"Sharper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The woful slaughter black and loathsome made That house, sometime the sacred house of God, O heavenly justice, if thou be delayed, On wretched sinners sharper falls thy rod! In them this place profaned which invade Thou kindled ire, and mercy all forbode, Until with their hearts' blood the Pagans vile This temple washed ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... yours are a deal sharper than mine, my dear, for I had not the faintest idea who it was that was coming along the road. But I am glad I met you, Dashwood, as I want to say a few words to you about—" and he lowered his voice ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... disarm him; but at the first encounter he felt that the colonel's wrist was iron, with the flexibility of a steel string. Maxence was then forced, unfortunate fellow, to think of another move, while Philippe, whose eyes were darting gleams that were sharper than the flash of their blades, parried every attack with the coolness of a fencing-master wearing his plastron ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... before us. The inhabitants were pouring forth to meet us. We saw them coming over the plain, as we watched the walls and buildings, glowing in the mystic radiance of the summer's evening, loom up larger and grander and sharper before us. It ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... gloriously, but the air bit ever sharper, and while Peggy went about her cooking, assisted by her husband and the outlaw, Alice pulled Ward down to ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... his cousin, "you are a brave man, Richard Talbot. I know those who had rather scale a Spanish fortress than face Queen Elizabeth in her wrath. Her tongue is sharper than even my stepdame's, though it doth not ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while submerged, for the mere purpose of testing its ability to defend itself—my enthusiasm being tempered by the caution of the mere amateur—it may be said that some of the spines appear to be blunt. All could hardly be "sharper than needles," for being used as a means of locomotion among and over and in the crevices of the coral and rocks, some are necessarily worn at the points. With care they may be handled without injury, though at first glance it would ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... well have thought "these sounds were just like those of a battle," but a practised ear could not have failed to note the difference. First there would come an explosion louder and unlike the report of one or several guns, and this would be followed by numerous smaller, sharper, and perfectly distinct reports, quite unlike that of musketry, which could not be mistaken for anything but the explosion of shells. There could be no room for doubt that these lights and sounds meant the destruction in Atlanta of magazines or carloads of fixed ammunition, and hence that Hood ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... variations this famous bit from Isaiah. He makes the truth stand out more sharply by stating the opposite of what He desires, making the contrast between His words and His known desires so strong as not only to make plain the meaning intended, but to give it a sharper emphasis. ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... if we wish really to understand the manner in which the Queen's Government over the British Empire is carried on, we must now prepare to examine into some sharper contrasts than any which our path has yet brought into view. The power of the American Executive resides in the person of the actual President, and passes from him to his successor. His Ministers, grouped around him, are the ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... good for Physick, and Dying.] The Orula, a Tree as big as an Apple-Tree, bears a Berry somewhat like an Olive, but sharper at each end, its Skin is of a reddish green colour, which covereth an hard stone. They make use of it for Physic in Purges; and also to dy black colour: Which they do after this manner; They take the fruit and beat it to pieces in Mortars, and put it ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... had had very hard work, and were completely knocked up, which was not wonderful; and you may want all your strength to-day. Besides, you know, you would have been of no use had you been awake, for you could have seen nothing. Donna Maria's eyes were a good deal sharper than mine, and I am quite sure that, tired as you were, Dias would have seen them coming long before you would. We had better lie down again, for it will be light enough soon for them to make us out. How far do their arrows ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... in front will keep as sharp an eye to the rear as to the front; more'n likely it will be sharper, and it will be a bad thing if they discover us when we're two or ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... you're a very clever fellow, and I dare say you think yourself a great deal sharper than I am; but, by Heaven, if you try any tricks with me, you'll find yourself mistaken! You must buy me an annuity. Do you understand? Before you move right or left, or say your soul's your own, you must buy ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Panney, sarcastically. "He has no choice to make. That is settled, and that is the very reason why people will talk the more and sharper, and nothing you can say, Madam Jane La Fleur, will stop them. Not only does this look like a scheme to marry Mr. Haverley to a girl who can bring him nothing, but to break off a most advantageous match with a lady who, in social position, wealth, and in every way, stands ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... is as pitiless toward himself as toward all others. That is the principal quality which attracted me to him and which made me for a long time seek his cooeperation. There are those who pretend that he is nothing but a sharper, but that is a lie. He is a devoted fanatic, but at the same time a dangerous fanatic, with whom an alliance could only prove very disastrous for everyone concerned. This is the reason: He first belonged to a secret society which, in reality, existed ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... "His knife is sharper than you, too," cried Sam. A roar followed, which made Frozzler so angry he shook his fist ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... for better things, what self-restraint, respect, or government, was left in the minds of these girls as a part of their education? As one of the bystanders, himself of the working class, said to me, 'God help their husbands!' Yes, poverty has many stings; but there can be none sharper than the necessity of marrying one of ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... they lived. In this group there was not a strain of industry, virtue, or scholarship. They were licentious, ignorant, profane, lacking ambition to keep them out of poverty and crime. They drifted into whatever it was easiest to do or to be. Midday and midnight, heaven and its opposite, present no sharper contrasts than the children and the children-in-law of Jonathan Edwards ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie All corners ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... who shall pay. I do not mean to have another such scene as that of yesterday in my office. It must not be said that my son is a sharper and a cheat at the very moment when I find for my ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... little daughter, 'Mid the fragrant Georgia bloom,"— Then his cry rang sharper, wilder, "Oh, God! pity all their gloom." And the wounded, in their death-hour, Talking of the loved ones' woes, Nearer drew unto each other, Till they ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... sub-province of Ifugao, and Gallman's headquarters. The cheers of our late hosts accompanied us as we entered the trail and began to climb. The country now took on a different aspect, due to our increasing altitude. The valleys were sharper and narrower, and so of the peaks. From time to time we could see the proud crest of Amuyao ahead of us. Over 8,000 feet high, this mountain, whose name means "father of all peaks," or "father of mountains," is the Ararat of the Ifugaos. ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... heart beat furiously, for a dusky, half-seen figure materialized out of the gloom, and grew into sharper form as it drew nearer to the sinking fire. The thing was wholly unexpected, almost incredible, but it was clear that the man could understand English, and his face was white. In another moment Wyllard's last doubt vanished, ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... ascertained on the first day of his absence. I went home soon after dark, leaving Mrs. Martindale with other friends. The anguish I was suffering no words can tell. Not such anguish as pierced the mother's heart; but, in one degree sharper, in that guilt and ...
— The Son of My Friend - New Temperance Tales No. 1 • T. S. Arthur
... language used by S. Paul in his first Epistle to the Thessalonians: "I pray GOD your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." {34a} The same distinction is marked in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "The word of GOD is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." {34b} It is thus that we understand the contrast which S. Paul enforces between things of the spirit and things of the soul. "The natural man,"—i.e., the psychical ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... turned to dive into the tunnel there was a sharper and more eager yelp, and a shaggy animal came to the edge of the bluff to their left and, without stopping an instant, plunged down through the drifts toward the two girls where they stood on the hard-packed snow at the ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... wondrous new sort of faith whose sharper hooks of steel enter and take hold of your very being as you actually experience the power of Jesus in a way wholly new to you. As it came to his keenly awakened mind that the favourable turn had come at the very moment Jesus uttered those quiet words, and ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... With sharper eyes the Italian women saw that her real reckoning lay with my husband, but they seemed to think no worse of her for that. They seemed to think no worse of him either. It was nothing against him that, having married me (as everybody appeared to know) for the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... more laws, better laws, and a better mechanism for punishing infraction of laws, that we can hope to check lawlessness. Lynching-as we noted in chapter XXV-have been the product of inadequate legislation and judicial procedure; as our laws against the worst crimes become sharper, our police forces more efficient, and our court trials quicker and less hampered by technicalities, they decrease in number. As education on the liquor question spreads, violations of prohibition laws become fewer. The kind of lawlessness that is on the increase is that ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... soul, tempest-toss'd, Hath her Rubicon cross'd, She shall fly—saved or lost! Void of dread! Sharper pang than the steel, Thou, oh, serpent! shalt feel, Should I set the bruised heel On ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... so tough that no man can hurt you. Your strength is greater than that of ten elephants. Your foot is so swift that you can distance the wind. Your wit is sharper than the bulthorn. Let the man fear, but drive fear from your own breast forever; for of all your race you ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... sharper, shriller, more vibrant in the ears of the rousing sleeper. His eyelids fluttered, rose a little way, and snapped wide apart. His eyes, bared of their covers, glared in utter horror of that which they saw. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... one day. "I can't quite describe how, but I feel as if Miss Harper knew all that I was doing and saying, and even thinking. I believe her eyes and ears must be sharper than anybody else's. She seems to notice such tiny little things, and then speaks of them quite a long time afterwards. She remembered perfectly well, I'm sure, that it was Beatrice Wynne who used always to borrow other people's pencils last term and never ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... replied to by Mr. Wedderburne, whose naturally sharp tongue was on this occasion rendered still sharper by his friendship for Mr. Whately who was lying between life and death. After reviewing the arguments of the opposite counsel, Wedderburne directed himself to an inculpation of the assembly and people of Massachusets; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a rough sneer, and the Black Colonel made the sting sharper by adding, "You'll be thinking it an assured capture, with the ends of the Pass sealed by red-coats and its sides so steep that only those tough sheep over there ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... she said, all bonny. Far toward their left the low hills rolled in soft swelling waves toward the level prairie, and far away to the right the hills climbed by sharper ascents, flecked here and there with dark patches of fir, and broken with jutting ledges of gray limestone, climbed till they reached the great Rockies, majestic in their massive serried ranges that pierced the western sky. ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... betwixt a red and yellow: Tipp'd was his tail, and both his pricking ears Were black; and much unlike his other hairs: The rest, in shape a beagle's whelp throughout, 120 With broader forehead, and a sharper snout: Deep in his front were sunk his glowing eyes, That yet, methinks, I see him with surprise. Reach out your hand, I drop with clammy sweat, And lay it to my heart, and feel it beat. Now fie, for shame, quoth she; by Heaven above, Thou hast for ever lost thy lady's love! ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... home that afternoon she found Bruce awaiting her. Since morning, mixed with her palpitating love and her desire to see him, there had been dread of this meeting. In the back of her mind the question had all day tormented her, should she, for his own interests, send him away? But sharper than this, sharper a hundredfold, was the fear lest the difference between their opinions ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... is Brown, and very far from being a fool. There is no sharper, shrewder man in New York, and no one who estimates his customers more correctly. He puts a high price on his services, and is said to have accumulated a handsome fortune, popularly estimated at about $300,000. Fat and sleek, and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the physical and mental difference between herself and beautiful Laetitia—a feeling in Laetitia's company that she was a boy, a young man, in the company of one most pronouncedly a young woman. Rosalie was always very plainly dressed by comparison with Laetitia; her voice was much clearer and sharper, her air very vigorous against an air very langorous. Her hands used to feel extraordinarily big when she sat with Laetitia and her wrists extraordinarily bare. She would glance down at her lap sometimes and could have felt a sense of surprise not ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... parasite, thought, which might just as well have fed upon a plainer exterior where there was nothing it could harm. Had Heaven preserved Yeobright from a wearing habit of meditation, people would have said, "A handsome man." Had his brain unfolded under sharper contours they would have said, "A thoughtful man." But an inner strenuousness was preying upon an outer symmetry, and they rated his ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... must work far more minutely than in less exacting communities. Every tendency to introspection and self-judging was strengthened to the utmost, and merciless condemnation for one's self came to mean a still sharper one for others. With every power of brain and soul they fought against what, to them, seemed the one evil for that or any time—toleration. Each man had his own thought, and was able to put it into strong words. No colony has ever known so large a proportion of learned men, there ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Regos. Choggenmugger was so old that everyone thought it must have been there since the world was made, and each year of its life the huge scales that covered its body grew thicker and harder and its jaws grew wider and its teeth grew sharper and its appetite ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... land unshadowed, where Polaris makes a somewhat sharper angle with the horizon, there is law, also, but much of it is unwritten. And one of the unwritten statutes is that which maintains the inherent right of a man to avenge his own quarrel with ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... knows I be a-poaching; but that don't make no difference for work; I can use my tools, and do it as well as any man in the country, and they be glad to get me on for 'em. They farmers as have got their shooting be sharper than the keepers, and you can't do much there; but they as haven't got the shooting don't take no notice. They sees my wires in the grass, and just looks the other way. If they sees I with ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... to wealth in New Orleans has long been Carondelet street. There you see the most alert faces; noses—it seems to one—with more and sharper edge, and eyes smaller and brighter and with less distance between them than one notices in other streets. It is there that the stock and bond brokers hurry to and fro and run together promiscuously—the cunning and the simple, the headlong and the wary—at the four clanging strokes ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... bay is a low line of hills, with softly rounded outlines. They are of pale russet color, from the red earth, and thin, dried grass, that covers them. Farther to the north is Mount Tamalpias, with sharper outlines. ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... "How sharper than a serpent's tooth is ingratitude! And what bad taste to prattle of prosecution. I sha'n't steal your car, it needs too much overhauling. And I abominate cheap machines. It is true that I'm one pistol to the good, but in view of the ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... misrule in the world's wide heath: our voyage is to the Isle of Dogs, there where the blatant beast doth rule and reign, renting the credit of whom it please. Where serpents' tongues the penmen are to write, Where cats do wawl by day, dogs by night. There shall engorged venom be my ink, My pen a sharper quill of porcupine, My stained paper this sin-loaden earth. There will I write in lines shall never die, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... hills, respectively west and east of Sofia; it may be regarded as a continuation of the great Alpine system which traverses the Peninsula from the Dinaric Alps and the Shar Planina on the west to the Shabkhana Dagh near the Aegean coast; its sharper outlines and pine-clad steeps reproduce the scenery of the Alps rather than that of the Balkans. The imposing summit of Musalla (9631 ft.), next to Olympus, the highest in the Peninsula, forms the centre-point of the group; it stands ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the pieces, which ended and began oddly after the fashion of wind through an Aeolian harp. It was part of the place and scene, just as the dying sunlight and faintly breathing wind were part of the scene and hour, and the mellow notes of old-fashioned plaintive horns, pierced here and there by the sharper strings, all half smothered by the continuous booming of the deep drum, touched his soul with a curiously potent spell that was almost too engrossing to be ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... rescuer himself will be in great need of help. In practice it will be found that, by grasping the encircling arms at the wrists and pushing back with the buttocks against the other's abdomen, room to slip out can be obtained. In a life and death struggle, sharper measures are needed, and if the rescuer throws his head suddenly back against the nose of the drowning man, he will secure his freedom very readily and have him under control by the time he has recovered from ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... whatever bait you use in a trout stream,—grasshopper, grub, or fly,—there is one thing you must always put on your hook; namely, your heart. It is a morsel they love above everything else. He tells us that man has sharper eyes than a dog, a fox, or any of the wild creatures except the birds, but not so sharp an ear or a nose; he says that a certain quality of youth is indispensable in the angler, a certain unworldliness and readiness to invest in an enterprise that does not pay in current coin. He says that nature ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... said his mother; "your mind is chaos. I tell you there are giants to be fought, hydra-headed ones—the giants of ignorance, of wickedness, of injustice, and they call for a sharper, keener sword than that wielded by the knights ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... suffer for Love's sake, and for Love's sake even to rejoice: thus shall I strew flowers. Not one shall I find without scattering its petals before Thee . . . and I will sing . . . I will sing always, even if my roses must be gathered from amidst thorns; and the longer and sharper the thorns, the sweeter shall ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... festivities and joys; and she joined in the dance, poised herself in the air as a swallow when he pursues his prey, and all present cheered her with wonder. She had never danced so elegantly before. Her tender feet felt as if cut with sharp knives, but she cared not for it; a sharper pang had pierced through her heart. She knew this was the last evening she should ever see the prince, for whom she had forsaken her kindred and her home; she had given up her beautiful voice, and suffered unheard-of pain daily for him, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... another dream. I thought that Odin's birds, Hugin and Munin, sat on a tree before me. And Hugin flapped his wings, and said, 'What more vile than a false friend? What more to be feared than a secret foe? Harder than stone is his unfeeling heart; sharper than the adder's poison-fangs are his words; a snake in the grass is he!' Then Munin flapped his wings too, but said nothing. And I awoke, and thought at once of the sunbright Balder, slain through Loki's vile deceit. And, as I thought upon his ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... make sweeter music far than any steeple's chime. But while you sling your sledges, sing—and let the burden be, "The anchor is the anvil king, and royal craftsmen we:" Strike in, strike in—the sparks begin to dull their rustling red; Our hammers ring with sharper din, our ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... indeed is it - at least not to mortal man. And yet all mankind, through the medium of its naturalists, is patiently and hopefully seeking it. But, though they have already unearthed much that is useful, measuring and recording and comparing with ever finer and sharper instruments, they are still digging in a direction that inevitably leads into ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... good as his word, and made four or five powerful speeches in behalf of Mr. Hughes, speeches which gave a sharper edge to the Republicans' fight. But their campaign was obviously mismanaged. They put their candidate to the torture of making two transcontinental journeys, in which he had to speak incessantly, and they warned him against uttering any downright ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... prince, dismissed from the service, a teacher of boxing, and one of Rogojin's followers. They are all lounging about the pavements now that Rogojin has turned them off. Of course, the worst of it is that, knowing he was a rascal, and a card-sharper, I none the less played palki with him, and risked my last rouble. To tell the truth, I thought to myself, 'If I lose, I will go to my uncle, and I am sure he will not refuse to help me.' Now ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a bit sharper. He heard me out, looked at my deceased poppies, and arranged a conference with a bigwig from the State Department. Then things got really messy. When I pointed out that in a few weeks every damned opium plant in Asia would be deader than the Ming Dynasty, ...
— Revenge • Arthur Porges
... up and down the folded sail;—this sentence was different—sharper, pithier, better rounded than she had written it. A soliloquy was missing there—and better so, its inclusion would have been a mistake. Oh, how good, how good he was! Her quivering fingers fumbled with the folding—Lynn and Max would forgive her for spoiling their boat when ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... social will. It is natural that he should attract especial attention. Thus the "Thou shalt not!" is given prominence. To this I might add, that punishments are cheaper and easier than extraordinary rewards. Pains are sharper than pleasures, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... sharper and the rumble of guns was uninterrupted, growling like thunder after a summer storm or as the shells passed shrieking and then bursting with jarring detonations. Underfoot the pavements were inch-deep with fallen glass, and as you walked it tinkled musically. With ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... receptive ears, lying on his back and looking up and joying in each movement of her lips as she talked. But his brain was not receptive. There was nothing alluring in the pictures she drew, and he was aware of a dull pain of disappointment and of a sharper ache of love for her. In all she said there was no mention of his writing, and the manuscripts he had brought to read lay neglected ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... driven to frenzy by individual oppression, and tempers the sternest despotism; but Demos wields opinion and defies the dagger. By general confession life is far less free, individual taste, caprice or eccentricity is kept under far sharper restraint by fashion and feeling, in America than in aristocratic England. At every epoch of American history, the freedom of opinion has been curtailed at certain points within strict if ill-defined ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... tone and the freedom of his repartees, overstepped the limit. There's a man who does not scruple to call things by their names. For instance, he said to M. Francis, so loud that he could be heard from one end of the salon to the other: "I say, Francis, your old sharper played still another trick on us last week." And as the other threw out his chest with a dignified air, M. Noel began to laugh. "No offence, old girl. The strong box is full. You'll never get to the bottom of it." And it was then that he told us about the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... over the money, his face drawing into closer and sharper lines as the amount grew, under his fingers, to ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... notoriously Laudian opinions and practices—a very large number of clergymen had been placed on the black books, and some actually ejected, before the commencement of the war. But, after the war began, sharper action became necessary. For now the Parliament had to provide for what were called "the plundered ministers" —i.e. for those Puritan ministers who, driven from their parsonages in various parts of the country by the King's soldiers, had to flock into London, with their ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... behind her with a sharper click than she had ever given its latch before. She hurried to her typewriter in her little room and began to work with ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... smoke in the sky is ever increasing and the fire is subsiding, and the unknown city is already near its dark end. The sea odour is growing ever sharper and stronger. Night ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... creating new demand for the machine, so that the sales forged ahead of Cater's, with whom there was still a good-natured we-rise-together sort of rivalry, though it seemed at times as if it might take a sharper edge. Leverich's dictum regarding Cater embodied an extension of the policy to be pursued with minor, outlying competitors: "You'll have to force that fellow out of business or get him ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... and last part of the course even the shrill whistles of the yachts and the cries and cheers that greeted the ears of the Go Ahead boys appeared to take on a sharper edge. The face of every boy was set and drawn. That silver cup in the eyes of all four now appeared to be the most valuable prize ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... of coins the face should be dusted with French chalk, as also a smooth bed of plasticine; the coin can then be pressed in safely without any possible risk, and afterward plaster cast in the mould. Sealing-wax is said to be sharper, but there is a risk of its sticking to the coin. If it is used, breathe hard on the coin, or wet it, before impressing; and when first set lift it slightly to detach it, and then replace till cold. Or tin-foil may be used, as in making positives; but, instead of floating on ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... may be," retorted a sharper, petulant voice, the sound of which was oddly familiar, "but I tell you this, Senor, 'tis on this very shore French gallants come hunting from New Orleans. There is dry land in plenty beyond the fringe ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... except in very rare cases. These Bannermen, as they are called, in reference to eight banners or corps under which they are marshalled, may be known by their square heavy faces, which contrast strongly with the sharper and more astute-looking physiognomies of the Chinese. They speak the dialect of Peking, now regarded as the official or "mandarin" language, just as the dialect of Nanking was, so long as that city remained the capital ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... to and fro, doubled up in pain, crying "Ooh!" with a rueful face, and squeezing his hand between his thighs to dull its sharper agonies. Then with redoubled wrath bold Swipey hurled him at the foe. He grabbed Gourlay's head, and shoving it down between his knees, proceeded to pommel his bent back, while John bellowed angrily (from between Swipey's ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... good-looking man in other respects, but with an odd look about his eyes, which I could not explain, as if he saw you under their fringed lids, and you could not see him again: this man was a common sharper. The greatest hypocrite I ever knew was a little, demure, pretty, modest-looking girl, with eyes timidly cast upon the ground, and an air soft as enchantment; the only circumstance that could lead to a suspicion of her true character ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... a man leads more than blood even, which tells; and there they are fighting the earth for the ore with great courage and endurance and hard manual labour, and so it produces finer expressions of faces, and lither forms than using your brains to be sharper in business than ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... Swegache—Mohawks, Senekys, Onandogs an' Algonks. They had been swappin' presents an' speeches with the French. Just a little while afore they had had a bellerin' match with us 'bout love an' friendship. Then sudden-like they tuk it in their heads that the French had a sharper hatchet than the English. I were skeered, but when I see that they was nobody drunk, I pushed right into the big village an' asked fer the old Senecky chief Bear Face—knowin' he were thar—an' said I had a letter from the Big Father. They ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... in a way, from the beginning, and was not without a good clientage, and some good employments. I was prompt, faithful, and persistently loyal to my clients' interests, trying never to neglect them even when they were small. Then litigations were sharper generally than at present, and often, as now understood, unnecessary. The court-term was once looked forward to as a time for a lawyer to earn fees; now it is, happily, otherwise with the more successful and better lawyers. Commercial ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... contemptuous character of Court art. How different from true politics. For, comparing the talents of two professions that are very different, I cannot but think, that in the present sense of the word Politician, a common sharper or pickpocket, has every quality that can be required in the other, and accordingly I have personally known more than half a dozen in their hour esteemed equally ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... shut his study door behind him. For the first time in his life he was on a battle-ground with no sensation of joy in the coming fight. The business was too ugly and the prospect was almost certain defeat. Were the first battle lost, he knew that a sharper engagement would immediately succeed: his political foresight anticipated the tie, and he alone had a consummate knowledge of the character of Burr. That the Republicans would offer Burr the office of Vice-President ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... your stops to nibble by the wayside will not be noticed, and you alone know when it is time to get the young couple home; you know, alas! when the courtship—blissful period of loitering for you—is ended and when the marriage is made, by the tighter rein, the sharper word, and the occasional swish of the whip. Ah, Dobbin, you and I—" The ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... face with the old, solemn thought that character makes capacity for heaven. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place?' asked the Psalmist; and a prophet put the question in a still sharper form, and by the very form of the question suggested a negative answer—'Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire; who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?' Who can pass into that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the Avenel family are beyond dispute,) thou mayest find a whetstone for thy witty compliments, a strop whereon to sharpen thine acute engine, a butt whereat to shoot the arrows of thy gallantry. For even as a Bilboa blade, the more it is rubbed, the brighter and the sharper will it prove, so—But what need I waste my stock of similitudes in holding converse with myself?—Yonder comes the monkish retinue, like some half score of crows winging their way slowly up the valley—I hope, a'gad, they have not forgotten my trunk-mails of apparel amid ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... with a new interest. There was a difference in him, what would be hard to say. One couldn't exactly put finger on it. Something in his gray eyes, perhaps; something in the sharper stamp of his aquiline nose, of his lips, of his bronzed jaw; something in his whole bearing. It went deeper than features, too; she sensed a change in the spirit of the man from what it had been that day of his going down to Kennard, when he strolled with her in her garden. He was less ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... that, for aught I know, his greatest excellency is in his diction. In all other parts of poetry he is faultless, but in this he placed his chief perfection. And give me leave, my lord, since I have here an apt occasion, to say that Virgil could have written sharper satires than either Horace or Juvenal if he would have employed his talent that way. I will produce a verse and half of his, in one of his Eclogues, to justify my opinion, and with commas after every ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... house; Constantia, the fair fugitive; Sir William Woodville, a gentleman of distinction under misfortune; Belmont, in love with Constantia, a man of fortune and interest; Freeport, a merchant and an epitome of English manners; Scandal, a sharper; and Lady Alton, in love ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... fire first took away a piece of his beard, at which he did not shrink. Then it came on the other side and took his legs, and the nether stockings of his hose being leather, they made the fire pierce the sharper, so that the intolerable heat made him exclaim, "I recant!" and suddenly he thrust the fire from him. Two or three of his friends being by, wished to save him; they stepped to the fire to help remove it, for ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... he, pointing to the man in spectacles on the platform. "Never saw him before? I thought so. Sharper, sir, I'll take my oath of it, or something worse. I know the sort; I've exposed hundreds of them. Take my advice, sir, and ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... not at all akin to the sun, nor ever saw Ouaquaphenogan, that were as like them as if they had been sisters. Their eyes did, indeed, sometimes send out volleys of lightnings, and their tongues give forth heavy thunders, but neither were louder nor sharper than those of the women, who had for ages given the beam of the one and the music of the other to the men of the Creeks. And, if they did at times term their husbands "brutes," it was no more than other husbands had been called before. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... with Mrs. Milroy threatening me on one side, and Mr. Midwinter on the other, the worst of all risks to run is the risk of losing time. Young Armadale has hinted already, as well as such a lout can hint, at a private interview! Miss Milroy's eyes are sharp, and the nurse's eyes are sharper; and I shall lose my place if either of them find me out. No matter! I must take my chance, and give him the interview. Only let me get him alone, only let me escape the prying eyes of the women, and—if his friend doesn't come between us—I answer ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the water, where it had not been above half a minute when he felt a tremendous tug. Pulling up the line quickly, he found that he had captured a magnificent nine-pounder in splendid condition, the fish being very like a salmon in shape, make, and colour, excepting that it had a longer, sharper head, and a finer tail. Securing his prize, he at once put about and made for the shore, as he was anxious to reach the camp on the other side of the island ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... proceed by way of contrast to note, for example, how this magnanimity was limited to friends in the upper levels of Athenian society, and went hand in hand with approval of slave labor and other exploitations which a modern conscience forbids. To give sharper edge to the conception of man as deserving right treatment for his own sake, the class might go on to examine other notable violations of personality in past and present; e.g., slavery (read for instance Sparr's History of the African Slave Trade) ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... France, not only abhorrence for the enemy of your country, I saw a purely personal and deadly hate of an individual man—the unknown and mysterious Englishman who proved too clever for you last year. And because I believe that hatred will prove sharper and more far-seeing than selfless patriotism, therefore I urged the Committee of Public Safety to allow you to work out your own revenge, and thereby to serve your country more effectually than any other—perhaps more pure-minded patriot would do. You go to England ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... "Folks'll wonder if they see me hangin' around here. But before I go I want to tell you somethin'. Your mother was a-countin' out my change yesterday when she got took. She thought she was goin' then on account o' the pain bein' sharper than common, an' she cries out: 'Donnie! Donnie! My baby, whatever is a-goin' to become o' you when I'm gone!' I was the only one that heard her say it. I caught her when she was fallin', an' I told her I'd see that ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... no surer index nor sharper test of national or individual character than the sort of 'heroes' they worship. Vox populi has not been very much refined since Saul's day. Athletes and soldiers still captivate the crowd, and a mere prophet like Samuel has no chance beside the man ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... agitated group on the platform, the central figure being Bernard Ridder, recognised leader of the large German-American population of New York City that had remained staunchly loyal in the crisis. Presently a clamour from the crowd outside, sharper and fiercer than any that had preceded it, announced some new and unexpected danger close ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... man's sharp wits, rendered still sharper by his sufferings, were cutting deeply and swiftly into this matter. "They did well, but none could have urged it more fervently than I, for none knows so well as I the joy of battle against the infidel under thy command and the glory of prevailing in thy sight. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... finger tips had reached an extraordinary degree of development, equal to that of one born blind. And those fingers were skillful, adroit, alert, their every movement carried out with that smooth, indefinable grace which is almost always possessed by the really high-class card sharper. His fingers were adorned with numerous rings, in which sparkled diamonds and other precious stones. And it was not for nothing that Sergei Kovroff took pride in them! This glitter of diamonds, scattering rainbow rays, dazzled the eyes of his fellow players. When Sergei Kovroff ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... wert mixed in this affair. Keep from the Doones, keep from De Whichehalse, keep from everything which leads beyond the sight of thy knowledge. I meant to use thee as my tool; but I see thou art too honest and simple. I will send a sharper down; but never let me find thee, John, either a tool for the other side, or a tube for my words to ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... details that are borrowed from literary sources like Gildas, Jerome, Prosper, betray great ignorance on the part of the borrower.[1] On the other hand, the native Celtic instinct is more definitely alive and comes into sharper contrast with the idea of Rome. Throughout, no detail occurs which enlarges our knowledge of Roman or of early post-Roman Britain. The same features recur in later writers who might be or have been supposed to have had access to British sources. ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... detestable noise, insufferable odour and dirty, oil-stained rider in goggled spectacles, was scarcely ever seen,—and motor-cars always turned another way on leaving the county town of Riversford, in order to avoid the sharp ascent from the town, as well as the still sharper and highly dangerous descent into the valley again, where the little mediaeval village lay nestled. Thus it was enabled to gather to itself a strangely beautiful halcyon calm on the Lord's Day,—and in fair Spring weather like the ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... world it seemed to him as though he were once again the same Ishmael who had so often gone this way long years ago, when the soul behind life had still intrigued him more than the manifestations of life itself. Whether it was that that afternoon in the study had awakened with sharper poignancy than ever before the remembrance of his youth, that some aspect of the room, with its musty books, its fire and the driving rain without, had awakened in him a forgotten memory of a day that had once held ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... such a place it was, where the road made a sharper turn than any the drunken chauffeur had reckoned on, that catastrophe leaped out ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... had a little fit of "work" which seized upon him, and so he toiled till late at night, sending some cipher dispatches to the Viceroy. "I may make a point in this, perhaps a C. B.," said the old veteran, who was sharper when drunk than sober. "I'll put a pin in Johnstone's game, and get ahead of Abercromby." This last old warrior had secretly vowed to force Hugh Fraser Johnstone to present him to the "little party in the Silver Bungalow." The Calcutta general was a Knight of Venus, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... and snarl, Sharper the dragons bite and sting! Eric the son of Hakon Yarl A death-drink salt as the sea Pledges to thee, Olaf ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... here's a fool coming, said a sensible man, when he saw Beau Nash's splendid carriage draw up to the door. Is a beau a fool? Is a sharper a fool? Was Bonaparte a fool? If you reply 'no' to the last two questions, you must give the same answer to the first. A beau is a fox, but not a fool—a very clever fellow, who, knowing the weakness of his brothers and sisters in the world, takes advantage of it to make himself a fame and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... the name given to long many-oared barges, particularly the Lord Mayor's barge of state. Foist is also a term for a sharper; and gallifoist was intended to be pronounced ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... of a beautiful little girl, the heiress to a big estate, who had been carried off by strolling gipsies, and never been seen again by her sorrowing relatives; while the waitress hinted darkly that the time might come when it would be a comfort to know force had been employed, for sharper than a serpent's tooth was an ungrateful child, and she always had said that there was something uncanny about ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... sharper, ain't she?" squeaked the woman. "Well, I won't tell her 'bout the cats in the back kitchen. But o' course, if folks will hire ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... a good prophet, and that afternoon the steamer passed an immense berg, the glittering pinnacles of which towered high into the air. The presence of it added to the cold, which was becoming sharper every hour. ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... than the sea-monster. And he cursed his eldest daughter Goneril so as was terrible to hear; praying that she might never have a child, or if she had, that it might live to return that scorn and contempt upon her which she had shown to him that she might feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it was to have a thankless child. And Goneril's husband, the duke of Albany, beginning to excuse himself for any share which Lear might suppose he had in the unkindness, Lear would not hear him out, but in a rage ordered his horses to be saddled, and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... on each other; that woman should train herself to be herself, and to stand on her own feet; that when woman had the business training of men, the widow and the unmarried woman—half of all women—would no longer be the easy prey of every kind of sharper. These new teachers were, of course, made social martyrs, but they sowed the seed and the crop was coming on. That every woman should prepare herself to stand alone in the world was the first article ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... from the village, and who knew that they had killed one horse and wounded two, said "Come, let us turn back and fight with these men until not one is left alive, for there are but a few of them!" and at once all returned with more spirit and greater impetuosity than before, and in this way a sharper battle than the first was fought. At the end, the Indians fled and the horsemen followed them in all directions as long as they could. In these two encounters more than six hundred men were left dead, and it is believed also that Maila, one of their captains, died, and the Indians ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... sharper joke than that was passed upon the people of Fond du Lac. Only six years before they had given me license to preach, and sent me to the Conference, and now, in sending me back so soon, the Conference seemed to say, "Brethren, we return you as good as you gave." I have heard it said that sometimes ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... finished his meal, cleared away the remains, set the table for breakfast, and was in the act of filling his pipe, when the Sealyham growled. Anthony, whose ears were becoming sharper every day, listened intently. The next moment came a sharp tapping upon the door. In an instant Patch was ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... bill from you, since you cashed it; that is enough for me. I should be glad to be of service to you, but I really don't see what I can do. The best advice I can give you is to make a sacrifice of the rascally sharper who gave you the forged bill, and if you can't do that I would counsel you to disappear, and the sooner the better, or else you may come to the galleys, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Cyclas amnica and fragments of a Unio, besides several land shells. In the black peaty mass Number 5, fragments of wood of the oak, yew, and fir have been recognised. The flint weapons which I have seen from Hoxne are so much more perfect, and have their cutting edge so much sharper than those from the valley of the Somme, that they seem neither to have been used by Man, nor to have been rolled in the bed of a river. The opinion of Mr. Frere, therefore, that there may have been a manufactory of weapons on ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... guarded by a regiment of negroes, as the Northern people want to kill him. I hope they won't, for if they did then they might put some one in his place that has some sense, and then the war would come to an end and we should be cheated in a settlement, for the Yankees are sharper than our big-hearted, generous men. No, sir, no; you mustn't talk. I've promised to keep you quiet, so lie still. I'll ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... precarious. I had paid more than was due; other lodgers fell into an opposite error, and forgot to pay Janet at all. Then, Janet being ignorant of all indirect modes of screwing money out of her lodgers, others in the same line of life, who were sharper than the poor, simple Highland woman, were enabled to let their apartments cheaper in appearance, though the inmates usually found them twice as ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... dear," said the playful old gentleman, patting Oliver on the head approvingly. "I never saw a sharper lad. Here's a shilling for you. If you go on in this way, you'll be the greatest man of the time. And now come here, and I'll show you how to take the marks out of ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser |
