"Sensitiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but when Pauline had fallen asleep—anxiety made her sleepy—he got up and went into the next room. He groaned, unable to breathe; his pain was so close and oppressive, that he had no room to draw his breath. With the prophetic hyper-sensitiveness of the artist, who often lives in tomorrow with more intensity than in the present moment, his agonised eyes and heart foresaw all that was to be. This inevitable war between the greatest nations of the world, seemed to him the failure of civilisation, the ruin of the most sacred hopes for human ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... another form of the works of self. Ah, how much pride and jealousy is there in the Christian world; how much sensitiveness to what men say of us or think of us; how much desire of human praise and pleasing men, instead of always living in the presence of God, with the one thought: "Am I pleasing to Him?" Christ said, "How can ye believe who ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... he would willingly have omitted. For though she set herself up as a profound critic and a super-refined aesthetic, her real nature was at once coarse and slightly Sadie, and she took pleasure in tales of bloodshed and suffering which would have disgusted a healthy-minded woman of ordinary sensitiveness. Indeed, as her Italian contemporaries knew her during those long years she spent in Rome, she was very far from being the royal Christina of the playwrights and poets. Her knowledge of art was not that of the critic, but of the ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... doses to a healthy person, will cause a peculiar headache with sharp, stabbing pains in forehead and temples, high fever, violent delirium, dilation of the pupils, dryness and rawness of the throat, scarlet redness of the skin and extreme sensitiveness to light, jars ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... these present-day sages reasonably explain to me that in a noble and lofty human type such as I, certainly not without some right, dared call myself, the very strong working of an impulse common to all animals was coupled with an exaggerated sensitiveness for its ignoble character? Were this impulse good and beautiful and in no part ignoble, whence then my aversion? - were it really low and unworthy, whence its presence, so impertinent and overpowering, in a refined and highly cultured ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... and Bye, beautiful Madam, and I cannot endure that you put upon my very good Uncle, the General Carruthers, an unfriendliness to France," I exclaimed with a quickness of my brain that I had not before discovered. "On points of honor I have that sensitiveness that you say to be—be of ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to measure now the difference that she saw in Mr. Queed, she could have done it by the shyness that they both felt in approaching a topic they had once handled with the easiest simplicity. She was glad of his sensitiveness; it became him better than his early callousness. Sharlee wore a suit of black-and-gray pin-checks, and it was very excellently tailored; for if she purchased but two suits a year, she invariably paid money to have them made by one who knew how. Her hat was of the kind that other girls ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... it some tendency to divert Him from His course. Christ's humanity felt natural human shrinking from pain and suffering. It shrank from the contempt and mockery of those around Him, and did so with especial sensitiveness because of His pure and sinless nature, His yearning sympathy, the atmosphere of love in which He dwelt, His clear sight of the sin, and His prevision of the consequent sorrow. If so, His sufferings did appeal to His human nature and constituted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... much reason to fear that the result of this match, and Zukertort's sensitiveness to supposed coolness towards him afterwards mainly contributed to cause his premature break up and untimely end. I always advised him before the match, in justice to himself, to stipulate for a time limit of 20 or 25 moves an ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... Sensitiveness.—Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as a sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... would have counted Warlock's rare honesty, pride or fastidiousness or unjustifiable free-handedness. Hence they came to think and speak of him as a poor creature, and soon the man, through the keen sensitiveness of his nature, became aware of the fact. But to his sense of the misprision of neighbours and friends, came the faith and indignant confidence of his wife like the closing and binding up and mollifying of a wound with ointment. The man ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... notwithstanding, this sort of responsibility gives the ministers or people of England very little trouble, since I never could discover any sensitiveness to their duties on this score. We all went in at Herman Mordaunt's, after walking to the house as we had walked from it, and were made to take a light supper, including some delicious chocolate. Just as we sat down to table, Bulstrode joined us, to receive the praises ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... and women from sixteen to twenty-five years of age. Nor were the participants mere rustics; many of them could boast as good blood, as careful breeding, and as much intelligence, as any in the land. Neither was the morality or sensitiveness of the young women of that day in any respect inferior to what ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... wounding, even in trifles, the just and inevitable susceptibilities of their American acquaintances. Our own national self-esteem is cased in oak and triple brass,[M] and we are apt to regard American sensitiveness as a ridiculous foible. It is nothing of the sort: it is a psychological necessity, deep-rooted in ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in church, and a working man should enter the door at the other end, would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch dog. The fact is, if you, had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing up of the common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... but one step from the most exquisite sensitiveness to the most violent defiance. The experience of this day had entirely cured him of his previous nervous deference to the feelings of society. Society had outraged him, and now he resolved to outrage society. He owed society nothing; his ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... to be introduced, and it was to be done without seeming to interfere. Her doctrine and practice always were instant, silent, and cheerful obedience to medical and disciplinary orders, without any qualification whatever; and by this she overcame the natural sensitiveness of the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Paul, and a great fellowship beside, this stress of the divided self was both immediate and intense. Such as these through the consciousness of very real fault—and this is true of Augustine and St. Paul—or through a rare spiritual sensitiveness and an unusual force of aspiration—and this is true of many others—did not need any conviction of sin urged upon them from the outside. They had conviction enough of their own. But all these ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while Error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger? I never heard that a mathematician was alarmed for the safety of a demonstrated proposition. I think, generally, that fear of open discussion implies feebleness of inward conviction, and great sensitiveness to the expression of individual opinion is a mark ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... vigorous comment there followed a long silence. That volatile young person, little troubled as she was by sensitiveness, guessed the fact that just now further discussion of the event would be distasteful to Mary, and so she betook herself discreetly to a cigarette and the illustrations of a popular magazine devoted to the stage. As for the man, his ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... an illustration of the sensitiveness of the Hungarians in the matter of their Austrian relations the fact may be cited that in 1889, after prolonged effort, an arrangement was procured in accordance with which the joint sovereign, in the capacity ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... is easy to understand how many women may feel the same, even in regard to a husband. And I fancy that those who feel it most are often the most conscientious and high-minded women. It is unreasonable to say of such persons, "Too sensitive! Too fastidious!" For it is just this quality of finer sensitiveness which men affect to prize in a woman, and wish to protect at all hazards. The very fact that a husband is generous; the very fact that his income is limited,—these may bring in conscience and gratitude to increase the restraining influence of pride, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... journey, I don't know how far the matter went, but my whole hope of removing this unpleasantness rests on your kindness. For if you will only make up your mind to believe that the best men are often those whose feelings are most easily irritated and appeased, and that this quickness, so to speak, and sensitiveness of disposition are generally signs of a good heart; and lastly—and this is the main thing—that we must mutually put up with each other's gaucheries (shall I call them?), or faults, or injurious acts, then these misunderstandings ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the squadron sailed from Plymouth on the 29th of May, 1868, for the Bay of Biscay, where the cable was subjected to numerous and thorough tests, which demonstrated its strength and its sensitiveness to the electric current. This accomplished, the vessels ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... feel angry with myself for having intruded upon the privacy of this grief with my idle and silly chattering. A feeling of remorse, too, sprang up in me as I remembered that for a moment I had accused these poor people of churlishness and set down the sensitiveness of their sorrow to a sulky rudeness. There must be something very revolting to the feeling of our better nature in the sense of an injustice done even in thought, for I declare I felt for a minute as if I ought to confess my ideas to my companions and beg their pardon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... for his inspiration; he lives dreamily in the past, in a realm of purely imaginary emotions and adventures. His first quality is imagination, not observation, and he is the first of our poets to create a world of dreams, fancies, and illusions. His second quality is a wonderful sensitiveness to beauty, which shows itself not only in his subject-matter but also in the manner of his poetry. Like Chaucer, he is an almost perfect workman; but in reading Chaucer we think chiefly of his natural characters or his ideas, while in ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... literature, Shelley did more than arraign tyrants. The Romantic Movement was not merely a new way of considering human beings in their public capacity; it meant also a new kind of sensitiveness to their environment. If we turn, say, from Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' to Wordsworth's 'The Prelude', it is as if we have passed from a saloon crowded with a bewigged and painted company, wittily conversing in an atmosphere that has become rather stuffy, into the freshness of a starlit night. ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... different soul animated the body and lighted the countenance and made of the whole another man. The tell-tale signs of evil living had vanished from the face, and so also had its expression of ultra refinement and sensitiveness, while in the eyes no longer shone that winning, caressing look which had been a magnet for the hearts of women. This man held his head high, his eyes were keen, penetrating, virile, and in his countenance the doctor ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... effort that he occasionally responded. And yet this was Joe, whom he had always liked. But Joe was too keen with life. The boisterous impact of it on Martin's jaded mind was a hurt. It was an aching probe to his tired sensitiveness. When Joe reminded him that sometime in the future they were going to put on the gloves together, he could almost ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... seeing that for a little more than a third of a century those of whom he was the avowed representative had, it must be admitted, pretty clearly testified to the contrary on a thousand "estrapades" from the Place de Greve to the remotest corner of France. Surely this extreme sensitiveness, this refined orthodoxy, unable to endure the simple enunciation of an opinion differing from their own on the part of an avowed opponent, savored a little of affectation; the more so as it came from prelates whose solicitude for their flocks had been manifested more in the way of seeking to ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... most painful sense of pity for the little thing, lying inert, as sick children do, while she walked about in some gloomy place with it, such as the aisle of Haworth Church. The misfortunes she mentioned were not always to herself. She thought such sensitiveness to omens was like the cholera, present to susceptible people,—some feeling more, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fretting over past mistakes; it is chafing about what we do not understand, or about plans of ours that have failed. A good deal of worry comes from pride and over-sensitiveness. The roots here, it will be noticed, of all alike are down in our own failures, our own selves. And there would be cause for more worry if we had only ourselves. ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... sponge and warm vinegar or weak acid (see Acetic Acid), and dry gently with a soft towel. This application can be used with good effect in all cases of hard, dry skin on the head, and formation of white scurf. It preserves the hair, and stimulates its growth. It also removes the painful sensitiveness to touch so often felt in the hair and head skin. Care must ever be taken to do it all with a gentle hand. So done it is priceless in its soothing and healing ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... people who are disagreeable through malignant intention, and through deficiency of sensitiveness, there are other people who are disagreeable through pure ill-luck. It is quite certain that there are people whom evil fortune dogs through all their life, who are thoroughly and hopelessly unlucky. And in no respect have we beheld a man's ill-luck so persecute him as in the matter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Servant girls were rather considered like calves and therefore entitled to scant human consideration. The odors, the unsightly colors, the clatter of the German home, gave further evidence of the absence of sensitiveness, of any fine and balanced poise ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... impulse,—impulses pure and good, but often rash and imprudent. She was yielding to weakness, persuaded into anything, so sensitive, that even a cold look from one moderately liked cut her to the heart; and by the sympathy that accompanies sensitiveness, no pain to her was so great as the thought of giving pain to another. Hence it was that Vargrave might form reasonable hopes of his ultimate success. It was a dangerous constitution for happiness! How many chances must combine to preserve to the mid-day of characters like ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but it well expresses the dumb, sullen churlishness which such a life as this engenders. For all the conditions and circumstances of such a life tend to one end only—the blunting of all the finer feelings, the total erasure of sensitiveness. The coarse, half-cooked cabbage, the small bit of fat and rafty bacon, the dry bread and pint of weak tea, makes no very hearty supper after such a day as this. The man grows insensible to the weather, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... Madame Royale's lot might be, that of the Dauphin was infinitely harder. Though only eight years old when he entered the Temple, he was by nature and education extremely precocious; "his memory retained everything, and his sensitiveness comprehended everything." His features "recalled the somewhat effeminate look of Louis XV., and the Austrian hauteur of Maria Theresa; his blue eyes, aquiline nose, elevated nostrils, well-defined mouth, pouting lips, chestnut hair parted in the middle and ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... explained a good many of his elemental impulses and idiosyncrasies. He was a creature of the plains. In his life among the Indians and Mexicans he had absorbed their stoical ways and almost brutal directness, yet, sometimes he showed a sensitiveness that was utterly impossible for Carolyn June to understand. Her thoughts turned to the Gold Dust maverick. To-morrow Ramblin' Kid would take the filly away for the round-up. She truly loved the beautiful mare. She would slip out, while ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... sympathy for the rare flood of experiences that his naval life brought on him, experiences which had not fallen to the lot of Bernardin de St. Pierre or Chateaubriand, both of whom he resembles. But neither of those writers possessed Loti's delicate sensitiveness to exotic nature as it is reflected in the foreign mind and heart. Strange but real worlds he has conjured up for us in most of his works and with means that are, as with all great artists, extremely simple. He may be compared to Kipling and to Stevenson: to Kipling, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... story among artists than that of this lowly born genius. He was not good to look upon, being the very opposite of all that he loved, having no grace or charm in appearance. He had a drooping mouth, red and bony hands, and a narrow chest with stooping shoulders. Because of a strange sensitiveness he lived all his life apart from those he would have been happy with, for he mistrusted his own ugliness, and thought he might be ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... conspicuously before him. He felt there was an immeasurable distance between them—for the first time he found himself wanting. Mentally putting himself in Louis' place, he acknowledged that no persuasion could have induced him to act so generously and disinterestedly; and knowing the keen sensitiveness of Louis to disgrace, he wondered how one so alive to the opinion of others, and naturally so yielding and wavering, could steadily and uncomplainingly persevere in his benevolent purpose; for not by word or sign did Louis even hint the truth to Reginald—the ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... were finely cut and exactly like his photographs, and the muscles of his neck and the carriage of his head were distinguished. But, like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated; and his hands, though capable and fairly strong, were wanting in sensitiveness and finesse. The first glance at the President suggested not only that, whatever else he might be, his temperament was not primarily that of the student or the scholar, but that he had not much even of that culture of the world which marks ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... the only touchstone of democratic sensitiveness. At Wellesley there has always been uneasiness at the hint of unequal opportunity. When the college grew so large that membership in the six societies took on the aspect of special privilege, restiveness was as marked among the privileged as among the ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... passed and repassed. Congressmen by the hundreds came and went. Administration leaders tried to conceal under an. artificial indifference their sensitiveness to ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... it is." But, before he would pronounce the word, he affected great dread. "Ie-ee—Ie-ee—it is—it is," said he, "yeo! yeo![8] I cannot name it; I am seized with a dread." The West told him to banish his fears. He commenced again, in a strain of mock sensitiveness repeating the same words; at last he cried out, "It is the root of the apukwa."[9] He appeared to be exhausted by the effort of pronouncing the word, in all this skilfully acting a ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... extent, disapproved of the proceedings, made men unwilling to wound his feelings by severe criticisms upon his son; for, whatever differences might be supposed to exist between them, all well-minded persons respected their natural and honorable sensitiveness to each other's reputation. Reasons like these prevented open demonstrations against both of them. Nevertheless, it is easy to gather sufficient evidence ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... him with the newly opened eyes of love. What was it he showed that the other men she knew lacked? Sensitiveness? Kindness? But her father was both sensitive and kind. So was Pink, in less degree. In the end she answered ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... infant would be inadvisable or even impossible. Syphilis contracted late in the pregnancy, and tuberculosis, are contraindications, owing to the danger of the mother infecting the child. Inversion of the nipples, their excoriation, or persistent sensitiveness may make it impossible. In marked general debility of the mother from any cause whatever, it would be injurious to ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... that was the way the word sounded to Eurie, but she had been roused to unusual sensitiveness. The effect was to rouse her still further, to put to flight every trace of embarrassment and every desire to laugh. She spoke in ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... not in the way you mean. You see, I have developed a strange sensitiveness—a sort of second sight," he laughed a little bitterly. "I awoke by instinct the moment you approached the house, and heard you come in. The loss of one sense, you see, has made others more acute. Well, well, so you have come to learn ranching? Diane"—the blind man turned ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... conditions, of properties that escape our coarser physical attunement? He were a bold man who should undertake to decide. Are not we ourselves, when the weather is about to alter, subject to subtle impressions, to sensations which we are unable to explain? And yet this vague sensitiveness to atmospheric changes would not be of much help to us in circumstances similar to those of my anchorites. Imagine ourselves in the darkness and the silence of a prison-cell, preceded and followed by other similar cells. We possess implements ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... various attitudes according to their individual inclinations, revealed the fact that three out of the four were Englishmen, while the fourth might have been denominated as a typical American from the professional class. Of rather slender form, with a face of rare sensitiveness and delicacy, and restless, penetrating eyes, his every movement indicated energy and alertness. On the present occasion he had little to say, but was engaged in listening attentively to ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Van Horn crooned. "You're nothing but a bunch of high-strung sensitiveness, with a golden heart in the middle and a golden coat wrapped all around. Gott-fer-dang, Jerry, you're gold, pure gold, inside and out, and no dog was ever minted like you in all the world. You're heart of gold, you golden dog, and be good to me and love me as I shall always be good to you ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... grateful shade—the melody of the birds—the majesty of the woods— the splendour of the marble ruins—the clear effulgence of the stars by night—the combination of all that was exciting and voluptuous in this transcending land, by inspiring a quicker spirit of life and an added sensitiveness to every articulation of her frame, only gave edge to the poignancy of her grief. Each long hour was counted, and "He suffers" was the burthen of all her thoughts. She abstained from food; she lay on the bare earth, and, by such mimickry of his enforced torments, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... blows the breath of life', which not many visitors will believe, because, instead of a quickening breath, pestilential odors enter by the window and offend the nostrils of those whose olfactory nerve has not lost all sensitiveness.... On the opposite wall, to the west, appear the words, 'A memorial unto the destruction of the Temple'. To this day I do not know what there was to commemorate the fall of the Holy Place. The rickety rafters? Or were the ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... daintiness, fineness, frailty, refinement, fastidiousness, discrimination, sensitiveness; dainty, tidbit, junket. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... well, a distinguished authority on the principles of government. Viewed as intellectual performances, his speeches in the Canadian House of Commons have never been surpassed. But to his great {105} gifts were joined great weaknesses, among which may be set down an abnormal sensitiveness. He was peculiarly susceptible to the daily annoyances which beset a public man. So marked was this infirmity that men without a tithe of his ability, but with a better adjusted nervous system, would sometimes presume to torment him just for the fun of the thing. While he was minister ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... disgrace upon the National Army. The highest civil official of Tonoro, falling to the ground in a swoon, was further kicked all over the body and rowelled with sharp spurs about the neck and face because of the great sensitiveness of his military colleague. This gossip of the inland Campo, so characteristic of the rulers of the country with its story of oppression, inefficiency, fatuous methods, treachery, and savage brutality, was perfectly known to Mrs. Gould. That it should be accepted ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... clam and so you try to live up to your reputation. I know you, Kent. You think yourself a tough old bivalve, but the most serious complaint you suffer from is ingrowing sensitiveness. They do want you. They'd invite you if you gave them half a chance. Oh, I know you won't, of course; but if I had my way I'd have you dragged by main strength to every picnic and tea and feminine talk-fest within twenty ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he could not have been the poet he was, and she knew his poetry had done something for Roman letters that Virgil's had not done. She had not only loved, with all the pure passion of her maturity, his charm and his blitheness and his gifted sensitiveness, but she had been proud of his achievements. His citizenship had satisfied her. But always, within the barriers of her own individuality, that faith which is deeper, warmer, more masterly than reason, had kept her the reverent lover ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... dissatisfaction of the public mind with this brilliant and select coterie, a flight of Corinthian leading articles, and an irruption of Mr. G. A. Sala. Clearly, this is not what will do us good. The very same faults,—the want of sensitiveness of intellectual conscience, the disbelief in right reason, the dislike of authority,—which have hindered our having an Academy and have worked injuriously in our literature, would also hinder us from making our Academy, if we established it, one which would really correct them. ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... and industrious, but certainly narrow in its range as compared with that of Sir. J. Macintosh. There, too, might be seen the true physical indications of the imperturbable coolness of Castlereagh, and of the sensitiveness and warm susceptibility ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... was loosened and falling over her forehead in ruffled waves; her eyes were brilliant, her cheeks crimson; there was a hint of everything in the girl's face,—of sensitiveness and delicacy as well as of ardor; there was the sweetness of the mayflower and the strength of the young oak, but one could easily divine that she was ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... keratitis, and takes the form of a gradual, slow clouding of the clear, transparent convex surface of the eyeball, the cornea, through which the light passes to reach the lens. While the process is active, the child is made miserable by an extreme sensitiveness to light, the eye is reddened, and there is pain and a burning sensation. When the condition passes off, the child may scarcely be able to distinguish light from dark, to say nothing of reading, finding its way about, or doing fine work. A certain ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... main traits include or suggest all the others: first, a vigorous but fitful emotionalism which rendered them vivacious, lovers of novelty, and brave, but ineffective in practical affairs; second, a somewhat fantastic but sincere and delicate sensitiveness to beauty. Into impetuous action they were easily hurried; but their momentary ardor easily cooled into fatalistic despondency. To the mysterious charm of Nature—of hills and forests and pleasant breezes; to the loveliness and grace of meadow-flowers ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... textile machine known, in its sensitiveness to heat and cold, is a lace machine. A machine can be made to run in any climate, provided it is so installed as to be protected from either extreme ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... first of many hours of anxiety, for she was very conscientious. Her fastidiousness desired perfection, but her sensitiveness refused to demand it of others—especially servants. Why should ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not merely for poets; it is true for all men, though, of course, all men may not be conscious of its truth, or realize the truth in just this way. Poets, being endowed with exceptional sensitiveness of feeling and expression, say the wonderful thing in the wonderful way, bring to it words more nearly adequate than others can bring; but it is an error to suppose that any beauty of expression can exaggerate, can ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... the help of test-strips. These should be about one inch wide and the length of the paper. The exposure depends on a number of factors, among which are light, negative, focal length of lens, size of enlargement, stops, sensitiveness of paper, developer, temperature of developer, and length of development. The first experiment had best, therefore, be made on a purely arbitrary basis, for which we will ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... republic is not as great as that of Pennsylvania, nor is the entire population much greater than that of the same state. It is materially less than the population of New York. On the subject of their numbers, there exists a singular, and to me an inapplicable, sensitiveness. It is not possible to come at the precise population of Switzerland. That given in the tables of the contingents is thought to be exaggerated, though one does not very well understand the motive. I presume the entire population of the country is somewhere ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and caught the fragrance of his humility. One or two letters of his already printed are delightfully straightforward,—even more so in their unabridged state than as they now stand; showing unconsciousness of the methods of a devious subtlety of penetration, though sensitiveness to its influence, as an ox slowly turns his great eye about at the sound of a bee, but never catches a glimpse of him; showing a restful stupidity that nevertheless had enough intellectual fire to take a kind, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... which had presented themselves for adjustment between the two countries were, after all, of no particular importance and were easily arranged. The days seemed to have gone by for that over-strained sensitiveness which was continually giving rise to senseless bickerings, when every trilling breeze seemed to fan the smouldering fires of jealousy. The two great English-speaking nations appeared finally to have ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Great sensitiveness pervades too many minds on the idea of attempting to show benevolence to a released prisoner, they holding it as a wrong to society. These will not hear on the subject understandingly, but with prejudice and a proclivity to misrepresent. Though the class does not embrace, in its numbers, ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... that my neighbor had no foolish sensitiveness. I could pay him what I thought the value of his services, and he pocketed the money without a word. Of course, I could not pay him what his advice was really worth, for his hard common-sense stood me in good stead in ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... Hell: "Master, will these torments after the great sentence increase or diminish?" Virgil explains that they will become worse because when the soul is united again to the body there will be perfection of being and the resulting sensitiveness will ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... money, he would part with it (we do not say cheerfully, but part with it still),—not to mere want, indeed (for he had been too pinched and starved himself, and had grown too obtuse to pinching and to starving for the sensitiveness that prompts to charity), but to any of his companions who had done him a good service, or who had even warmed his dull heart by a friendly smile. He was honest, too,—honest to the backbone. You might have trusted him with gold untold. Through the heavy clod which man's ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thought a child would have known better," he remarked, scornfully; and his tone hurt my sensitiveness the more because his voice had been so anxious and his words so kind when I was fainting. He had called me "child" and "little girl." I remembered well, and the words had been saying themselves over in my mind ever since. I ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... if any horse of mine had taken such complete charge of its rider, I should have been in a state of anguish till I had separated them; but he was riding along talking and laughing in front of me in the highest of spirits. This lack of sensitiveness irritated me and my heart sank. Before reaching the cover, Peter came up to me and suggested that we should change Havoc's bit. I then perceived he was not quite so happy as I thought; and this determined me to stick it out. I thanked him demurely and added, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... so," answered Kenyon. "Forgive me, Hilda; but I must needs speak. You seemed to me a rare mixture of impressibility, sympathy, sensitiveness to many influences, with a certain quality of common sense;—no, not that, but a higher and finer attribute, for which I find no better word. However tremulously you might vibrate, this quality, I ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... instance the power of scent in the dog, of sight in the eagle. Moreover, our eye is much more sensitive to some colours than to others; least so to crimson, then successively to red, orange, yellow, blue, and green; the sensitiveness for green being as much as 750 times as great as for red. This alone may make objects appear of very different colours to ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... such ways deeply lodged within us, and we do not always know that we have; but if we will turn ourselves to Him, He will prevent our 'condemning ourselves in things that we allow' and increasing the sensitiveness of our consciences, He will teach us that many things that we did not know to be wrong ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and I did our summer work in the neighboring town of Clifton. If ever there was missionary ground in America, it is there. I cannot understand just why the call comes to me to go to a place and take up work that, in many ways, is so distasteful to me. In one sense I shrink from it with a sensitiveness which no one except my wife and you could understand. You know what an almost ridiculous excess of sensibility I have. It seems sometimes impossible for me to do the work that the active ministry of this age demands of a man. It almost ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... jealousy whenever naval action is taken by any other fleet than theirs, and some idea of the inflammable elements with which I was about to be surrounded will be gained. The very announcement of the despatch of my squadron to Morocco brought forth a demonstration of the national sensitiveness in the British Parliament. A former minister, Lord Minto, was the first to echo it in the House of Lords, where he went so far as to do me the honour of complaining that I should have been entrusted with the command of the squadron It was decided that ships should be sent ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... hour of his life his Majesty suffered, in his morbid egotism, various and keen annoyance, by reason of his sensitiveness to the opinions of foreigners, the encroachments of foreign officials, and the strictures of the foreign press. He was agitated by a restless craving for their sympathy on the one hand, and by a futile resentment of their criticisms or their claims ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... to pay for every happiness by making it a source of fresh obligations, had from the outset accepted his ties with an exaggerated devotion. Any disregard of such a claim would have vulgarized her most delicate pleasures; and her husband's sensitiveness to it in great measure extenuated the artistic obtuseness that often seemed to her like a failure of the moral sense. His loyalty to the dull women who depended on him was, after all, compounded of finer tissues than any mere ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... parts. So familiar is he with it that his ear detects the slightest variation in the beats of the machinery, and can tell the shocks and shakes which are caused by a defective road from those which are due to a defective engine. Even his nose acquires a peculiar sensitiveness. In the midst of so much heat, he can detect that which arises from friction before any mischief has been done. At every rate of speed he knows just how his engine ought to ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... found himself alone in his room; he gave a sigh of relief—a sigh which was almost a groan of pain. He took out his pipe unconsciously and filled it; but then, remembering where he was, put it down. He knew his father's sensitiveness of smell. If he began to smoke there would quickly be a knock at the door, and the inquiry: "There's such a smell of burning in the house; there's nothing on fire in your room, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... design attributed to the ruling powers apparent to the obscured and timid intellect of the Sepoys. The consequences of loss of caste are so feared,—and are in reality of so trying a nature,—that upon this point the sensitiveness of the Sepoy is always extreme, and his suspicions are easily aroused. Their superstitions and religious customs "interfere in many strange ways with their military duties." "The brave men of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... and tried beyond bearing, and her impulsive nature revolted at his silence. She misunderstood him, or, if she did not wholly misunderstand him, she was angry at what she thought was a needless remorse or sensitiveness. Did not the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... there is another reason why we think of conscience as our highest faculty. That is, that it acts instinctively. It has a sensitiveness of feeling towards questions of right and wrong, and of truth and error. This seems to me to be a higher faculty than mere reason. It seems to ally conscience more closely with the divine. We cannot think of God arriving at conclusions ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... gets possession of a wise man's head, is as keenly sensible of ridicule, as it is impassible to its shafts when more appropriately lodged with a fool. Of the sensitiveness arising out of this foible Walpole seems to have had a great deal, and it certainly dictated those hard-hearted reproofs that repelled the warm effusions of friendship with which poor Madame du Deffand (now old and blind) addressed him, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... practical welfare. But imagination here refines upon worldly interest. What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves. Nothing could better prove the mythical character of self-consciousness than this extreme sensitiveness to alien opinions; for if a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation. Indeed, those opinions would hardly seem to him directed ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... best of his ability, he had lived retired from all society, and in his sensitiveness to his wife's shame had kept, as well as he could, her history to himself, it was well known in the town. There was none who knew who did not respect and pity him. Kind hands were eagerly put out ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... man's sum of lust, befouled with the shameful knowledge of the streets, yet young, delicate, "apparelled beyond parallel," unblessed, with a beauty which, if copied by a Da Vinci's hand, might stand whole ages long "for preachings of what God can do," and then to endow such a one with the sensitiveness of a poet's own mind, make her read afresh as though by lightning, and in a dream, that story of the ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... 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 myself and all personal consequences. The favor and good-will of my fellow-citizens, of my brethren ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... which is natural lies not in things, but in the minds of men. There is a difference between prudery and modesty. Prudery detects wrong where no wrong is; the wrong lies in the thoughts, and not in the objects. There is something of over-sensitiveness and over-delicacy which shows not innocence, but an inflammable imagination. And men of the world cannot understand that those subjects and thoughts which to them are full of torture, can be harmless, suggesting nothing evil ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... that it is not always intellectual sensitiveness, nor care for the moral interests involved, which sets the mind to criticise statements of the Atonement. There is such a thing as pride, the last form of which is unwillingness to become debtors even to Christ for forgiveness ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... you not. There is nothing in the whole field of commerce more surprising than the fluctuations of the leather market. Its sensitiveness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not always square with her theory, especially in the field of politics, she is indefatigable in the praise of freedom, equality, and the other commonplaces of democracy. The worst is, that she cannot laugh at herself. Her gravity and sensitiveness still lie, like stumbling-blocks, in her path. She accepts the grim adulation of such unwise citizens as Mr Carnegie as no more than her due. If only she could dismiss the flattery of her admirers ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... this handsome, well-knit and proud-featured girl called "little Sheila," and spoken of in a pretty and caressing way. He thought there was something almost majestic in her figure, in the poising of her head and the outline of her face. But presently he began to perceive some singular suggestions of sensitiveness and meekness in the low, sweet brow, in the short and exquisitely-curved upper lip, and in the look of the tender blue eyes, which had long black eyelashes to give them a peculiar and indefinable charm. All this he noticed hastily and timidly as he heard Ingram, who still held the girl's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... distinct form and border, and that its carefully carved surface gives origin to wheel-like areolae which form the bases of delicate hairs. The function of this organ is really unknown. It is known from its position as the pygidium; and from the extreme sensitiveness of the hairs to the slightest aerial movement, may be a tactile organ warning of the approach of enemies; the eyes have no power to see. But we have not reached the ultimate accessible structure of this organ. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... had been half policy, his face would have been more sullen and forbidding than ever. But she dwelt glorified and apart in his consciousness, and if she could only maintain that ideal supremacy, he would be her slave. But in his morbid sensitiveness she would have to be very careful. The practical girl at this time did not dream of his fanciful imagining about her, but she was bent on securing friends and helpers, however humble might be their station, and she had shrewdly and quickly learned ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... following bracketed the thirty most miserable days of his life. Every waking moment he was under the lashing tongues of his contemporaries; his habits and mannerisms became butts for intolerable witticisms and, of course, the sensitiveness of adolescence was a further thorn. He considered that he was a natural pariah; that the unpopularity at school would follow him through life. When he went home for the Christmas holidays he was so despondent that his father sent him to a nerve specialist. When he returned to Andover ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... masterpiece of vivid character-painting, is a remarkable revelation of the complex nature of its subject. It discloses the deep affection, the keen intelligence, the wide sympathy, the tireless energy, the delicate sensitiveness, the tearing impatience, the cold tyranny, and the flaming scorn by which his character was so erratically dominated. It is a noble and pathetic monument to the suffering which had been imposed for a quarter of a century upon ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... presence of Mr. Vernor, and the calm frankness displayed during our accidental meeting in Barstone 264 Park, had alike given way to a strange excitability, which at times showed itself in the bursts of wild gaiety which had annoyed my fastidious sensitiveness in the earlier part of the evening, at others in the deep impassioned feeling she threw into her singing, though I observed that it was only in such songs as partook of a melancholy and even despairing ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... of Brutus is full of beauty and sweetness. In all the relations of life he is upright, gentle, and pure; of a sensitiveness and delicacy of principle that cannot bosom the slightest stain; his mind enriched and fortified with the best extractions of philosophy; a man adorned with all the virtues which, in public and private, at home and ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... free of affairs, and bred essentially the private life of a thinker. He displayed in youth extraordinary precocity and varied intellectual curiosity, and showed at the same early time a temperament of spiritual sensitiveness and religious ideality which suggests the youth of a poet rather than of a logician. It was not without a struggle that he embraced sincerely the Calvinistic scheme of divine rule, but he was able to reconcile the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... it were more bitter, I could bear it and not weep. But to think of my children—as motherless babes; to hear Willie tell his sorrow, and mourn so bitterly in his tender years for a mother—so dear; to feel that with his susceptibility and keen sensitiveness he realizes so fully his loss; to hear him sob on his pillow at night, and, when alone, call himself 'little motherless Willie;'—oh, mother! what man or Christian would not bow beneath a burden like this?—It is the contemplation of ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... jealousy of the Colonies, lest they should by their success in the different branches of industry interfere with the home monopoly, shows itself in various other forms. There was, naturally enough, a special sensitiveness to the practice of the art of printing. Sir Edmund Andros, when he came out as Governor of the Northern Colonies, was instructed "to allow of no printing-press"; and Lord Effingham, on his appointment to the government of Virginia, was directed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... thereof. The undershrubbery purchases shade and protection at too dear a price when it sacrifices therefor the opportunity of the glorious sunlight of heaven. No healthy, vigorous breed can be produced in the shade. No wonder, then, that the productive sensitiveness of the Northern Negro is affected by his industrial and social isolation among an overshadowing people who regard him with a feeling composed in equal ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... associated the face with Harvard, but is not even positive about that. The name, if he ever knew it, he has long since forgotten. However, with a fine sensitiveness and an equally commendable charity PARAMORE recognizes the fact and tactfully ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... expansion of mercury and its great sensitiveness to heat, it is the fluid most commonly used in the construction of thermometers. In all thermometers the freezing point and the boiling point of water, under mean or average atmospheric pressure at sea level, ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... and the priest standing together beneath the jamelon tree. Bous-Bous ran forward barking, and Domini was conscious that Androvsky braced himself up, like a fighter stepping into the arena. Her keen sensitiveness of mind and body was so infected by his secret impetuosity of feeling that it seemed to her as if his encounter with the two men framed in the sunlight were a great event which might be fraught with strange consequences. She almost held her breath as she and Androvsky came down the path ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... depends upon a certain sensitiveness of texture, resembling the resonance of a well tuned musical instrument, and a certain harmonious adjustment of parts which renders the individual capable of receiving a mental impression promptly and responding to its action. Persons possessing ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... accelerated by placing it nearer the window bringing the screen nearer, and placing a white muslin cloth over the head; this will enable you to work in one third of the usual time. Should the person move, or the plate become exposed to the light, it may be restored to its original sensitiveness by placing it over the ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... appalled when, upon making inquiries, he could learn nothing of her movements since leaving her home. No one seemed to know anything about her—even her friend Susie Leades was in ignorance of her whereabouts, for Mona had shrunk, with extreme sensitiveness, from telling any one, save Mr. Graves, of ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... stone, alas, is not there! At the last moment he must have changed his purpose. Could his wondrous sensitiveness of intuition have made him feel that my eyes were looking ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... of African descent themselves employ it, nicely and wisely; and when they call each other "nigger" the familiar term of opprobrium is applied with all the malice of a sting, and resented with all the sensitiveness of a raw. So when I say that my Auntie's piety was not of the niggerish kind, even Zoe, "The Octoroon," or any other woman or man in whose veins courses the blood of Ham four times diluted, knows that I mean it was not that glory-hallelujah variety of cunning or delusion, compounded of laziness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... Nevertheless, I may be allowed to say in my own defense, that in this combination of physical and mental sufferings which overwhelmed me all at once, a person must be very sure of infallibility himself to condemn completely this sensitiveness so natural in a man of honor when accused of a fraudulent transaction. This, then, I said to myself, is the recompense for all my care, for the endurance of so much suffering, for unbounded devotion, and a refinement of feeling ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... unusual opinions. I don't think Lane ever had much interest in the dogmas of science, religion, or philosophy; he lived by the spirit of them, that cannot be expressed in formulae. He had the peculiar sensitiveness of a poet for words, for colors and sounds, and for moral beauty, and blended with it the statesman's observant awareness of conditions ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... extraordinary sensitiveness to all such impressions many curious tales are told. The sight of refulgent jewels, of flowers, and of fair landscapes, had the same effect upon his nerves as the sound of the Dorian mood upon the youths whom Pythagoras cured of passion by music. He found in them an anodyne for pain, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... than to any manifestation of normal mentality. From this point of view his mental deformity seems not unlike that of Cavendish's, later, except that in the case of Cavendish it manifested itself as an abnormal sensitiveness ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... make darkness visible, Marcella found herself left behind with Aldous. As soon as she felt that they were alone, she realised a jar between herself and him. His manner was much as usual, but there was an underlying effort and difficulty which her sensitiveness caught at once. A sudden wave of girlish trouble—remorse—swept over her. In her impulsiveness she moved close to him as they were passing through her mother's little sitting-room, and put ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... refuge the familiar sound of the office penetrated—the whirr which usually sounded as a homogeneous murmur, but which, in her acute sensitiveness, she now analyzed into the voices of different typewriters—one flat, rapid, staccato; one a steady, dull rattle. The "zzzzz" of typewriter-carriages being shoved back. The roll of closing elevator doors, and the rumble ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... cannot always distinguish between enthusiasm and extravagance when he sees them. But apart from these influences which I have adduced in exculpation, there was certainly a vein of coarseness in him, a want of that exquisite sensitiveness which is the conscience of the artist. An old gentleman, writing to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1745, professes to remember "plain John Dryden (before he paid his court with success to the great) in one uniform clothing ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... to have felt, on the subject of English censure or ridicule, pretty much as some of our own people do to-day. No matter how well-founded the objection may be, or how justly a local habit may be satirized, our sensitiveness is wounded and our indignation aroused. That the portrait in Lismahago's case was not altogether overcharged may be deduced from a passage in one of Walter Scott's letters, in which he likens the behavior and appearance of one of his oldest and most approved friends to that of the gallant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... in motion to life in thought and sensation.' So Coleridge sums up his childhood with its delicacy, its sensitiveness, and passion. From his tenth to his eighteenth year he was at a rough school in London. Speaking ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the girls was due to nothing more profound than that Maisie always gave him her hand to shake and Phoebe only her fingers. Possibly this test would only have held good in the case of men outside the family. It was connected with some minute sensitiveness of feeling towards that class, not perceptible by ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... sex might well have made them so. A woman is not ashamed to be a widow in the Occident, but she may well be so in India. A woman may be ashamed to be an old maid, or that she has no children, or has only girls. It depends on the view current in the mores, and on the sensitiveness of the person to unfavorable judgments. "Shame, for Arabs, occupies the place which we ascribe to conscience. 'The tree lives only so long as its bark lives; and the man only so long as he feels shame.' Arabs, however, are not ashamed in abstracto, but before father ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... seem nonsense to you is not the same to her. You must be forbearing, Ethel. Remember that dependence is prone to morbid sensitiveness, especially in those who have ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... are what's needed, Charles. Not one thoroughbred in ten makes good, unless he's got the heart of a coward, and that's just what distinguishes them from mongrels and cross-breds. Like race-horses, they're hot-blooded. They've got sensitiveness, and pride. Pride's the worst. You listen to me. I was born into the business and I've studied it all my life. I'm a success. There's only one reason I'm a success—I KNOW. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Spirit in the absolute we can only conceive of it as these two modes of livingness carried to infinity. This, therefore, means infinite susceptibility. There can be no question as to the degree of sensitiveness, for Spirit is sensitiveness, and is thus infinitely plastic to the slightest touch that is brought to bear upon it; and hence every thought we formulate sends its vibrating currents out into the infinite of Spirit, producing there currents of ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... first time I had heard him allude to the people who couldn't read him—a class so generally conceived to sit heavy on the consciousness of the man of letters. A being organised for literature as Mark Ambient was must certainly have had the normal proportion of sensitiveness, of irritability; the artistic ego, capable in some cases of such monstrous development, must have been in his composition sufficiently erect and active. I won't therefore go so far as to say that he never thought of his ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... this, and you prove that men may do and dare, deny and suffer, not only without motives, but in direct opposition to their duty, interest, desire, prejudice, and passion. The disciples could not have pretended the resurrection from sensitiveness to the probable charge that they had been miserably deceived; for they did not understand their Master to predict any such event, nor had they the slightest expectation of it. They could not have pretended ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... if he had been left with only a wounded heart, but in that heart lay wounded pride. He hid it carefully, and the keener in consequence grew the sensitiveness, almost feminine, which no stranger could have suspected beneath the manner he wore. Under that bronzed countenance, with its firm-set mouth and powerful jaw—below that clear blue eye, and that upright easy ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... as an accursed destiny. It was in her inheritance to know and live for the wild thrill of ecstasy in her pulses, to feel trembling joy and despair and frantic hope, that exacted its tribute hardly less poignant; as it was, also, to feel a shivering sensitiveness in regard to the loneliness and bitterness of her life, to have the same measureless capacity for sorrow that she had for loving, to have a soul attuned to the tragedy of things, to love the mighty forces about her, to feel the reflection of all their ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... as from Jefferson Worth and Abe Lee the Company man received a hearty welcome with a cordial invitation to ride with them the next day over the line of their work. Although Holmes watched with peculiar sensitiveness, there was no sign from either of the three that they had yet discovered the real significance of the South Central deal or that they knew the part he had played in it. His desire to end the whole unpleasant situation by going over the work with Mr. Worth and the surveyor, and by confessing ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... that somewhere deep behind that rough exterior lay a finer sensitiveness, a gentleness of feeling, and a sympathy that had impelled him to a deed of unconscious chivalry of which no man need be ashamed. And in her heart Chloe knew that had she not witnessed with her own eyes the destruction of his whiskey, she would have been convinced ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... temperament, the gaiety, the sensitiveness of New Orleans comes from the Creole. He was Latin enough to be a good deal of a gambler, to love beautiful women, and on slight provocation ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... are in constant movement up and down. The stems, too, are restless; and as for the mature leaves, every child knows how they droop their three leaflets back to back against the stem at evening, elevating them to the perfect horizontal again by day. Extreme sensitiveness to light has been thought to be the true explanation of so much activity, and yet this is not a satisfactory theory in many cases. It is certain that drooping leaves suffer far less from frost than those ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... at him with a half-glance, so that he might not suspect, as if to measure his need of stimulant. Then, without a word, she led the way to the dining-room and unlocked the liquor closet, and turned her back lest he might not drink his need from sensitiveness. ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend |
