"Competently" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stared at the purple horizon-line, silently she ate, silently she bestowed the modest gratuities that brought her what little assistance she needed. Her only social act was the nursing of the two sisters who shared her cabin, and this was done so quietly and competently that they were certain she was a professional nurse ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... half-time by German control; and there was no one to take the place of those who departed. Russian generals were among the most skilful of strategists, and men like Ruszky, Alexeiev, Brussilov, and others would have been invincible had Russia's man-power been competently equipped. As it was, every sort of provision was neglected; the artillery of one army was limited to two shells a day; a whole division had on one occasion to face an attack without a rifle among them, and troops were put into trenches ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... to state my ideas as to the way in which Mr. Brook can most profitably avail himself of the extensive territory of Sarawak. In the first place, he must have the whole District competently and correctly surveyed, and laid out in portions (not of square miles, New-South-Wales fashion, without any regard to natural boundaries, but) of different sizes according to the topographical features of the country. On ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... knocker and let it fall, the two men stood gazing with varying degrees of attention at the closed white-painted old door. The younger, the one with the round dark head and quick dark eyes, seemed extremely interested in the door, and examined it competently, its harmoniously disposed wide panels, the shapely fan-light over it, the small panes of greenish old glass on each side. "Beautiful old bits you get occasionally in these out-of-the-way holes," he remarked. But the older man was aware of nothing so concrete and material. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... subsequent history of French fiction is thus an extremely important one, and one that requires, not only a good deal of reading on which to base any opinion that shall not be worthless, but a considerable exercise of critical discretion in order to form that opinion competently. The present writer can at least plead no small acquaintance with the subject, and a full if possibly over-generous acknowledgment of his dealings with it on the part of some French authorities, living and dead, of the highest competence. But the attractions of the vast and strangely long ignored ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... quite comforted, now that Betsy was talking so competently to grown-ups. She did not hear what they said, nor try to. Now that Betsy's voice sounded all right she had no more fears. Betsy would manage somehow. She heard Betsy's voice again talking to the other man, but she was busy looking at an exhibit of beautiful jelly glasses, ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... this way. Judith was gone, and with her the spell that had held him mute and helpless, and he was a man of affairs once more. He was not a very cheerful man of affairs to-night. He was not singing or whistling to himself, as he usually did, but he moved competently enough about the room, entering the Judge's private office with its smell of stale tobacco smoke and group of chairs, so confidentially close that they looked capable of carrying on the conference their late occupants had begun without help ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... that marriage with a woman he adored would cure habits contracted only through the inevitable aimlessness of too much wealth; the fact that, once married, a woman like Judith would accept, and for the most part deal competently with, facts which would frighten her in her raw girlish state of ignorance and crudeness. Sylvia did not even hear these arguments and many more like them, dignified with the sanction of generations of women trying their best to deal with ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... quickly, clearly, competently, like a seaman, and in the end remained puzzled. This noise, though, came deadened from outside, together with the washing and pouring of water on deck above his head. Was it the wind? Must be. It made down there a row like the shouting of a big lot of crazed men. And he discovered in himself ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... and the cares of others, Gervaise had, however, a beautiful example of courage in the home of her neighbors, the Bijards. Little Lalie, only eight years old and no larger than a sparrow, took care of the household as competently as a grown person. The job was not an easy one because she had two little tots, her brother Jules and her sister Henriette, aged three and five, to watch all day ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... did not stamp her mark on him. He was one of the order of highly polished men, ignorant of women, who are impressed for long terms by temporary flashes, that hold them bound until a fresh impression comes, to confirm or obliterate the preceding. Affairs of the world he could treat competently; he had a head for high politics and the management of men; the feminine half of the world was a confusion and a vexation to his intelligence, characterless; and one woman at last appearing decipherable, he fancied it must be owing to her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Swiftly and competently his fingers moved over instruments of science which only a completely sane man would have known how to manipulate. It was an acid test of his sanity and he knew as he worked that his reasoning faculties at ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... Things worthy to be known. And, though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and Lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother-dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made Learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful. First, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... of Napoleon has been written by many pens, in our own day most competently by Dr. Holland Rose (2 vols. Bell); but a good account of the Emperor, indispensable for some particulars and an undoubted classic, is that by de Bourrienne, Napoleon's private secretary, published in an English translation, in 4 volumes, by Bentley ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... proceed cautiously and to act only when I had every human probability of a personal conviction and sincere desire to embrace Christian teaching and to lead a Christian life. I think the adult candidates were all competently instructed ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge |
