"Eagerness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fact she had to contemplate was the difficulty of getting a new mode of life into operation. Notwithstanding all her eagerness to pay, the days were still passing in gentle routine somewhat quietly because of her father's indisposition, but with the usual household dignity. There was a clock-work smoothness about life at Tory Hill, due to the most competent service secured ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... should spill the milk. "Whatever it be, it'll be there when I git there!" she muttered philosophically; and kept on to the cool cellar with her milk. But as soon as she had deposited the pail she turned and fairly ran in her eagerness. The speckled hen was cackling vain-gloriously; and as Mrs. Gammit passed the row of nests in the shed she saw a white egg shining. But she did not stop ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the urchin at the same moment, looking up at her as he passed by with a queer expression of mixed curiosity and knowing eagerness,—"Yer know yer father's sick? ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... next morning at his studio. The military adepts were punctual to their appointment, and found their friend at work, not in a mysterious laboratory, but at his easel, on a half-length picture of St. Jerome. Entreating them to restrain their eagerness, he painted steadily on, finished his picture, sent it out by his servant, and received a small rouleau in return. This he broke open in the presence of his visitors, and throwing ten gold doubloons on ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... talking about; I found that she was making particular inquiries as to my identity, and that he was unable to give her the information she desired. I did not feel much encouraged by the tone in which she alluded to me. Unfortunately, I rustled a branch in my eagerness to catch every word, and so discovered myself. Beating a hasty retreat, I went back to the house, took my hat, and quietly retired, walking most of the way to the city, a distance of several miles. I have not called upon the family of Mr. Ellis, and am still in doubt whether it will ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... has run through a score of editions, at long intervals out of print, and again revived at the public call with an eagerness of distribution which few modern romances have enjoyed. Its author, Hannah Foster, was the daughter of Grant Webster, a well-known merchant of Boston, and wife of Rev. John Foster, of Brighton, Massachusetts, whose ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... George, colour slowly heightening upon her cheeks and temples, while Fanny watched him with a quick eagerness, her eyes alert and bright. But Eugene seemed merely quizzical, as if not taking this brusquerie to himself. The ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... gentry and men of means and the lawyers very soon took the lead in political affairs. A larger proportion of these classes came from Virginia than was the case with the rest of the population, and they shared the eagerness and aptitude for political life generally shown by the leading families of Virginia. In many cases they were kin to these families; not, however, as a rule, to the families of the tidewater region, the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... takes. Bring about any tension of expectation in a child—have him wait for your head to appear around the corner as you play peek-a-boo, or delay opening the box of candy, or pretend you are one thing or another—and the excitement of the child is manifested in what is known as eagerness. Attention in children is accompanied by excitement and is wearying as a natural result, since excitement, means a physical discharge of energy. A child laughs all over and weeps with his entire body; his anger involves every muscle of his body ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... be victorious." Gushtasp deeply lamented the coming event, which involved the destruction of his kinsmen, but did not shrink from the battle, for he exulted in the anticipation of obtaining the victory. The contest was begun with indescribable eagerness and impetuosity. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... general table, so as to make the acquaintance of this odd character. But she did not respond to my polite advances, was insensible even to my little attentions. I poured out water for her persistently, I passed her the dishes with great eagerness. A slight, almost imperceptible, movement of the head and an English word, murmured so low that I did not understand it, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... general was always as impatient as Lady Cecilia herself both of his hypercriticism and of his never-ending fancies, each of which Beauclerc purused with an eagerness and abandoned with a facility which sorely tried the general's equanimity. One day, after having ridden to Old Forest, General Clarendon returned chafed. He entered the library, talking to Cecilia, as Helen thought, about ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... of action, only undertaking what lies in the path of duty; controlling natural eagerness and activity; acting soberly, with the help of the HOLY SPIRIT, the thought that by our deeds we glorify GOD: pausing for a moment, when passing from one occupation to another, in order to direct aright the intention; ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... his honoured but restricted post, but needs must doff his crown—monarchs wore them in those fairy days—and fling a leg over a gentleman's charger, behind its owner, and thus ride double to see the sights. So great was his eagerness to enjoy all the display that he got a smart reproof from an officer of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... ignorance. In whatever state a man experiences either of them, that state may be called disease; and excessive pains and pleasures are justly to be regarded as the greatest diseases to which the soul is liable. For a man who is in great joy or in great pain, in his unreasonable eagerness to attain the one and to avoid the other, is not able to see or to hear anything rightly; but he is mad, and is at the time utterly incapable of any participation in reason. He who has the seed about the spinal ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... appropriation for its completion had been some kind of enchantment. In Boston, I early presented my letter of credit to the publisher it was drawn upon, not that I needed money at the moment, but from a young eagerness to see if it would be honored; and a literary attache of the house kindly went about with me, and showed me the life of the city. A great city it seemed to me then, and a seething vortex of business as well as a whirl ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... affecting his life, and to send him to his last account whilst suffering the pangs of laceration, was inexpressibly revolting. Those who desired to disgrace the government, embraced the opportunity—perhaps with the eagerness of faction: pictures were exhibited of the unfortunate man, illustrative of his melancholy fate. Surely no argument can be found, in the calmest exercise of the understanding to extenuate an administration of the law, which distorted ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... strong to keep all minor tyrants in subjection; and, despairing of freedom, sought only an interval of repose. This hope was, however, not destined to be realized, for Buonaparte soon pursued all those who presumed to oppose his schemes in the slightest degree with astonishing eagerness, and those who submitted with the most alacrity, were treated only ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... expressed an inclination to taste every thing that they saw: They seemed best pleased with the salt pork, though we had other provisions upon the table. At sun-set, they eat another meal with great eagerness, each devouring a large quantity of bread, and drinking above a quart of water. We then made them beds upon the lockers, and they went to sleep with great seeming content. In the night, however, the tumult of their minds having subsided, and given ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... thought of her feelings and of the consequences of his act to her. The literature of ancient Rome, Greece, and Oriental countries is full of such cases of individualized "love" which, when closely examined, reduce themselves to cases of selfish lust—eagerness to gratify an appetite with a particular victim, for whom the "lover" has not a particle of affection, respect, or sympathy, not to speak of adoration or gallant, self-sacrificing devotion. Unless we have positive evidence of the presence of these traits of unselfish ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... lad's cheeriness, the eagerness of the keen young face, and the tone of the voice put new heart into him. The fame he had dreamed of on the day he had been called to the bar was still a phantom; the struggle to earn a living in the profession he had chosen in the years when youth ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... and glad to be off. To be sure, America had been kinder to me than ever, and I was loath, in a way, to be leaving her and all the friends of mine she held—old friends of years, and new ones made on that trip. But I was coming back. And then there was one great reason for my eagerness that few folk knew—that my son John was coming to meet me in Australia. I was ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... had turned toward her with a flash of boyish eagerness. One look at her radiant face and ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... attitude," France, to examine again with much care its asserted policy of strict neutrality, and this because of the increased effectiveness of the blockade. Meanwhile another "American question" was serving to cool somewhat British eagerness to go hand in hand with France. For nearly forty years since independence from Spain the Mexican Republic had offered a thorny problem to European nations since it was difficult, in the face of the American Monroe Doctrine, to put sufficient pressure ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... he sallied forth, not as one to the manner born, but with the eagerness of a traveller from a far country, who feels as though he were living in a dream. His attitude to the whole experience is curiously ingenuous, but perfectly sane and straightforward. It is the Paris of Murger in which he lives, not the Paris of Baudelaire and the Second Empire. He takes ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... His eagerness to keep the Indians in order made him greatly liked at Fort King. His services were often demanded there as guide or informer. But while he made every effort to keep the Indians from doing wrong, he did not think the white men blameless and said so frankly. He accused them of failure to punish ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... nobler heroes, but he never made a finer gentleman than Walter Raleigh. And as our Admirals were full of heroic superstitions, and had a strutting and vainglorious style of fight, so they discovered a startling eagerness for battle, and courted war like a mistress. When the news came to Essex before Cadiz that the attack had been decided, he threw his hat into the sea. It is in this way that a schoolboy hears of a ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Angouleme Lord Lovat continued for three years; at first, being treated with great severity: "thirty-five days in perfect darkness, where every moment he expected death, and prepared to meet it with becoming fortitude. He listened with eagerness and anxiety to every noise, and, when his door screached upon its hinges, he believed that it was the executioner come to put an ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... is in Africa! another quarter of the globe! a long, long way off!" she exclaimed, starting up with an eagerness that the duke mistook for ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... long in the water when I felt a bite. I almost trembled with eagerness as I gave a gentle jerk, sufficient to hook the unwary fish. It tugged pretty hard, and I was sure that I had it fast; but still I was afraid that it might break my line. Carefully I drew it along till I got it sufficiently near the surface to ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... him, he was spared from deciding. For there was a sudden crash at the door, and in a moment it gave way before the onslaught of the proprietor, two or three clerks, and a couple of stout porters. In a second the robber was overpowered and a prisoner, and then Charlie saw Bessie, her eyes alight with eagerness, in the background. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... it is not often that one may be in at such a murder as that! I ran to a livery stable, secured a swift horse, mounted him, and spurred furiously for the reservation. The hack, with its generous start, had gone far on its way, but my horse was nimble, and his legs felt the pricking of my eagerness. A few miles of this furious pursuit brought me within sight of the hack just as it was crossing a dark ravine near the reservation. As I came nearer I imagined that the hack swayed somewhat, and that a fleeing shadow escaped from it into the tree-banked further wall of ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... the book from the hand of the angel and eating it, John became a symbol of the church, or people of God, who receive the Word from the hand of his ministers. The sweetness of its taste signifies the eagerness with which people receive it and the gladness experienced when they first partake of the heavenly manna; while the bitterness resulting therefrom probably symbolizes the bitter persecutions and oppositions of which it is the occasion. "Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... hand as the car stopped before the apartment house where he lived. "In a few hours I shall see you again," he said; and his voice, in its eagerness, reminded her of the voice of Kent Page when he had made love to her in her girlhood. Ah, she had learned wisdom since then! Just so much and no more, that was the secret of happiness. Give with the mind and the ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... wavering expression in his smoldering eyes, an expression that hovered between reluctant submission, reawakened cupidity, and dawning hope. Dolores stood motionless, imperious in every line and feature, her heavy eyelashes veiling the eagerness in her eyes, her red lips curved in ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... be a beautiful woman, and was not unaware of it; her social instincts, which Society would straightway do its best to abuse, might outweigh her spiritual tendencies. But a year of life by Ullswater consolidated her womanhood. She bent herself to books with eagerness. The shock of sorrow compelled her to muse on problems which as yet she had either not realised, or had solved in the light of tradition, childwise. Her mind was ripe for those modern processes of thought which hitherto had only been implicit in ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... matter, the law of South Carolina, and why there should exist in that state a condition of public opinion which would accept such a law. Perhaps it may be attributed to the fact that the colored population of South Carolina always outnumbered the white population, and the eagerness of the latter to recruit their ranks was sufficient to overcome in some measure their prejudice against the Negro blood. It is certainly true that the color-line is, in practice as in law, more loosely drawn in South Carolina than in ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... "quartering" the ground like a pointer dog. Presently it struck the trail of the ermine, and with a yelp of satisfaction followed it. This of course brought it close past where Lucien was; but, notwithstanding his eagerness to fire, it moved so rapidly along the trail that he was unable to take sight upon it. It did not halt for a moment; and, as Lucien's gun was a rifle, he knew that a flying shot would be an uncertain one. In the belief, therefore, that the fox would stop soon—at all events when it came ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the gray parrot from her perch, quite forgetting she had promised never to speak the English language, in her eagerness to mark her approval of his conduct. "Now, if you really would like to please Master Herbert," she continued in her own parrot tongue, "I'd say the words he has been trying to teach you for days. Come, out with it, old boy;" and again she relapsed ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... at the captive, and motioned the men to bring a burning stick from the fire. Several at once hastened to obey, tumbling over one another in their eagerness. One, more active than the rest, extricated himself, seized a flaming torch, and rushed toward the prisoner. He had almost reached him, and Reynolds felt that the moment of doom had arrived. But just at this critical instant a peculiar noise fell upon his ears, and he listened ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... perfect sympathy and accord with the body,—a reluctant or unwilling heart. The horse and rider must not only both be willing to go the same way, but the rider must lead the way and infuse his own lightness and eagerness into the steed. Herein is no doubt our trouble, and one reason of the decay of the noble art in this country. We are unwilling walkers. We are not innocent and simple-hearted enough to enjoy a walk. We have fallen from that state of grace which capacity to enjoy a walk implies. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Intelligences and the celestial spheres. As the Rabbis forbid teaching these profound doctrines except to one or two worthy persons at a time, and as the authors of those chapters in the Bible clearly intended to conceal the esoteric contents from the gaze of the vulgar, Maimonides with all his eagerness to spread abroad the light of reason and knowledge hesitates to violate the spirit of Bible and Talmud. His interpretations of these mystic passages are therefore expressed in allusions and half-concealed revelations. The diligent student of the "Guide," ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... if it is possible for us to adopt a conciliatory attitude on the Belgian question. Mr. Wilson believes that he is so hated in England that he won't be listened to. This train of thought largely explains his eagerness in the Belgian question. In any case, so much is certain, that House is continually urging Mr. Wilson to take action; moreover, peace propaganda here is steadily increasing, notwithstanding that it is for the ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... Brereton and turned off. He had no mind to be more than civil to Pett, and he frowned when Pett, in his eagerness, laid a detaining hand on his gown. "I'm not going to discuss it, Mr. Pett," he added, a little warmly. "I've my ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... bright face appeared before her. She was a young girl, with soft brown eyes and a patient expression. It was her first experience at district-school teaching, and she found it laborious. Hetty soon told her errand, and in her eagerness so mixed up the concert and the custard and Matilda Ann's new bonnet that Miss Martin was bewildered, but after a while made ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... not!" I cry, with passionate eagerness; thankful for once to be able to tell the truth; "we none of us ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Here is my uncle's will, which has been so long mislaid. I presume this is proof sufficient," said May, spreading out the lost will before him. But such was his surprise, and so great his eagerness to take it to the window to examine it, that he upset his desk, and losing his balance, plunged head foremost after it, and lay amidst the ruins covered ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... pleasures, think also of the cares they produced and the anxieties they cost you. Behold, they are ended, and forever. Have you reaped from them a moral, or have you been poisoned with their sting? Have you not discovered that pleasure is a phantom, which vanishes in proportion to the eagerness with which it is pursued? that by itself it fatigues without satisfying—that it knows no limits or bounds to gratify the restless and unfettered soul—that it is a feeble soil, which, without the sweat of labor and the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... given to forming chance acquaintanceships, was at first inclined to be suspicious, and yet it was he who made the next advance, prompted, however, by his eagerness ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... he plashed to his ankles, and this brought his headlong race to an abrupt termination. What could it mean? Then he remembered, with a sudden chill, what, in his eagerness and anxiety, he had entirely forgotten,—the tide was coming in, and was already over the path which ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... his macaroni and must pause to shovel the outlying strings of it into his mouth. But the haste with which he did so was sufficient guaranty for his eagerness to reply as soon as it was humanly possible to ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... a lady, sumptuously arrayed, sweep slowly along with her daughter, a beautiful girl who greatly wished to keep her eyes fixed on the ground. The mother glanced everywhere with half-concealed eagerness and anxiety. Once she bowed impressively to a dame with a cold, pale aristocratic face, around whom were gathered several officers in the uniform of His Majesty's Guards. The grand dame lifted her ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... The prevalent eagerness on the part of farmers to obtain the utmost from their land made it difficult, this evening, to find a proper camping-place. We finally found a narrow triangle of clay terrace, in Indiana, at the mouth of Crooked Creek (727 miles), where not long since had tarried a ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... it so that the light struck it revealingly. His face glowed. Save the want of tenderness in his eyes, he looked as though Billy Louise stood before him; the same guarded gladness, the same intent eagerness. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... the middle of the precious cabbages, biting with a sort of dainty eagerness at first one and then another, and wantonly tearing open the crisp heads with impatient strokes of his knife-edged fore hoofs, was a ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... apartments. In bygone days a few neighbours, taking advantage of a moonlight night, accomplished the erection of a cabin ere the morning dawned, in which case it was supposed that the keepers had no power to pull it down. To show the eagerness with which poor families sought to establish themselves in the Forest, it may be mentioned that they took possession of the ancient mine-caves, walling up the back and front, leaving a vent for the smoke in the former, and in the latter ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... that, in their eagerness to see their guest eat, none of the juniors took anything. They continued to pile up the good man's plate till he didn't know where to begin, and fairly bewildered him by each commending the excellence of his own particular ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... province!" exclaimed the empress, coming closer to Kaunitz, and in her eagerness laying her hand upon his shoulder. "Tell me—what wise and wicked stratagem do you hatch ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... felt that some half-formed guilty idea was floating in the mind of the other, she might naturally take the words of the letter as indicating much more than they said; and then in her passionate contempt at his hesitation, and her passionate eagerness to overcome it, she might easily accuse him, doubtless with exaggeration, and probably with conscious exaggeration, of having actually proposed the murder. And Macbeth, knowing that when he wrote the letter he really had been thinking of murder, and indifferent to anything except the question ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... this new fancy of his was the exceeding joy which he manifested on my presenting to him a rouleau of twenty Napoleons, which Lord K——d, to whom he had, on some occasion, lent that sum, had entrusted me with, at Milan, to deliver into his hands. With the most joyous and diverting eagerness, he tore open the paper, and, in counting over the sum, stopped frequently to congratulate himself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... was beaten down, the golden standard was taken, and Harold and the best of his friends were slain; but there was so much eagerness, and throng of so many around, seeking to kill him, that I know not who ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... well imagine my state of eagerness to know the result of the experiment. I could scarcely sleep for anxiety to know the issue. I had, of course, every faith in the completeness of our preparations, but was not without misgivings that the experiment might fail, as my own mental ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... myself, I guess," he said; "I used to camp out when I was a boy, and I can cook pretty well, mother always said." He looked at her wistfully; but the uncomfortable-ness of such an arrangement did not strike her. In her desire for a new emotion, her eagerness to FEEL—that eagerness which is really a sensuality of the mind—she was too absorbed in her own self-chosen hardships to think of his; which ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... ready at eleven," she said, and was instantly surprised to find that her voice rang with new life, new interest. The greyness seemed to lift from the view that stretched beyond the window; she even looked for the sun in her eagerness. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... it was put before her, discussed the merits of different styles, and a faint colour mounted to her cheeks over the difficulty of deciding between two which she liked equally well. She had pushed up her veil; it swathed her forehead like an Eastern woman's. Her eagerness, which was expressed in a slight unsteadiness of nostril and lip, would have had something childish in it, had it not been for her eyes. They remained heavy and unsmiling; and the disquieting half-rings below them were more bluely brown than ever. Leaning sideways against the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... warm little human thing, and a tender one, and when he came close to her, glowing with tempestuous boyish eagerness, her eyes grew bluer because they were suddenly wet, and she was obliged to ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... earnestly. "I was early—conceive my eagerness!—and by ill chance a friend of mine insisted upon lunching with me. I had only a cup of coffee and a roll." He motioned to the waiter, calling him "Waiter!" rather than "Garcon!"——intuitively understanding that Maitland would ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... The drums beat. The passers-by stopped. Here and there an open carriage or an automobile drew up, and pale men, some of them still in bandages, sat and watched. In their eyes was the same flaming eagerness, the same impatience to get back, to be loosed against ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... authenticity, one is tempted to believe them apocryphal, he was still but a youth, rich and of noble birth, who entered into life by a golden door, and ran into all its pleasures with the fiery imprudence and eagerness of his age. He carried to excess, as so many do at eighteen, all the vices and all the virtues of his day. It will be easily understood how proud he was to serve as second to men like Lafare and Fargy in a meeting which was likely to "make ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... realised that he must neglect no means within his power to secure to himself the victory. Nor did he. Had his life and fortune both been staked on the result of the race, he could scarcely have manifested more eagerness. Indeed, he rather overdid it, imperilling his spars by carrying a heavy press of canvas up to the last moment possible; which, as the north-east trades happened to be blowing rather fresh, involved ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... commonplace remark that allowed free speech to resume itself again. She saw at once the position of affairs; the reason of Hugh's coolness when in Gussie's society was no longer any secret. She thought he had lacked the lover-like eagerness that one might expect, judging the matter from the ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... eagerness he seized her hand, clasped it tightly, bent over her. She made no reply, and the silky black lashes sank lower, lower till they touched the violet circle suffering had worn under her eyes. Like ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... do you think of her?" he asked in his boyish eagerness to have their opinion of the girl he thought he was beginning to ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... the progress the assailants made. They were now climbing along the slopes of the ravine on both sides of the harbour, occupying house after house, and maintaining a hot fire on the retreating foe. It was exciting, maddening; in his eagerness McKay was tempted to emerge from his shelter and wave encouragement to ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... picture of her own detestable character, and put the finishing hand to her unhallowed work, by swearing away that life which her arts had rendered scarcely worth defending, could death have come unaccompanied by disgrace. With a manner betraying suppressed, but ill-concealed eagerness, and in language prompt and fluent, as if reciting by rote a carefully kept journal, she went on to detail every fault or neglect or impatient act of her relative, not sparing exposure of the most delicate domestic events, at the same time carefully suppressing all mention ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Granted that the great majority of editors and their staffs would never dream of wittingly disclosing information injurious to their country during hostilities, the fact remains that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. If one journal, in its eagerness to attract, prints what ought to have been kept secret, the reticence of the remainder is of no avail. Nor is this merely a question of honour and patriotism. It is also a question of competence. Censorship responsibilities ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... me, 'Don't tell him.' It's you that Mitya's most afraid of. Because it's a secret: he said himself it was a secret. Alyosha, darling, go to him and find out what their secret is and come and tell me," Grushenka besought him with sudden eagerness. "Set my mind at rest that I may know the worst that's in store for me. That's why I ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... spirits of the dead are feared, for they, in their eagerness to participate in the farewell and final death feast, avail themselves of every occasion to injure the living in some mysterious but material way. Sickness, especially one in which the only symptoms are emaciation and debility, are ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... are: but other forms arise 260 And seen as clear, albeit with dimmer eyes: First he from sympathy still held apart By shrinking over-eagerness of heart, Cloud charged with searching fire, whose shadow's sweep Heightened mean things with sense of brooding ill, And steeped in doom familiar field and hill,— New England's poet, soul reserved and deep, November nature with a name of May, Whom high ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... losing her; for her views of human nature and parental feeling were as yet pure superstitions. But Mrs. Goff at once became envious of the luxury her daughter was about to enjoy, and overwhelmed her with accusations of want of feeling, eagerness to desert her mother, and vain love of pleasure. Alice, who loved Mrs. Goff so well that she had often told her as many as five different lies in the course of one afternoon to spare her some unpleasant truth, and would have scouted as infamous any suggestion that her parent was ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... strange—no passion nor eagerness—in thy way of accosting her," whispered Hester. "Our Pearl is a fitful and fantastic little elf, sometimes. Especially, she is seldom tolerant of emotion, when she does not fully comprehend the why and wherefore. But the child hath ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the foulest language he was capable of, but he grabbed the dollars when they were handed to him, and stowed them into his hip-pocket with an eagerness which suggested that he feared the other might repent of his bargain. And Beasley quickly swept the precious nuggets away and securely locked them in his safe, with the certain knowledge that his profit on the deal was more than cent ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... advanced by all his efforts. He had welcomed this chance to accompany Burns as a diversion from his restless thoughts, for a few days' interval in his engineering plans, caused by a delay in the arrival of certain necessary material, was making him wild with eagerness for something—anything—to happen. ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... watched him was brim full of an eagerness which swept away all fear. "Tomah says, wolf and Injun hunt just alike; keep ver' still; don't trouble game 'cept when he hungry," she whispered. "Says too, Keesuolukh made us friends 'fore white man come, spoil um everything. ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... is a book for which I have been waiting impatiently this great while, and I welcomed it with eagerness. The first volume left off, you may remember, with Michael just about to go up to Oxford. Knowing what Mr. COMPTON MACKENZIE could do with such a theme, I have anticipated all these months that to watch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... animation. But presently there was a dog-fight over in the neighborhood of the blacksmith shop, and the visitors slid off their perch like so many turtles and strode to the battle-field with an interest bordering on eagerness. The Squire remained, and read his letter. Then he sighed, and sat long in ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... he ran before the slight grade and a rocky strip slowed him down to a heavy gallop. Johnny had been in the mind to let the fool run himself down just for punishment, but the rocks and an eagerness to return to the stranded plane urged him ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... refused to submit, until the stranger, with effusive expressions of respect for his doubts, said the secret would be embarrassing to its possessor, as it concerned the interest and safety of the most illustrious of the Scottish Jacobites. The doctor's reluctance now changed into eagerness; he readily agreed to follow his guide, and was conveyed, partly by land and partly by water, to a mansion, which they entered through a garden. After passing through a long range of apartments, his mask was removed, and he looked round upon a splendid saloon, hung with crimson velvet, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... state-papers. Soon after Lord Lytton's departure there was some talk of Fitzjames's resuming his old place upon the retirement of Lord Hobhouse, by whom he had been succeeded. It went so far that Maine asked him to state his views for the information of Lord Salisbury. Fitzjames felt all his old eagerness. 'The prospect,' he says, 'of helping you and John Strachey to govern an empire,' and to carry out schemes which will leave a permanent mark upon history, is 'all but irresistibly attractive.' He knew, indeed, in his heart that ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... time that as a lad still in his teens he showed to Mr. Folsom his eagerness to learn, Farragut was ever diligent in the work of self-improvement, both professional and general. His eyes were weak from youth, but he to some extent remedied this disability by employing readers in the different ships ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... Some imagine that the former was unloving but energetic and efficient, and that the latter was affectionate, but sentimental and indolent. In reality both sisters had admirable qualities; both loved the Master and longed to please him; but on this occasion Martha, in her very eagerness to serve, had overburdened herself in the preparation of an elaborate meal, while Mary, with truer intuition of what Jesus wished, "sat at the Lord's feet, and heard his word." She knew that he desired, not for his own sake, but for theirs, to reveal himself and to deliver his heavenly ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... moral estimates come down to us from ancestors who hanged children for stealing forty shillings' worth, and sent their souls to perdition for the sin of being born,—who punished the unfortunate families of suicides, and in their eagerness for justice executed one innocent person every three years, on the average, as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... you?" inquired Colonel Ward, a flavor of satiric skepticism in his voice. He was gazing quizzically forward to where Mr. Bodge sat on the capstan's drumhead, his nose elevated with wistful eagerness, his whiskers flapping about his ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... remembering the home mandate, would not have entered into any prolonged conversation with Susy. She forgot all this now in her eagerness and desire ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... This was perhaps due to the photograph of him on her mantel. There was a dash about the picture rather lacking in the original, for it was a profile, and in it the young man's longish hair, worn pompadour, the slight thrust forward of the head, the arch of the nostrils,—gave him a sort of tense eagerness, a look of running against the wind. From the photograph Harvey might have been a gladiator; as a matter of fact ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... discretion of the present age will more readily censure than admire, but can more easily admire than imitate, the fervor of the first Christians, who, according to the lively expressions of Sulpicius Severus, desired martyrdom with more eagerness than his own contemporaries solicited a bishopric. The epistles which Ignatius composed as he was carried in chains through the cities of Asia, breathe sentiments the most repugnant to the ordinary feelings of human nature. He earnestly beseeches the Romans, that when he should be exposed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... as late as twelve, one, or two o'clock, without experiencing any ill effects; they go without a meal to day, and to-morrow eat to repletion, with only temporary inconvenience. One night they will sleep three or four hours, and the next nine or ten; or one night, in their eagerness to get away into some agreeable company, they will take no food at all, and the next, perhaps, will eat a hearty supper, and go to bed upon it. These, with various other irregularities, are common to the majority of young men, and are, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... This they do with clumsy wooden pestles, held as they stand erect round a sort of trough, the ding-dong-ding of the pounders carrying far and wide through the forest, and, at the sound, all wanderers from the camp turn their faces homeward with the eagerness born of empty stomachs and the prospect of a good meal. The grain is boiled in cooking pots, if the tribe possess any, or, if they are wanting, in the hollow of a bamboo, for that marvellous jungle growth is used for almost every conceivable purpose by natives of ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... hope-inspiring words, there was genuine eagerness in the tone of Douglas Dale's voice, there was brightness in his frank eyes. No wonder Lydia held the story her brother had told her in scornful disbelief; no wonder she felt all the glow of the fulfilment of long-deferred hope. What ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the site of the old meeting-house which had been destroyed by the Catholics. It was a very numerous assembly, to which crowds of people came from all parts; but on the following days it was still more numerous; for, as the news spread, people ran with great eagerness to hear the preaching of the word of which they had been so long deprived. D'Aygaliers tells us in his Memoirs that—"No one could help being touched to see a whole people just escaped from fire and sword, coming together ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... they all arose and made for the river-side. Now, while Khalifah was expecting the Caliph's return with the two frails, behold, the Mamelukes swooped down upon him like vultures and took the fish and wrapped them in gold-embroidered kerchiefs, beating one another in their eagerness to get at the Fisherman. Whereupon quoth Khalifah, "Doubtless these are of the fish of Paradise!" [FN225] and hending two fish in right hand and left, plunged into the water up to his neck and fell a-saying, "O Allah, by the virtue of these ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... of Geary and Hancock. He could have ascertained, by an early morning reconnoissance, (indeed, his corps-commanders did so on their own responsibility,) that there was no enemy whatsoever confronting his right and left flanks, where three corps, the First, Fifth, and Eleventh, lay chafing with eagerness to engage the foe. And the obvious thing to do was to leave a curtain of troops to hold these flanks, which were protected by almost insuperable natural obstacles, as well as formidable intrenchments, and hold the superfluous troops well in hand, as a central reserve, in the vicinity ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... be inspected besides. Mr. Picknell came to talk about the plan with Miss Barbara Leicester, who was going to drive out to the farm in the afternoon, and then walk back with the club, as besought by Betty. She was highly pleased with the eagerness of her young neighbors, who had discovered in her an unsuspected sympathy and good-fellowship at the time of Betty's June tea-party. It had been a pity to make believe old in all these late years, and to become more and more a ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... could not explain satisfactorily to herself when she partly attempted to do so. She could discover in him none of those brilliant and promising traits which Gaston, her husband, had often assured her that he possessed. On the contrary, he sat rather mute and receptive before her chatty eagerness to make him feel at home and in face of Gaston's frank and wordy hospitality. His manner was as courteous toward her as the most exacting woman could require; but he made no direct appeal to her approval or ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... taper (nota bene) and some pieces of gold to the Bishop who performed the grand mass, and who was sitting in an arm-chair near the altar. The prelate intended to have given them to his assistants, the priests of the King's chapel; but the monks of Saint Denis ran to him with great eagerness, exclaiming that the taper and the gold belonged to them. They threw themselves upon the Bishop, whose chair began to totter, and made his mitre fall from his head. If I had stayed there a moment longer the Bishop, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... objects. The fact that they traced the origin of music to the gods shows in what esteem they held it; and their quaint story of the 16,000 nymphs and shepherdesses, each of whom invented a new key and melody in her emulous eagerness to move the heart and win the love of the handsome young god Krishna, shows that the amorous power of music was ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... the first to greet the arrivals was Donald McTavish. His wonder at the skill and stamina that carried the men through that awful storm expressed itself in eagerness to assist in relieving men of their packs. The gaunt, half-starved five that had been left at Sturgeon Lake pounced upon the food, and, without more ado, started to brew pails of tea, and to thaw ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... and "Donalds" and "Sandys" as they strode along through the thick grass, cutting a wide swath before them. There was something in the work that appealed to the boy's bump of destructiveness, and filled him with eagerness ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... questions to be buried deep in the secret places, and yet he had a curious eagerness to talk to Nan about them; to find out if she could understand. But he could not get near to any serious or confidential side of her. Her mood was playful, hilarious, daring. Once she ran squirrel-like out on the bole of a great tree leaning ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... Pol in Paris, in 1393, King Charles VI. and five noblemen were dressed in close-fitting suits of linen, thickly covered from head to foot with tow or flax, the colour of hair, so as to look like "savages." In this attire nobody recognized them, and the Duke of Orleans, in his eagerness to make out who they were, brought a torch too near, so that the flax took fire, and four of the noblemen were burned to death. See Froissart's Chronicles, tr. Johnes, London, 1806, vol. xi. pp. 69-76. The point of the ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... my return to London. Old Hasluck a month or so before I had met in the City one day by chance, and he had insisted on my lunching with him. I had found him greatly changed. His buoyant self-assurance had deserted him; in its place a fretful eagerness had become his motive force. At first he had talked boastingly: Had I seen the Post for last Monday, the Court Circular for the week before? Had I read that Barbara had danced with the Crown Prince, that the Count and Countess Huescar had been entertaining a Grand ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... I cried, trembling with eagerness, and hurrying on my clothes, as he did his, we rowed ashore, and after hauling the boat back to its safe place, climbed up the slope, and prepared to ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... positive eagerness. "You have never said anything more just, c'etait bete, mais que faire? Tout est dit. I shall marry her just the same even if it be to cover 'another's sins.' So there was no object ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in a foaming stream chafing against its banks, such is the passion of these men to accomplish in their own lifetimes what in the past it took centuries to effect. Sometimes, in a moment of pause—for even the visitor finds himself infected by the all-pervading eagerness—one is inclined to ask them: "Gentlemen, why in heaven's name this haste? You have time enough. No enemy threatens you. No volcano will rise from beneath you. Ages and ages lie before you. Why sacrifice the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... jolly-boat were each taken possession of by different prahus, the former being very nearly run down by two of the pirate vessels, in their eagerness to get hold of her, she being considered the most valuable prize, from having the women and the largest number of people in board. What the Malays did to our companions in misfortune I cannot say. We heard loud shrieks and cries when they were first ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... still day, and there were nearly three hours of daylight left. Without a word my silent companion, who had been scanning the whole country with hawk-eyed eagerness, took the trail, motioning me to follow. In a moment we entered the woods, breathing a sigh of relief as we did so; for while in the meadow we could never tell that the buffalo might not see us, if they happened to be lying in some place with ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... eagerness possessed her all that day; and the next she went away, clinging to me at the last as she had clung that night upon the river-bank, as if her grateful heart reproached her for the joy she felt at leaving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Hortensius dicendi cupiditate sic, ut in nullo flagrantius studium viderim, Hortensius burned so with eagerness to speak that I have seen in no one a greater desire (Direct statement: in nullo vidi, I ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett |
