"Incisive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his genial sociability, graced by, and gracing, the self-supporting habit of his soul; his intrepidity of intellect, matched by a beautiful boldness and openness in speech; the absence, too, from works so incisive, of a single trace of truculence: all this will now be remembered; and those are unamiable persons, in whom the remembrance does not breed a desire to believe him as great in thought as he was brave, as prosperous in labor as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
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... in two languages—the original Arabic on one page, and, facing it, the translation in very old French. The author, born A.D. 1058, described himself as "a poor student striving to discern the truth of things"—and his work was a serious, incisive, patiently exhaustive inquiry into the workings of nature, the capabilities of human intelligence, and the deceptive results of human reason. Reading it, Alwyn was astonished to find that nearly all the ethical propositions offered for the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
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... appear to heed the foreman's scoffing. Instead, he began in a low incisive voice the narration of his experiences of the previous night, beginning with the bear hunt and ending with his finding his way out ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
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... of this volume will give the reader a more correct idea of the character discussed than he would probably get from reading their biographies. The lecture is analytical, penetrative, terse, incisive, and candid. The book is worth its price, and will ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
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... Arnold has occupied a high place among the foremost prose writers of the time. His style is in marked contrast to the dithyrambic eloquence of Carlyle, or to Ruskin's pure and radiant coloring. It is a quiet style, restrained, clear, discriminating, incisive, with little glow of ardor or passion. Notwithstanding its scrupulous assumption of urbanity, it is often a merciless style, indescribably irritating to an opponent by its undercurrent of sarcastic humor, and its ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
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... remembering indignantly all that Lawyer Ed had once given up for Old Angus's sake, and further maddened by being forbidden to disclose it, expressed his disapproval of Roderick's leaving so soon, in strong incisive terms. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
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... especially occupies the public mind, those known to be interested in it are compelled to listen to many weary platitudes. Lady Byron's remarks, however, caught my ear and arrested my attention by their peculiar incisive quality, their originality, and the evidence they gave that she was as well informed on all our matters as the best American statesman could be. I had no wearisome course to go over with her as to the difference between the General Government and State ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
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... quite accept Mr. J.R. Green's sentences as your father's; though I didn't doubt that they convey the sense; but then I think that only a shorthand writer could reproduce Mr. Huxley's singularly beautiful style—so simple and so incisive. The sentence given is much ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
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... all the morning in so terrible a state of agitation that it seemed as if she must have news for better or worse, or die of suspense. My father was not away longer than necessary. He returned as he had gone, wearing a cheerful, incisive look very characteristic of him, and ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
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... yesterday. All went smoothly and simply. At eight, kit was inspected; in the morning, bareback exercise; at twelve, tents struck; at 12.30 dinner; at one, 'boot and saddle.' When we were hooked in and mounted, the Captain made a splendid little speech in the incisive forcible voice we had learned to know so well, saying we had had for long the most trying experience that can befall a soldier, that of standing fast, while he sees his comrades passing him up to the front. He congratulated ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
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... desired to rally to the side of Mrs. Boyce. The Red Cross and Volunteer Aid Detachment Nurses claimed representation. So did the munitions workers of Godbury. The Countess of Laleham, the wife of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, a most imposing and masterful woman, signified (in genteel though incisive language) her intention to take a leading part in the proceedings and to bring along her husband, apparently as an unofficial ornament. This, of course, upset our plans, which had all to be reconsidered ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
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... in his keen, incisive way:—"No, Medoline, I cannot say that I have—not since boyhood, at least, when my mother, who loved the God whom Israel served so indifferently, endeavored to train my ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
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... be ceaseless, incisive and merciless competition in securing and holding circulations, as well as in the outward statements made of individual circulations to those who purchase advertising space. In this, as in all other forms of enterprise, there ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
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... (41777 MCZ) reveals that it resembles S. c. cooperi in shortness of hind foot (18 mm.), shortness of tail (18 mm.), narrowness across zygomata (16 mm.), and grayish pelage. In the long braincase, heavy rostrum, greater condylobasilar length, greater lambdoidal breadth, long rostrum, and longer incisive foramina, it agrees closely with specimens of S. c. saturatus, to which subspecies we refer ...
— Comments on the Taxonomy and Geographic Distribution of North American Microtines • E. Raymond Hall
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... deep, incisive voice to counteract the effect of his recent embarrassment, "Office of 'The Opp Eagle.' Mr. Toddlinger? Yes, sir. You say you want your subscription stopped! Well, now, wait a minute—see here, I can explain that—" but the other party ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
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... while, and said to himself that she was a good specimen of the grand style of woman; and then the image came back to him of a woman not quite so large, not quite so imperial in her port, not quite so incisive in her speech, not quite so judicial in her opinions, but with two or three more joints in her frame, and two or three soft inflections in her voice, which for some absurd reason or other drew him to her side and so bewitched him that he told her half his secrets and looked into her eyes all ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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... Thessalonians in his first letter he says, "Quench not the Spirit."[30] To the disciples scattered throughout the province of Galatia who had been much disturbed by false leaders he gives a rule to be followed, "Walk by the Spirit."[31] The other two of these incisive words of advice are found in the Ephesian letter—"Grieve not the Spirit of God,"[32] and "be ye ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
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... principle, to emotional chaos and moral sentimentalism. Very often they are of all men the most meticulously mannered. But their manners are not the decorum of the humanist, they are the etiquette of the worldling. Chesterfield had these folk in mind when he spoke with an intolerable, if incisive, cynicism of those who know the art of combining the useful appearances of virtue with ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
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... picked you out for what I wanted long before you left stir. Brainard, you're wise enough to know that some of our best pinches come from tips handed us from the inside. Brainard"—the slow voice had now become incisive, mandatory—"you're not going to go straight. You're going to string along with Barney and Old Jimmie and the rest of the bunch—we'll protect you—and you're going to slip us tips when something big is about ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
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... assurance that the circulatory system of the blood is a closed system of vessels, and that the enclosing epithelium is not permeable by non-incisive solid bodies such as vegetable microbes, and still less by rounded protozoa, which are much larger than microbes and soft in substance. This well-known and clearly demonstrated fact ought to have suggested a problem to the minds of students: How do the protozoa of malaria enter the ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
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... repeated, "then I must leave you, for I would speak with him," and I bowed myself off with what grace I could muster, knowing naught of such matters. A brisk walk fetched me to Serigny's side. In a few words I communicated my mission. His quick, incisive glance took in every detail of my dress and appearance, but his ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
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... Radnor suddenly raised his head and half turned back as if to speak, but thinking better of it, he resumed his chair and watched the approach of the detective with an angry frown. Clancy did not glance at Radnor, but gave his evidence in a quick incisive way which forced the breathless attention of every one in the room. He told without interruption the story of his arrival at Four-Pools and his conclusions in regard to the ha'nt and the theft; he omitted, however, all mention ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
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... did, she made no sign. Her cheeks were flushed, the lids of her downcast eyes were pink, and her voice had lost its crisp, incisive tones, but she read rapidly, without comment or pause, until the supply of news gave out. Then she began on the advertisements, dreading the end of her task and vainly wishing for more papers, though in her heart there was something ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
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... life, and the life in the great outer world, in which she was girlishly and eagerly interested. She asked him many questions about it—direct and incisive questions which showed that she had already formed decided opinions and views about it. Yet it was plain to be seen that she did not regard it as anything she might ever share herself. Hers was the dispassionate interest with which she might ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
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... risked it, but her brother gave her such a terribly incisive look—a look so like a surgeon's lancet—that she was frightened at her courage. And he answered her in words that corresponded to the look: "It may not prevent me, either, from losing ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
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... expression, were written on his face. "Little Van" was an affable, firm, and crafty politician. Although he was not a creative statesman, neither was he a mere schemer. He had definite ideas, if not convictions, of the proper lines of policy, and was able to state them with incisive and forcible argument when occasion demanded. To him, perhaps, more than to any other of the politicians, fell the task of organizing the campaign of Crawford, and afterwards of making the political combinations that ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
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... high task, since they were one and all incapable of entering into the spirit of antiquity. Although at the first reading, therefore, this book may seem to be rather fragmentary, there are two main lines of thought running through it: an incisive criticism of German professors, and a number of constructive ideas as to what classical ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
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... held opposite views; and that in any case it was a point of honour with him that no troops should embark until the last person who claimed his protection should be safely on board a British ship. As time went on, his replies to Congress grew shorter and more incisive. On being requested to name an outside date for the evacuation of the city, he declared that he could not even guess when the last ship would be loaded, but that he was resolved to remain until it was. He pointed out, moreover, that the more the uncontrolled violence of their citizens ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
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... pasty in complexion without a scrap of color in it, and her eyes were of too light a blue to redeem the general insipidity of her appearance; but when she spoke that insipidity vanished, for her lips were very firm, and were apt to utter incisive words, and at such moments her pale blue eyes would flash with a light fire which was full of sarcasm, and might ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
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... order from a man's lips so incisive, so truly commanding, so fearful. The American turned pale and in the twinkling of an eye smothered the flame. The beautiful Canadian closed her eyes. But the captain, as if nothing had occurred, continued to converse ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
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... originally one of the philosophical radicals, had become more and more violent in his attacks on his own leaders, whom he accused of having deceived the people. According to him, they were "aristocratic in principle, democratic in pretence," and all the resources of his incisive rhetoric were exhausted in exposing their incapacity, in a motion for a committee to consider the state of the nation. This motion, so advocated, met with no support, and gave Russell the opportunity of once more vindicating the wisdom of moderation in ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
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... At last he was about to remove his doubt—or prove Viola's guilt. "Doctor," he said, and his voice was incisive, "take the other side and place a hand on her wrist. That will be ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
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... that had so recently been threatening to hang him, the man walked back to his buckboard, climbed in, and stood there on his feet with the reins in one hand, and the rope in the other. "You get away from in front of me there," he said, in his harsh, incisive voice; "I'm tired of child's play. If you don't let me alone, I'll kill a few of ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
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... him of what he omits and of what he adds, prevents him from changing his role, from substituting himself for the author, makes each word sacred, and causes what the poet has said to remain vivid a long while in the hearer's memory. The idea, when steeped in verse, suddenly assumes a more incisive, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
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... slender, ungainly young man, stooping as short-sighted people always stoop, and curiously untidy. His complexion was unusually dark for an Englishman, and his thick beard and scanty hair were intensely black. Sitting for a pocket-borough, he soon became famous for his anti-democratic zeal and his incisive speech. He joined Lord Derby's Cabinet in 1866, left it on-account of his hostility to the Reform Bill of 1867, and assailed Disraeli both with pen and tongue in a fashion which seemed to make it impossible that the two men could ever ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
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... The incisive tone, low as it was, penetrated the man's muddled brain. His blustering assurance collapsed visibly, increasing fourfold his ludicrous aspect. He staggered backward, muttering incoherent words that might charitably be ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
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... pleasant social companionship. Liszt tells us that the constant intercourse with Berlioz, Hiller, and other celebrities who were in the habit of saying smart things, developed Chopin's natural talent for incisive remarks, ironical answers, and ambiguous speeches. Berlioz. I think, had more affection for Chopin ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
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... in the same quiet, incisive tone, "that my former suggestions have been unheeded. I fear that I must speak more plainly. You will please come with me for ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
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... that his colleagues in the Senate, especially the younger members, are somewhat in fear of the incisive tongue, for he wields it frequently and contemptuously. When after his election, Mr. Harding went South with Senator Frelinghuysen, Senator Davis Elkins, and Senator Hale, the older Senators, not, perhaps, without a tinge of disappointment at having ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
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... been two years among them and he counted it two years of failure. He had been too outspoken for them; they resented sullenly his direct and incisive tirades against their pet sins. They viewed his small innovations on their traditional ways of worship with disfavour and distrust and shut him out of their lives with an ever-increasing coldness. He had meant well and worked hard and he felt his ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
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... view of the outcome of experiments has remained part of his character down to this day, just as his painstaking, minute, incisive methods are still unchanged. But to the careless, stupid, or lazy person he is a terror for the short time they remain around him. Honest mistakes may be tolerated, but not carelessness, incompetence, or lack of attention to business. In such cases ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
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... necessarily progress, only that for some reason or other the environment has become uncongenial. It is, of course, tempting to infer from the decay of an art that there must be a corresponding decay in the vitality and morality of the race. Ruskin, for example, always assumed in his most brilliant and incisive, but not very conclusive, arguments that men ceased to paint good pictures simply because they ceased to be good men. He did not proceed to prove that the moral decline really took place, and still less ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
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... clear, incisive tones. "A positively infallible recipe for the invasion of England: Wait until the Channel freezes and then ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
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... profound interest with which she listens, and the patient efforts she makes to understand. I must in justice add that she sometimes, though not often, displays gleams of clear intelligence, and powers of close incisive reasoning, that ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
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... singularly alike. Thus, each had the same proud, self-reliant carriage, the same large, brilliant eyes, serene brow and firm mouth, the same repose of manner, the same clear, incisive enunciation. Neither could move in any company, however ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
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... door. He heard his mother-in-law's voice and she was the last person he wished to meet until he was in a position to tell her to leave the country. He was turning away impatiently when Madame Delano lifted her hard incisive tones. ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
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... opinions I noted was a horse of quite a different colour. He bore a Scottish name, and had the incisive, argumentative style of the typical Ulsterman, who unites the cold common-sense and calculating power of the Scot with the warmth and impulse of the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
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... or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man in ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
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... face unruffled, turned the bewildered and frightened boy toward the lane and spoke, in the silky, incisive tones which were half of ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
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... Martha's voice was clear and incisive, with a ring of determination through it that, for the moment, ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
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... and incisive. His face was grey and anxious. She herself remained lifeless. All that there was of emotion between them seemed to have become vested in his ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
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... Admonition was printed at Stirling a few months later. In the same year Buchanan wrote that curious tract called the Chameleon, a satirical attack upon Lethington, which is not very brilliant either in language or conception, and fails altogether in the incisive bitterness which characterises most of Buchanan's other political papers. "It is at least equal in vigour and elegance to that of most compositions in the ancient Scottish language," says Buchanan's biographer, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
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... occurred. He attributed little importance to the imputation of "the unhealthiness of the place" and to the assertion that tobacco sales yielded little return in England after all fees were paid. In an incisive statement ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
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... any rate, his present toying with the mask of genius inspires us with as much hatred and scorn as his former earnestness commanded respect and sympathy. When, for instance, he tells us, "it would also argue ingratitude towards my genius if I were not to rejoice that to the faculty of an incisive, analytical criticism was added the innocent pleasure in artistic production," it may astonish him to hear that, in spite of this self-praise, there are still men who maintain exactly the reverse, and who say, not only that he has never possessed the gift of artistic production, but that the ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
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... experience came, Raeburn advanced from the somewhat starved quality of pigment, which in his earlier pictures was accentuated by his broad manner of handling, until in many of the pictures painted during the later nineties he attained extraordinary {63} power of expression by vigorous and incisive use of square brush-work and full yet fluid and unloaded impasto. This method with its sharply struck touches and simplified planes reaches its climax perhaps in the striking portrait (1798 circa) of Professor ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
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... feel himself in a way trammelled by it. The moment that a case is stated with any vehemence, that moment it is certain that the speaker has antagonists in his eye. There is a story of Professor Blackie at Edinburgh making a tirade against the stuffiness of the old English universities to Jowett, the incisive Master of Balliol. At the end, he said generously, "I hope you people at Oxford do not think that we are your enemies up here?" "No," said Jowett drily; "to tell the truth, we don't think about you at all!" The man who is really making a new beginning, serenely confident in his strength, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
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... to the floor, overcome by sickness and the responsibilities he had carried for twelve years. Storrow, in a different way, was fully as indispensable as Smith. It was he who built up the superstructure of the Bell defence. He was a master of details. His brain was keen and incisive; and some of his briefs will be studied as long as the art of telephony exists. He might fairly have been compared, in action, to a rapid-firing Gatling gun; while Smith was a hundred-ton cannon, and Lockwood was the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
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... sensible experience as such is logically inconceivable. He proved it, or thought, or professed to think, he proved it, in the phenomenon which covers all the most vivid, the seemingly irresistible facts, of such experience. Motion was indeed, as the Heracliteans said, everywhere: was the most incisive of all facts in the realm of supposed sensible fact. Think of the prow of the trireme cleaving the water. For a moment Zeno himself might have seemed but a follower of Heraclitus. He goes beyond him. All is motion: ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
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... which demands sentiment, style, and imagery, is the greatest creation of modern days; it is the successor of stage comedy grown obsolete with its restrictions. Facts and ideas are all within the province of fiction. The intellect of an incisive moralist, like La Bruyere, the power of treating character as Moliere could treat it, the grand machinery of a Shakespeare, together with the portrayal of the most subtle shades of passion (the one treasury left ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
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... his words decided the matter. The cold and haughty manner which he knew so well how to assume, his few but incisive words, produced ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
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... coming, sir. That's mighty nice of you," he said, as they walked down Boylston Street together, and his father waited a moment and then spoke in his usual incisive tone. ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
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... subjected all the proposed theories to a severe criticism both on the ground of facts and on that of their innate possibility and logical value. He decides in favor of the mutation theory. His arguments are incisive and complete and wholly adapted to the comprehension of all intelligent readers, so that his book relieves me entirely of the necessity of discussing these general questions, as it could not be done in a better or ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
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... He came to her after that interview with Mr. Wharton and told her, speaking with the soft yet incisive voice which she used to love so well, that they were to dine in the Square on the following day. "Let there be an end of all this," he said, taking her in his arms and kissing her. Of course she did not tell him ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
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... ringing clearly, though he could not distinguish her words. He heard a great cry from a score of male throats. More minutes passed. Words that were low and tense poured out in a rumbling volume. Above the rumble, Naida's voice presently sounded again, clear and sweet, but incisive. Then, when no more than five or six minutes had gone, Kirby heard the clang of the bronze gate at the foot of the steps, heard ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
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... Friends, and that description of any part of the Lord's works is as unnecessary and carries with it as little of what we mean as can be. Incidents are greater than description, as the telling to me how a tree looked when it was in full foliage is not near so incisive as that the tree fell with a great crash during a storm in the night. Therefore it would be using needless language, which a Friend's discipline enjoins him to beware of, for me to say how friend Hicks's daughter might have seemed to those to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
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... in that old davenport, what then? Would Shapless get the money? She grew keen in speculation. To leave her in the lurch, to give it all to that greasy Shapless, would be the most natural trick in the world for an incisive ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
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... moment, and then added in his most incisive accents: "But if not, the law must take its course, and Roma Roselli must complete ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
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... a smile; with his overcoat buttoned up to the chin, his tall hat pressed down to his eyes, and between the two his incisive features and his keen, stern glance, he looked the ideal detective of fiction and the stage. What I looked God knows, but I did my best to glower and show my teeth at his side. I had thrown myself into the game, and it ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
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... 'It is very probable,' writes Sir David Brewster in his biography, 'that Newton's idleness arose from the occupation of his mind with subjects in which he felt a deeper interest.' Nobody could have penned a more incisive indictment against the imbecility of an education system that forces all boys, irrespective of their wishes or talents, into a fixed groove. It was Newton who, in answer to an inquiry as to how the principle of gravity was discovered, replied: ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
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... of his reasonings had there existed no flaw in his premises. The San Reve was far from being gifted with that cold, incisive wisdom which he ascribed to her. Given a situation wherein the San Reve had no concern, and she would be sound enough; her speculations would defend themselves, her advice be worth a following. Endow the San Reve with a personal interest, the more if that interest ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
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... tell the class all about it. He noticed Robert and Mary and, knowing that they were strangers, he put on his most condescending and insinuating air. Raising himself to his full height, and giving his grizzled head just the right angle for incisive ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
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... township, subsisting on agriculture, road traffic, and the patronage of thirsty shearers and station hands from runs within a half-day's ride of Sawyer's "Emu Hotel," which was the incisive ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
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... cast on human life was not the eye of a sympathizing poet, but rather that of a sagacious cynic. His observation, though sharp, close, and vigilant, is somewhat ironic and unfeeling. His penetrating, incisive intellect cuts its way to the heart of a character as with a knife; and if he lays bare its throbs of guilt and weakness, and lets you into the secrets of its organization, he conceives his whole work is performed. This criticism applies even to his tragedy of "Women beware Women," a drama ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
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... stories so easily and well that his early desertion of fiction is surprising. His mocking spirit has often suggested comparison with Voltaire, whom he studied and admired. He too is a skeptic and an idol-breaker; but his is a kindlier irony, a less incisive philosophy. Perhaps, however, this influence led to lack of faith in his own work, to his loss of an ideal, which Zola thinks the real secret of his sudden change from novelist to journalist. Voltaire taught him to scoff and disbelieve, to demand "a quoi bon?" and that took the heart out of him. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
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... them in debate. His name was Abelard. Before long he himself became a teacher of Grammar and Logic at Paris, and later of Theology, and, so widely had he read, so clearly did he appeal to the reason of his hearers, and so incisive was his teaching, that he attracted large numbers of students to his lectures. To assist in his teaching of Theology he prepared a little textbook, Sic et Non (Yea and Nay), in which he raised for debate many questions as to church teachings (R. 91 b), such as "That faith is based ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
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... Convention was held at Springfield, Ill., which nominated Abraham Lincoln as the Republican candidate for United States Senator to succeed Senator Douglas in the National Legislature. On June 16th—after such nomination—Mr. Lincoln made to the Convention a speech—in which, with great and incisive power, he assailed Mr. Douglas's position as well as that of the whole Democratic Pro-Slavery Party, and announced in compact and cogent phrase, from his own point of view, the attitude, upon the Slavery question, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
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... question of disestablishment had been raised: and one was made to realise how it stirs the blood of good men here. And not merely were there this evening a fire, a keenness, a power of stirring a multitude to the depth of their nature, which are rare indeed, but an incisive severity of denunciation which few had expected from that calm, cautious man. And if the preacher was at white-heat, so was the congregation long before he was done. Several times there would have been loud applause, had ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
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... and became a quite pious adorer of this angel of grace and beauty. He was a tall, lean man, with a minatory countenance set off by terrible eyes in deep black circles, under enormous eyebrows; and his eloquence, very unlike his love-making, could be incisive. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
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... buzz. He found himself wondering why Warde was speaking in this smooth, quiet voice, so different from his usual curt, incisive tones. ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
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... stepped briskly at Miss Elting's incisive command. He shinned up the tree without loss ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
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... grew suddenly clear and incisive, and Orsino broke off in the middle of his sentence. A moment's ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
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... man and woman from drowning with emotionless gravity, more taken for the moment by Morgana herself, whom he had never seen before, but with whom he had corresponded on current questions of scientific importance. From the extremely learned and incisive tone of her letters he had judged her to be an elderly woman of profound scholarship who had spent the greater part of her life in study, and his astonishment at the sight of the small, dainty creature who received him in the library of the ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
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... The most incisive comment on politics to-day is indifference. When men and women begin to feel that elections and legislatures do not matter very much, that politics is a rather distant and unimportant exercise, the reformer might as well put to himself a few searching doubts. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
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... its editorials have spoken for the sober sense of the people with amazing success. As a constant reader of the Nation since 1866, I have felt the fascination of Godkin, and have been consciously on guard against it. I tried not to be led away by his incisive statements and sometimes uncharitable judgments. But whatever may be thought of his bias, he had an honest mind, and was incapable of knowingly making a false statement; and this, with his other qualities, makes his ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
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... most incisive of our satirists will not let himself degenerate into an illustration of Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory that man repeats ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
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... hurt and uncomfortable. He thought all this rank form. And Mabel—the bright and incisive Mabel with her high hunting colour—made it much worse. "What! Is James jealous? Oh, how perfectly splendid! Is he going to give secret orders to Crewdson not to admit Mr.—? As they do in plays at the St. James's? Oh, James, do tell me ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
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... hardly be traced in the brilliant chapters that he has devoted to the Apostate. He sees through Julian's weaknesses in a way in which Voltaire never saw or cared to see. His pitiful superstition, his huge vanity, his weak affectation are brought out with an incisive clearness and subtle penetration into character which Gibbon was not always so ready to display. At the same time he does full justice to Julian's real merits. And this is perhaps the most striking evidence of his penetration. An error on the side ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
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... "Keen and incisive in character study, logical and life-like in plot invention and development, 'The Women We Marry,' is a novel that stands sturdily on its own merits. It is vigorous, frank and emotional in the best sense of that much-abused ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
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... speak. At that moment I was gazing at the funnel, trying to decipher a monogram upon it; but I heard a new voice, rapid and incisive, sure of its subject, resolving doubts, and making the crooked straight. It was the man with the brown paper parcel. That was still under his arm—in fact, the parcel contained pink pyjamas, and there was hardly enough paper. The respect of the mate ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
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... Fox's incisive tones went on, "and our hold-overs will be moved now. It will be busy there. We shall take the eight o'clock train to-night." He glanced sharply at Bob's lean, set face. "I ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
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... their prototypes. I am quite certain that, though they took a natural and proper interest in history, it never for a moment crossed the minds of any of them to talk like the ladies of the ancien rgime or to imitate them in any sort or way. They were as natural and unsophisticated as they were incisive, intrepid, and amusing ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
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... in one swift, incisive glance that she might very well serve for his purpose. "With all my heart," ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
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... "as deep and wicked a conspiracy as ever was invented in the darkest ages against the liberties of a free people." It soon occurred to Hamilton that it would be well worth while to explain the meaning of all parts of the Constitution in a series of short, incisive essays. He communicated his plan to Madison and Jay, who joined him in the work, and the result was the "Federalist," perhaps the most famous of American books, and undoubtedly the most profound and suggestive treatise on government that has ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
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... effect, that is, of saying that the labor groups C and M, but not X, are underpaid, instead of saying that Labor is Exploited, is incisive. Perceptions recover their identity, and the emotion they arouse is specific, since it is no longer reinforced by large and accidental connections with everything from Christmas to Moscow. The disentangled idea with a name of its own, and an emotion that has been ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
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... for so long I've been thinking. I have always been materialistic, too. Tell me seriously, doctor, do you believe there is any psychic force capable of killing two men in this incisive fashion?" ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
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... was fairly well informed of the causes that agitated the soul of "King" Plummer, and as he shot westward on a Limited Continental Express he considered the best way of approach, inclining as always to delicate but incisive methods. Long before he reached Boise his mind was well made up, and he felt content because he anticipated no difficulty in handling the crude mountaineer, who was unused to the ways ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
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... them not only tolerable but tender and appealing. What would be as immediate experience altogether heartrending, for example the torturing remorse of a Macbeth, is made splendid and moving in the incisive majesty and penetration of his monologues. At the end of Hamlet, the utter wreck, unreason, and confusion is made bearable and beautiful by the tender finality of Hamlet's dying words ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
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... blind man seem in any way interested in his personal affairs. It was the news of men, and matters concerning the world, that they discussed. And the rancher's information and remarks, and keen, incisive questions, set the newcomer wondering. He watched the face before him, the red, sightless eyes. He studied the quiet, gentle-voiced man, as one may study an abstruse problem. The result was disheartening. One long, weary expression of pain was all ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
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... can't," Talbot replied in the same calm, incisive way, that contrasted strongly with the coarse, whisky-thickened tone of ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
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... these records were still far removed from the character of real historical writings. How scanty the contemporary record still was at the close of this period and how ample room is left for the caprice of subsequent annalists, is shown with incisive clearness by a comparison of the accounts as to the campaign of 456 in the annals and in the epitaph of the consul Scipio.(14) The later historians were evidently unable to construct a readable and in some measure connected narrative out of these notices from the book of annals; ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
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... with the sterner sex. After a graceful introduction by Colonel J. W. Bush, the lecturer plunged at once with ease and distinction into her subject and line of argument.... She is a very able and incisive speaker, talks fluently and distinctly, and makes easy and graceful gestures. In a word, she is as good a ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
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... once. Benda's big teeth were visible under his bushy moustache. He had a habit of pulling his lips apart whenever he was searching for a really incisive word. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
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... said in quiet, incisive tones the voice of Henry Scott (of the Psychical Research Society). "I hardly dared to hope for so complete a triumph! My good friends, it is one a.m. As the clock struck twelve you sank into hypnotic trance; on the point of its striking one, you ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
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... low-minded policies and misguided blatherskites, but his wrathful outpourings upon pupils for some trivial offence were sometimes over-copious. There are Boston schoolmasters, still living perhaps, who yet feel a smart from his scourge. His personality was so incisive that probably few were in any close or long contact with him without a good rasping now and then. My father was the most amiable of men, yet even he did not escape. As an Antioch trustee he was in charge of funds which were not to be applied ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
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... between Britain and Ireland, blackened and scarred by more burning antagonisms than those that once divided the larger island. The record of several consecutive centuries is graven deep in it by the brand and bayonet, and by the more incisive teeth-marks of hate. The slumbering antipathies of race and religion even now crop out here and there, over the unfused boundary, in hissing tongues of flame. The Briton and the Celt are still struggling for the precedence in the Irishman's breast; but it is not a war of extermination. His ardent ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
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... Pierre could not help feeling surprised at Narcisse's language, for he remembered his incisive voice and clear, precise, financial acumen when speaking of money matters. And, at this recollection, the young priest's mind reverted to the castle fields, and intense sadness filled his heart as for the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
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... It was my theory of life." He sprang from his chair and began walking back and forth in his quick, excited way. The flush had gone from his face now and was replaced by a strange paleness. His lips were tense, the fingers of his hands tightly clenched, his voice was quick, sharp, incisive when ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
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... doctrine, as the loss of their rector himself. The older members of the congregation loved Brenton as a son, the younger ones as something a little dearer than a brother. One and all, they missed his pastoral visitations, his incisive sermons on the righteousness of honest living; above all else, they missed his voice. If they could have kept these personal marks of the man himself, their rector might have been welcome to believe anything he chose. He was their shepherd and their friend. His ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
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... things going on and believed the city was being robbed, but they could not prove it. There were two attacking parties, however, who did not wait for proofs—Thomas Nast, the brilliant cartoonist of Harper's Weekly, and the New York Times. The incisive cartoons of Nast appealed to the imaginations of all classes; even Tweed complained that his illiterate following could "look at the damn pictures." The trenchant editorials of Louis L. Jennings in the Times reached a thoughtful circle of readers. In one of ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
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... certainly far superior, in point of precision and positiveness, to anything of the sort ever written when I was a young man. The author of the article, Monsieur Paul Meyer, points out every error with a remarkably lucid power of incisive criticism. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
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... his act and words. Her next words were an incisive and frosty command. "You may commence at once your life on the billowy wave! Go for'rd and stand ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
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... Coquillard, with his railleries assuming legal forms and phrases, laughs at love and lovers, or at the Droits Nouveaux of a happy time when licence had become the general law. Henri Baude, a realist in his keen observation, satirises with direct, incisive force, the manners and morals of his age. Martial d'Auvergne (c. 1433-1508), chronicling events in his Vigiles de Charles VII., a poem written according to the scheme of the liturgical Vigils, is eloquent in his expression of the wrongs ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
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... romance. Conrad penetrates to the motive concealed in it, the psychological spring and basis of it, the whole fabric of weakness, habit and aberration underlying it. The one achieved an agreeable romance, and an agreeable romance only. The other achieves an extraordinarily brilliant and incisive study of the Latin-American temperament—a full length exposure of the perverse passions and incomprehensible ideals which provoke presumably sane men to pursue one another like wolves, and of the reactions of that incessant pursuit upon the men themselves, and upon their primary ideas, and upon ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
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... one of the strongest works of fiction of the present decade. The author is a philosopher and a philanthropist. Her clear, incisive reasoning, her large sympathies, combined with rare power of description, enable her to give the world a story which will hold in its thrall even the most shallow novel-reader who can appreciate ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
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... Gray led the way without a word through the driveway, and finding the street clear, hurried on rapidly. Her mind, strangely stimulated, was working in quick, incisive flashes. Her work was not yet done. The Sparrow was safe, as far as his life was concerned; but her possession of even the necklace would not save the Sparrow from the law. There was the money that was gone from the safe. She could not recover that, but—yes, dimly, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
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... people know, his speeches are remarkable for their point, force, logical reasoning, incisive language, and straight, hard hitting, but, as I have observed, he rarely if ever essays to be funny. By his sharp remarks and his adept turns of speech he often, however, creates much laughter—as, for instance, when he once spoke ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
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... from all the ends of the earth. The lad who thus finds himself in this worshipful but woful company is himself of noble and knightly lineage. This we learn from the recital of his history, but also from the bright, incisive, militant, chivalresque ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
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... we are looking for. One of you gentlemen, I am certain, can obtain the necessary permission to have me verify the official verdict of suicide. When we have done that, we shall have cleared away much doubt and uncertainty." His speech was now crisp, clear, incisive. "Is there any reason why we ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
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... sane principles of national life among all sorts and conditions of men and women who make up our population. But anything and everything that goes by the name of Americanization is not necessarily an effective move in that direction. There is slowly growing up a body of incisive criticism dealing with the current epidemic of Americanization work that is sweeping the country on the wings of clever catch-words and generous emotions. It may be of interest and value to attempt an analysis and statement of the main points ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
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... was incisive, and seemed to cut slightly like falling steel from those soft, warm lips. A sudden desire rushed through me to teach her—at any rate, to exert myself to the utmost to teach her—that her life was valuable to her for other things than the capacity it gave to work. But I checked the ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
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... draw social distinctions, but he desired to find people personally interesting. He used to say afterwards that he did not really believe in what involved a sort of social condescension, and, like another incisive missioner, he thought that the giving up a few evenings a week by wealthy and even fashionable young-men, however good-hearted and earnest, to sharing the amusements of the boys of a parish, was only a very uncomfortable way of showing the poor ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
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... scene is clear to me now, after many years. We three stood in the outer room; The Duke and her father were with Gwen. So earnest was the discussion that none of us heard the door open just as young Fawcett was saying in incisive tones: ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
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... A low incisive voice sounded forward, a blotch of a hand and arm pointing. There was a movement on the bridge as a dark object came close. It was the Jefferson. A dull figure leaned over her bridge with ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
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... keen gray eyes on Paul's face as he spoke. His speech was rather incisive, considering how little he had seen of Paul. Perhaps he intended that it should be, for he watched the effect of his ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
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... principal group of riders, and, casting aside to Monsieur de Lucan an expressive glance, she urged her horse slightly forward. He overtook her almost immediately. She cast upon him again an oblique glance, and abruptly, with her bitterest and most incisive accent: ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
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... Milly as in commerce with, and whose renewed intervention at such a distance, just announced to him, required some accounting for. He had a vision of great London surgeons—if this one was a surgeon—as incisive all round; so that he should perhaps after all not wholly escape the ironic attention of his own sex. The most he might be able to do was not to care; while he was trying not to he could take that in. It was a train, however, that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
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... better after your friend, Theo?" said her father one day when Barbara's chair was empty at dinner—with his cold incisive voice, a little rasping now that the clutch of age's hand was beginning to close ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
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... lasting is hardly to be presumed. The lesson given by firing on Atua was not sufficiently sharp and incisive to leave a lasting impression on the forgetful Samoan temperament. In fact, conditions are existing which show that peace will not last and is not seriously intended. Malietoa, the King, and his chiefs are convinced that the departure of the war ships will ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
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... the text, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone," ever preached such a sermon as Burns in his Address to the unco Guid? and in his epistle of advice to a young friend, what wisdom! what incisive aphorisms! In passages like these scattered throughout his writings, and in some single poems, he has passed beyond all bonds of place and nationality, and spoken home to the universal ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
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... next to the Koh-i-noor. On this barbaric contribution of the gorgeous East the French observers, a little jealous perhaps, were severe. One of them says: "They rely on the sun to make it sparkle," and, when the fog is too thick, on gas. The curiosity about it, in the eyes of this incisive Gaul, was "not the divinity, but the worshipers." All day long a crowd filed solemnly by it under the supervision of a detachment of police, each pilgrim bestowing upon the fetish, "an egg-shaped lump of glass," half a second's adoration, and then moving reluctantly on. Thousands of far more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
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... rhythm, tempo, phrasing, dynamics, instead of the slovenly muddling which then passed for breadth of style, and the substitution of the conductor's own subjectivity for that of the composer. It has been well expressed in a few incisive words by one of the greatest of the school: "The privilege of an interesting subjectivity is given to few, its expression will always give evidence of that instinctive logic which is a necessary condition of intelligibility."[6] Call Wagner ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
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... that puts itself on the rack. By the side of them one finds smiling visions of the Holy Family, which recall Murillo. The thirty-four folk-songs are brilliant, restless, whimsical, and wonderfully varied in form. Each represents a different subject, a personality drawn with incisive strokes, and the whole collection overflows with life. It is said that the Spanisches-Liederbuch is to Wolf's work what Tristan is ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
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... elaborate his symbolism with the patchwork of careful, allegoric analysis. He had a richer contact with social forces than Heine, yet his realizations of them were awkward and meagre, his humor wooden, his imagery derived. He had much greater intellectual force than Platen, yet he lacked the incisive and controlled critical sense of the latter. Having no one faculty to a distinguished degree, he constantly had to substitute the strained labor of one faculty for the spontaneous production of another. Predominantly rationalistic, he labored at the symbolistic ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
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... of copying the best verses, dramatic phrases and orations of ancient authors, and then to show his superiority of epigrammatic, incisive style, he could paraphrase the poems of other writers into his own divine sentences, using the crude ore of Homeric and Platonic philosophy, resolving their thoughts into the best form of classic English, lucid, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
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... whom I met in London was Joseph Chamberlain. When I first met him he was one of Mr. Gladstone's trusted lieutenants. He was a capital speaker, a close and incisive debater, and a shrewd politician. When he broke with Mr. Gladstone, he retained his hold on his constituency and continued to be a ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
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... and granting to each the same quality of human material, the problem of achieving organic unity in the face of the enemy is one thing on a ship, and quite another among land-fighting forces. Loyalty to the ship itself provides an extra and incisive bond among naval forces. Given steadiness in the command, men will fight the ship to the limit, if only for the reason that if they fail to do so, there is no place to go but down. The physical setting of duty is defined by material objects ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
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... Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
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... Bishop slowly, looking him squarely in the eyes, "I only came to ask a question, anyhow." Then he turned and walked briskly from the office. He had no right and no wish to know what the other man chose to conceal beneath that curt and incisive manner. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
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... and we were "pinnacled in mid-heaven" in unutterable isolation, blank forgotten units, in a white, wonderful, illuminated world, without permanence or solidity. Our voices sounded thin in the upper air. The keen, incisive wind that swept the summit, had no kinship with the soft breezes which were rustling the tasselled cane in the green fields of earth which had lately gleamed through the drift. It was a new world and without sympathy, a solitude which ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
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... persevered in his level tones, he was not to be hurried. He felt the case as good as won, and there was the taste of triumph in his mouth, for he was going to convict his man in spite of the best criminal lawyer in the state! Yet presently the level tones became more and more incisive, and Moxlow would walk toward North, his long finger extended, to loose a perfect storm of words that cut and stung and insulted. He went deep into North's past, and stripped him bare; shabby, mean, ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
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... speaking very frigidly and with even more than her usual incisive clearness of articulation, "it's not your property. It's only yours ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
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... Icelandic pony, was to be sent to the Lechlade railway station to meet them. “You are now going to be introduced to my fellow partner,” Rossetti said. At that time I only knew of the famous firm by name, and I asked Rossetti for an explanation, which he gave in his usual incisive way. ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
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... Webling was shocked—by the vulgarity, no doubt. "Swine" do not belong in dining-room language—only in the platters or the chairs. Marie Louise caught an angry look also in the eye of Nicholas Easton, though he, too, had been incisive in his comments on the theme of the dinner. His English had been uncannily correct, his phrases formal with the exactitude of a book on syntax or the dialogue of a gentleman in a novel. But he also was drinking too much, and as his lips fuddled he ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
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... So Davy Jones goes by the name of Doctor Glyphic in these parts, does he?" said Balder, with a sudden, incisive smile, which almost cut through the old ferryman's self-possession. The boat at the same moment glided into a little cove, and the passenger jumped ashore. Charon stood deferentially touching his weather-stained hat, too much mystified ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
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... something else caught his attention. When he "chipped" there was an answering "Chip" across the river; certainly there was no cardinal there, so it must be that he was hearing his own voice as well as seeing himself. Selecting a conspicuous perch he sent an incisive "Chip!" across the water, and in kind it came back to him. Then he "chipped" softly and tenderly, as he did in the Limberlost to a favourite little sister who often came and perched beside him in the maple where he slept, and softly and tenderly came the answer. Then the Cardinal understood. "Wheat! ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
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... of Nero, down to the time of Hadrian. And there were Palmaesque faces, with a sensual expression, heavy chins solidly modeled with the neck, and not without a certain bestial beauty. Some of them had thick curly hair, and bold, fiery eyes: they seemed to be subtle, incisive, ready for everything, more virile than other women. And also more feminine. Here and there a more spiritual profile would stand out. Those pure features came from beyond Rome, from the East, the country of Laban: there ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
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... stone-walled fort was a busy one for the new recruits. After they were sworn in by Colonel Osborne Smith, that officer returned to his duties at Upper Fort Garry. He had done a good day's work, and if he addressed the men in the crisp, incisive style I have often heard him use on patriotic occasions, then he had made additional contribution to the considerations that inspired the Police to determined endeavour. On his leaving Superintendent W. D. Jarvis, who had seen service in Africa and became a very popular officer, took over ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
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... ignorance, his weakness and superstition, his crude notions and erroneous observations, his ridiculous inferences and theories, with his grasp of method, his lofty views of the true scope of Medicine, his lucid statements, his incisive and epigrammatic criticisms of men and motives.[244:1] After remaining at Basle for about a year, he resumed his wanderings, frequenting taverns and spending whole nights in carousals, with the lowest company. Paracelsus believed that it was reserved for him to indicate ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
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... (October, 1844, Columbian Magazine), perhaps the best of his humorous stories. The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether (November, 1845, Graham's Magazine) may be rated higher, but it is not essentially a humorous story. Rather it is incisive satire, with too biting an undercurrent to pass muster in the company of the genial in literature. Poe's humorous stories as a whole have tended to belittle rather than increase his fame, many of them verging on the inane. There are some, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
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... notification to those with whom he conversed that he was the greatest logician, metaphysician, moralist, and economist of the day,—his speech was always, even on the most trivial subjects, so clear and incisive, that it at once betrayed the intellectual vigor of the speaker. Not less remarkable also than his uniform refinement of thought, and the deftness with which he at all times expressed it, were the grasp and keenness of his observation, and the strength of memory with which he stored up every ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
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... of the escort, Captain Muffet remained at department head-quarters long enough to impress the officials thereat on duty with his version of the riot at Bluff Siding,—its inciting cause and its incisive cure. Then he went back to the cavalry depot and presumably improved on his initial effort. The story of Muffet's wild ride with the raw recruits and Muffet's method of quelling a mob was often told ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
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