"Acuteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of his own making. He carried a flat brown flask under the box and there were times when his driving was more a matter of muscular habit than of mental acuteness. Twice he was threatened with discharge and twice he solemnly promised reform. At last the inevitable happened. Dan came one morning to Bonfire's stall, very sober and very sad. He patted Bonfire and ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... understood, refers only to the laws of God and to His government of the universe, 128:6 inclusive of man. From this it follows that business men and cultured scholars have found that Christian Science enhances their endurance and 128:9 mental powers, enlarges their perception of character, gives them acuteness and comprehensiveness and an ability to exceed their ordinary capacity. The human 128:12 mind, imbued with this spiritual understanding, becomes more elastic, is capable of greater endurance, escapes somewhat from itself, and requires less repose. A knowl- ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... turning to the cauzee, bade him learn of that child to acquit himself more exactly of his duty; and embracing the boy, sent him home with a purse of a hundred pieces of gold as a token of his liberality and admiration of his acuteness. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... established Theodosius the Spaniard in the Eastern Empire. Military discipline was soon restored to a high level, and the Goth, perceiving that the cowardice and sloth of former princes was ended, became afraid. For the Emperor was famed alike for his acuteness and discretion. By stern commands and by generosity and kindness he encouraged a demoralized army to deeds of daring. But when the soldiers, who had obtained 140 a better leader by the change, gained new confidence, they sought to attack the Goths and drive them from the borders of Thrace. ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... look was one of great acuteness, rather antagonistic, as a rule, than sympathetic; and the hands, which were large and yet slender, were those of a craftsman finely endowed with all ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... This is consequently the time to bring the child into immediate contact with his environment through his senses, in such departments as nature study and field work in geography. Thus is laid the basis of future potentialities of imagery, and through it appreciation of literature. On account of the acuteness of sense activity at this period, this is also the time for memorization of fine passages of prose and poetry. The child's thinking is still of the pictorial rather than of the abstract order, though the powers of generalization and language are considerably extended. The social ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... The Fox's admitted acuteness, combined with the visible swelling, were taken as undeniable evidence, and the revelation undoubtedly met a general desire for information on a point of interest. Nevertheless, there was a murmur the reverse of delighted, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... physician's business to detect the hidden longing for the food of the soul, as much as for any form of bodily nourishment. Especially in the higher walks of society, where this unutterably miserable false shame of Protestantism acts in proportion to the general acuteness of the cultivated sensibilities, let no unwillingness to suggest the sick person's real need suffer him to languish between his want and his morbid sensitiveness. What an infinite advantage the Mussulmans and the Catholics have over many of our more exclusively spiritual sects ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... To realise—when peace is broken—the practical conditions of war demands an effort of which the unfettered intelligence alone seems capable. The great majority of successful leaders in war on both elements have not been considerably, or at all, superior in intellectual acuteness to numbers of their fellows; but they have had strength of character, and their minds were not squeezed in a mould into a commonplace and ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... banished nor recalled by the force of reality by any act of the mind, either to affect our determinations or to sympathise with another. The traveller soon forgets his sufferings and at every future journey their recurrence is attended with diminished acuteness. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... mankind, which seizes upon the different forms they assume, and, remarking the objects of their notice, discovers at the same time the means by which they are attained." If this be a true statement, the acuteness of feminine observation has gained but little in the progress of the centuries, and her literary sisters of the present era can hardly hope to eclipse the penetration of Marie ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... and smiled, and I was surprised to see that he really was bringing his mind to bear on the trivial problem with all the acuteness ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... movements of the troops; their idea was that a dispute had arisen at the Horse Guards. The ordinary sapper is a great deal better educated than the common soldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the possible fight with some acuteness. I described the Heat-Ray to them, and they began to argue ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... you very much for your kind note, which warmed my heart, and for the sketch you have cut out of Punch. It is indeed a fine one, and my father, to whom I showed it yesterday when your letter reached me, was pleased with its acuteness, as well as with the kind messages you sent him and which he requites. He has left last night for good, and I follow to-night to Friedrichsruh. It was a rather melancholy historical event, when my father stepped out of the house in which he has lived for the benefit of my country for nearly twenty-eight ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... sorrows; its health, its sickness; its wealth, its poverty; it compels reason, in spite of herself, to believe, to doubt, to deny; it suspends the exercise of the senses, and imparts to them again an artificial acuteness; it has its follies and its wisdom; and the most perverse thing of all is that it fills its votaries with a complacency more full and complete even than that ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... themselves by prosecuting one another right and left. The Squire, bless his honest, lazy, Leigh Huntish face, comes out strong on these occasions. He has pronounced decisions which, for legal acumen, brilliancy, and acuteness, would make Daniel Webster, could he hear them, tear his hair to that extent—from sheer envy—that he would be compelled to have a wig ever after. But, jesting apart, the Squire's course has been ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... sketches of Irish character were about the shrewdest and the best I ever listened to; and that I am not bribed to this by any flattery, I may remark that they were more often severe than complimentary, and that he hit every blunder of image, every mistake in figure, of my peasant characters, with an acuteness and correctness which made me very grateful to know that his daily occupations were limited to blacking boots, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... I was considered as a man of parts, and therefore easily found admission to the table of Hilarius, the celebrated orator, renowned equally for the extent of his knowledge, the elegance of his diction, and the acuteness of his wit. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... is the case of an old and a prolonged shock, of great acuteness and severity to the affections, the feelings, the—the—as you express it—the mind. The mind. It is the case of a shock under which the sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for how long, because I believe he cannot calculate the ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... book; but it may be dismissed with two remarks. (1) It embodies an error in political economy, namely, that it is spending and not saving that gives employment to the poor. If Mandeville's aim had been less critical, and had he been less delighted with his famous paradox, we may infer from the acuteness of his reasoning on the subject, that he would have anticipated the true doctrine of political economy, as he saw through the fallacy of the mercantile theory. (2) He employs the term, luxury, with great latitude, as including whatever is not a ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... argue or discourse with me, I will endure your asperity for the sake of your acuteness; but it appears to me a more philosophical thing to avoid what is insulting and vexatious, than to breast ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... and never will be an end or limit to this; one catches at one thing, another at another; each has his favourite fancy; pure and open light there is none; every one philosophises out of the cells of his own imagination, as out of Plato's cave; the higher wits with more acuteness and felicity, the duller, less happily, but with equal pertinacity. And now of late, by the regulation of some learned and (as things now are) excellent men (the former license having, I suppose, become wearisome), the sciences ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... to be engrossed by personal interests, together with a life of narrowed circumstances, had somewhat blunted the acuteness of Mrs. Tucker's impressionable sensibilities, yet she could not but be struck at the change these last two weeks had wrought in the aspect of the place. The houses, wont to stand open so that friendly greetings might be exchanged, were now closed and shut; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... questioned me indolently as to my theory of that stage of her development. I must add that he has never seemed surprised at what she said and has occasionally corrected me in my analyses and prophecies with an acuteness that has astonished me, for he was never by way of being analytic, our Roger. When I once remarked to Clarence King (who was devoted to her) apropos of this silence of theirs that it was like the quiet intimacy of the animals, he looked at me deeply for a moment, then added, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... daughter; he remembered her tears and pleading on the preceding day; the situation came to him now, as perceptions come to dull minds, with force that had gathered with the lapse of time. He had not the refinement and acuteness of mind necessary to make him understand the disinterested element in Bates's tyranny, and while he sympathised cunningly with the selfishness of which, in his mind, he accused Bates, it seemed to him that the promise to the dead was broken, and he thought upon such calamities ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... bushel, but the people of the earth flock to hear and see this rara avis. The regret is that such a singer can not sing on forever. It is strange that the human mind can retain the memory of song with such distinctness and acuteness in the different singers and remember the very songs they sang and how and where. When this can be done the singer can well feel that his work has made a lasting impression. Nothing less than the best will satisfy a lover of good music after having enjoyed ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... in olden times in hunting and in the pursuit of fugitives; two services for which his remarkable acuteness of smell, his ability to keep to the particular scent on which he is first laid, and the intelligence and pertinacity with which he follows up the trail, admirably fit him. The use and employment of these dogs date back into remote antiquity. We have ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... puritanical expression, an irritable temperament corrected by habit and discipline. Or in modern times, he is something between Franklin and Charles Fox, with the comfortable double-chin and sleek thriving look of the one, and the quivering lip, the restless eye, and animated acuteness of the other. His eye is quick and lively; but it glances not from object to object, but from thought to thought. He is evidently a man occupied with some train of fine and inward association. He regards the people about him no more ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the different passions of mankind; can seize upon the varied forms which they assume; and marking the objects of their attention, discover, at the same moment, the means they employ to attain them. For this reason, her fables are written with all that acuteness of mind, that penetrates into the very inmost recesses of the human heart; and, at the same time, with that beautiful simplicity so peculiar to the ancient romance language, and which causes me to doubt whether La Fontaine has not rather imitated our author, than the fabulists ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... a nation that never kept such a treaty for more than a week would find itself in a position where it was impossible to make any treaties at all. Still, if upon a vague calculation of men's memories, the acuteness of the circumstance, the advantage ultimately to follow, and so on, it be to the advantage of Prussia to break such solemn treaty, then such a treaty ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... He laid his Disappointment so far to Heart, that in a short Time he was become a mere Skeleton, and was sick almost to death for some Months afterwards. At last, however, by Dint of Reflection, he got the better of his Distemper; and the Acuteness of the Pain he underwent, in some Measure, contributed towards ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... spread a real plague under the scorching rays of the sun. Cardinal Filomarino had either lost his influence or else the dread of losing his popularity made him impotent. Yet he wrote to the Pope: "The wisdom, the acuteness, and the moderation first shown by this man are entirely gone since the signature of the capitulation, and are changed into audacity, rage, and tyranny, so that even the people, his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... this, however, we begin to catch the first faintly-resounding note of modern Thanet. The intelligent reader will no doubt have observed, with his usual acuteness, that up to date we have heard practically nothing of Ramsgate, Margate, and Broadstairs, which now form the real centres of population in the nominal island. Its relations have all been with Rutupiae, Sandwich, Canterbury, and the mainland. But the silting up ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... he carries through the air, and shows him the inside of houses, where they see what is being done in private or secrecy without being seen. Although Asmodeus is not malignant, yet with all his wit, acuteness, and playful malice, we never forget the fiend.—Le ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Segrais observes with much acuteness that they who blame AEneas for his insensibility of love when he left Carthage, contradict their former accusation of him for being always crying, compassionate, and effeminately sensible of those misfortunes which befell others. They give him two contrary characters; but ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... Scots, and once more the new customs were allowed to swell the royal revenue. Thus the revolution was completed. Edward, Gaveston, Lancaster, and Pembroke had each in their turn been tried and found wanting. Thanks to the jealousies of the barons, his own spasmodic energy, and the acuteness of the Despensers, Edward was still to have another chance, under the guidance of his new friends. We shall see how the restored rule of the Despensers was blighted by the same incompetence and selfishness which had ruined their predecessors ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... apparition of a skeleton. Alone or in company," said the unfortunate invalid, "the presence of this last phantom never quits me. I in vain tell myself a hundred times over that it is no reality, but merely an image summoned up by the morbid acuteness of my own excited imagination and deranged organs of sight. But what avail such reflections, while the emblem at once and presage of mortality is before my eyes, and while I feel myself, though in fancy only, the companion of a phantom representing a ghastly ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... force, had produced among the Highland emigrants a spirit of revolt, which it required all the energies of General Greene to counteract, before it could be matured. The zeal and activity of Lieutenant Colonel Lee, united to his acuteness and happy talent of obtaining intelligence of every movement, and of the most secret intentions of the enemy, pointed him out as the fittest man for this important service. He was accordingly selected with orders to impede the intercourse of Lord Cornwallis ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... more anxious watchfulness than those sad, deep-set, hazel ones; and as she was drawn along the train of its inevitable logic, a close observer might have seen how the shadows deepened over them. For, while others listened for the clearness of the thought, for the acuteness of the argument, she listened as a soul wide, fine-strung, acute, repressed, whose every fibre is a nerve, listens to the problem of its own destiny,—listened as the mother of a family listens, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... Magazine; or Universal Review (1756-58) is memorable for Johnson's cooeperation and a half-dozen articles by Goldsmith. Boswell tells us that Johnson wrote for the magazine until the fifteenth number and "that he never gave better proofs of the force, acuteness and vivacity of his mind, than in this miscellany, whether we consider his original essays, or his reviews of the works of others." The London Review of English and Foreign Literature (1775-80) was conducted by the infamous Kenrick and others who ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... their seeing men so much unlike themselves, and things to which they had hitherto been utter strangers; their indifference for the presents of our people, and their general inattention, were sufficient testimonies that they were not endued with any acuteness of understanding. What the ancient poets tell us of Fauns and Satyrs living in hollow trees is realized at Van Dieman's Land. Some wretched constructions of sticks, covered with bark, and which did not deserve the name of ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... grown up, which deterred any but the most resolute students. Of Fearne's essay upon 'Contingent remainders'(published in 1772) it was said that no work 'in any branch of science could afford a more beautiful instance of analysis.' Fearne had shown the acuteness of 'a Newton or a Pascal.' Other critics dispute this proposition; but in any case the law was so perplexing that it could only be fully understood by one who united antiquarian knowledge to the subtlety of a great logician. The 'vast and intricate machine,' as Blackstone calls it, 'of a ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... writes without reserve, he gives his modern readers confidential revelations of the utmost piquancy; and when he words his epistles with diplomatic care, he displays with equal acuteness, to the student familiar with the intrigues of public life at Rome at the time, the sinuosities of contemporary statesmanship and the wiles of the wary politician, and the revelation is all the more entertaining and important because it is an unintentional exhibition. The orations of Cicero ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... their minds at this point was that Jones was insane, probably led thereto by his lonely life; that he was wandering about in the bush in the neighbourhood of the hut, which he continued to visit, as they had seen, and that he had, with a madman's acuteness, purposely misled the hutkeeper about his going to England. Smith and his companion feared to mention their suspicions to the hutkeeper, believing that he would not remain alone on the station if he thought that a maniac was about. Seeing ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... felt a deliverance, but at the same time a certain consciousness that I was not thus to get free of him, but that he was like to be an acquaintance that was to stick to me for good or for evil. I was astonished at his acuteness and knowledge about everything; but, as for his likeness to me, that was quite unaccountable. He was the same person in every respect, but yet he was not always so; for I observed several times, when we were speaking of certain divines and their tenets, that ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... betrayed the fact of her daughter's unhappiness. Yet she would have maintained, and truly, that she had not permitted three sentences to pass her lips on the subject of the Princess Feodoreff. But the acuteness of the mondaine pales before that of the lover. Caroline knew nothing of what Ivan took away with him; nor dreamed that, from this hour, Nathalie's load became the secret burden of another. But perhaps in that ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Swift is much indebted for the plans of his two very original performances: he owes the "Travels of Gulliver" to the "Voyages of Cyrano de Bergerac to the Sun and Moon;" a writer, who, without the acuteness of Swift, has wilder flashes of fancy; Joseph Warton has observed many of Swift's strokes in Bishop Godwin's "Man in the Moon," who, in his turn, must have borrowed his work from Cyrano. "The Tale of a Tub" is an imitation of such various ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Richard could not conceal from himself: Elsie had some new cause of indifference, at least, if not of aversion to him. With the acuteness which persons who make a sole business of their own interest gain by practice, so that fortune-hunters are often shrewd where real lovers are terribly simple, he fixed at once on the young man up at the school ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of them. The new duke of Arschot had in times past, as prince of Chimay, fought against the king, and had even imagined himself a Calvinist, while his wife was still a determined heretic. It is true that she was separated from her husband. He was a man of more quickness and acuteness than his father had been, but if possible more mischievous both to friend and foe; being subtle, restless, intriguing, fickle; ambitious, and deceitful. The Prince of Orange was considered a man of very ordinary intelligence, not more than half witted, according ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... courageous intellectual curiosity, the ardour for truth, the gusto for life, and the love of earth, which we see in Keeling's letters and Barbellion's diary. All is shown in these two books in an exceptional degree, and, in Barbellion's diary, is expressed with a remarkable wit and acuteness, and not seldom, as in the description of a quarry, of a Beethoven Symphony, of a rock-pool of the Devon coast, with a beauty that ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... hands enough upon the undertaking. Let it be remembered what Wanley and Messrs. Planta and Nares have done for the Cottonian and Harleian MSS.—and what Mr. Douce is now doing for those of the Lansdowne collection! One gentleman alone, of a very distinguished college, in whom the acuteness and solidity of Porson seem almost revived, might do wonders for the Greek MSS., and lend an effectual aid towards the arrangement of the others. The printed books might be assigned, according to their several classes, to the gentlemen most conversant with the same; and the numerous bibliographical ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... opinions as these is not the exact height and depth of their falseness, but the considerations which could recommend them to a man of so much knowledge, both of books and of the outer facts of life, and of so much natural acuteness as De Maistre. Persons who have accustomed themselves to ascertained methods of proof, are apt to look on a man who vows that if a thing has been declared true by some authority whom he respects, then that constitutes proof to him, as either the victim of a preposterous and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... A man who is particularly interested in some maiden's voice or footstep will be able to make correct distinctions which simply do not exist for anyone less actively interested in that particular lady. Concentration enables any sense to become more acute. This increased acuteness naturally gives its possessor the power to receive impressions which would otherwise escape record. In the sense of not being usual, this acute sensitiveness of the artist is thus an abnormality: but it is only a variation ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... reigns of Edward the Sixth and Mary, Dr. William Bulleyn ranked high as a physician and botanist. He wrote the first Boke of Simples, which remains among the most interesting literary productions of that era as a record of his acuteness and learning. It advocates the exclusive employment of our native herbal medicines. Again, Nicholas Culpeper, "student in physick," whose name is still a household word with many a plain thinking English person, published in 1652, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... that tooth; Ben-Tovit's entire mouth and his head were filled with terrible sensations of pain, as though he had been forced to chew thousands of sharp, red-hot nails, he took some water into his mouth from an earthen jug—for a minute the acuteness of the pain subsided, his teeth twitched and swayed like a wave, and this sensation was even pleasant as ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... pursuit of their daring plans of annoyance, the restless enterprise of the French even attempted the distant and difficult gorges of the Alleghany, it may easily be imagined that their proverbial acuteness would not overlook the natural advantages of the district we have just described. It became, emphatically, the bloody arena, in which most of the battles for the mastery of the colonies were contested. ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... seat before a series of maps on a sitting-room table an officer of about thirty-five rose to receive us. It struck me that he exemplified self-possessed intelligence and definite knowledge; that he had coolness and steadiness plus that acuteness of perception and clarity of statement which are the gift of the French. You felt sure that no orders which left his hand wasted any words or lacked explicitness. The Staff is the brains of the army, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the race, has remarked their intense keenness of vision. Their eyes, for acuteness, and capability of discerning distant objects, resemble those of the eagle or the lynx; and their cat-like tread among the grass and leaves, seems so light as scarcely to shake off the dew drops. Thus ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... consideration the numerous productions of those learned philologists who have labored so long, and, as many suppose, so successfully, in establishing the principles of our language; and, more especially, when we view the labors of some of our modern compilers, who have displayed so much ingenuity and acuteness in attempting to arrange those principles in such a manner as to form a correct and an easy medium of mental conference; it does, indeed, appear a little like presumption for a young man to enter upon a ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... remarkable for beauty; indeed, they were below the average, with one or two exceptions; they had dark hair, neatly and classically arranged, dark eyes, but sallow complexions and irregular features. The only thing to strike a passer-by was an acuteness and intelligence of countenance, which has often been noticed in a ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Scotland. In the battles Mary's father was defeated, and he thought that the generals and nobles who commanded his army allowed the English to conquer them on purpose to betray him. This thought overwhelmed him with vexation and anguish. He pined away under the acuteness of his sufferings, and just after the news came to him that his daughter Mary was born, he died. Thus Mary became an orphan, and her troubles commenced, at the very beginning of her days. She never saw her father, and her father never saw her. Her mother was a French lady; her name ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... satisfaction that he also was an ardent (not of course a blind) admirer of Whitman. Satisfaction, and a degree almost of surprise; for his intense sense of poetic refinement of form in his own works and his exacting acuteness as a critic might have seemed likely to carry him away from Whitman in sympathy at least, if not in actual latitude of perception. Those who find the American poet "utterly formless," "intolerably rough and floundering," ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Miss Buchanan as he had found her on the occasion of his first visit to the little house in Belgravia. Her acute and rugged face showed not much greater softening for this now wonted guest—showed, rather, a greater acuteness; but any one who knew Miss Buchanan would know from its expression that she liked Franklin Kane. 'Well,' she said, as he drew his chair to the opposite side of the tea-table—very cosy it was, the fire shining upon them, and the canaries ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... over himself that the small wild game began to believe by and by that he was not alive. Birds sang freely over his head and the hare hopped through the undergrowth. Yet the hunter saw everything and his very stillness enabled him to listen with all the more acuteness. ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... eyes: no peep-holes for him, as for Pyramus and Thisbe: no initiation requisite for any hidden mysteries; all arcana are revealed to him, every sanctum is a highway. No art of mortal pen can defeat this mischief of acuteness: character is character; oaks grow of acorns, and the plan of a life may be detected in a microscopic speech. The career of Mr. Jennings is as much predestined by us to iniquity, from the first intimation that he never makes excuse, as honest Roger is to trouble ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... age of 48, after having been for five years afflicted by a paralysis, which did not however affect his mental powers. He was Professor of Public Hygiene, at the School of Medicine, and drew crowded audiences to his lectures. To a mind of rare scientific acuteness and endowments, he added an active and fertile imagination, and great youthfulness of spirit. He inherited the intellectual tendencies of his uncle, and was an intimate friend ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... he cried: "Good-bye! Come back soon!" These words cut into my soul. Was it possible that this little ragamuffin was the only one in that village who was sorry to see me depart and who desired my return? And the acuteness of this cut was not decreased by the remembrance that on several occasions when he had accompanied his mother to my lodging I had given him ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business. than about that of the society, their ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... other, and were in loud and animated conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed the direction of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, 'Come in, Shelley, its only our friend Tre just arrived.' Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands; and although I could hardly ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... long kept her in retirement. A year—more than a year—had elapsed since the incident at Bridges, but I had not encountered him again. I think at bottom I was rather ashamed—I hated to remind him that though I had irremediably missed his point a reputation for acuteness was rapidly overtaking me. This scruple led me a dance; kept me out of Lady Jane's house, made me even decline, when in spite of my bad manners she was a second time so good as to make me a sign, an invitation to her beautiful seat. I once saw her with Vereker at a concert ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... Asculum.[194] He received these things from his father when he took Asculum, but he lost them after his return to Rome, when the guards of Cinna broke into his house and plundered it. He had many preliminary contests with the accuser before the trial commenced, in which, by showing himself to possess an acuteness and firmness above his years, he got great reputation and popularity, so that Antistius,[195] who was praetor and presided at that trial, conceived a great affection for Pompeius, and offered him his daughter to ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... imaginative of us is frankly aware of the fact that a detective is just a common man earning (or pretending to earn) a common living by common and obvious means. Yet in spite of ourselves we are accustomed to attribute superhuman acuteness and a lightning-like rapidity of intellect to this vague and romantic class of fellow-citizens. The ordinary work of a detective, however, requires neither of these qualities. Honesty and obedience are his chief requirements, and if he have intelligence as well, so much the better, ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... were minutes when he hoped she had nothing to say. Unaware of a woman's capacity for keeping the surface unruffled while storm may be raging beneath, he beguiled himself at times into thinking that his fears of her acuteness had been false alarms. If so, he could only be thankful. He wanted to forget. If he had had a prayer to put up on the subject, it would have been that she would allow him to forget. So, as day followed day, regularly, peacefully, with an abstention on her part from ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... darkness and light, the shades of colors, all these are very easily distinguished when the difference is any way considerable, but not when it is minute, for want of some common measures, which perhaps may never come to be discovered. In these nice cases, supposing the acuteness of the sense equal, the greater attention and habit in such things will have the advantage. In the question about the tables, the marble-polisher will unquestionably determine the most accurately. But notwithstanding this want of a common measure for settling ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... purely and simply; he had acquired in the Court of Rome, and, what we may call, the Court of the Royal Prelate, Beaufort, the necessary experience of public affairs and leading individuals, which fitted him to pass sovereign judgment on great men and public events, and he was gifted with the acuteness, the understanding and the prudence to lay down ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... which is constantly taking place in pharmacy, geology, and navigation. A Christian of the fifth Century with a Bible is neither better nor worse situated than a Christian of the nineteenth century with a Bible, candour and natural acuteness being, of course, supposed equal. It matters not at all that the compass, printing, gunpowder, steam, gas, vaccination, and a thousand other discoveries and inventions, which were unknown in the fifth century, are familiar to the nineteenth. None of these discoveries and inventions has ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... eagle, and an eagle he truly is. We're apt to think, Mr. Lennox, that we white people alone gather our forces and prepare for some aim distant but great. But the Indian intellect is often keen and powerful, as I have had good cause to know. Many of their chiefs have an acuteness and penetration not surpassed in the councils of white men. The great Mohawk whom we call King Hendrick probably has more intellect than most of the sovereigns on their thrones in Europe. And as for Joseph, the lad there who so gallantly keeps step with the Onondaga, ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... it was as if already she saw his line. Only she wondered what he would have guessed. If he had guessed anything at all it would be rather remarkable of him. As for what there was to guess, he couldn't—if this was present to him—have arrived at it save by his own acuteness. That acuteness was therefore immense; and if it supplied the subtlety she thought of leaving him to, his portion would be none so bad. Neither, for that matter, would hers be—which she was even actually enjoying. She wondered if really then there mightn't be ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... opinion is, and so I tell you plainly, that you are turning into the wrong road. You have been listening to some mischievous stranger or other - they're always about - and the best thing you can do is, to come out of that. Now you know;' here his countenance expressed marvellous acuteness; 'I can see as far into a grindstone as another man; farther than a good many, perhaps, because I had my nose well kept to it when I was young. I see traces of the turtle soup, and venison, and gold spoon in ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... general loose living. The thief is never the richer by this vile act which impoverishes his victim; for the money obtained by this crime is wasted in others. The folly of theft; its ill economy. What high qualities are laid out to their greatest disadvantage by the thief; acuteness, watchfulness, sagacity, determination, tact. These virtues, coupled with integrity, enrich thousands every year. How many thieves do they enrich? How many thieves are a shilling a year the better for the hundreds of pounds that ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... at variance with the Church. I should consider Michelet a much better authority than M. Collin de Plaucy, who, to judge from his preface to another work, Le Dictionnaire Infernal, slavishly submits his critical acuteness to ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... greater freedom of diction than in some apparently less original chapters, and with a wealth of special illustrations, that the dog is superior to man in acuteness of perception,[5] that he has the power of choice, and possesses an art, that of hunting,[6] and, also, is not deprived of virtue,[7] as the true nature of virtue is to show justice to all, which the dog does by guarding ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... him as possible in the matter of good spirits. Scarcely anything could interfere with the judge's cheerfulness, while Boswell was always falling into depressions about nothing in particular and perhaps indulging in the "foolish notion," rebuked by Johnson, that "melancholy is a proof of acuteness." But in spite of their differences the father and son managed to avoid anything like a definite breach. Boswell was sincerely anxious to please his father, and was constantly urged in that direction by his great mentor: and after all the judge went some way to meet his ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... pressed so severely upon particular States. Though the constitutionality of the law was contested with an earnestness and zeal proportioned to the ruinous effects which were felt from it, and though, as Mr. Chief Justice Marshall has said, (9 Wheat., 192,) "a want of acuteness in discovering objections to a measure to which they felt the most deep-rooted hostility will not be imputed to those who were arrayed in opposition to this," I am not aware that the fact that it prohibited the use of a particular species of property, belonging ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... course. The great principles of war have evolved from centuries of observation on how men react in the mass. It could not be otherwise than that any officer's growth in knowledge of when and how these principles apply to varying situations, strategical and tactical, come primarily of the acuteness of his powers of observation of individual men, and of men working together in groups, and responding to their leadership, under widely different conditions of stress, ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... subject is a curious and interesting one; but, from my perusal of the tract, I should scarcely say that Huet has treated it very successfully, or that the book is at all worthy of his learning or acuteness. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... If every of your wishes had a womb, and foretel every wish, a million] [W: fertil ev'ry] For foretel, in ancient editions, the latter copies have foretold. Foretel favours the emendation, which is made with great acuteness; yet the original reading may, I think, stand. If you had as many wombs as you will have wishes; and I should foretel all those wishes, I should foretel a million of children. It is an ellipsis very frequent in conversation; ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... hear a sound, but I had great faith in Jimmy's hearing, for in old times he had given me some remarkable instances of the acuteness ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... scenting, now it means the power of seeing or perceiving anything easily. In old literature we may read of the sagacity of dogs; keenness of scent. But it is now sharpness of wit; keenness of perception, subtilty, shrewdness, acuteness, penetration, ingenuity. The terms, "attentio," "intentio," "comprehensio," "apprehensio," "penetratio," and understanding are all just so many bodily actions transferred to the expression of mental energies. There is just the same reason for giving ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... seen to be so obvious. She thought of no funeral garments for the old man but one shroud [Greek: speiron] (Odyssey, II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a character of late Ionian, not of genuine old AEolic epic, she should have known better. It is manifest that if even the acuteness and vast erudition of Helbig can only find such invisible differences as these between the manners of the genuine old epic and the late Ionian innovations, there is really no difference, beyond such trifles as diversify ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... acquired by forty-eight things, and these are they—with study, attention, eloquence; an understanding heart, an intelligent heart; with dread and meekness, fear and joy; with attendance on the Sages, the acuteness of companions, and disputations of the disciples; with sedateness, the study of the Bible, and the Mishna; in purity, in taking little sleep, in using little discourse, in being little engaged in traffic, in taking little sport, in enjoying little delight and little worldly manners; ...
— Hebrew Literature
... niece, my dear Madame Campan, I send you both thanks and reproof:—thanks for the brilliant education you have given her, and reproof for the faults which your acuteness must have noticed, but which your indulgence has passed over. She is good-tempered, but cold; well-informed, but disdainful; lively, but deficient in judgment. She pleases no one, and it gives her no pain. She ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Zabriskie, who seemed to have an almost supernatural acuteness of hearing, gave a violent start at this, and spoke up for the first time with real passion ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... them. They may have seen but little; but what they did see, they grasped with surprising force and clearness. They may not have gone far beneath the surface; but, so far as they went, their work was a model of acuteness and precision. This was the secret of their power. To this may be traced their victory in the various tasks that ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... together—were the Priests ABLE to map out the path of the former among the latter? Into that question we need not go. Sufficient to say that they succeeded; and their success—even with the very primitive instruments they had—shows that their astronomical knowledge and acuteness of reasoning were of no ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... down in his present state, and was obliged to submit to a cross-examination, in which he showed no abatement of his natural acuteness, and, unsparing as he always was, laid himself under no restraint at all. Philip was compelled to give a full history of his researches; and if he had afforded no triumph to Guy, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the brute animals. It is not necessary that we should possess the latter, when the former is so manifestly superior to it; and accordingly I do not believe that it is given us, or any of that acuteness of sensation which exists in the dog, the tiger, the vulture, &c.—and which ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... of a hunter, pitting his skill and strength against the marvellous instincts and quick perceptions of the brute, training his senses to preternatural acuteness, but blunting his more tender feelings, his sole aim to shed blood and take life, dependent on luck for his food, exposed to deprivations, storms, and long wanderings, his chief diet flesh, we may more readily comprehend that conspicuous disregard of human suffering, those ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... acuteness of apprehension induces a caution in not resenting the assaults of wit, unless the wounded can retort with success by a similar weapon, or that the attack has been so obvious that he is justified in resenting it by a less poetical one. Hence arises a difficult position ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... serious attempt at a revolt of the slaves that has ever taken place, and will be a warning to us that more vigilance must be exercised. As it is, we have only been saved from the loss of our galleys and slaves by the acuteness of one of the youngest of our knights, who, in the first place, noted a suspicious occurrence which would have been passed by without attracting a moment's thought by ninety-nine out of a hundred men. He laid the matter before his bailiff, ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... This last editor has enriched his edition of these two dialogues with very valuable and copious philological and critical notes, in which he has displayed no less learning than judgment, no less acuteness than taste. He appears indeed to me to be one of the best and most modest of philologists; and it is to be hoped that he will be imitated in what he has done by ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in his voice, and though he stood, with Pine by his side, at the very mouth of the levelled cannon, the mutineers perceived, with that acuteness which imminent danger brings to the most stolid of brains, that, did they hesitate an instant, he would keep his word. There was an awful moment of silence, broken only by a skurrying noise in the prison, as though ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... in the city complained bitterly to the public of Anderson for his perfidy in occupying Fort Sumter, they did not hesitate, among themselves, to express their admiration for his acuteness in evading the dangers and difficulties which surrounded him, and for the skillful manner in which he had ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday |
