"Fixedness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is nature's favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion; it enforces concentration: people who learn slowly, learn only what they must. The best security for people's doing their duty is, that they should not know anything else to do; the best security for fixedness of opinion is, that people should be incapable of comprehending what is to be said on the other side. These valuable truths are no discoveries of mine: they are familiar enough to people whose business it is to know them. Hear what a douce and aged attorney says ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... the car, the doctor, completely overwhelmed, sat with his arms folded on his breast, gazing with idiotic fixedness upon some imaginary point in space. Kennedy was frightful to behold. He was rolling his head from right to left like a wild beast ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... language of the human countenance which we all understand without an interpreter, though the lineaments belong to the rudest savage that ever stammered in an unknown barbaric dialect. By the stillness of the sharpened features, by the blankness of the tearless eyes, by the fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the deadening tints, by the contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we know that the soul is soon to leave its mortal tenement, and is already closing up its windows and putting out its fires.—Such was the aspect of the face upon which the divinity-student looked, after ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... out in fine relief the beauty of the baroness. Mademoiselle Zephirine, being deprived of sight, was not aware of the changes which eighty years had wrought in her features. Her pale, hollow face, to which the fixedness of the white and sightless eyes gave almost the appearance of death, and three or four solitary and projecting teeth made menacing, was framed by a little hood of brown printed cotton, quilted like a petticoat, trimmed ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Dissolution the Component Particles of the Mixt, being Freed and set at Liberty, do Naturally, and oftentimes without any Operation of the Fire, Associate themselves each with its Like, or rather do take those places which their Several Degrees of Gravity and Levity, Fixedness or Volatility (either Natural, or Adventitious from the Impression of the Fire) Assigne them. Thus in the Distillation (for Instance) of Man's Blood, the Fire do's First begin to Dissolve the Nexus or Cement of the Body; and then the Water, being the most Volatile, and Easy to be Extracted, is ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... the twig yet more rigidly, and thus is produced the mysterious bending. The phenomena of the divining-rod and table-turning are of precisely the same character, and both are referable to an involuntary muscular action resulting from fixedness of idea. These experiments with a divining-rod are always made in a district known to be metalliferous, and the chances are, therefore, greatly in favour of its bending over or near ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... theory also is not entirely without support in the realm of observed facts. How simply it explains the fixedness of the differences of closely related species arising from their geographical and climatical home! how simply the similarity of the color of many animals from the color of their abode, through which they have protection against ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... and clothing it with the forms of uses of the vegetable kingdom. The heat, light, and atmospheres of the natural world simply open the seeds, keep their products in a state of expansion, and clothe them with the matters that give them fixedness. And this is done not by any forces from their own sun (which viewed in themselves are null), but by forces from the spiritual sun, by which the natural forces are unceasingly impelled to these services. Natural forces contribute ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Months afterwards, he asked you about things which you yourself had forgotten. He was not a man of whom it would be generally said that he had the gift of sympathy; but he gave his attention to a friend's circumstances with a conscientious fixedness which was at least very far removed from indifference. Bernard had the gift of sympathy—or at least he was supposed to have it; but even he, familiar as he must therefore have been with the practice of this charming virtue, was at times so struck with his friend's fine faculty of taking ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... found, after repeated trials, that he could not propagate them by "root-joints," whereas, the variegated Tussilago farfara can thus be safely propagated;[879] but this latter plant may have originated as a variegated seedling, which would account for its greater fixedness of character. The Barberry (Berberis vulgaris) offers an analogous case; there is a well-known variety with seedless fruit, which can be propagated by cuttings or layers; but suckers always revert to the common form, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... much politeness in the Captain's manner, and yet evident fixedness of purpose, that Albert attempted no answer. There was now no doubt that their hospitable entertainers were pirates. They retired to the cabin, and sat there in profound silence. Soon Mrs. Templeton came in, and in her gentle winning ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... up calmly, expecting to see Sally; but the sight of that still figure, with eyes which looked at him with a curious fixedness, sent the color from his face in one moment of actual fright. "Helen!" he cried, springing to his feet. "Good heavens! child, what is it? What ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... few minutes I found that she breathed more regularly and distinctly—presently her eyes lost that fixedness which had made them so painful to look upon. Then she recognised me, and took hold of my hand, regarding me with the sweet smile with which I ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... of her hand on mine an unspeakable horror thrilled me. It was not only icy cold, but stiff. Dropping it in my agitation, I started back and again surveyed the face. Great God! when did life ever look like that? What sleep ever wore such pallid hues, such accusing fixedness? Bending once more I listened at the lips. Not a breath, nor a stir. Shocked to the core of my being, I made one final effort. Tearing down the clothes, I laid my hand upon her heart. ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... last gleam of satisfaction in seeing so lucidly the springs of his failure as a human being. Happiness was the child of fixedness—in opinions, in space. Soul and body had need of a centre, a ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... There was a fixedness in her look and a recklessness in her step that showed anger and determination. It struck Lizette with a sort of awe, so that, for once, she did not dare to accost her young mistress with her usual freedom. The maid opened the door and closed it again without offering a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... pity, than one could forget it in his actual story. So he becomes the best critic, almost the discoverer, of Webster, a dramatist of genius so sombre, so heavily coloured, so macabre. Rosamund Grey, written in his twenty-third year, a story with something bitter and exaggerated, an almost insane fixedness of gloom perceptible in it, strikes clearly this note ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... there is given opportunity for crosses that nature occasionally delves into, and in the additional eccentric types getting mixed, tending to offer in rare instances special merit. We have then through mixture, not that fixedness that usually stands in the way, but a getting away from set types where once in thousands of offerings a more useful specimen is made, one nature herself cannot handle to our advantage, but for which we should have our eyes open, and make use of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... gods: to sum up, a religion in whose seal and secret 'God in man is one with man in God,' must also be necessarily a religion of vitality, of progress, of advancement. The contrast between it and Islam is that of movement with fixedness, of participation with sterility, of development with barrenness, of life with petrifaction. The first vital principle and the animating spirit of its birth must, indeed, abide ever the same, but the outer ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... city home; the green lawn, faultlessly trimmed by a time-serving gardener; the floral borders, the hedges; the two stately trees; the neat walk, the wide verandah, the dim, mysterious hall; the rooms, heavily shaded to save the rich carpets; the order, the precision, the fixedness, the this-sits-here and that-stands-thereness—the flatness and emptiness and formality of it all, and she turned again to the Elden kitchen and laughed—a soft, rippling, irrepressible laugh, as irrepressible as the laughter ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... search of peace. He writhes and roars under his consciousness of the difference in himself between the possible and the actual, the hoped-for and the existent. He feels that duty is the highest law of his own being; and knowing how it bids the waves be stilled into an icy fixedness and grandeur, he trusts (but with a boundless inward misgiving) that there is a principle of order which will reduce all confusion to shape and clearness. But wanting peace himself, his fierce dissatisfaction fixes on all that is weak, corrupt and imperfect around ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... be mobile and became fixed, but even so it was none the less impossible to render; it was a drill sounding the heart of whosoever he looked upon, the deepest, the most secret thought of which he meant to sound. Marble or painting might render the fixedness of that look, but neither the one nor the other could portray its life—that is to say, its penetrating and magnetic action. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... midst, or light packets like our own decked all over with a row of curtained windows from stem to stern, and a drowsy face at every one. Once we encountered a boat of rude construction, painted all in gloomy black, and manned by three Indians, who gazed at us in silence and with a singular fixedness of eye. Perhaps these three alone, among the ancient possessors of the land, had attempted to derive benefit from the white mail's mighty projects and float along the current of his enterprise. Not long after, ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fixedness of countenance, saw to the priming of his rifle for the fiftieth time; and Rosalind, with her father's courage, examined her own weapon, which she had resolved to take with her for safety if ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... at herself in a glass which hung over the kitchen-table, and she hardly knew her own face, it had gathered such a strange fixedness of secret purpose. That had altered it more than her pallor. Maria tried to smile and say again that nothing ailed her, but she could not. Suddenly a tremendous pity for her aunt came over her. She had not thought ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... clouded and impaired in its strength, the memory also enfeebled and sometimes quite obliterated. The mind is wandering and vacant, and incapable of intense or steady application to any one subject. This state is usually accompanied by an unmeaning stare or fixedness of countenance quite peculiar to the drunkard. The imagination and the will, if not enfeebled, acquire a morbid sensibility, from which they are thrown into a state of violent excitement from the slightest causes: hence, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... medical remedies and her husband's voice were both alike powerless to reach the spirit which was still there, but was now so rapidly sinking into the depths of slumber, and darkness and death. The fixedness of feature and the oppressed and heavy breathing only made it too plain that the end was near. And the man who had faced so many deaths, and braved so many dangers, was now utterly broken down and ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... a principle from which it proceeds. Fluctuating opinions and feelings produce fickleness of conduct; while settled convictions, stability of affections, and fixedness of purpose, give birth to persevering and methodical action. A system of beneficence must be founded on ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... carved ebony and cramoisie velvet, her elbow supported by one arm of this seat, her head a little bent down, she supported her cheek upon the back of her small white hand, delicately veined with azure. The languishing attitude of Fleur-de-Marie, her paleness, the fixedness of her gaze, the bitterness of her half-smile, revealed a deep melancholy. After some moments, a heavy, sad sigh relieved her breast. Then, letting her hand which supported her cheek fall again, she bent her ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... degree of pain and sorrow for which she could not readily account. If Clara loved Dr. Hartwell, why should it grieve her? Her step grew nervously rapid, and the eyes settled upon the carpet with a fixedness of which she was unconscious. Suppose he was double her age, if Clara loved him notwithstanding, what business was it of hers? Besides, no one would dream of the actual disparity in years, for he was a very handsome man, and certainly did not look more than ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... she gave him her hand, told him that she came up to speak to him. There was no hesitation in her manner, nor any look of anger in her face. But there was in her gait and form, in her voice and countenance, a fixedness of purpose which he had never seen before, or at any rate ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... some of her friends, who stood near her, observed a more than ordinary earnestness and fixedness in her countenance; they said one to another, "Look how earnestly she ...
— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley
... large number," says Mr. Bancroft, "still acknowledged the fixedness of the divine decrees, and the resistless certainty from all eternity of election and of reprobation, there were not wanting, even among the clergy, some who had modified the sternness of the ancient doctrine by ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... summer time. A Negro porter passing through a coach set apart for white passengers noted the fixedness with which a young woman with a pretty face and a pair of beautiful blue eyes was regarding him. Her head was inclined to one side, her hand so supporting her face that a prettily shaped ear peeped out from between her fingers. ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... was seated in a secluded spot whence all but her had fled; her grave demeanour, her discarded sun-bonnet, her corrugated brow, all bespoke more than common fixedness of purpose, the cause of which will be discovered ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... (and it is a most remarkable circumstance that the book which has for its avowed purpose the disheartening of restless adventurers, should have made wanderers and voyagers innumerable), gave form and fixedness to his purpose of rambling; and, in company with his youngest brother, the boy set out one fine morning, without any intention but the somewhat vague one of "traveling to seek their fortune." The young fugitives walked several miles, without knowing, in the least, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... subjects, religious and monumental, in which a full, graceful drapery is requisite; but when, as is often the case, the sculptor is required to reproduce the actual costume of the day, what can we look for? The truth is, it has no grace in itself; what, then, must it be when put into the fixedness of bronze or marble? Yet where is the remedy for this? We do not wish to see the men whom we have known and who have moved among us in the dress of other men put into an antique disguise by the sculptor; the incongruity ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... shimmering peaks of the distant mountains. The movement fixed her attention instantly. It was the instinct of one who lives in a country where the eyes and ears of a horse are often keener and more far-reaching than those of its human masters. The horse was gazing with statuesque fixedness across a waste of partially-melted snow. A stretch of ten miles lay flat and smooth as a billiard-table at the foot of the rise upon which the house was built. And far out across this ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... I have before had occasion (Vol. I. Chap. XIII. Sec. VII.) to note some manifestations of this energy or fixedness; but it must be still more attentively considered here, as it shows itself throughout the whole structure and decoration of Gothic work. Egyptian and Greek buildings stand, for the most part, by ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... rather scantily furnished mess- table, was seated a captain of infantry, quite foreign in appearance,— a tall, slender man, wearing a light-colored moustache and goatee. His name, as I gathered from the conversation, was Carlson, and I was considerably surprised at the fixedness with which his eyes were fastened upon me during the earlier part of the meal. Thinking we might have met somewhere before, I ransacked my memory in vain for any recollection which would serve to account for his evident interest in me. Finally, not a little ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... never more to cheer The mariner who holds his course alone On the Atlantic, through the weary night, When the stars turn to watchers, and do sleep, Shall it appear, With the sweet fixedness of certain light, Down-shining on the ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... will be a stable heart. Our fixedness and stability are not natural immobility, but communicated steadfastness. There must be, first, the consolation of Christ before there can be the calmness of a settled heart. We all know how vacillating, how driven to and fro by gusts of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... agreeable in the slow time she had for her nephew's sake to pass with such primitive people, and was glad of what she might otherwise have counted barely endurable. For Mr. Raymount, he would not leave what he counted his work for any goddess in creation: Hester had got her fixedness of purpose through him, and its direction through her mother. But it was well he did not give Miss Vavasor much of his company: if they had been alone together for a quarter of an hour, they would have parted sworn foes, hating each other almost as much as is possible ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... (b) The fixedness of impressions of sense furnishes a link of connexion between ancient and modern philosophy. The modern thinker often repeats the parallel axiom, 'All knowledge is experience.' He means to say that the outward and not the inward is both the ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... little, and she kept her eyes on the questioner with involuntary fixedness. The last shadow of doubt regarding Sibyl having disappeared (no woman with an uneasy conscience, she said to herself, could talk in this way), she had now to guard herself against the betrayal of suspicious sensibilities. Sibyl, of course, meant nothing personal ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... quickened into activity while he sought to infuse them into the mind of another; his own spirit acquired strength while he was endeavoring to render his companion strong of soul. Ronald's character was perhaps more affluent and expansive, had more force and fixedness of purpose, than that of Maurice, yet it derived fresh vigor from the less hopeful, less confident nature ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... for any considerable well-doing in the world is to be found in good purposes and in fixedness of purpose when a purpose has been formed. These characteristics were Mr. Sumner's possession, but in him they were subject to very important limitations as powers in practical affairs. He did not exhibit ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... adventurers. They cannot hope to secure the respect of the industrious sectaries who own and till the soil, and who are taught to count them aliens and persecutors. Irrigation is here the only means of successful agriculture. It involves great outlay of capital and labor, and creates great fixedness of tenure. Newcomers are thus ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... exist in nature, two essential laws, which produce, by counterbalancing each other, the universal equilibrium of things. These are fixedness and movement, analogous, in philosophy, to Truth and Fiction, and, in Absolute Conception, to Necessity and Liberty, which are the very essence of Deity. The Hermetic philosophers gave the name fixed to everything ponderable, to everything that tends by its natural to central ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and indomitable purpose. Let it never be forgotten that the man of whom I speak possessed an integrity that could know no temptation, a purity of life that was never questioned, a patriotism that no sectional lines could limit, and a fixedness of purpose that knew ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... yielding of the nerves though it was evident, by his attitude of thought and the momentary fixedness of his eye, that he foresaw danger was near. Moving to the window, he looked out on the water, and instantly drew back, like one who wanted ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... essences. The particular parcel of matter which makes the ring I have on my finger is forwardly by most men supposed to have a real essence, whereby it is gold; and from whence those qualities flow which I find in it, viz. its peculiar colour, weight, hardness, fusibility, fixedness, and change of colour upon a slight touch of mercury, &c. This essence, from which all these properties flow, when I inquire into it and search after it, I plainly perceive I cannot discover: the furthest ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... world last night, I heard the slow beat of the Winter rain— Poor foolish drops, down-dripping all in vain; The ice-bound Earth but mocked their puny might, Far better had the fixedness of white And uncomplaining snows—which make no sign, But coldly smile, when pitying moonbeams shine— Concealed its sorrow from all human sight. Long, long ago, in blurred and burdened years, I learned the uselessness of uttered woe. Though sinewy Fate deals ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of Mr. H. S. McGuire's factory in the city of Rowe," as the item in the local paper put it. He was a young man, younger than his cousin, but he looked older. He had a handsome face, under the most complete control as to its muscles. When he laughed he gave the impression of the fixedness of merriment of a mask. He looked keenly at Nahum Beals with that immovable laugh on his face, and spoke with perfectly good-natured sarcasm. "All very well for the string-pieces of the bridge from oppression to freedom," he said, "but you need some common-sense for the ties, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... truth, for ten thousand years' (Laws); he was aware that natural phenomena like the Delta of the Nile might have slowly accumulated in long periods of time (Hdt.). But he seems to have supposed that the course of events was recurring rather than progressive. To this he was probably led by the fixedness of Egyptian customs and the general observation that there were other civilisations in the world more ancient than ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... obeyed. She lighted the candle on the high shelf, then she sat down next Barnabas. Cephas glanced around at them. He was a small man, with a thin face in a pale film of white locks and beard, but his black eyes gleamed out of it with sharp fixedness. Barnabas looked back at him unflinchingly, and there was a curious likeness between the two pairs of black eyes. Indeed, there had been years ago a somewhat close relationship between the Thayers and the Barnards, and ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... you staring at?" the girl asked, presently, growing uneasy over the fixedness of his gaze. "Do you see anything ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... unusual fixedness, and seemed on the point of making some significant remark; but immediately his face expressed change of purpose, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... hold of him, and fronted the whole court in an instant. The railing in front of her shook with the quivering of her arms and hands as she held by it to support herself! Her hair lay tangled on her shoulders; her face had assumed a strange fixedness; her gentle blue eyes, so soft and tender at all other times, were lit up wildly. A low hum of murmured curiosity and admiration broke from the women of the audience. Some rose eagerly from ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... looking back at him, with a quiet fixedness. I no longer feel the slightest embarrassment in his presence; it no longer disquiets me, that he should hold ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... time, however, Rutherford's only troubles were his immediate surroundings, and the problem of how to pass the next three hours. The loungers, who by this time had changed to a sitting posture, and who were staring at him with an unwinking fixedness which made him rather nervous, did not seem very congenial companions. The town consisted of merely a few, straggling, unpainted buildings, while in every direction extended the apparently interminable stretches of undulating prairie, ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... Saigo, whose very name is an inspiration to tens of thousands of the choicest youth of the nation. Joseph Neesima was such a personality. The transparency of his purpose, the simplicity of his personal aim, his unflinching courage, fixedness of belief, lofty plans, and far-reaching ambitions for his people, impressed all who came into contact with him. No one mingles much with the Japanese, freely speaking with them in their own language, but perceives here and there men of "strong personality" ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... of view. They are especially useful in enabling us to form a correct opinion as to the merits of the works that have lately appeared on China; and everyone must acknowledge his rare talent, must value his immovable fixedness of purpose, and must admire his zealous perseverance in the cause of science, and his unshaken belief in the principles of his religion. (Dr. Gutzlaff died in ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... saw Therese mute and motionless opposite, gazing at him with ardent fixedness. Her dull black eyes seemed like two fathomless holes, and through her parted lips could be perceived the rosy tint of the inside of her mouth. She seemed as if overpowered by what she heard, and lost in thought. She ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... sat, no one coming near her, through several dances, trying to maintain the smile of delighted interest upon her face, though she felt the muscles of her face beginning to ache with their fixedness, her eyes growing hot and glazed. All the other girls were provided with partners for every dance, with several young men left over, these latter lounging [v]hilariously together in the doorways. Ariel was careful not to glance toward them, but she could not help hating ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Wherefore they preached, not with fear and trembling, but rather even with excess of boldness, the saving Name of God, and naught but Christ was on their lips, as they plainly proclaimed to all men the transitory and fading nature of this present time, and the fixedness and incorruptibility of the life to come, and sowed in men the first seeds, as it were, towards their becoming of the household of God, and winning that life which is hid in Christ. Wherefore many, profiting by this most pleasant teaching, turned away from the ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... we, is fixedness intense, Unequalled effort, strife that shall not cease, Is night, the bitter night of labor, whence ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... possible to get within yards of him. It happened once, however, that he looked through a temporary break in the crowding people and saw a dark strong-featured and remarkably intent boy's face, whose vivid scrutiny of him caught his eye. There was something in the fixedness of its attention which caused him to look at it curiously for a few seconds, and Marco ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... That follows, as a matter of course. The only way to make light things stable is to fasten them to something that is stable. And the only way to put any kind of calmness and fixedness, and yet progress—stability in the midst of progress, and progress in the midst of stability—into our lives, is by keeping firm hold of God. If we grasp His hand, then a calm serenity will be ours. In the midst of changes, sorrows, losses, disappointments, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... looked at Mr. Richmond for a minute or two, as if there must be words to follow that would undo the wonderful tale of these; but seeing that Mr. Richmond only smiled, there came a great change over the child's face. The fixedness broke up. Yet she did not smile; she seemed for the instant to grow grave and old; and clasping her little hands, she turned away from Mr. Richmond and walked the breadth of the room and back. Then she stood still ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... prisoner without: the Place de Greve, with its thirty thousand Regulars, its whole irregular Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, is one minatory mass of clear or rusty steel; all hearts set, with a moody fixedness, on one object. Moody, fixed are all hearts: tranquil is no heart,—if it be not that of the white charger, who paws there, with arched neck, composedly champing his bit; as if no world, with its Dynasties and Eras, were now rushing ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... were abundantly occupied, suddenly assumed a look of greater fixedness and intensity. For a while she seemed nearly speechless with ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... him with a moment's fixedness while he polished the palette; and for that moment he felt the temptation to reply: "There's a way you could do that, to a considerable extent—I think you guess it—which wouldn't be intrinsically disagreeable." But the impulse passed without expressing itself in speech, and he simply brought ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... the fixedness of her ideas, the rigidity of her type of mind, the relentlessness of her will; and that independence on my part survived was due to sturdy stubbornness, to a refusal to be dominated, and an incapacity for subjection. But this, too, ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... sensation of fixedness. He had expected when he went to sleep that the dream would, in sleep, end, and that he would wake to find himself alone in the empty house at New Cross. But he had wakened to the same dream once more, and now he began to wonder whether he really belonged ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... are unitedly necessary to man's salvation; since charity, without faith, is not spiritual, but natural; and faith, without charity, is not living, but dead; and both charity and faith, without good works, are merely mental and perishable things, because without use or fixedness: And that nothing of faith, of charity, or of good works, is of man; but that all is of the Lord, and all the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... associate arrangements, modes of life, have their characteristic imperfections. The natural, perhaps the necessary defect of ours, is their instability, their want of fixedness, not in form only, but even in spirit. The face of physical nature in the United States shares this incessant fluctuation, and the landscape is as variable as the habits of the population. It is time ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... Nelson's flagship, the "Vanguard," dismasted at sea Indications of character elicited by the accident He is joined by ten ships-of-the-line, raising his squadron to thirteen Pursuit of the expedition under Bonaparte Nelson's fixedness of purpose Attitude of Naples Perplexities of the pursuit The light of the single eye Embarrassment from the want of frigates Squadron reaches Alexandria before the French Renewed perplexity Nelson returns to the westward Anchors at Syracuse Again ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... determination, in a voice become suddenly vibrant with new energy. "But I won't go!" Her face, too, had lost the delicate, yielding lines of the woman wooed and won, rejoicing in submission; it was again alert, set to fixedness of plan that would brook no denial. At sight of the change in her, Hamilton stared in dismay. He could not understand this development in her. He had humiliated himself in vain. He had offered the abandonment of all that could offend her, yet she remained obdurate, discontented, ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... also comprehended the relativeness of words, the vagueness of conceptions, the faultiness of all communion, but was nevertheless not so broad-minded that he found extenuating circumstances everywhere and for everyone. His great power lay in his demand for fixedness of opinion. Growth and development were thereby excluded, but he sacrificed these, for the sake of the support so necessary to the herd, that positiveness and ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... There was a fixedness and a tenacity about this woman's regard for her youngest child that was, in a certain sense, very touching. It could not be termed parental affection—that is blind and indiscriminating; it was rather a sympathetic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... close upon our left were the Sweetwater Mountains. The difference in scenery after leaving the river and plains was such as to awaken new emotions and fire one with a new kind of admiration. The immensity and fixedness of the mountains awakened a keener sense of stability, of firmness of purpose, and a sort of expect great things and do great things spirit; while the sense of beauty appreciation was in no wise narrowed ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... offence which he believed to have been committed, he consecrated his vast energies to the detection of crime. His whole soul was fired almost to frenzy with the greatness of his work, and he pursued it with a firmness of principle and fixedness of purpose that seemed almost madness, till he exposed to the world the most stupendous league of robbers ever dreamed of, extending into every State and Territory of the Union, and numbering, to his personal knowledge, over seven hundred men of influence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... educated Negro (and I include both sexes) leads by the inspiration that is radiated. Much as we regret it we cannot refuse to face the fact that grows upon us daily—the fact that there are too many Negro youths to-day, who seem lacking in ambition, in aspiration, in either fixedness or firmness of purpose. We have too many dudes whose ideal does not rise above the possession of a new suit, a cane, a silk hat, patent leather shoes, a cigarette and a good time—too many in every sense the "sport of the ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... beginning the Negroes were not a live issue in Cincinnati. The question of their settlement in that community was debated but resulted in great diversity of opinion rather than a fixedness of judgment among the citizens. The question came up in the Constitutional Convention of 1802 and provoked some discussion, but reaching no decision, the convention simply left the Negroes out of the pale of the newly organized body politic, discriminating against ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... and holding his course where they were darkest and most gloomy, the man who had left the widow's house crossed London Bridge, and arriving in the City, plunged into the backways, lanes, and courts, between Cornhill and Smithfield; with no more fixedness of purpose than to lose himself among their windings, and baffle pursuit, if any one were dogging ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... disturbed by any merely "personal" considerations. We behold the Almighty's use of power for the advance of a moral kingdom. The Almighty is set before us as exerting all his power for the relief of men. The cross makes the profoundest revelation of the moral fixedness and self- control of God so long as we hold to the scriptural representation. It is to be regretted that many theological theories break away from the Scripture basis and build upon assumptions which are artificial, not to say unmoral: or, rather, in ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... with a real crisis, a definite transaction, a point of time as clear as the morning dawn. It is not an everlasting dying and an eternal struggle to live. But it is all expressed in a tense that denotes definiteness, fixedness and finished action. We actually died at a certain point and as actually began to live ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... inspired description: "As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." We see the lying down, the fixedness of the posture, the utter disregard, in the cold remains, of every thing which passes before them; and these remains are like the channels of a river, or the flats of the sea, when the tide has utterly forsaken them. The soul is like those vanished waters, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... credit for the salvation thus obtained. They were exerting all their powerful influence to increase the chance, already alarmingly great, of making a Democrat the next President of the United States. Nevertheless Mr. Lincoln, with his wonted imperturbable fixedness when he had reached a conviction, did not modify his position ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... flux or flow of being consisted its reality; even as in a river the water is ever changing, and the river exists as a river only in virtue of this continual change; or as in a living body, wherein while there is life there is no stability or fixedness; stability and fixedness are the attributes of the unreal image of life, not of life itself. Thus, as will be observed, from the material basis of being as conceived by Thales, with only a very vague conception of the counter-principle of movement, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... veil which, till then, had hidden nature from her. The Little Virgin still existing in the beautiful young girl thought on the morrow that her flowers had never been so beautiful; she heard their symbolic language, she looked into the depths of the azure sky with a fixedness that was almost ecstasy, and tears without a ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... to stare on the speaker with the fixedness of regard that one might be supposed to fasten on a creature of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... a clinging, self-effacing, timid soul. Within three years she became a determined and calculating little person who lacked nothing but a certain fixedness to be a ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... the maintenance of health, we find, first, remarkable regularity of habits, which is largely due to the fixedness, or caste state of society, that keeps people in the same grade of life into which they are born; that is, in conditions where they have no occasion to change their habits, and where they have little opportunity for seeing any habits, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett |
