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Keenly   /kˈinli/   Listen
Keenly

adverb
1.
In a keen and discriminating manner.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Keenly" Quotes from Famous Books



... While keenly sensitive to all that was exasperating in the condition and by no means indisposed to support the just complaints of our injured citizens, I still deemed it my duty, for the preservation of important American interests which were directly involved, and in view of all the details of the situation, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... found all the servants assembled in the hall to pay their respects to her as she quitted the only home she had ever known. Edith felt deeply their respectful sympathy and parted from them with unfeigned regret. Poor old Bridoon at the Lodge felt keenly for his young mistress, and could not refrain from expressing to her, as she wished him farewell, that there was something wrong about the absence of any will or other document. He would not believe that his dear old master would put ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... of his insult keenly renewed by the mere mention of the scene of it. "Put," he went on, continuing aloud the reflections of a moment of silence, "she'll pe a laty, and it's not to pe laid to her charch. Sit town, my laty. Ta poor ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... door to false, it is figured even to those who seize it by the hem of the garment. We may, perhaps, yawn over the intermingled Latin and law of Arcangeli, in spite of the humour of parts of it, as well as over the vapid floweriness of his rival; but for all that, we are touched keenly by the irony of the methods by which the two professional truth-sifters darken counsel with words, and make skilful sport of life and fact. The whole poem is a parable of the feeble and half-hopeless struggle which truth has to make against the ways of the world. That in this particular case ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... imagined the long-nosed man was becoming a little doubtful. But just as he was losing his placidity so far as to cross one leg over another, the chateau gate opened, and a heavy, dark-browed fellow with the appearance rather of a soldier than of a servant, came out, and over to us, scrutinizing us keenly as he approached. He asked if we were the gentlemen who had written to borrow a set of chessmen. Being ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... conversation beyond the ordinary courtesies of the table, and such trifling jests as were suggested by occurrences of the moment. Yet still in the few words that passed from time to time, Paullus continued often to convey his sentiments to Lucia in words of double meaning; keenly marked, it is true, but seemingly unobserved by the wily plotter opposite; and more than once in handing her the goblet, or loading her plate with dainties, he took an opportunity again and again of pressing her not unwilling hand. And ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... met a preacher keenly interested in Flavelle. He told me a story repeated to him in a sort of admiring deprecation that very day by a Methodist preacher from Toronto who had a gift for elevated gossip. This story was probably out of the Apocrypha, as it concerned a very worldly ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... head and body solemnly backwards and forwards; sometimes a number will form a ring, and one after the other will leap into it and rapidly rotate themselves; but whatever the form, all seemed to be keenly excited and to ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... Gardley looked keenly, steadily, at the boy's dancing eyes, and resolved to have a fuller understanding later, and his own eyes met the boy's in a gleam of ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... suppose that any man could be sufficiently callous not to feel keenly such treatment. Mr. Adams was far from callous and he felt it deeply. But he was not crushed or discouraged by it, as weaker spirits would have been, nor betrayed into any acts of foolish anger which must have recoiled upon himself. In him warm feelings were found in singular combination ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... her, the fingers moving in slight convulsions; her head dropped upon her bosom, and her whole person seemed suspended against the tree, looking like some beautiful emblem of the wounded delicacy of her sex, devoid of animation and yet keenly conscious. In a few moments, however, her head began to move slowly, in a sign of deep, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... the Clyde when Monmouth's trumpets sounded the recall, with the same readiness and composure that he showed in leading them to the charge down the slopes of Drumclog; and he would have led them against his brothers-in-arms Ross or James Douglas, had they turned rebels, as straightly and keenly as he led them against Hamilton and Burley. At the same time both his letters and his actions show that he did his best to discriminate between the ringleaders and the crowd: between the brawling demagogues or the meddlesome priests and the honest ignorant peasants, whose only crime ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... many titles? And yet, even with such a popinjay as Lord Rufford, he himself felt the lordship. When that old farmer at the hunt breakfast had removed himself and his belongings to the other side of the table the Senator, though aware of the justice of his cause, had been keenly alive to the rebuke. He had expressed himself very boldly at the rector's house at Dillsborough, and had been certain that not a word of real argument had been possible in answer to him. But yet he left the house with a feeling almost of shame, which had grown ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... but very good. Evidently Azalea had a capable servant. We talked gaily, the Cashier proving an adept at keeping the ball in the air, and keenly appreciative of others' attempts to ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond

... you? You belong to another man, Miss Vogdes." She lifted herself erect. Doctor McCall was speaking more loudly than usual and looking keenly into her face. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... enter among the rest, but with so haughty a bearing that he feared to look at her as keenly as at the others, and felt quite sure that it could not have been she. Nevertheless, when her back was turned, he perceived the chalk mark, whereat he was so greatly astonished that he could hardly ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... perhaps, ere from his home He launch his venturous bark, will hither come, Read fondly o'er and o'er his graven name, With feelings keenly touched, with heart aflame; Till, wrapped in fancy's wild delusive dream, Times past and long forgotten, present seem. To his charmed ear the east wind, rising shrill, Seems through the hero's shroud to whistle still. The clock's ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... future to the Lord God of my father, assured that in my very heart I was willing and anxious to serve Him and to follow the blessed Saviour, yet feeling keenly that intense darkness had ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... contact with him in the sphere of affairs, his duty to the State always came first. In this great business community there was no better man of business, no man by whom the humdrum obligations—punctuality, method, preciseness, and economy of time and speech—were more keenly recognized or more severely practised. I speak with the privilege of close experience when I say that wherever he was, whatever may have been his apparent preoccupations, in the transactions of the business of the State there were never any arrears, there was never any trace of confusion, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... grotto, or cascade, were nearly certain to lure Miss Ruth to her feet. Then he would have her to himself, for Mrs. Denham seldom walked when she could avoid it. To make assurance doubly sure Lynde could almost have wished her one of those distracting headaches from which hitherto he had suffered so keenly. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... John Pitcher, the dairyman, the parish clerk, the engaged man of fifty, the row of young women against the wall, seemed lost in thought not of the gayest kind. The shepherd looked meditatively on the ground; the shepherdess gazed keenly at the singer, and with some suspicion; she was doubting whether this stranger was merely singing an old song from recollection, or composing one there and then for the occasion. All were as perplexed at the obscure revelation as the guests at Belshazzar's feast, except the man in ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various

... thine, Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "ought to be used to such squalls; but mine, reared in soft cloth and fine linen, it is plain they must feel more keenly the pain of this mishap, and if it were not that I imagine—why do I say imagine?—know of a certainty that all these annoyances are very necessary accompaniments of the calling of arms, I would lay me down here to die of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Monfort, and listen to me," said Mrs. Clayton, at last, regarding me keenly, with her warped forefinger uplifted in her usual admonitory fashion, but with an expression on her face of interest and sympathy such as I had never witnessed there before. "A new light has broken just now upon my ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... him below his highest level of power for work. His father early warned him to have a care for his health, "for," said he, "in your profession, if once you were to fall ill you would be a ruined man." To one so intent on perfection and so keenly alive to imperfection such advice must have been nearly superfluous, for the artist could not but observe the effect upon his work of any depression of his bodily well-being. He was, besides, too thrifty in all ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... lazily in their chairs, their feet resting on the rungs of the chairs before them, but their eyes were fastened keenly on Henley. All that he was saying was of the greatest importance to them. They found comfort in his words, but the comfort raised new ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... olden times in secular history is more dramatic and picturesque than real to children; but in the history of the Church and especially of the personalities of the popes the continuity of her life is very keenly felt; the popes are all of to-day, they transcend the boundaries of their times because in a number of ways they did and had to do and bear the very same things that are done and have to be borne by the popes of our own day. If we ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... keenly, and when his scrutiny was completed he fell to whistling a bar of Chopin's Marche Funebre. Then he turned ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... of all hold in the courts, and it was never weary of directing political impeachments, not indeed against the regents themselves, but against their prominent instruments. This warfare of prosecutions was waged the more keenly, that according to usage the duty of accusation belonged to the senatorial youth, and, as may readily be conceived, there was more of republican passion, fresh talent, and bold delight in attack to be found among these youths than among the older members of their order. Certainly the courts were ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... in the sunshine of my guru's love, unspoken but keenly felt, I banished from my conscious mind the various hints he had given of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... this shore, and breathing this pure air. And, trust me, gentlemen, that, if I had wandered here, unknowing and unknown, I would—if I know my own heart—have come with all my sympathies clustering as richly about this land and people—with all my sense of justice as keenly alive to their high claims on every man who loves God's image—with all my energies as fully bent on judging for myself, and speaking out, and telling in my sphere the truth, as I do now, when you rain down ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... amongst the houses through the country. The laird, having seen the beggar sit down near his gate to examine the contents of his pock or wallet, conjectured that he had come from his house, and so drew near to see what he had carried off. As the laird was keenly investigating the mendicant's spoils, his quick eye detected some bones on which there remained more meat than should have been allowed to leave his kitchen. Accordingly he pounced upon the bones, declaring he had been robbed, and insisted on ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of ages. Men's minds are keenly alive to what is passing; communications are much improved; the dissemination of news is rapid; the old race of besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping, avaricious, domineering tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and there could be no difficulty in establishing in such village or district ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... of this aesthetic negation appears, it seems to the present writer, in a certain rudeness or more precisely a certain lack in the domain of manners, outside of the interests in which Quakerism has given so fine a culture. This appears to be keenly felt by the descendants of Friends. Not in business matters; for they are made directors of savings banks and corporations, and trustees, and referees, and executors of estates, in all which places they find themselves at home. Nor is it a lack of dignity and composure ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... of breaking in, accompanied with no little chafing to restless spirits. The expedition to Romney was, to such officers, just such an apprenticeship to Jackson's methods of making war. All this was fully known to him; but while he keenly felt the injustice, he disdained to resent it, or to condescend to any explanation."* (* Dabney ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... moment the enormous change wrought by her mother's death left her keenly understanding. Until the final break, her step-father must be humoured, conciliated. The thought was humiliating, but necessity urged. And she accepted the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... to examine my consciousness, I was keenly aware only of the thoughts on psychology I was trying to ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... beside a little dead child, or—or a young lad, and hear the mother weeping, I feel more keenly than at any other time the fact that blessings descend upon the earth. The child is taken in innocence. The lad is bereft of the power to sin. And their souls are surely ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... austerities, was enfeebled also by frequent illnesses; but her activity, her indomitable energy, was still the same. She never flagged, never wearied, never gave way under the pressure of physical or moral sufferings. It was probably a trial of the latter description, one which she had always been keenly alive to, that hurried ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... placed in prison finds himself at once in a most favorable environment for a mental breakdown. It is true, imprisonment acts more deleteriously upon the psyche of the criminal by passion, the accidental criminal, but even the recidivist who would be expected to feel less keenly the painful loss of freedom, falls a prey to the deleterious effects of prison life. The unfavorable hygienic surroundings which are found in most prisons, the scarcity of air and exercise, readily prepare the way for a breakdown, even in an habitual criminal. Above all, however, it is the emotional ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... most intoxicating women alive. Was this man she loved so passionately to go on to the end of his life only guessing what the Fates forbade him? The years of the impersonal attitude to men which she had thought it right to assume had made her anticipate the more keenly the freedom which one man would bring her. She frankly admitted the strength of her nature, she almost had admitted it to him; should she always be able to control the strong womanly vanity which would give him something more than a passing glimpse of the woman, making ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... remarkable resemblance to his handsome artist father also irritated him. As a result, while he really became very fond of the boy, and was never unkind to him, he treated him with an assumed indifference that was keenly felt by the loving, high-spirited lad. As for Snyder Appleby, he was jealous of Rodman from the very first; and when, only a short time before the race meeting of the Steel Wheel Club, the latter was almost unanimously elected ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... country—is something deeply felt. Few men realize the extent of the spiritual helps which the Christian society of America renders to the aspiring life of a man of God. In his loneliness, in the far-off land, the missionary feels its absence keenly. ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... expresses feelings common to all. The perfection of the latter consists in the intensity of its expression of a single moment of passion or emotion, one peculiar to a single personality, and to that personality only at a single moment. To appreciate it we must enter keenly and instantaneously into the imaginary character at its imagined crisis; and, even when this is easiest to do, it is evident that there must be more difficulty in doing it (for it requires a certain exertion) than in merely letting the mind lie at rest, accepting and absorbing. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... allegiance to the heavenly voice. Somehow, through the blinding snow and unbroken road, she ploughed her way up to Horn o' the Moon, where she found an epidemic of diphtheria; and there she stayed. We marveled over her guessing how keenly she was needed; but since she never explained, it began to be noised abroad that some wandering peddler told her. That accounted for everything and Mary had no time for talk. She was too busy, watching with the sick, and going about from house to house, cooking delicate gruels and broiling ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... for your mother," said Mrs. Durrant, looking at him again keenly, as she transferred the skein. "Yes, it ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... MacKenzie, the discoverer, went home to retire on an estate in Scotland, he found the young nobleman and philanthropist, Lord Selkirk, keenly interested in accounts of vast, new, unpeopled lands, which lay beyond the Great Lakes. A change in the system of farming, which dispossessed small farmers to turn the tenantries into sheep runs, had caused terrible poverty in Scotland at this period. Here in Scotland were people ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... These are mighty questions. When our little ones are removed by death from our care and affection, we feel most keenly our ignorance, and long to know something of those immutable laws of life and health we have so long violated. Woman should at least know enough to be physician to herself and children, but she is denied the advantages granted to man for obtaining knowledge ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... of the gross wrongs which he saw inflicted on them. The administrator of whom we have already spoken might have gone out to the savage country with nothing but contempt for its wild natives, but if he were at all a humane and a just man, it would be natural for him as time went on to feel keenly if any injustice were inflicted on the poor creatures whom he despised, and at last to stand up {244} with indignation as their defender and their champion. So it was with Swift. [Sidenote: 1724—The drapier's arguments] ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... properly to be classified as paupers. Society regards them as primarily drunkards and criminals. Of these two classes the first are generally to be found making a courageous fight against adverse circumstances and feel their position keenly. They are deserving of the compassion of society. Their families, it is true, are a burden upon private and institutional charity, but only a temporary one and after a while become the very means of recovering the broken fortunes of their parents. Very large ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... newly minted in the glowing heat of a true thinker's mind, a pregnant word that sets your fancy ranging through eternity, a luminous doctrine that rises on the intellectual horizon like a star,—these are your wealth. You feel keenly the darkness of the world, and are perplexed by a hundred problems. Child and lover of wisdom, do you know the King of Truth? This is He who can satisfy your craving for light and lead you out of the maze ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... to take this terrible risk?" said Thunder, gravely, feeling keenly the approaching loss of ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... you, Dicky, better than you know me. I feel as keenly as you do, boy. No: we will not give up. We haven't given the ostriches a ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... Shakespeare, Browning and Goethe. When his infantile ear is caught by the lively rhythm and the catchy rhymes, he is receiving his first lessons in poetry. That the lessons are delightful now he shows by his smiles, and in middle life he will appreciate the joy more keenly as he teaches the same little rhymes to his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... were evident, but no exact analysis of the details was possible, a fact that was of great importance in the demonstration of the theory of descent. The lack of more definite knowledge upon this matter was keenly felt by Darwin, [716] and exercised much influence upon his views ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... the water but become accustomed to the thing in his hand. Each time he pressed a bit nearer she struggled to rise toward him—Skag standing just out of reach, tirelessly working with his mind and voice. He keenly registered her pain and helplessness in his own consciousness and was unwilling to prolong it, yet at the same time he had a very clear understanding of the patience required ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... and he felt the bitterness of the general's words the more keenly from having forgotten himself and departed from his neutral position of messenger to speak as he had. He wanted to say something angry that should show Sir Godfrey and his companions, and above all, Scarlett, that ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... says that the Holy Father has expressed a wish to know the state of Catholic Missions in the German Colonies. He feels very keenly the arbitrary conduct of the Imperial Government, and has expressed to the Prussian Minister his astonishment at ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... the deep collar and cuffs of linen and heavy lace to which she was addicted, and her dark, sensuous, haughty, tender face motionless for the moment, against the dark background of the leather, she looked like a Vandyke; and at such times Dartmouth's artistic nature was keenly responsive, and ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... from the treasury for its endowment. The support of a mercenary army, and the burdens incident to the war, pressed heavily on the people during the first years of his reign. But the Neapolitans, who, as already noticed, had been transferred too often from one victor to another to be keenly sensible to the loss of political independence, were gradually reconciled to his administration, and testified their sense of its beneficent character by celebrating the anniversary of his death, for more than two centuries, with ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... chieftain, probably really called Fearcuincedorigh, or Man who is chief of a hundred heads, known to us by Caesar's version of his name, as Vercingetorix, a high-spirited youth, who keenly felt the servitude of his country, and who, on receiving these tidings, instantly called on his friends to endeavor to shake off the yoke. His uncle, who feared to provoke Roman vengeance, expelled him from the chief city, Gergovia, the remains of which may be ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Medici, elected in 1513, assumed the title of Leo X. He was keenly interested in the exploration and discoveries in America, and unceasingly urged his nuncios to keep him supplied with everything written ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... they should suspend their attendance there for a time, until these affairs were adjusted. Thereupon, coram omni populo [i.e., "in the presence of all the people"] who had gathered to see what was going on, the platform was removed [from the cathedral]. The auditors keenly resented this; but since they are to blame in having done what they could not be forced to do, let them pay ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... him when he came on a burn-course among the braes of Manor that shone purple with their graceful trophies; and not all his apprenticeship and practice for so many years of precise gardening had banished these boyish recollections from his heart. Indeed, he was a man keenly alive to the beauty of all that was bygone. He abounded in old stories of his boyhood, and kept pious account of all his former pleasures, and when he went (on a holiday) to visit one of the fabled great places of the earth where he had served before, he came back ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... though it be shown that Keats in 1820 was comparatively indifferent to the praise of The Edinburgh, it cannot follow that in 1818 he must have been superior to the blame of The Quarterly. It is difficult to see why a man may not be keenly sensitive to what the world says about him, and yet retain all proper manliness as a part of his literary character. Surely it was from the mistaken impression that this could not be, and that ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... jealous eye on any innovation that was likely to deprive them of the services of their wives, who built their houses, gathered firewood for their fires, tilled their fields, and reared their families; who were suspicious, and keenly scrutinised the actions of the missionaries; in fact, a people who were thoroughly sensual, and who could rob, lie, and murder without any compunctions of conscience, as long as success ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane

... by a more genuine and unforced inspiration. His extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his intellectual pursuits; and rendered his mind keenly alive to every perception of outward objects, as well as to his internal sensations. Such a gift is, among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the disappointments we meet, and the galling sense of our own mistakes ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley

... became drawn toward the struggle which was about to commence between Great Britain and America, and at a public meeting he made a short speech which attracted general attention. He was now but seventeen years of age, yet his pen was keenly felt in the interest of America, through the columns of Holts Journal, to which he had become a regular contributor. He entered the army as captain of an artillery company which he was the chief means of raising, and did good ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... out the direction with his whip, we both became aware of a large body of men, riding rapidly over the moor as if to meet us. My father eyed them keenly, his face growing grave as he ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... a noisy gay crowd of these folk, the young men lounging against the houses, the girls talking, talking together, arm in arm, as they went to and fro before them, with a wonderful sweet air of indifference to those who eyed them so keenly and yet shyly too, and without anything of the brutal humour of a northern village, that in the later afternoon I again sought the highway. And before I had gone a mile upon my road the whole character of the way was changed; no longer was I crossing a great plain, but winding among ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... children. They were to him what the bull-dog was to her—the constant source of irritation and annoyance. They could hardly hurt him, nor did he appear to dread other injury from them than insult, to which, fool though he was, he was keenly alive. Human gadflies that they were! they sometimes stung him beyond endurance, and he would curse them in the impotence of his anger. Once or twice Elsie had been so far carried beyond her constitutional timidity, by sympathy ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... disappointment. She was nobody that he knew, even by reputation. She was simply a young girl, barely out of her teens—if as old as that phrase would signify. He wondered what she had found in him to make her think him worth so long a study; and looked again, more keenly curious. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... familiar with this by no means uncommon little bird, it may seem that I am overstating the charm of its melody. I can only say that the mood I was then in made me very keenly appreciative; also that I have never heard any other individual of this species able to produce precisely the same effect. We know that there are quite remarkable differences in the songs of birds of the same species, that among several that appear to be perfect and to sing ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... so very keenly that he turned savagely toward the one who had dared to tell him so plainly of his degradation, and demanded. "Who are you, and why have you disturbed the quiet of this mean hovel to ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff

... the serious answer you expected, Miss Vizard?" said Ina, keenly: then to Severne, "You are unwise to insult the woman on whom, from this day, you must depend for bread. Miss Vizard, to you I speak, and not to this shameless man. For your mother's sake, do me justice. I have loved him dearly; but now I abhor him. Would I could break ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... speaking, he bent over and looked keenly at a footprint on the earthen floor of the room. It was not such a print as the foot-covering of a Chinese man would leave. It had been made by the long heel of an ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson

... an instructive aside revealed a day or two ago. For their teacher had told them in English, not as a Scripture lesson, but just as a story, about Peter and John and the lame man. The picture was before them, and they understood and followed keenly; but one little girl whispered to another, who happened to be the well-informed Cock-robin: "Did Peter and John talk English or Tamil?" "Tamil, of course!" returned Cock-robin, ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... nor courtesy could disregard, in a measure tied Gates's hands, while it gave Washington time to ascertain the extent of the disaffection. On the appointed day he suddenly came into the meeting, and amid profoundest silence broke forth in a most eloquent and touching speech. Sympathizing keenly with the sufferings of his hearers, and fully admitting their claims, he appealed to their better feelings, and reminded them of the terrible difficulties under which Congress laboured, and of the folly of putting ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... Monsieur Souverain added a new element of cheerfulness to our little party: he was so thoroughly French—that is, so ignorant of other habits than French ones, so naively persuaded of their superiority to all others, so keenly alive to any point of difference, and so openly astonished when he discovered any, always wondering at the reason for this want of similarity—that he was a perpetual source of interest to our lady visitors. He could not speak English, but he always addressed Aunt Mary in his voluble ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... smiled a little, glancing at me keenly, as she said: "A pretty simile! It was more than I expected after your rueful looks to-night. But you are not singular. There are others in the Carrington settlement who think the same—young men with many rich acres and wealthy ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... influence of revived classical information on geographical matters was keenly felt; and the idea of a direct westerly passage to India was suggested, not only by Portugal's monopoly of the Cape route, but by classical authority, generally accepted by the best geographers of the time. The Imago Mundi of 1410, already mentioned, embodying Roger Bacon's arguments that ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... that Sanskrit, English, Greek, and Latin are cognate languages, has not been without its influence on the scholars and thinkers, or the leaders of public opinion, in India. They, more than others, had felt for a time most keenly the intellectual superiority of the West, and they rose again in their own estimation by learning that, physically, or at all events, intellectually, they had been and might be again, the peers of Greeks and Romans and Saxons. These silent influences often escape ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... heavy robe doth hold. Her looks are mild, her fingers slight As the driven snow are white; But her cheeks are sunk and pale. Is it that the bleak sea-gale Beating from the Atlantic sea On this coast of Brittany, Nips too keenly the sweet flower? Is it that a deep fatigue Hath come on her, a chilly fear, Passing all her youthful hour Spinning with her maidens here, Listlessly through the window-bars Gazing seawards many a league, From her lonely shore-built tower, While the knights are at the wars? Or, perhaps, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... boy," said old Mr. King two days later. "It's just knocking you up to stay," studying Jasper's face keenly. "Goodness me! I should think you'd fallen off a dozen pounds. Upon my word I should, my boy," ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... Princess Ziska devoted herself almost entirely to the entertainment of Dr. Dean, and awakened his interest very keenly on the subject ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... legs like a cow, by which he could make it steal itself home to his semi-baronial residence.[3] These apparently inconsistent and opposite qualities were possessed by the laird of Henderland. There was not in all Liddesdale a nobler champion of the rights of war; and few there were that entered more keenly into the spirit of enterprise, to take from his neighbour a fat steer, and then fight, as nobly as ever did King Robert for a lost kingdom, in defence of his horned prey. The riever in Cockburn was, however, a character of mere habit; for he possessed qualities of heart ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... I felt myself grow keenly awake and alive. So it was Pemaou who was following. Well, I had told him that we should meet again. I untied the strings of the bag and turned its contents into my handkerchief. There was an amulet in the form of a beaver's paw, a ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... 1815 was too full of stir and excitement for a man like Haydon, who was always keenly interested in public affairs, to devote himself to steady work. The news of Waterloo almost turned his brain. On June 23 he notes: 'I read the Gazette [with the account of Waterloo] the last thing before going to bed. I dreamt of it, and was fighting ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... like all pleasant things, came to an end at last, and the Ingleton family, leaving the Casa Bianca with many regrets, returned to their own country in time to welcome Roland, Bevis, and Clifford back from school for Easter. Carmel, who had seemed keenly to feel the parting from her mother, and who had been so quiet on the journey that her cousins suspected a bad attack of homesickness, cheered up when they were once more settled at the Chase. The beauties of the English country-side, with plum-blossom, primroses, ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... climatic conditions. More than this, the same new was entertained by the classic writers; for we find the philosopher and orator Cicero recording his belief that "Athens has a light atmosphere, whence the Athenians are thought to be more keenly intelligent; Thebes a dense one, and the Thebans fat-witted accordingly." Again, Horace, the poet and satirist, has given us the famous passage:—" You would swear he (Alexander the Great) was born in the ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... Foote is only to be compared with our best women novelists. To make this comparison briefly, Miss Woolson observes keenly, Mrs. Burnett writes charmingly, and ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... agnosticism, because affecting larger masses of people, is the rapid growth of the mercantile spirit during the present century, especially in America. This evil the poet saw most clearly and felt most keenly, as every one may learn by reading 'The Symphony', his great poem in which the speakers are the various musical instruments. The violins begin: "O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead! The Time needs heart ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... stood by the window, holding the lace curtain just sufficiently aside to get a narrow and attenuated view of the fog-enshrouded Green. The outlook was far from inspiriting, and Serena was keenly interested in the conversation going forward between her host and hostess. But it was not in her programme to let this appear. She, while straining her ears to listen, therefore maintained an air of detachment. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... particular to say what is exactly true"; but, she added, there was always something to remember in everything he said. With regard to another point, a clergyman who knew Sir Andrew very intimately once told me that "No man of this century had a more keenly religious mind; he was so saturated with thoughts of God and so convinced that God had spoken to man. He was intensely religious, with a profound sense of the supernatural; he certainly was a great example to very busy men in the way he always managed ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... looking keenly into his face. "Who are you? Look at his chin—he never shaved with a sharpened stone! Something ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick

... the door and entered. At a desk before him sat a rather elderly man, clean-shaven, who eyed him keenly. On his left, with his back to him, was a man in uniform pattering away busily on a typewriter, and, for the rest, the room contained a few chairs, a coloured print of the Light of the World over the fireplace, and a torn map. Peter again hesitated. He wondered what was the rank of the ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... Eying the prisoner keenly, and with a manner expressive of surprise to which all that had gone before seemed indifference itself, his Honor, with apparent difficulty, at ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... Keenly he watched that finger about the trigger, breathed silent relief as he saw it slacken, and watched the muzzle drop slowly from level of his eyes. But it was still held pointed at him, and that barely gave him the chance he longed for. Only let the muzzle ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... account of the traditional readiness of the British Navy to go anywhere and do anything, partly by reason of the familiarity of the average sailor with monkeys, parrots, and other tropical fauna, but chiefly at the urgent request of the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was keenly desirous of an opportunity for performing some personal act of unobtrusive public service within the province of ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... sufficed to carry it through. On the other hand, if twenty-five to fifty drops were withdrawn on each day (that is, from one to two grains of opium), inevitably within three, four, or five days the deduction began to tell grievously, and the effect was to restore the craving for opium more keenly than ever. There was the collision of both evils—that from the laudanum and that from the want of laudanum. The last was a state of distress perpetually increasing, the other was one which did not sensibly diminish—no, not for a long period of months. Irregular motions, impressed by a potent ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... low, sullen mutterings of revengeful wrath. Crawford had been so prominent a man, so popular, and, except in his last and fatal expedition, such an efficient leader that his sudden taking off was almost a national calamity. In fact no one felt it more keenly than did Washington himself, for ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... sounds, and this forms the peculiar charm of the hour, its haunting and winning charm. If you take the omnibus-top to be trundled whiningly up to one of the farther east-side entrances of the Park, and then dismount and walk back to the Plaza through it, you are even more keenly aware of the suspensive quality of the time. The summer, which you left for dead by mountain or sea-shore, stirs with lingering consciousness in the bland air of the great pleasance. Many leaves are yet green on the trees, and where they are not green and not there they are gay on ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... shrinking meanly When blows the March wind keenly; A timid fawn, on wild-wood lawn, Where ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... seizes; his life is a fever; his organs, in order to search the depths of joy, are forced to avail themselves of the stimulant of fermented liquors and sleepless nights; in the days of ennui and of idleness he feels more keenly than other men the disparity between his impotence and his temptations, and, in order to resist the latter, pride must come to his aid and make him believe that he disdains them. It is thus he spits on all the feasts and pleasures of his life, and so, between an ardent thirst and a profound ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... lineage, Yet have I a sword of keenness, Gleaming brightly in the battle. 280 This is surely high descended, And has come of noble lineage, For the blade was forged by Hiisi And by Jumala 'twas polished, Thus am I so high descended. And I come of noblest lineage, With my sword so keenly sharpened Gleaming brightly in ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... felt that he could never be what they were, and that those manners and speeches of his, which, if they had imitated them, would have seemed in themselves so many forms of vulgarity, were somehow not vulgar in him. Vjera, as she loved him, felt all this far more keenly than the others. And besides, to add to her embarrassment at present, there was the girl's maidenly shyness and timidity. Since she had told Johann Schmidt her secret, she felt as though all eyes were upon her, and as though every one were about to turn upon her with those jesting ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... said Sam, with a look full of contempt at the shrunken, degraded man before him, who was receiving the punishment already of his misdeeds, and suffering more keenly than from any which could have been inflicted by ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... pleasure in the quaint pictures of the old family Bible, that I have mentioned as the only book and sole literary possession of Hannah Worth. A rare old copy it was, bearing the date of London, 1720, and containing the strangest of all old old-fashioned engravings. But to the keenly appreciating mind of the child these pictures were a gallery of art. And on Sunday afternoons, when Hannah had leisure to exhibit them, Ishmael never wearied of standing by her side, and gazing at the illustrations ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... heart was a stranger to the jealousy and dread of neglect which tormented Adolphe, sympathised with, and felt for his friend; and he thought that if they were both together excluded from command at his request, the blow would be less keenly felt. They were the two youngest in the room, and their youth was a good reason why they should not be named; but Henri was the younger of the two, and he knew that if he were selected as one of the chiefs, Adolphe would be miserable at finding ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Keenly" :   keen



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