"Aptness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they produce a fine effect. Bloomfield is a name apt and fortunate for a rustic bard; as Florian seems to describe his sweet and flowery style. Dr. Parr derived his first acquaintance with the late Mr. Homer from the aptness of his name, associating with his pursuits. Our writers of romances and novels are initiated into all the arcana of names, which cost them many painful inventions. It is recorded of one of the old Spanish writers of romance, that he was for many days at a loss to coin a fit name for ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... was famous for his epistolary style. Here is a passage which, though written in Persia in the tenth century, might have aptness in English country houses at this moment: When water has long remained at rest, its noxious qualities appear; and when its surface has continued tranquil, its foulness gets into motion. Thus it is with a guest: his presence is displeasing ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... inconsistencies in dwelling upon accidents in Tess's life as if they were vital features. It was for herself that he loved Tess; her soul, her heart, her substance—not for her skill in the dairy, her aptness as his scholar, and certainly not for her simple formal faith-professions. Her unsophisticated open-air existence required no varnish of conventionality to make it palatable to him. He held that education had as yet but little ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... regretted Sidwell's omission, but the friendly informality of the arrangement delighted him. When the carriage rolled softly from the gravelled drive, Buckland holding the reins, he felt an animation such as no event had ever produced in him. No longer did he calculate phrases. A spontaneous aptness marked his dialogue with Miss Moorhouse, and the laughing words he now and then addressed to Fanny. For a short time Buckland was laconic, but at length he entered into the joyous tone of the occasion. Earwaker would have ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... all who read the September issue of this monthly will unite in paying tribute to the excellent quality of the reading material, the artistic merit of the wood engraving, the aptness of the subjects chosen for presentation, and the earnestness and faithfulness with which Editor and Publisher do their ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... Mr. Feeble-mind, Thou wast delivered from the mouth of Giant Slay-good, that thou mightest live in the light of the living for ever, and see thy King with comfort. Only I advise thee to repent thee of thine aptness to fear and doubt of his goodness before he sends for thee, lest thou shouldest, when he comes, be forced to stand before him ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... domestic circle, and soon felt myself quite at home, for there is generally a frankness in the hospitality of Spaniards, that soon puts a stranger at his ease beneath their roof. The wife of Don Juan Fernandez was extremely amiable and affable, possessing much of that natural aptness for which the Spanish women are remarkable. In the course of conversation with them I learnt, that Don Juan Fernandez, who is seventy-two years of age, is the eldest of five brothers, all of whom are married, have numerous offspring, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... man who familiarizes himself with the grave. For me; I must deny myself, for I go tomorrow to take part in festivities the reverse of funereal. I commend the propriety and aptness ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... that telephone or special messenger would speedily have advised him if news of the Andromeda had arrived since he left the office on Saturday afternoon. But it is said that drowning men clutch at straws, and the metaphor might be applied to Verity with peculiar aptness. He was sinking in a sea of troubles, sinking because the old buoyancy was gone, sinking because many hands were stretched forth to push him under, and never one to draw ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... an accepted lover, and we made our conclusions that however subject he might be to his indefinitely future mother-in-law, he would not be at all so to his wife, if she could help it. He took the lead, but because she gave it him; and she displayed an aptness for conjugal submissiveness which almost amounted to genius. Whenever she spoke to either of us, it was with one eye on him to see if he liked what she was saying. It was so perfect that I doubted if it could last; but my wife said a girl like that could keep it up till she dropped. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... assiduously and went for long walks at a trot, and raided and studied (and incidentally explained themselves to) any social "types" that lived in the neighbourhood. One invaded type, resentful under research, described them with a dreadful aptness as Donna Quixote and Sancho Panza—and himself as a harmless windmill, hurting no one and signifying nothing. She did rather tilt at things. This particular summer they were at a pleasant farmhouse in level country near ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... show a remarkable thoroughness of preparation, else they could not be so thickly sown as they are with pregnant facts, telling figures, and apt illustrations. His pudding is too full of plums to be the work of the moment. Such aptness of quotation as he displays is sometimes a little too happy to be spontaneous; as when, in alluding to the difference between men's professions out of office and their measures in office, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... muehsam klingt"). Midas votes for Pan—"denn nach meinen beiden Ohren singt er unvergleichlich schoen." At the word "Ohren" the violins give a pianissimo "hee-haw" which is fully as witty in its musical aptness as Mendelssohn's clown-theme in the Overture to the Midsummer Night's Dream; and in the ensuing dialogue their prophecy is verified. As with many other great artists, Bach's playfulness occasionally showed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... now put all the aptness on Of Figure, that Proportion Or Color can disclose; That if those silent arts were lost, Design and Picture, they might boast From you a newer ground, Instructed by the heightening sense Of dignity and reverence In their true motions found." ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the aptness of the illustration is lost sight of, by omitting the second half of this admirable sentence; therefore we quote ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... much so that many of us may well envy him,—he is not just the man fitted for this destination. A Knight of the Garter should be a man prone to show himself, a public man, one whose work in the country has brought him face to face with his fellows. There is an aptness, a propriety, a fitness in these things which one can understand perhaps ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... from the Old World, and become more and more nationalized in our great struggle for existence as a free people, we shall carry this aptness for the production of beautiful forms more and more into common life, which demands first what is necessary and then what is pleasing. It is but a step from the painter's canvas to the weaver's loom, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... treated them as enemies, and to remain at the mercy of sovereigns whose sole object was to oppress, plunder, and subject them to all kinds of vexations? To understand this it is sufficient to remember that, in their peculiar aptness for earning and hoarding money, they found, or at least hoped to find, a means of compensation whereby they might be led to forget the servitude to ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... throughout and had dominated the country. That enthusiasm could have but one effect, that of deepening and enriching Canadian loyalty to the Crown, and giving a new sense of solidarity among the people of Canada. "Our Indian compatriots," he concluded, "with picturesque aptness have acclaimed the Prince as Chief Morning Star. That name is well and prophetically chosen. His visit will usher in for Canada a new day full of wide-flung ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... he was able, therefore, to oppose the thumb to the other four fingers, to seize hold of objects and to fashion tools; and it is well known that the hands are great promoters of the intelligence. This same position gave to the lungs, trachea, larynx, and mouth an aptness for the production of articulate speech, and speech is intelligence. Moreover, this position, causing the head to weigh vertically upon the trunk, facilitated its development and increase of weight, and the head is the seat of the ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... feelings probably inherent in the shepherd of the flock, since my wards might well be likened, I thought, to helpless young sheep. By this comparison I mean no disrespect; the simile is employed because of its aptness and for no other reason. It would ill become me, of all men, to refer slightingly to any of our student-body, we at Fernbridge making it our policy ever to receive only the daughters of families having undoubted social standing ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... was such an entire absence of all self-seeking about the man, and he so thoroughly identified himself with the people whose interests he pleaded, that, possessing a fair readiness of speech, and aptness for ad captandum argument, he could not fail to secure the favourable attention of earnest men on a subject where ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that this pretended reason should not be so contemptibly spoken of as were fit and medicinable, in regard that hath been too much exalted and glorified, to the infinite detriment of man's estate. Of the nature of words and their facility and aptness to cover and grace the defects of Anticipations. That it is no marvel if these Anticipations have brought forth such diversity and repugnance in opinions, theories, or philosophies, as so many fables of ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... without scruple animals which had died a natural death, being especially fond of the pig, which, when it has thus been 'butchered by God,' is still regarded even by the most prosperous Gipsies in England as a delicacy. They flayed animals, carried corpses, and showed such aptness for these and similar detested callings that in several European countries they long monopolised them. They made and sold mats, baskets, and small articles of wood. They have shown great skill as dancers, musicians, singers, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... gone into the country, Jonathan, and noticed an immense rock split and shattered by the roots of a tree, or perhaps by the might of an insignificant looking fungus? I have, many times, and I never see such a rock without thinking of its aptness as an illustration of this Socialist philosophy. A tiny acorn tossed by the wind finds lodgment in some small crevice of a rock which has stood for thousands of years, a rock so big and strong that men choose it as an emblem of the Everlasting. ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... had a singular aptness, for he had hardly uttered them when Roderick came out from the house, evidently in his darkest mood. He stood for a moment gazing ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... emitted with great earnestness that the beggar, Blizzard, looked exactly like "the wrath of God." Whatever the boy's simile may convey to the reader, to Barbara, fresh from seeing the man himself, it had a wonderful aptness. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... to the original, and the subtitle calls attention to the aptness of the Discourse as a defense of Pope's satiric practice.[25] It is so apt, indeed, that one could almost suspect Pope himself of making the translation and submitting it to Harte or his publisher. Pope had already invoked Boileau's ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... general rule, that whenever they are at liberty to choose between wages in money and a share in the crop, they will choose the former and work better. Many cases of negroes engaged in little industrial pursuits came to my notice, in which they showed considerable aptness not only for gaining money, but also for saving and judiciously employing it. Some were even surprisingly successful. I visited some of the plantations divided up among freedmen and cultivated by them independently ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... well-read person; his range of allusive phrases was limited, but there was a peculiar aptness in circumstances which made him think of rats leaving a doomed ship. He very nearly said so. He had grown suspicious and embittered. Could it be that the old woman had such an excellent nose? But the unreasonableness of such a suspicion was ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... words. They gather them up; they cherish them, but they don't hoard them in their breasts; on the contrary, they are always ready to pour them out by the hour or by the night with an enthusiasm, a sweeping abundance, with such an aptness of application sometimes that, as in the case of very accomplished parrots, one can't defend oneself from the suspicion that they really understand what they say. There is a generosity in their ardour of speech which removes it as far as possible from common loquacity; and it is ever too disconnected ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... mild and much of the time could be spent out of doors. Matilda, frail but with that gentle tenacity of life that marks many women for longevity, settled at once into the semi-rough life of the cabin with innate delicacy and aptness. The rooms Sandy had so lovingly planned and furnished became hers after the first day, and no truer compliment could have been paid her host than this homelike acceptance of his thoughtfulness. To see her soft, bright knitting in the sitting-room ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... of it is past, but a small thing would make it flame again; for the nobles receive so to heart the banishment of that worthy Coriolanus that they are in a ripe aptness to take all power from the people, and to pluck from them their tribunes for ever. This lies glowing, I can tell you, and is almost mature for the violent ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... left us at one o'clock. He has a sense of humour, and aptness of comprehension which renders him an agreeable companion. I am sorry his visit has made me a little idle, but there is no ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... mask of Rupert's face, sternly and sadly rebuking, was not proof against the exquisite aptness of this proposal. His men outside were waiting for the signal, surrounding the island from land and seaward, (for the prey was not to be allowed to escape them again); but how to make it without creating suspicion had not yet suggested ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... was put without thought, but its aptness seemed almost to imply an intuitive knowledge of their previous conversation. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the poet-nature; and though this memory is probably the more tenacious of the two, it is no safe guide to the recovery of facts, still less to that of their order and significance. Yet up to the last weeks, even the last conscious days of his life, his remembrance of historical incident, his aptness of literary illustration, never failed him. His dinner-table anecdotes supplied, of course, no measure for this spontaneous reproductive power; yet some weight must be given to the number of years during which he could abound in ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... warm advocacy of the woman he had elected to marry. He could not even be certain that he had really understood the feeling shown by Cora Tuttle when she heard the man, who had once lavished attentions on her, express in this public manner a preference for her sister. A woman has great aptness in concealing a mortal hurt, and, from what I had seen of this one, I thought it highly improbable that all was quiet in her passionate breast because she had turned an impassive front to ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... She also adds, 'Many were the lessons of wisdom and faith I have delighted to learn from her.' . . . . 'She continued a great favorite in our meetings, both on account of her remarkable gift in prayer, and still more remarkable talent for singing, . . . and the aptness and point of her remarks, frequently illustrated by figures ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... ocean and a variegated landscape. The company must not be a score of tawny American aborigines, nor of European peasants, nor of individuals whose life of monotonous labor, whether for necessaries or luxuries, has no opportunity or no will for the finer mental culture; but, to give aptness to our illustration, should consist of persons whose being has been unfolded to the tissue of susceptibility to the wonders and beauties of nature, and whose intellect has been tilled sufficiently to receive and nourish any fresh ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... shipwrecked Ulysses. It is a striking feature of the easy unconstrained character of life among the Greeks, of its gladsome joyousness of disposition, which knew nothing of a starched and stately dignity, but artist-like admired aptness and gracefulness, even in the most insignificant trifles, that in this drama called Nausicaa, or "The Washerwomen," in which, after Homer, the princess at the end of the washing, amuses herself at a game of ball with her maids, Sophocles himself played at ball, and by his ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... an insult in which every gownsman felt himself involved. A number of the scholars flew to arms, and sallied forth to battle, headed by a hare-brained fellow nicknamed Gallows Walsh, noted for his aptness at mischief and fondness for riot. The stronghold of the bailiff was carried by storm, the scholar set at liberty, and the delinquent catchpole borne off captive to the college, where, having no pump to put him under, they satisfied the demands of ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... by the child living before 1850. The modern child brought up on phonics is sensitive to sound also, and open to an appreciation of the beauty of the individual word used in description. This description, when it occurs, should be characterized mainly by aptness ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... his one-and-twentieth year, and the term of his medical studies was just expiring; yet it must be confessed that he knew little more of the profession than when he first entered the doctor's doors. This, however, could not be from want of quickness of parts, for he showed amazing aptness in mastering other branches of knowledge, which he could only have studied at intervals. He was, for instance, a sure marksman, and won all the geese and turkeys at Christmas holidays. He was a bold rider; he was famous for leaping and wrestling; he played tolerably ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... both, obtained as a young man the most tumultuous applause. For he possessed that strong leaning for polished and condensed maxims which Menecles displayed; as with whom, so with Hortensius, some of these maxims were more remarkable for sweetness and grace than for aptness and indispensable use; and so his speech, though highly strung and impassioned without losing finish or smoothness, was nevertheless not approved by the older critics. I have seen Philippus hide a smile, or at other times look angry or annoyed; but the youths were ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the Toronto Women's Literary and Social Progress Club had gathered in public for the first time in the City Council Chamber to consider the Suffrage question. Mrs. McEwan presided and a paper "treating pithily and with much aptness on the subject of the Franchise" was read by Miss E. Foulds, who moved a Resolution "that in the opinion of this Meeting the Parliamentary Franchise should be extended to women who possess the qualifications which entitle men to vote." This and a second ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... a plenitude of subtle matter, Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives, Of burning blushes or of weeping water, Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves, In either's aptness, as it best deceives, To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes, Or to turn white and swoon ...
— A Lover's Complaint • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... in bad Latin," were well adapted to the spirit of the age. But nothing like his German writings had ever been seen before. In lucidity and copiousness of language, in directness and vigor, in satire and argument and invective, in humor and aptness of illustration and allusion, the numerous tracts, political and theological, which poured from his pen, surpassed all that had hitherto been written and went straight to the hearts of his countrymen. And he won his battle almost alone, for Melanchthon, though ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... capital to be elbow-grease; the work to be done that fall and winter. Smith was indeed the head and inspiration of all enterprise in that new place. People to whom that country was strange, and that included nearly all of them, looked to him for advice, and regarded with admiration and wonder his aptness in answering everything. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... and men of courage and capacity, wise in council and prompt in action rose to meet it. They were not men ennobled merely by their appearance on the stage at the time when great scenes were passing. They took a part in those scenes with a degree of aptness and energy proportional to the magnitude of the occasion and throughout displayed ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... alike in the most learned words and the most colloquial, is responsive to all demands. His power of phrasing runs the whole gamut from the most pellucid simplicity to the most triumphant originality. His figures of speech, drawn from all realms, are penetrating in quality, of startling aptness. Equally characteristic is his versification, varying as it does from passages of melodic smoothness and grace to lines as strident, broken, and harsh as the thought they dramatically reflect. In narration, whether in the brilliant ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... favorite in Boston where she made her debut at the Tremont Theatre in January, 1842, in the play of "Old and Young," personating five characters, and introducing songs and dances. Although very youthful, she displayed great aptness and evinced remarkable musical talent. On the 25th of September, 1843, she first appeared on the boards of the Boston Museum, which then stood at the corner of Tremont and Bromfield Streets, where the Horticultural ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... but he, too, was not without his romances, and even vagaries. He loved a story, was a fine teller of stories, used to sit at night and spin the most wondrous yarns, a man of much reserve, yet also of much power in discourse, with an aptness and felicity in the use of phrases—so much so, as his son tells, that on his deathbed, when his power of speech was passing from him, and he couldn't articulate the right word, he was silent rather than use the wrong one. I shall never forget how in these early morning walks at ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... and took the lead in tracking, with the aptness for that trick that goes with primitive minds such as his. Even in the farthest glimmer of the light he could pick up the trail, and soon he led them to the willows where the ravisher's horse ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... subject-matter for a hearty laugh close-linked with a lesson that may well be conned by the most serious-minded. The philosophy of home-building and home-improving is expounded with a subtlety of humor and an aptness of illustration as ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... command have rendered you quick in expression, and impatient of contradiction; or if, from whatever other cause, you have contracted an unhappy peevishness of temper, or asperity of manners, or harshness and severity of language, (remember that these defects are by no means incompatible with an aptness to perform services of substantial kindness); if nature has been confirmed by habit till at length your soul seems thoroughly tinctured with these evil dispositions, yet do not despair. Remember that the Divine Agency is promised, "to take away the heart of stone, and give a heart of flesh," of ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... itself with the ideal and the emotional, in nature, life, and thought. Its language must be choice, for aptness of expression and for melodious sound. Its form will embody the recurrence of rhythmic measures, which, however elaborated and varied in later times, originated in the dim past, when singing and dancing ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... said he, 'you must be, with the aptness of my scholar. Julia has not studied dialectics in vain. Before I can feel myself able to contend with her, I must study the books she has commended so—from which, I must acknowledge, I have been repelled ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... emulate the examples presented to my imagination,—to do something and become somebody, which partly made amends for my coldness for letters. In fact, I have always thought that if I had been allowed to read history more constantly, instead of losing my time in studies for which I had no aptness, I might have made ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... lost its aptness after the inauguration of the Government. Jefferson and his school were not opposed to a federal government. They were opposed only to its pretensions, to its assumption of centralized power. Their deep faith in popular control is revealed in the name they assumed, ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... matters that nowhere in the world does as large a percentage of the medical or surgical profession adopt new and improved methods of treatment of the maimed and the ill as in the United States. And nowhere in the world are such new and improved methods applied with anything like the aptness or skill as by American doctors of ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... vehement applause. The noises ceased entirely, and the symbols of opposition disappeared. The audience, hushed into attention, gave vent to no sounds but those of admiration for the genius of the actor. When, in the course of his part, he repeated the words, "So! I am in London again !" the aptness of the expression to the circumstances of the night, was felt by all present, and acknowledged by a round of boisterous and thrice repeated cheering. It was a triumphant scene for Mr. Kemble after his long ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... They despised her remarks and pitied her because her son was so unlike other boys and caused her anxiety. There was nothing to complain of in his work when he stuck to it. What a carpenter he might be with such aptness! Only he should not interfere in things he could not understand, and should not disturb people's belief in ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... where foxes fly about from tree to tree; where the swans are black; where rats make nests; where the bower-bird opens her reception-rooms to receive visits from her feathered friends; where the birds astonish the imagination by the variety of their notes and their aptness; where one bird serves for a clock, and another makes a sound like a postilion cracking of a whip, and a third imitates a knife-grinder, and a fourth the motion of a pendulum; where one laughs when the sun rises, and another cries when the sun sets! Oh, strange, illogical country, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... many exquisite variations in shape, conditions the form of the air-column as it enters the cup of the trumpet or horn. This I believe to be one important function performed for the larynx by the vocal cords, which Mackenzie, with an aptness he could not have appreciated, called the lips of the glottis. They are, in fact, the lips of the essential organ of voice, the larynx. If they are looked at from below they will be seen to be bevelled, and their resemblance to lips ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... knowledge, which is nothing but a representation of truth: for the truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected. This vice therefore brancheth itself into two sorts; delight in deceiving and aptness to be deceived; imposture and credulity; which, although they appear to be of a diverse nature, the one seeming to proceed of cunning and the other of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the most part concur: for, as the verse ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... always excellent in the aptness of his scriptural allusions, once said with regard to a leader who had announced that he would "set his face" against a certain policy and then gave way, "Yes, the deer 'set his face,' but he did not 'set it as a ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... innumerable shades and degrees of every conceivable distinction of merit and of sin, so the proportion and depth of the pains which the souls will feel will vary equally. The pains of no two souls will be exactly the same. They will be measured out, in subtle and exact aptness to each, according to its guilt or goodness, precisely as the process of its purification shall require. There will be nothing ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... admiring Bridget, as she did everything else at Otter. Leslie would have propitiated the mayor of the palace with kind words and attentions, but when she was snapped up in her efforts, she drew back with a girl's aptness to be affronted and repelled. Next Leslie began to angrily resist Bridget's unbecoming interference with her movements, and design of exercising authority and control over the child whom the master had chosen ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... acceptant capacity, there is no effectual value; that is to say, no wealth. A horse is no wealth to us if we cannot ride, nor a picture if we cannot see, nor can any noble thing be wealth, except to a noble person. As the aptness of the user increases, the effectual value of the thing used increases; and in its entirety can co-exist only with perfect skill of use, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... his reply, because, slight as the matter seemed, it apparently called for some declaration, or intimation, or faint foreshadowing of policy in reference to the conduct of the war, and the final treatment of the Rebels. But the President's Yankee aptness and not-to-be-caughtness stood him in good stead, and he jerked or wiggled himself out of the dilemma with an uncouth dexterity that was entirely in character; although, without his gesticulation of eye and mouth,—and especially the flourish of the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... how little aptness there is in the existing human being for taking pleasure either in what already exists ready to hand, or in the making of something which had better be there; in what can be enjoyed without diminishing the enjoyment of others, as nature, books, art, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... In housewife matters, of aptness to learn and activity to execute, she is eminently mistress; and during my absence in Nithsdale, she is regularly and constantly apprentice to my mother and sisters in their dairy and other ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... whenever its glittering and heterogeneous contents are moved or shaken, surprises by some new combination of colour or of form. She professed to write as she talked; but her conversation was doubtless better than her books: her main advantages being a well-stored memory, fertility of images, aptness of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... an English cousin, "in an openness to ideas, an aptness for intuitions, and sometimes a seemingly positive preference for the bird in the bush," which latter may account for that skilful Yankee versatility so perfectly exemplified in the chaplain, poet, editor, merchant, speculator, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... hearts, To whom mysterious seas have been In midnight watches, lonely calm and storm, A stern, sad disciple, And rooted out the false and vain, And chastened them to aptness for Devotion and the deeds of war, And death which smiles and cheers ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... is no one circumstance in which the distempers of the mind bear a more exact analogy to those which are called bodily, than that aptness which both have to a relapse. This is plain in the violent diseases of ambition and avarice. I have known ambition, when cured at court by frequent disappointments (which are the only physic for it), to break out again in a contest for foreman of the grand ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at selecting and applying quotations, and a countenance that is as solemn and as blank as the back side of a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating joke. One night a negro woman was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... book, drawn by the aptness of the text to my problem. Had Maupassant given me the key of the whole enigma? Was this astonishing genius, who had so wrought upon our imaginations, was he a criminal irresistibly driven to tell us the story of his evil life? Were ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of Thomas Bailey Aldrich to George Ade's Fables in Slang is a far cry, but one is as typical a style of humor as the other. Ade's is the more distinctly original, for he not only created the style, but another language. The aptness of its turns, and the marvelous way in which he hit the bull's-eye of human foibles and weaknesses lifted him into instantaneous popularity. A famous bon mot of George Ade's which has been quoted threadbare, but which serves excellently to illustrate his native wit, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... he said, 'Whenever my name is coupled with that of a young lady in this manner, I make it a point of honour to say I have been refused.' To the last, we are told, Lady Morgan preserved the natural vivacity and aptness of repartee that had made her the delight of Dublin society half a century before. 'I know I am vain,' she said once to Mrs. Hall, 'but I have a right to be. It is not put on and off like my rouge; it is always with me.... I wrote books when your mothers worked samplers, and demanded freedom ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... One she smelt and held her face long to it, as though its sweetness kept her senses willing prisoners; turning to the other, she smelt it for a short instant and then drew away, her face, that told every mood with unfailing aptness, twisted into disappointment or disgust. She leant out looking down on me; now behind her shoulder I saw the King's black face, half-hidden by the hangings of the window. She glanced at the first flower, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... a writer's charm lies, as with Horace, in exquisite aptness of language, and in a style perfect for fulness of suggestion combined with brevity and grace, the task of indicating his characteristics in translation demands the most liberal allowance from the reader. In this volume the writer has gladly availed himself, where he might, of the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... well-nigh amounting to genius, seemed to dwell in the swarthy forehead beneath the double curve of ebony hair that lay upon it like a crown, and gleamed in the light like a varnished surface; but like many another actress, Coralie had little wit in spite of her aptness at greenroom repartee, and scarcely any education in spite of her boudoir experience. Her brain was prompted by her senses, her kindness was the impulsive warm-heartedness of girls of her class. But who could trouble over Coralie's psychology when his eyes were dazzled by those ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... wolves would not—— But, Jacob, thou wouldst have lost thy dogs as well as thy sheep. What stand could any dogs make against a pack of wolves, and a shepherd without dogs is like a bird without wings, as Brother Amos used to say. Yes, that is just it, Jacob replied, struck by the aptness of the comparison. Thou art known, Jesus, to be the most foreseeing shepherd on the hills; but the flock would not have increased without thy dogs. Abdiel is great in his knowledge of dogs, and he told me that he had never known any like thine, Master. Come ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... Church's system to bear on their hearts and lives and to lead them to ask, "Can we not all do more than we are now doing and do all with a better spirit?" A Mission is conducted by a Priest specially invited for the purpose and is chosen for his aptness in carrying on such special work. If well conducted and blessed of God a Mission brings great spiritual blessings to the Parish in which it is held and its happy results are to be seen in the awakened life and renewed ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... would have refused a salary of fifteen hundred dollars in a bank against five hundred in a counting-room, and for the reason that a bank-clerk has little or no hope beyond his salary all his life, while a counting-house clerk, if he have any aptness for trade, stands a fair chance of getting into business sooner or later, and making his fortune as a merchant. But a debt of four hundred dollars hanging over his head was an argument in favour of a clerkship in the bank, at a salary of a thousand ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... between 1580 and 1610, we might have seen him,—a man who came from his Maker's hand endowed with the noblest powers and the most godlike reason,—who had the greatest natural ability to become a great dramatic poet,—the native genius and the aptness to acquire the art, and who did acquire the highest art of his age, and went on far beyond it, exhibiting new ingenuities and resources, and a breadth that has never been equalled, and which admits at once ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... the latch, and God alone knew what was behind the gate. Toil, with a certainty, but our lives had known it. Death, perchance. But Death had been near to all of us, and his presence did not frighten. As we climbed towards the Gap, I recalled with strange aptness a quaint saying of my father's that Kaintuckee was the Garden of Eden, and that men were being justly punished ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... been vindicated in this experience as they never were before; and the whole history of the last four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke, seems in the providence of God, to have been clothed now, with an illustration, with a sympathy, with an aptness, and with a significance, such as we never could have expected nor imagined. God, I think, has said, by the voice of this event, to all nations of the earth: "Republican liberty, based upon true Christianity, is firm as the ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... inviting their cultivation. Some are called into existence by their own internal strength, and others by the external powers that surround them. Some of these seeds flourish more, some less, according to the aptness of the soil, and the modes of assistance. We are not to suppose infancy the only time in which these scions spring, no part of life is exempt. I knew a man who lived to the age of forty, totally regardless of music. A fidler happening to have apartments near his ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... Low German race as pure barbarians, great at destruction, but incapable of constructive work. Professor Rolleston, who has opened several of these early heathen tombs of our Teutonic ancestors, finds in them everywhere abundant evidence of "their great aptness at destroying, and their great slowness in elaborating, material civilisation." Until the Anglo-Saxon received from the Continent the Christian religion and the Roman culture, he was a mere average Aryan barbarian, with ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... orange ribbon tied beneath his chin; Around his arms and shoulders his sole dress, A cloak, was all bunched up. He leapt, and lighted Upon the boulder just beneath; there swayed, Re-poised, And perked his head like an inquisitive bird, As gravely happy; of all unconscious save His body's aptness for its then employment; His eyes intent on shells in some clear pool Or choosing where he next will plant his feet. Again he leaps, his curls against his hat Bounce up behind. The daintiest thing alive, He rocks ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... seemed to mock her own want of hope with so bitter an aptness that in her nervous irritation she could have screamed at him outright. But she only said in self-mockery, and speaking to him as though he had been sane, "Why, Captain Hagberd, your son may not even want to look ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... far from it, but if in many circumstances you reason and argue with considerable aptness, I grant you far less deductive faculty. That does not seem to ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... the deepest passion in him, even as defeating the hopes of the Vaufontaines was more than a religion with the Duke. By no trickery, but by a persistent good-nature, alertness of speech, avoidance of dangerous topics, and aptness in anecdote, he had hourly made his position stronger, himself more honoured at the Castle Bercy. He had also tactfully declined an offer of money from the Prince—none the less decidedly because he was nearly penniless. The Duke's hospitality he was ready to accept, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... history by saying, I went to a North Country school, where I was noted for my aptness in learning; and my skill at 'prisoner's base,'—upon my word I purposed no pun! I was intended for the Church. Wishing, betimes, to instruct myself in its ceremonies, I persuaded my schoolmaster's maidservant to assist me towards promoting a christening. My father did not like ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of it, he felt a faint tug inside him; as it were a whispered reminder that, away at Kapurthala, he had been about as free as a bird with a string round its leg. He resented the aptness of that degrading simile. It was a new sensation; and he did not relish it. The few women he intimately loved had counted for so much in his life that he scarcely realised his abysmal ignorance of the power that is ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... men could be said to sleep. Nothing but the goodness of the weather and climate could have enabled us to endure so continual a fatigue. Had it been in Europe, half the people must have sunk under it. For my part, it did me good." No evidence of professional aptness could be given clearer than the last words. A man is easy under such circumstances only when they fit him. De Guichen asked to be superseded; "my health cannot endure such continual fatigue and anxiety." Twice the wary Frenchman was nearly caught, but the wind did not favor Rodney long ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... with inward delight and profound emotion what no musician, except Beethoven, has felt before." And Heinrich Heine had a keen perception of Berlioz's originality when he called him "a colossal nightingale, a lark the size of an eagle." The simile is not only picturesque, but of remarkable aptness. For Berlioz's colossal force is at the service of a forlorn and tender heart; he has nothing of the heroism of Beethoven, or Haendel, or Gluck, or even Schubert. He has all the charm of an Umbrian painter, as is shown in L'Enfance du Christ, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... of extraordinary power, has so much more markedly the defects of his qualities that I take it to be, at the utmost, the poise of the first gradual refluence. This analogy of the tidal ebb and flow may be observed with singular aptness in Browning's life-work—the tide that first moved shoreward in the loveliness of "Pauline," and, with "long withdrawing roar," ebbed in slow, just perceptible lapse to the poet's penultimate volume. As for "Asolando," I would rather regard it as the gathering of a new ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... moral or intellectual, he was always ready to pay unbounded deference. That strenuous application which was one of his most remarkable gifts in manhood showed itself in his youth, and his application was backed or inspired by superior intelligence and aptness. After he had been two years at the Ecole Polytechnique he took a foremost part in a mutinous demonstration against one of the masters; the school was broken up, and Comte like the other scholars was sent home. To the great dissatisfaction of his parents, he resolved to return to Paris (1816), ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... were brilliant, gallant, much-loved, early epauletted fellows, who did not let twenty-one catch them without wives sealed with the authentic wedding kiss, nor allow twenty-two to find them without an heir. But they had a sad aptness for dying young. It was altogether supposable that they would have spread out broadly in the land; but they were such inveterate duelists, such brave Indian-fighters, such adventurous swamp-rangers, and such lively free-livers, that, however numerously ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... in each. Mr. Palmer informed me, that, in going on shore, the canoes could beat our boat very much in rowing whenever the Esquimaux chose to exert themselves, but they kept close to her the whole way. During the time that they were on board, we had observed in them a great aptness for imitating certain of our words; and, while going on shore, they took a particular liking to the expression of "Hurra, give way!" which they heard Mr. Palmer use to the boat's crew, and which they frequently imitated, to the ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... "A point of morals will be no better discussed in a society of philosophers than in that of a pretty woman of Paris," said Rousseau. This constant habit of reducing thoughts to a clear and salient form was the best school for aptness and ready expression. To talk wittily and well, or to lead others to talk wittily and well, was the crowning gift of these women. This evanescent art was the life and soul of the salons, the magnet which attracted the most brilliant ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... rather to poetry or painting, or music, or scientific research, or industry, or military art, minds of the second order are dragged into the current—showing that a goodly part of their power is in the aptness, not ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... the old man, as he transferred a duck to his plate and proceeded to carve it with the aptness of one who had practical knowledge of its anatomy, "I tell ye, Henry, the birds be gittin' fat; and I sartinly hope the flight this fall will be a good un. Don't be bashful, Lad, in yer eatin'," he ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... a little unroyal. Raleigh, who had stood in almost mute astonishment at Morgan's strange readiness of tongue and aptness of expression, now began to fear that the blunt yeoman was going to undo all his previous good work. Elizabeth Tudor was not accustomed to hear that some other "maid" was ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... felt. His only relief was when, tossing aside for a moment the heavy load of responsibility, his face would light up with a humorsome smile, while he narrated some incident whose irresistible wit and aptness to the subject at hand, convulsed his hearers, and rendered "Lincoln's stories" household words throughout ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... sailing, you may say, almost within three points of the wind; and his own accidental allusion to Romeo had brought it about with an aptness and a celerity which were better for my purpose than anything I had privately developed from the text of Bottom and Titania; none the less, however, did I intend to press into my service that fond couple also as basis for a moral, in spite ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... as the rule, but for a few remarkable exceptions, like Sir Robert Peel and Gladstone. And yet it would be unwise to decry college honors, since not one in a hundred of those who obtain them by their industry, aptness, and force of will can lay claim to what is called genius,—the rarest of all gifts. Moreover, how impossible it is for college professors to detect in students, with whom they are imperfectly acquainted, extraordinary faculties, more especially if the young men are ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... the Sacred Writers, but others make use of this Comparison. The Grecians of old were wont to call the Snow, ERIODES HUDOR Wooly Water, or wet Wool. The Latin word Floccus signifies both a Lock of Wool and a Flake of Snow, in that they resemble one another. The aptness of the similitude appears in three things." "1. In respect of the Whiteness thereof." "2. In respect of Softness." "3. In respect of that Warming Vertue that does attend the Snow." [Here the reasoning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... I noted the aptness of the description; but, indeed, Felipe had sometimes a strange felicity in rendering into words the sensations of the body. 'And your mother, too,' said I; 'she seems to feel this weather much. Do you not ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grace and aptness of gesture, also, in a measure, bespeak and proclaim commanding oratory. The power, moreover, which with the Indian resides in mere gesture, as a medium for disclosing and laying bare the thoughts ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... In household matters, of aptness to learn and activity to execute, she is eminently mistress; and during my absence in Nithsdale, she is regularly and constantly apprentice to my mother and sisters in their dairy, and ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... undoubtedly useful to the political speaker in that it enables him to be apt without being exact, and thereby frees him from the possibility of being pinned down to a stated position, but in serious discussion exactness rather than aptness is desired, and to the thinking man the figure of speech, by which the notion of two lines running always parallel without meeting is applied to the course of development of two races living together in one country, ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... William Bradford, his lieutenant and successor. The governor was the first to speak, and the somewhat measured accents of his voice, with its inflections at once kindly and haughty, told of gentle breeding, of a calm and dignified temper, and of an aptness at command. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin |
