active heat, is not sensitive, since by this heat men and beasts are preserved, and move, and think; more especially since this heat of the world is itself the sole principle of agitation, and has no external impulse, but is moved spontaneously; for what can be more powerful than the world, which moves and raises that ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... dark, folded up, as he had placed it for the last time, with hasty, familiar hands, in its red silk shroud. After two dead months the first string had snapped, sharply striking the sensitive body of the instrument. The second string had broken near Christmas, but no one had heard the faint moan of its going. The violin lay mute in the dark, a faint odour of must creeping over the smooth, soft wood. Its twisted, withered ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... straight, clearly marked black brows under the mark the cap made on his forehead; the rather high cheekbones, the clear-cut nose and chin, the little line of black mustache that did not hide his hard-set and yet sensitive lips; the square, rather long jaw—"He'll have deep lines at the sides of his mouth in a few more years," she thought, and—"He's much darker than I remembered him. But he has no color under the brown. I thought he had a good deal of color . . ." She appraised his face, not liking ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... these pearls has been seen of one and one-half ordinary palmos in length and almost one palmo in its narrowest part—whose pearl could not be obtained, because the valve opened on drawing it from the sea, and the sensitive fleshy part that contained the pearl fell into the water. According to its appearance, it must have contained pearls of many grains and carats in size. The island has various exquisite and useful woods which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... Sir Anthony replied warmly; and he stood, his hands under his coat-tails and his gaitered legs apart, regarding her with the air of a cock-sparrow accused of murdering his young, or a sensitive jockey repudiating a suggestion of crooked riding. "Heaven forbid!" he repeated. "Such an idea never entered ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... him something of herself. She had returned him to his fellow-laborers with a new feeling toward them, a humbleness he had never known, a desire to adjust himself with them. He was sensitive to the kindness of the day,—White's friendly trust, Leonard's just words, Miss Hitchcock's generosity. As the sense of this life faded from the woman he loved, the dawn of a fairer day came to him. And his heart ached because she for whom he had desired every happiness might never ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... began to talk of returning to England, at least of leaving Italy. I believe he had become frightened at the calls which were continually being made upon him for money; for after all, you know, if there is a sensitive part of a man's wearing apparel, it is his breeches pocket; but the young ladies could not think of leaving dear Italy and the dear priest; and then they had seen nothing of the country, they had only seen Naples; before leaving dear Italia ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the hazel. Hazel-rods were used to "divine" for water and minerals by professors of an art which received the crack-jaw title of Rhabdomancy. Having tried our own hand at Rhabdomancy, we are able to say that the freaks of the divining-rod in sensitive fingers are sometimes as curious as those of a table among table-turners; and are probably ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to feel it in gritty, grimy accumulations on skin and linen, and smell it in suffocating stenches which serve, with sneeze-provoking dust, to stifle anything like comfort, their skin must be thicker, their linen more neglected, and their noses less sensitive than those of the majority of fellow travellers it has been our fortune to be cooped up with for a day's ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... "how quick and sensitive is our self-love! When pressing forward in our high calling, we point out the errors of the Sovereign, who praises our boldness more than the noble Morton? But touch we upon his own sore, which most needs lancing, and he shrinks ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... stamping his foot violently upon the stone floor. After a while he resumed his low soliloquy. "I fear for Edgar," he said, "lest the cold world chill his heart and undo his usefulness, as it has mine. He has my temperament, reserved, sensitive, and with the same accursed capacity for strong, undying attachment. What a fair prospect of fame had I! What honors were ready to crown me when that monster came and blasted them all! Such do I fear will be Edgar's fate. But he must go forth into the world; such was the wish of his ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... down again, and he hadn't much choice, she said to herself, about helping her into her motor. Then at the very last moment he had asked if he mightn't come and see her the next afternoon. Miss Severance, who was usually sensitive to inconveniencing other people, had not cared at all about the motor behind hers that was tooting its horn or for the elderly lady in feathers and diamonds who was waiting to get into it. She had cared only about arranging the hour and impressing the address upon him. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... menses (the plural of the Latin word mensis, which signifies a month). The menstrual flow continues from three to five days, and is merely the exudation of ordinary venous blood through the mucous lining of the cavity of the uterus. At this time, the nervous system of females is much more sensitive, and from the fact that there is greater aptitude to conception immediately before and after this period, it is supposed that the sexual feeling is then the strongest. When impregnation occurs immediately before the appearance of the menses, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... French nation took it into its head to realize them; for the rest, full of fine sentiments, believing himself much more sanguine and romantic than he was in reality; rather more faithful to the prejudices of caste and considerably more sensitive to the opinion of the world than he flattered and prided himself on being—such was the man. His face was certainly handsome, but I found it excessively dull; for I had conceived the most ridiculous animosity for him. His polished manners seemed ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... suspiciously, but it was evident that she was in sober earnest, and the tragedy of such profound ignorance smote the man sharply. Here was a girl of at least average intelligence and of sensitive makeup; a girl with looks, too, in spite of her size, and no doubt a full share of common sense—perhaps even talents of some sort—yet with the knowledge of a child. For the first time he realized what playthings of Fate are men and women, how completely circumstance can make or mar them, and what ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... a very interesting character, and a man of great natural refinement. After the publication of his work, he became one of the fashionable lions of London, but was very sensitive about his early career, and very sedulous to sink the posture-master in the traveller. He was often present at Mr. Murray's receptions; and on one particular occasion he was invited to join the family circle in Albemarle Street on the last evening of 1822, to ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... is not always responsible for the frolics of his fancy. Indeed, an audience of some five thousand souls, all intent upon this opaque, mysterious Entity in the tribune, is bound to reach the very heart of it; for think what five thousand rays focussed on a sensitive plate can do." Thus our ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the portrait over the mantelpiece. The calm passionless face smiled blandly at the tiny dog. One sensitive hand, white and delicate as a woman's, was raised, forefinger uplifted, gently holding the attention of the little animal's eager eyes. The magic skill of the artist supplied the doctor with the key to the problem. A woman—as mate, as wife, as part of himself, was not a necessity in the ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... electric lights, and in the dark, when the eye is unoccupied, one is doubly sensitive to the messages of hearing and feeling. He caught every sound, felt every movement, of the mighty ship, steadily pursuing its course through the midnight. He heard the churning of the propeller, like the labouring of a great demon condemned to slave for mankind. He heard shouts and calls and the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... truths—those which cannot be demonstrated—he found that Adam being made of red earth, was of too dull a nature to understand these subtle distinctions, but that Eve, on the contrary, being more tender and more sensitive, was easily impressed. Therefore he conversed with her alone, in the absence of her husband, in order ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... dollars a month writing serials for Hitch's;' 'Smith sold two novels on synopsis for thirty thousand dollars;' 'Green's signed up with Tagwicks for four years at two thousand dollars a month writing problem novels.' Into the maelstrom of 'Dollars, Dollars, Dollars,' the sensitive brains of all America were drifting, throwing overboard ideals and aspirations in order to keep afloat in the ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... irreconcilable disparagement of problem plays, and all of them bound by etiquette to be as undemonstrative as possible, is not exactly the sort of audience that rises at the performers and cures them of the inevitable reaction after an excitingly successful first night. The artist nature is a sensitive and therefore a vindictive one; and masterful players have a way with recalcitrant audiences of rubbing a play into them instead of delighting them with it. I should describe the second performance of Mrs Warren's Profession, especially as to its earlier stages, as ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... enemies in the Mexican Congress, threw them into jail, and proclaimed himself dictator. Washington was much displeased that Sir Lionel Carden should have selected the day of these high-handed proceedings to present to Huerta his credentials as minister; in its sensitive condition, the State Department interpreted this act as a reaffirmation of that recognition that had already caused so much confusion in ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... large measure of veneration belongs to them, as having a finer and more habitually present consciousness than most men of something infinitely above what even their imaginations can compass. He was as magnanimous as it was possible, perhaps, for so sensitive and impassioned a person to be. He was humane, self-denying, courteous. He had an intellect of that largely inquiring kind which may remind us of our great English philosopher, Bacon. He was singularly resolute ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... and cloudy, with a blink here and there. We know the brightness would scorch and destroy if it were constant; still the bursts of glory that come between the clouds are a rich provision for our frail and sensitive lives." Her conception of achievement was a little out of the common. One day she sat in court for eight hours; other two hours were spent with the clerk making out warrants; afterwards she had to find tasks to employ some labour; then she went out at dusk and attended a birth ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true, that, to a sensitive observer, there was something exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I am to be of good cheer. I must not think anything of what he formerly wrote. Mr. Trelyon is leaving Eglosilyan for good, and his mother will at last have some peace of mind. What a pity it is that this sensitive creature should be at the mercy of the rude passions of this son of hers! that she should have no protector! that she should be allowed to mope herself to death ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... kept his promise, would be a very serious charge if brought against anybody else. Yet my oldest friend in the world knows how many times he has made a promise to himself, and has not only not kept it but has actually found excuses why he did not keep it. The more sensitive our conscience becomes, the more blameworthy many an act of our life seems to be, and what to an ordinary conscience is no fault at all, becomes almost a sin under a ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... hypochondria out of many a patient's mind by thus making his own vigorous optimism flow down from his fingertips, while he looked into the patient's eye. But his hands remained in the air, though Jack had been only smiling at him. This was not the way to handle this patient, something told his trained, sensitive instinct in time, and he let his hands fall in semblance of a gesture of protest, gave a shrug and came directly ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... releasing his arm, he stroked the beautiful creature's rump with his hand, till the mare's tail whisked more than ever. Presently he put his fingers right into the mare's cunt, and worked them by thrusting in and frigging the twitching lips of that hyper-sensitive organ to the evident delight of the beast, to judge from the way she stood to allow it: at first his fingers simply glistened with the moisture of the aperture, which could be seen contracting and twitching spasmodically as his fingers increased the animal's excitement, till a gush of horsey lubricity ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... The mule may not be so liable to spavin as the horse, but he has ringbone just the same. I cannot, for the life of me, see how the committee could have fallen into this error. There is this, however, to be taken into consideration: the mule is not of so sensitive a nature as the horse, and will bear pain without showing it in lameness. The close observer, however, can easily detect it. One reason why they do not show spavin and ringbone so much at the horse, is because our blacksmiths ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... agitation, now in progress, for the final abolition of the queue may be due to one or all of the following reasons. Intelligent Chinese may have come to realize that the fashion is cumbrous and out of date. Sensitive Chinese may fear that it makes them ridiculous in the eyes of foreigners. Political Chinese, who would gladly see the re-establishment of a native dynasty, may look to its disappearance as the first step towards throwing off the ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... house,' said Noel, 'and it's a deserted house, and the garden is like in "The Sensitive Plant" after the lady has ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... was a warmth in Aspinall's voice which touched the most sensitive side of his nature. Dick would have liked the ghost to be ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... October 14, 1814, at Moscow. From his father he inherited the love of brilliant society, from his mother the love of music and an unusually sensitive temperament. When he was but two and a half years old his mother died and he became the idol of his grandmother, by whom he was spoiled, until the wilfulness of youth became the arrogance and domineering quality so distinguishing his maturity. Being a delicate child, his grandmother ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... All sensitive children, born of orthodox Christian parents, who heard the Bible read aloud, looked fearfully into the sky for "signs and wonders." The Bible tells in several places of devils breaking out of Hell ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... her with his superior fifteen-year-old smile, she was such a wee mousie and always needed taking care of. If he could have a sister, he would want her to be like Marjorie. He was very much like Marjorie himself, just as shy, just as sensitive, hardly more fitted to take his own part, and I think Marjorie was the braver of the two. He was slow-tempered and unforgiving; if a friend failed him once, he never took him into confidence again. He was proud where Marjorie was humble. He gave his services; ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... tender-hearted child, Cecile," she said to the little creature, who was watching her every movement with a kind of trembling eagerness. Cecile's sensitive face flushed at the words of praise, and she came very close to the sofa. "Yes, you're a good child," repeated Mrs. D'Albert; "you're yer father's own child, and he was very good, though he was a foreigner. For myself I don't much care for good ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... which they had brought along for presents, Jolliet bade the men wait their return and climbed the bank with the missionary. The path led through prairie grass, gay at that season with flowers. The delicate buttercup-like sensitive plant shrank from their feet in wet places. Neither Frenchman had yet seen the deadly rattlesnake of these southern countries, singing as a great fly might sing in a web, dart out of its spotted spiral to fasten a death bite upon a victim. They walked ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the exercise of federal government, state government, and local government, in your own town or city. Of which government do you observe the most signs? Of which do you observe the fewest signs? Of which government do the officers seem most sensitive to local opinion? ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... position with accuracy. The change in reading of the manometer gives the relation of change of surface tension and therefore of potential. Each electrometer needs special graduation or calibration, but is exceedingly sensitive and accurate. It cannot be used for greater potential differences than .6 volt, but can measure .0006 volt. Its electrostatic capacity is so small that it can indicate rapid changes. Another form indicates potential difference by the movement of a drop of sulphuric acid in a horizontal glass tube, ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... now to examine was of the customary material, and of the usual striped pattern in blue and white. Her fingers were not sufficiently sensitive to feel anything under the surface, when she tried it with her hand. Turning the empty trunk with the inner side of the lid toward the light, she discovered, on one of the blue stripes of the lining, a thin little shining stain which looked like a ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... was suddenly awake. He lay without motion, sensitive to some subtle change in the surroundings. From the corner of his eye he could see Jarvis wrapped in sleep. The silence ...
— Operation Lorelie • William P. Salton
... thereabouts; he bore in his hand a manchet of bread, which, after prying about for a moment, he proceeded to dip in the pan where some delicate woodcocks were in the course of preparation. You know, mon maitre, how sensitive I am on certain points, for I am no Spaniard but a Greek, and have principles of honour. Without a moment's hesitation I took my young master by the shoulders, and hurrying him to the door, dismissed him in the manner which he deserved; squalling loudly, he hurried away to the upper part ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... who had lingered to look at the dreary prospect had a somewhat gloomy, discontented face, whose sensitive lines indicated a certain susceptibility to such impressions. He was further distinguished by having also lingered longer with the washing of his hands and face in the battered tin basin on a stool beside the door, and by the circumstance ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... far they were subject to the vices of flattery or detraction we cannot tell, but we may be sure that those who were accounted great in these ancient times were anxious to have their doughty deeds immortalised, and perhaps were as sensitive to the tone of public criticism thus represented as is the statesman or warrior of to-day. What would we not give to hear from the living voice of one of those bards, were it only possible, the stores of traditionary lore of which they were the sole depositories! As it is, we ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... feelings. The lawyer Mr. Medler had pried into everything, the shopman told Percival Nowell; had declared himself empowered to do this, as the legal adviser of the deceased; and had seemed as suspicious as if he, Luke Tulliver, meant to rob his dead master. Mr. Tulliver's sensitive nature had been outraged by such ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... or rather series of battles which were afterwards classified under the general head the Battle of the Marne. He was not a soldier, merely a civilian serving as a soldier, but he had learned already to interpret many of the signs of combat. There was an atmospheric feeling that registered on a sensitive mind the difference between victory and defeat, and he was firm in the belief that as yesterday had gone today was going. Certainly this great German army which he believed to be in the center was not advancing, and something of a character most ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I thought, in his most sensitive spot, his pocket; and the opportunity came naturally enough for we were passing the shops in the High Street and he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... Leaphighers had been travelling in Leaplow; and, not satisfied with this liberty, they had actually written books concerning things that they had seen, and things that they had not seen. As respects the latter, neither of the public opinions was very sensitive, although many of them reflected on the Great National Allegory and the sacred rights of monikins; but as respects the former, there was a very lively excitement. These writers had the audacity to say that the Leaplowers had cut off all ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... simple and practical, the other sensitive and speculative, did not move in the same atmosphere, and could not understand one another. Ambrose was in the condition of excitement and bewilderment produced by the first stirrings of the Reformation upon enthusiastic minds. He had studied ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... beauty, and I ought to add that this alone can prove it. In fact, as in the possession of truth or of logical unity, feeling is not necessarily one with the thought, but follows it accidentally; it is a fact which only proves that a sensitive nature can succeed a rational nature, and vice versa; not that they co-exist, that they exercise a reciprocal action one over the other; and, lastly, that they ought to be united in an absolute and necessary manner. From this exclusion of feeling as long ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... He had always been sensitive to either criticism or praise, but, at the bottom of his heart, in spite of his legitimate vanity, he suffered more from being criticised than he enjoyed being praised, because of the uneasiness concerning himself which his hesitations had always encouraged. Formerly, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... on hearing of this brought about the Archbishop's murder on the 29th of the same month. During the excommunication, Foliot seems to have behaved wisely and well. He refused to accept it as valid, but stayed away from the cathedral to avoid giving offence to sensitive consciences. After Becket's murder, he declared his innocence of any share in it, and the Bishop of Nevers ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... consequences of an apparently insignificant and ridiculous event in his past, doubt of his own fitness to conduct his existence and mistrust of his best sentiments—for what the devil did he want to go to Fouche for?—he knew them all in turn. "I am an idiot, neither more nor less," he thought. "A sensitive idiot. Because I overheard two men talk in a cafe... I am an idiot afraid of lies—whereas in life it is ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... brown, nearly black, save where the light showed a tinge of red, a glint of gold. It was almost too abundant; like a rich, virulent weed it grew triumphant. Her lips were thin yet perfectly modelled, a long gracious curve; the upper lip a trifle thicker and short below the sensitive, wide-open nostrils. The brow serene and white, heavy over the deep-set blue eyes. And the eyes! No one could ever describe Wilhelmine von Graevenitz's eyes, or no two persons could agree concerning them, which comes to the same thing. They were blue and deeply set, the lids heavy, the lashes ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and her sensitive lips began to tremble. Monte Irvin drew her arm under his own and led her back to meet the car, which the chauffeur had turned and which ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the neglect of the navy practised by the Spanish Government, and partly upon the inference that the general incapacity evident for years past in all the actions of the Spanish authorities, and notably in Cuba, could not but extend to the navy,—one of the most sensitive and delicate parts of any political organization; one of the first to go to pieces when the social and political foundations of a State are shaken, as was notably shown in the French Revolution. But, though suspected, the ineffectiveness of that squadron could not be assumed before proved. Until ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... smiling, "a queen of fourteen years of age is very sensitive with regard to her dignity, and takes it very ill if she is not treated with due reverence ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach |
