"Purposeful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... humble blessing and the assurance of true German devotion from the preachers of the North German Evangelical Conference assembled in conference. We raise our eyes with respect and love to your Majesty, the powerful and purposeful leader of the German nation. We are filled with the consciousness that the sources of German power are unconquerable, not only because of the complete union of the German princes and peoples, but because ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... getting used to the war before, but now I've got back to my original amazement at the whole business. I find myself wondering what we are really up to, why the war began, why we were caught into this amazing routine. It looks, it feels orderly, methodical, purposeful. Our officers give us orders and get their orders, and the men back there get their orders. Everybody is getting orders. Back, I suppose, to Lord Kitchener. It goes on for weeks with the effect of being quite sane and intended and the right thing, and then, then suddenly it comes ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... and he wearied of their service. Were there not better things than these, things he had once known and loved and forgotten? Where were the ideals of his youth, the lofty aspirations that had upborne him then? Where was the eagerness and zest of new dawns, the earnestness of well-filled, purposeful hours of labour, the satisfaction of a good day worthily lived, at eventide the unbroken rest of long, starry nights? Where might he find them again? Were they yet to be had for the seeking in the old valley? With the thought came a great yearning for home. He had had many habitations, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... you were not followed?" asked the detective, disregarding her lamentations with purposeful brusqueness, for the tears stood in her soft, bovine eyes, and he feared an emotional outburst which would draw down upon them the attention ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... were swarms, literally, of fresh-faced, purposeful youths and maidens, an astonishingly large number of whom were meeting after the manner of friends long separated. Later Kate discovered how great a proportion of that enthusiasm took itself out in mere gesture and vociferation; but it all seemed completely genuine to her that first day and she thought ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... and may be entered at any time by one who has learned to withdraw his Soul from the senses as the tortoise withdraws itself within its shell. And then, coming forth once more, action is prompt, direct, purposeful, and the time "wasted" in meditation is more than saved by the directness and strength of ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... as blindly as the lower animals; but, thanks to his higher mental powers, this blindness soon gives way to foresight, and he is able to formulate purposeful ends and adapt his activities to their accomplishment. Possessing a larger number of instincts than the lower animals have, man finds possible a greater number of responses to a more complex environment than do they. This advantage, ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... frayed and worn, was stained with earth and the green of grass, and was splashed, here and there, with a darker stain; pale was he, and hollow-cheeked, but with eyes that gleamed 'neath black brows and with chin long and purposeful. Now at sight of him, fierce-eyed Walkyn cried aloud and flung aside his axe and, falling on his knees, caught the friar's threadbare robe and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... and above ether, a purposeful, sentient force that laps like an ocean the furthest-flung star, that transfuses all that ether bears, that sees and speaks and feels in us and in you, that is incorporate in beast and bird and reptile, in tree and ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful was the clutch in which it held us. Once only we saw a trace that someone had passed that perilous way before us. From amid a tuft of cotton grass which bore it up out of the slime some dark thing was ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... dealing with what we have called natural forces. The phenomena which we have studied have not been caused by any conscious and purposeful action of the people as a whole. They have not been brought about by the power of governments nor by anything which savors of what is called collectivism. Individuals have done what they would, seeking to promote their own interests under ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... action, and sent into the field her yet unknown champion from the Norfolk parsonage. The representatives of the French people had imparted to the original movement of their nation,—which aimed only at internal reforms, however radical,—a new direction, of avowed purposeful aggression upon all political institutions exterior to, and differing from, their own. This became the one characteristic common to the successive forms of government, which culminated in the pure military despotism ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... tumescence. But now we reach the point at which a new element comes in: muscular action. With the onset of muscular action, which is mainly involuntary, even when it affects the voluntary muscles, detumescence proper begins to take place. Henceforward purposeful psychic action, except by an effort, is virtually abolished. The individual, as a separate person, tends to disappear. He has become one with another person, as nearly one as the conditions of existence ever permit; he and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... spoke with flashing eyes and purposeful energy, while with her strong brown arms she threw open the wide casement of the sitting-room I had taken, and bade me view her orchard. It was a fresh green strip of verdure and foliage—about eight acres of good land, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... tender, he was down to ten hours a week of work. Many others in the luxury-gorged economy had even smaller shares of the purposeful activities that remained. At night he dreamed of the slagger moving from house to house as it burned, melted and then evaporated each group of junked labor-blocking devices. He even had glorious daydreams about it. Walking down the park side of his home block, he was liable to lose ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... of the convent she had left, and the Reverend Mother approved of him. There could not have been a happier girl for five or six years. For it was only at the end of that time that clouds began, as the saying is, to arise. She was then about twenty-three, and her purposeful efficiency made her perhaps have a desire for mastery. She began to perceive that Edward was extravagant in his largesses. His parents died just about that time, and Edward, though they both decided that he should continue his soldiering, gave a great deal of attention ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... one of the most distinguished German writers on Botany, in his Natural History of Plants, speaking of the chemical explanation, says: "It does not explain the purposeful sequence of different operations in the same protoplasm without any change in the external stimuli; the thorough use made of external advantages; the resistance to injurious influences; the avoidance or encompassing of insuperable obstacles; the punctuality ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... purposeful prayer to live this life as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye, and whose Paradise Lost is the colossal epic of the loss of Eden through sin; (2) JOHN BUNYAN (1628-1688), whose Pilgrim's Progress addressed itself in simple, earnest English to each individual human being, telling him what ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... through weakness, indetermination, too great susceptibility, a minimum acuteness, false constructiveness, untrained capacity for inference; in the same way, again, the most cruel hardness depends on properties which, taken in themselves, are good: determination, energy, purposeful action, clear conception of one's fellows, healthy egotism, etc. Every man is the result of his nature and nurture, i. e. of countless individual conditions, and every one of his expressions, again, is the result of all of these conditions. If, therefore, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... We have now to consider a series of plays, less distinguished on the whole, though varying greatly in individual merit, which, amid the luxuriant growth of the romantic drama, tended, in a more spontaneous and less purposeful manner, towards the creation of something of a pastoral tradition. We shall find in these plays a considerable traditional influence, a groundwork, as it were, borrowed from the Arcadian drama of Italy, together with frequent elements owing their origin to plays of the mythological type. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... great mistake to rule these purposeful individuals out of our psychology. We wish to understand busy people as well as idlers. What makes a man busy is some inner purpose or motive. He still responds to present stimuli—otherwise he would be in a dream or trance and out ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... the faces of the men about him with a purposeful eye. Especially he watched one—a lean man in red shirt and leather breeches, booted and spurred, who stood near ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... "Reluctant! Don't you believe it? He hates Father like poison." A flash of inspiration came to her. She rose, slim and tall and purposeful. "Cass Fendrick is the man you want, and he is the man I want. He robbed the express company, and he has killed my father or abducted him. I know ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... his shoulder as if disturbed by the buzzing of some insect, then with unruffled composure turned back to the girl. His eyes looked straight into hers for perhaps ten seconds, then in the same purposeful fashion he set her free and deliberately turned upon the man ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... contracts were under consideration, but he dismissed them from his thoughts and centered his forces upon this particular job. Once he had taken a definite scent his early trepidations vanished. He became obsessed by a joyous, purposeful, unceasing energy that ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... bringing the boy over the threshold of vital and purposeful religion is the favorable influence of his group or "gang." The disposition to move together which is so pronounced in every other field must not be ignored here. The ideal club will be bringing the boy toward the altar of the church and at the right ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... pressure and weakening down the heart, are so immensely effective that a slash across the great artery of the thigh in the groin of a dog will be closed completely before he can bleed to death. So delicate and so purposeful is this adjustment that the blood will continue as fluid as milk for ten, twenty, forty, eighty years—as long as it remains in contact with healthy blood-vessels. But the instant it is brought in contact with a broken or wounded piece of a vessel-wall, that instant it will begin to clot. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... days and weeks of pain that lay deep within him, but his cousin's confidence which he had to reward by living up to it, the healing effect of busy and purposeful work, the manliness which both these things had already ripened in him, all held their own in the struggle and came ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... owner really cares about; still more, if he fails in the economical administration of the funds allowed for the building, will he fail in that which the owner most cares about. Less beauty, less success in producing a novel, an original, a thoughtful, a purposeful design will hurt him but little, but insufficient care as to the circulation ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... darkest, I've read those words over to myself, and found hope in them. Events changed, crises came and went, portents loomed thick, despair seemed omnipotent, failure and disgrace inevitable—but the motto of Alleghenia remained the same. Steadfast, purposeful, and commanding, it has endured through the trivial changes of political significance which have been as impotent to sully the actuality of her fair fame as are sun-spots to dim the radiance of the sun. It is only ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... towards the hulk. But so far from this, there appeared even a purpose to shun our attention; for that light which we had viewed in the past night was more in the way of an accident, than of the nature of a purposeful exhibition. ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... the heel of his clenched fist against his knee to emphasize his words. Evidently he spoke out of the faith that was in him. Not a line of his face suggested humour or whimsicality. Not a twinkle of the eye relieved its hardness. He was grave, dour, purposeful, matter-of-fact. He took himself, his life, and the things of life with ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... ball with the same purposeful air, and Walton swept at it as before. There was a click, and Jimmy Silver, who was keeping wicket, took the ball comfortably on ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Prof. Ladd says, our ignorance on this point is almost complete. There resides in the central nervous mechanism governing the muscles something which for lack of a better name may be called an instinct. When a purposeful movement of any part of the body is willed, the mental picture of the movement is translated by the central nervous mechanism into a succession of nerve impulses; these impulses are transmitted through the lower centers to the muscles. ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... the lambs galloping—what a jolly, friendly commotion we've made! But we can get into the road again this way. Indeed, we must get into the road soon because it is hungry work out in the air, and two inches to the north-west is written a word full of meaning—the most purposeful word that can be written upon a map. "Inn," So now for a steady climb. We have dropped down to "200" by the farmhouse, and the inn is marked "500." But it is only two miles—well, barely ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... were easy. We became very good friends. He was a genial fellow, capable as I have said of taking or making a joke, yet his moods were prevailingly serious, and he had already hitched his waggon to a star. Abnormally purposeful perhaps, a cropping out no doubt of heredity, he had set a high mark for himself and was already striving toward it. In an autobiographical fragment he says, referring to his early surrender of his powers to ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... was certainly expecting him to speak. Every second her hesitation seemed more purposeful. Julien, however, with an effort which was almost savage, set his teeth and walked on. She looked after him for a moment and began to laugh softly to herself. Julien walked steadily on till he had reached the corner of the street. Then he turned away abruptly ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... very great fear, for of a surety, now, the earth was not large enough for this man and me. I held his life in my hand as surely as though he were but a grasshopper, and he knew it. And he was strong with the strength of many purposeful men behind him, every man as heartless as himself, and Le Marchant and I were but two. My head swam at thought of the odds between us, and hope ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Blithers couldn't keep to a straight course. He went from rut to rut and from rock to rock with the fidelity of a magnetised atom, seldom putting his foot where he meant to put it, and never by any chance achieving a steady stride. He would take one long, purposeful step and then a couple of short "feelers," progressing very much as a man tramps over a ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... it. "You are never to say that—or anything like it—again," she said severely. "If—if you weren't so dreadfully tired, I believe I'd be really angry. As it is—" she reached the ground and stood there before him, a small, purposeful figure clad in the great apron that wrapped about ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... for seeking now. Jesus is full ready. He decides the action that follows. He is masterful even in His purposeful yielding. Quietly He walks out from the cover of the trees to meet them. And as their torches turn full upon His advancing figure again that marvellous power not only of restraint but decidedly more is felt by them. And the ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... was impossible to judge of the effect of the shots, but both knew that the accuracy of their shooting was falling off. Clench his teeth as he would, hold his breath as steadfastly as he might, Alfred could not accomplish that steady, purposeful, unblinking pressure on the trigger so necessary to accuracy. In spite of himself, the rifle jerked ever so little to the right during the fall of the hammer. Soon he adopted the expedient of pulling it suddenly which is brilliant but uncertain. The ground was very cold. Before ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... very well done, and she probably saw through it. She probably knew that he was as anxious as she was herself. But his very presence was full of comfort. It somehow brought a change to the moral atmosphere—a sense of purposeful direct simplicity which was new to the West ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... positively good-looking, but every line of his face, the poise of his well-proportioned, upstanding figure, the tilt of his head and the squareness of his chin, all spoke of strength; of elemental strength, and of a purposeful, resolute character. And, too, she told herself that he had nice eyes. The nice eyes never wavered in ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... usually remained long unexpressed. His great sociability had perhaps even then a rather formidable side to it. He was not merely amusing himself and other people, when he chatted and exchanged anecdotes far into the night; there was an element, not ungenial, of purposeful study in it all. He was building up his knowledge of ordinary human nature, his insight into popular feeling, his rather slow but sure comprehension of the individual men whom he did know. It astonished the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... to be done about it. She saw her child's sewing lie forgotten on the floor, and the eyes that should have been following the needle, fixed often on the absorbed, unconscious, boyish-manly face so near by. She saw them scanning the bent brows, the smooth bronzed cheek, the purposeful mouth, and the unusual length of dark eyelashes that gave its charm to the whole face; and she saw them quickly withdrawn whenever the face with those lashes was lifted and an unsuspecting smile of young companionship broke slowly about the relaxing lips and the soft, deep-curtained eyes. No; ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... beautiful, but it gives me the creeps. It upsets you more than anything else in this house. Every time you come here, I've noticed you go straight to it. I can see that it's a Jonah. Do you give me leave to do the reversing act?" Elfreda grinned boyishly, yet her round blue eyes were purposeful. It would have given her infinite pleasure to summarily bundle the offending painting into Upton Wood, leaving it to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... especially with regard to women. They had always liked him. He was good to look at and his silent, self-possessed manner touched the feminine imagination. He had had his share of the amorous adventures that come to most men, and his attitude toward women had changed from the hesitancy of adolesence to the purposeful, confident and somewhat selfish attitude of the male ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... entering. Hush! If I could but describe her! Languorous, slender and passionate. Sleepy eyes that see everything. An indolent purposeful step. An unimaginable grace. If you were /her/ lover, my boy, you would learn how fierce love can be, how capricious and sudden, how hostile, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... aristocrat flung it at them, flung it fight in their faces, and laughed as she saw it strike home. A howl of rage greeted the taunt, and, listening to the wild, fierce yell—so different from the noisy bravado of a few minutes before, I shuddered; there was something so stern and purposeful about it. ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... the stress of persecution and the stimulus of migration, the mass of the first settlers doubtless caught something of the spiritual exaltation which inspired the leaders. But it was not for the many to live on that high level of purposeful resolution and enduring courage. It is a significant fact that of those who came over with Winthrop and Dudley two hundred returned in the ships that brought them out; and of those who remained who shall ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... funds, he who handled disbursements, he who conducted the proceedings, he who made the principal addresses on meeting nights, he who between meetings labored without cessation to spread educational propaganda. That he found time for all these purposeful endeavors and yet crowded in such frequent opportunity for mingling socially among the lambs of his flock—notably the ewe lambs—was but evidence, accumulating daily, of his ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... empty air as Anthony, timing the blow, sprang lightly aside, then leapt heavily in with stiffened arm and fist that smote the scowling face reeling back to the wall. And now rose sounds evil to hear, fierce-panted oaths, the trampling of quick, purposeful feet, and a dust wherein they swayed and smote each other in desperate, murderous fashion; sickened by this beastly spectacle I shrank away, then ran to catch up the flickering lamp and with this grasped in tremulous hands, waited ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... inanimate objects—rocks, hills, rivers, lakes—are matters of chance, since they serve no purpose: any other form would be as fit; but the forms of living things are always purposeful. Is it possible to believe that the human body, with all its complicated mechanism, its many wonderful organs of secretion and excretion and assimilation, is any more matter of chance than a watch or a phonograph ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... bigoted denials of our good faith we sought only concord of all our people in the tasks of American in the world. There was glory enough for all and we never advanced the claim that it was a partisan matter until the fact had been established through long and weary months of purposeful misunderstanding and unconscionable intrigue for party advantage by our opponents. There is in this no suggestion of unkind sentiments toward our leading adversaries. We can utter the sentiment voiced on the hill above Jerusalem and when America has come to understand we stand ready ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... her just when the thunder-clouds were gathering, we could usually divert her attention and avert the threatened trouble; but if we did not happen to meet her just at the right moment, she would plunge straight into the most outrageous naughtiness with a sort of purposeful directness that was difficult to deal with. Knowing the child well, we often let her choose her own punishments; and she did this so conscientiously that at last, as she herself mournfully remarked, "they were all used up," and there was nothing left but the most ancient—and perhaps in some cases ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... Cinderella. She shut the box again, tripped downstairs, and out into the street. She had not been out for a whole month now, and the fresh, frosty air, even coming to her through the musty gauze, was very refreshing. She walked quickly. She had an object in view. Very purposeful was her careworn little face as she stepped briskly along. She had a problem to solve. It was too weighty for her young shoulders; she must get the advice of another. She meant to consult Father John—not by words; ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... that was true. And Graver, in contrast to Dalon's agitation, had the calm, purposeful air of a man who had pondered deeply upon an unpleasant future and had taken ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin
... physical sickness; it was quickly followed by one of inertia, just as extraordinary. He felt as if he had been mesmerized; as if he could neither move nor speak. And Kitely sat there, a hand on his victim's arm, his face sinister and purposeful, close to his. ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... was exactly what he wanted. For he meant to help the County who, he was sure, would never accept a cent from him save under a pretext like that of the sale of the Faun. He loved old Caloveglia. There was something clean and purposeful about him. His friendship with such a man filled up what he knew to be a void in his own equipment as citizen of the world. And the count was working—was lying—for a worthy purpose: a daughter's dowry. For that reason alone ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... practice had given extraordinary speed and a technique that was almost perfect. In addition, he enjoyed over Andre-Louis physical advantages of strength and length of reach, which rendered him altogether formidable. And he was cool, too; cool and self-contained; fearless and purposeful. Would anything ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... mother-liquid illustrate how the vital process—cell-multiplication—may be induced to go on and on, blindly, aimlessly, for an almost indefinite time. The cells multiply, but they do not organize themselves into a constructive community and build an organ or any purposeful part. They may be likened to a lot of blind masons piling up brick and mortar without any architect to direct their work or furnish them a plan. A living body of the higher type is not merely an association of cells; it is an association and cooeperation of communities ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... loneliness of the road and of her own bodily fatigue, and she broke into a run, hoping to reach the Cottage gate before the supposed tramp should turn the corner. But the steps drew nearer—striding, purposeful steps, not in the least like those of a tramp—and an instant later the figure of Eliot Coventry rounded the bend in the ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... over with subdued excitement. Whether this arose from the intense nationalism of an expatriated American, or from some more subtle personal cause, he could not determine, but, being young, he was cynical. He looked at the strong, set face, the well-knit, sinewy figure, the purposeful hands gripping the fore rail of the promenade deck; then he growled, with just the least spice of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... a pretty, clever, and high-spirited boy. Usually well-behaved, he was, however, sometimes violent. He had a will of his own, and asserted it; his elder brother was less passionate, less purposeful, and, in their wrangles, it was Albert who came out top. The two boys, living for the most part in one or other of the Duke's country houses, among pretty hills and woods and streams, had been at a very early age—Albert ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... flat braid of fair hair swung below the girl's waist and on her cheeks a warm red showed through the golden tan. Her slim straight figure was eloquent of suppleness and strength and her movements, quick, purposeful, showed decision and activity of mind. They were as characteristic as her directness ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... destroyed, whilst yet they transgressed, and they are laid low on their own foundations and wells abandoned and high-builded palaces!" Mr. Lane observes that the words are either misunderstood or purposely misapplied by the author of the tale. Purposeful perversions of Holy Writ are very popular amongst Moslems and form part of their rhetoric; but such is not the case here. According to Von Hammer (Trebutien ii. 154), "Eastern geographers place the Bir al-Mu'utallal ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... facilities." He was very busy, always a bit pressed for time, always a moment late; his theory of constant forward motion never permitted an awkward pause in conversation. On the street, his long legs covered the ground at something less than a run, his eyes were keenly alert, his face set in purposeful lines. Pedestrians turned to look ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... in a feminine way at Frank Nelsen, a tall, lean guy of nineteen, butch-haircutted and snub featured. But he was the purposeful, studious kind, more an observer and a personal doer than a leader; he hadn't much time for the encouraging smiles of girls, and donning even an Archer Five now instead of within a few hours, didn't exactly represent his kind ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... Tam'rack," she said, in a very low and steady voice—a voice that could not be mistaken, a voice relentlessly resolute and purposeful. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... as the purposeful-looking chuckers-out wended their leopard-like steps toward the box, he was rushing out into ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... westward; walking at a steady, purposeful pace, with cheery countenance and eyes that gave sign of pleasure as often as they turned to the sun-smitten clouds, he struck across Kensington Gardens, and then on towards Fulham, where he crossed ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... when she came, and without quitting the table bade them usher her into his presence. He found her very white, but singularly calm and purposeful in ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... few seconds, waiting, and nothing happened, and the empty room showed bare from corner to corner. And then, you know, I realized that the room was full of an abominable silence; can you understand that? A sort of purposeful silence, just as sickening as any of the filthy noises the Things have power to make. Do you remember what I told you about that 'Silent Garden' business? Well, this room had just that same malevolent silence—the beastly ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... fact. Cosmic activity takes place only in certain definite areas. Solar systems do not jostle each other in space. In a word the Sound, which thus starts the initial impulse of creation, is guided by Intelligent Selection. Now sounds, directed by purposeful intention, amount to Words, whether the words of some spoken language or the tapping of the Morse code—it is the meaning at the back of the sound that gives it verbal significance. It is for this reason, that the concentration of creative energy in particular areas, ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... oath, uttered by the fire at supper-time; a long, drowsy conversation as they lay in their blankets with the tang of the night breeze in their nostrils, gazing up at the splendor of the flaming stars; until they knew each other man to man—and Curly Bill began to feel something like devotion to his purposeful young companion. Thenceforth he talked freely of his ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... mail, of course; but there seemed nothing else for him to do, no other place for him to go; and he was afraid that if he stayed around the hotel some one might ask him to register. He went, therefore, to the postoffice and stood just outside the door with his hands still in his pockets and the purposeful look on his face; whereas no man was ever more completely adrift and purposeless than was Jack Corey. Now that he had lost himself from the world—buried himself up here in these wonderfully green mountains where no one would ever think of looking for him—there seemed nothing at all to do. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... hybrid when he advises us to treat ourselves as free agents and everyone else as an automaton. On the other hand Prof. Muensterberg has always insisted that in social relations we must always treat everyone as a purposeful, integrated character. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... to explain, thought better of it, and turned to Betty. The events that followed were swift and purposeful. ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... Stratton left the kitchen and headed for the bunk-house with a purposeful air, soon leaving the others well in the rear. Presently one ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... the Frenchman, and removed his pipe from his mouth. He trimmed the bowl fastidiously with his thumb, smiling the while. Of a sudden he looked up, and the smile was gone. He gave Mills back a look as purposeful as his own. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... the English nation became more and more a people of one book, and that book the Bible. As, deeply dyed with Calvinism, they read over and over its sacred pages, they became a serious, sombre, purposeful—and almost fanatic people. The faults and extravagances of the Puritan party and of the later Commonwealth do not at this time concern us. It is with their purposefulness, their determination to make the church a home of vigorous and visible righteousness, and to preserve their ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... all one with acting intelligently. To foresee a terminus of an act is to have a basis upon which to observe, to select, and to order objects and our own capacities. To do these things means to have a mind—for mind is precisely intentional purposeful activity controlled by perception of facts and their relationships to one another. To have a mind to do a thing is to foresee a future possibility; it is to have a plan for its accomplishment; it is to note the means which make the plan capable of execution and ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... give specific directions in advance to meet every need and detail of administration. The law cannot make brains nor supply conscience. Therefore, the Forest Service proposes also to serve the people by the intelligent and purposeful use of the law and every lawful means at its command for the public good. And for that intention it ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... shows that a much greater impression is made upon the memory by the hand forming the outlines described than if they were provided in pictorial form. In other words, the student should supply this purposeful omission by himself constructing the illustrations from the description. The trifling extra time and trouble thus demanded will be amply repaid by the ease and rapidity with which the various points will be fixed in the memory. Nor is this the only advantage to be gained. The act of reproducing ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long eyes as he looked down on us. The purposeful cruelty of the man was inherent; it was entirely untheatrical. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... remembered that she had that morning presented the last of the milk to a sandy cat with a purposeful eye which had dropped in through the window to take breakfast with her, when her regrets for this thriftless hospitality were interrupted by ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... busy in her hospital life. She came in with her accustomed eager, purposeful walk. She sat down on the nearest chair, and began to talk cheerfully to the children and sympathetically ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... suppose it comes to make the corn grow in spring, any more than to spoil the autumn sheaves: that the teeth grow by the operation of some natural (or physical) law, and that their apparent and undoubted fitness for cutting and grinding is not purposeful but coincident; that the backbone is divided into vertebrae because of the antecedent forces, or flexions, which act upon it in the womb. And Empedocles proceeds to the great evolutionary deduction, the clear prevision of Darwin's philosophy, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... sergeants were in evidence, but quiet, imperturbable men compared to their feldwebel, plying their kibokos without wasting words, stirring the whole world within their reach into action—if not orderly and purposeful, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... coldly and critically. To women she was not over-amiable; but as she looked at the young Huguenot maid, of this calm bearing, warm of colour, clear of eye, and purposeful of face, some thing kindled in her. Most like it was that love for a cause, which was more to be encouraged by her than any woman's love for a man, which as she grew older inspired her with aversion, as talk of marriage brought cynical allusions to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not a wholesome time for perusing Greek text. For Margaret Junkin it meant seven years of physical pain, a part of the time in a darkened room, and the lifelong regret of unavailing aspirations. It was in Easton that she began to write in any serious and purposeful fashion, the result of her semi-blindness, as, but for that, she would have devoted her life to painting, for which she had decided talent. In the beautiful environment of Easton the young soul had found the poetic glow that tinged its early dawn. Hills crowned with a wealth ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... the letter mechanically, without opening it. His gaze was riveted, as though by a magnetism too powerful for him to resist, upon her purposeful countenance. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... meet again." There was something purposeful, almost vehemently so, in the curtly spoken words. "If ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Purposeful reading on the part of children may be brought about by direct instruction from parent or teacher or it may be acquired by the child through his own efforts. Manifestly the former is the really efficient way and its efficiency may be increased if ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... preceding period is still in evidence, more and more activity is becoming purposeful and willed. While the child continues to love activity for itself, he is more interested in what it will accomplish than formerly, but an end is not yet sufficiently attractive in itself to hold ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... his lips in a purposeful straight line of silence. To such an outrage there could be nothing to say. The Factor jerked ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... only one thing would account for the purposeful firing of the ship. Yonder lay some mighty chief—and as I thought of that I clutched Bertric's arm ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... orchard, he became aware of movement. Among the apple trees three small figures shuffled about some dark recumbent object. For the most part they went on all fours, but at moments reared up on their hind legs. Their action was at once silent, stealthy and purposeful. Our young clergyman's shortness of sight rendered their appearance the more peculiar. His normal attitude was not so completely restored, moreover, but that they caused him another nervous tremor. Then he grasped the truth; while the detective, latent ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... emergency in which she stood. One thing was sure; if that was the way I must go, I had at least been taught how to tread it; and all through the dizzy, blurred day that followed, I saw, as I sat at my work, repeated visions of that stealthy, purposeful figure stealing down the stairs and entering with uplifted pistol into the unconscious presence of my employer. I even found myself a dozen times that day turning my eyes upon the door through which ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... with a purposeful, omniscient air, "the thing you bought at Lucille's, the day before we sailed, and had sent me without a word of explanation. What ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... are not likely to cause baby to overcome very much of the fear of a tub bath. Patience, perseverance, and purposeful diversion of mind will ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... greenish teeth. "Of a sort... Perhaps high priest would be nearer the truth. There's a certain purposeful cruelty about that term which appeals to me. I'm a bit of a fanatic, you know... But I like to get my recruits when they're bleeding raw. I like them when the salt of truth can sting deep... Wounds heal so quickly ... so ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... desertion. (2)The preparation of false documents or the use of such. (3)Officials giving false information to facilitate these crimes. (4)Purposeful damage of instruments or material. (5)Uneconomical or careless work. (6)(Probably the most serious of all: Instigation to any ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... spoke in an energetic, purposeful tone—"I'm going to put Jerry to bed while I nail ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... scientist, the minister and the reformer, were all combined in this one purposeful man. The people believed him to be a wizard, and even credited him with power to raise the dead. Heathen, sick and curious, crowded about his wagon, but not an article was stolen. One day the chief of a savage tribe said: "I wish you would change my heart. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... draw away when Alcatraz sprinted up beside her. She gave him not so much as a toss of the head or a swish of the tail but kept her gaze on the far Western mountains for she was still sick with the scent of blood; and she maintained a purposeful, steady, lope. It was far other with the stallion. He kept at her side with his gliding canter but he was not thinking of the peace and the shelter from man which they might find in the blue valleys of yonder mountains. His mind was back at the slaughter of Mingo Lake hearing the crackle ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... ways, keeping God's earth in chaos, when a great wisdom and great virtue like Washington's a hundred years ago would convert them into a family of nations, into a federation and fraternity, with a comprehensive law, an efficient police, and a purposeful economy. ...
— Standard Selections • Various |
