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More "Penetration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... increase in worth and beauty every year. Her command of the Dutch language and her power of wresting from it literary resources which are unattainable by any other writer have made her the admiration of all critics of penetration. Louis Couperas is also another living poet of mark, who, however, does not confine himself to formal versification, for his prose is also poetry. His best works are 'Elme Vere,' the first book he wrote, and the characters in which are said to have been all taken from life, and his novels ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... bethink us of Smudge. At length, I turned to observe its effect on the savage. He evidently noted our proceedings; but his feelings, if the creature had any, were so deeply buried beneath the mask of dullness, as completely to foil my penetration. He saw us take up fragment after fragment, examine them, heard us converse over them, though in a language he could not understand, and saw us throw them away, one after another, with seemingly equal indifference. At length he brought a half-burned billet to the captain, and held it before his ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... remember in the country, some here, who affect to despise what they cannot understand; such enterprising critics and fastidiously hypercritics, men of truly philosophical penetration—of a truly classical taste spurn aside the coarse beverage to be found in Gr. mss. scholiasts and ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... to draw a certain truth from the situation. Perhaps she saw the woman in Boylan—the mysterious, draggled creature which he designated his devil on occasion. The old war-wolf gave her credit for no such penetration. Still she kept herself second, advised, assisted for a few moments, but ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... far as possible, necessitated the development of a method of extraction of the caffein from the whole raw bean without a permanent alteration of the shape thereof. The close structure of the green bean, and its consequent resistance to penetration by solvents, and the existence of the caffein in the bean as an acid salt, which is not easily soluble, offered resistance ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... highest spiritual excellence, humility, firmness, patience, would never enable a man to read an unknown tongue, or to enter into the depths of science, so all the most brilliant mental endowments, wit, or imagination, or penetration, or depth, will never of themselves make us wise in religion. And as we should fairly and justly deride the savage who wished to decide questions of science or literature by the sword, so may we justly look with amazement ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... frighten, and not fright, is the verb used in the continuation. Furthermore, I have pointed out in a previous introduction[1] that Defoe was fond of making his characters smile, to show either kindliness or shrewd penetration. They do not smile in ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... seems almost out of place. "He is not so much an eighteenth-century French artist," Lady Dilke says of him, "as a French artist of pure race and type. Though he treated subjects of the humblest and most unpretentious class, he brought to their rendering not only deep feeling and a penetration which divined the innermost truths of the simplest forms of life, but a perfection of workmanship by which everything he handled was clothed with beauty." That the Wallace Collection includes no work from his hand is perhaps ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... the sacraments in like manner, {13} because of his crude supernaturalism and his inadequate intellectual and spiritual penetration, drifted to a semi-medieval view. He intended to transform these ceremonies and to have them fit "the pure Word of God." In his primary intention they were to be no longer objective works of grace, but were to have a subjective value only, a faith-significance. ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... over whose heads, in the exercise of their duties, six months may occasionally pass without painful disclosures and dangerous scandals; who shall not weary us with their surprises and intrigues; who shall not amaze us with their lack of penetration; who shall not, in the hour of their destitution, seem to have diverted L600 of public money for the purchase of an inconsiderable sheet, or at a time when eight provinces of discontented natives threaten at any moment to sweep their ineffective Government ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... diplomacy was now brought into play to baffle Mr. Pericles, inspire Emilia with the spirit of secresy, and carry on his engagement to two women to their common satisfaction. Adela, whose penetration he dreaded most, he had removed by a flattering invitation to Stornley; and that Emilia might be occupied during his absences, and Mr. Pericles thrown on a false scent, he persuaded Tracy Runningbrook to come to Brookfield, and write libretti for Emilia's operas. The two would sit down together ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... breadth and tolerance of mind, and such penetration into the inner meanings of outward phenomena as to make it a book which no one can afford to ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... right in the last particular," he said, with a sigh. "Mr. Whyte is so rough and overbearing that the Indians are beginning to dislike him. Some of the more clear-sighted among them see that a good deal of this lies in mere manner, and have penetration enough to observe that in all his dealings with them he is straightforward and liberal; but there are a set of them who either don't see this, or are so indignant at the rough speeches he often makes, and the rough treatment he sometimes threatens, that they won't forgive him, but ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... man. In person he was small, but well-made and muscular, and able to go through astonishing exertion—frequently marching on foot over mountains and plains without exhibiting the slightest fatigue. His eyes were dark, large, and full of fire and penetration, denoting wonderful energy of mind and greatness of soul. His nose was aquiline and well-formed, his face rather long, and his complexion somewhat sallow. As Uncle Richard and I had the honour of being invited to his table, I had an opportunity of seeing him in his ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... for a moment. He would seek refuge anywhere, even in the very sanctuary of his accusers, rather than abide a trial with him in a court of justice. But the House of Commons was too just not to send him to this tribunal, whose justice they cannot doubt, whose penetration he cannot elude, and whose decision will justify those managers whose ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... see in the dark?" Thorpe questioned. "Or...." He visioned dimly some denizen of the vast depths, living beyond the limits of the sun's penetration, far in the abysmal darkness where its only light must be self-made. But his mind failed in the attempt to picture what manner of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Suffering and love had taught him many lessons, amongst others those of absolute self-control. His face was smiling and calm as he crossed the room, bent over the child and kissed her. Those blue eyes of hers, always so full of penetration and of knowledge, which was not all this earth, could detect no sorrow ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... perfectibility of mankind is not easily accounted for. I cannot doubt the talents of such men as Godwin and Condorcet. I am unwilling to doubt their candour. To my understanding, and probably to that of most others, the difficulty appears insurmountable. Yet these men of acknowledged ability and penetration scarcely deign to notice it, and hold on their course in such speculations with unabated ardour and undiminished confidence. I have certainly no right to say that they purposely shut their eyes to such arguments. I ought rather to doubt ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... century, cast in the same mold and after the same pattern, and after a certain abstract conception which served for the whole human species. There was a knowledge of man but not of men. There was no penetration into the soul itself; nothing of the infinite diversity and wonderful complexity of souls had been detected; it was not known that the moral organization of a people or of an age is as special and distinct as the physical structure of a family of plants or of an order of animals. History ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... were diverted out of the upper estuary and if it proved possible to cope quickly with other pollution or to ignore it, during prolonged use salt water penetration from downstream would take place as fresh water was withdrawn above and not replaced. Studies on a mathematical model of the estuary indicate that under conditions that could materialize, this would make the water at the intake too ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... Mills seems to have acted somewhat unscrupulously. He himself appears to have had some doubt about it, at a given moment, as they were driving to the Prado. But perhaps Mills, with his penetration, understood very well the nature he was dealing with. He might even have envied it. But it's not my business to excuse Mills. As to him whom we may regard as Mills' victim it is obvious that he has never harboured ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... loss, and yet never at her ease, with her figure in company with them there, and her mind apparently quite alone - it was of no use 'going in' yet awhile to comprehend this girl, for she baffled all penetration. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... sensibility gave a pensive tone to her spirits, and a softness to her manner, which added grace to beauty, and rendered her a very interesting object to persons of a congenial disposition. But St. Aubert had too much good sense to prefer a charm to a virtue; and had penetration enough to see, that this charm was too dangerous to its possessor to be allowed the character of a blessing. He endeavoured, therefore, to strengthen her mind; to enure her to habits of self-command; to teach her to reject the first impulse of her feelings, and to look, with cool examination, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... himself, his country, and his God," and wishing him all good wishes, struck me with some astonishment. Whenever he has alluded to him since, it has been with significant eulogy. When I alluded that he was no gentleman, he seemed out of patience with me for the objection. You say papa has penetration. On this subject I believe he has indeed. I have told him nothing, yet he seems to be au fait to the whole business. I could think at some moments his guesses go farther than mine. I believe he thinks a prospective union, deferred for five years, with such a decorous reliable personage, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... large white cloths on long poles, like colours, as if inviting the Spaniards to land. The country, on the coast of which the Spaniards now were, was a province of the great empire of Mexico, over which Montezuma then reigned, a prince of great wisdom and penetration, who had heard of the exploits of the Spaniards, and the pains they took to become acquainted with the sea coasts of his dominions. He was uneasy on this account, and was anxious to learn who and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities, and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road till some accident intercepts his journey. He whose penetration extends to remote consequences, and who, whenever he applies his attention to any design, discovers new prospects of advantage, and possibilities of improvement, will not easily be persuaded that his project is ripe for execution; but will superadd one contrivance ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... with a steel ball, against the French plate, the English being hors de combat. The penetration was the same; the ball was not broken, but was flattened at the point like the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... ill-news direct to the threatened inhabitants of the residencia. Fate was to decide for me; for, while I was still hesitating, I beheld the veiled figure of a woman drawing near to me up the pathway. No veil could deceive my penetration; by every line and every movement I recognised Olalla; and keeping hidden behind a corner of the rock, I suffered her to gain the summit. Then I came forward. She knew me and paused, but did not speak; I, too, remained silent; and we continued for some time to ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... read the enclosed five and forty times over. I have submitted it to my Edmonton friends; at last (O Argus' penetration), I have discovered a dash that might be dispensed with. Pray don't trouble yourself with such useless courtesies. I can well trust your editor, when I don't use queer phrases which prove themselves wrong by creating a distrust ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Journey to Ashango Land: and Further Penetration into Equatorial Africa. By Paul B. Du Chaillu. New Edition. Handsomely Illustrated. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Napoleon's Government. Benedetti had kept his employers thoroughly informed of the progress of the North German military organisation; he had warned them that the South German States would most certainly act with the North against a foreign assailant; he had described with great accuracy and great penetration the nature of the tie that existed between Berlin and St. Petersburg, a tie which was close enough to secure for Prussia the goodwill, and in certain contingencies the armed support, of Russia, while it was loose enough not to involve Prussia in any Muscovite enterprise that would bring upon ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... for us? Is there to be no laughter left in literature free from the preoccupation of a sham real-life? So it would seem. Even what the great master has not shown us in his work, that your critic convinced of pathos is resolved to see in it. By the penetration of his intrusive sympathy he will come at it. It is of little use now to explain Snug the joiner to the audience: why, it is precisely Snug who stirs their emotions so painfully. Not the lion; they can see through that: but the Snug within, the ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... time the people of Newbern would cease to remember that such a schooner as the Osprey ever existed, although her arrival was loudly heralded in all the city papers. Her "saucy air" and the "duck-like manner in which she rode the waters," were especially spoken of, and one reporter, whose penetration was both surprising and remarkable, discovered in Captain Beardsley a man who would "do and dare anything for the success of the glorious cause he had ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... enigmas: hence the confused, broken, and disjointed style, an odd jumble of dialogue and soliloquy, in which he tries to jerk out his thoughts, as if he would have them known, and yet not have them known. I believe men generally credit themselves with peculiar penetration when they are in the act of being deluded, whether by themselves or by others. Hence, again, the strange and even ludicrous conceit in which Leontes wraps himself. "Not noted, is 't," says he, referring ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... led to think oppression wrong, and toleration was exalted to a virtue. The theocratic spirit which prevailed at first passed away, and the great principle was established that governments have nothing to do with religion. It does not require much penetration to discover that a government which has unlimited power over the person and property of the citizen will not long respect the scruples of his conscience. Religious liberty gave birth to political freedom. The separation of the settlements from each other, even in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... sapient masters, seems to me that which our most prudent and politic brother has now advanced, were it not for one single circumstance which unhappily spoils all. I, indeed, do not make a boast of possessing the deep visual penetration of the alderman,—a penetration, my brethren, which can spy out a storm before it arises; nevertheless, whether it be from chance or reflection, I have long foreseen, and have long foretold, that which ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... day I had an opportunity of observing the watchfulness and penetration of our commandant. A sailing-vessel was quietly at anchor in a small creek. The commandant, perceiving it, immediately ordered the steamer to stop, ordered out a boat, and sent an officer to see what it was doing there. So far everything had gone correctly; ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... it was almost as difficult to strike a blow with a sword as it was to effectively draw a bow. Working his way quietly but rapidly forward in the effective manner which he had acquired by several months' practice in the penetration of such growth, Dick at last stretched out his hand and touched what he at once knew was the hull ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... allow me to congratulate you on your keen artistic perception! I believe you are the only person, besides myself, who has hitherto been struck by those definite but undefinable traits of similarity. Mr. van Koppen may well be proud of your penetration—" ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... early bier. To mourn thy exit, how can we refrain, For seldom shall we see thy like again! Who, to deep learning, and the soundest sense, Join'd the rare gift of matchless eloquence. Thy wit most keen, thy penetration clear, Thy satire poignant, made corruption fear. And such thy knowledge of the human heart, So prompt to see, and to unmask each art. Oppression shrunk abash'd, while innocence Call'd thee her champion—her sure defence. Once more, farewell, long shall thy name be dear, And oft shall Independence ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... him rashly! I am not prepared to believe that he could act dishonorably toward anyone. I will not believe it." "Oh, you, too, will get your eyes open in due time! Ha! it is all as clear as daylight! And I, with my boasted penetration!—it maddens me!" Her eyes glittered ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... each began to scrimmage; the broken-spirited Christie exhibiting both alacrity and penetration in searching obscure corners. In the dining-room, behind the dresser, three or four books were discovered: an odd volume of Thackeray, another of Dickens, a memorandum-book or diary. "This seems to be Latin," said Jessie, fishing ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... the terrible heat of summer, and the wind and snow of winter; it is between the roof and the stone or adobe walls of the houses. Wherever the inequalities of the stones or the shrinkage of the wood has left an opening, and made penetration possible, there an English sparrow has established a ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... unsolicited. Tacitly, at any rate. If Mr. Harry's speaking blue eyes were to be trusted and Mr. Harry's tell-tale tones when with her, his love, at the very least, equalled hers. Eliza Hamlyn, despite the penetration that ill-nature generally can exercise, had not yet scented any such treason in the wind: or there would have blown ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... no limits to the combinations of fancy. A smooth exterior, a show of virtue, and a specious tale, are, a thousand times, exhibited in human intercourse by craft and subtlety. Motives are endlessly varied, while actions continue the same; and an acute penetration may not find it hard to select and arrange motives, suited to exempt from censure any action that a ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... portraying. Velasquez had become acquainted with humanity, and gotten on intimate terms with life. He had haunted the waysides and markets to good purpose; he had laid the foundation of those qualities which characterize his best work: mastery of expression, penetration into character, the ability to look upon a face and read the thoughts that lurk behind, the crouching passions, and all the aspirations too great for speech. To picture great men you must be a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... were less frequent. Timid souls began to inquire, "Are all Dakota summers like this?" and those with greatest penetration reasoned, from the quality of the grass which was curly and fine as hair, that they had unwittingly ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Stafford, who looked with great penetration into the heart of the mysterious proceedings at Paris, assured his government that no better result was to be looked for, "after long dalliance and entertainment, than either a flat refusal or such a masked embracing of their cause, as would rather tend to the increasing of their miseries ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... reception. Vast numbers of wise and good men, through many generations and in different countries, have agreed in receiving the Bible as a revelation from God. Many of them have been noted for seriousness, erudition, penetration, and impartiality in judging of men and things. We might refer to Alfred, "replete with soul—the light of a benighted age"—to Charles V., Emperor of Germany—to Gustavus Adolphus, the renowned King of Sweden; ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... pitch that even in the society of her most intimate friends she frequently owns that she is bored to death. She writes memoirs, or rather a journal, of all that falls under her observation. She is so clever, has so much imagination and penetration, that they must be very entertaining. She writes as well as talks with extraordinary ease and gracefulness, and both her letters and her conversation are full of point; yet she is not liked, and has made hardly any friends. Her manners are stately and reserved, and so little bonhomie penetrates ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... you have heard much, is an extraordinary woman, with more common sense than I almost ever met with. Great quickness in discovering characters, penetration in going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that never fails in a likeness—seldom a favourable one. She exacts and preserves, spite of her birth and their nonsensical prejudices about nobility, great court ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... understand the boy, Clara,' returned Miss Murdstone, arranging the little fetters on her wrists. 'We'll agree, if you please, that I don't understand him at all. He is much too deep for me. But perhaps my brother's penetration may enable him to have some insight into his character. And I believe my brother was speaking on the subject when ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... they had been permitted to champion my cause before I had fallen, when after that fall they had proved strong enough to raise me up again. And the real feelings of these men you not only had the penetration to see, when bringing forward my case, but the power to encourage and keep alive. In promoting which measure—I will not merely not deny, but shall always remember also and gladly proclaim it—you found certain men of the highest rank more courageous ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... interest of the book, always keen and absorbing, is due to some extent to a puzzle so admirably planned as to defy the penetration of the most ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... reasons, and many others equally solid, which cannot escape the great penetration and sagacity of your High Mightinesses, that the undersigned hopes to receive a ready and favorable answer to the above, conformable to the just expectation of the King, his master, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Mary Beaufort; and on these principles she contemplated the extraordinary fine qualities she saw in the exiled Thaddeus with an interest honorable to her penetration and her heart. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... aware that this was the person from whose attentions Jane had been in such danger. He could scarcely conceive the possibility of a woman of such admirable sense and such penetration as Jane forming an attachment to one so shallow and so unheroic. He felt himself scarcely worthy of Jane Melville, and he would never compare himself with the Laird of Mosstower. But the young people had been thrown together, and had spent ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... truly, brother," said the lovely girl, breathing more quickly, and half amazed at Ruez's penetration ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... established our quarters without any provision for drainage. There was not exactly a wild tempest abroad; but there was a degree of liveliness in the thrashing limbs and the creaking of the tree-branches which rubbed against each other, and the pouring rain increased in volume and power of penetration. Sleep was quite out of the question, with so much to distract our attention. In fine, our misery became so perfect that we both broke out into loud and sarcastic laughter over the absurdity of our situation. We had subjected ourselves to all this forlornness simply for pleasure. Whether ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... it was rather pathetic reading when he kept to the point, for love for his wife cropped out plainly between the lines after years of separation. Suddenly he began to adorn me with a variety of fine qualities. He assured me that I had penetration, clear judgment, and a sense of justice, as well as ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... continued, "my excuse may only expose my own credulity, and want of judgment and penetration. I will, therefore, merely beseech your pardon, and ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... and penetration, conceived a favourable opinion of the stranger. He loaded him with presents, and assigned him a distinguished rank among his officers. Bazmant might have been proud of his new situation could he have banished from his memory ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... no ray of recognition came into his face. Then, like throwing off a garment, Ashton-Kirk allowed the mannerisms he had assumed to drop from him. Osborne at once sat erect with a laugh of pleasure at his own lack of penetration. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... extensive portion of the mucous membrane of the mouth, or a mass of cellular substance, became affected. We certainly see that, in every case but two, the disease commenced in contact with the teeth. This doctrine will also explain the rapid and deep penetration of the ulcer along the roots of the teeth; and the destruction of the bone. We may recur to the statement, that a portion of the fang of every loose tooth was always found ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... speaking; but her visitor required nothing further. He pretended, however, not to have understood her words; but as he well knew that Jon Jonson's vessel was still at Goteborg for he expected some merchandise in it himself, it did not require much penetration for him to surmise that the mate Lonner had taken an opportunity of sending home some smuggled goods by his ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... amazed at Annerly's instinctive penetration into the mysteries of the psychic world, "how do you intend ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... by penury and exile, that they would thankfully accept almost any terms of reconciliation. The new Envoy's origin was plebeian, his stature was dwarfish, his countenance was ludicrously ugly, and his accent was that of his native Gascony: but his strong sense, his keen penetration, and his lively wit eminently qualified him for his post. In spite of every disadvantage of birth and figure he was soon known as a most pleasing companion and as a most skilful diplomatist. He contrived, while flirting with the Duchess ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... homophones: and that something better should win the first place, I hold to be the most desirable of possible events. But perhaps our 'S.E.' is not yet so far committed to the process of decay as to be incapable of reform, and the machinery that we use for penetration may be used as well for organizing a reform and for enforcing it. There is as much fashion as inevitable law in our 'P.S.P.' or 'S.E.' talk, and if the fashion for a better, that is a more distinct and conservative, pronunciation should set in, then at the cost of a little temporary self-consciousness ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... friends—incapable of having any jealous, suspicious, ever restless, full of slyness and artifices to discover and to scrutinise all, (in which he was unceasingly occupied, aided by an extreme vivacity and a surprising penetration,) choleric and headstrong to excess even for trifles, difficult of access, never in accord with himself, and keeping all around him in a tremble; to conclude, impetuosity and avarice were his masters, which monopolised him always. With ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... which, not being able to compete with the former in the variety of nasal titillations it gives rise to, probably consoles itself with coming off the distinct victor in the department of power and penetration. The leaves and twigs of this tree are distilled for oil. This oil is in large demand on the Continent, the fact of there being no other species than the globulus in the neighborhood being a guarantee of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... of view. Such is the complexity of human affairs, and so infinite the combinations of circumstances, that the true hypothesis which is capable of explaining and reuniting all the apparently conflicting circumstances of the case, may escape the acutest penetration: but the prisoner, so far as he alone is concerned, can always afford a clue to them; and though he may be unable to support his statement by evidence, his account of the transaction is, for this purpose, always most material and important. The ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Miracles are the penetration of the absolute or new human-divine life principle into the sphere of the old natural human life. The revelation of the divine-human in Christ is the absolute miracle which manifests itself in a succession of single miracles. A miracle is supernatural and contrary ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... at your powers of penetration. Perhaps you also observed that I rank only a little ways ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... untrustworthy. Deep in his heart—for he had a heart, though contracted from want of use—lay a hungry desire to be loved, really loved for himself; and the very keenness of the longing, and the anxiety not to be deceived, lessened his powers of penetration, and blinded him to the ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... heard, from time to time, of all that Joel was doing. In fact, impelled by a strong impulse, he took pains to ascertain what progress he made from year to year. But Hiram could not, with all his penetration, fathom a nature like that of Joel. It was always a puzzle to him. For it was not given to a man, who had all his life harbored the wicked Demon Absorption, to understand the excellency and happiness of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... lent a hearing so long and patient, was no other than that of the Countess of Exeter against Sir Thomas Lake and his Lady. Throughout it, whether prompted or not as to the course he pursued, the Monarch displayed great sagacity and penetration. Prior to the trial, and when the preliminary statements had alone been laid before him, he determined personally to investigate the matter, and without acquainting any one with his design, while out hunting, he rode over to the Earl of Exeter's residence at Wimbledon—the place, it will be ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... to have exercised his usual penetration when he says that English humour "far from agreeable, and bitter in taste, like their own beverages, abounds in Dickens. French sprightliness, joy, and gaiety is a kind of good wine only grown in the lands ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... sign of Jupiter, whose characteristic is expansion; above it are placed an Eye and an Envelope, the Eye showing the power of penetration, seeing things in a right perspective, and light thrown on difficult questions, the letter showing that news from all parts of the world is made ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... desperate. That chaste artist was always musing over the memory of naked beauties, fancying pictures he did not dare to paint for fear of her. With her sick woman's penetration, she seemed to read this longing in her husband's face. She would have preferred certain infidelity, to see him in love with another woman, mad with passion. He might return from such a wandering outside the bonds of matrimony, wearied and humble, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... old man's purse in that manner; but I'll try my skill at taming that proud, free spirit! Blast the girl! I wonder if she knows anything? But pshaw! what a thought! How could she?—What a fool I was to be so startled!—Well she is shrewd, and I give her credit for her penetration; but she must not be left to surmise and publish her suspicions: I've too much on hand just now to be set upon by spies; and so the sooner I get her out of the way the better. Once in my power I'll see that she ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... were only to be found in the sappy portions of the long-leaf pine and in the loblolly (Specimens II and IV). Exposure in a semi-tropical climate for 26 years had resulted in the removal of the more volatile portions of the creosote oil. The penetration of the oil into the sap wood seemed to be perfect, while in the loblolly it varied from a fraction of an inch to 1-1/2 in. In the heart wood there was very little penetration across the grain. The timber had been framed and the holes bored before treatment. The penetration of the creosote along ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - Tests of Creosoted Timber, Paper No. 1168 • W. B. Gregory
... exhausted his credit to the last real. With the minute keenness of the shameless sponger he was aware of every source in Coralio from which a glass of rum, a meal or a piece of silver could be wheedled. Marshalling each such source in his mind, he considered it with all the thoroughness and penetration that hunger and thirst lent him for the task. All his optimism failed to thresh a grain of hope from the chaff of his postulations. He had played out the game. That one night in the open had shaken his nerves. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... Collinson overtook him in the hollow. He evaded this by post-dating his discovery of the richness of the ore until he had reached Marysville. But he found some difficulty in recounting his good fortune: he was naturally no boaster, he had no desire to impress Collinson with his penetration, nor the undaunted energy he had displayed in getting up his company and opening the mine, so that he was actually embarrassed by his own understatement; and under the grave, patient eyes of his companion, told his story at best lamely. Collinson's ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... sufficiently intimate terms with your mother to confide freely to her all my hopes and aspirations, this among the rest; but, whilst she thoroughly sympathised with me in the particular matter to which I have referred, she had penetration enough to be fully sensible of the danger to which I was exposing myself; and she earnestly sought to dissuade me from having anything to do with active politics. But I was proud of being looked upon as a patriot, and blind to the fact that my ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... had fled abroad. St. Rejant, who had let off the infernal machine, had not yet recovered from the injuries caused by it; and Carbon having betrayed his place of concealment, and all the details of the plot, they were both executed. Fouche's penetration on this occasion gained him still greater confidence with the First Consul. "He was right," repeated Bonaparte: "his opinion was better than that of the others. The returned emigrants, the royalist plotters, and people of that sort, ought to be closely watched. I am pleased, however, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... classicism really is, that it is the outline of all things that endure. They have both shown that it is not idiosyncrasy alone which creates originality, that idiosyncrasy is but the husk of personal penetration, that it is in no way the constituent essential for genius. For genius is nothing but the name for higher perception, the greater degree of understanding. Cezanne's fine landscapes and still-lifes, and Whitman's majestic line with its gripping imagery are one and the same thing, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... "You are full of penetration, my dear M. Dupont. Madame de la Sainte Colombe is far from being a great lady. I believe she was neither more nor less than a milliner, under one of the wooden porticoes of the Palais Royal. You see, that I deal openly ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... only a short period after this ardent declaration. He had penetration enough to see that Miss Loring was profoundly disturbed, and that she desired to be alone. He saw with concern that her countenance was losing its fine warmth, and that the lustre of her eyes was failing. Her look was becoming more inverted each moment. She was trying to read her heart, ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... war be ameliorated, by having one common object of benevolence remaining; in the exercise of which the jealousies and angry passions incident to a state of hostility could not have any part with a generous and a high-minded people; whilst the experience and penetration of liberal and enlightened governments could, without difficulty, form such arrangements as would prevent that which was intended as a benefit to mankind, from being made subservient to ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... entirely in its power to propagate such good effects, whether they were already present in him or not. All criticism is therefore moral, since it deals with benefits and their relative weight. Psychological penetration and reconstructed biography may be excellent sport; if they do not reach historic truth they may at least exercise dramatic talent. Criticism, on the other hand, is a serious and public function; it shows the race assimilating the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... uneasiness. No hopes were given him, that he should be gratified in his extravagancies, or flattered in his levities; on the contrary he was told, 'That as his past conduct had not merited any favour, nothing but his future behaviour could recommend him to it.' The duke had sufficient penetration to discover by this hint, that he was not likely to be abandoned, which was consolation enough to one of his sanguine temper, in the then desperate situation of his affairs.—The Chevalier de St. George soon after sent him ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... had bitter enemies he possessed also true friends. I have known persons," he continued—for he thought he might avail himself of the opportunity of speaking of D'Artagnan—"who by their sagacity and address have deceived the penetration of Cardinal Richelieu; who by their valor have got the better of his guards and spies; persons without money, without support, without credit, yet who have preserved to the crowned head its crown and ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... without support, but with great difficulty, and appeared bent by infirmity and age: his countenance has a melancholy but most benevolent expression, and his dark eyes retain uncommon lustre and penetration. During the twenty-one years he has worn the tiara, he has suffered many vicissitudes and humiliations with dignity and fortitude. He is not considered a man of very powerful intellect or very shining talents: he is not a Ganganelli or a Lambertini; but he has been happy ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... may venture on such ground, were clearness and vigor, intensity, fervor,[26] concentration, penetration, and perseverance,—more of depth than width.[27] The moral conditions under which he lived were the love, the pursuit, and the practice of truth in everything; strength and depth, rather than external warmth of affection; fidelity to principles and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... fleecing him and his fellow-travellers; for he well knew to what shifts a subaltern in the French service is reduced, in order to maintain the appearance of a gentleman, and had reason to believe that most of them were sharpers from their youth: but, as he depended a good deal upon his own penetration and address, he gratified the stranger's desire; and a party was instantly formed of the painter, the physician, the proposer, and himself, the other officer having professed himself utterly ignorant of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... their objects, and more so mischievous to herself. He especially praised the unaffected dignity with which she had received the mistress who had attended in her apartments to pay her court, though in no respect deceived as to the lady's disposition, her penetration into the characters of all with whom she had been brought into contact, denoting, as it struck him, "a sagacity" which, at ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... cannot help being hurt when you speak coldly. Of course you are quite right: it is dreadful to think of anyone being killed or even hurt; and I hope nothing really serious has— (Her voice dies away under his contemptuous penetration.) ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... and nationality, and into the natural trap of patriotic conceit. The dissent of the Indian and Colonial governing class to the first crude applications of liberal propositions in India has found a voice of unparalleled penetration in Mr. Kipling, whose want of intellectual deliberation is only equalled by his poietic power. The search for a basis for a new political synthesis in adaptable sympathies based on linguistic affinities, was greatly influenced by Max Muller's unaccountable ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... doubt; and I have claimed for him nothing that will interfere with his right to that title. But to say that his intellectual power is supreme is to make a great mistake. Within certain limits he has indeed extraordinary penetration, quickness, inventiveness, adaptiveness; but the limits are defined with the hardest of lines, and they are narrow limits. It would scarcely be unjust to call him simply astonishingly clever, or simply a consummate master of intrigue. But compare ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... taken with a grain of salt; but, at all events, it is true that Duerer combined 'keen and devoted study of Nature (in the widest sense of the word) with a penetration which aimed at tracing her facts up to their source.'[6] It is interesting to see how these qualities overcame his theoretical views on Nature and art.[7] Duerer's deep respect for Nature proved him ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... penetration, Mrs. Harcourt was abashed by this ready compliance, and she blamed herself for feelings which she could ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... amperage) are often not nearly so important in regard to the effects on the body, as the area, duration, and location of the points of contact with the current, and the resistance offered by clothing and dry skin to the penetration of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... apparent apathy thus induced on her modes of thought, passivity lost in a gulf of anxious speculation, while she watched the theatre of events with a glow, like wine in lamplight, that burned behind her dusky eyes till they had the steady penetration of some wild creature's. She may have wondered if Mr. Raleigh's former feeling were yet alive; she may have wondered if Marguerite had found the spell that once she found, herself; she may have been ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... six feet in height and could not, I think, have weighed over one hundred and fifty pounds. His face was pinched and careworn, but this effect was more than redeemed by a pair of full, black eyes having a depth and penetration I have never seen equalled, albeit there was, ever and anon, a suggestion of wildness which somewhat marred their deep, contemplative beauty. The brows and the carriage of the head at once bespoke the ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... cost the poor sinner to pick up the letter, emerge from his closet, and make his way upstairs to Mr. Blithe's ante-chamber will never be known. That it reduced his overdraft in Heaven goes without saying. Curiously enough, the penetration of the barrier erected upon the obnoxious personality of a managing clerk proved a less formidable business than Mr. Slumper had expected. The very truculence of the fellow stung the derelict to a sudden defiance. This was but a flash in the pan—yet ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... talents and ardent feelings rashly wedded to novel expectations, when common sense, uninquisitive experience, and a modest reliance on old habits of judgement, when either these, or a philosophic penetration, were the only qualities that could ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... muscles and form a coating on the outside which will not allow the generating gases to escape. Meat should never be in a frozen condition when the salt is added as the frost will prevent the proper penetration of the brine and uneven curing ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... his will, it can be a prison as damnable as any other; possibly even more damnable by reason of those same inevitable mountains. British prisoners of war interned there knew that. Mr. R. O. PROWSE, in A Gift of the Dusk (COLLINS), speaks with subtle penetration for those other prisoners, interned victims of the dreadful malady. Of necessity he writes sadly; but yet he writes as a very genial philosopher, permitting himself candidly "just that little cynicism which helps to keep one tolerant." He is of the old and entertaining ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... You see through all things with your penetration. Now I am calm. How fares it with Maria? My heart doth ache to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... different view of the matter. Mr. Verne looked on in grave disquietude. It may be sacrilegious but we cannot refrain from intruding upon his inmost thoughts and with heartfelt sympathy grieve for the indulgent parent who sees his fair first-born sacrificed to the world and mammon. The man of far-seeing penetration knows too well the great mistake and with painful intensity contrasts the sweet girlish wife of his youth with the fashionable woman of the world who presides supreme over his household—he sighs deeply and plunges deeper into ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... were a weak and defenceless people, and could not do otherwise than obey her commands. The eagle eyed, shrewd, and sagacious Yankees, ever alive to all that pertains to their own pecuniary interests, with that keen-witted penetration and over-reaching foresight, for which they are remarkable, soon made the discovery, that slave labor in a Northern latitude, and on a comparatively barren soil, must prove unproductive. Hence, they strike a bargain with their Southern neighbors. The Yankees ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... the doorway, she paused, and with that clear penetration only a little child possesses, she looked up ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... under her hands when, by that subtle psychological process which makes us aware of the presence of another person, though we may have heard and seen nothing, Blanche became conscious that she was no longer alone. She looked up quickly, into the face of a stranger; but no great penetration was needed to guess that the young man before her was the ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... credulous creatures, and even often succeeds by it in his divinations. Sometimes he does not need all this ceremonial. He pretends to foretell off-hand, and actually does so, when he is already prepared by his knowledge, cunning, or natural penetration. His divinations chiefly turn on the expedience of peace with one nation, or of war with another; upon matches between families, upon the long life of some, or the short life of others; how such and such persons came by their deaths, violently or naturally; whether ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... consummation of rhetorical fame, in the pursuits of the bar, or those, in general, of any public assembly. It is sufficient to say, that in the execution of this elaborate work, Quintilian has called to the assistance of his own acute and comprehensive understanding, the profound penetration of Aristotle, the exquisite graces of Cicero; all the stores of observation, experience, and practice; and in a word, the whole accumulated exertions of ancient genius on ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... posed; she had been on a false scent evidently, and yet she was sure there was something. That is how she shaped her doubts in her own mind—there was something. Warman thought so, she knew; and Warman was gifted with no ordinary amount of penetration. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... de Villeroi's, you would appear with blue feathers in your head-dress. I do not add my name; it is one of those which should not be found at the bottom of a declaration of love." In spite of all her penetration, the duchesse de Grammont did not perceive, in the emphatic tone of this letter, that it was a trick. Her self-love made her believe that a woman of more than forty could be pleasing to a king not yet twenty. She actually went in the evening to madame de Villeroi's dressed in blue, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Barcelona. A Place at such a Distance from receiving any Reinforcement or Relief; the only Place in which the Spaniards had a Garrison of regular Forces; and those in Number rather exceeding the Army he was to undertake the Siege with, was enough to cool the Ardour of a Person of less Penetration and Zeal than what the Earl had on all Occasions demonstrated. Whereas if the General, as he intended, had made an immediate March to Madrid, after he had secur'd Valencia, and the Towns adjacent, which were all ready to submit and declare for King Charles; ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... regard to all things in the world, to proceed from what knowledge he has of their principles, and pursue his investigation of them, till he reaches the extreme point. After exerting himself for a long time, he will suddenly find himself possessed of a wide and far-reaching penetration. Then, the qualities of all things, whether external or internal, the subtle or the coarse, will be apprehended, and the mind, in its entire substance and its relations to things, will be perfectly intelligent. This is called ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... He is to stay with the Danforth-Sibbs. Mamma says that as he is a stranger here we must be very polite to him, and that his being here will give distinction to the season. Do you like him?" There was in Evelyn still, with the penetration of the woman, the naivete ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... object of attention among the women than among the men. Greatly did they admire his courage and unshaken presence of mind while engaged in so perilous an adventure; but still more were they astonished at his penetration in discovering where the bravoes concealed themselves, an attempt which foiled even the keen wits of the so much ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... approves of my conduct, I have my plan ready for further proceedings. If the office blames me, I shall take myself off, with my marketable information, to the genteel villa residence in the neighborhood of the Regent's Park. Anyway, the affair puts money into my pocket, and does credit to my penetration as ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... you think," replied Wilton, who had plenty of penetration. "I don't claim to be any great forest rover, although I do think I've learned something since I left Philadelphia, but I imagine that our building of a fort in the woods will draw 'em. The Indian runners will soon be carrying the news of it, and then they'll cluster around us like ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... confidence. She sees the man—runs upon him, if you will, in places or under circumstances she cannot avoid—till her judgment leaves her and the point of catastrophe is reached. Then, possibly, she awakens, or what is more probable, seeks to protect herself from the penetration and opposition of his friends by meetings less open than those in which they had lately indulged. She says that she left the house to escape seeing him again last night. But this is not true. On the contrary, she must have ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... distance due, Dispenses light from far; they, as they move Their starry dance in numbers that compute Days, months, and years, towards his all-cheering lamp Turn swift their various motions, or are turned By his magnetick beam, that gently warms The universe, and to each inward part With gentle penetration, though unseen, Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep; So wonderously was set his station bright. There lands the Fiend, a spot like which perhaps Astronomer in the sun's lucent orb Through ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... of the nation, a period of material achievement and of social progress, in short, a national forward movement almost unequalled in history. The world looked on in admiration, perhaps not entirely free from a tinge of envy. Germany was conquering the earth by peaceful penetration; and no one stood in its way. It had free access to all the ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... be allowed to project through openings in the boot, as this arrangement will give much more freedom to the feet, and the boot itself will not be destroyed so soon by the penetration of the toes through its substance. Boots thus neatly made will neither interfere with his locomotive nor swimming powers, but add greatly to the comfort of the animal, and secure ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... recently with increased use of digital switching equipment; microwave radio relay transmission and coaxial and fiber-optic cable are employed on trunk lines; growing mobile-cellular usage in both urban and rural areas is reducing use of fixed-line services; Internet penetration remains modest and slow-growing domestic: 1995 telecommunications law opened all non-fixed-line services to private competition; in 2005, monopoly over fixed-line services terminated and the entire telecommunications sector was opened to competition; mobile-cellular ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... my penetration stop there. I guessed that the gems were family property, the last treasure of the house; and that M. de Cocheforet, when I saw him at the inn, was on his way to convey them out of the country; either to secure them from seizure by the Government, ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... experiments which have cost large sums of money, but have given much valuable data. For a long time wrought iron was the only material used for armor, and the resisting power depending on the thickness; and the caliber and penetration of guns rapidly increasing, it was not long before a point was reached where the requisite thickness made the load of armor so great that it was impracticable for a ship to carry it. The question then ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... it then," ordered their commander. "It is small enough to be brought inside our carrying compartment, and we can see with our penetration rays just what manner of creatures it holds. They are intelligent, that is certain, for their space ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... was President, would repel any attempt by foreigners to violate the Monroe Doctrine, and set up a nucleus of foreign power in either North or South America. He devoted himself all the more earnestly to pushing the sly work of peaceful penetration, that work of spying and lying in which the German people proved itself easily first. The diabolical propaganda, aimed not only at undermining the United States, at seducing the Irish and other hyphenate groups of Americans, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... sufficient power to transport you to such a degree of injustice. You repeat the opinion of every other foreigner upon the Italian character, when drawn from first impressions; but it requires deeper penetration, and a more patient scrutiny, to be able to form a correct judgment upon this country, which at different epochs has been so great. Whence comes it that this nation, under the Romans, has attained the highest military character in the world? that it ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... or woman, that dares rely upon him or put any confidence in his word or friendship." The one man in England indeed on whom the discovery of the king's perfidy fell with the most crushing effect was Shaftesbury himself. Ashley Cooper had piqued himself on a penetration which read the characters of men around him and on a political instinct which discerned every coming change. He had bought, as he believed, the Declaration of Indulgence, the release of the imprisoned Nonconformists, and freedom of worship for all dissidents, at the price ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... by these words—viz. that such steadfastness as we have been trying to describe has for its result a deeper penetration into Jesus Christ and a fuller possession of Him. The only way by which we can grow nearer and nearer to our Lord is by steadfastly keeping beside Him. You cannot get the spirit of a landscape unless you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... A man of penetration, forethought, tact, Loving to solve, elucidate each fact; He firmly held to truth with friend and foe, And ne'er was known to ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... great penetration for Herbert to be instantly convinced that the writer of this vulgar epistle and the owner of the unknown voice were two very different individuals. The note was evidently a trick. A suspicion of its ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... we infer from thence? The consequence flows of itself. "If so much wisdom and penetration," says Minutius Felix, "are required to observe the wonderful order and design of the structure of the world, how much more were necessary ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... resolved, however, to continue somewhat longer in a country where my works had been so well received, and accordingly bestowed myself with Hilario.[5] His natural wit, his lively turn of humour, and great penetration into human nature, easily determined me to this choice, the effects of which were soon after produced in this paper, called "The Tatler." I know not how it happened, but in less than two years' time Hilario grew weary of my company, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... facts will be stated respecting the same individual, which I believe are strictly true. Miss W. possessed a fine and well-cultivated mind, great penetration, and a tact at discriminating character rarely equaled. She could, if she chose, impart a charm to her conversation that would interest and even fascinate those who listened to it; still, she was not beloved. Weaknesses and foibles met with unmerciful severity, and well-meaning intentions ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... toward the cemetery. Never had she said as much since the day of her arrival, when she was taken with sudden illness at the same spot. The rector looked attentively at his penitent, and the habit of penetration he had long acquired made him see that in those simple words he had won another triumph. Veronique must have made a mighty effort over herself to break her twelve years' silence with a speech that said so much. The rector clasped his hands with a fervent ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... striking conclusion of a first act,—letting the reader into the secret;—having before impressed us with the dignified and kingly manners of Richard, yet by well managed anticipations leading us on to the full gratification of pleasure in our own penetration. In this scene a new light is thrown on Richard's character. Until now he has appeared in all the beauty of royalty; but here, as soon as he is left to himself, the inherent weakness of his character is immediately shown. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... illustrations were furnished by Gavarni and Daumier. Since he already aspired to a foreign ministry or ambassadorship, he reserved the department of foreign affairs for himself, and for more than a year he treated of European diplomacy with extraordinary penetration and accuracy. He made prodigious efforts to keep his review on its feet, but in spite of his activity and the talent of his collaborators, the Chronique exerted little or no influence, and remained ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... from accomplishing his purpose. But for the most part one side in battle is on the offensive; the other on the defensive. The invader is habitually the offensive person, just for the reason that the native force commonly acts on the defensive; the latter is anxious to hinder further penetration into the bowels of its land; the former's desire is to effect that penetration. The defensive of the native army need not, however, be the passive defensive; indeed, unless the position be exceptionally strong that is according to present tenets to be avoided. When, always with an underlying ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... comes to saying that he did not describe them well, then that is quite another matter, and that I should emphatically deny. The things that are really odd about the English upper class he saw with startling promptitude and penetration, and if the English upper class does not see these odd things in itself, it is not because they are not there, but because we are all blind to our own oddities; it is for the same reason that tramps do not feel dirty, ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... on one or other portion of the brain, it should affect his mental capacities in such and such directions. So if he should talk, notice very carefully what kind of ideas his mind seems to run on; whether memory, or penetration, or the reasoning faculties are exercised; whether sentiments or practical questions fill his thoughts; whether he makes forecasts or dwells on the past; in fact; you must be prepared to give an accurate report ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... more an object of attention among the women than among the men. Greatly did they admire his courage and unshaken presence of mind while engaged in so perilous an adventure; but still more were they astonished at his penetration in discovering where the bravoes concealed themselves, an attempt which foiled even the keen wits of the so much celebrated ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... knee before her, Alexis gratefully kissed her beloved hand, and the counts and gentlemen surrounded him, loudly praising the great wisdom of the empress, whose divine penetration enabled her everywhere to discover and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... was in an agony. She would have given her best gold chain for the little Breton jeweller to have kept away from Hazelwood. If he had any sort of penetration, another minute might reveal the secret hitherto so jealously guarded, that his Sovereign's missing mother was a prisoner there. Her misery was the greater because she could not feel at all sure of Perrote, whom she strongly suspected of ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... small points to cleverness, quick intuitions, a liking for one's own way, brilliant intellect, and fine powers of penetration. Round, jolly, comfortable-looking letters betoken a disposition ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... tarnished by communication with vulgar interests. They rule like the unseen influence of mind over matter, and form, as it were, the soul of the state, whose seat, like that of reason, remains a problem exceeding human penetration." ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... accessibility results in similarity of human and animal occupants, while a corresponding dissimilarity is the attendant of remoteness or of segregation. Therefore, despite the distribution of mankind over the total habitable area of the earth, his penetration into its detached regions and hidden corners has maintained such variations as still ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... recognition came into his face. Then, like throwing off a garment, Ashton-Kirk allowed the mannerisms he had assumed to drop from him. Osborne at once sat erect with a laugh of pleasure at his own lack of penetration. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... return of the Druses," a "Blot in the 'Scutcheon," and "Colombo's Birthday," all have the same originality of conception, delicate penetration into the mysteries of human feeling, atmospheric individuality, and skill in picturesque detail. All three exhibit very high and pure ideas of Woman, and a knowledge, very rare in man, of the ways in ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the one hand stupid and base to condemn him for writing verses, and he despised on that account both fellows and teachers, whose bad manners were always repellent to him, and whose personal weaknesses he detected with strange penetration. On the other hand, he himself found it really an improper dissipation to write verse, and so had to agree to some extent with all those who regarded it as a doubtful occupation. But this could not make him ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... he is not searching or profound; he saw too little of the inner world of the heart, and knew too imperfectly its agitations. When, however, he deals with literature—and a just judgment in letters may almost be called an element in morals—all his penetration and power become apparent. To clear the ground for the new school of nature, truth, and reason was Boileau's first task. It was a task which called for courage and skill ... he struck at the follies and affectations of the world of letters, and he struck with force. ...
— English Satires • Various
... be denied that Mills seems to have acted somewhat unscrupulously. He himself appears to have had some doubt about it, at a given moment, as they were driving to the Prado. But perhaps Mills, with his penetration, understood very well the nature he was dealing with. He might even have envied it. But it's not my business to excuse Mills. As to him whom we may regard as Mills' victim it is obvious that he has never harboured a single reproachful thought. For him Mills is not to be criticized. A ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... ophthalmia are largely those of the external form only, acting with greater intensity or on a more susceptible eye. Severe blows, bruises, punctures, etc., of the eye, the penetration of foreign bodies into the eye (thorns, splinters of iron, etc.), sudden transition from a dark stall to bright sunshine, to the glare of snow or water, constant glare from a sunny window, abuse of the overdraw checkrein, vivid lightning flashes, drafts of cold, damp air; above all, when the animal ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... that she could be guilty of such a vile trick; and second, that she had had the hardihood to acknowledge it, even to a boy like me. My respect for the knowledge and penetration of the gentlemanly conductor rose about ten degrees, and I was tempted to say to myself that I would never again interfere in behalf of another "lone woman," especially if she was the mother of one as smart as her ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... that he read my story, unspoken though it was,—it is conceivable. His eyes had powers of penetration which were peculiarly their own,—that ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... I asked, amazed at Annerly's instinctive penetration into the mysteries of the psychic world, "how do you intend to get it ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... looked upon as the refuge of the entire universe.[1241] Who then speaks the truth that says that domesticity cannot lead to the acquisition of Emancipation? Only those that are destitute of faith and wisdom and penetration, only those that are destitute of reputation that are idle and toil-worn, that have misery for their share in consequence of their past acts, only those that are destitute of learning, behold the plenitude of tranquillity in a life of mendicancy. The eternal and certain distinctions ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... spirit, wrote verses, and was a very fair actor. He was only twenty-eight, and he was already a kammer-yunker, and had a very good position. Panshin had complete confidence in himself, in his own intelligence, and his own penetration; he made his way with light-hearted assurance, everything went smoothly with him. He was used to being liked by every one, old and young, and imagined that he understood people, especially women: he certainly understood their ordinary weaknesses. ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... against Vitellius, he saith, We rise not against the piercing judgment of Augustus, nor the extreme caution or closeness of Tiberius. These properties, of arts or policy, and dissimulation or closeness, are indeed habits and faculties several, and to be distinguished. For if a man have that penetration of judgment, as he can discern what things are to be laid open, and what to be secreted, and what to be showed at half lights, and to whom and when (which indeed are arts of state, and arts of life, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... will complete what I have begun— avenge Austria's wrongs on France, and restore her to her place as one of the four great powers. You have not only the instincts of a soldier, but the quickness and penetration which constitute military genius. My pupil, I think, will ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... amiable talker, but on the parade-ground he ruled us all like a Napoleon. He had lost one eye; people always believed in battle, but in fact, the loss had occurred in a tennis-court since his return from India. The other eye seemed to have gained, in consequence, a supernatural degree of penetration. It looked you through! One day, on the parade-ground, that eye glared at me in such a manner that I was quite intimidated, and said what I had to say in rather a low tone of voice. "Speak up, sir! can't you?" thundered ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... his left eye and cheek just that peculiar amount of screw which indicated intense sagacity and penetration; "but I've a notion that, if they are to be found, Captain Guy is the man ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... way of his sensuality; and when his passions were roused, he put no bounds to his violence and cruelty. But with all this, he had several qualities, which attached his followers to him. He was liberal and enterprising. He had much quickness and penetration, and acted so politically towards the Shah and his government, that he was always treated with the greatest confidence and consideration. He lived in princely magnificence; was remarkable for his hospitality, and making no mystery of his irregularity ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... speech, and causeless animosity toward Great Britain" of the North; and declared that the interests of America and of the world would be best served by the independence of the South. The effect of a full year's penetration in England of Lincoln's emancipation proclamation is shown in the necessity felt by the framers of this constitution to meet that issue. This required delicate handling and was destined to cause some heart-burnings. The concluding section ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... but from our right as well, and our guns were replying less and less. Reports began to come in from the right of batteries wiped out (the 28th R.F.A. Brigade lost nearly all their guns here, for nearly all the detachments and horses were killed), and of a crushing attack on the 19th Brigade and penetration of our line thereabouts. And soon afterwards the movement itself became visible, for the 14th Brigade, and then the 13th, began to give way, and one could see the trenches being evacuated on the right. The Norfolks stuck well to it on the right, and covered the retirement ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... Thusa would call her a foolish child, and tell her parents all her terrors of the worm-eaten traveler, and she raised her timid eyes to her face, wondering at her silence. There was something in those prophetic orbs, which she could not read. There seemed to be a film over them, baffling her penetration, and she looked down ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... what excessive labour, what endless solicitude, has he not been compelled to employ in this continued struggle; how many embarrassments, how many cares, has he not experienced in this eternal wrestling with his associates, whose penetration he dreads, whose scorn he fears will follow a true knowledge of his pursuits. Demand of him what he thinks of himself, he will shrink from the question. Approach the bedside of this villain at the moment he is dying; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... negotiation, in which the penetration, judgment, and firmness, of the American commissioners were eminently displayed, eventual and preliminary articles were signed on the 30th of November. By this treaty every reasonable wish of America, especially on the questions of boundary ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Resistance to penetration by water is desirable in all concrete structures, and is essential in such structures as tanks, reservoirs, vaults, subways, basements and roofs. Concrete, as it is ordinarily made, is pervious to water, hence to secure concrete structures through which water will not penetrate some ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... a theme in a symphony, its deviations and disappearances, its distribution in the various choirs of wood-wind, brass, and strings, its interweaving with other themes, its resilient, surprising, and apposite emergences, its pervasive penetration of the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... "Minds of little penetration rest naturally on the surface of things. They do not like to pierce deep into them, for fear of labor and trouble; sometimes still more for ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... sick, I hope. Come and have a seat. What news do you bring this morning?" He was quite portly, with a profusion of gray hair, and small blue eyes which age had robbed of much of their brightness but none of their penetration. ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... was no one in the town who so completely surrendered to Mrs. Maxwell's charms as Jonathan Jackson, the Junior Warden. Betty had penetration enough to see, beneath the man's rough exterior, all that was fine and lovable, and she treated him with a jolly, friendly manner ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... With his usual penetration, Loftus divines and explains the origin of these forms. The idea must have been suggested, he thinks, by the palm trunks that were used set closely together in timber constructions, or at regular intervals in mud walls. In either case half ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... returning from Vienna, but a great deal in returning from Warsaw, in case of failure, notwithstanding the creation of the Kingdom of Saxony, and the provisional government given to Prussia, and to the other States of Germany which we had conquered. None of these considerations escaped the penetration of Napoleon: nothing was omitted in the notes, letters, and official correspondence which came to me from all quarters. Receiving, as I did, accurate information from my own correspondents of all that was passing in Germany, it often happened that I transmitted to the Government the same news which ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... The fleet which was to take Bovadilla back to Europe, and to bear with it, besides the enormous lump of gold already mentioned, other treasures of great value, was ready to put to sea. But the weather was very threatening, and Columbus, with a sailor's penetration, having observed the signs of an approaching storm, implored the governor not to expose the ships and passengers to such danger. Ovando would not listen to the advice, and the ships put to sea; scarcely had they reached the eastern point of the island before ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... glance in spite of herself, and, with the intuitive penetration of a woman, intimated that she had come to the same conclusion. The two strangers were both tall, and decidedly gentleman-like young men, whose personal appearance would cause either to be remarked. The one whom the captain addressed as ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... he said, "but the Government have to-day shown themselves possessed of a penetration and appreciation of mind for which I for one scarcely gave them credit. They have made ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... doorway, she paused, and with that clear penetration only a little child possesses, she looked up ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... asset, is manifest throughout the review, and we thoroughly appreciate the favorable mention not infrequently accorded us. In passing upon the merits of Dowdell's Bearcat, Mr. Fritter shows equal penetration and perspicuity, and we are convinced that his rank amongst amateur reviewers ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... before any overt military act, aggression begins with preliminaries of propaganda, subsidized penetration, the loosening of ties of good will, the stirring of prejudice and the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... with an altogether massive person. His large head was at that time covered with dark hair, and he had prominent features and gray eyes, which were watchful and overhung by shaggy eyebrows. He was a man of great natural strength of character, deep penetration as regards human nature, and a good sense, judgment, and cheerfulness in his own characteristics which conduced to respect and popularity. He was most happy in his intercourse with men, for he had, when a mere youth, a geniality and tact ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... opinion with an air of profound wisdom, and the most acute penetration, he leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and regarded his empty glass as with the air of a man whose fondest hopes in that direction had been ruthlessly crushed. And ANN was walking the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... at the same time showing quite clearly the defects that explained it. Mr. LUCAS, in short, does not commit the error of making his hero merely a mute, misunderstood paragon, whom anyone with common penetration must have recognised as such. On the contrary, we sympathise with him, especially in the big tragedy of his life, while quite admitting that to any casual acquaintance he must have appeared only a dull and uninteresting egoist. This I call clever, because it shows that Mr. LUCAS ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... was considered the physician of most "weight," though Dr. Minchin was usually said to have more "penetration," divested his large heavy face of all expression, and looked at his wine-glass while Lydgate was speaking. Whatever was not problematical and suspected about this young man—for example, a certain showiness as to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... was the experimental application of X-ray photography, which showed up latent defects, both in the material and in manufacture, which would otherwise have passed unnoticed. This method was also used to test the penetration of glue into the wood on each side of joints, so giving a measure of the strength; and for the effect of 'doping' the wings, dope being a film (of cellulose acetate dissolved in acetone with other chemicals) applied ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... school, and look over the books I have. We will talk some more about it, and you shall select as you please, or I will select for you, if you desire," I said, looking at Rebecca with kindly though severe penetration. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... whose judgment was not guided by the dictate of fashion. Having met accidentally with the performance we have mentioned, he was struck with its beauties. As he had heard nothing of it in the politest circles, he concluded, with his usual penetration, that the author of it was in obscure and narrow circumstances. Open as day to sweet humanity, interested warmly in the fortune of the writer of so amiable a performance, he flew to his bookseller's with the usual enquiries. The bookseller stared, and had it not been for the ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... when he has once got hold of you. To interrupt him is a physical impossibility. If you get a chance to remonstrate for a moment, he raises his voice and bears you down. True, he does you no injustice, and, with his admirable penetration, sees the disclaimer in your mind, so that you are not morally delinquent; but it is not pleasant to be unable to utter it. The latter part of the evening, however, he paid us for this, by a series of sketches, in his finest style of railing and raillery, ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... man was standing before Sabre in the little cupboard bending his head close towards him as though he would sense out, if he could not see, some hidden motive behind all this. He contracted his great brows as if to squeeze more penetration into his gaze. "Yes, but I'll want references, Mr. Sabre. My girl's been well brought up. She's not ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... man of no inconsiderable penetration. He understood the thoughts which, upon this occasion, passed in the mind of his wife, and in order to ensure her kind treatment of the boy, instead of reproaching her for the cold manner in which she had at first received him, he praised her tender and sympathetic heart for ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... and Pherecydes, tell us, that Argus was the son of Arestor. He is supposed by some to have been the fourth king of Argos after Inachus, and to have been a person of great wisdom and penetration, on account of which he was said to have a hundred eyes. Io most probably was committed to his charge, and he watched over her ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... hint of the author's design. He does not intend that the devil shall succeed; he does not mean to adopt the conclusion of the legend and send Faust to hell. He had the penetration to see, and he meant to show, that the notion implied in the old popular superstition of selling one's soul to the devil—the notion that evil can obtain the entire and final possession of the soul—is a fallacy; that the soul is not man's to dispose of, and cannot be so traded away. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... no very extraordinary penetration to read "Philip" under the words of the monitorium: "Ita ut in casu contraventionis (quod Deus avertat) et contumaciae, regnum, principatus, ac alia cujuscunque status et dominia hujuscemodi, dentur et dari possint cuilibet illa occupanti, vel illi aut illis ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... manure drops immediately beneath the surface within reach of the active roots. If the rainfall has been scanty and the soil is dry he may use ten of water to two of night soil, not to supply water but to make certain sufficiently deep penetration. If the weather is rainy and the soil over wet, the food is applied more concentrated, not to lighten the burden but to avoid waste by leaching and over saturation. While ever crowding growth he never overfeeds. Forethought, ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... we knew, reports of our approach would have spread far and wide. Probably a dozen good old captains, sweeping the sea, each with his glass on his "captain's walk," had sighted our topsails while we were hull down and had cried out that Joseph Whidden was home again. Such was the penetration of seafaring men in those good old days when they recognized a ship and its master while as yet they could spy nothing more ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... attachment to its peculiar doctrines, is enthusiastic. They listen to the artful seducer, who assures them that their principles are too evidently drawn from the lessons of the nursery, and that it is time to shake off—their own penetration, indeed, will lead them to discard—the mere prejudices of an illiberal education. It is not improbable they may meet with some advocate of deistical principles or libertine conduct, who zealously instils into them the maxim of the well-known Earl of Shaftesbury, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... seen, the facts collected by Klaproth are very curious, and throw an unexpected light on the migration of ancient races. The penetration and sagacity of the traveller were marvellous, and his memory was extraordinary. The scholar of Berlin rendered signal services to the science of philology. It is to be regretted that his qualities as a man, his principles, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the visible appearances of the planets do so indeed answer to their magnitudes and orbs, and come nearest to mathematical observations and precedent calculations, there is no repugnancy to physical axioms, because no penetration of orbs; but then between the sphere of Saturn and the firmament, there is such an incredible and vast [3105]space or distance (7,000,000 semi-diameters of the earth, as Tycho calculates) void of stars: and besides, they do so enhance ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... who ventures to appear upon the concert-platform. He must be a wonder, indeed, who can disturb our critical equilibrium by mere digital feats. We want strength and velocity of finger to be coupled with strength, velocity, and penetration of thought. We want no halting or lisping in the proclamation of what the composer has said, but we want the contents of his thought, not the hollow shell, no matter how ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... my own mind a question, and see if Planchette would not answer it. I yielded at last to her all but hysterical importunity, and thought of an heraldic question concerning the crest on a ring which I wore, which I felt was quite beyond Planchette's penetration; but while we sat in quiet expectation of the reply, which of course did not come, my friend's mother—a sober, middle-aged lady, habitually behaving herself with perfect reasonableness, and, moreover, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Johnson! what a charming man you are! Mrs. Cholmondeley, too, I am not merely prepared but determined to admire; for really she has shown so much penetration and sound sense of late, that I think she will bring about a union between Wit and Judgement, though their separation has been so long, and though their meetings have been ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... intolerable, among the three characters with whom I am cast. Pauline is daring, like all young persons who are innocent, to whom love is a wholly ideal thing, and who see no evil in anything, so long as it concerns a man whom they intend to marry. The penetration of Gertrude is very acute, but we manage to elude it through Pauline's terror lest my name should be divulged; the sense of this danger gives her strength to dissemble! But now Pauline has just refused Godard, and I do not know what ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... administration? The only way to find out would be by having the understanding of those persons who are to accomplish it and carry it into effect. If there was anything in which woman excelled man it was her penetration and correct judgment of persons at first sight. It by no means follows that because woman has the right to vote, that entitles her to hold office. That right is vested in the judgment of our fellow-citizens, who, if they ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... how egregiously she was deceiving him!—He was a person of no natural penetration, and could no more see thro' her designs, than through the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... we were a weak and defenceless people, and could not do otherwise than obey her commands. The eagle eyed, shrewd, and sagacious Yankees, ever alive to all that pertains to their own pecuniary interests, with that keen-witted penetration and over-reaching foresight, for which they are remarkable, soon made the discovery, that slave labor in a Northern latitude, and on a comparatively barren soil, must prove unproductive. Hence, they strike a ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... attractive. It gave his mind something to play with, like a new toy to a child; and it took him on the weak side, for like many young men coming to the Bar, and before they had been tried and found wanting, he flattered himself he was a fellow of unusual quickness and penetration. They knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in those days, but there was a good deal said of Talleyrand. And if you could have caught Frank off his guard, he would have confessed with a smirk that, if he resembled any one, it was the Marquis de Talleyrand-Perigord. It was on the occasion of Archie's ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... intended to be nonsensical, but the nonsense has much spirit in it. They are usually preceded by a dedication of mock solemnity to some one of her family. It would seem that the grandiloquent dedications prevalent in those days had not escaped her youthful penetration. Perhaps the most characteristic feature in these early productions is that, however puerile the matter, they are always composed in pure simple English, quite free from the over- ornamented style which might be ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... the good days of old, when the larder and refectory were a credit to religion and a relief to the destitute, but which, alas!—and alas! again—we can only think of as a—in the meantime, I can stand this no longer. If I possess judgment or penetration in re culinaria, I am of opinion," he added (stirring up the contents of it), "that it is fit to be operated on; so, in God's name, let us have ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... disinterested malice, which lurks in the sodden sediment of character, that malice which is disinterested and inactive, and not only incapable of drawing a dagger but even of writing an anonymous note, this no writer but Dostoievski has had the penetration to reveal. He has shown us at the same time mere inert goodness, lying passive in the soul, without ever serving as ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... yard ain't much to brag of anyhow," replied Miss Polly with that careful penetration which never sees below the surface of things. "To tell the truth I've always had a sort of leanin' toward geraniums myself—especially rose geraniums. I don't know why on earth," she concluded with animated wonder, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... guest. Miss Deane was both insincere and a thoroughly selfish person, caring nothing for the comfort or happiness of others. She had perceived Zoe's antipathy from the first day of their acquaintance, and took a revengeful, malicious delight in tormenting her; and she had sufficient penetration to see that the most effectual way to accomplish her end was through Edward. The young wife's ardent and jealous affection for her husband was very evident; plainly, it was pain to her to see him show ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... had fallen, and the water view was growing dim in the gloaming. Judith explained to the peddler that the convict her husband had bought proved to be an old enemy of his. She stammered a little in her endeavor not to betray the real reasons for selling him, and Perkins, who was proud of his own penetration, inferred that Browne was afraid of his life if he should keep the new servant. He saw in this an unexpected chance for profit. When Mrs. Browne offered to sell him if Perkins would take him to the eastern shore or some other place away off, he said that servants wuz ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... herself. He especially praised the unaffected dignity with which she had received the mistress who had attended in her apartments to pay her court, though in no respect deceived as to the lady's disposition, her penetration into the characters of all with whom she had been brought into contact, denoting, as it struck him, "a sagacity" which, at her age, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... as possible; and the commander of the whole force will so distribute his troops that about half his available force can be kept in hand for this decisive blow, on a part of the enemy's front if sufficient penetration has been effected, or on a flank. The point chosen becomes the vital {32} point, and success there means success at all points. Once routed, the enemy must be relentlessly pursued and prevented from regaining order ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... been disposed to cry at particular times in the day, without any obvious cause, we should at those hours engage his attention, occupy him, change the room he is in, or by any new circumstance break his habits. It will require some penetration to distinguish between involuntary tears, and tears of caprice; but even when children are really cross, it is not, whilst they are very young, prudent to let them wear out their ill-humour, as some people do, in total neglect. Children, when they are left to weep in solitude, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... imagined that Tacitus wrote vigentibus, "flourishing," instead of urgentibus, "urgent." But it is sufficiently evident, from other passages, that the causes which were operating gradually, but surely, to the destruction of the Roman empire, did not escape the penetration of Tacitus, even when disguised by the most flattering appearances. The common reading is therefore, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... was Johan Wilhelm Snellman, who advocated his cause with great vigour and skill in his two journals, first the Saima (1844-1847), and Literaturblad fr allmn medborgerlig bildning[F] (1847-1863). Snellman's activity was of epoch-making importance for Finland. With much penetration he proved that the existence of the Finnish people depended on the preservation and development of the language spoken by the bulk of the population. He maintained that the West-European civilisation, that had been imparted to the Finnish ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... his poems and plays. But his Essay on Dramatic Poesie, which Dr. Johnson called our "first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing," was in the shape of a Platonic dialogue. When not misled by the French classicism of his day, Dryden was an admirable critic, full of penetration and sound sense. He was the earliest writer, too, of modern literary prose. If the imitation of French models was an injury to poetry it was a benefit to prose. The best modern prose is French, and it was ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Edward's penetration had been sufficiently quick to discover that there was a mystery about the angler, that there must have been a cause for the blush that rose so proudly on Ellen's cheek; and his Quixotism had been not a little mortified, ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to use all the penetration I was capable of, to find out one thing, whether you were purely and unreservedly sincere in it. I wondered whether you really wished to live your life alone, but could not find the courage to tell me so. I firmly believe ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... irrepressible aspiration and effort, 'Not as if I had already attained, either were already perfect, but I follow after,' or as he had just said, 'press towards the mark,' in continual approximation to the ideal. A complete penetration of all our actions by the principles and emotions of the Gospel is what ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... tenderness as pride. Her look, so often lost in space, was followed by those who knew her, as if it were possible to find with her the inspiration she sought. That gaze, open, yet profound as her understanding, had as much serenity as penetration. We felt that the light of her genius was only the reverberation of a mine of tenderness of heart. Thus there was a secret love in all the admiration she excited; and she, in admiration, cared only for love. Love with her was ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... him all good wishes, struck me with some astonishment. Whenever he has alluded to him since, it has been with significant eulogy. When I alluded that he was no gentleman, he seemed out of patience with me for the objection. You say papa has penetration. On this subject I believe he has indeed. I have told him nothing, yet he seems to be au fait to the whole business. I could think at some moments his guesses go farther than mine. I believe he thinks a prospective union, deferred for five years, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... preparations had been made to repulse an attack in force, and Juan D'Omedes was a Grand Master who excited little enthusiasm either among the Knights or the inhabitants. The choice of Sinan was not one which did great credit to the penetration of the Sultan. Let us explain. We are all of us conscious at one time or another of a desire to express some fact in the fewest possible words; to place the transaction or the circumstance which we wish to ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... time to know what classicism really is, that it is the outline of all things that endure. They have both shown that it is not idiosyncrasy alone which creates originality, that idiosyncrasy is but the husk of personal penetration, that it is in no way the constituent essential for genius. For genius is nothing but the name for higher perception, the greater degree of understanding. Cezanne's fine landscapes and still-lifes, and Whitman's majestic line with its gripping imagery are one and the same thing, for ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... they take shelter, and to whose rule they submit, because of love which masters and controls them. The heart cries out for a person—not for things. Spirit desires spirit; soul yearns for soul. It is the genius of woman to be electrical in movement, intuitive in penetration, and spiritual in tendency. She excels not so easily in classification or recreation as in an instinctive seizure of causes, and a simple breathing out of what she receives, that has the singleness of life, rather than the ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... uncommon. This one had a nest in a large tree nearby. One of the boys shied a small stone at him as he flapped overhead, but, I think, without any idea of hitting him. The peasants assembled here eyed us narrowly. They probed me and my belongings with eyes of corkscrew penetration, but since this country of theirs was a show place to me, I argued that I had no right to object to their making in return a show of me. But such scrutiny is not comfortable, especially if one is seated in ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... 1859, which contains excellent notes, and Prof. David Masson's, which is the work of the most learned and devoted of all Milton's editors. Both of these have the advantage of Todd in some respects; Keightley in acuteness and penetration, Masson in completeness of knowledge. But no single editor's work can be a perfect substitute for a variorum edition like that of Todd, giving the comments and suggestions of many different minds. The most complete edition of Masson's work is the final library ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... moment were not worth the hearing. Because he was shy and unassuming; because he betrayed neither in face nor bearing, save in the heat of battle, any unusual power or consciousness of power, it is hastily concluded that he was deficient in the initiative, the breadth, and the penetration which are the distinguishing characteristics of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... of herself as a woman, to mistrust these masked approaches. She did not see them, in fact. She thought him sympathetic—the first expressively sympathetic person she had ever met. She was so innocent that she could not understand the fury of the German woman. For, as you may imagine, the wifely penetration was not to be deceived for any great length of time—the more so that the wife was older than the husband. The man with the peculiar cowardice of respectability never said a word in Flora's defence. He stood by and heard her reviled in the most abusive ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... gate, introduction, accession, door, gateway, opening, adit, doorway, ingress, penetration, admission, entree, inlet, portal. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... book which, you will remember, I succeeded in recovering from the wreck of the Daedalus, and therein I met with a passage of a most surpassingly interesting character. This passage related to the rumoured penetration into this region of a certain unnamed traveller who is stated to have positively asserted that he here saw, on more than one occasion, an animal absolutely identical with the fabled unicorn. This remarkable statement at once ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Celts and Celticism. Who were the Celts? I defy anybody to say. Who are the Irish? I defy any one to be indifferent, or to pretend not to know. Mr. W. B. Yeats, the great Irish genius who has appeared in our time, shows his own admirable penetration in discarding altogether the argument from a Celtic race. But he does not wholly escape, and his followers hardly ever escape, the general objection to the Celtic argument. The tendency of that argument is to represent the Irish or the Celts as ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Tomlinson answered never a word, but looked steadily first at one and then at the other. Dr. Boomer said afterwards that the penetration of Tomlinson was wonderful, and that it was excellent to see how Boyster tried in vain to draw him; and Boyster said afterwards that the way in which Tomlinson quietly refused to be led on by Boomer was delicious, and that it was a pity that Aristophanes ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... the perceiving, the imagining, and the sense of a flowing symbolism in Nature, which our own time brings to them. To make Homer alive to this age,—what an expenditure of imagination, of pure feeling and penetration does it demand! Let the Homeric heart or genius die out of mankind, and from that moment the "Iliad" is but dissonance, the long melodious roll of its echoes becomes a jarring chop of noises. What chiefly makes Homer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... truth, as it is intended to be; but it needs no penetration to see here a man whose sympathies with all kinds of those "come-outers" who then multiplied exceedingly in his neighborhood, would be infinitesimal. He had not, however, yet engaged with this problem so closely as he was to do. So far one would discern only that fatalistic ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... Ah, it were sacrilege to thus befoul The mighty soul whose penetration deep Hath by selection brought this galaxy Of excellence to lead this groping state In paths which lead to freedom ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... sufferings which spring from human passions and the tragedy of life. But, if his serenity of expression suggested that he had not allowed his own disillusionment with life to embitter his outlook or narrow his vision, his glance also suggested a clear penetration of human motives which it would be unwise to try to blind. Miss Heredith instinctively realized that Colwyn was one of those rare human beings who are to be both ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... (says Mr. Pound with infinite penetration) is a dreadful day, Monday is much pleasanter. Then let us muse a little space Upon fond ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... method, or of founding this school of criticism. We have heard village critics of the loom and the forge discuss such questions as are handled by Colenso, and the Essays and Reviews, and often with much more acuteness and penetration. With what eclat has our village critic unhorsed the itinerant preacher with the inquiry, What became of the forks belonging to the nine and twenty knives which Ezra brought back from Babylon? but was, alas! himself routed ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... expedition. Three months from the time he started, he was back again in Williamsburg, having faced his first great responsibility, and done his work absolutely well. He had shown a cool courage that nothing could shake, a fine patience, and a penetration and perception which nothing could escape. He was the hero of the hour in the little Virginia capital; the whole colony perceived that here was a man to ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... at the kindergarten age, when that interest which comes from continued agreement between the work in hand and the child's inner wants is absolutely essential to the gaining of knowledge. Mr. W. N. Hailmann puts the whole matter in a nutshell when he says: "If the kindergartner has the penetration to discover these inner wants, and the skill to adapt the circumstances and her own purposes to these, she will find it easy to secure and hold the child's attention. Without this penetration and skill, all else is unavailing. She may sing and cajole herself ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... surrounded help to mould their character and determine their future. To a healthy and vigorous body was coupled a clear and active mind. He loved knowledge, and was willing to buy it at any price—willing to make any sacrifice. He was an industrious student, and possessed great power of penetration and acquisition. And every thing he read he remembered. The greatest difficulty with students is that they fail to apply themselves. A man may have the ability to accomplish a given amount of work and yet that work can never be accomplished except ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... whose glance, having more penetration, had at last brought a look of sympathy to his face. "Let us go up to the poor thing, she stands so alone, and I'm not clear that she has ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... literary interest. There is no other instance, that I happen to have met with, in which a writer's thought reflects itself upon paper so immediately and sensitively as in these studies. To read them is to look into the man's mind, and see its quality and action. The penetration, the subtlety, the tenacity; the stubborn gripe which he lays upon his subject, like that of Hercules upon the slippery Old Man of the Sea; the clear and cool common-sense, controlling the audacity of a rich and ardent imagination; the ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... darkish shade of blue, relieved by a bunch of roses in her corsage and a single diamond brooch. Statuesque, too statuesque, Kelson had called her; certainly her manner and bearing had a certain cold stateliness, but Gifford had penetration enough to see that behind the reserve and the society tone of her welcome there might easily be a depth of feeling which his friend with a lesser knowledge of human nature never suspected. An interesting girl, decidedly, Gifford concluded ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... chamber, so that it can only be opened from the outside, partake of several sleeping essences of unusual strength, after which he will awake in an undoubtedly refreshed state of mind, and in a condition to observe matters with his accustomed diamond-like penetration.' ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... Had she played her part with success? Dare she lift her eye and meet the gaze she felt concentrated upon her? No. He must speak first. She must have some clew to the effect she had produced before she risked his penetration by a direct look. ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... provideth for him before he giveth him his being. He bringeth him not to an empty house, but to one well furnished with all kind of necessaries, having beautified the heaven and the earth with glory, and all sorts of nourishment for his pleasure and sustenance." But the most pious penetration is exhibited in the spiritualizing of the creation and of the flood—every step produces some type of that new creation, or regeneration, without which no soul can be fitted for heaven. The dim twilight before the natural sun was ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... said of a flag not yet seen in heaven or earth interests me," said Colonel Washington. "Tell me," he added with a penetration we both remarked, "tell me, does your Captain Stanwix follow the times? Is he a man to read his prints and pamphlets? In other words, is he a man who might predict out of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Lamarque, whose penetration showed her by this time that the pilot was only playing on our fears, for want of a better instrument for his skill. "I quite enjoy the idea that you have actually been astride a fragment of the arctic glacier, and that we may perhaps make the acquaintance ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... dearest ... and there is no help for the expressing it all, no voice nor hand, but these of mine which shrink and turn away from the attempt. So you must go on, patiently, knowing me more and more, and your entire power on me, and I will console myself, to the full extent, with your knowledge—penetration, intuition—somehow I must believe you can get to what is here, in me, without the pretence of my telling or writing it. But, because I give up the great achievements, there is no reason I should not secure any occasion of making clear one of the less important points that arise ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... know that Ruggieri is dead in Italy? and even if he had more penetration than you, the secret died with him. But, I tell you, he could not have known. Nothing transpired at the play to show that a duplicate card was used at all, far less to show that it was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... circumstances as well as in illness; and a just admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity": and it is this very admixture of sweetness with his dignity which makes him so beautiful a moralist. It enables him to carry even into his observation of nature, a delicate penetration, a sympathetic tenderness, worthy of Wordsworth; the spirit of such a remark as the following has hardly a parallel, so far as my knowledge goes, in the whole range of Greek and ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... philosopher like myself, who am apt to see clear through a subject, where the penetration of ordinary people extends but half way, there is no fact more simple and manifest than that the death of a great man is a matter of very little importance. Much as we may think of ourselves, and much as we may excite the empty plaudits of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... never spoken about the matter openly before, though he had always felt that if he could speak openly to any one, he could to this charming charge of his. Such is the keenness of masculine penetration. And now he felt almost relieved already. The natural craving for sympathy of some kind or other was to satisfy itself through the ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... tracts. Penn's sons by his second wife, for instance, became men of great wealth.[15] The pacific and conciliatory Quaker faith operated as a check on any local extraordinary misuse of power. Unfortunately for historical accuracy and penetration, there is an obscurity as to the intimate circumstances under which many of the large private estates in the South were obtained. The general facts as to their grants, of course, are well known, but ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... happy circumstance for the promotion of the cause which I had then so deeply at heart, as it led me to the knowledge of several of those, who became afterwards material coadjutors in it. It was also of great importance to me with respect to the work itself: for he possessed an acute penetration, a solid judgment, and a literary knowledge, which he proved by the many alterations and additions he proposed; and which I believe I uniformly adopted, after mature consideration, from a sense of their real value. It was advantageous to me also, inasmuch as it led ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... of the case, leaving his own feelings in the background till his intellect should have done its work. He said little; but what he did say was to the point, and satisfied both brothers. John perceived that his messenger would exercise penetration and act with energy; while Jeremiah was soothed by Philip's caution in not hastily admitting the probability of any charge against Dickinson, and in giving full weight to his previous ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... one to be sneered at or insulted; but, for all that, I could perceive that the broad-cloth gentry did not quite regard him as an equal. Perhaps this may be explained by the hypothesis that he was poor, and, indeed, it did not require much penetration to perceive that such was the reality. The hunting-shirt, though once a handsome one, was no longer new. On the contrary, it was considerably "scuffed;" and the green baize wrappers upon his limbs were faded to a greenish brown. Other points proclaimed a light purse— perhaps far lighter ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Any German with penetration and tact in matters of literary criticism will own that the principal deficiency of German poetry is in style; that for style, in the highest sense, it shows but little feeling. Take the eminent masters of style, the poets who best give the idea of what the peculiar ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... genuine expression. Utterly indifferent, perfectly self- reliant, never at a loss, and yet never at her ease, with her figure in company with them there, and her mind apparently quite alone - it was of no use 'going in' yet awhile to comprehend this girl, for she baffled all penetration. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... conscious pride in his own powers of penetration. He acknowledged my admiring attention with a modest wave of the hand, and then proceeded to clear his throat ostentatiously, as one about ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of two plates, or tablets of bony matter, united by a porous portion of bone. The external tablet is fibrous and tough; the internal plate is dense and hard, and is called the vit're-ous, or glassy table. These tough, hard plates are adapted to resist the penetration of sharp instruments, while the different degrees of density possessed by the two tablets, and the intervening spongy bone, serve to diminish the vibrations that would occur ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... then," ordered their commander. "It is small enough to be brought inside our carrying compartment, and we can see with our penetration rays just what manner of creatures it holds. They are intelligent, that is certain, for their space ship does imply ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... as much opposed to the peaceful penetration of European influence in the Western Hemisphere as to its forceful expression. The project of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, to be built and owned by a French company, had already aroused President Hayes on March ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... smile, intense without brightness and as prompt to act as the scrape of a safety-match; the protrusion of her rather remarkably long chin, which in her case represented invitation and urbanity, and not, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance; the penetration of her voice to a distance, the general encouragement and approval of her manner, were all elements with which intercourse had made him familiar, but which he noted today almost as if she had been a ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Reinforcement or Relief; the only Place in which the Spaniards had a Garrison of regular Forces; and those in Number rather exceeding the Army he was to undertake the Siege with, was enough to cool the Ardour of a Person of less Penetration and Zeal than what the Earl had on all Occasions demonstrated. Whereas if the General, as he intended, had made an immediate March to Madrid, after he had secur'd Valencia, and the Towns adjacent, which were all ready to submit and declare for King Charles; ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... of comment, or even observed at all by our schoolfellows. That he observed it in all its bearings, and as fixedly as I, was apparent; but that he could discover in such circumstances so fruitful a field of annoyance, can only be attributed, as I said before, to his more than ordinary penetration. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... explained? It succeeded in your case, my poor sister. Oh, nobly! Don't be afraid that I shall outrage you by saying all I think. But just think of me as a result of Jewish education applied to an English lad, and one whose temperament was plain enough to eyes of ordinary penetration. My very name! Your name, too! You it has made a Jew in soul; upon me it weighs like a curse as often as I think of it. It symbolizes all that is making my life a brutal failure—a ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... several pictures of Garrick, none resembling another, and I have heard Hannah More speak of the extraordinary variety of countenance by which he was distinguished, and of the unequalled radiance and penetration of his eye. The voice and delivery of Jeffrey resemble his face. He possesses considerable power of mimicry, and rarely tells a story without imitating several different accents. His familiar tone, his declamatory ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... all transmission of light, and we may investigate how much is reflected at the surface and how much is absorbed; or, on the other hand, we may confine our attention to the light which enters the body and inquire into the relation between the decay of intensity and the depth of penetration. We shall take these two ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
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