|
|
|
More "Earnestness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... help being a little surprised at the earnestness with which you implore me to read Archbishop Whately's treatise. My objection to reading of books never extends to any book either given or lent, or strongly recommended to me. I am so fond of reading ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... faint echo of the words he used, but I can give no conception of the dignity and earnestness of his manner, or the intense pathos of ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... difficult to prevail on her, because she thought him as yet not well enough to be left. He was, of course, shocked at being thus considered, and as soon as he next saw Amabel, told her, with great earnestness, that he could not bear to see her remaining there on his account; that he was almost well, and meant to leave Recoara very soon; the journey was very easy, the sea voyage would be the best thing for him, and he should be glad to get to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... less, they asserted that the Samnites carried with them pallisades for a rampart, and evidently intended to draw lines of circumvallation round the camp. On this the consul exclaimed, with great earnestness, against submitting to such an ignominious insult, and from so dastardly a foe. "Shall we even be blockaded," said he, "in our camp, and die, with ignominy, by famine, rather than bravely by the sword, if it must be so? May the gods be propitious! and let every one ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... enemies. Much of it, I should have thought, was in stark defiance of the Defence of the Realm Acts, but if any wise Scotland Yard officer had listened to it he would probably have considered it harmless because of its contradictions. It was full of a fierce earnestness, and it was full of humour—long-drawn American metaphors at which that most critical audience roared with laughter. But it was not the kind of thing that they were accustomed to, and I could fancy what Wake would have said of it. The conviction grew upon me that Blenkiron was deliberately trying ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... and vitalities of what we call Protestantism,—an assertion by the living soul of its right to be heard once more in a world which seemed to ignore its existence, and had set up a ghastly skeleton of dry bones for its oracle and God. It was that necessary return to health, earnestness, and virtuous endeavor which Kreeshna speaks of in the Hindoo Geeta: "Whenever vice and corruption have sapped the foundations of the world, and men have lost their sense of good and evil, I, Kreeshna, make myself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Gelsomina, blushing with her own earnestness to stand exculpated in his eyes, had done; "I understand it all. Distrust thy cousin, for the Senate itself is ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the human voice. Thus Auguste and I had frequent dialogues. He told me something of his past life, which I do not remember very well. I think its chief incident was his having been drafted for the army, and having served his term. Of his future, however, he spoke with an earnestness which has left its impression on my mind. He said that the next winter he meant to go to Paris and seek a service; and his perseverance in wringing employment out of us inclines me to think that he fulfilled his intention. Savoy, to which province he belonged, had just been annexed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... which is Mi-Doovel-Parik-tooti—and she was the only Gipsy round London who could put the words in Romany—and some other conversation accompanied with "coppers and baccy," &c., and to which she replied, "Amen!" with as much earnestness as if she was the greatest saint outside ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the-game's-closed-till-another-day, the myriad of tortured souls that are supposed to haunt the treacherous bogs and quicksands of the great Exchange, where lie their earthly hopes, must have prayed with renewed earnestness for its destruction before the morrow. Never had the Stock Exchange folded its tents with surer confidence of continuing its victorious march. Sugar advanced with record-breaking total sales to 2071/2 and in the final half-hour carried the whole list of stocks up with it. In that time ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... play, and said: "Come, Eliza, I hear that Georgia is sick, and I am going to take you back, and bring her in your place." The sweet little girl looked very grave for a moment, then glancing up with her large black eyes into that dear old face, she took courage, and asked, with the earnestness of an anxious child: "Grandma, can't ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... vast and rich territory which is included in the so-called "Pale of Settlement." This portion of Russia was peopled with many millions of Jews. It was not possible any longer to do away with this large population by either drowning it in a river, or even—as many are still planning in all earnestness—by deportation. Thus, the Russian state, in the person of Empress Catherine II, for the first time found itself forced to face the Jewish question in a form which did not allow of simply waving it aside. How then did the enlightened Empress settle it? Well, she simply ...
— The Shield • Various
... MacIan looked at him for one moment with a sort of notion that perhaps he was not too old to be merely playing the fool. But after staring steadily for an instant Turnbull saw the hard and horrible earnestness in the man's eyes behind all his empty animation. Then Turnbull looked very gravely at the strict gravel walls and the gay flower-beds and the long rectangular red-brick building, which the mist had left evident beyond them. Then he ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Slop,' quoth my uncle Toby, (repeating his wish for Dr. Slop a second time, and with a degree of more zeal and earnestness in his manner of wishing, than he had wished at first (Vide.))—'I wish, Dr. Slop,' quoth my uncle Toby, 'you had seen what prodigious ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... companionship upon the inarticulate stranger. An elderly gentleman, with huge goggles and long nails, whose fingers were stained with opium, was the pacificator of the party, and calmed the frequent wranglings in which the other eighteen Chinese engaged with much earnestness. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... do not remain there!" said Mother Bunch, with so much earnestness, that Agricola joined her, and said to his father: "Since sister rashes it, father, she has some reason for it. The Boulevard de l'Hopital is a few steps from here; nobody passes that way; we can talk ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... and his lovely daughter, Isabel, smiled at the earnestness of the old man, and slipping some money into his hand, the latter bade him come up to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... little boy who had spent a few years in the school for the deaf and dumb, was watching with great earnestness for his father, who was to fetch him home for the ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... recovers her presence of mind, and asserts her native dignity. In her justification of her feelings and her conduct, there is neither sophistry, nor self-deception, nor presumption, but a noble simplicity, combined with the most impassioned earnestness; while the language naturally rises in its eloquent beauty, as the tide of feeling, now first let loose from the bursting heart, comes pouring forth in words. The ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... evening, I wrote from the time I had drunk my tea, about six o'clock, till after one in the morning when my hand and fingers were so weary, that I- could not hold my pen to finish the sentence, but left Matilda and Isabella talking, in the middle of a paragraph. You will laugh at my earnestness; but if I have amused you by retracing with any fidelity the manners of ancient days, I am content, and give you leave to think me as idle ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... began to show more earnestness and energy. Bucquoi and Dampierre, with two armies, fell upon the Bohemian territories, which they treated as a hostile country. But the imperial generals found the march to Prague more difficult than they had expected. Every pass, every position that was the least tenable, must be opened by the ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... She was not in the least changed, but looked as beautiful and serene as usual. Her salutation, though far from deficient in warmth, was a little more dignified than that which Plantagenet remembered; but still her presence reassured him, and while he pressed her hand with earnestness he contrived to murmur forth with pleasing emotion, his delight at again meeting her. Strange to say, in the absorbing agitation of the moment, all thought of Venetia had vanished; and it was when he had turned and beheld a maiden of the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... in getting to work, and his vigilance and method soon set their mark on the Golden Dustman's affairs. His earnestness in determining to understand the length and breadth and depth of every piece of work submitted to him by his employer, was as special as his despatch in transacting it. He accepted no information or explanation ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... dancers were flying through the figures in silence and breathless haste. They could not stop or speak when I came in, and seemed quite surprised at my laughing at them; but you have no idea how ridiculous they looked, especially as their gravity and earnestness were profound. ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... and on the first Sunday "the brethren", (as they affectionately called all who, like themselves, were interested in living a Christian life,) came to them, and a series of meetings for prayer, conference, and instruction was begun. Boehler was a man of attractive personality, and convincing earnestness, and in spite of his slight knowledge of their language many English also became interested and formed a society similar to that begun by Zinzendorf, the two soon uniting in the Fetter ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... long fight that is now nearing its triumph but never before have been actually organized to work for the cause. Men old and young, men of the most diverse professions, parties and creeds, spoke with equal earnestness in behalf of equal rights for women." The speakers were the Hon. Frederick C. Howe, Judge Dimner Beeber, president of the Pennsylvania League; A. S. G. Taylor of the Connecticut League; Joseph Fels, the Single Tax leader; Julian Kennedy of Pittsburgh; George Foster ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... his word. I feel that my essay may be scouted as a paradox; but I hope that many may recognise that I am not, out of mere boredom, endeavouring to stop my ears against popular platitude, but rather, in a spirit of real earnestness, to point out to the mob how it has been cruel to George. I do not despair of success. I think I shall make converts. The mob is really very fickle ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... In his earnestness he had taken her hand. He dropped it suddenly and drew back at the sound of a soft, cold, drawling ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... earnestness that he put one foot in the gutter, and fell heavily against his master. The ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... his departure the Council of Regency, rudely shaken by the ultimatum which had driven him forth, became more docile and active, and for a season the measures enjoined by the Commander-in-Chief were pursued with some show of earnestness. ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... that this book's miraculous stupidities were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume carefully through and keep that opinion. It was written in serious good faith and deep earnestness, by an honest and upright idiot who believed he knew something of the English language, and could impart his knowledge to others. The amplest proof of this crops out somewhere or other upon each and every page. There are sentences in the book which could have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with whom one of our party, recognising him as an old acquaintance, entered into conversation. In answer to an inquiry made as to the progress of the good cause in the valley, the old man replied very despondingly. "There was," he said, "a great lack of faith, of zeal, of earnestness, amongst the rising generation. They were too fond of pleasures, too apt to be led away by the fleeting vanities of this world." It was only the old story—the complaint of the aged against the young. When ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... taken on him the hold of necessity. And with a free mind as to the obstacles that lay between him and the realization of the great dream of his life, the winning of the one woman who could make his life complete, Philip set to work with an earnestness and a clearness of vision that had never been given ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... worthy friends, and by the help of a stout and uncorrupted heart, by penitence and by kindliness, did our brave little Walter win his way. He was helped, too, greatly, by his achievements in the games. At football he played with a vigour and earnestness which carried everything before it. He got several bases, and was the youngest boy in the school who ever succeeded in doing this. Gradually but surely his temporary unpopularity gave way; and even before he began to be generally ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... and the reason they assigned, was, that the river had never beheld a white man before; and, therefore, they dreaded the consequences of their rashness and presumption in regarding its waters so attentively. This and similar nonsense was delivered with such determination and earnestness, that they reluctantly laid down, and allowed themselves to be covered with mats, in order to quiet their apprehensions; for they did not forget that they were prisoners, and that a perseverance in standing up, would ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... know, but I do." In their earnestness they had come close to the bars; she stood with both hands resting on the grille, looking in; he in ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... But I'd rather be a 'fraid cat than a fat cat!" declared the little, lisping girl with an earnestness that made them all smile. Harriet came swinging in with long, steady strokes, the last one landing her on the sand with the greater part of her body ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... sometimes, but more seldom, to the Jamiesons' estancia. The light-hearted young Englishmen were naturally more to their fancy than the quiet and thoughtful Scotchmen. The latter were, however, greatly esteemed by Mr. and Mrs. Hardy, who perceived in them a fund of quiet good sense and earnestness. ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... as to every earnest seeker after wisdom, that Heavenly Lady showed herself and her exceeding beauty; and gave gifts to each according to his earnestness, his purity and his ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... that we had got everything comfortable for the winter, which now, about the middle of October, began to set in with severe earnestness, with heavy falls of snow and strong northerly winds. Our house, on which we had so much prided ourselves, did not keep out the cold blast as we expected; and though we covered ourselves up with blankets, ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... interpreter, and coming to an Indian village gathered its inhabitants about me, and sitting down upon a hillock read and expounded to them the Sermon on the Mount. I was much edified by the solemnity of their demeanor and the earnestness of their attention, and had conceived great hopes for their spiritual welfare, when, the reading and exhortation being finished, one of their old men arose and made me a long speech, which I could not well understand, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... with a spoke-sheave at the spoke of a cart-wheel. How curiously the smallest visual fact will sometimes keep its place in the memory, when it cannot with all earnestness of endeavour recall a thought—a far more important fact! That will come again only when its time ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... little Martin, who could not yet read a line, was throwing the whole deep earnestness of an active intellect into ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... the loss of the fort of Cremera, while the consul had his standing camp at no great distance from thence, was the cause of his unpopularity. This crushed him, though both the senators had exerted themselves in his behalf with no less earnestness than in behalf of Coriolanus, and the popularity of his father Agrippa was not yet forgotten. The tribunes, however, acted leniently in the matter of the fine: though they had arraigned him for a capital offence, they imposed on him, when found guilty, a fine ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... matters in well-weighed and well-chosen phrases, which carried conviction of his earnestness and sincerity to the minds of his hearers; and we observed that the audience was evidently profoundly impressed by the importance of his statements. This fact seemed to us very significant, as he was addressing one of the most brilliant assemblies—representing ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... visible. Her closed eyes seemed to sleep. She had the perfect peace of Luini's S. Catherine borne by the angels to her grave on Sinai. I have rarely seen anything which surprised and touched me more. The religious earnestness of the young custode, the hushed adoration of the country-folk who had silently assembled round us, intensified the sympathy-inspiring beauty of the slumbering girl. Could Julia, daughter of Claudius, have been fairer than this maiden, when the Lombard workmen found her in her Latin tomb, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... unusually heavy. I gathered this from the demeanour of the ship's crew generally, officers as well as men; the former revealing the feeling by the extreme care with which they scrutinised and personally superintended the several preparations for the expedition, and the latter by the grim and silent earnestness with which they performed their share of the work. True, there was some faint attempt at jocularity among a few of the occupants of the midshipmen's berth as we sought our hammocks, but it was manifestly braggadocio, utterly lacking the true ring of heartiness that usually characterised such ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... said, of thousands? And not only of thousands in our crowded marts of commerce, but in our principal towns—nay, even in our rural districts. It is an age of impulse. Every thing is proceeding with railroad speed. Every branch of business is urged forward with all practical earnestness. Every sail is set—main-sail, top-sails, star-gazers, heaven-disturbers—all expanded to catch the breeze, and urge the vessel ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... cry softly, and hid her face in her handkerchief. The son of science was perplexed. What should he do or say? All this was new to him. That a young and pretty girl should appeal to him with such earnestness disconcerted him, and he did not know how to act. A problem in triangulation or knotty question in physics would have charmed him and braced him up for any work. This was so new and so peculiar that he said, "Don't cry, cousin," ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... to a window saw, in a public square opposite, a crowd of persons surrounding some high officials who were engaged in cutting off a man's head. Just before the executioner delivered the fatal stroke, the victim was asked if he had anything to say. He explained with earnestness that the deed for which he was about to suffer had been inspired and commanded by a brass-headed cow and four bushels ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... introduction of terms from the gipsy's caravan, the betting ring, or the thieves' kitchen; one cannot help being made angry and sad by observing a tendency to belittle all things that are great, to mock all earnestness, to vulgarize all beauty. There is not a quarter where the subtle taint has not crept in, and under its malign influence poetry has all but expired, good conversation has utterly ceased to exist, art is no longer serious, and the intercourse ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the solemn feeling of terror and pity that filled both their souls. And yet there was a difference, for one retained, even in her distress, the involuntary smile of her bright youth, while in the eyes of the other, pale as death, was the grave earnestness of the heart which, one love lost, can ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... knowledge on the subject of the dates of discoveries in the arts and sciences, but well do we remember the earnestness, and single-minded devotion to a laudable purpose, with which our worthy friend first communicated to us his ideas on the subject of using the electric spark by way of a telegraph. It was in Paris and during the winter of 1831-82 and the succeeding spring, and we have a satisfaction in recording ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... enough, which seemed to be the result of some long train of thought. Ma suddenly stopped working to look up, and waved a protesting hand at the swarming flies. She found the girl's violet eyes looking steadily into hers. There was an earnestness in their depths as unusual as the seriousness of her face. The old woman had been about to answer hastily, but she ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the deep tenderness of his voice or the earnestness of his question. Lloyd felt the blood surge up in her face and her heart throbbed so fast she could hear it beat. But she hastily thrust back the ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... "new affection"—the love of Christ—in its turn expelled the worldliness and unrest which existed, and gave a tone to her mental and spiritual nature, which, by steady degrees, lifted her up, and caused her to forget the syren song of earth. Not all at once,—in the story of her newborn earnestness we shall find that the habits and associations of her daily life sometimes acted as drawbacks to her progress in faith. But the seed having once taken root in that youthful heart, germinated, developed, and sprang up, to bear a glorious harvest in the work ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... the Wise One, with great earnestness, "deeply as the Prince is indebted to the Shadow Witch, brave though he is and potent as is his Sword of Flames against the Wizard, it is not given to him ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... who have been assigned to that mission. [41] In letters written in the month of October, Father Gabriel writes as follows: "Our Lord has singularly blessed our attempts and labors. For after the flocks of the heathen were gathered in one place they were converted to God with such earnestness, so completely without pretense, that I can say nothing else than that God their Maker and Redeemer has desired by some peculiar favor in their calling to add them to His flock—inasmuch as within two months two thousand mortals have yielded themselves to the laws and customs of Christ, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue: these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.—Confucius. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... a ring of earnestness that seemed impossible to be counterfeit. Puzzled, I looked at her, ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Osterman. "He don't have to go into this thing, if it's against his conscience. That's all right. Magnus can stay out if he wants to, but that won't prevent us going ahead and seeing what we can do. Only there's this about it." He turned again to Magnus, speaking with every degree of earnestness, every appearance of conviction. "I did not deny, Governor, from the very start that this would mean bribery. But you don't suppose that I like the idea either. If there was one legitimate hope that was yet left untried, no matter how forlorn it was, I would try it. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... as much about the world as a tin jelly-mould knows about the dinner, and is the oddest mixture of brooding anxieties over things that don't in the least matter and of bland failure to suspect things that intensely do. She lives in short in a weird little waste of words—over the moral earnestness we none of us cultivate; yet hasn't a notion of any effective earnestness herself except on the subject of empty bottles, which have, it would appear, noble neglected uses. At this time of day it doesn't matter, but if there could have been dropped into her empty bottles, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... She sensed his earnestness, and spoke just as seriously. "It is not impossible. I have heard of such things before. I was sleepy, and—the point is, what did I say?" ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... hand in the endeavour to bring him back to sense; he seemed about to cry out on her. But mademoiselle's earnestness had drawn all eyes. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... the two theories, the obligation to lead a moral life; and to this sensible view of their functions the bishops and clergy had in fact gradually arrived in the last century, when the revival of what is called earnestness, first in the form of Evangelicalism, and then of Anglo-Catholicism, awoke ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... guarding our right. An assault was ordered for the 3d, to be made mainly by the corps of Hancock, Wright and Smith; but Warren and Burnside were to support it by threatening Lee's left, and to attack with great earnestness if he should either reinforce more threatened points by drawing from that quarter or if a favorable opportunity should ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... instrument had been dragged was smashed beyond repair; save for some scrapes on the varnish the piano had suffered no harm, and its tone was agreeable to the ear. The pianist possessed technique and played with feeling and earnestness, and it seemed weirdly strange to hear Schumann's "Slumber Song" in such surroundings. But the war has produced more ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... was beautifully simple, thrilling the vast throng with a sudden deeper conviction of the speaker's earnestness: "Charity! Oh, of all the flowers that have swung their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare as this one flower of charity. Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live;" and then the Saviour's remonstrance seemed to arrest them—"Ye will not come to me that ye might have life;" until at length the influences of the Holy Spirit were supplicated with earnestness and solemnity. These instructions and such conversations were daily repeated; and henceforth each time I saw them, I perceived a gradual but distinct unfolding of the ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... Paul. They separated; and each began a careful and exhaustive search for inaccuracies, incongruities, and contradictions in the documents. They were engaged in exposing error, they said, and in searching after truth. Yes, they were searching after truth, and they sought with earnestness and sincerity. They were searching after truth, and they found it. For when, at the appointed time, they met to arrange the details of their projected campaign, each had to confess to the other that he had become convinced of the authenticity of the records ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... to the great subjects handled by St. Augustine in his many works, and from the literary attractions of writings which unite high moral earnestness and the use of a cultivated rhetorical style, his works formed a model for Latin theologians as long as that language continued to be habitually used by Western scholars; and to-day both the spirit and the style of the great man have ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... marriages were declared to be barbarians; not Greeks but Egyptians, and were brought up accordingly. They left the worship of Jupiter and Juno for that of Isis and Osiris, and perhaps the more readily for the greater earnestness with which the Egyptian gods were worshipped. We now trace their descendants by the form of their skulls, even into the priestly families; and of one hundred mummies covered with hieroglyphics, taken up from the catacombs ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... seem to me to give insufficient prominence to the gaiety of Stevenson. It was his cardinal quality in those early days. A childlike mirth leaped and danced in him; he seemed to skip the hills of life. He was simply bubbling with quips and jest; his inherent earnestness or passion about abstract things was incessantly relieved by jocosity; and when he had built one of his intellectual castles in the sand, a wave of humor was certain to sweep in and destroy it. I can not, for the life of me, recall any ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... of Christianity,—so great and few and simple in their application to our needs! The violet eyes had never appealed more tenderly, the soft voice had never been softer than now, as he strove to explain to this ignorant soul, the cardinal doctrines of Faith and Repentance, and Charity, with an earnestness that was perhaps more effectual than ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... moment, he now found how hard it is to renew communications with a being who has been so long neglected. The fault lay in himself, however, for a gracious ear was open, even over the death-bed of Stephen Spike, could that rude spirit only bring itself to ask for mercy in earnestness and truth. As his companions saw his struggles, they left him for a few minutes to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... by her earnestness, and then she said, with sweet humility, "It is only that I feel so unworthy of all this happiness; but if you and Raby think it best, I will be guided by you. Will you tell him so? but no, there he is alone; I ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... but he has not imagination, in kind or degree, as Shakspeare and Milton have; the boldest effort of his powers in this way is the character of Talus.[2] Add to this a feminine tenderness and almost maidenly purity of feeling, and above all, a deep moral earnestness which produces a believing sympathy and acquiescence in the reader, and you have a tolerably adequate view ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... them, too," broke in Amy, adding with such earnestness that the girls looked at her wonderingly. "They are everything that Betty has said. And yet when Betty spoke of the plains as being cruel I couldn't help wondering if the mountains weren't sometimes ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... of, and nothing to bring confidence. Old enough to have lost the first fine careless rapture that showers on the immature 'Stunt imaginary Commissionerships and Stars, and sends him into the collar with coltish earnestness and abandon; too young to be yet able to look back upon the progress he had made, and thank Providence that under the conditions of the day he had come even so far, he stood upon the "dead-centre" of his career. And when a man stands still, he feels the slightest impulse ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... dissatisfaction, manifesting itself often in rude contests and ruder speech, with the gulf which separates principles from actions. Men are struggling to realize dim ideals of right and truth, and each failure adds to the desperate earnestness of their efforts. Beneath all the shrewdness and selfishness of the American character, there is a smouldering enthusiasm which flames out at the first touch of fire; sometimes at the hot and hasty words of party, and sometimes at the bidding of great thoughts and unselfish ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... according to the good pleasure of Thy will! How safe for the preserving of heavenly grace to fly from human approval, and not to long after the things which seem to win admiration abroad, but to follow with all earnestness those things which bring amendment of life and heavenly fervour! How many have been injured by their virtue being made known and too hastily praised. How truly profitable hath been grace preserved in silence in this ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... some outstanding post or stone it was necessary to travel quite gently. They were indeed in no condition to travel otherwise if light had not been wanting. Slowly and patiently, with painful care groping their way, they pushed on through the snow and the thick night. Alice could feel the earnestness of Ellen's grasp upon her clothes; and her close pressing up to her made their progress still slower and more difficult than ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... rhetorical outbreaks. But he was discontented with these rhetorical outbreaks. His dispositions to fall into them made him rather like a nervous sepia that cannot keep its ink sac quiet while it is sitting for its portrait. In the earnestness of his attempt at self-display he vanished in his ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... her hands on his arm, and was speaking with unusual earnestness, and he knew, by a certain look in her eyes, that ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to be able to tell you what I mean. But it is n't possible—now. Will you let me beg your pardon?" she urged, with impulsive earnestness. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... would be bad, by the way, for the Democrato-Rum-elected Governor Seymour, for the whole alcoholic vote was cast in his favor. There will, we believe, come a time when the party of progress will urge an enlarged provision of education and recreation for the people, with the same earnestness which it now ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the monastery was handsomely rebuilt and a multitude of altars erected; and beautiful frescoes and stained windows came from the leaders of the reaction. The whole effect was, perhaps, somewhat theatrical and thin, but it showed none the less earnestness in making the old "Isle of Saints" a protest against ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... demeanour, dress, and general appearance, suggested the idea of a city missionary—an idea which was strengthened when, in obedience to the woman's request, he promptly prayed, in measured sentences, yet with intense earnestness, for deliverance—first from sin and then from impending death—in the name of Jesus. His petition was very short, and it was barely finished when a wave of unusual size struck the vessel with tremendous violence, burst over the side and almost swept every one into the sea. ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... house, a carriage drove unexpectedly into the yard, rustling over the grass, and in it was sitting one of those girls. It was the elder one. She had come to ask for subscriptions for some villagers whose cottages had been burnt down. Speaking with great earnestness and precision, and not looking at us, she told us how many houses in the village of Siyanovo had been burnt, how many men, women, and children were left homeless, and what steps were proposed, to begin with, by the Relief Committee, of which she was now a member. After handing us the ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... wife's failing health had forced her to relinquish teaching, and the burden of earning their living had fallen entirely upon him. She hoped that a long rest might improve her in health, and that in some months—six, she imagined as a sufficient interval—she would be able to undertake in full earnestness her daughter's education. To do this had become her dearest wish; for there could now be little doubt that Evelyn had inherited her voice, the same beautiful quality and fluency in vocalisation; and thinking of it, Mrs. Innes ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... The earnestness of our parents in the pursuit of their work could not fail to impress in some degree the children. The main purpose of Christianizing that people was felt in everything. It was like garrison life in time of war. But this seriousness was not ascetical or moroseful. ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... the fault lay somewhere within himself. She was as she had ever been, but he lacked the strength to rise to her. Why? Why? He searched himself with a desperate earnestness, but he could find no answer to his questioning. In himself, as in her, there had come no change. She was still to him all that she ever had been—the star of his destiny, the pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day, to guide him on his path. Where, then, the fine, pure ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... like to try it?" A conviction of Kellogg's earnestness forced itself upon Duncan's understanding. "Would I—!" He lifted his glass and drained it at a gulp. "Why, that's the first laugh I've had ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... much struck with Paul's earnestness and zeal, though at that time I could scarcely comprehend all he said—I myself knew nothing experimentally of the great love of Jesus of which he spoke. The poor black Christian was far more enlightened ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... brought a coil of cotton clothesline to Casey, looking up at him with wide, measuring eyes of a tawny shade like sunlight shining through thin brown silk. "I wish you'd give Joe a beating too," she said with grave earnestness. "He's a badder man than Ole. He hurt my mamma. Will you give Joe a beating and tie his naughty hands jus' like that when he wakes up?" She lifted her plump little body on her scuffed toes, her brown, dimpled fingers clutching ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... with more earnestness to press this care upon you, because I have observed oaths and covenants have been undertaken by us formerly, and by the command of authority, the fruit whereof, though great, yet answered not our expectation; the Lord surely hath been displeased with the slightness of our hearts in the work. I ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... speaks: "Often in my contemplation of nature, radiant intimations, and as it were sheaves of light, appear before me as to the facts of cosmogony, in which my mind has, perhaps, taken especial part." He wisely adds, "but it is necessary with earnestness to verify the knowledge we gain by these flashes of light." And none should forget this. Sight must be verified by light before it can deserve the honors of piety and genius. Yet sight comes first, and of this sight of the world of causes, this ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the furnace,—red hot,—white hot,—clear through. I have little doubt that the sharpness and ruggedness of my writing is due, in some degree, to the curt, sharp statements of that period. When men were feeling so intensely, and speaking with a force and earnestness unknown in these later years, a reporter would insensibly take on something of the spirit of the hour, otherwise his reports would be limp and lifeless. I was induced to study stenography, but the system then in use was complex and inadequate,—hard to learn. I was informed by ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... her hand, and stood up, facing him. Her countenance, turned to the light, shone like a white flame; it was tensely aquiver with passionate earnestness, lambent with the flowering of her body, of dim desire, the heritage of flesh. She spoke in a voice that startled Gordon by its new depth, the brave thrill of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... sleep, or a nice bit of supper, and to get into bed,—I'm so tired of a night, I like to get to bed early if I can." We went on talking about eating and drinking; she told me what she liked, and what she disliked with much gusto and earnestness. "I'll give you a good dinner", said I, "and we will come here afterwards." "Will you?" "Yes,—but I won't unless I have you three hours here." "Impossible,—I dare not be out after half-past ten." ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Fernando made all haste to leave me, and by the adroitness of my maid, who was indeed the one who had admitted him, gained the street before daybreak; but on taking leave of me he told me, though not with as much earnestness and fervour as when he came, that I might rest assured of his faith and of the sanctity and sincerity of his oaths; and to confirm his words he drew a rich ring off his finger and placed it upon mine. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... seated himself at the piano, at the host's request, and addressed himself to his work with a loving earnestness that showed that the soul of music dwelt within him. The very first chords he struck riveted at once the attention of every one, an attention which was deepened into surprised delight, as he executed with perfect finish passages of surpassing brilliancy growing out of ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... figure now-a-days! The time was when I looked the part and acted it well, and then I liked to play it. I must leave it, with many other good things, to younger men." Speaking about dramatic elocution, he said, "The best method is obtained by close observation of Nature, and above all by earnestness. If you can impress people with the conviction that you feel what you say, they will pardon many shortcomings. And, above all, study, study, study! All the genius in the world will not help you along with any art unless ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... professions are not hypocritical: they are for the most part quite sincere. The common libertine, like the drunkard, succumbs to a temptation which he does not defend, and against which he warns others with an earnestness proportionate to the intensity of his own remorse. He (or she) may be a liar and a humbug, pretending to be better than the detected libertines, and clamoring for their condign punishment; but this is mere self-defence. No reasonable person expects the burglar to confess his pursuits, ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... moral indignation. Every now and then genuine feeling seems to come to the surface. For a time the superincumbent masses of hypocrisy vanish. In speaking of his mother or his pursuits he forgets to wear his mask. He feels a genuine enthusiasm about his friends; he believes with almost pathetic earnestness in the amazing talents of Bolingbroke, and the patriotic devotion of the younger men who are rising up to overthrow the corruptions of Walpole; he takes the affectation of his friends as seriously as a simple-minded man ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... clasp the shade Of my departed mother; thrice I sprang Toward her, by desire impetuous urged, And thrice she flitted from between my arms, Light as a passing shadow or a dream. Then, pierced by keener grief, in accents wing'd With filial earnestness I thus replied. 250 My mother, why elud'st thou my attempt To clasp thee, that ev'n here, in Pluto's realm, We might to full satiety indulge Our grief, enfolded in each other's arms? Hath Proserpine, alas! only dispatch'd A shadow to me, to augment my woe? Then, instant, thus the venerable ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... deny—that Pope was a great writer, and the "angel of reasonableness," the strong common sense of both was a link between them; but the expressions he uses during his controversy with Bowles look like jests, till we are convinced of his earnestness by his anger. "Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age can ever diminish my veneration for him who is the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence.... ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... The gaunt farmer made me welcome, and Josie, hearing my errand, told me anxiously that they wanted a school over the hill; that but once since the war had a teacher been there; that she herself longed to learn,—and thus she ran on, talking fast and loud, with much earnestness and energy. ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... different description. Slung from his shoulders was a large but shallow wire cage, in which were about a dozen doomed rats, whose futile endeavours to make their escape by running up the sides of their prison were regarded with the most intense earnestness by a group of terriers, who gave way to various phases of excitement. In his hand he carried a small circular cage, containing two or three rats for immediate use. On the receipt of sixpence, one of these was liberated; and a few yards start being (sportsmanlike) allowed, the speculator's ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... influence that unduly oppresses them,—against these, guilty though they may have been, is not directed the moralist's unmeasured censure. His reproaches in such cases tend less to condemn than to awake to a sense of moral responsibility; earnestness in pointing out remedy and safeguards takes the place of severity against wilfulness. For he knows that not a few sentences of condemnation Christ writes on the sands, as He did in a celebrated case, and many an over-zealous accuser he has confounded, like the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... and reserve which seemed to have become habitual to Hugh Blair in his intercourse with others never showed itself to him. The frank, open nature of the lad seemed to act as a charm upon him. The perfect simplicity of his character, the earnestness with which he strove first of all to do right, filled his cousin with wonder, and oftentimes awoke within him bitter regret at the remembrance of what his own youth had been; and a living lesson did the unconscious lad become ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... have already been increased in frequency and in earnestness, for the call upon our prayers has come with an insistence and an imperiousness ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... had banking become a separate and important trade, than men began to discuss with earnestness the question whether it would be expedient to erect a national bank. The general opinion seems to have been decidedly in favour of a national bank; nor can we wonder at this; for few were then aware that trade is in general ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... accept the compromise. They explained their votes. Their explanations showed their earnestness in working for the best Direct Primary measure that could be passed - which indicates what might have been done under other leadership - and a loyalty to Wright, the accepted leader in the Direct Primary fight, which, to say the ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... in the fountain was indeed wonderfully agitated and hissing; it seemed as if something within were struggling to free itself, but Undine only the more earnestly urged the fulfilment of her orders. The earnestness was scarcely needed. The servants of the castle were as happy in obeying their gentle mistress as in opposing Bertalda's haughty defiance; and in spite of all the rude scolding and threatening of the latter the stone was soon firmly lying over the opening of the fountain. Undine ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... only I almost wished you were second or third lieutenant, rather than first," replied the commander with some earnestness in his manner. ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... clerk smiled at his companion's earnestness. "Had He wished help," he said, "He could have summoned legions of archangels from heaven, so what need had He of your poor bow and arrow? Besides, bethink you of His own words—that those who live by the sword ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Eschelles, with some earnestness, "to take down the dead body of a criminal, when the fleur de lys was marked on the tree where he was hung with my ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... family she inherited a fund of Irish humor, while her mother, of good old New England blood, inclined to quietness of spirit with earnestness of purpose; and this blending of fun and sobriety caused the young Christian much perturbation of spirit. Conscientious in the extreme, she had many an hour of self-questioning when she feared that, in the exuberance of youthful merriment, ...
— Clara A. Swain, M.D. • Mrs. Robert Hoskins
... of our little friends, and their little friends, were earnestness itself as they concentrated on the great work in the glow of the sunset. They had no eyes for its glories. The lamplighter even, dropping jewels as he went, passed them by unheeded. The organ interpreted Donizetti in vain. Despair ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fell once more into travail. "Wait!" he cried. "Ah, wait!" His level glance met Sir Richard's in earnestness and entreaty. "Answer me the truth upon your soul and conscience: Do you in your heart believe that it is what my mother would have ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... among Hindus. Where it exists it is generally connected with ceremonial defilement or the breach of some one of the innumerable and meaningless rites of the religion. How unlike in all this is the Gospel! The Bible dwells with all possible earnestness on the evil of sin, not of ceremonial but moral defilement—the transgression of the divine law, ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... you ever remarked that a serious-minded earnestness always goes with cobbling? Though I'm not really a practical cobbler, but a proprietary one. Our friend, Bertram, will dress and act the practical part. I've wired him and he's replied, collect, accepting the job. You and I will be ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... could. I feel any misfortune to you and your army quite as keenly as you feel it yourself." Mr. Stanton could only be silent; and whatever criticisms may be made on some traits of his character, he is quite safe in leaving the rebuke of such an imputation to whoever feels that earnestness, devotion, and unflagging purpose are high ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... with the frankness of the former outlaw. He had the speech and the manners of a gentleman, and his earnestness and apparent sincerity went far towards removing their suspicions, and, much to their surprise, they found themselves soon talking to him with ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... there was no express prohibition on my learning anything, doing anything, or going anywhere; and so, after this, I besought her to let me accompany her some time. But this too she refused. My requests were often made, and as I learned more and more of the language I was able to make them with more earnestness and effect, until at length I succeeded in ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... thousand dollars, and the James B. Congdon fund of five hundred dollars. Besides the culture of books, New Bedford has always been blessed by the presence and words of ministers far above the average in talent and earnestness. The dispute of the early settlers with the General Court showed that the people were particular as to the quality of their spiritual food, and this fastidiousness seems to have been handed down from generation to generation, judging from the personnel of the men. Dr. Samuel West, who ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... I would come upon them in the small writing-room where the studies were conducted, to find the little one standing by the father's knee, as he held the book for her, or sitting in his lap looking up at him with a funny earnestness, as though they ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... marvellous hymn is the acknowledged master-piece of Latin poetry and the most sublime of all uninspired hymns. The secret of its irresistible power lies in the awful grandeur of the theme, the intense earnestness and pathos of the poet, the simple majesty and solemn music of its language, the stately metre, the triple rhyme, and the vocal assonances, chosen in striking adaptation—all combining to produce an overwhelming effect, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... Joshua. 'You and she seem quite of one accord. Tell me, old man, is this a put-up thing? You told me of the gipsy camp—did you arrange it all with Her Majesty?' This was said with an air of bantering earnestness. Gerald assured him that he only heard of the camp that morning; but he made fun of every answer of his friend, and, in the process of this raillery, the time passed, and they ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... had moved McMurdo deeply. It was easy to see that he shared the other's opinion as to the danger, and the need for meeting it. He gripped Morris's shoulder and shook him in his earnestness. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Susan having once summoned up courage sufficient to put her remonstrances into words, followed up the attack with an earnestness that did not admit a ...
— Town Versus Country • Mary Russell Mitford
... had fashioned something, and hardly anything had been left unpainted. The clumsy old "boys" of the town had labored with untold patience to perfect their gifts. Their earnestness over the child and the day was a beautiful thing to see. Never were presents more impressive as to weight. The men had ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... all unconsciously, disdainful noises in its throat. It would have been worse than useless for me to interfere. The pair would have repelled me. This was a domestic rite. Once in his struggle with his coat the dominant figure glanced down at the earnestness of his little mate, paused for a moment, and ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... fool could find it in his heart to make fun of boys who display as much earnestness as you youngsters showed to-day," Spencer ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... the delegation was admitted, and some of its members were a little surprised to hear their spokesman, Senator Krebs, press with extreme earnestness and in their names, the appointment of Josiah B. Carson to a place in the Cabinet, when they had been given to understand that they came to recommend Jared Caldwell as postmaster of Philadelphia. But Pennsylvania is a great and virtuous State, whose representatives have entire confidence ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... label behind, and that under-done-pie-crust-coloured cover, which is technically known as 'law calf.' Others, who had neither briefs nor books, thrust their hands into their pockets, and looked as wise as they conveniently could; others, again, moved here and there with great restlessness and earnestness of manner, content to awaken thereby the admiration and astonishment of the uninitiated strangers. The whole, to the great wonderment of Mr. Pickwick, were divided into little groups, who were chatting and discussing the news of the day ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Instead of walking erect, and taking bow and courtesy as a matter of course, and of no meaning, he hung his head somewhat, and there was a slight blush on his cheek; and as he glanced upward and round him—shyly, as it were—and his eye met those friendly looks, it returned them with an earnestness that had in it something touching as well as cordial,—an eye that said, as well as eye could say, "I don't quite deserve it, I fear, neighbours; but I thank you for your good-will with my whole heart." And so readily was that glance ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... farm, and he did say that if HE owned the farm the first thing he'd do would be to drain the pond and plant it in corn. It was his friend that suggested the electric lights—and he wasn't joking, either, Uncle Joe," stoutly declared Bob with much earnestness. ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... tell any man I choose to go to the d—-l," he had said half jestingly, being rather put to it by his friend's earnestness. His friend had laughed too, he remembered, ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... their being made to suffer the punishment they would deserve, when they were themselves to decide upon the accusation brought against them for the treachery of which they have been guilty? This objection has been circulated with more earnestness and with greater show of reason than any other which has appeared against this part of the plan; and yet I am deceived if it does not rest upon an erroneous foundation. The security essentially intended by the Constitution against corruption and treachery in the formation of treaties, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... not know what the coming of the tribes in hostility means," continued Mr. Stewart, with increasing solemnity of earnestness. "You were too young to realize what little you saw, as a child here in the Valley, of Belletre's raid. Sir John and Guy know scarcely more of it than you. Twenty years, almost, have passed since the Valley last heard the Mohawk yell rise through the night-air above ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... suavity; but it grew finer every spring, until it had become as exquisitely courteous as Sir Philip Sidney's must have been. The arch of his dark eyebrows sometimes seemed almost angry, being quickly lifted, and then bent in a scowl of earnestness; but as age advanced this sternness of brow grew to be, unchangeably, a calm sweep of ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... to and fro as if strongly agitated, and his hands accomplished a series of wonderful gestures as he warmed up and spoke with impassioned eloquence. His hearers were spell-bound, and well they might, as each concluding assertion with terrible earnestness was uttered with the effect and force of a trumpet blast. That every soul in Court was impressed is not untrue, and many ladies were moved to tears. The following is an epitome ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... man!" she said. "I would rather perish in the woods under the knife of an assassin than under your tongue... In all earnestness I beg of you: when it comes into your mind to speak evil of me, take a knife instead and cut my throat. I think you would not find that a very ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... you know that? Who told you?" asked the girl, her face whitening, for the man's vehemence and evident earnestness were convincing. ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... wittiest sort. If one has an ache or a pain, a care or a loss, let it be forgotten now. It is weakness and folly continually to be under any burden. Here every one should take a genuine release from seriousness and earnestness in weighty and responsible affairs. Let all, except the serving committee for this evening, take part in this strictly social hour-and-a-half. When the late-comers have arrived and have been introduced, and the people have moved about and met one another, almost before ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... grateful for it than the average American woman. Lady Elfrida found the officers very entertaining and gallant. Accustomed to the English officer, and his somewhat bored way of treating his profession and his duties, she may have been amused at the zeal, earnestness, and enthusiasm of these youthful warriors, who aspired to appear as nothing but soldiers, when she contrasted them with her Guardsmen relatives who aspired to be everything else but that; but she kept it to herself. It was ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... gracious marbles of Desiderio da Settignano. The picture of the Coronation of the Virgin beside this Tabernacle, once the altar-piece of the Baroncelli Chapel, a genuine work of Giotto's, as it is thought, is tender in feeling and magnificent in arrangement and composition. Full of a grave earnestness and full of ardent life,—mark the eagerness of those clouds of Saints,—it is worthy of the painter of the tribune of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... a person of extraordinary ability, great purity of character, and great zeal. At this period he was about sixty years of age, but he possessed the earnestness and energy of a young man. His congregation were very much attached to him, and it is true he exercised over them a remarkable influence. Many people sneered, accusing them of 'being led by the nose by their minister.' They were led, it is true, but not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of artists. The fierce light of publicity that beats upon us makes us liable, from time to time, to dissertations upon our public and private lives, our manners, our morals, and our money. Our whims and caprices are discanted on with apparent earnestness of truth, and seeming sincerity of conviction. There is always some lively controversy concerning the influence of the stage. The battle between old methods and new in art is waged everywhere. If an actor were to take to heart everything ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... is more complete and balanced, and penetrates to the specific genius of Christianity more deeply, than Saints Paul and Augustine with all their greater directness and intensity. We saw how the deepest originality of our Lord's teaching and temper consisted in His non-rigoristic earnestness, in His non-Gnostic detachment from things temporal and spatial. The absorbing expectation of the Second Coming, indeed the old, largely effete Graeco-Roman world, had first to go, the great Germanic migrations had to be fully completed, the first ...
— Progress and History • Various
... busy days; and in the earnestness of the preparation the sorrow of the coming parting was in some sort dissipated. Hobert's wearing-apparel was all brought out, and turned and overturned, and the most and the best made of everything. The wedding coat and the wedding shirt were almost as good as ever, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... truths turned out to be lies. Now we must prepare that which is solid and indestructible. Perhaps some great and wise spirit brooding over our world, learned with the experience of aeons, of human attempts and mistakes, smiles at the deadly earnestness of the intention to reconstruct. I do not care. We have reached a pass when all life and all hope are centred in this faith: the faith that we can make anew and good and beautiful the distorted web of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... policy, and was not capable of being wilfully unjust. Palmerston, essentially superficial, delighted in banter, and knew how to divert grave opposition by playful levity; LINCOLN was a man of infinite jest on his lips, with saddest earnestness at his heart. Palmerston was a fair representative of the aristocratic liberality of the day, choosing for his tribunal, not the conscience of humanity, but the House of Commons; LINCOLN took to heart the eternal ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... the First could assemble a parliament, he addressed them with an earnestness, in which the simplicity of words and thoughts strongly contrasted with the oratorical harangues of the late monarch. It cannot be alleged against Charles the First, that he preceded the parliament in the war of words. He courted their affections; and even in this manner ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... one of the men endeavored to raise a laugh at the deformed lad, by asking him if he didn't expect to see just such another angel at this minute, who had lost her way in the field on the other side of the heap; but his jest failed. The earnestness and devout emotion of the boy to the vision of reality which his imagination, aided by the hues of sunset, had thus exalted, were too much for the gross spirit of banter, and the speaker shrunk back into ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... the desperation of a lover abandoned. She feared it was, she feared it was not. Nevil Beauchamp's foe persisted in fearing that it was not; his friend feared that it was. Yet why? For if it was, then he could not be quite in earnest, and might be cured. Nay, but earnestness works out its own cure more surely than frenzy, and it should be preferable to think him sound of heart, sincere though mistaken. Cecilia could not decide upon what she dared wish for his health's good. Friend and foe were not further separable within her bosom than one tick ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cant prevalent on his stage, just as any great actor of that century found rant on his, and, like the actor, he used it occasionally as a means of gaining his own lofty ends, and as a foil to his own genuine earnestness and power. ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... seen. Sent Borck to negotiate, to correspond, to consult with Dickens, to do his utmost in pacifying Hotham. All which Correspondence exists, but is not worth giving. Borck's remonstrances are in rugged soldier-like style, full of earnestness and friendliness. Do not wreck, upon trifles, a noble interest we have in common; King is jealous about foreign interference with his Ministers, but meant nothing; I tell you it is nothing I—Hotham is polite, good-tempered; ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... creation of the world in Latin. He knew the names of Augustus, Tiberius, and Diocletian; and while enjoying the agreeable coolness of the nights in an enclosure planted with bananas, he employed himself in reading all that related to the courts of the Roman emperors. He inquired of us with earnestness for a remedy for the gout, from which he suffered severely. "I know," said he, "a Zambo of Valencia, a famous curioso, who could cure me; but the Zambo would expect to be treated with attentions which I cannot ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... lady expressed herself to him, with earnestness, after the veil; a subject on which, it seems, they indulged her; urging, that the only way to secure her health of mind, if it could be restored, was to yield to her wishes. Lady Sforza said, that it was not a point that she herself would ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... your duties are before you. Now beware the mediocrity that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and interest, its dulness of fancy, its too external life, and mental thinness. Remember the limitations that threaten every professional man, only to be guarded against by great earnestness and watchfulness. So take care of yourself, and let not the intellect more ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... retort, but there was a shade of earnestness mixed with her playfulness, for to her future husband she only wished to show the amiable side of her character; but all the time she was thinking. Will ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... Dale's eyebrows had drawn so close together that they almost touched; her eyes appeared darker, smaller, more opaque. Mr. Ridgett continued talking in a tone of light facetiousness that seemed to cover a certain deprecating earnestness. ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... merchant was about to discharge for his bluntness. "You are good for nothing as a salesman," said his employer. "I am sure I can be useful," said the youth. "How? Tell me how." "I don't know, sir, I don't know." "Nor do I," said the merchant, laughing at the earnestness of his clerk. "Only don't put me away, sir, don't put me away. Try me at something besides selling. I cannot sell; I know I cannot sell." "I know that, too," said the principal; "that is what is wrong." "But I can make myself useful somehow," persisted the young man; "I know I can." He was ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... only knew Goethe as one who had attained, and ignored the struggle of his hot youth on the way to attainment. Carlyle justly commends him, not for his artistic mastery alone, but for his sense of the reality and earnestness of life, which lifts him to a higher grade among the rulers of human thought than such more perfect artists and more passionate lyrists as Heine. He admires above all his conquest over the world, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... only in an obscure light,—in fact, could scarce make out their forms, shrouded as they were in dark cloaks—but the attitudes in which they stood, the fact of their keeping thus apart in the most obscure quarter of the boat, the apparent earnestness with which they were conversing—all led me to conjecture that they were lovers. My heart, guided by the sweet instinct of love, at once accepted this explanation, and looked ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... without malice prepense, the very role of Mephistopheles.... The gentle boy who, with innocent reverence, makes his visit of courtesy to the foreign teacher, bringing for gift a cluster of iris-flowers or odorous spray of plum-blossoms,—the boy who does whatever he is told, and charms by an earnestness, a trustfulness, a grace of manner rarely met with among Western lads of the same age,—is destined to undergo the strangest of transformations long before becoming a baccalaureus. You may meet with him a few years later, in the uniform of some Higher School, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... log and strode before the trembling figure. He was strangely moved. Grasping the man he thrust him back upon the log. His own voice rolled down the hillside in a great roaring laugh. "Men of Coal Creek," he shouted, mimicking the earnestness of Hartnet, "listen to the voice of McGregor. I hate you. I hate you because you jeered at my father and at me and because you cheated my mother, Nance McGregor. I hate you because you are weak and disorganised like cattle. I would like to come among you teaching ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... 'twere Portius, could you blame my choice?— Oh, Portius, thou hast stolen away my soul! Marcus is over warm, his fond complaints Have so much earnestness and passion in them, I hear him with a secret kind of horror, And tremble at his ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... attention is concentrated for a length of time with fixed earnestness on any object or subject, all the organs of the body are forgotten and neglected;[8] and as the nervous energy of each individual is limited in amount, little is transmitted to any part of the system, excepting that which is at the ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... several times to me, and at last demanded with such earnestness that I should bring it to him, that I could not refuse. I brought it to him accordingly, but read it to him I declared I never would. He took it, therefore, and read it in a low tone, standing in the window of his little cabinet, where ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... discipline—was given to the regenerated Latin schools. A new Renaissance, in a way, took place in German lands, [27] and a knowledge of Greek was proclaimed by German university and gymnasial teachers as indispensable to a liberal education with an earnestness of conviction not exceeded by Battista Guarino (p. 268) four centuries before. To know Greek and to have some familiarity with Greek literature and history now came to be regarded as necessary to the highest culture, [28] and a pedagogical theory ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... restricted space will compel us to forego a report of the discussion at present. On the conclusion of Mrs. Colby's very bright and convincing remarks, Dr. McNamara addressed the convention in a brief speech of great earnestness, depth ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... again, this colonel, on whom may the saints send a lingering disease. I can swear that there is no young lady in the house? but assuredly, I can, and do swear it, with all earnestness. He whistles, and swears also—in a different manner. He says, 'I must search the house. This is an important matter. A large reward is offered by the Senora Montfort for the discovery ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... and with a mystifying earnestness, "which do you think would kill a man quickest—a slash across the throat, or a stab in ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... blameworthy than before. What a graceful fellow Leslie was, and how suave and genial the father when he sat at the head of his table toying with a glass of port! And these were capable men, too, men of affairs. Doubtless their earnestness was strong enough below the surface, I thought—for ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... at Concord, New Hampshire, is thus described by another writer: "He gradually let out the outraged humanity that was laboring in him, in indignant and terrible speech.... There was great oratory in his speech, but more of dignity and earnestness than what we call eloquence. He was an insurgent slave, taking hold on the rights of speech, and charging on his tyrants the bondage of ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... she broke in with a laugh, "call me Frances; and if something is hurt and needs mending, I'm not a tinker, though my father and the priest—yes and you, too—sometimes think so. But sisters do mending, don't they?" and she laughed my earnestness off as one ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... resolved to bring before you the whole history of the greatest spiritual movement that has taken place since the Reformation; and also to indicate the untold blessings the Revision will bear to those who avail themselves of it in all reverent earnestness and devotion. ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... at him for one moment with a sort of notion that perhaps he was not too old to be merely playing the fool. But after staring steadily for an instant Turnbull saw the hard and horrible earnestness in the man's eyes behind all his empty animation. Then Turnbull looked very gravely at the strict gravel walls and the gay flower-beds and the long rectangular red-brick building, which the mist had left evident beyond them. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... distaff. He had pleased her and she had received him kindly because he was related to the man whom she had loved from childhood. She imagined that she could trace a resemblance between him and Hosea, though the youth lacked the grave earnestness of the man to whom she had yielded her young heart, she knew not why nor when, though he had never sought ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... may suppose that he received this intimation by a simple assurance that he would submit the French Emperor's sentiments to your Majesty, and he added that he foresaw a serious difficulty to the project in the fact that the Princess was a Protestant. Count Walewski was evidently sincere in the earnestness with which he spoke of the subject, and the impatience with which he pressed Lord Malmesbury to inform your Majesty ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... month—October, 1843—when having recently returned from visits to Cork and Parsonstown, connected with a meeting of the British Association, the desire to discover the laws of multiplication referred to, regained with me a certain strength and earnestness which had for years been dormant, but was then on the point of being gratified, and was occasionally talked of with you. Every morning in the early part of the above-cited month, on my coming down to breakfast, your (then) little brother William Edwin, and yourself, used ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... never break up, and though the persons in the piece mean no harm, they are nearly as noxious to sleep as the loud musical water-side rough or public-house loafer. Dogs, too, like men, seem to feel it incumbent on them to howl more than usual in hot weather, and to bay the moon with particular earnestness in July. No enemy of sleep is deadlier than a dear, good, affectionate dog, whose owners next door have accidentally shut him out. The whole night long he bewails his loneliness, in accents charged with profound melancholy. The author of the "Amusement Philosophique" would have us believe that ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... little bewildered by the girl's earnestness, her energy, and the perfect simplicity of her evident belief that she was saying nothing unreasonable. She saw reluctance and hesitation in ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... good-looking and graceful little creature, with blue eyes, and hair as nearly black as that kind of hair, both fine and plentiful, ever is. She might then have discovered as well a certain look of earnestness and service that would at first have attracted her for its own sake, and then repelled her for James's; for she would assuredly have read in it what she would have counted dangerous for him; but seeing her poorly dressed, ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... Lord Rotherwood's earnestness in the cause was the arrival of his servant, who was to bring down the large stone which Master Merrifield had moved, and who conveyed it in a cab, being much too grand to carry ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... close observation, my belief is that, after the Negro has overcome the false idea which city life emphasizes, two or three generations will bring about an earnestness and steadiness of purpose which do not now generally obtain. As the Negro secures a home in the city, learns the lessons of industry and thrift and becomes a taxpayer, his moral life improves. The influence of home ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... their only hope of sanity in the midst of distressing and unintelligible events. In the general course of modern life events move less rapidly, but are equally important, and there, too, Mr. Belloc has attempted with almost pathetic lucidity to explain. His true earnestness will not be rewarded, his true purpose will not be attained, until the thoughtful public realizes that it can find in Mr. Belloc's historical and political writings at large the guide to the formation of opinion and the help to sanity which ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... vividness was accentuated as usual by the robin's egg blue dress she wore, had the warm genial glow radiating from a polar berg. It was, however, only a moment before she recovered herself and was able to say with sweet earnestness: ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... must be acknowledged that this was astonishing language to be uttered in the apartments of the King's mistress; yet it went on for twenty years without being talked of. "It was probity speaking with earnestness," said M. de Marigny, "and not a mere burst of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... you this favour. But why, you may well ask, when you have already often assured me that you intended to record in your book with the utmost minuteness the policy and events of my consulship, do I now make this request to you with such earnestness and in so many words? The reason is to be found in that burning desire, of which I spoke at the beginning of my letter, for something prompt: because I am in a flutter of impatience, both that men should learn what I am from your books, while I am still alive, and that ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... that she had had precious visits from her Saviour; he had told her that he was coming soon, and would fulfill her heart's desire in taking her to him. Her mother said, that during the previous night she had been constantly reaching up, and sometimes she would cry out, with great earnestness, "Do not ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... chest is instantly seized with the palsy. Upon one occasion, a priest of noted piety was brought to the vault: he used all the arts of exorcism to persuade his infernal majesty to vacate his seat, but in vain; the huntsman remained immovable. At last, moved by the earnestness of the priest, he told him, that he would agree to resign the chest, if the exorciser would sign his name with blood. But the priest understood his meaning, and refused, as by that act he would have delivered over his soul to the Devil. Yet if any body can discover the mystic words used by ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... an offering into the well—usually a pebble, but sometimes a small coin. Then a bit of the child's dress was attached to a bush or tree growing on the side of the well. These visits were paid in a spirit of earnestness and faith, and were kept more or less secret. Some of the wells have names of Christian saints attached to them; but I never knew of a case in which the saint was in any way recognised or prayed to. There is reason to believe these wells were the objects of adoration before the country was christianised, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... a flippant retort Kerns experienced a curious sensation of hesitation. Something in Gatewood's earnestness, in his jeering assurance and delighted certainty, made him, for one moment, feel doubtful, ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... himself out of the circle of his own feelings, or to aid any cause which he had near to his heart. He had had much to say about New England cant. Yet in this work he can find no words sufficiently strong to praise what he calls the zealous freedom and Christian earnestness of one of the most offensive canters that the whole range of fiction presents. It would be unjust to deny that when in "The Sea Lions" Cooper abandons his metaphysics and turns to his real business, that he creates ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... the Man from Solano did not strike him. He looked at the ironical Dashboard with grave earnestness, and ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... pause. He had been painting that day an agonising Christ, red and languid, crowned with thorns. Some of his own torment seems to have entered it, for, looking at it now, we see, first of all, wild eyeballs staring with the mad earnestness, the purposeless intensity of one seized or "possessed." He put the panel away and looked about for something else, the sketch he had made of Simonetta on that last day. When he had found it, he rolled it straight and set it on his ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... you, sir!" she said, as I gave him to her, with an earnestness which seemed to me disproportionate to the deed, and carried him away with a deep ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... process is reversed. The surest, I may almost say, the only, evidence we have of divine guidance in the production of this literature is to be found among the earliest productions. There we see earnestness of purpose combined with heavenly aspiration and deep searching after truth. Subsequent to this we see the light vanishing and earnestness giving place to triviality of thought, to the ravings of superstition, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... is well worth while seeing what this same civilization holds for starved and noble souls who have elsewhere been denied what here we hold to be, as a matter of course, rights free to all—altho we do not, as we should do, make these rights accessible to all who are willing with resolute earnestness to strive for them. I most cordially ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... the party united forces and pushed onwards and upwards towards the wild ravine where the haunt of the wolf lay, the twin brothers heard themselves addressed in their own language, and though the tones were sweet and silvery, the words had a ring of passionate earnestness in them which went straight ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... came as a shock. At first she thought the silly pair must be joking—then that they were mad. Finally she realized their earnestness and their happiness and saw that the situation was serious and must be dealt with with the utmost tact. Still, she could hardly believe what she saw and heard. Was it possible that the demure girl talking to her so seriously of love and marriage was her little Virginia—her baby? And that these ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... that of a monastery. Hour by hour, there was the same periodical rotation of work and religious service, with short intervals at fixed times for rest or food. The usual occupation in the earliest times had to do with the carding and spinning of wool, and Saint Jerome, with his characteristic earnestness, advises the nuns to have the wool ever in their hands. Saint Augustine gives us the picture of a party of nuns standing at the door of their convent and handing out the woollen garments which they have made for the old monks who are standing there waiting to receive them, with food to give ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... had passed, the holidays were over, Winter had set in with all earnestness, and now we find Joe hurrying along, intent on the rescue of Reggie and his sister ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... no means of reaching these patriots, for they could not be purchased. This convinced Napoleon of their earnestness, for he could buy kings and princes. The students were invisible, implacable, and many a brilliant officer of the imperial guard disappeared, never ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... it, as well as being stage-manager and adapter, if not designer of scenery. Whatever she did—and really she did an incredible deal—she did it with all the might of her dramatic perception, did it in fact with such earnestness that she had no time to have an eye to the gallery at all, she simply contemplated herself and her own vigorous accomplishment. When she played the piano as she frequently did, (reserving an hour for practice every day), she cared not in the smallest degree for what anybody who passed ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... a certain "agency," in the northern part of Iowa, to procure some whiskey for a young warrior that had been bitten with a rattlesnake. At first the agent did not credit the story, but the earnestness of the Indian, and the urgency of the case, overcame his scruples, and turning to get the liquor, he asked the Indian how much ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... were favorably impressed with the frankness of the former outlaw. He had the speech and the manners of a gentleman, and his earnestness and apparent sincerity went far towards removing their suspicions, and, much to their surprise, they found themselves soon talking to him with ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... early summer evenings in the hills, when everything in nature seems drowsily awaiting the night. They thought there was an unusual hush in the manner of those they met. Men talked on the corners or in groups in the roadway with unaccustomed earnestness. Women leaned across window sills and chatted across intervening spaces with an air of anxiety; the very dogs in the street appeared to be subdued. At the trader's there was not the usual small gathering of loungers, squatted sociably ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... and through it to the heart. The exhortations and invitations must be based on and grow out of these instructions. The great themes of sin and Grace, and the application and reception of Grace, should be set forth with all possible simplicity and earnestness. ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... in a former volume, although a man of ability and of intense earnestness of purpose, his devotion to his political labours never wholly counteracted a certain lethargy of temperament which, throughout his life, limited achievement. Thus, although in his youth undoubtedly gifted with a lively fancy, or with what ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... interpreting aright my clumsy, circumlocutory phrases in attempting to describe shawls, gowns, and bonnets; and taught me the exact millinery language which I ought to have made use of with an arch expression of triumph and a burlesque earnestness of manner, that always enchanted me. At that time, every word she uttered, no matter how frivolous, was the sweetest of all music to my ears. It was only by the stern test of after-events that I learnt to analyse her conversation. Sometimes, when I was away from her, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... hand that reposed unavoidably upon her person, the poor woman started from her seat, and looked wildly about her, as if endeavouring to identify those by whom she was surrounded. But when she observed the pitying gaze of the officers fixed upon her, in earnestness and commiseration, and heard the benevolent accents of the ever kind Blessington exhorting her to composure, her weeping became more violent, and her sobs more convulsive. Captain Blessington threw an arm round her waist to prevent her from falling; ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... Islands half a century or more ago.* There Samuel Armstrong, a youth of missionary parents, earned enough money to pay his expenses at an American college. Equipped with this small sum and the earnestness that the undertaking implied, he came to Williams College when Dr. Mark Hopkins was president. Williams College had many good things for youth in that day, as it has in this, but the greatest was the strong personality of its famous president. Every student does not profit by a great teacher; ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... man had fashioned something, and hardly anything had been left unpainted. The clumsy old "boys" of the town had labored with untold patience to perfect their gifts. Their earnestness over the child and the day was a beautiful thing to see. Never were presents more impressive as to weight. The men had made ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... that you might be kept 'unspotted from the world.' I heard her make that prayer myself." And stretching out his hand, the old gentleman laid it tenderly upon Fleda's bowed head, saying with strong earnestness and affection, even his voice somewhat shaken, "God grant that prayer! whatever else he do with her, keep my child from the evil! and bring her to join her father and mother in heaven! ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... no clue. But his fellow worker, John Stearne, was clearly a Puritan[5] and Hopkins was surely of the same faith. It can hardly be proved, however, that religious zeal prompted him in his campaign. For a time of spiritual earnestness his utterances ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... to the young officer showed his own farsighted earnestness. Had he who received them been any less in earnest, the task assigned to him must have seemed appalling. The primary instruction was to blaze a path, more than four thousand miles long, through ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... is not alone, as a Church, in this patriotic and Christian enterprise. The Established Church has entered upon it with an ever-increasing earnestness, having come, mainly through the advocacy of the Chaplain-General, Rev. Dr. Edgehill, to grasp the situation, and to realize that for the men themselves and for the empire it is of paramount importance that this provision should ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... wit still raised him friends who were desirous of setting him at length free from that indigence by which he had been hitherto oppressed; and therefore solicited Sir Robert Walpole in his favour with so much earnestness that they obtained a promise of the next place that should become vacant, not exceeding two hundred pounds a year. This promise was made with an uncommon declaration, "that it was not the promise of a minister to a petitioner, but of a ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... began to return. He protested with maudlin earnestness that I was entirely mistaken,—that I was intoxicated; then asked me to swear eternal secrecy, and promised to disclose the mystery to me. I pledged myself, of course, to all. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... not believe me," cried Julius. "You think that something is underlying all this," and he spoke with deep earnestness, his voice broken ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... any misfortune to you and your army quite as keenly as you feel it yourself." Mr. Stanton could only be silent; and whatever criticisms may be made on some traits of his character, he is quite safe in leaving the rebuke of such an imputation to whoever feels that earnestness, devotion, and unflagging purpose are high qualities in ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... immediately became inevitable, tiring both with its earnestness and its utter absence of a common ground. Because in him apparently remained every vital germ of convention and of generations of training in every precept of formality; and in her—for with Valerie West adolescence ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Without going into details, it is enough to say that conditions finally became so scandalous that all Chicago rose in horror and rebellion. The police department was thoroughly overhauled, and a new chief appointed who undertook in all earnestness to suppress the worst features of the system. He had no new weapons it is true, and he probably had no notion that he could make any impression on the evil of prostitution. But he might have restored external decency and order, and he ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... the learned Templars insisted on their privilege, and the unlearned of Ram's-alley and Fleet-street asserted their right of saving their crown-pieces: and finally how this combat of mockery and earnestness was settled, not without the introduction of "a god," as Horace allows on great occasions, in the interposition of the king and the attorney-general—altogether the tale had been well told in some comic epic; but the wits of that day let it ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Wilton's countenance with some degree of earnestness; and, to say the truth, if his young companion had not been put upon his guard, by detecting the first stern, dark glance the minister had given him, some emotion might have been visible in his countenance, some degree of thoughtful ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... faces with pearl powder till they looked like white plaster casts with beautiful living eyes, the peculiar gossip of the town, and the continuous political changes, the constant "saving of the country," which to his wife seemed a puerile and bloodthirsty game of murder and rapine played with terrible earnestness by depraved children. In the early days of her Costaguana life, the little lady used to clench her hands with exasperation at not being able to take the public affairs of the country as seriously as the incidental atrocity of methods deserved. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... by the seer's earnestness, and so suddenly did his last words strike home, that the thought never occurred to him that this might only be the gossip of his followers come in time to Atli's ears. It seemed to him an inspired insight into his past, and he started suddenly, ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... he himself said, neither in reproach nor anger. It was the appealing tones that gave his speech its power —its convincing earnestness, its lack of rancor, its sober truth that gave it weight. Elsewhere it is printed in detail. Suffice it to say here that he predicted that the rules would have to be changed since they had been made the instrument of a revolutionary ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... lips. That other man, who speaks with the sweat of anguish beaded on his brow, with a mortal pallor on his thin, worn cheeks, is putting questions to the celestial guide within which seem to that guide the ravings of a crazed lunatic; and yet there is a deadly, despairing earnestness in the appeal that makes an indistinct knocking at the door of his heart, for the man is born of woman, and can feel that somehow or other these are the words of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... artists. Its statesmen, its merchants, its common artisans, and the very monks in its convents, were all pervaded by one spirit. The men of Florence in its best days were men of a large, grave, earnest mould. What the Puritans of New England wrought out with severest earnestness in their reasonings and their lives these early Puritans of Italy embodied in poetry, sculpture, and painting. They built their Cathedral and their Campanile, as the Jews of old built their Temple, with awe and religious fear, that they might thus express by costly and imperishable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... idea! Why, I don't think I've ever even had the thought. Anyhow, the years have gone—the inclination is gone, if it ever was there. I'm too old." Then with sudden and passionate earnestness, "But you two." She rose and took each by a hand, and led them to the dial. "Read! Read what is written in the stone!—Tempus Fugit—time flies! Oh, take your happiness while you can! Don't wait. Oh, don't!—We must find a way somehow. The Church—we must see the proper ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... stranger, "and plunge into the river that glides past the bottom of your garden. Take likewise a vase of the same water, and sprinkle it over any object that you may desire to change back again from gold into its former substance. If you do this in earnestness and sincerity, it may possibly repair the mischief which your avarice ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... book out of his pocket, opened it, and showed me a page with two alphabets, one English and the other Bohemian. He placed this book in my grandmother's hands, looked at her entreatingly, and said, with an earnestness which I shall never ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... face, and thinking how terrible it would be to see that face shadowed with pain and care. Somehow, of late, Uncle Ephraim was always thinking of such a calamity as more than possible for Katy, and when that night she knelt beside him, his voice was full of pleading earnestness as he prayed that God would keep them all in safety, and bring to none of them more grief, more suffering, than was necessary to purify them for His own. "Purified by suffering" came involuntarily into Katy's mind as she listened, and then remembered the talk down in the meadow, when she sat on ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Mr. Sheridan as by Mr. Burke, one example, out of many, will suffice. It cannot fail, however, to be remarked that, while the denunciations and invectives of Burke are filled throughout with a passionate earnestness, which leaves no doubt as to the sincerity of the hate and anger professed by him,—in Sheridan, whose nature was of a much gentler cast, the vehemence is evidently more in the words than in the feeling, the tone of indignation is theatrical and assumed, and the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... charm of its own. Even when two men are fighting, you are compelled to admire their earnestness and singleness of purpose." ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Strangers' Gallery, listened with appreciation to the praises of his famous Camel Corps. Then followed what might be called the Home Rule argument—we could not refuse what the Indian people so much desired—delivered with so much earnestness that Mr. JEREMIAH MACVEAGH loudly invited Mr. CHAMBERLAIN to "come over and sit on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... but more seldom, to the Jamiesons' estancia. The light-hearted young Englishmen were naturally more to their fancy than the quiet and thoughtful Scotchmen. The latter were, however, greatly esteemed by Mr. and Mrs. Hardy, who perceived in them a fund of quiet good sense and earnestness. ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... wants to hear an eloquent oration, let him go when the Roman Catholic priest is preaching on the divine institution of auricular confession. There is no subject, perhaps, on which the priests display so much zeal and earnestness, and of which they speak so often. For this institution is really the corner-stone of their stupendous power; it is the secret of their almost irresistible influence. Let the people to-day open their eyes to the truth, and understand ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... no orator, though he had the clear, firm, penetrating voice of one; but his words, because of the surprise of his presence, and the change which had been wrought in him, and because of his earnestness and simplicity, had on his audience all the effect of the loftiest eloquence. He had a great deal more to tell them of the darkness and misery and sin through which he was passing, when the minister found him and laid hands on him, and ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... there again. I grew utterly bewildered. The blood mounted to my cheeks, for I felt that my father had been unjust to me. I looked at the Princess as if she ought to shield me, but upon her face was only an expression of mild earnestness. Then I looked round upon the ladies and gentlemen assembled in the room, believing that they would come to my defense. But as I looked, I saw that they were laughing. Then the tears sprang into my eyes, and out of ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... his noble saying, "Earnestness alone makes life Eternity" and that other "saying" about Art having, as its main purpose, the turning of the "Transitory" into the "Permanent"! If the Transitory is really to be turned into the Permanent, we must take ourselves and our work very ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... blue-eyed, the last man in the room one would have picked for great stamina and courage, yet playing one of the leading roles in this crisis; the merchant Truett, towering above all the rest; Farwell, direct, uncompromising, inspired with tremendous single-minded earnestness; James Dows, of the rough and ready, humorous, blasphemous, horse-sense type; Hossefross, of the Committee of '51; Dr. Beverly Cole, high-spirited, distinguished-looking, and courtly; Isaac Bluxome, whose signature of "33 Secretary" was ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... said, turning back to the old gentlewoman,—and his face was radiant with the earnestness of this thought,—"Auntie Sue, there are as many currents in our river out there as there are human lives. A comparatively few great main or dominant currents in the river flow—a comparatively few great dominant currents ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... with a little movement of pride. "Those tasks in life which give a high moneyed wage, generally give only that. Part of our compensation is that we belong to the Service; we are doing something for the whole people, not just for ourselves." She caught Bob's half-smile, more at her earnestness than at her sentiment, and took fire. "You needn't laugh!" she cried. "It's small now, but that's because it's the beginning, because we have the privilege of being the forerunners, the pioneers! The time will come when in this country there will be three great Services—the ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... means undeserved, Romulus, and parent of his country, and a second founder of the city. His country, thus preserved by arms, he unquestionably saved a second time in peace, when he hindered the people from removing to Veii, both the tribunes pressing the matter with greater earnestness after the burning of the city, and the commons of themselves being more inclined to that measure; and that was the cause of his not resigning his dictatorship after the triumph, the senate entreating him not to leave the commonwealth in so unsettled ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... and the good housekeeper sent up lunch and tea to save my walking, and in the silence and beauty and peace I communed with God. He is so near and so dear. Oh, if I only get another day in which to work! I hope it will be more full of earnestness and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... during those long tete-a-tetes. On one side was the accomplished coquette, possibly only determined to make a plaything of the man of genius, to charm him and keep him at her feet; or perhaps with a lurking hope that her skilful game would turn to earnestness, and that in the course of it she would manage to forget that charming young Metternich who died at Florence and left her inconsolable. On the other was Balzac, his senses bewildered by passionate love, but ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
