"Acuteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He could not understand of what use it could be for finding the way. To the vehement protestations of the ship's captain, he stamped his foot and tapped the handle of his sword. "Aha! I have unmasked you," he cried, triumphantly. "You are tearing your hair from despair at my acuteness. Am I a child to believe that a light in that brass box can show you where the harbour is? I am an old soldier, I am. I can smell a traitor a league off. You wanted that gleam to betray our approach to your friend ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... been alive before, which was but their ordinary and normal condition, he was now in the frame of mind of a Sioux on the war-path, and in corresponding alertness and acuteness of every faculty. The little glove was swiftly put where it would furnish a spot of light to no one else; and in breathless readiness for action, though that is rhetorical, for Rollo's breath was as regular and as calm as cool nerves could make it, he subsided again into the utter inaction ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... "The acuteness of animal senses has its drawbacks. These dogs must have heard some sound in the street that is entirely inaudible to us. Well, Rupert, what is it? Lie down again and go ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... spirit of its time, though we can no longer call it the modern spirit. The book perfectly renders the disillusion, languor and sentimentality which characterise a self-centred scepticism. It is the record, indeed, of a morbid mind, but of a mind gifted with extraordinary acuteness and with the utmost delicacy of perception. Amiel wrote also several essays and poems, but it is for the "Intimate Diary" alone that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... whole, the expectation was more formidable than the reality. However much he disliked applying himself to business, no one understood it better. The value of his good sense, judgment, and acuteness was speedily felt. Mr. Nugent, the chairman, depended on him as his ally, and often as his adviser; and as he was thus made to feel himself of weight and importance, his aversion subsided, and he almost learnt to look forward to a chat with Mr. Nugent; or whether he looked ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rush into the middle of his subject; such a course, however, was not in accordance with Mr Bideawhile's usual practice. Mr Bideawhile got up from his large wooden-seated Windsor chair, and, with a soft smile, in which, however, was mingled some slight dash of the attorney's acuteness, put out his hand to his young client; not, indeed, as though he were going to shake hands with him, but as though the hand were some ripe fruit all but falling, which his visitor might take and pluck if he ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... the animals we had seen the antelope seems to possess the most wonderful fleetness: shy and timorous they generally repose only on the ridges, which command a view of all the approaches of an enemy: the acuteness of their sight distinguishes the most distant danger, the delicate sensibility of their smell defeats the precautions of concealment, and when alarmed their rapid career seems more like the flight of birds than ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... practical conditions of war demands an effort of which the unfettered intelligence alone seems capable. The great majority of successful leaders in war on both elements have not been considerably, or at all, superior in intellectual acuteness to numbers of their fellows; but they have had strength of character, and their minds were not squeezed in a mould into a commonplace and ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... himself back in the corner of the wide sofa and crossing his long legs. He had thought more deeply on a good many subjects than the majority of his acquaintance supposed; with the consequence that he occasionally surprised his fellow-peers by the acuteness of his observations in debate. Lord Fallowfeild, it may be added, took his recently acquired office of hereditary legislator with a commendable mixture ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... publication. Mr Hunter is an assistant-keeper of the public records, and is well known, by his other publications, as one of the most laborious and most judicious elucidators of mysterious passages in our national history. But the evidences of industry, of minute knowledge, and of logical acuteness, contained in his little treatise concerning 'the ballad-hero, Robin Hood,' are really surprising. The story of an obscure outlaw, who chased deer and took purses in a northern forest five hundred years ago, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... Taste are generally of less than average acuteness in criminals. Cases of complete anosmia and qualitative ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... seen these answers, but does not allude to them, far less attempt to meet them. There are, no doubt, individuals, who show in their public speaking the outward and visible signs of a greater degree of acuteness than they can summon to guide their private thinking. If Mr. Lowe be not one of these, if the power of his mind in the closet be at all comparable to the power of his tongue in the House, it may be suspected that his reserve with ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... wills and testaments, for the peasantry, who had a genuine Norman predilection for law and chicanery, and a respect amounting to veneration for written documents, red tape, and sealing-wax. Master Pothier's acuteness in picking holes in the actes of a rival notary was only surpassed by the elaborate intricacy of his own, which he boasted, not without reason, would puzzle the Parliament of Paris, and confound the ingenuity of the sharpest advocates ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... right. Then came Mrs. Stephen Colfax; after her Mr. Endsleigh Jarrott, who had on his right Mrs. Reginald Pole. Mrs. Pole's neighbor was Charles Conquest, whom she shared with Mrs. Rodney Wrenn. Now and then Wayne himself would give proof of that increased acuteness in his hearing of which he had spoken more than once since his blindness had become total. "Colfax Yorke is here," he observed at one time. "I hear his voice. He's sitting on our side of the table." "Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott is ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... business and bustle of a city; give them a variety of imperative employments, and place them in society so as to supply to their cerebral organs that extent of exercise which gives health and vivacity of action, and in a few months the change produced will be surprising. Health, animation, and acuteness will take the place of former insipidity and dullness. In such instances, it would be absurd to suppose that it is the mind itself which becomes heavy and feeble, and again revives into energy by these changes in external circumstances. The effects arise entirely from changes ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... facility of pronunciation as the Mallecollese; we were therefore obliged to tell him our names, modified according to the softer organs of the Otaheitans. His features were rather handsome, his eyes large and very lively; and the whole countenance expressed good humour, sprightliness, and acuteness. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... juxta-position with the pure and stern virtue of the master of Plato. This is very plausible; but it may still be doubted, whether the greater part of an Athenian audience, with all their native acuteness and practical criticism, would, at the moment, detect this subtile irony. If, indeed, it was irony, for still, with deference to great names be it spoken, it remains to be disproved, that the Clouds was the introductory step to a state-impeachment. Irony is, at best, a dangerous weapon, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... to be complete, and might perhaps have been accepted without minute examination, except for the imprudent acuteness of the Lower House of Convocation. As it passed through their hands, they discovered—what had no doubt been intended as a loophole for future evasion—that the grounds which were alleged to excuse the submission were the virtues of the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... only the beginning of a practical exhibition of the woman's earnestness and acuteness, and her great love. It was but evidence that she was to be, what she became in time, his rhinoceros-bird in all things, his right hand, prompter in such relations as a woman's wit and woman's way best serve. She was of ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... the difference of this might have been inclined to blame him; but all who have seen a clever dentist with the toothache are aware that his knowledge adds acuteness to the pain. Mr. Twemlow had borne great troubles well, and been cheerful even under long suspense; but now a disappointment close at home, and the grief of beholding his last hopes fade, were embittered ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... singers, showing her usual half-slipshod discrimination, dropping here and there criticisms full of acuteness. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... deterred any but the most resolute students. Of Fearne's essay upon 'Contingent remainders'(published in 1772) it was said that no work 'in any branch of science could afford a more beautiful instance of analysis.' Fearne had shown the acuteness of 'a Newton or a Pascal.' Other critics dispute this proposition; but in any case the law was so perplexing that it could only be fully understood by one who united antiquarian knowledge to the subtlety of a great logician. The 'vast ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Subjects,"—an essay which begins with a recipe for his favorite fluid, and slides by gentle gradations into an examination of the sublimest doctrines of Plato. To show how far a man of honesty and benevolence, and with a mind of singular acuteness and depth, may be run away with by a favorite notion on a subject which his habits and education do not fit him to investigate, I shall give a short account of this Essay, merely stating that as all the supposed virtues of Tar Water, made public in successive editions of his treatise ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... just about the delay that he had expected, and Robert's hand sprang to the trigger at the very moment the man pulled his own. The bullet hummed by his cheek. His finger contracted and then it loosened. A sudden acuteness of vision, or a chance thinning of the fog at that point, enabled him to see the man's face, and he recognized the French partisan, Charles Langlade, known also to the Indians as the Owl, who, ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... reached the bottom, he also descended—holding his cutlass in his teeth—as actively as most men could have done with two hands. Peter and old John Trowel were directed to wait above. Peter said that from his acuteness of hearing he should be able to judge what progress they were making, and to let Captain Askew ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... shrewdest plungers and manipulators, men to whom the tape yields up its secrets as the penitent to the priest; to whom the ticker babbles the inner mysteries of directors' meetings and deep-down deals—these men whose eyes, ears, and noses decades of stock-play had trained to supernatural acuteness were as impotent to track the truth as the veriest tyro. All admitted that the conditions were unusual, that the subscriptions had far exceeded expectation, that time would be required to get them straightened out. Because of this it was natural that the market should be slow and in ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... forgotten when we first learned how the Jews came to migrate to Egypt during the years of the famine, when Joseph had become the minister of Pharaoh through his acuteness in reading dreams. Also how, after their settlement in the land of Goshen,—which is the Egyptian province lying at the end of the ancient caravan road, which Abraham travelled, leading from Palestine ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... the fitness of consulting other understandings than their own, and of considering the sentiments and opinions of those who, however neglected in the present age, had in their own times, and many of them a long time afterwards, such reputation for knowledge and acuteness as will scarcely ever be attained by those that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... plan for her improvement suggested by her new mamma, (for she never called her by any other name,) she engaged with docility and eagerness; and her behaviour and her progress exceeded the most sanguine hopes that I had formed as to the softness of her temper and the acuteness of her genius. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the hands of Dalhousie. The overseer he regarded as a kind of thing, who, while he retained him in his service, would never injure him. Jaspar, for some reason or other, had formed no very elevated opinion of Dalhousie's acuteness. He had bought him off cheaply once, and could do so again. If he refused to be bought off cheaply,—and Jaspar grated his teeth at the reflection,—why, a method could be devised to get ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... dates from the middle of the eleventh century. It was the work of numerous teachers, many of them of unsurpassed acuteness, who, at a time when learning and scholarship were at a low ebb, made it their aim to systemize, elucidate, and prove on philosophical grounds, the doctrines of the Church. Aristotle was the author whose philosophical writings were most authoritative with ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... in short, with all that make up the elements of civilization. Ondegardo's memoirs, therefore, cover the whole ground of inquiry for the philosophic historian. In the management of these various subjects, Ondegardo displays both acuteness and erudition. He never shrinks from the discussion, however difficult; and while he gives his conclusions with an air of modesty, it is evident that he feels conscious of having derived his information through the most authentic channels. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... of the United States ever pressed so severely upon particular States. Though the constitutionality of the law was contested with an earnestness and zeal proportioned to the ruinous effects which were felt from it, and though, as Mr. Chief Justice Marshall has said, (9 Wheat., 192,) "a want of acuteness in discovering objections to a measure to which they felt the most deep-rooted hostility will not be imputed to those who were arrayed in opposition to this," I am not aware that the fact that it prohibited the use of a particular species of property, belonging almost exclusively ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... kind and sympathizing letter, which, I assure you, helped to mitigate the acuteness of my mental sufferings from the then disastrous aspect of my whole enterprise. God works by instrumentalities, and he has wonderfully thus far interposed in keeping evils that I feared in abeyance. All, I trust, will yet be well, but I have great difficulties ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... stark and cold on the scorched grass beside the guns, or in the thin ridges of trampled corn, where the gay young tassels were now storm-beaten upon the ripped-up earth. He saw them as he had seen them the evening before—not in the glow of battle, but with the acuteness of a brooding sympathy—saw them frowning, smiling, and with features which death had twisted into a ghastly grin. They were all there—each man with open eyes and stiff hands grasping the clothes ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Ambroise de Lore went to fetch her; and, when she had come, the Chancellor told her that the camp of Saint-Laurent-des-Orgerils was to be attacked on the morrow. She divined that something was being kept back; for she possessed a certain acuteness. Besides, since they had hitherto concealed everything, it was natural she should suspect that something was still being kept from her. This mistrust annoyed her. Did they think her incapable of keeping a secret? She ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... garments for the old man but one shroud [Greek: speiron] (Odyssey, II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a character of late Ionian, not of genuine old AEolic epic, she should have known better. It is manifest that if even the acuteness and vast erudition of Helbig can only find such invisible differences as these between the manners of the genuine old epic and the late Ionian innovations, there is really no difference, beyond such trifles as diversify custom in ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... movement of the affected parts. Swelling of the joints occurs, especially those of the knee, ankle, wrist, elbow, and the smaller joints of the hands and feet. The swelling and redness are generally in proportion to the acuteness of the attack. Acute articular rheumatism is always accompanied with more or less fever. Sweating is generally a prominent symptom, being strongly acid and more profuse during the night. The appetite is impaired, the tongue is coated, the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... plenty of time to dry up after the battle! The fact was unfortunately over-looked that according to xxi. 19 the dogs were to lick the blood of Ahab not at Samaria but at Jezreel, the place of Naboth. The verse xxii. 38 is an interpolation which does credit to Jewish acuteness. *************************************** ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... eldest, their master, but still more their companion and friend"; lighting in them his own sacred fire, and amazing them by the deftness of his fingers and the acuteness of his lynx-like eyes. Furnished with a notebook and all the tools of the naturalist—lens, net, and little boxes of sawdust steeped in anaesthetic for the capture of rare specimens— they would wander "along the paths ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... hold immediately; but, if the water happen to be at too great a distance, he will destroy the elk before he reaches it. As this hunter does not possess the faculty of smelling with the greatest acuteness, he carries with him three foxes, which he sends on the discovery. The moment they have got scent of an elk, two of them place themselves by his side, and the third takes post behind him. They manage the matter with ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... daughter, and not the less so that she did not comprehend the meaning of a single word which he uttered. Indeed, the gallant knight's language was far too courtly to be understood by persons of much greater acuteness ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Fontainebleau, its "long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight," in a way that conveys the golden glow, the silvery gleam, the suave outline of spreading leafage, and the massive density of mysterious boscage with the force of an almost abstract acuteness. Does nature look like this? Who knows? But in this semblance, surely, she appeared to Dupre's imagination. And doubtless Diaz saw the mother-of-pearl tints in the complexion of his models, and is not to be accused of artificiality, but to be credited ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... by the Hindus, and was abundantly used in all their religions ceremonies. Its leaves are very long, and taper to a sharp needle-like point, of which the extreme acuteness was proverbial; whence the epithet applied to a clever man, 'sharp as the point of Ku[s']a-grass.' Its botanical name is ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... where speed wins, the fleetest are the fittest. In fields where strength wins, the strongest are the fittest. In fields where sense-acuteness wins, the keenest of eye, ears, ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... city; though Timaesus, as if he acted by the Licinian or the Mucian law, remands him back to Syracuse. There is, however, a manifest resemblance between his character and that of Cato: for they are both of them distinguished by their acuteness, their elegance, their agreeable humour, and their brevity. But the Greek has the happiness to be most admired: for there are some who are so extravagantly fond of him, as to prefer a graceful air to a vigorous constitution, and who are perfectly satisfied ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... instruct and delight me, were among the least of my misfortunes. Reading, that great field of enjoyment, which was daily opening more amply upon me, was totally cut off. My curiosity had been awakened, my memory praised, and my acuteness admired: in an instant, as it were, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Correspondence," first printed in 1830, in two volumes octavo, by Dawson Turner, Esq. M.A. F.R.S. from the originals in his valuable collection. Mr. Pinkerton was born at Edinburgh, in February 1758, and died at Paris in May 1826. "He was," says Mr. Dawson Turner, "a man of a capacious mind, great acuteness, strong memory, restless activity, and extraordinary perseverance: the anecdotes contained in this correspondence afford a striking proof of the power of talent,, and industry to raise their possessor ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... there, thinking that he would be in greater repute and would be more sought for from abroad than he would be if he stayed in Florence. When he was in Rome, therefore, the work came to be considered, and so, too, the great acuteness of his intellect, for he had shown in his discourse such confidence and such courage as had not been found in the other masters, who, together with the builders, were standing paralyzed and helpless, thinking that no way of raising the cupola could ever ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... and fifty dollars was, to them, an enormous sum; but the risk was great. It was not that they feared that any suspicion would fall upon them, on their return. They had often smuggled tobacco from Gibraltar, and had no high opinion of the acuteness of the authorities. What really alarmed them was the fear of being sunk, either by the Spanish or British guns. However, they saw that, for the present at any rate, they had no option but to obey the orders ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... Calebar, the dreaded thief-taker of the Pampas, the Vidocq of Buenos Ayres. This man during more than forty years exercised his profession in the Republic, and a few years since was living, at an advanced age, not far from Buenos Ayres. There appeared to be concentrated in him the acuteness and keen perceptions of all the brethren of his craft; it was impossible to deceive him; no one whose trail he had once beheld could hope to escape discovery. An adventurous vagabond once entered his house, during his temporary absence on a journey to Buenos Ayres, and purloined ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... is the case of an old and a prolonged shock, of great acuteness and severity to the affections, the feelings, the—the—as you express it—the mind. The mind. It is the case of a shock under which the sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for how long, because I believe he cannot calculate the time himself, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... idle; but, of all other, a Scholar; in so many improvements of reason, in such sweetness of knowledge, in such variety of studies, in such importunity of thoughts. . . . To find wit, in poetry; in philosophy, profoundness; in mathematics, acuteness; in history, wonder of events; in oratory, sweet eloquence; in divinity, supernatural light and holy devotion; as so many rich metals in their proper mines, whom would it not ravish with delight!"—Joseph Hall, Bishop ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... They are almost all of them noble figures, too,—affectionate, frank, brave, high-spirited, 'of an open and free nature' like Shakespeare's best men. And almost all of them, again, are amusing and charming as well as pathetic; comical in their mingled acuteness and naivete, charming in their confidence in themselves and the world, and in the seriousness with which they receive the jocosity of their elders, who commonly address them as strong men, great warriors, or ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... you have all the accomplishments within the reach of human genius, experience, or acuteness, yet I thought it only consistent with my affection to set down in writing what occurred to my mind while thinking, as I do, day and night on your canvass, not with the expectation that you would learn anything ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... singular interest he felt in the pardon and liberation of this youth; adding, that if Angustus Glinski died upon the scaffold, he feared the life of his daughter. But even this was unavailing. The old monarch thought he was displaying a great acuteness when he detected, as he imagined, in this plea of a daughter's happiness, a scheme of selfish aggrandizement. "Ha! ha!" said he, "so the wind sits in that quarter. A good match—duchess of Lithuania! I would rather you asked for the dukedom yourself, and married your daughter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... asking if he could not discover the origin of the scourge and find remedies capable of stopping it. It was not only magnetism that interested him, but clairvoyance as well, fortune tellers and readers of cards, to whom he attributed an acuteness of perception ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... used in olden times in hunting and in the pursuit of fugitives; two services for which his remarkable acuteness of smell, his ability to keep to the particular scent on which he is first laid, and the intelligence and pertinacity with which he follows up the trail, admirably fit him. The use and employment of these dogs date back into remote ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... in a department of which he was particularly qualified to judge: "Let me add, that, in the list of philosophical reformers, the authors of Martinus Scriblerus ought not to be overlooked. Their happy ridicule of the scholastic logic and metaphysics is universally known; but few are aware of the acuteness and sagacity displayed in their allusions to some of the most vulnerable passages in Locke's Essay. In this part of the work it is commonly understood that Arbuthnot had the principal share."—See Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopaedia Britannica, note to p. 242, and also ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... second, 'proceeds from a man of ability, a scholar and a reasoner.' 'His scholarship,' says this same reviewer again, 'is apparent throughout.' 'Along with a wide and minute scholarship,' he writes in yet another place, 'the unknown writer shows great acuteness.' Again a third reviewer, of whose general tone, as well as of his criticisms on the first part of the work, I should wish to speak with the highest respect, praises the writer's 'searching and scholarly criticism.' Lastly a fourth reviewer attributes to the author ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... has left us an episode of his great work, a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed if Alexander the Great had invaded Italy. Posterity has generally regarded that disquisition as proving Livy's patriotism more strongly than his impartiality or acuteness. Yet, right or wrong, the speculations of the Roman writer were directed to the consideration of a very remote possibility. To whatever age Alexander's life might have been prolonged, the East would have furnished full occupation for his martial ambition, as well as for those schemes of commercial ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... and dimness of the forest, their intimate seclusion there, the great trees, the sky, the bright green cushion of moss, the few detached sounds,—bird-notes, rustling leaves, snapping twigs,—by which the silence was intensified; again all these lent an acuteness to his sensations. Her dark eyes were smiling lustrously, languidly, at the smoke curling in the air before her, as if they ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... worse, because he is no longer in a way to utilize them; the young man, as a rule, that they are growing better, because he hopes to turn them to account. It is, however, always a purely empirical question; and in the solution of it, the observer's eye may acquire a singular acuteness by the comparative study of as many nations as possible, especially of those which ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... indifference to her new suitor, to incontinence with him, and it leaves the deserted Troilus dead on the field of battle, where he has sought an eternal refuge from the new grief provoked by clear proof of his mistress's infidelity. The polish, elegance, and power of the style, and the acuteness of insight into character, which mark the poem, seem to claim for it a date considerably later than that adopted by those who assign its composition to Chaucer's youth: and the literary allusions and proverbial expressions with which it abounds, give ample evidence that, if Chaucer ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... this there is the exact type of the consummate poetical temperament. For, be it clearly and constantly remembered, that the greatness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acuteness of feeling, and command of it. A poet is great, first in proportion to the strength of his passion, and then, that strength being granted, in proportion to his government of it; there being, however, always a point beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... of instinctive knowledge that Mr. Arabin was an admirer of Mrs. Bold. Men hunt foxes by the aid of dogs, and are aware that they do so by the strong organ of smell with which the dog is endowed. They do not, however, in the least comprehend how such a sense can work with such acuteness. The organ by which women instinctively, as it were, know and feel how other women are regarded by men, and how also men are regarded by other women, is equally strong, and equally incomprehensible. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... philosophers.... We are agreed that our old religious system is false; but I cannot say with you that it is a patchwork of bunglers and half-philosophers. I know nothing in the world in which human acuteness has been more displayed or exercised than in that."[158] Lessing was always for freedom, never for looseness, of thought, still less for laxity of principle. But it must be a real freedom, and not that vain struggle to become ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... is pleasing to you," observed the old man, "I will go on with it; for though the repetition gives me pain, its acuteness is relieved when I murmur, as I do now, to some one who ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... contribution to the History of Art, his work is unquestionably the most valuable which has yet appeared in England. His research has been unwearied; he has availed himself of the best results of German investigation—his own acuteness of discernment in cases of approximating or derivative style is considerable—and he has set before the English reader an outline of the relations of the primitive schools of Sacred art which we think so thoroughly verified in all its more important ramifications, that, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Westminster Hall, or even in Westminster Abbey—with reverence be it spoken—as on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war; for we maintain it is of less consequence for a man to be a great pleader or an eloquent divine, (where the utmost extent of evil resulting from the absence of eloquence and acuteness is a law-suit lost or a congregation lulled to sleep,) than that he should be active, energetic, skilful, in one of the "leviathans afloat on the brine." Science, zeal, courage, and self-reliance, are very pretty qualities to find in the fool of the family—and without these, no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... originally bestowed upon Jude, in recognition of his success in swindling a mining partner; but, with an acuteness of perception worthy of emulation, the miners determined that the length of the appellation detracted from its force, so they ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... of his wife, which had long kept her in retirement. A year—more than a year—had elapsed since the incident at Bridges, but I had not encountered him again. I think at bottom I was rather ashamed—I hated to remind him that though I had irremediably missed his point a reputation for acuteness was rapidly overtaking me. This scruple led me a dance; kept me out of Lady Jane's house, made me even decline, when in spite of my bad manners she was a second time so good as to make me a sign, an ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... admiration. Alexander Knox, a personal friend of Wesley's, thus writes of him: "How was he competent to form a religious polity so compact, effective and permanent? I can only express my firm conviction that he was totally incapable of preconceiving such a scheme. * * * * That he had uncommon acuteness in fitting expedients to conjunctures is most certain; this, in fact, was his great talent." (Letter appended to Southey's Third Edition, 2, p. 428.) Methodism, at the first, sprang up ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... could not conceal from himself: Elsie had some new cause of indifference, at least, if not of aversion to him. With the acuteness which persons who make a sole business of their own interest gain by practice, so that fortune-hunters are often shrewd where real lovers are terribly simple, he fixed at once on the young man up at the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... separation from Alice, but my imagination took fire at Mr. Redpath's glowing account of his own splendid success. I pictured myself returning to Canada after an absence of four or five years with a mountain of gold at my command, as the result of my own energy and acuteness. In imagination, I saw myself settled down with Alice in a palatial mansion on Jarvis Street, and living in affluence all the rest of my days. My uncle bade me consult my own judgment in the matter, but rather encouraged the idea than otherwise. He offered to advance me L500, and I had about ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... hotel, they talked about London, and he surprised her by an acuteness of observation that she had sometimes inwardly accused him of lacking. He seemed to have seen everything, to have examined, felt, compared, with nerves as finely adjusted as her own; but he said nothing of the pictures. The next day they returned to the National Gallery, and he began to ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... cutaneous sensibility, motor paralysis, and vesical and rectal incompetence. The phenomena persisted from periods of a few hours to two or three days, return of function being first noticeable in the sensory nerves, and often with modification in the way of lowered acuteness, or minor signs of irritation, such as formication, slight hyperaesthesia or pain, pointing to a combination with the least extensive degrees of haemorrhage; later, motor power was rapidly regained. ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... last least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and stoutest of tissues. Sight and scent became remarkably keen, while his hearing developed such acuteness that in his sleep he heard the faintest sound and knew whether it heralded peace or peril. He learned to bite the ice out with his teeth when it collected between his toes; and when he was thirsty and there was a thick scum of ice over the water hole, he would break it ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... make it one's own, when it has been learned from another, as when one has himself discovered it. And so true is this of the present subject that, though I have often explained some of my opinions to persons of much acuteness, who, whilst I was speaking, appeared to understand them very distinctly, yet, when they repeated them, I have observed that they almost always changed them to such an extent that I could no longer acknowledge them as mine. I am glad, by the way, to take this opportunity of requesting ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... Daw. (after Carpenter). Oldest known organic body. Decalcified portion of natural rock, showing CANAL SYSTEM and the several layers; the acuteness of the planes prevents more than one or two parallel ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... who outlined the Norman character many centuries ago with much psychological acuteness, insisted on the excessiveness of that gens effrenatissima, the tendency to unite opposite impulses, the taste for contradictory extremes. Now of all their conquests the Normans only made one true and permanent Conquest, the Conquest of England. And as Freeman has pointed out, surely with ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... figures and metaphors in the original poets, which, stripped of their justifying reasons, and converted into mere artifices of connection or ornament, constitute the characteristic falsity in the poetic style of the moderns; and as far as he has, with equal acuteness and clearness, pointed out the process by which this change was effected, and the resemblances between that state into which the reader's mind is thrown by the pleasurable confusion of thought from an unaccustomed train of words and images; and that state which is induced ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... is grown a refined as well as a resigned character, and promises at his return to become an ornament to his own parish, and a very prominent person in the future family pedigree of the Fletchers, who I take to be Goths by their accomplishments, Greeks by their acuteness, and ancient Saxons by their appetite. He (Fletcher) begs leave to send half-a-dozen sighs to Sally his spouse, and wonders (though I do not) that his ill-written and worse spelt letters have never come to hand; as ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... critical analysis of American institutions ever made by a foreign author. Inferior in point of style to De Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America,' it far surpasses that book in amplitude, breadth of view, acuteness of observation, and minuteness of information; besides being half a century later in date, and therefore able to set down accomplished facts where the earlier observer could only make forecasts. His extensive knowledge of foreign countries, by divesting him of insular prejudice, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... did not show in his verses, Mr. Seaman's critical acuteness and depth.... As a critic in the form of parody, Mr. Seaman is without a rival.... Of his serious poems an ode to Queen Wilhelmina is a very graceful accomplishment of a difficult task."—Mr. G. S. STREET in The ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... too, that, probably from the same cause, most of their doctrine leaned towards the restriction; and the old lawyers being bred, according to the then philosophy of the schools, in habits of great subtlety and refinement of distinction, and having once taken that bent, very great acuteness of mind was displayed in maintaining every rule, every maxim, every presumption of law creation, and every fiction of law, with a punctilious exactness: and this seems to have been the course which laws have taken in every nation.[50] It was probably ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Sydney in 1842. He gives no date of the occurrence, and clearly embellishes the tale. In 1835, however, the story is told by Mr. Montgomery Martin in volume iv. of his History of the British Colonies. He gives the story as a proof of the acuteness of black trackers. Beyond saying that he himself was in the colony when the events and the trial occurred, he gives no date. I have conscientiously investigated the facts, by aid of the Sydney newspapers, and the notes of the judge, Sir Frederick Forbes. Fisher disappeared at ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... just published on the Nocturnal Assemblies of the Sorcerers. I reply to you with the greatest pleasure; and I am going to tell my opinion fully and unreservedly, on condition that you will examine what I write to you with your usual acuteness, and that you will tell me frankly whatever you remark in it, whether good or bad, and that may appear to deserve either your approbation or your censure. I had already read this book, and passed an eulogium on it, both for the great erudition displayed therein by the author, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... return journey, was made to serve Miss Boyson's gift for monopoly. She took possession of him in a business-like way, inquiring into his engagements in Washington, his particular friends, his opinion of the place and the people, with a light-handed acuteness which was more than a match for the Englishman's instincts of defence. The General did not mean to give himself away; he intended, indeed, precisely the contrary; but, after every round of conversation Miss Boyson felt herself more and more richly provided with ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... used to his lordship's style of conversation, and understood his friend at all times. Maulevrier was not an intellectual companion, and the distance was wide between the two men; but his lordship's gaiety, good-nature, and acuteness made amends for all shortcomings in culture. And then Mr. Hammond may have been one of those good Conservatives who do not expect very much intellectual ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a man who reasoned on his premises so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature. The same inconsistency may be observed in the schoolmen of the middle ages. Those writers show so much acuteness and force of mind in arguing on their wretched data, that a modern reader is perpetually at a loss to comprehend how such minds came by such data. Not a flaw in the superstructure of the theory which they are rearing escapes their vigilance. Yet they are blind to the obvious ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... information has been almost entirely derived from the researches of practical men, we wish it to be understood, and shall afterwards endeavour to demonstrate, that these researches have, nevertheless, been conducted upon those inductive principles which are so often characteristic of natural acuteness of perception, when combined with candour of mind and honesty of purpose. We believe it to be the opinion of many, that statements by comparatively uneducated persons are less to be relied upon than those of men of science. It ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... things from his father when he took Asculum, but he lost them after his return to Rome, when the guards of Cinna broke into his house and plundered it. He had many preliminary contests with the accuser before the trial commenced, in which, by showing himself to possess an acuteness and firmness above his years, he got great reputation and popularity, so that Antistius,[195] who was praetor and presided at that trial, conceived a great affection for Pompeius, and offered him his daughter to wife, and spoke about it to his friends. Pompeius ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... debater, in conjunction with the excellence of his elocution, and the gracefulness of his manner when speaking.... His style is polished, but has no appearance of the effect of previous preparation. He displays considerable acuteness in replying to an opponent; he is quick in his perception of anything vulnerable in the speech to which he replies, and happy in laying the weak point bare to the gaze of the House. He now and then indulges in sarcasm, which is, in most cases, very felicitous. ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... some abstract notion of boundless bodily strength. God's omniscience too often means, only some physical fancy of innumerable telescopic or microscopic eyes. God's infinite wisdom too often means, only some abstract notion of boundless acuteness of brain. And lastly—I am sorry to have to say it, but it must be said,—God's infinite majesty too often means, in the minds of some superstitious people, mere pride, and obstinacy, and cruelty, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... you mean that the position in which they are develops a kind of cunning rather than acuteness or cleverness?-Yes; it fosters a sort of low cunning. The system having been continued, one might almost say, for centuries has fostered ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... something weird and witch-like in her whole aspect. He felt as though he had seen before some face that that withered one faintly resembled, but in the confusion of the moment he could put no name to it. He wanted to keep his head, and to retain his firmness and acuteness, but he was conscious of a strange whirling in his brain as the old woman continued to gaze and gaze upon him as though she would never be satisfied ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... your man," remarked a youth, perhaps twenty-two years of age, whose countenance at once suggested acuteness and cunning. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... Bradshaw, commonly called by his last two names, was the son of a lawyer of some note for his acuteness, who marked out his calling for him in having him named after the great Lord Mansfield. Murray Bradshaw was about twenty-five years old, by common consent good-looking, with a finely formed head, a searching eye, and a sharp-cut ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... unable to leave or preferring to run all risks, remained throughout the war. This unhappy remnant constantly looked to the American ministry for aid to subsist and to escape violence. Mr. Hoffman ventures to place the banishment of the Germans, for acuteness if not mass of suffering, by the side of the ejection of the Huguenots and the Moors. This exaggeration serves at least to show the impression it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... this mystery-mongering have been pointed out by Poe with his wonted acuteness in his criticism of 'Barnaby Rudge.' After retelling the plot of Dickens's contorted narrative, and after putting the successive episodes into their true sequence, Poe asserted that "the thesis of the novel may thus be regarded as based upon ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... in your reading of this discourse, you will be apt to blame me for two things: First, Because I have not so beautified my matter with acuteness of language as you could wish or desire. Secondly, Because also I have not given you, either in the line or in the margent, a cloud of sentences from the learned fathers, that have, according to their wisdom, possibly, handled these matters ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "Your cursed acuteness told you what I should do. Well, leave me here a week—and there's another problem for you. Do ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... engage the attention of the public, it will probably be in those pages which treat of Liberia. The value of his evidence, as to the condition and prospects of that colony, must depend, not upon any singular acuteness of observation or depth of reflection, but upon his freedom from partizan bias, and his consequent ability to perceive a certain degree of truth, and inclination to express it frankly. A northern man, but not unacquainted ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... detailing all that was then known on the subject of the circumference of the earth, and on the distances which had been ascertained by actual admeasurement, or approximated by analogy or probable conjecture, between the most remarkable places on its surface, adds, that Eratosthenes, whose acuteness and application had advanced him far in every branch of knowledge, but who had outstripped all his predecessors or contemporaries in that particular branch which was connected with the admeasurement of the earth, had fixed its circumference at 250,000 stadia; a bold and almost presumptuous ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... seemed to work hard, leaving home at nine each morning, getting back to dinner at half-past six, and, as often as not, spending the evening away from home, and not returning till the small hours. He had the feverish eye of a man whose subsistence depends upon speculative acuteness and restless calculation. No doubt he was still so far the old Paul, that, whatever he undertook, he threw himself into ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... to approach Machiavelli in the acuteness with which he pushes behind mere political names, and passes on to the real differences that may exist in movements and institutions that are covered by the same designation. Nothing in its own way can be more admirable, for instance, than ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... than those sad, deep-set, hazel ones; and as she was drawn along the train of its inevitable logic, a close observer might have seen how the shadows deepened over them. For, while others listened for the clearness of the thought, for the acuteness of the argument, she listened as a soul wide, fine-strung, acute, repressed, whose every fibre is a nerve, listens to the problem of its own destiny,—listened as the mother of a family listens, to know what were the possibilities, the probabilities, of this mysterious existence of ours to herself ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... testing them. For the rest, he was going back here; something of the cold, loose freshness got into his brain, he believed. In the two years of absence his power of concentration had been stronger, his perceptions more free from prejudice, gaining every day delicate point, acuteness of analysis. He drew a long breath of the icy air, coarse with the wild perfume of the prairie. No, his temperament needed a subtiler atmosphere than this, rarer essence than mere brutal freedom The East, the Old World, was his proper sphere for ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... wavered and darkened; then she recovered a torturing acuteness of vision. Every detail of her surroundings pressed upon her: the tick of the clock, the slant of sunlight on the wall, the hardness of the chair-arms that she grasped, were a ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... view he is not an uninteresting figure to contemplate. And although his attempts to awaken persecution were reprehensible, yet his ardour in defending what he believed to be vital truth is none the less to be respected. He had the acuteness to see that Lessing's refutation of deism did not make him a Christian, while the new views proposed as a substitute for those of Reimarus were such as Goetze and his age could ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... company, he knew that he felt a distinct irritation in a preference for Billy on the part of a lady whom he had at one time honoured with his notice. In arriving where he was in the English social world, he had increased, not only the need for luxury of body, but the sensitiveness and acuteness of certain perceptions as to his fellow creatures, and these perceptions were not ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... acuteness, had guessed, Dudley Horne had never had any intention of returning to his ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... to apply, but which is not so much an estimate as it is a measure. I refer to the various respects in which an individual or community may be said to be more or less religious. Thus, for example, certain religious phenomena surpass others in acuteness or intensity. This is peculiarly true of the phenomena manifested in conversion and in revivals. In this respect the mysteries of the ancients exceeded {219} their regular public worship. Individuals and communities vary in the ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... praised by a woman. Possibly—she was not sure of this—possibly Sir Seymour had noticed that she was interested in the stranger. He was very sharp in all matters connected with her. His affection increased his natural acuteness. She resolved to be very careful, even very deceptive. And ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... is directed to his prey by the sense of smell, or by keenness of vision; I have paid much attention to their habits, and, although there can be no question that their power of scent is great, I feel convinced that all birds of prey are attracted to their food principally by their acuteness of sight. If a vulture were blind, it would starve; but were the nostrils plugged up with some foreign substance to destroy its power of smell, it would not materially interfere with its usual mode of hunting. Scent is always stronger near the surface of the ground; thus hyaenas, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... theme to his own libretto. This is a three-act work called "Azara;" the libretto has been published by the Riverside Press, and is to be translated into German. This has not yet been performed. Being, unfortunately, an American grand opera, it takes very little acuteness of foresight to predict a long wait before it is ever heard. In it Paine has shown himself more a romanticist than a classicist, and the work is said to be ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... accordingly he rang the bell, and ordered the negro to be sent up. Nero entered the room, and observing the triumphant chuckle of the Dead Man, and the dejected look of his mistress, with his natural acuteness instantly comprehended the true state of affairs. The contempt with which Julia had treated him was still fresh in his memory, and led him to view that lady with hatred; he therefore determined to add to her chagrin ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... while the long turmoil of the night and day had slipped away from her and she sat with closed eyes, surrendering herself to the spell of warmth and silence. But presently this merciful apathy was succeeded by the sudden acuteness of vision with which sick people sometimes wake out of a heavy sleep. As she opened her eyes they rested on the picture that hung above the bed. It was a large engraving with a dazzling white margin enclosed in a ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... fashion, I know," he said, "to regard woman as an enigma. Now, without professing any unusual acuteness, I believe that this is a mistake. Woman is an enigma certainly, because she is human, but that ends it. Her conditions have tended to cultivate in her the power of dissimulation, and the histrionic quality, just as the peaceful ilex learns ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... writers—Hedelin and Perrault—avowed a similar scepticism on the subject; but it is in the "Scienza Nuova" of Battista Vico, that we first meet with the germ of the theory, subsequently defended by Wolf with so much learning and acuteness. Indeed, it is with the Wolfian theory that we have chiefly to deal, and with the following bold hypothesis, which we will detail ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... were not dulled or sophisticated by the damnosa hereditas of the past. Neither their life nor their mental atmosphere was complicated. They had not 'thought themselves into weariness'. They were the children of the world, and they united the startling acuteness, directness, and simplicity of children to the intellects ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... for a supreme effort. They were now able to tell the difference between night and day by the temperature. The air that came through the holes in the ceiling was a little cooler by night, enough for senses trained to preternatural acuteness by long imprisonment to tell it. The guard always came about eight o'clock with Ned's supper and they chose ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... now balances with his dread. I've hunted him till he has 'turned'; that, up there, is what has happened—he's the fanged or the antlered animal brought at last to bay." There came to him, as I say—but determined by an influence beyond my notation!—the acuteness of this certainty; under which however the next moment he had broken into a sweat that he would as little have consented to attribute to fear as he would have dared immediately to act upon it for enterprise. It marked none the less a prodigious ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... place, Segrais observes with much acuteness that they who blame AEneas for his insensibility of love when he left Carthage, contradict their former accusation of him for being always crying, compassionate, and effeminately sensible of those misfortunes which ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... habits, however, they by no means deserve the gentle appellations bestowed upon them. They are, in truth, the tigers of the insect world, and their whole lives are devoted to bloodshed and rapine. Indomitable in their strength of wing, furnished with tremendous jaws, and possessed of acuteness of sight and rapidity of motion scarcely to be paralleled, there seems to be no escape from their ferocity, and terrible is the slaughter they effect amongst the insect legions they are appointed to destroy." It must not, however, be supposed from the above description ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... the first authors that taught the Dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. Whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He shewed them, that zeal and purity might be expressed and ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... and out of sorts. People who are "born tired," who are neurasthenic and easily fatigued and "ached," are probably in a chronic state of self-poisoning due to some defect in their body-chemistry. Further, the somewhat greater frequency and acuteness of headache in brain workers—although the difference between them and muscle workers in this regard has been exaggerated—is probably due in part to the greater sensitiveness of their nerves; but ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... upon me will suffer. The faint conceptions I have of poems to come bring the blood frequently into my forehead. All I hope is, that I may not lose all interest in human affairs—that the solitary indifference I feel for applause, even from the finest spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not think it will. I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them. But even now I am perhaps ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... faux monnoyer, and was an adept in the art, and it was he who had discovered the redoubted coiner who had brought the crime into such notoriety. Monsieur Favart was a man of the most vigilant acuteness, the most indefatigable research, and of a courage which; perhaps, is more common than we suppose. It is a popular error to suppose that courage means courage in everything. Put a hero on board ship at a five-barred gate, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... groan;—the older he grew, till he reached manhood, the severer the discipline he underwent. The intellectual education was little attended to: for what had sentinels to do with the sciences or the arts? But the youth was taught acuteness, promptness, and discernment—for such are qualities essential to the soldier. He was stimulated to condense his thoughts, and to be ready in reply; to say little, and to the point. An aphorism bounded his philosophy. Such an education produced its results in an athletic frame, in simple and hardy ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... never a woman just like you. Your coldness, your haughty reserve, your refinement would intimidate most men and keep them at a distance, but not me. Your aloofness, your indifference only spurs me, only adds to the acuteness of my desire. I swore to myself that I would conquer you, overcome your resistance, bend you to my will. You turned me out of your home. I swore to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the slightest resemblance to a compliment. But when she saw before her the earnest and somewhat plain features of her friend, she felt that her caution was unnecessary, and she answered, "It does not require any extraordinary acuteness to perceive that when two people make an attempt in common to thoroughly understand any subject, they are more likely to be successful than if each were to work for himself. But what appears to me most remarkable is ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... familiarity with offensive effluvia. "The General repeatedly called the attention of the officers at Fort George to the filthy state and foul effluvia of their camp, but they perceived no offensive odor; their olfactories had lost their acuteness, and failed to warn them of the noisome gases that pervaded the atmosphere."[68] If the officers fail of their duty as housekeepers to see that everything in the camp and tents is clean and healthy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... illustrates all of this with a charming picturesqueness. Professor Johan Albrecht Bengal was a teacher in the seminary in Denkendorf, Germany, in the eighteenth century. "He united profound reverence for the Bible with an acuteness which let nothing escape him." The seminary students used to wonder at the great intellectuality, and great humility and Christliness which blended their beauty in him. One night, one of them, eager to learn the secret of his holy life, slipped up into his apartments while the professor was out ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... and inert, but all of him beyond the flesh was galvanized into quicksilver acuteness and determination. He was praying for a reprieve of life sufficient to call this Judas friend to an accounting—and if that failed, for strength enough to die with his denunciation spoken. Yet he realized the need ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... done in dispute by calling a man an ass or a knave,—but the resolve to use the words should have been made only at the moment, and they should come hot from the heart. There was much neatness and some acuteness in Mr. Daubeny's satire, but there was no heat, and it was prolix. It had, however, the effect of irritating Mr. Gresham,—as was evident from the manner in which he moved his ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... John?" was his address to the 429 footman who answered the door, and who, apparently not being favoured by Nature with any superfluous acuteness of intellect or sweetness of disposition, merely stared ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... inclination; I was considered as a man of parts, and therefore easily found admission to the table of Hilarius, the celebrated orator, renowned equally for the extent of his knowledge, the elegance of his diction, and the acuteness ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... wild game began to believe by and by that he was not alive. Birds sang freely over his head and the hare hopped through the undergrowth. Yet the hunter saw everything and his very stillness enabled him to listen with all the more acuteness. ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... concealed his plans from the conservative Russians. His lips were sealed about what had occurred at the meeting with Napoleon, and the charge has been disproved that some of his suite blabbed enough to the British diplomats to enable them to divine the rest. Canning's acuteness and his conviction that Napoleon and Alexander had reached an understanding hostile to England sufficiently account for the bombardment of Copenhagen, and place the responsibility for it on his shoulders. But ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... by the exercise of what acuteness had these two ordinary mortals ascertained that which so many persons of the highest rank and importance scarcely even suspected? It is impossible to say. Had they the gifts of foreknowledge and foresight? Did they possess a supplementary sense, which enabled ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... declined offering any opinion on the merits of the bill in its present stage, and the house went into committee upon it. On the 10th of June Sir Edward Sugden proposed on this occasion to omit the first clause of the bill, after which he proceeded to dissect its provisions with considerable acuteness. Mr. Labouchere defended the measure, and Messrs. Gladstone and Goulburn objected to it. The latter said that tire present bill differed but little from the former, and, in his opinion, only differed for the worse, as it offered a premium to the council for disapproving ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the first step is already a co-ordination of those materials. A tone becomes musical material only by association with another tone. We might hear it alone, study its quality, and determine its degree of acuteness or gravity (its pitch, as musicians say), but it can never become music so long as it remains isolated. When we recognize that it bears certain relationships with other tones in respect of time or tune (to use simple terms), it has become for ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... father, and had spent ten years, from his seventh to his seventeenth year, at Constantinople. Though he scorned to receive an education in Greek or Roman literature, he studied during these years, with unusual acuteness, the political and military circumstances of the empire. Of strong but slender figure, his beautiful features, blue eyes with dark brows, and abundant locks of long, fair hair, added to the nobility of his race, pointed him ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... pretensions to peace of mind: the satisfaction of dealing them diminished when nothing came back. The day was at hand, and she saw it, when she should feel more delight in hurling Maisie at him than in snatching her away; so much so that her conscience winced under the acuteness of a candid friend who had remarked that the real end of all their tugging would be that each parent would try to make the little girl a burden to the other—a sort of game in which a fond mother clearly wouldn't show to advantage. The prospect of not showing to advantage, a distinction in which ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... was mild, gentle, and "meek as a maid," and possessed exactly of the courteous manners ascribed by our father Chaucer to the pattern of chivalry whom he describes upon his pilgrimage to Canterbury. But with all his gentleness, De Valence showed a great degree of acuteness and accuracy in his queries; and well pleased was Bertram that the young knight did not insist upon seeing his supposed son, although even in that case his ready wit had resolved, like a seaman in a tempest, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... way to him and drew him aside and broached what he declared was a small matter. There was, he said, a certain order in his gift that, unlike all other orders and decorations in the world, had never been corrupted. It was reserved for elderly men of supreme distinction, the acuteness of whose gifts was already touched to mellowness, and it had included the greatest names of every age so far as the advisers of his family had been able to ascertain them. At present, the king admitted, these matters of stars and badges were rather obscured by more urgent affairs, for ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... prominent positions in the body is so large that it may well be assumed as the rule of promotion. Mr. Raymond was nearly forty-six when he made his first speech in the House. While he still exhibited the intellectual acuteness and alertness which had always been his characteristics, there was apparent in his face the mental weariness which had come from the prolonged and exacting labor of his profession. His parliamentary failure was a keen ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine |
