"Sharpness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... says, "Come up higher." The rule of the Divine Kingdom is, "faithful in that which is least," then, "ruler over that which is much." Translation to Enoch meant the elevation to higher duties and enjoyments without the wearing agonies of disease, the sharpness of death, or the ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... directors of the Company. One of the principal practical objections to this locomotive was the enormous quantity of coke consumed or wasted by it—about 692 lbs. per hour when travelling—caused by the sharpness of the steam-blast in the chimney, which blew a large proportion of the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... the sharpness of dread. She whom he loved was in the direst peril. He saw the gulf which had swallowed so many others yawning for her life, and he trembled as he had never trembled before. It must be said for him that he had always valued his own life little and had been ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... sharpness of his penetrating gaze, which no secret was capable of resisting. "You are ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... interest and delight in all the preparations were too real and manifest, to permit any of the willing helpers to be offended at her sharpness. In her heart Mrs Snow was greatly pleased, and owned as much in private, but in public, "saw no good in making a work about it," and, on behalf of the minister and his daughter, accepted the kindness of the people as their proper right and due. When Mrs Page identified ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... Cheery old man, he cuts his jokes, and hovers careless along; his cloak well adjusted to the wind, if so be he may please all persons. The simple young King, whom a Maurepas cannot think of troubling with business, has retired into the interior apartments; taciturn, irresolute; though with a sharpness of temper at times: he, at length, determines on a little smithwork; and so, in apprenticeship with a Sieur Gamain (whom one day he shall have little cause to bless), is learning to make locks. (Campan, i. 125.) It appears further, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the night very comfortably; but the spouse of the operator appeared to be much disturbed by the frequent and capricious opening of the door by the other passengers, which let in torrents of intensely cold air from without, and chid the offenders with a wholesome sharpness. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... man in the street, and, for no reason perceptible to me, suddenly clutch him by the hair and cuff his ears,—an infliction which he bore with exemplary patience, only snatching the very earliest opportunity to take to his heels. Where a sharp tongue will not serve the purpose, they trust to the sharpness of their finger-nails, or incarnate a whole vocabulary of vituperative words in a resounding slap, or the downright blow of a doubled fist. All English people, I imagine, are influenced in a far greater degree than ourselves by this ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a salad, cut some of the red part of the lobster, and add to it. This will form a pleasing contrast to the white and green of the vegetables. Be careful not to put in too much oil, as shell-fish absorbs the sharpness of the vinegar. Serve it up in a dish, not in ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... horses go faster, we must do so," cried Tom. "Those fellows astern mean mischief, and we must keep well ahead, or they will be trying the sharpness of the ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... so that divers, especially in age, do desire to live with them with little or no meat or bread. And above all we strive to have drinks of extreme thin parts, to insinuate into the body, and yet without all biting, sharpness, or fretting; insomuch as some of them put upon the back of your hand, will with a little stay pass through to the palm, and yet taste mild to the mouth. We have also waters, which we ripen in that fashion, as they become nourishing, so that they are indeed ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... with some sharpness, for I was still nettled, "when you have confided your language to the dirk, or let it speak ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... peace to Europe, Calistus the Second alone had resolution and power to prohibit the use of private arms in the metropolis. Among the nations who revered the apostolic throne, the tumults of Rome provoked a general indignation; and in a letter to his disciple Eugenius the Third, St. Bernard, with the sharpness of his wit and zeal, has stigmatized the vices of the rebellious people. [16] "Who is ignorant," says the monk of Clairvaux, "of the vanity and arrogance of the Romans? a nation nursed in sedition, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless they are too feeble to resist. When they promise to serve, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... windows open. But as her senses emerged from those mists which lie on the surface of the river of sleep, she was conscious of a balmy warmth in the room, of an impression of bright sunshine behind the dark blinds, and of noises from the streets reaching her with a kind of sharpness associated with sunshine. She sat up, looked at her watch, and was shocked to find how late she had slept. She must have missed a lecture. Then the recollection of the dinner-party at the Fletchers', the verdict of Mr. Stewart on her chance of a First, and ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... same as before—perhaps a little more mechanically; but still the old routine of daily work was gone through. Leases, though for a short period, do not expire in a day; after awhile time began to produce its usual effect. The sharpness of the pain wore off, and he set to work to make the best of matters. He understood the capacity of each field as well as others understand the yielding power of a little garden. His former study had been ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... bitter sarcasm as serviceable weapons. These were chiefly employed in exposing measures he considered calculated to ruin the country, though they might gratify the king. However, he had no hatred of monarchy, but would occasionally divert Charles by the sharpness of his satire and brilliancy of his wit. Considering how valuable these would be if employed in service of the court, Charles resolved to tempt Marvell's integrity. For this purpose the Lord Treasurer Danby sought and found him in his chamber, situated in the second floor of a mean house standing ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... Francisco; he was accompanied by his wife, a rather good-looking young woman with sharp intelligent features, and who appeared in every respect to be what her husband had represented her on the former visit. She was very poorly clad, and notwithstanding the extreme sharpness of the weather, carried no mantle to protect herself from its inclemency, - her raven black hair depended behind as far down as her hips. Another Gypsy came with them, but not the old fellow whom I had before seen. This was a man about forty-five, dressed in a zamarra of sheep-skin, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... officers at dinner. You are now in plain clothes, and the Captain's guest, but do not presume on their present freedom. You will find the drawing-room and the quarter-deck very different places. Sharpness and wit are very well at times, but modesty is never out of place." I thanked Mr Bryan, and ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... sensitiveness of Carlyle to his own pains and troubles, so often imaginary, joined with his inconsiderate blindness to his wife's real sufferings, led to many heart-burnings. If she contributed to them, in some degree, by her wilfulness, jealous temper, and sharpness of tongue, ill-health and solitude may ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... naturally pale face acquired a corpselike sharpness in its lines. "I had no idea that it was of this ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... a part of the truth," she said. "They have more sharpness than I gave them credit for possessing. They have scented out a part of the truth, but they can not follow the scent. Ha, ha, ha! They may advertise from now till doomsday, but they will never get ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... encountered a change, and Beth could scarcely repress a gasp of surprise and apprehension. The trail was laid upon the merest granite shelf, above that terrible chasm. She was terrified, frankly. The man and pony in the lead were cut with startling sharpness against the gray of the rock—the calico coloring, the muscular intensity, the bending of the man to every motion—as they balanced with terrifying slenderness above ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... handed to Whittington a short, stout pole, on its end a two-foot iron rod, flattened to a point shaped like a tablespoon, and filed to razor sharpness. Percy set out in pursuit of the red barrel, now almost two ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... was a just man, ventured to represent that Trafton did not foresee the result of his action; but, in the sharpness of her bereavement, Mrs. Trafton would find ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... give you nothing!" she declared, with the sharpness of one wronged, and helpless of redress. "You have taken ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... were, which was still in the same communication trench in reserve. The trench was five feet in width—in favourable spots it may have been six—and the bottom was deep in dust, which, to a certain extent, moderated the sharpness of ammunition pouches in the middle of one's back. From the heaps of piled-up spoil above came irregular avalanches of dust and dirt, and due care had to be taken to prevent it getting in one's ears, eyes, nose and mouth. Still, notwithstanding these minor discomforts, Mac had managed ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... sharp," said Miss Emily. It was a long time since I had heard the word so used, but it was very apt. Maggie was indeed sharp. But Miss Emily launched into a general dissertation on servants, and Maggie's sharpness was forgotten. ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the soft mud was the print of a foot, a human-looking foot, but for the evenness in the length of the toes and the sharpness and length of the toe nails. Yes, there was another difference, and that was the size. It was the footprint of a savage Hercules, the track of an enormous grizzly bear, and the soft mud that had dripped from the big foot was still undried ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... that spares no sort of men cannot be said to be angry with anyone in particular, but the vices of all. And therefore, if there shall happen to be anyone that shall say he is hit, he will but discover either his guilt or fear. Saint Jerome sported in this kind with more freedom and greater sharpness, not sparing sometimes men's very name. But I, besides that I have wholly avoided it, I have so moderated my style that the understanding reader will easily perceive my endeavors herein were rather to make mirth than bite. Nor have I, after the example of Juvenal, ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... the ladder vibrated under his weight as he worked himself slowly and cautiously to one edge, and the sharpness of the jagged iron rungs ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... that a mother's sorrow for the loss of a beloved child cannot be assuaged by the commonplaces of condolence, yet I must write a few lines to assure you of my heartfelt sympathy in your grief. There is one thing, however, that should soften the sharpness of a mother's agony under such a bereavement. It is the reflection that "little children" are pure and guileless, and that of such is the kingdom of heaven. "It is well with the child." Much sin and woe has it escaped. It ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... had the most delightful eyes imaginable, and was a good-bodied dog, faulty only in tail and in a tendency to be leggy. The Welshman was a little miracle of Celtic grace—the very incarnation of doggy sharpness. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... went into Chelsea, where there are whole streets of lodgings, and—I suppose it was wrong of me, but I went and pretended to be looking for rooms for a girl clerk I knew, and I saw—Oh! no end of rooms. And such poor old women, such dingy, worked-out, broken old women, with a kind of fearful sharpness, so eager, so dreadfully eager to get that girl clerk who ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... common sense, starting from no theory, and aiming at no conclusion. If he was beyond his contemporaries in the mass of expedient knowledge, he was not before them in the strictness of his tests, or in sharpness or boldness in applying them. He was abreast as a critic, he was not ahead. He did not innovate. The parallel studies of the time kept pace with his; and his judgments are those which are accepted generally. His critical mind was pliant, to assent where he must, to reject where he ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... expectancy, the very plough-boys going about their labours without boisterous laughter, the children playing quietly, and the good wives in their kitchens and dairies bustling less than usual and modulating the sharpness of their voices, the most motherly among them in truth finding themselves falling into whispering as they gossiped of the ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... crawls; Who hopes by strange variety to please Puts dolphins among forests, boars in seas. Thus zeal to 'scape from error, if unchecked By sense of art, creates a new defect. Fix on some casual sculptor; he shall know How to give nails their sharpness, hair its flow; Yet he shall fail, because he lacks the soul To comprehend and reproduce the whole. I'd not be he; the blackest hair and eye Lose all their beauty ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... manifest that Mr. Mulready was master in his own house. He still looked pleasant and smiled, for his smile was a habitual one; but there was a sharpness in the ring of his voice, an impatience if everything was not exactly as he wished. He roughly silenced Charlie and Lucy if they spoke when he was reading his paper at breakfast, and he spoke snappishly to his wife when she asked him ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... definitely. Some scientists place hearing in the antennae, others in a little organ on each side the base of the abdomen. Packard writes: "The eyes are large and globose and vary in the distance apart in different families": but fails to tell what I want to know most: the range and sharpness of their vision. Another writer states that the eyes are so incomplete in development that a moth only can distinguish light from darkness and cannot discern your approach ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... had finished writing, she observed smilingly, as she addressed herself to all the young ladies: "I have all along lacked the quality of sharpness and never besides been good at verses; as you, sisters, and all of you have ever been aware; but, on a night like this I've been fain to do my best, with the object of escaping censure, and of not reflecting injustice on this scenery and nothing more. But some other day when I've got time, be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... certain sharpness in the hunter's voice, which told of a greater anxiety than would be caused by the very slight risk of the quietly spoken words being heard by passing redskins, and he wondered ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... the wood of which the mechanism has to be made, by means of fire; either baking it in hot sand or ashes, or otherwise applying heat to a degree just short of charring its surface. The mechanism will then retain the sharpness of its edges under a continuance of pressure, and during many hours of wet weather. The slighter the strain on the springe, the more delicately can its mechanism ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... upon my mind, he thought of yet another method. Cautiously he began to ask what means I should have taken, supposing my jailers had locked me up, in order to set the dungeon doors open and effect my flight. I then, who wanted to display the sharpness of my own wits to so ingenious a man, replied that I was quite sure of being able to open the most baffling locks and bars, far more those of our prison, to do which would be the same to me as eating a bit of new cheese. In order then to gain my secret, the ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... been spent either in endeavours to find room for the expression of feelings which no master guided to a worthy end, or to obtain the attention of a public whose mind was dead to natural beauty, by sharpness of satire, or ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... with all the sharpness and pertness of which she was capable; but do what she would, he received it all with a smiling indifference and civility which exasperated her ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when fresh, it must have had the pliancy of clay, so delicately are the finest curves in scroll or foliage scooped from its substance. And yet it preserves each cusp and angle of the most elaborate pattern with the crispness and the sharpness of a crystal. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... objects. Presently a muffled sound caught our ears, and we recognised it as the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right away a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of smoke, its mass had so little sharpness of outline. It was a man on horseback; and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got hold of a gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright. Somebody said 'Fire!' I pulled the trigger. I seemed to see a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... something unusual were about to happen. Her own body was going hot and cold by turns—her neck and hands. She had a fine figure, finer than she realized, with shapely limbs and torso. Her head had some of the sharpness of the old Greek coinage, and her hair was plaited as in ancient cut stone. Cowperwood noted it. He came back and, without taking his seat, bent over her ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... in matters that might involve life and death, with a mere boy! But there was no help for it; besides, to say truth, the extraordinary energy and courage that had been displayed by the lad, combined with a considerable amount of innate sharpness in his character, tended to create a feeling that the consultation might not be altogether without advantage. At all events, it was better to talk over their desperate position even with a boy, than to confine his anxieties to his ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... the musical hand of Eld, with wonder of delicate transition and change of key, that one could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at work informing the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the sharpness, and blending the angles, until in some parts there was but the gentle flickering of the original conception left, all its self-assertion vanished under the file of the air and the gnawing of the worm. True, the hand of the restorer had been busy, but ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... With whatever sharpness of criticism I had approached Ma'am (HUTCHINSON), the edge of it would have been turned by the statement upon the fly-leaf that the author, M. BERESFORD RYLEY, died while the novel was still in manuscript, and that it has been revised for the press by her friend, Mr. E.V. LUCAS. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... concede that, concerning the magnitudes in which they were most interested, as for example, God and soul, we have no knowledge of the sort which the method of the physical sciences would give. They fell back upon Kant's distinction of the two reasons and two worlds. They exaggerated the sharpness of that distinction. They learned that the claim of agnosticism was capable of being viewed as a line of defence, behind which the transcendental magnitudes might be secure. Indeed, if one may take Spencer as an example, it is not certain that this was not the intent of some of the scientists ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... violent, compressed. They are not the judgments of balance. They are final not as a goal reached is final, but as a death-wound delivered. He throws out sentences which all the world can see to be insufficient and thin, but whose sharpness is the sharpness of conviction and of a striving determination to achieve conviction in others —-or if he fails in that, at least to leave an enemy smarting. Everywhere you have up and down his prose those short parentheses, those side sentences, which ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... distressing thought of all was that I saw my children predestined to the same fate. I saw them growing up in complete destitution of those country sights and sounds which had made my own youth delightful; acquiring the superficial sharpness of the city child and his slang; suffering at times by the anaemia and listlessness bred of vitiated air; high-strung and sensitive as those must needs be whose nerves are in perpetual agitation; and when, in chance excursions to the country, I compared ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... moving through the water. Horrible-looking creatures they were: for they were hammer-headed sharks! Both were conspicuously seen: for they had risen to the surface, and were swimming with their dark dorsal fins protruded above, and set with all the triangular sharpness of staysails. Although they had not been observed before by those on the Catamaran, they appeared to have been swimming in the proximity of the gig,—on which, beyond doubt, they had been for some ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... landed us in a green track traversing a land of endless commons, as wild and as forsaken of human kind as though it were a region in some virgin continent. On either hand the gorse was thick and golden, great oaks, splendid in the first dazzling sharpness of their spring green, threw vast shadows over the fresh moist grass beneath, and over the lambs sleeping beside their fleecy mothers, while the hawthorns rose into the sky in masses of rose-tinted snow, each tree a shining miracle of white set in ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... explicit than the Bible itself, in favor of the universal duty of truthfulness. He says: "Mosaism, with its fundamental law of holiness, has established the standard of truthfulness with incomparable definiteness and sharpness (see Lev. 19: 2, 12, 13, 34-37). Truthfulness is here presented as derived directly from the principle of holiness, and to be practiced without regard to resulting benefit or injury to foe or to friend, to foreigner or to countryman. In this moral loftiness ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... most surface kind—she skims the cream off each item of news, and serves it up to you in her own fashion, caring little whether it be correct or the reverse. And the more vivaciously she talks, the more likely she is to be dangerously insincere and cold-hearted, for the very sharpness of her wit is apt to spoil the more delicate perceptions of her nature. Show me a brilliant woman noted for turning an epigram or pointing a satire, and I will show you a creature whose life is a masquerade, full of vanity, sensuality and pride. The man who ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... to sit down and remain quite still while I make the exposure," he said to me and the inspector. "A very little vibration is enough to destroy the sharpness of ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... that try us; but if we also do or say something hastily at that time, it will increase our trial and make it the more difficult to bear. It will make the clouds that come all the darker. If we have not been as kind as we ought to have been, if there has been a sharpness in our words, or if we have manifested our displeasure at something in a way that showed our feelings too much, it is sure to bring a cloud ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... in size, the shape and sharpness of the teeth, their recurvature and the slight enlargement of their bases, the exclusion of the lacrimal bone from the narial margin (in Mycterosaurus) and the apparent lack of a special canine pair of teeth. Resemblances to the caseids are to be noted in the enlargement of ...
— Two New Pelycosaurs from the Lower Permian of Oklahoma • Richard C. Fox
... and promising to assist me therein. Whereupon I arose from my bed, and in the fear and dread of the Lord committed to writing what He, in the motion of His divine Spirit, dictated to me to write. When I had done it, though the sharpness of the message therein delivered was hard to my nature to be the publisher of, yet I found acceptance with the Lord in my obedience to His will, and His peace filled my heart. As soon as I could I communicated to my friends what I had written; and it was printed in the year 1660, in one sheet ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... on his coat of darkness, and his shoes of swiftness, and was there before her. When the lady came, she gave the handkerchief to the magician. Jack with his sword of sharpness cut off his head with one blow; and the enchantment ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... a strange feeling of loss of self, of being a stranger to herself, and the world in which she moved seemed a vague and shrouded world. It lacked sharpness of definition. Its customary vividness was gone. She had lapses of memory, and was continually finding herself doing unplanned things. Thus, to her astonishment, she came to in the back yard hanging up the week's wash. She had ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... incommoded. Whenever the thought of death is brought home to them, as in the course of events it is ever and again sure to be, they are appalled and terrified. They then feel that death has a sting, and they have some foretaste of its sharpness and venom. They see nothing in death but the ruin of all their earthly hopes and schemes, and nothing after death but "a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries," ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... of conversation, like the other best things—the beauty of woman, the strength of wine, the sharpness of steel, and red ink—is "open to abuse."[326] It has been admitted that even the fervency of the present writer's Alexandrianism cools at the "wall-game" of Montalais and Malicorne. There may be ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the door for him, and, he thought, looked at him with unusual sharpness. "I guess you can see her," she said, shortly. "I'll ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... family lawyer, he was naturally the poor man's protector at such a time as the present,—pleaded also that as the poor man was so very poor, no one else could come forward on his behalf,—and in this way somewhat softened the hard sharpness of the old porcupine's quills. But after all this, there was very little to be learned from the old porcupine. "There was not a magistrate on the bench," he said, "who had any doubt that the evidence was sufficient to justify them ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... pensively on one of the travelling carriages. "Guten Morgen, Ihro Konigliche Hoheit!" [Ranke, 1. 305.] —Fancy such a salutation to the young man! Page Keith, at this moment, comes with a pair of horses, too: "Whither with the nags, Sirrah?" Rochow asked with some sharpness. Keith, seeing how it was, answered without visible embarrassment, "Herr, they are mine and Kunz the Page's horses" (which, I suppose, is true); "ready at the usual hour!" Keith might add.—"His Majesty does not go till five this morning;—back to the stables!" ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... you in bed, Flidda?" said Cynthy, with some sharpness. "That's what you had ought to be. I am sure your grandpa ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... said, slowly. Then—and it will not do to inquire too closely into her logic—she spoke with considerable sharpness: "She's a conceited little cat! I never in all my life knew a girl to be quite so conceited as she is. Positively, I don't believe she thinks there's a man breathing who's good ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... of the race, is his motive. And pity makes his gentle style, pity makes him regardless of artifice, and gives his often clumsy novels an undercurrent which sweeps them beyond technical masterpieces whose only merit is sharpness of thought. It is instructive to compare the relative fortunes of Hardy and Meredith, once always bracketed—the apostle of pity in comparison with the most subtle and brilliant mind of his ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... together, the effect of so many powerful and unisonant voices is very grand; but it differs in the two species, owing to the quality of their voices being different; the storm of sound produced by the black-backs is deep and solemn, while that of the herring-gulls has a ringing sharpness ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... sharpness in Michael's tone, and the light had faded out of his eyes. After all, there was no cause for him to rejoice; she had not left off her mourning of her own accord. What a fool he had been! Of course, she had only done ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... deep enough in all conscience, it was not to be compared with the drifts on the line. The wind now, as they started off, was whipping away the loose top layers of snow in cold white clouds, which stung the face and ears with their icy sharpness; but, with caps well down and coats buttoned up to the ears, the two trudged on. The snow had ceased, but it was plain, by the dark and lowering sky, that this might only be temporary, and Acton kept up as smart a pace as he could, heading right for the shoulder ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... so far lost and gained, in being transplanted from Europe to the New England soil and climate, is well illustrated by the writings of Emerson. There is greater refinement and sublimation of thought, greater clearness and sharpness of outline, greater audacity of statement, but, on the other hand, there is a loss of bulk, of unction, of adipose tissue, and shall we ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... you, my lad," said the harassed Mr. Porter, "you'll know it! Pity you don't keep your sharpness for your lessons! Wot ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... Thither I hastened to find Schlosser, when he had sent to inform me of his arrival. I scarcely remembered having seen him before, and found a young, well-formed man, with a round, compressed face, without the features losing their sharpness on that account. The form of his rounded forehead, between black eyebrows and locks, indicated earnestness, sternness, and perhaps obstinacy. He was, in a certain measure, the opposite of myself; and this very thing doubtless laid the foundation of our lasting friendship. I had the greatest ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... a couple of strides to the edge of the little stream and there held her threateningly over the bank. The two young men shouted approval and Myrtle began to squirm. At first she demanded coyly to be set down, and then with more sharpness in her tone. Joe looked into her eyes. They were unfathomable. Her peach-bloom cheeks were quite pink. But there were a few tiny wrinkles about her mouth that he had never seen before. Made her look older, somehow. He softened, for the lovely burden ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... the keenness of your judgment but the sharpness of your eyesight, not because you are full of wisdom—no, don't plume yourself on that—but because you are just as wise as I am, and that is saying a great deal. Yet, joking apart, I think the slaves which I bought on your recommendation ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... that even the old woman who had robbed her when a little child—whose image and whose house, and all she had said and done, were stamped upon her recollection, with the enduring sharpness of a fearful impression made at that early period of life—had spoken fondly of her daughter, and how terribly even she had cried out in the pain of hopeless separation from her child But her own mother, she would think again, when ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... fired on the column which came on afterwards, and wounded one trooper of the Light Dragoons, and a few native followers, and killed three horses. Most of us lost a deal of kit in this Pass, owing to the camels' feet knocking up, from the sharpness of the stones; and the very moment the column was off the ground the rascals would be down and fighting for what was left behind. I was on rear-guard the second day's march, and the very moment we cleared the ground it was ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... the smoking lantern back onto the shelf to have his hands free for action, and drew a cutlass out of the arm rack, running one leatherly thumb along the blade to test its sharpness. His eyes sought ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... music greets our ears now," said Miss Fancy, alluding, with the sharpness that her position as village sharpener demanded, to the contrast between the rattle of knives and forks and the late notes ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... tyrants of the forest sprang up, wide awake, and bared their angry teeth, and the untried youths of Thrace ran to beg their fathers to let them taste battle, while the scarred warriors felt on their thumbs the sharpness of their sword blades, and smiled, well content. While he played it would seem as though the very stones and rocks gained hearts. Nay, the whole heart of the universe became one great, palpitating, beautiful thing, an instrument from whose trembling ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... see no farther than their own noses; in one word, they are dull. Those that have brains are hysterical, devoured with a mania for self-analysis. They whine, they hate, they pick faults everywhere with unhealthy sharpness. They sneak up to me sideways, look at me out of a corner of the eye, and say: "That man is a lunatic," "That man is a wind-bag." Or, if they don't know what else to label me with, they say I am strange. I like the woods; that is strange. ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... Cassius J. Keyser, in his book The Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking (Columbia University Press, 1916), mathematics is the science of "Exact thought or rigorous thinking," and one of its distinctive characteristics is "precision, sharpness, completeness of definitions." This quality alone is sufficient to explain why people generally do not like mathematics and why even some scientists bluntly refuse to have anything to do with problems ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... of our civil war, certain truths, hitherto unobserved or guessed at merely, have been brought out with extraordinary sharpness of relief; and two of them have been specially impressive, the one for European observers, the other for ourselves. The first, and perhaps the most startling to the Old World watcher of the political skies, upon whose field of vision the flaming sword ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... his, and with nobody near him to take him by the hand, he made great mistakes. His wife and he cared nothing for one another, but she was jealous to the last degree. I never saw such jealousy. It was strange that, although she almost hated him, she watched him with feline sharpness and patience, and would even have killed any woman whom she knew had won his affection. He, on the other hand, openly avowed that marriage without love was nothing, and flaunted without the least modification the most ideal theories ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... rest, and a brother's repast, barley and stalls for your horses. My threshold flourishes by hospitality: the blessing of the stranger increaseth the flock, and giveth sharpness to the sword of the master. Fix not the seal of reproach on our whole village. Let them not say, 'They have seen travellers in the heat of noon, and have not refreshed them nor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharpness, and then broke off again into a chuckle. "But I see this is a love match of yours, and you have ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... with the antithesis of interests, that they are subject to certain common, constraining, and obligatory rules. The common presuppositions, which exclude everything that is merely personal from the legal controversy, have that character of pure objectivity to which, on its side, the sharpness, the inexorableness, and the absoluteness of the species of struggle correspond. The reciprocity between the dualism and the unity of the sociological relationship is accordingly shown by the judicial struggle not less than by the war game. Precisely the most extreme ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... trained Rescue Party stood and took aim with the rocket-apparatus; his glance darted out and back again to measure the distance with the sharpness of a claw. "Ready!" said the others, moving to one side. "Ready!" he answered gravely. For a moment all was still, while he placed it in another position ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... behind him. It was she who had brought him to this pass. It was she who had locked his door upon herself and, in her wantonness, as good as thrown away the key. Let her stay outside. But he was not equal to even that sharpness of decision and Tira, after she found the door ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... voluntarily committing his life and liberty into his enemies' hands, by that action manifesting that he had absolute confidence in them, to the end they might repose as great an assurance in him. Caesar only opposed the authority of his countenance and the haughty sharpness of his rebukes to his mutinous legions in ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... asked this question, Lady Dauntrey stared with almost ostentatious frankness straight into the cure's face, and her voice had lost its sharpness. She was dressed in purple velvet, and wore a large purple hat. The rich dark hue gave her light eyes a very curious colour, more green than gray; and as she stood on the doorstep, tall and somehow formidable, the cure thought that she looked Egyptian, an elemental creature who might have lived ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a morning star. The shadow of the rings on the planet is best seen when the rings are but moderately open, and Saturn is in or near quadrature. When the shadow lies outside the rings it is best seen, as the dark ring takes off from the sharpness of the contrast when the shadow lies within the ring. It would take more space than I can spare here to show how it is to be determined (independently) whether the shadow lies within or without the ring. But the 'Nautical Almanac' gives ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... that he was—and for the rest he could hardly get his words out with the sharpness of his hunger whetted still keener by the blessed smell of cooking. But he resisted ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... she was almost shocked by the change in her aunt's appearance. The invalid's face seemed drawn and gray, and she lay upon her cushions breathing heavily and without any appearance of vitality or strength. Even the sharpness and piercing quality of her hard gray eyes was lacking and the glance she cast at her niece ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... present the most interest. Unfortunately, notwithstanding the skill of the engraver, it is impossible to render with accuracy all the details that are seen upon examining the negative. The proofs that have been printed upon paper present much less sharpness than the negative, for there are certain parts of the figures on the glass that do not show ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... give most people a fright," said Ingram with a laugh. He was rapidly forgetting the object of his mission. The almost childish softness of voice of this girl, and the perfect composure with which she uttered little sayings that showed considerable sharpness of observation and a keen enjoyment of the grotesque, had an odd sort of fascination for him. He totally forgot that Lavender had been fascinated by it too. If he had been reminded of the fact at this moment he would have said that the boy had, as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... of embarrassment, without even the colour rising to her cheeks. Thus might one greet a casual friend of yesterday. Linforth bethought him, with a sudden sting of bitterness which surprised him by its sharpness, of the postscript in the last of the few letters she had written to him. That letter was still vivid enough in his memories for him to be able to see the pages, to recognise the ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... ebony silhouette of a massive cook kneading dough, was still with the uncompromising stillness of the Sabbath. In the midst of this stillness, his thoughts, which were usually as angular as lean birds on a bough, lost their sharpness of outline and melted into a vague and feathery mass. At the moment it was impossible to know of what he was thinking, but he was happy with the happiness which visits men of small parts and of sterile imagination. By virtue of these limitations and this sterility he had risen out ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... to the counter. His footsteps echoed loudly on the floor of polished boards. He took down a bottle, labelled "Sirop de Groseille." The little sounds he made, the clink of glass, the gurgling of the liquid, the pop of the soda-water cork had a preternatural sharpness. He came back carrying a pink and glistening tumbler. Mr. Ricardo had followed his movements with oblique, coyly expectant yellow eyes, like a cat watching the preparation of a saucer of milk, and the satisfied sound after he had ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... others what you think for yourself?" pursued the editor, giving sharpness and definition to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fifties, rather bald, and with a decided stoop in his shoulders. At home he was a manufacturer of barbed wire, and his business, as Danny later suggested, had perhaps helped to give him some of his keenness and sharpness. He was slenderly fashioned, and reminded one, at first, of a professor ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... People had assured him since he was engaged that Marie Bromar was the handsomest girl in Lorraine or Alsace; and he felt it to be an injury that this handsome girl should prefer such a one as George Voss to himself. Marie, with a woman's sharpness, perceived all this accurately. 'Remember,' said she, 'that I had hardly seen you when George and I were—when he and I became ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... its pathetic expression, suggested a melancholy humour delighting in subdued and tranquil thoughts, inclined naturally to the romantic view, or to what in the eyes of youths of twenty appears to be the romantic view of life. He had suddenly found her answering him with a sharpness which, while it roused his wits, startled his sensibilities. But he was flattered as well. His instinct and his observation of Mrs. Goddard when in the society of others led him to believe that with Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose, or even with Mr. Juxon, she was not in the ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... around the gabled roofs stood laden and spotless. The woods behind the village, and those running along the top of the snowy hill, were meshed in a silvery mist which died into the moonlit blue, while in the fields the sharpness of the shadows thrown by the scattered trees made a ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... quiet (padded feet, | loose joints, manner of | walking). | Action of tail. 3. How caught.....{ Catching and holding; | ability to spring; strength of | hind legs. | Fore paws; used like hands. | Claws; shape, sharpness, ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... the Image. Its Use in Imagination. Necessity for Number, Variety, Sharpness. Source of "Imaginative" Productions. Method of Developing Active Imaginative Powers: Cultivate Images in Great Number, Variety, Sharpness; Actively Combine the ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... look upon that sorrowful face, and that drooping head, bleeding under the points of the accursed thorns. Thy sins and mine gave them their sharpness. Gaze upon the hideous nails that pierce those blessed hands and feet, and upon the blood trickling from that divine side, and say, canst ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... two-thirds of his life, metaphorically, at this woman's feet, and had formed a habit of admiration and lovership which no facts nor developments could ever alter. He was frowning, he replied with a certain sharpness, and yet he leaned towards her as he spoke, and his eyes followed her long, graceful lines and noted the clear delicacy of her features against the crimson background. "How the child looked—how the child looked; Cynthia, you do not realize what you did. You have not the faintest ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... manifested in the three previous chapters now begins to take more definite thought form. The intellect seeing more clearly, appeals to the intellects of those who listen that they may think with greater sharpness and distinctness the thoughts presented. By aiming to present these thoughts so as to be clearly understood, distinctness and precision of utterance are gained. The elements of speech become more perfectly and beautifully ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... forehead was narrow, her lips thin and straight, her nostrils cut too high. Her eyes were bold and sharp, dominating her face, and fixing upon the hearers the look of a bird of prey. Mrs. Crapps's hair was tinged with gray, and in her whole appearance there was a sharpness which seemed to speak of one who had battled with the world. Ashe was struck by the personality of the woman, yet strongly repelled. She was evidently a creature of abundant vitality, and exultantly dominant of will. The bold, black ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... morning from a near-by camp as Joan was about to set out for Dad Frazer's. From his way of plunging abruptly into this matter, which he never had discussed with her before, and his sharpness and apparent displeasure with her, Joan knew that he had seen Reid overnight. They were beside the sheep-wagon, to a wheel of which Joan's horse was tied, all saddled and ready to mount. The sun was already ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... that are latent in every nature, and to blend them with the petty disappointments to which even the best of us are liable. The material thus obtained you temper with intentions that seem to be good, and eventually you forge out of it a weapon of marvellous point and sharpness, with which you mercilessly goad your victims along the path that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... Soracte white with snow, now bend the laboring trees, And with the sharpness of the frost the stagnant rivers freeze. Pile up the billets on the hearth, to warmer cheer incline, And draw, my Thaliarchus, from the Sabine ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... you quite get me, Helen," he heard himself say, with icy sharpness. "I wanted to see Hilmer myself! I had a business proposition to put up to him. I want ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... fire, containing an excess of heat. Now in fire we may consider three things. First, the movement which is upwards and continuous. This signifies that they are borne inflexibly towards God. Secondly, the active force which is "heat," which is not found in fire simply, but exists with a certain sharpness, as being of most penetrating action, and reaching even to the smallest things, and as it were, with superabundant fervor; whereby is signified the action of these angels, exercised powerfully upon those who are subject to them, rousing them ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... which they had been journeying. In the face of Jack's misfortune and all that he was giving up, her part of the sacrifice sank into comparative insignificance. Her suffering for him was so great that it dulled the sharpness of her own renunciations, and even dulled her disappointment for Joyce. The year in Paris had meant as much to her as the course at Warwick Hall had ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... know him fully," replied the delighted Manilov. "The amount of sharpness which he possesses is extraordinary. Our younger one, Alkid, is not so quick; whereas his brother—well, no matter what he may happen upon (whether upon a cowbug or upon a water-beetle or upon anything else), his little eyes begin jumping out ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... will do. You need not say anything more." Then he put his hands into the pockets of his shooting coat, and walked off as though all had been said that was necessary. Fenwick had told his message and might now go away. As for himself, in the sharpness of his agony he had as yet made no scheme for a future purpose. Only this he had determined. He would see that false woman once again, and tell her what ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... 20, 3, 186; Minto, Aug. 10, 1799; Records: Austria, vol. 56. "I had no sooner mentioned this topic (Piedmont) than I perceived I had touched a very delicate point. M. de Thugut's manner changed instantly from that of coolness and civility to a great show of warmth attended with some sharpness. He became immediately loud and animated, and expressed chagrin at the invitation sent to the King of Sardinia.... He considers the conquest of Piedmont as one made by Austria of an enemy's country. He denies that the King of Sardinia ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... used in the furnace, and the quantity of clinker that can be left therein without interfering with its operation, thus permitting of having the grates always black. These latter in no wise change, and after five months of work the square bars still preserve their sharpness of edges. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... observe the physician with the same diligence as he the disease; I see he fears, and I fear with him; I overtake him, I over-run him in his fear, because he makes his pace slow; I fear the more because he disguises his fear, and I see it with the more sharpness because he would not have me see it.' As he lies in bed, he realises 'I am mine own ghost, and rather affright my beholders than instruct them. They conceive the worst of me now, and yet fear worse; they give me for dead now, and yet wonder how I do when they wake at midnight, and ask how I do ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Diomed and Nestor were but names, and Helen but a dream, yet, through Homer's power of representing men and women, those old Greeks will still stand out from amidst the darkness of the ancient world with a sharpness of outline which belongs to no period of history except the most recent. For the mere hard purposes of history, the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" are the most effective books which ever were written. We see the hall of ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... Waggoner and Porterfield, engaged the British flank guard very closely, killed a captain with ten or fifteen privates, drove them out of the wood, and were on the point of taking a field piece. The sharpness of the skirmish soon drew a large body of the British to that quarter, and the Americans were ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... "How, how," which meant, "Go on with your story. We are all ears." Blue-Star Woman had not yet detected any particular sharpness about their ears, but by an impulse she looked up into their faces and scrutinized them. They were busily engaged in eating. Their eyes were fast upon the food on the mat in front of their crossed shins. Inwardly she made a passing ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... It is better to leave a vessel unfilled, than to attempt to carry it when it is full. If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness. ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... The sharpness of Miss Smith's joy did not let her dwell on the proposed "Board of Trust"; of course, it would be a board of ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... express, and she despaired of recovering the incidental memories. The years with Stevenson have of course been adequately told, but the earlier period—Indianapolis and California—had a romance as stirring, even if sharpened by the American glare. This sharpness has already, for all of us, begun to fade, to take on the glamour of time and distance, and I cannot think of a better literary service than to make the fullest possible record now, before it ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... the room proved to be no more nor less than Lampaxo. Two years had not removed the wrinkles from her cheek, the sharpness from her nose, the rasping from her tongue. At sight of her Democrates half rose from his seat and held out his hand ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... give him a farthing!" she said with a sudden sharpness that startled him—"not a farthing! If he wants money, let him work for it, as other people do; and then, when he has done that, if he is to have any of my money, he must be beholden for it to his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... when covered with red bunches of flowers, or, O king, like the Kinsuka tree when clad in its flowery attire! Taking up then another bow, Rama, filled with wrath, showered upon me numerous arrows of excessive sharpness, furnished with golden wings. And those fierce arrows of tremendous impetus, resembling snakes, or fire, or poison, coming at me from all sides, pierced my very vitals and caused me to tremble. Summoning all my coolness I then addressed myself ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... terrible word was repeated with increasing frequency; its sharpness wore off, and it became as familiar to her ear as scores of other words unintelligible to her. But Sashenka did not please her, and when she came the mother felt troubled ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... rather thin and spare, but they were softened by the loose bodice and long full skirt of her dress, and by the folds of a large white muslin handkerchief which was crossed over her breast. The face, sheltered by the plain shady hat, was also a little spoilt from the point of view of beauty by the sharpness of the lines about the chin and mouth, and by a slight prominence of the cheekbones, but the eyes, of a dark bluish gray, were fine, the nose delicately cut, the brow smooth and beautiful, while the complexion had caught the freshness and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... know most people's voices have a little thread, if it is not more, of sharpness or roughness, coming out somewhere. It is sure to come out somewhere; in one form of speech or another; with some people it only appears in the laugh, and they should never laugh. Your voice is like a chime ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... deep cuts on his own foot and ankle. McEwen, indeed, could only limp along, with mingled curses and lamentations, supported by Anderson. In the excitement of his son's appearance he had forgotten his injury. The pain and annoyance of it returned upon him now with added sharpness, and Anderson realised that here was yet another complication as they moved ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my hair up some time, I suppose," she said resentfully. There was something in the abruptness of her father's question, no less than in the new closeness and sharpness of eye with which he was examining her, ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... justice, but I do say that justice will be done, and I expect to see the murderers of Arnold Nicholson hung." The keen eyes of Dyke Darrel fixed themselves on the face of his prisoner, with a penetrating sharpness that fairly made the fellow squirm in his seat. On more than one occasion had the railroad detective brought confession from the lips of guilt, through the magnetism ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... main you have your father's character and talents and your mother's temperament. You have the spirit of her nature, but the framework in the main is like the father. You have large benevolence, not only in the direction of sympathy but of gratitude. You have frankness of character, even to sharpness, and you are obliged to bridle your tongue lest you speak more than is meet. You have mechanical ingenuity, the planning talent, and the minds of others are apt to be used as instruments to accomplish your objects. For instance, if ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the others, though her heart was beating very fast, her forehead was contracted, and she could not help keeping her right hand clasped round her arm, and sometimes shifting from one foot to the other. The sharpness of the pain soon went off; she was able to attend to the Lessons, and hoped it would soon be quite well; but as soon as she began to think about it, it began to ache and throb, and seemed each moment to be growing hotter. The sermon especially tried her ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge |
