"Directness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a marked degree. But the wit which plays while it wounds, which while saying one thing means another, which deals in far-off suggestion and remote allusion, this was something entirely unsuited to the directness and energy of his intellect. Moreover, some of his most marked literary defects were seen here exaggerated and unrelieved. In many of his novels there is prolixity in the introduction. Still in these it is often compensated by descriptions ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... how will ye pay me?" Her question, a certain curiosity tinged by a growing interest in for all its directness, implied no ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a most faithful showing up of spurious repentance, the vain substitute for a downright abandonment of every form of sin, and right-about facing towards the Lord. In directness and point, it is a model for earnest revival preaching,—rather, for all preaching to unsaved souls, outside the church, or within it. All of these will be found in some subterfuge, which must be ruthlessly torn down, before it will be abandoned for ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... "the end of drama is not character but action," there is nothing good that Bach's art does not express. He has plenty of humour, if the term may be applied to art which is, so to speak, always literal,—art in which a jest is a jest and serious things are treated with familiar directness, and all, whether in jest or earnest, is primarily beautiful. In Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan Bach answers the critics who censured him for his pedantry and provincial ignorance of the grand Italian operatic style, by making effective ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... with this way of makin' a livin' I don't 'low ever to let no slip-ups occur," he added with simple directness. There was no suggestion of the morbid in his voice or manner as he said this, but instead ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... in hers. It was very peculiar of him to break out in prayer after such an abrupt fashion—in the presence of an older minister than himself—and praying for him too! But there was such an appearance of reality about the man! such a simplicity in his look! such a directness in his petitions! such an active fervor of hope in his tone—without an atom of what she had heard called unction! His thought and speech appeared to arise from no separated sacred mood that might be assumed and laid aside, but from present faith ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... personal freedom rests on precisely the same grounds as the knowledge of our personal existence. The same "immediate consciousness" which attests that I exist, attests also, with equal distinctness and directness, that I ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... from the inner to the outer aspects of the old-time tale is to meet another cause of its value to children. This is the value of its style. Simplicity, directness, and virility characterise the classic fairy tales and the most memorable relics of folklore. And these are three of the very qualities which are most seriously lacking in much of the new writing for children, and which are always necessary elements in the ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... is that it's infernal to think that some one may be shedding precious tears on your grave and you not there to see. I've often wondered if one could get a ticket of leave for such an occasion." He smiled down at her with baffling directness. "I should value those ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... asked Cartoner, with the simple directness of those who have no self-consciousness—who are absorbed, but not in themselves, as are the majority ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... harmonizing principle was called for the discord existed confessedly, and the one course had been the palinode of the other. But such a theory is quite inadmissible to our minds; it tallies neither with the long-headed and comprehensive sagacity of Sir Robert Peel, nor with the spirit of simplicity, directness, and determination in the Duke of Wellington. Next came an evening paper, of high character for Conservative honesty and ability, which (having all along justified the past policy of vigilant neutrality) could not be supposed to acknowledge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the officers at South Norwalk had been fully exerted, and no result further than that already mentioned had been achieved. The evidence against Bucholz, although circumstantially telling against him, was not of sufficient weight or directness to warrant a conviction upon the charge preferred against him. He had employed eminent legal counsel, and their hopeful views of the case had communicated themselves to the mercurial temperament of the prisoner, and visions of a full and entire acquittal ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... as the inner temper of a man always is reflected, in his style of written prose. The merits of Macaulay's prose are obvious enough. It naturally reproduces the good qualities I of his understanding, its strength, manliness, and directness. That exultation in material goods and glories of which we have already spoken, makes his pages rich in colour, and gives them the effect of a sumptuous gala-suit. Certainly the brocade is too brand-new, and has none of the delicate charm that comes to such finery when it is a little faded. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... needed his father's summons to draw the expert Westy to Miss Brent: he was already gravitating toward her, with the nonchalance bred of cosmopolitan successes, but with a directness of aim due also to ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... of the age of artificiality!" said Ella; "and what an apt commentary upon the subject we were talking about, Phyllis! We were discussing the merits of directness in speech and straightness in every way. We were ridiculing the timid maid—all sandals and simper—of forty years ago. Why should men and women have ever taken the trouble to be affected? Let us go in to lunch and eat with the appetites of men and women of the nineties, ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... to go to the city—to school," Myrtle said, with the directness which belonged to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... I still have a good deal of a reputation"—she turned upon him with more directness and a little laughing pugnacity—"as though I were the same terrible child, up to the same riotous tricks as when ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... one, I came upon an editorial article. The rapid increase of the habit of talking tommyrot was dwelt upon and the necessity for prompt action was emphasized. The objects of the society were set forth with a naked directness, likely, I feared, to cause offence. Then came a paragraph, most disquieting to me, in which the generous gentleman whose aid had rendered the publication of the magazine possible was subjected to a good deal of praise. His ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... a sterility in literature. Out of the great mass that was written, however, two productions stood out in their nobility of thought and in their classic directness of expression. These were the address before Congress by President Wilson on the night of April 2, 1917, when, recognizing fully the dread responsibility of his action, he pronounced the words which led America ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... with no fondness for luxury or dress, possessing simple and quiet tastes, never striving for effect, always preferring half-tints to a blaze of light, her expression and demeanor always had a quality of simplicity and directness which fascinated Napoleon, who was very glad to turn from experienced coquettes to a ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... exactly what she seemed to be; and presently she was saying in a low voice, with her smiling, unoffending directness: ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... nothing of a neck—for a cursore. He does without a spiral gullet. The festive cassowary—which, by-the-bye, doesn't abound—or exist—on the plains of Timbuctoo, as the rhyme says—the festive cassowary, I say, wears his gullet plain. The rusty rhea takes things below with perfect directness. The lordly emeu gets his dinner down as quickly as the length of his neck will permit. It is only when one reaches the top of the cursorean thermometer, all among the boilings, so to speak, that the ostrich, with the longest neck of all, must ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... by force of our own statutes. In his addresses, both to courts and juries, he affected to despise all eloquence, and certainly disdained all ornament; but his efforts, whether addressed to one tribunal or the other, were marked by a degree of clearness, directness, and force not easy to be equalled. There were no courts of equity, as a separate and distinct jurisdiction, in New Hampshire, during his residence in that State. Yet the equity treatises and equity reports were all in his library, not ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... when he told him that his version was a pretty poem but he must not call it Homer. By this criticism, however, as Matthew Arnold has observed, the work is judged in spite of all its power and attractiveness. Pope wants Homer's simplicity and directness, and his artifices of style are utterly alien to the Homeric spirit. Dr. Johnson quotes the judgment of critics who say that Pope's Homer 'exhibits no resemblance of the original and characteristic manner of the Father of Poetry, as it wants his awful simplicity, his artless ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... inconceivably difficult to bear. He never once removes his eye from you till you are quite past his range; and you feel it all the same, although you do not meet his glance. He is perfectly respectful; but the intentness and directness of his silent appeal is far worse than any impudence. In fact, it is the very flower of impudence. I would rather go a mile about than pass before his battery. I feel wronged by him, and yet unutterably ashamed. There must be great force in the man to produce such an effect. There is nothing of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... those of Lovejoy and Wendell Phillips were more vehement and impassioned; Senators Seward, Hale, Trumbull, and Chase spoke from a more conspicuous forum; but Lincoln's were more philosophical, while as able and earnest as any, and his manner had a simplicity and directness, a clearness of statement and felicity of illustration, and his language a plainness and Anglo-Saxon strength, better adapted than any other to reach and influence the common people,—the mass ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... whole affair stuck in Lloyd's imagination. There was a primitiveness, a certain hideous simplicity in the way Bennett had met the situation that filled her with wonder and with even a little terror and mistrust of him. The vast, brutal directness of the deed was out of place and incongruous at this end-of-the-century time. It ignored two thousand years of civilisation. It was a harsh, clanging, brazen note, powerful, uncomplicated, which came jangling in, discordant and inharmonious with the tune of the age. ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... know any one who goes?" asked Reggie, with a directness which shocked his friend's sense of ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the night, as she sat by the open window. She sat silent for almost an hour reviewing in her mind many plans of attack. But she was too vigorous a woman to be much of a strategist, and she usually came to her point with directness. At last she cut her thread and suddenly put ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... the Emperor without clothes can be matched, for simplicity and searching directness, against any parable outside of the Gospels, and it agrees with the Divine parables in exalting the wisdom of a child. I will not dare to discuss that wisdom here. I observe that when the poets preach it we tender them our applause. We ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mch 22, '92. SUSY DEAR,—I have been delighted to note your easy facility with your pen and proud to note also your literary superiorities of one kind and another—clearness of statement, directness, felicity of expression, photographic ability in setting forth an incident—style—good style—no barnacles on it in the way of unnecessary, retarding words (the Shipman scrapes off the barnacles when he wants his racer to go her best gait and straight ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... accepted. Its processes were intuitively correct and almost instantaneous, while its assumptions were arbitrary in the extreme. It might begin to act at any point whatsoever, and unlike the material man, which required a will to move it at first, it struck spontaneously with the directness of straight lightning from one point to another, never misled in its path, though often fatally mistaken in the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... recalled me to the infinitely deeper misery of my present situation, and conscious of the conclusions which might be drawn from such impulsive utterances, I pulled myself together and proceeded to finish my story with greater directness. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... impressed by the rugged directness of the fellow, convinced he already half believed my brief explanation. He stepped outside into the sunlight searching the road that led away across the flat distance; returning he indulged in a single ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... we see why it is that he has always been distinguished for his purity of motive, simplicity of manners, and republican plainness in his style of living and in his intercourse with society. To the same causes may be ascribed his firmness, his directness of purpose, and his unyielding adherence to personal as well as political liberty. You have recently seen him stand as unmoved as the rock of Gibraltar, defending the right of petition, and the constitutional privileges of the representatives of the people, assembled ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... influence into an intellectually insufferable type. A conversion by which Hazlitt profited, for she tolerated him more easily as a result of her ruse. She thought of him. His youth was fast entrenching itself in platitudes and acquiring the vigor and directness that come as a reward of conformity. Life was nothing to wonder at or feel. Life shaped itself into definite images and inelastic values before him. To these images and values he conformed, not submissively, but with a militant enthusiasm. On summer mornings he saw ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... 'young shavers' and 'two-shoes'—so he called all little boys and girls—whenever he put pennies into it, they turned into sugar-plums or gingerbread, or some other nice thing. Indeed, little Bessie Parrot, a flaxen-headed 'two-shoes', very white and fat as to her neck, always had the admirable directness and sincerity to salute him with the question—'What zoo dot ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... to her. The next moment there was a lull, and the girl looked across her shoulder and called 'Clahowya!' At the same time she rested on her oars long enough to take off her hat and toss it with careless directness on my breathing hole. The squaw's answer came from above me, and she repeated and intoned the word so that it seemed part of her dirge. 'Clahowya! Clahowya! Clahowya! Wake tenas papoose. Halo! Halo!' The despair of it cut me worse than lashes. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... artistic eye, while the white topee hat, with the long blue veil, failed to hide the attractive carriage of her head. He felt impatient to see her unhatted and unveiled. Certainly she was not dowdy, nor had she any aggressive cleverness about her. Indeed, there was something which suggested a man's directness of mind and a simplicity which was quite unusual and fascinating. He could almost have laughed aloud when he thought of the picture which he had conjured up to himself of the Meg who could "tackle pretty stiff stuff and suck the guts out of a ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... it. The lyric poetry that has been written in Greece since the time of Koraes is not wanting, if a foreigner may express an opinion, in tenderness and grace The writer who shall ennoble Greek prose with the energy and directness of the ancient style ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... appeared in due course, and it stated the position of the Church of England as the historical and continuous Church in this land, with an uncompromising directness which would have satisfied Bishop Stubbs or Professor Freeman. With equal directness, it affirmed that Protestantism, "with its three notable tenets of predestination, original sin, and justification, has been pounding away for three centuries at St. ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... procession who had not unmixed delight in it. She had a certain shamefacedness about going through the streets in such a fashion. She avoided looking at the people whom she met, and kept her head slightly bent and averted, instead of carrying it with the proud directness which was her habit. She felt vaguely that this was the element of purely personal vanity which degrades a triumph, and the weakness of delight and gloating in the faces of her relatives irritated her. It was a sort of unveiling of love, and the girl was sensitive enough ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fatal resemblance between the two daughters of one father, the conspiracy of which Anne had been the innocent instrument and Laura the innocent victim could never have been planned. With what unerring and terrible directness the long chain of circumstances led down from the thoughtless wrong committed by the father to the heartless injury inflicted on ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... surprised and shocked as I replied, "I do not believe that Keseberg was responsible for my mother's death," that he interrupted me, lost for a moment the manner of the impartial historian, and with the directness of a cross-questioning ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... The directness of the question seemed to shake the girl out of her enforced calm. A slow flush mounted into her pale cheeks and then died away, again leaving them whiter than before. "I do not know—oh, I do not know what ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... which Miss Lady looked out one day as she sat in a big rocking-chair in the shade, in a favorite spot of the wide gallery, feeling dreamily, if not definitely, the spirit of the idle landscape which lay shimmering in the sun. Her gaze gained directness and comprehension at last. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... careless speech, which a day earlier would have passed unheeded, aroused all her instincts of defense. She was half-aware of the irony by which their talk about the nephews of Jack Holton had carried them with so fateful a directness ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... nominally Friends, but they had gradually slipped away from the directness of speech, the plainness of dress, and the simplicity of the Quakers. They were getting rich on government contracts—and who wants to be ridiculous anyway? So, with consternation, the father and mother ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... not repeat the question. In a little while the mother's wandering thoughts began to find words again, and she went on talking in broken sentences out of which little could be gleaned. At length she said, turning to Edith and speaking with the directness of one ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... shifted uneasily in his chair; the truculent directness of the detective was unpleasing ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... his previous executive experience and his intimate knowledge of the University, but also by those qualifications which had made him so long a leader in the Faculties of the University. An unusually dignified presence and somewhat judicial manner only conceal a rare simplicity, directness, and kindliness revealed to every one with whom he comes into personal contact. He has the rare qualification of a real and sincere interest in the affairs of those with whom he is dealing, and the kindly sympathy, invariably shown toward every one with whom the wide range of his duties ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... violence of language, did not alienate most of his contemporaries. Even his Latin works, too harshly described by Hallam as "bellowing in bad Latin," were well adapted to the spirit of the age. But nothing like his German writings had ever been seen before. In lucidity and copiousness of language, in directness and vigor, in satire and argument and invective, in humor and aptness of illustration and allusion, the numerous tracts, political and theological, which poured from his pen, surpassed all that had hitherto ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... The Village Blacksmith.—The directness and homely strength of "The Village Blacksmith" have made it deservedly popular. One questions whether the last stanza might not have been omitted with advantage both to the unity and ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... affectation of simplicity covers and reveals by turns a great thirst for ingenuity. Swift's prose is a fair example; in the "Tale of a Tub" and even in "Gulliver" at first sight there seems to appear only an honest and simple directness; but pry beneath the surface statements, or allow yourself to be dazzled by their coruscations of meaning, and you immediately see you are watching a stylistic prestidigitator. The later, more orderly dignity of ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... brutal directness of his look her own eyes slowly sank. A very faint tinge of colour crept over her pallor, but she made no signs ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... that the rules for the interpretation of auguries and omens, were far too indefinite and vague to answer the purpose for which they were now appealed to. The most unequivocal distinctness and directness in giving its responses is a very essential requisite in any tribunal that is called upon as an umpire, to settle disputes; while the ancient auguries and oracles were always susceptible of a great variety of interpretations. When Remus and Romulus commenced their ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... from incredulity to anger; then almost as swiftly came to a resolve, which was as mad and harebrained as could have been expected from a lad in his eighteenth year who held the reins of power. Yet by its very directness and its superb ignoring of all obstacles, legal and canonical, it was invested ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... to see that students waste a vast amount of time and form many harmful habits because they do not know how to use their minds. The recognition of this condition is taking the form of the movement toward "supervised study," which attempts to acquaint the student with principles of economy and directness in using his mind. It is generally agreed that there are certain "tricks" which make for mental efficiency, consisting of methods of apperceiving facts, methods of review, devices for arranging work. Some are the fruits of psychological ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... brutal directness of reply, "I have been very much interested with his energy; he is the hardest-working man ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... infallibility; his classical quality is not obedience to tradition but insight, into the underlying laws that made tradition. Here we have a splendid example of his perfection of mass, balance and finish and of quiet, inspiring depth and directness of feeling. Creation extends life-giving arms over the universe. Serene, brooding, blessing, the noble face emerges from mysterious shadows of the enveloping mantle. The sculptural quality of the draperies, their weight and texture ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... of these hands, this bold lover schemed with palpable directness, proposing that she should hear how their hunting songs were sung, with a chorus that signalled hands to be clasped. So his splendid voice gave the verses, and, as the chorus was taken up, he claimed her hands, and, even through the easy grip, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... were involved therein. During the revolutionary war, he faithfully maintained his testimony against the shedding of blood, and suffered considerably for refusing to pay military taxes. Isaac's mother was noted for her fearless character, and blunt directness of speech. She was educated in the Presbyterian faith, and this was a source of some discordant feeling between her and her husband. The preaching of her favorite ministers seemed to him harsh and rigid, while she regarded Quaker exhortations as insipid and formal. But as time ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... Promise Me" has a few opening notes that remind one of "Musica Proibita," but it was a taking lyric that stuck in the public heart. His setting of Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue" is a work of purest pathos and directness. His version of "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" is among the best of its countless settings, and "The Fool of Pamperlune," the "Indian Love Song," "In June," and a few ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... why," she said calmly, emotionlessly. He drew back instantly, chilled by her directness. "You came because there was promise of an interesting adventure, which you now are on the point of making impossible by a ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... that intense glowing love of the Holy Faith, which even still, in a measure, differentiates the north of England from the south?[C] We must value very greatly the solid foundation of strength, sincerity, what we call grit, directness of expression, simplicity, to be found in early English work; all these being great things, yet capable of receiving into their fellowship and above it and beyond it, that which should give what we look for in a great literature; the power of appeal to various kinds of ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... thrusts, nearly all in the low line, without uttering the usual cries. Sperelli, nothing daunted by this onslaught, and wishing to avoid an actual hand-to-hand fight, parried vigorously, and returned with such directness that he might, had he so wished, have run his adversary through the body each time. Rutolo's leg was ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... became an issue of the gravest political character, and of the deepest personal interest; and a steady pursuit of this object, from October, 1768, to March, 1770, gave unity, directness, and an ever-painful foreboding to the local politics, until the flow of blood created ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... grave wonder, and then said with her old directness: "But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I should have told you." She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color. "I mean," she said hesitatingly, "of course you have acted nobly, generously, kindly, wisely—but I hate secrets! Oh, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... disciples; take the trite instance of Carlyle, whose influence twenty years ago ruined styles innumerable. Shakspere and Congreve, possibly our two supreme prose artists, have styles which, in directness and freedom from mannerism, are well suited to be models for the young journalist; but since they wrote only dialogue, now archaic in many details, it is very difficult for the young journalist ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... your 'Luria,' if that is ceasing to be with you—which it is, I feel at last. Yet the new act is powerful and subtle, and very affecting, it seems to me, after a grave, suggested pathos; the reasoning is done on every hand with admirable directness and adroitness, and poor Luria's iron baptism under such a bright crossing of swords, most miserably complete. Still ... is he to die so? can you mean it? Oh—indeed I foresaw that—not a guess of mine ever touched such an end—and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... indeed. Bronzed, bearded, corduroy-clothed, cigarette-smoking,—for cigars fifty miles from a railroad are a curiosity,—as the seasons are dissimilar, so was he unlike his former inconsequent self. In his every action now was a directness and a purpose of which he had not even a conception in his ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... her look with a directness oddly disconcerting. "I was commemorating the occasion, ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... not diminish, but increases, as the months roll by. The call for men to join our fighting forces, which is our primary need, has been and is being nobly responded to here at home and throughout the empire. That call, we say with all plainness and directness, was never more urgent or more imperious than today. For this is a war not only of men but of material. To take only one illustration, the expenditure upon ammunition on both sides has been on a scale and at a rate which is not only without ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... patriarchal societies the fear of the god of the tribe, the overpowering influence of custom and the unswerving directness of the punishment of the man who violates it tend to prevent the development of individuality and of independent thinking; and the normal attitude of practically every person is to obey the customs and the laws, although often those laws ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... her sex, by the manner of her upbringing. Yet, withal, she was purely womanly. In appearance she was tall and fair, her figure slender but firmly-built; she was lissom in all her movements and a general air of independence, in harmony with the frankness of her speech and the directness of her gaze, hung around her. She was a large-hearted girl and no one but her banker knew of the thousands of pounds that were quietly distributed amongst the charities of the city every year: a decided eccentricity, and most directly opposed to ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... this appeal,—the very directness of it seemed to increase the irritation of the mob, that pressing closer and closer, began to jostle and hustle him in a threatening manner that boded ill for his safety,—he was again taken prisoner, and struggling ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... The brutal directness of the masculine shopper arouses a certain combative derision in the feminine onlooker. A cat that spreads one shrew-mouse over the greater part of a long summer afternoon, and then possibly loses him, doubtless feels the same ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... curious, and almost godlike air of simplicity and native directness. He reminded her of an apparition, the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... of this work truly says that any designer who fairly tries the graphical method will be pleased with the simplicity and directness of the analysis, even for apparently complex forms. The hindrance to the general use of the method is the want of knowledge of the higher mathematics, which are largely used in most treatises on the subject. Professor Greene has avoided ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... of style. Yet there is in this volume much of the author's usual boldness of originality and peculiar felicity of expression. Our readers have been made acquainted with the high merits of Dr. Bethune as a poet, by his contributions to "Graham;" but highly as we appreciate his verse, there is a directness, an originality, an old-fashioned power in his prose which we prefer, and which we think place him in the first class of American writers. On subjects like that treated in the volume before us, his whole heart and mind seem to be poured into his pages; and in ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... and Lady Lamington, Lord Brassey, Lord Avebury, Sir Frederick Young and many other interesting or important personages. The speech delivered by the Prince of Wales was one which startled England from its directness of statement and its eloquence of style and delivery. It was not merely a clear, or good description of the tour; it was the utterance of one who was both statesman and orator. His Royal Highness referred to the historic title which he now bore, to the voyage, unique in character and rich ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... purpose by the employment of the Fewest Parts, casting aside every detail not absolutely necessary, and guarding carefully against the intrusion of mere traditional forms and arrangements. The latter are apt to insinuate themselves, and to interfere with that simplicity and directness of action which is in all cases so desirable a quality in mechanical structures. PLAIN COMMON SENSE should be apparent in the general design, as in the form and arrangement of the details; and a general ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... sympathetic interpretation, the realising and anticipating power of deep feeling and penetrative imagination; the other, at first sight, little related to poetry, a hard-headed, ingenious, prosaic shrewdness and directness of common sense, dealing practically with things as they are and on the whole, very little curious about scientific questions and precision, argumentative in a fashion modelled on Bishop Butler, and full of logical resource, good and, often it must be ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... and mighty with Gracie for the rest of her days, her heart smote her, and flinging her former resolution to the winds, she followed Maggie's example, and laying her hand persuasively on Gracie's muff, said, with her usual directness: ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... clearly, logically, and to express himself intelligibly and earnestly, let him give his days and nights to WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. His ear will thus accustom itself to forms of phrase whose only mannerism is occasioned by the fulness of thought and the directness of expression; and he will not easily, through the habits which either his understanding or his ear will acquire, fall into the fluent cadences of that sort of writing in which words are used without discrimination of their nice meanings,—where the sentences are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... think I do! I thought it one of the prettiest stories I had ever read, or heard read. Its fearless directness, without the least affectation of boldness, enchanted me. How one—clearly a woman—whose grammar was nowise to be depended upon, should yet get so swiftly and unerringly at what she wanted to say, has remained ever since a worshipful wonder to me. But I have seen something like it ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... his place by her side, deliberately removed his muffler and unfastened his overcoat. It struck her, from the first moment she heard his voice, that his manner was somehow altered. She was altogether unprepared, however, for the almost stern directness of his first question. "Miss Beverley," he began, "will you allow me to ask you how long you have ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Celtic or Iberian brilliance was balanced by a classical delicacy and precision of feature. He had the brow, the nose, the upper lip, the finely-moulded chin, which belong to the more severe and spiritual Greek type. Certainly of Greek blitheness and directness there was no trace. The eye was wavering and profoundly melancholy; all the movements of the tall, finely-built frame were hesitating and doubtful. It was as though the man were suffering from paralysis of some moral muscle ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 30, 1429, she set about inquiring after the messenger who carried her proclamation to the English from Blois—the one which she had dictated at Poitiers. Here is a copy of it. It is a remarkable document, for several reasons: for its matter-of-fact directness, for its high spirit and forcible diction, and for its naive confidence in her ability to achieve the prodigious task which she had laid upon herself, or which had been laid upon her—which you please. All through it you seem to see the pomps of war and hear the rumbling of the drums. In it Joan's ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... I went through that phase. We all do. But we emerge. I mean, of course, when we have anything to express. Metaphysical verbosity is a friendly refuge. But as a rule years and hard knocks drive us to directness of expression. . . . But poets must begin young. And New York is not ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Fraser with a frank directness of sloe-black eyes that had never known coquetry. She was washing handkerchiefs, and her sleeves were rolled to the elbows of the slender, but muscular, ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... secondary details, all the less important incidents, and proceeds to her narrative of Columbus's discovery, the colonial period, the founding of our Republic, and its subsequent life down to the present year, with the simple directness of a dramatist; there is no halting in her impetuous relation; it is infused throughout with the same degree of philosophical ardor, and one follows as one does a wonder tale the rapid sequence of events, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 36, July 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... that the adventures of innocence have so often been the material of fiction? Yes," Voyt replied; "that's exactly what the bored reader complains of. He has asked for bread and been given a stone. What is it but, with absolute directness, a question of interest or, as people say, of the story? What's a situation undeveloped but a subject lost? If a relation stops, where's the story? If it doesn't stop, where's the innocence? It seems ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... Jenny, after a long pause, during which Von Barwig put on his cape coat. Once more he did not appear to hear her, and Jenny repeated the question. "What's her name, Herr Von Barwig?" This time she spoke with directness. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... report is a volume of not less than twenty thousand words. His testimony is marked by the qualities for which he was known both on the civil and military side of his career. These qualities were clearness of thought, accuracy and readiness of memory, directness of expression and the absence of remarks in the nature of exaggeration or embellishment. The character of the man and the history of events may gain something from an examination of his testimony upon three important points to which it related: the opinion of President ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... Sandy!" Sheila interrupted authoritatively, with sisterly directness. "I'm quite able to look after my own affairs. Mr. Farwell is sorry. You be white enough to let ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... 7: Not, He commanded the bier to be set down. The Mn.E. passive in such sentences is a loss both in force and directness.] ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... for the existence of the Church of England itself. The majority of the English clergy denounced the proposition, and some even declared its author a madman; but Mr. Gladstone pursued his chosen way with energy and directness. In one of those elevated speeches with which he was accustomed to ennoble debate, he laid the details of his plan open to the Commons. The Irish Church was to be disestablished and disendowed, its ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... minute she opened the door, and answered the mortgage jobber's somewhat embarrassed greeting with a frigid stare. Having some experience of Sally's uncompromising directness, he was inclined to fancy that the game was up, but he said nothing further, and she fixed ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... first stages in the battle was necessarily to fight for the rights of the workingman. For this reason I felt most strongly that all that the government could do in the interest of labor should be done. The Federal Government can rarely act with the directness that the State governments act. It can, however, do a good deal. My purpose was to make the National Government itself a model employer of labor, the effort being to make the per diem employee just as much as the Cabinet officer ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... directness of purpose may be traced in the career of Pitt, who lived—ay, and died—for the sake of political supremacy. From a child, the idea was drilled into him that he must accomplish a public career worthy of ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... visited St. Jude's for months had promised themselves the luxury of feeling they were listening to the Rev. Augustus Cracklethorpe for the last time. The Rev. Augustus Cracklethorpe had prepared a sermon that for plain speaking and directness was likely to leave an impression. The parishioners of St. Jude's, Wychwood-on-the-Heath, had their failings, as we all have. The Rev. Augustus flattered himself that he had not missed out a single one, and was looking forward with pleasurable ...
— The Cost of Kindness - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... the subjects under discussion, and viewed only as literary productions, they may be ranked among the highest intellectual efforts of their author. Their sarcasm is Junius-like,— cold, keen, unsparing. In boldness, directness, and eloquent appeal, they will bear comparison with O'Connell's celebrated 'Letters to the Reformers of Great Britain'. They are the offspring of an intellect unshorn of its primal strength, and combining the ardor of youth ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... on that the free-handed gentleman beyond the seas had not made a settlement, but had given a handsome present and was apparently to be looked to, across the water, for other favours. People are simplified alike by great contentments and great yearnings, and, whether or no it was Gravener's directness that begot my own, I seem to recall that in some turn taken by our talk he almost imposed it on me as an act of decorum to ask if Miss Anvoy had also by chance expectations from her aunt. My enquiry drew ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... His first words he scarcely heard and never remembered. He had not come to make a defense, but a naked, bitter confession. As he made it low and monotonously, in brief, harsh words, holding no sparing for himself, Rebecca stood with her hand upon the mantle looking at him with simple directness. There was no rebuke in her look, but there was weariness. It occurred to him once or twice and with a terribly humiliating pang, that she was tired of ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with a start, and looking straight at her father. He was taken aback by the directness of the statement; he exclaimed as if an unexpected blow had struck him. Had he loved her to see her swept away by this torrent, to have her taken from him by this uncontrollable force, to stand by helpless, ignored? ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... paper. He was permitted to enlarge upon all the circumstances of the occasion, and to surround the execution of the assignment with the most ingenious plausibilities. He told his story with a fine show of candor, and with great directness and clearness, and undoubtedly made a profound impression upon the Court and the jury. Then Mr. Cavendish passed him into the hands of ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... English aristocracy; so that the estate was but little enlarged since the reign of James, though profiting, of course, by improved cultivation and the different value of money. On the other hand, perhaps there were scarcely ten families in the country who could boast of a similar directness of descent on all sides from the proudest and noblest aristocracy of the soil; and Sir Miles St. John, by blood, was, almost at the distance of eight centuries, as pure a Norman as his ancestral William. His grandfather, nevertheless, had deviated from ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... smiling with confidence, led her friend, perplexed and entangled as he was by the whole dream-like and confusing puzzle—led him to the armchair she had just vacated, and then seated herself at his feet upon a high footstool and stared into his eyes with a sweet and irresistible directness of gaze that at once increased both his sense of bewilderment and ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... because you want to know?" inquired Sandy with the directness which characterized everything ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... silver dollar and one five-dollar bill back in her purse. She clutched the other bill in her left hand, picked up a pencil, and began to write. She headed the petition: "To all who know and love the mountains," and she told the story with the simpleness of one speaking from the heart, and the directness of one who speaks to those sure to understand. "And so I found her here by the Denver paper," she said, after she had stated the tragic facts, "because it was the closest she could come to the mountains. Her heart is not breaking because she is going blind. It is breaking because she may ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... into a lady-in-waiting to a small German Grand-Duchess, was a terrible blow. But what was to be done? Lord Skye had drafted her into the service and she could not decently refuse to help him when he came to her side and told her, with his usual calm directness, what his difficulties were, and how he counted upon ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... addresses him with a frankness of passion that has no idea of concealment. She does not even take the pains to seal her letters to him, though they contain what most women would hesitate to put on paper. They have all the same directness, which sometimes becomes a splendid simplicity. One note, reproaching ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... the commonplaces people uttered to each other disjointed and fragmentary, while it was plain that few were aware whether music was being rendered or not. Anyone sensitive to pervading mental currents in gatherings of this sort would have found the relief of concentration and directness only near the buffet that ran along one side of the room, where the natural instinct played, without impediment, upon soup ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Goodwin, with equal directness, "but you can't have any. You're drinking yourself to death, Blythe. Your friends have done all they could to help you to brace up. You won't help yourself. There's no use furnishing you with money to ruin ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... of eating, it appears, must go on all through creation. We eat ducks, turkeys, and chickens, though we don't swallow them whole, feathers and all. Our four-footed friends, less civilized, take things with more directness and simplicity, and chew each other up without ceremony, or swallow each other alive. Of these unceremonious habits we ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... directness of execution which had been the strength of the Sung art gradually gave way during the Ming era to complicated conceptions and elaborate effects. The high glow of life faded; the lyrical temper and impassioned work of the Sung ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... a rugged directness about the description of rushing runs on the rail, through which one can hear the thump-thump of the machinery as the engine dashes over the rails, and which seems to be illumined by the glow of the headlights and ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... she was ten and had lived all her life among the rocks and the sage and the stunted cedars and huge, gray hills of Idaho. Meet her with her pink sunbonnet hanging down the back of her neck and her big eyes taking in the squalidness of Marthy's crude kitchen in the Cove, and her terrible directness of speech hitting squarely the things she saw that were different from her own immaculate home. Of course, if you don't care for children, you may skip a chapter and meet her later when she was eighteen—but I really wish you would ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... The directness of the question took Julia by surprise, and, falsehood being unnatural to her, she hesitated, hardly knowing what to answer. Her hesitation was only momentary; but in that moment there came up such a wave of pity for ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... you tell with admirable simplicity and directness of the suffering heroically endured by such numbers of poor fugitives, will instruct and inspire many who have regarded the American slave as a member of ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... letter on her table, she had intended returning at once to pleasant and frivolous conversation with Dick Bellamy. For to-night she was nervous—a little unstrung, it may be, by the pain she had given to his brother; and Dick, with his quiescent vitality, his odd phrases and uncompromising directness of expression, seemed to her at that moment the most restful companion in the world. If she could only get him started, he might amuse and interest her as on the long drive the day before. And then, he seemed ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... me gin your faither and you bide thegither withoot ony woman body, did I no hear that yince; is that the case na?" demanded the lady of Craig Ronald with astonishing directness. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... recovered himself and laughed. "You speak with directness." He suddenly turned solemn. He bent toward her and lowered his voice; his hand would have touched her arm, but ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... despair she tells Alfio the story of his wife's inconstancy. Alfio challenges Turiddu to mortal combat, and kills him as the curtain falls. Squalid as the story is, it is full of life and movement, and has that simple directness which is essential to success. The music is melodious, if not very original, and vigorous even to brutality. Mascagni here shows a natural instinct for the theatre. His method is often coarse, but ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... of their power to harm. Sagacious in the study of causes, he was still more sagacious in tracing their connection with effects; and his speculations often lose somewhat of their grandeur by the simple and unpretending directness with which he adapts them to the common understanding and makes them minister to the common wants of life. The ambition which quickened his early exertions met an early reward. He was ambitious to write well, and he became one of the best writers in our language. He was ambitious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... had never before been addressed with harshness, failed to understand the tone of this speech, and answered with amiable directness— ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... though so near the equator, and the soil, though often unfertile, is admirably adapted to the rearing of sheep and cattle. The adjoining islands offer the finest opportunities for the commercial enterprise of the Englishman; and its directness of navigation to India or China, across an ocean that scarcely knows a storm, give it the promise of being the great eastern depot of the world. Van Diemen's Land, about the size, with more than the fertility ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... embarrassing to the intruder. At the apparition of the woman, the unaffected and simple directness he had previously shown in his equally abrupt contact with Bradley had fled utterly; confused by the awkwardness of his arrival, and shocked at the idea of overhearing a private conversation, he stepped hurriedly ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte |
