"Sharpened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Holland. I expressed a desire to the native of having some...and no sooner expressed my wish than I missed my companion from behind me. I halloed...upon which he instantly presented himself from the wood with a small stick in his hand. Asking for my knife he presently sharpened one end to a point and then, stripping himself, he leaped from one point of the rock to another until he met with an opportunity of striking a fish which he did, the stick penetrating right through it. I could not but admire the keenness of his sight ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... reward of literature. The fame of Nicholas the Fifth [110] has not been adequate to his merits. From a plebeian origin he raised himself by his virtue and learning: the character of the man prevailed over the interest of the pope; and he sharpened those weapons which were soon pointed against the Roman church. [111] He had been the friend of the most eminent scholars of the age: he became their patron; and such was the humility of his manners, that the change was scarcely discernible either to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favourite fishing food before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with great expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinking me of Mrs. Hussey's clam and cod announcement, I thought I ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... upon;—for he had a thousand little sceptical notions of the comick kind to defend—most of which notions, I verily believe, at first entered upon the footing of mere whims, and of a vive la Bagatelle; and as such he would make merry with them for half an hour or so, and having sharpened his wit upon them, dismiss them till ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... distance of a musket shot, the trees being felled so that their tops turned outwards, forming an almost impenetrable obstacle, while, immediately in front of the log wall, the ground was covered with heavy boughs, overlapping and interlaced, their points being sharpened. This position was, in fact, absolutely impregnable against an attack, in front, ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... looked quickly up, cast a furtive glance at Mrs. Staines, and finding she was employed for the moment, made an agitated signal to Dr. Philip. All she did was to clench her two hands and lift them half way to her face, and then cast a frightened look towards the door; but Philip's senses were so sharpened by constant alarm and watching, that he saw at once something serious was the matter. But as he had asked himself what he should do in case of some sudden alarm, he merely gave a nod of intelligence ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Lois came in. She glanced at the empty sleeve with grave, wide eyes, and sat down near him. He would not have known the face before him, it had so altered; the hair pushed back from hollow, blue-veined temples, the sharpened, angular outlines, and an old, suffering look about the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... have come back from Samuel's house at Kamah. Saul's strange subjugation to the hallowing influences of the prophet's presence had been but momentary and superficial; and it had been followed by a renewed outburst of the old hate, obvious to David's sharpened sight, though not to Jonathan. In the interview between them, David is pardonably but obviously absorbed in self, while Jonathan bends all his soul to cheer and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... this sight to recover the delicious sensations of his youth. With the sharpened sensibility of the convalescent he breathed in the odors of the spring-time, but spring-time did not come, as he had expected, to his heart. This smiling nature had for him only a message of sadness. He had believed that the breezes ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... that if Mr Swiveller stood in need of beef perhaps he would be so obliging as to come there and eat it, bringing with him, as grace before meat, the amount of a certain small account which had long been outstanding. Not at all intimidated by this rebuff, but rather sharpened in wits and appetite, Mr Swiveller forwarded the same message to another and more distant eating-house, adding to it by way of rider that the gentleman was induced to send so far, not only by the great fame and popularity its beef had acquired, but in consequence of the extreme ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... again to the pillow. At last she answered in muffled tones, " You know." Thereafter came a long silence full of sharpened pain. It was Marjory who spoke first. "I have saved my pride, daddy, but-I have-lost-everything —else." Even her sudden resumption of the old epithet of her childhood was an additional misery to the old man. He ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the "thick air" and the "fresh rivulets" which "parch all the more" the throat of the thirsty. The belief that a picture yields only visual impressions is a curious illusion. The bloom of a cheek, the warmth of a youthful body, the sweetness and freshness of a fruit, the cutting of a sharpened blade, are not these, also, impressions that we have from a picture? Maybe they are visual? What would a picture be for a hypothetical man, deprived of all or many of his senses, who should in an instant acquire the sole organ of sight? The picture we are standing opposite and believe we ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... and looked at them. Her face shrank and sharpened under the dropped wing of her hair. She must have heard what Mark said. She hated it when Mark talked and looked like that. She hated it ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... defences, was not needed then, as it might seem to us to have been. For the fundamental notions on which it rested were the common belief of the nation and age. Geology and astronomy had not disturbed the credit of a definitely located Hades and heaven, nor had free metaphysics sharpened the common mind to skeptical queries. The view itself, as we conceive it occupied the mind of Paul, is this. Death was a part of the creative plan for us from the first, simply loosing the spirit from its corruptible body, clothing it with an ethereal vehicle, and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... hands clenched, every muscle taut. All his senses were sharpened. He heard the voices of the veldt, near and far, and all the little sounds that were underneath them. His vision seemed to pierce the darkness of the shadows, so that he made out the details of the lion's mane, and even the muscles stiffening ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... senses, sharpened beyond those of men by long solitude and fasting, distinguished the step of a man far up the height on the distant crags, and his keen sight soon detected a figure descending cautiously, but surely, towards the deep abyss where Zoroaster stood. More and more clearly he saw him, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... the Scriptures, and the need of a wider entrance to a broader road to heaven than the strait gate and narrow way of the Gospels. But let such men come to Crossbourne, and have to deal with these people of shrewd and sharpened intellects, strong wills, strong passions, and strong temptations, and they will find that the old-fashioned gospel is, after all, the only thing that will meet all man's moral and spiritual needs. I have never been more struck with ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... much amazed to hear a Bonza reasoning like a schoolman, that turning to Edward de Gama, who was by him, "See," says he softly in Portuguese, that he might not be understood by the Japonians, "see how the devil has sharpened the wit of these his advocates." In the mean time, one of the Bonzas coming up to the charge, said, according to the same principle, "That if God had foreknown that Adam would sin, and cast down, together with himself, his whole progeny into an abyss of miseries, why did he ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... their fate. It was in the dungeons of our inhuman invaders; it was in the loathsome and pestiferous prisons, that the wretchedness of our countrymen still makes the heart bleed. It was there that hunger, and thirst, and disease, and all the contumely that cold-hearted cruelty could bestow, sharpened every pang of death. Misery there wrung every fibre that could feel, before she gave the Blow of Grace which sent the sufferer to eternity. It is said that poison was employed. No, there was no such mercy there. There, nothing was employed which could blunt the susceptibility to anguish, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... do us what little service was in their power, he afterward employed himself in sharpening the seamen's knives, which he did with great expertness on any flat smooth stone, returning each, as soon as finished, to its proper owner, and then making signs for another, which he sharpened and returned in the same way, without any attempt, and apparently without the smallest desire, to detain it. The old man was extremely inquisitive, and directed his attention to those things which appeared useful rather ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... bamboo sharpened like a knife in one hand, he held another piece in the other, split in two, with the convex part uppermost, in which he had cut a small notch. He began passing the sharp piece slowly over the other, as a fiddler ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... severely in hand, and set himself to unrelenting work, fixing his attention on the matters in hand as if he would drive a nail through them. Heavy circles appeared under his eyes, and the lines from nose to chin sharpened perceptibly. More than ever he looked the eagle, stern and remote, capable of daring the very sun in high ambitious flight, or of sudden and death-dealing descent; but deep in his ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... whose profession sharpened his observation for specimens of bygone achievements in his own line of business, noted the venerable exterior before him ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... nothing to do with the present play; it had to do, instead, with Mercy Curtis and the graduation exercises. One idea bred another in Ruth Fielding's teeming brain. Her dramatic faculties, were being sharpened. ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... her open casement came up to her the sounds of the April night: a heightened chorus of little frogs in a rain-fed branch; nearer in the dooryard a half-dozen tree-toads trilling plaintively as many different minors; with these, scents of growing, sharpened and sweetened by the dark. And all night the cedar tree which stood close to the porch edge below moved in the wind of spring, and, chafing against the shingles, spoke through the miniature music in its deep, muffled legato, a soft baritone ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... himself a long, green palmetto stem which would not take fire readily and sharpened one end to a point upon which he impaled a generous slice of steak. With flushed faces and singed fingers they kept turning the meat over and over before the blaze. It was an unsavory mess, burnt and ash covered, which they at last pronounced done ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... keen edge of the eyes. Semble—as the lawyers say—that this idea was born of great phonetic facts in the days when a seaman knew his duty better than the way to spell it; and when, if his outlook were sharpened by a friendly wring from the captain of the watch, he never dreamed ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... backward 69 of great length. The Ethiopians had skins of leopards and lions tied upon them, and bows made of a slip 70 of palm-wood, which were of great length, not less than four cubits, and for them small arrows of reed with a sharpened stone at the head instead of iron, the same stone with which they engrave seals: in addition to this they had spears, and on them was the sharpened horn of a gazelle by way of a spear-head, and they had also clubs with knobs upon them. Of their body they used to smear ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... again, its screaming parrots would darken the sun with a cloud of many flaming colours if a gun were fired there, no face is ever reflected in the waters of the little creek which Friday swam across when pursued by his two brother cannibals with sharpened stomachs. After comparing notes with other travellers who have similarly revisited the Island and conscientiously inspected it, I have satisfied myself that it contains no vestige of Mr. Atkins's domesticity or theology, though his track on the memorable evening of his ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... still they were resolved upon the death of the pig. He, however, at the same time had made up his mind to escape, and by a mighty effort broke his tether, and got off; but in vain, for after a short but exciting chase he was caught and then, an incision having been made in his belly, a sharpened stick was inserted and stirred about until his insides were thoroughly mixed, when he died. We left them cleaning and scraping and dividing, and beating two drums, about four feet long, eight inches in diameter, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... time and events, even when one is quietest, go with such a rush that one notes almost nothing of what is passing. The opium seemed to compel the kaleidoscope of life to turn more slowly; in fact, it sharpened my senses so that they unconsciously took impressions many times more quickly and easily and accurately. As I sat there that night after leaving Anita, forcing my mind to follow the printed lines, I found I was in exactly the state in which I had been during ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... pattern of it well by the close of day. The Leading Gentleman took that evening to sharpening the already sharp blade of the knife. As he sharpened it on his sandal and the side of the boat, and tried its edge on his thumb, he regarded the thin body of Moussa Isa ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... at this sally. I depicted to myself their shapes, their fierce gesticulations, their earrings, bound heads, rags, and weapons, the vile scowls on their swarthy, grimacing faces. My anxiety beheld them as plainly as anything seen with the eyes of the body. And, with my sharpened hearing catching every word with preternatural distinctness, I felt as if, the ring of Gyges on my finger, I had sat invisible at the council of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... sharpened are passed through an opening in the side of the machine, and are brought in contact with a bar, which is made of emery or other ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Belgrade became the cynosure and the rallying-centre of the whole Serbo-Croatian race. But Vienna and Budapest could only lose courage and presence of mind for the moment, and the undeniable success of the Serbian arms merely sharpened their appetite for revenge. In August 1913 Austria-Hungary, as is now known, secretly prepared an aggression on Serbia, but was restrained, partly by the refusal of Italy to grant its approval of such action, partly because the preparations of Germany at ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... had found, and joined in the general conversation; and his views were usually as shrewd as they seemed quaint, for he possessed many of the traits generally accredited to the Yankee from Down-East; and a natural keenness had been further sharpened by his constant rubbing up against all manner of men in the great logging ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... fatal scissors, with which she cuts the threads of human lives, have become so dulled by the great amount of work my trusty blade has given her to do with them, that she has been obliged to send them to Vulcan to be sharpened, and she begs for a short respite. So you see, Scapin, I must put force upon myself and restrain my natural ardour—refrain for a time from wars, massacres, sacking of cities, stand-up fights with giants, killing of monsters and dragons, like Theseus and Hercules of glorious memory, and all the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... to her that Roger had vanished from among men, no one knew whither. As was her wont, Bradamante heard, and said nothing, but the next morning she sharpened her sword, and looked to the fastenings of her helmet, and rode off to seek him if perchance some ill ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... He was aware of a vague pleasure before he localised the sound. It was music; a piano—but not the usual rooming-house instrument; a piano in tune, softly played. It drew him to the door and to the banisters outside, a poignant, haunting melody rippling in a minor treble, a melody that queerly sharpened the knife that stabbed him, ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... these pedantries is that moral training to be found, for which we have been lauding the study of Natural History: but in healthful walks and voyages out of doors, and in careful and patient watching of the living animals and plants at home, with an observation sharpened by practice, and a temper calmed by the continual practice of the naturalist's first virtues - patience ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... conversation with her,—to the despair of her unfortunate lover. That day, however, it chanced that Costanza appeared with one cheek muffled, and told some one who asked her the reason, that she was suffering from a violent face ache. Tomas, whose wits were sharpened by his passion, instantly saw how he might avail himself of that circumstance. "Senora Costanza," he said, "I will give you a prayer in writing, which you have only to recite once or twice, and it will take away your ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sometimes crude. Redundant: "He took the ax and sharpened it." Better: "He sharpened the ax." Crude: "He took and nailed up the box." Better: "He nailed up ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... are Coway Stakes, where Julius Caesar is supposed to have crossed the Thames in pursuit of Cassivellaunus, king of the Catuvellauni. The British chief drove sharpened stakes into the bed of the river, to block the ford, and built a palisade along the bank, where he waited for the enemy. They came on, cavalry and infantry, in spite of the stakes. The Catuvellauni would have met them, but fled in horror at the sight ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... music," as he jestingly called it—so surely as his wife. She had studied; she had even played the violin in public; but she gave up her virtuosa ambitions for the man she had married during their student years in Germany. Now the old doubts came to life as the chivalric tones of Weber rose to her sharpened senses. Why ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... acquired by singers in the exercise of trills and sustained notes. Instead of the pointed beard of his brother, he was shaven, sunburnt; and his sailor's cap, a blue wool knitted cap, shaded a true Breton face, tanned by the sea, cut in granite, with small eyes, and a keen glance sharpened by the minute work ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... at the mountains," she mused, in a hushed voice; "see the haze that hangs over them—the veil that God uses to cover up his treasures." She drew a deep breath. "The breeze fairly tastes with clean things, doesn't it? Do you know, I've often wanted to be an animal, to have my senses sharpened—one of those wild things with a funny, sharp, cold nose. I'd like to live in the trees and run along the branches like a squirrel, and drink in the perfume that comes on the wind, and eat the tender, growing things. The sun is bright enough and the world is ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... rattled against something on my threshold. Stooping, I found it was a straight knife, fashioned entirely of lead, and so soft and brittle that it was a strange choice for a weapon. To render it more harmless, the top had been cut square off. The edge, however, had been assiduously sharpened against a stone, as was evident from the markings upon it, so that it was still a dangerous implement in the ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the cutting qualities of the obsidian head as compared to those of the sharpened steel head, was answered in the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... from not closely supervising the people employed in minor works; from not having tools sharpened overnight; and from delay in setting the people to work, I do not touch on here, as I have alluded to them in my hints to managers: and the mention of tools reminds me that much loss is often incurred from their careless use, and from neglect in seeing after them, the result of which, of ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... is not so performed rests with the Mediums. This proof the Mediums will neither offer themselves, nor permit others to obtain. Investigators, therefore, are forced to bring to bear their own powers of close observation, sharpened and educated by experience. Be it remembered that what we have here stated applies solely to the process whereby the communication is written on the slate; with the substance of the communication, whether pertinent ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... propriety first, out of prudence afterward. For it is not a question of taking part in a conversation for the simple pleasure of brilliant repartee; and while he applies himself carefully to play his part well, he feels that he has been dexterously cut to pieces with a well-sharpened knife. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the son was whitened and sharpened by acute suffering, and his blue eyes flushed with a peculiarly cold sarcastic ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... afresh, "goes ahead of any thing I ever dreamed of, of impudence. Repair my feller! I don't want him any different. I want him jest as he is. I would scorn to repair him. I could if I wanted to,—his teeth could be sharpened up, what he has got, and new ones sot in. And I could cover his head over with red curls; or I could paint it black, and paste transfer flowers onto it. I could have a sot flower sot right on the top of his bald ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... he considered the dangers of cross-examination almost entirely passed. In this he was mistaken, for no sooner was the keen edge of Mrs. Belden's hunger dulled than her curiosity sharpened. ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... approach, and when the girl beheld her high pale forehead furrowed by lines of care, the lofty features sharpened by anxiety, she felt her heart glow toward her sovereign and the last feeling of animosity which had lain so long in her heart faded away never to return. It was therefore with a sincere feeling of reverence that she knelt before Elizabeth, who had shown herself ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... words with a dramatic clearness. The terrific excitement she had undergone, and which she now held in hand, sharpened her faculties. The powers of memory and of expression were intensified. She fairly burned upon Kate there in the beautiful, disguising light of the morning. Her weary face was flushed; her eyes were luminous. Her terrific sorrow put ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... was a delicate green, each blade pushing up straight as a spear-point from the crumbled earth. Here were more anemones, between patches of last year's bracken, and on the further slope a mass of daffodils. He pulled out a pocket-knife that had sharpened some hundreds of quill pens, and looking to his right, found what he ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... square forehead and level eyebrows, but her hair was darker than Gilbert's, and her eyes more deeply set. The fire of a lifelong pain smouldered in them, and the throes of some never-ending struggle had sharpened every line of cheek and brow, and taught her lips the close, hard compression, which those of her son were also beginning to learn. She was about forty-five years of age, but there was even now a weariness in her motions, as if her prime of strength were already past. She wore a short gown ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... let us have her sword sharpened for her. A curious look came upon her face as Bertrand pointed out that although now clean and shining, its edges were too blunt for real use. She looked round upon us as we stood before her, and passed her fingers lovingly down the edges of ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... for Tom Rawle, who was resting easy from his hip wound, the same party started out at the same tune for the same purpose on this second night, but with a very much sharpened realization of the obstacles they had to overcome and the chances they faced of being ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... sweet kind or not. They went up to the Basin bank and got lots of salt out of the holes in the barrels lying there, and then they ate all the apples they could hold, and after that they cut limber sticks off the trees, and sharpened the points, and stuck apples on them and threw them. You could send an apple almost out of sight that way, and you could scare a dog almost as far as you could ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... I show an easy way of hanging the lever. It is simply a piece of wire sharpened and notched, so as to form several small barbs, preventing withdrawal. The mode of fixing will be easily understood by reference to B and C, Fig. 5. Some considerable amount of care will have to be bestowed on fitting and adjusting this part of the work, on which the successful ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... and they live like other old ladies, eating what they choose. I have no idea how many fourpenny tortoises would make a meal for a healthy young nun on Monte San Giuliano, where one's appetite is sharpened by the air. They occasionally add a few snails, which are also permitted; there is a kind of snail which is found underground and is considered a luxury by others besides ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... made by laying felled trees on top of each other with branches, sometimes sharpened, facing ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Everlybody seems to have become quite dull-witted—the plainest tluths they could not see. I can imagine that those faculties which aided them in their stlain to become lich themselves, and make the lest more poor, must have been gleatly sharpened, while all the other faculties withered: as I can imagine a person with one eye seeing double thlough it, and quite blind on ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... it, you cut it out with a sharp knife removing the bark to the wood. Blighted trees send up shoots from the base, below the blighted bark. So you take one of these shoots, sharpen it at the top and insert this sharpened tip under the healthy bark at the top of the blighted area. The shoot should be a little longer than the blighted area so that you can get a spring to the shoot as you push its tip in between the bark and the trunk. Even if it goes up above and breaks ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... him with new intentness. The excitement of the moment may have sharpened the girl's wits, or, possibly, its hint of peril may have brought to Holton's face some detail of expression, which, during recent weeks, had not before appeared ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... he lay with his thoughts, and in the darkness the ray was piercing bright and looked keen like a sharpened sword. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... party preferred remaining near the little cove, the rest rambled away in search of the much-desired fluid. The doctor had taken his rifle, and Willy, by his direction, carried an axe in his belt, and a spar sharpened at the end. ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... fit for a king, and all the more enjoyable that the sea air and pleasant exercise had sharpened the appetites ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... with impatience, and her suddenly quitting him had sharpened it; in spite of which he kept his place, only looking up at ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... removing the blue from the flat part of the screwhead at a. (1) Make a special holder for the screw in the end of a cement brass, as shown at E, Fig. 36, and while it is slowly revolving in the lathe touch the flat surface a with a sharpened pegwood wet with muriatic acid, which dissolves the blue coating of oxide of iron. (2) The surface of the screwhead is coated with a very thin coating of shellac dissolved in alcohol and thoroughly dried, ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... action generally led to desirable ends. If A kills B before B kills A, then A survives, and the human race is a race of A's. But the issues of life are plain no longer. To act rightly in modern society requires a great deal of previous study, a great deal of assimilated information, a great deal of sharpened imagination; and these pre-requisites of sound action require much time, and, I was going to say, much 'lying in the sun,' a long period of 'mere passiveness.' Even the art of killing one another, which at first particularly trained men to be quick, now ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... Spain, which had compelled the Government to tighten the reins. One conspiracy had followed another. Any means were held legitimate to rid the world of an enemy of God. The Queen's character was murdered by the foulest slanders, and a hundred daggers were sharpened to murder her person. The King of Spain had not advised the excommunication, because he knew that he would be expected to execute it, and he had other things to do. When called on to act, he and Alva said that if the English Catholics wanted Spanish help they must do something ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... good minister; he meant well.' This was hardly a sufficient reason for letting him take 100,000 francs out of an impoverished treasury for the furniture of his residence. The hour, however, was just striking, and the knife was sharpened. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... brother; and the fact that his success was due to the ability to purchase port-wine and game was not in this case a mitigating circumstance. Stanwell knew that the Arrans really preferred him to Mungold, but the knowledge only sharpened his envy of the latter, whose friendship could command visible tokens of expression, while poor Stanwell's remained gloomily inarticulate. As he returned to his over-populated studio and surveyed anew the pictures of which Shepson had not offered to relieve him, he found himself wishing, not for ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... average more than a dozen in twenty miles, and on one occasion only six all told; so we turned into nut-gatherers ourselves, spurred on by the fact that we had had no breakfast and our appetites were becoming sharpened, with small prospect of being ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... unfrequently immortal; but rare indeed is it to find the same pertinacity of malice in a nation. And what embittered the interest was, that the malice was reciprocal. Thus far the parties met upon equal terms; but that equality only sharpened the sense of their dire inequality as to other circumstances. The Bashkirs were ready to fight 'from morn to dewy eve.' The Kalmucks, on the contrary, were always obliged to run; was it from their ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... near slopes descending to the sea are a radiant green, with streaks and specklings of darker verdure;— the farther-rising hills faint blue, with green saliencies catching the sun;—and beyond these are upheavals of luminous gray—pearl-gray—sharpened in the silver glow of the horizon.... The general impression of the whole landscape is one of motion suddenly petrified,—of an earthquake surging and tossing suddenly arrested and fixed: a raging of cones and peaks and monstrous truncated shapes.... We approach ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... rendered by blindness doubly intolerable, she began, with outstretched arms, to feel around her prison for some channel of escape; and finding the only entrance secure, she called aloud, and with the vehemence of a temper naturally violent, and now sharpened ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... from the insipid and the idle, he took care not to become separated from the world. He formed his own society according to his tastes: took pleasure in the manly and exciting topics of the day; and sharpened his observation and widened his sphere as an author, by mixing freely and boldly with all classes as a citizen. But literature became to him as art to the artist—as his mistress to the lover—an engrossing ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... There had been more than one sign of late that the pretty comedy of friendship had run its course. The very words they uttered had lost their clear-cut black and white, seemed to grow more full-blooded. His eyes had made her lose her breath more than once, had even sharpened ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... fever once conquered, in a week he was sufficiently convalescent to walk out, leaning on the arm of Gaston de Bois, or Ronald Walton. His gait was feeble, his form attenuated, his countenance had lost its ruddy glow,—the lines had sharpened until their youthful, healthful roundness was wholly obliterated; but the nervous, untranquil expression had passed away from his face, and the restless glancing from side to side had left his eyes. Through the stimulating medium of fresh air and gentle exercise he gathered new vitality, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... is sharpened and brought nearer. The deep blue of the real sea, beyond the lagoon, grows deeper; the great fields of mud (if it is low tide) gleam and glisten. And so it ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... near midnight, we pushed out again. My vigilance and susceptibility were rather sharpened than dulled by the waiting; and the features of the night had also deepened and intensified. Night was at its meridian. The sky had that soft luminousness which may often be observed near midnight at this season, and the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... good sense to know all this without being told. Her peculiar experiences had sharpened her reasoning faculties and made her keenly observant of what passed before her, and had also given her an unusually acute perception of the meanings and influences floating in the atmosphere about her ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... for Montrose sharpened men's eyes and ears, and in two days he was discovered lying on the mountain side almost too weak to move. It was Macleod of Assynt to whom the deadly shame of his betrayal is said to belong, and Montrose prayed earnestly that the mercy of a bullet ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... to his feet, while the scarlet mantle, lined with blue and bordered with ermine, fell straight from his shoulders and touched the turf as he walked. He was bareheaded, and as Eleanor noticed what was evidently intended for another act of humility, the serene curve of her closed lips was sharpened in scorn. And suddenly, as she gazed at her husband's cold, white features in contempt, she heard Gilbert's voice at her elbow again, chanting the Latin words musically and distinctly, and she turned almost with a movement of anger to see the bold young face saddened and softened ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... the worthy officer of militia infused animation into all bosoms; and, in an instant, the settlement, late so peaceful, resounded with the hum and uproar of warlike preparation. Horses were caught and saddled, rifles pulled from their perches, knives sharpened, ammunition-pouches and provender-bags filled, and every other step taken necessary to the simple equipment of a border army, called to action in an emergency so sudden ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... defiant, priding himself on detecting shams. His waistcoat and trousers were of coarser stuff than suited his temperament; a taint of vulgarity in his talk, his whiskers untrimmed, the meaning of his face compacted, sharpened. It was many a year since a tear had come into his black eyes; yet tears belonged there, as much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... sharpened by the ride, everyone did ample justice to the things which were put before them. Even Aunt Betty, usually a light eater, consumed three eggs, two glasses of milk and a plate of fried bacon, topping them off with ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... jaws,—is well-known among mariners, and better among true shark-fighters, who use it to their advantage. Among the pearl-divers of the Vermilion Sea (Gulf of California), the attack of the common shark is but little dreaded. The only weapon used by them is a piece of stick (the estaca), sharpened at both ends, and hardened by fire. Provided with this simple weapon, which they carry, stuck through a loop in their leathern belt, they dive without fear among the sharks that frequent the waters of the pearl-oyster fishery. When attacked by one of these voracious creatures, they wait for ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... of a fort it was, too—ranking second to only the famed Fort Pitt at Pittsburgh. It stood near the river edge of a flat bluff about a quarter of a mile up the Ohio from the mouth of Wheeling Creek. Its stockade of sharpened white-oak pickets seventeen feet high enclosed more than half an acre, with small block-houses or bastions in the corners, and with a commandant's log house of two ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... gather up her books. On top of the pile was a slender inlaid box under a card bearing the words, "For Dolly, from Father." Pushing back the sliding cover, Dorothea saw that the box contained a row of pencils, all beautifully sharpened, a dozen pens, and a slim ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... toy familiar to most children, is one example selected by Mr. Lang. It is a long, thin, narrow piece of wood, sharpened at both ends; attached to a piece of string, and whirled rapidly and steadily in the air, it emits a sound which gradually increases to an unearthly kind of roar. The ancient Greeks employed at some of their sacred rites a precisely similar ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... "... Just a sharpened bayonet. You slung it round your neck when you were swimming.... Only had to use it once ... nasty sticky job. No joke either, crawling about naked on your belly in ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... brushwood lay, All with withies loosely bound, And never heard a human sound. Yet men have toiled and men have rested By yon hurdles darkly-breasted, Woven in and woven out, Piled four-square, and turned about To show their white and sharpened stakes Like teeth of hounds or fangs of snakes. The men are homeward sped, for none Loves silence and a sinking sun. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Woodmen know Souls are lost that hear it so, Seven times upon the wind, To lull the watch-dogs of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... blood springing from a dozen places, yet felt she no pain nor hurt, by reason of the great dread wherein she went. But if she were in cumber to win there, in worse was she to win out. But she deemed that there to abide was of none avail, and she found a pike sharpened, that they of the city had thrown out to keep the hold. Therewith made she one stepping place after another, till, with much travail, she climbed the wall. Now the forest lay within two crossbow shots, and the forest was of thirty leagues this way and that. Therein also ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... knowledge of his closest friends, similarly situated though they were, they shook their heads gravely and even feared for his reason. For how could that be a remedy which merely sharpened and intensified the evil? It seemed to him, on the other hand, that their moral distress was so acute because the Jew of to-day had lost the poise which was his father's very being. They ridiculed him for this when his back was turned—many even laughed openly in his ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... placed vertically so that they are in line with the pivot nail. This will form a sight for measuring the angles. The board is then mounted upon a pointed stick or tripod. You will need a hatchet and a half dozen sharpened sticks for markers and a boy for rod man. You are ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... in the street below. The warm May sunshine poured into the room, revealing with painful clarity the changes which the last three months had wrought in her. Never at any time robust in appearance, she seemed the slenderest, frailest thing as she lay there, the delicate angles of her face sharpened by fever and weakness, her cheeks so hollowed that the violet-blue eyes looked almost amazingly big and wide-open in ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... comfort to us; still we were gnawed with hunger. That night we slept; but the next morning every man's eyes flashed, and we all looked as if we would eat each other; and there were whisperings and noddings going on in the bow of the boat; and a negro who was with us took out his knife, and sharpened it on the boat's gunnel. No one asked him why. We spoke not, but we all had our own thoughts. It was dreadful to look at our hollow cheeks—our eyes sunken deep, but glaring like red-hot coals—our long beards and haggard faces—every ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... a falsehood, that the old gentleman looked somewhat sternly in Oliver's face. It was impossible to doubt him; there was truth in every one of its thin and sharpened lineaments. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... course, it was only Michael's nonsense: he would say anything when he was in the humour for disputation. Even her own Percival had these contentious moods. The masculine mind liked to play with moral ninepins, to send all kinds of exploded theories rolling with their little ball of wit; it sharpened their argumentative faculties, and kept them bright and ready ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... even so, it is not well to be too explicit—between ourselves of course nothing—well—miraculous happened, beyond the fact that our Lady most certainly sharpened the wits of old Antony. Therefore is it, that you undoubtedly owe your wife to those same wits, and may praise our ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... escaped the jealous eyes of De la Zouch, for, securely hidden within the friendly foliage of a patch of brushwood, he had seen and heard all, and, with perceptions sharpened by the jealous spirit which raged within his breast, he had at once divined the secret which neither of the ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... somewhat grounded in her distrust of her own fitness, was really the last vestige of a self that had clung to her, in bitterness not toward Adam, but toward Lily. Ever since she had known that the child was coming she had felt a kind of spiritual exhaustion, sharpened by the strange sense of oppression that hung upon ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... of bloodshed, that even the gladiators in Rome could not obtain his inspection of their contests, unless, like the wrestlers, they contended without imminent risk; for he never allowed them the use of sharpened weapons, but universally they fought before him with weapons previously blunted." Thirdly, he repealed the old and uniform regulation, which secured to the gladiators a perpetual immunity from military service. This necessarily diminished their available amount. Being now liable to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... that could be ascribed to the domestic animal at any moment of the year preceding his death; a similar latitude of thirty days was granted on the destruction of any other valuable effects. A personal injury is blunted or sharpened by the manners of the times and the sensibility of the individual: the pain or the disgrace of a word or blow cannot easily be appreciated by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... These anxieties sharpened the intensity of her enjoyment, and made the contrast keener between her crowded sparkling hours and the vacant months at Saint Desert. Little as she understood of the qualities that made Moffatt what he was, the results were of the kind most palpable to her. He used life exactly as ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... at a chop-house. The old laws of Scotland against sedition, laws which were considered by Englishmen as barbarous, and which a succession of governments had suffered to rust, were now furbished up and sharpened anew. Men of cultivated minds and polished manners were, for offences which at Westminster would have been treated as mere misdemeanours, sent to herd with felons at Botany Bay. Some reformers, whose opinions were extravagant, and whose language was intemperate, but who ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of this creature, so I was willing to have them take it as a favour from me; which, when I made signs to them that they might take him, they were very thankful for. Immediately they fell to work with him; and though they had no knife, yet, with a sharpened piece of wood, they took off his skin as readily, and much more readily, than we could have done with a knife. They offered me some of the flesh, which I declined, making as if I would give it them, but made signs for ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... woman looked with astonishment at the millionaire devouring a bit of bread and a triangle of cheese, the only food that she could find in her humble dwelling. The certainty that he would not be able to find any other nourishment, no matter how much he might seek it, greatly sharpened his cravings. To have acquired an enormous fortune only to perish with hunger at the end of his existence! . . . The good wife, as though guessing his thoughts, sighed, raising her eyes beseechingly to heaven. Since the early morning hours, the world had completely changed its course. Ay, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... but a brave black hand seized the colors. They were soon up again and waved their starry light over the storm of battle. Again the axemen fell, but strong hands and willing hearts seized the heavy sharpened trees and dragged them away, and the column rushed forward and with a shout that rang out above the roar of artillery went over the redoubt like a flash, and the enemy did not stop running within four miles, leaving the Phalanx in ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... was to embrace the Emperor's knees and throw him to the ground, and then Scaevinus was to deal the fatal blow. The theatrical conduct of Scaevinus—who took an antique dagger from the Temple of Safety, made his will, ordered the dagger to be sharpened, sat down to an unusually luxurious banquet, manumitted or made presents to his slaves, showed great agitation, and finally ordered ligaments for wounds to be prepared,—awoke the suspicions of one of his freedmen named Milichus, who hastened ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... genial. A few pedestrians were walking resolutely toward the transpontine borough; the cop on duty stood outside his little cabin with the air of one ungrieved by care. Behind us stood the high profiles of the lower city, sharpened against the splendidly clear blue sky which is New York's special blessing. On the water moved a large tug, towing barges. Smoke trailed behind it in the same easy and comfortable way that tobacco reek gushes over a man's shoulder when he walks across ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... lightly and tirelessly in the broad and careless spoor of Jake Kloon, his narrow, pointed head alert, and every fear-sharpened instinct tensely observant, the trap-thief continued to ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... nature. While this town had on all sides around it very high rocks and precipices, there was left on one side a gently ascending approach, of not more than 200 feet in width; which place they had fortified with a very lofty double wall: besides, they had placed stones of great weight and sharpened stakes upon the walls. They were descended from the Cimbri and Teutones, who, when they were marching into our province and Italy, having deposited on this side the river Rhine such of their baggage-trains as they could not drive or convey with them, left 6000 of their men as a ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... me at making toys for children. It was a manufacturer of Paris who found it advantageous to have made by the prisoners his harlequins, his trumpets of wood, and his swords of ditto. Thus, I tell you, haven't I sharpened, and cut, and carved for fifteen years, these toys! I am sure that I supplied the pets of an entire quarter of Paris—it was, above all, on the trumpet I excelled; and rattles too! With these two instruments one could have put on edge the teeth of a whole battalion! I pride ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... high, which had not been scooped out by water; and that even the mountain-tops which stand up miles aloft in jagged peaks and pinnacles against the sky were cut out at first, and are being cut and sharpened still, by little else save water, soft and hard; that is, by ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... is strengthened by exercise and the wits are sharpened by imitating what is heard, he urged some by warnings, and some by floggings and punishments [to the constant practice of memorizing and imitation]. They were individually required on the following day to reproduce some part of what they had heard the day before, ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... to do with that first eventful year of married life—the year of attrition in mind and character, when two natures, differing in many points, and these sharpened as it were by education, are suddenly brought into immediate contact. There were some ideals overthrown, no doubt—it is often so; and some good qualities discovered, which were unsuspected before. The second anniversary of the wedding-day was also the birth-day of a darling child, and the ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... that I might not be putting on the red coat too, and following the drum. And still and on, I would have no son of mine a soldier. Three fozy, foggy brothers—what did the armies do for them? They never sharpened their wits, but they sit and dover and dream, dream, even-on, never knowing all that's in their sister Mary's mind. And here you are, a boy, yet you get to my thoughts in a flash. Oh! I think I am going to ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the Medway are fine, strong sea-boats; their sailing qualities are excellent, and they are improved every year by a regatta specially for them, where forty gay-dressed, bluff and burly craft compete for prizes. In this match the utmost of skill, sharpened by years of river sailing, is shewn in the wind and tide, and knowledge of intricate channels, and among such competitors "fouling ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... reaction was undoubtedly a sharpened perception and evaluation of his fellow-members in the Fraternity. Herzl had joined and been active in a duelling Fraternity. Here, too, anti-Semitism was breaking through; student after student ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl |
