"Keenness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marked the keenness of his wit and the elevation of his sentiments, were quoted with pleasure in the assemblies ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... suffering. Disdainful of honours, of titles, and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers, generous, fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without believing in it, he would almost have passed for a saint if the keenness of his intellect had not caused him to be feared as a demon. His glance, more penetrating than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every lie athwart all assertions and all reticences. And thus ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... preaching. The people drew nearer when Dinah Morris mounted the cart which served as a pulpit. There was a total absence of self-consciousness in her demeanour; she walked to the cart as simply as if she were going to market. There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations. When Dinah spoke it was with a clear but not loud voice, and her sincere, unpremeditated eloquence held the attention of her audience ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... discouragements of his last voyage, the prospect of comfort and honours in France seemed to hold more inducements for him than the idea of once more facing the dangers of the deep. His limbs were not so sturdy as of old, his eye had lost something of its keenness, and the hardships and anxieties of the last winter had left their mark upon him. He had money enough to support him to the end of his days, and he had purchased the seignorial mansion of Limoilou—that ancient stone house which ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... Frere bitterly. "You do not know the Baggaras. They are keenness itself. It is real enough, but I am well paid ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... throughout the eighteenth there was a gradual progress toward religious liberalism. The population steadily increased, and New England's unremitting struggle with a not too friendly soil, her hardihood upon the seas, and her keenness in trade, became proverbial throughout the country. Her seaport towns were wealthy. The general standards of living remained frugal, but extreme poverty was rare. Her people still made, as in the earliest days of the colonies, silent and unquestioned sacrifices for ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... glittering armour, she struck her as the only person she had yet encountered who had exactly the same tenderness, the same pity, for women that she herself had. Miss Birdseye had something of it, but Miss Birdseye wanted passion, wanted keenness, was capable of the weakest concessions. Mrs. Farrinder was not weak, of course, and she brought a great intellect to the matter; but she was not personal enough—she was too abstract. Verena was not abstract; she seemed to have lived in imagination through all ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... first real hunting of an iceberg. When we landed, we were thoroughly chilled. Our man was waiting with his wagon, and so was a little supper in a house near by, which we enjoyed with an appetite that assumed several phases of keenness as we proceeded. There was a tower of cold roast beef, flanked by bread and butter and bowls of hot tea. The whole was carried silently, without remark, at the point of knife and fork. We were a forlorn-hope of two, and fell to, winning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... California, for in the Eighties the youth of the city had not turned their wits and prowess to sport. Few of them could drive with either grace or assurance, and Helena's accomplishment was the more renowned. Occasionally Colonel Belmont was allowed to drive, a favour which he enjoyed with all the keenness of his dashing youth. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Vitality, like the vitality of youth upon mountain tops, pulsed and whirled about them, pouring into them the currents of a rushing glorious life, undiluted, straight from the source. In his little person he felt both the keenness of sharp steel and the vast momentum of a whole ocean. Thus he describes it. And the more clearly he uttered in his thoughts the sound given to him by his leader, the greater seemed the influx of strength and glory into ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... a new keenness came into her steady eyes. It was one thing to go back voluntarily to make terms with the men who had attacked her party; it was quite another thing to be deliberately chased across the desert by an Arab freebooter. Her ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... did night find him busy on what he had begun at dawn! How he delighted in predicting for us solar and lunar eclipses long before they occurred! Or again in studies of a lighter nature, though still requiring keenness of intellect, what pleasure Naevius took in his Punic War! Plautus in his Truculentus and Pseudolus! I even saw Livius Andronicus, who, having produced a play six years before I was born—in the consulship of Cento and ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... and his party in the Hotel Bristol in Paris. Steinmetz, who held an open letter in his hand, looked out of the window across the quiet Place Vendome. A north wind was blowing with true Parisian keenness, driving before it a fine snow, which adhered bleakly to the northern face of a column which is chiefly remarkable for the facility with which it falls ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... live like that, for the purposes of a period, wrought up to immense keenness of sense and brilliancy of energy, making steadily for some point of feeling or achievement flashing gloriously on the horizon. It is already plain, perhaps, that she rejoiced in such strokes, and that life as she found it worth ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... mongoose—and whose slightest scratch is attended with such dire results, are two in number, one in each upper jaw, and placed anteriorly to all other teeth, which they exceed by five or six times in point of size. Situated just within the lips, recurved, slender, and exceeding in keenness even the finest of cambric needles, they are penetrated in their longitudinal diameter by a delicate, hair-like canal opening into a groove at the apex, terminating on the anterior surface in an elongated fissure. As the canal is straight, and the tooth ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... assassins; and, last and most deadly charge of all, with having formed a plan for a National Dictatorship, of which he himself was to be the first possessor. The charge was sufficiently probable, and was not now heard for the first time. But the keenness and fiery promptitude with which the speaker poured the charge upon him, gave it a new aspect; and I could see in the changing physiognomies round me, that the great democrat was already in danger. He obviously felt this himself; for starting up from the bench to which he had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... sat in her wainscoted walnut cabinet, a small woman by her inches, but stately enough to seem of majestic stature, and with gray eyes, of inexpressible keenness, which she fixed upon the halting, broken form of Isaac Gardon, and his grave, venerable face, as she half rose and made a slight ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely: but perhaps the city is rather angry ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... look shone with sympathy; he brought pleasant images before the sufferer; his caresses excited no distrust, for they arose purely from the feeling which leads a mother to kiss her wounded child; a desire to demonstrate in every possible way the truth of his feelings, and the keenness of his wish to pour balm into the lacerated mind of the unfortunate. As Evadne regained her composure, his manner became even gay; he sported with the idea of her poverty. Something told him that it was not its real evils that ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Arabia, they were far from popular. The qualities which have drawn down on them the bitter hatred of modern peoples among whom they dwell, acted there in the same way; their pride and exclusiveness, their keenness in business, their profession as money-lenders, made them detested in Arabia as in modern Germany. On the other hand, the ascetic view of life which the Christians represented had attractions even for some of the higher minds among the Arabs. A set of men ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the little field before you earnestly and long, than you would have learned, if you had bestowed a cursory glance upon fields more extensive by far. Perhaps there was compensation for the fewness of the cases you had to observe in the keenness with which you were able to observe them. Perhaps the Great Disposer saw that in your case the pebble got nearly all the polishing it would stand,—the man nearly all the chances ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... teaches that the accurate measurement of the magnitude of our own failings should precede our detection of our brother's. Christ assumes the commonness of the opposite practice by asking 'why' it is so. And we have all to admit that the assumption is correct. The keenness of men's criticism of their neighbour's faults is in inverse proportion to their familiarity with their own. It is no unusual thing to hear some one, bedaubed with dirt from head to foot, declaiming with disgust about a speck or two on his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... miracle—but be not untrue to ourselves." Here he, no doubt, in a sincere and exalted moment, confuses God with a name. He apparently feels that there is a separable difference between natural and revealed religion. He mistakes the powers behind them, to be fundamentally separate. In the excessive keenness of his search, he forgets that "being true to ourselves" IS God, that the faintest thought of immortality IS God, and that God is "miracle." Over-enthusiasm keeps one from letting a common experience ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... exultation over the sale of England. Every light laugh in the proverbial ease of the social Normans rang on his ear like the joy of a ghastly Sabbat. All his senses preternaturally sharpened to that magnetic keenness in which we less hear and see than conceive and divine, the lowest murmur William breathed in the ear of Odo boomed clear to his own; the slightest interchange of glance between some dark-browed priest and large-breasted warrior, flashed upon his vision. The irritation of his recent and neglected ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Len Guy with a question in his tone. And his look searched my thoughts with the keenness of ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... witnessing and becoming accustomed to the most appalling forms of crime and oppression, is to me the most awful and distressing part of the subject. Nothing makes me feel it so painfully as to see with how much more keenness the English feel the disclosures of my book than the Americans. I myself am blunted by use—by seeing, touching, handling the details. In dealing even for the ransom of slaves, in learning market prices of men, women, and children, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... phrase, vividness of fancy, and keenness of insight into the motives that sway mankind, this passage is worthy of Napoleon. He knew that his exile at St. Helena would dull the memory of the wrongs which he had done to the cause of liberty, and that from that lonely peak would go forth the legend of the new Prometheus chained to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... solicitude, anxiety; yearning, coveting; aspiration, ambition, vaulting ambition; eagerness, zeal, ardor, empressement[Fr], breathless impatience, overanxiety; impetuosity, &c. 825. appetite, appetition[obs3], appetence[obs3], appetency[obs3]; sharp appetite, keenness, hunger, stomach, twist; thirst, thirstiness; drouth, mouthwatering; itch, itching; prurience, cacoethes[Lat], cupidity, lust, concupiscence. edge of appetite, edge of hunger; torment of Tantalus; sweet tooth, lickerish tooth[obs3]; itching palm; longing eye, wistful eye, sheep's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Flavia proved the keenness of her eyes. "Where is Giralda?" she exclaimed. "Where is ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... ability, keenness, alertness and capacity, and in proportion as you limit these qualifications by lack of sleep, so in proportion will your ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... specimens, and for the artist to make drawings. The net was frequently drawn in the bays for examples of marine life. Everybody when ashore kept a look out for plants, birds, beasts, and insects. In short, a keenness for investigation, an assiduity in observation, animated the whole ship's company, stimulated by the example of the commander, who never spared himself in his work, and interested himself ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... their haunts, their love of blood, their keenness and immense numbers, cannot understand the disgust and annoyance experienced from them by travellers. They get into the hair, hang by the eyelids, crawl up the legs, or down the back, and fasten themselves under the instep of the foot; and if not removed, ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... pairs of eyes looked into each other for a moment, singularly alike in a certain intent expression, developed into great keenness in the man, but showing as yet only an extreme wide-awakeness in the boy. Cyrus Woodbridge had an engagement with a young friend in half an hour, but he ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... next day—the more firmly she refused to believe herself the victim of an hallucination. She lived frugally; her nerves and digestion were alike in excellent order; in all her life she had never suffered from faintness, and but once or twice from a headache. The keenness of her eyesight was notorious, and she had a healthy contempt for anyone who believed in ghosts.... Moreover, Charlotte Pope, though inclined now to hedge about it, ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... attentive; nor how it blooms into delicious harmonies like a beautifully tinted flower. Oh, if I could only shout aloud with ten thousand lung-power the truth that I now tell you in silence. Then would I make the ears of a hundred thousand men ring with it! What keenness of sensation, what a soul, what a mind, what force of will and active energy, what dexterity and skill of muscular movement and of perception, and what calm and patience will not all these things call ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... admitted the predominance of Gaston, but with a professional keenness of eye began to point out minor points in which the baby ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... spot, convenient to a running stream; where, turning their horses loose to graze till morning, they would build a cheerful fire of the dry brushwood close at hand, and prepare their evening meal, which they would eat with a keenness of appetite known only to the tired and hungry hunter. Each man was his own cook; their food consisting chiefly of venison and wild turkey their rifles procured them, and fish drawn from the neighboring brook, which they would broil on the glowing coals, fastened ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Mr Loring!' he said, shaking my hand again. He said it with fervour. He obviously was delighted. The exercise of hospitality was clearly the chief joy of his life; at least, if he had a greater it must have been something where keenness was excessive beyond the point of pleasure, as some joys are. 'How do, Bob? Your missis has just come.' He was ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... brilliant verses entitled "Gentlemen, Please Desist", exposes in a masterly way the fatuity of our loud-mouthed peace workers. Miss Silverman's lines on the same subject are very good, but scarcely equal in keenness of wit. It is all very well to "keep industry booming", but industry cannot take the place of military efficiency in protecting a nation against ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... that you've met things I never had to meet, met them much better, doubtless, than I should have met them. Only that you've fought in the real, while I've flitted around here on the playground." Katie's eyes contracted to keenness. "And I wonder if there isn't more dignity in fighting—yes, and losing—in the real, than just sitting around where you get nothing more unpleasant than the faint roar of the guns. To lose fighting—or not to fight! Why certainly there can be no question about it. What do ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... left to sink into oblivion by its own weight, with original essays on the most interesting subjects of the time, religious, or political; in which the titles of the books or pamphlets prefixed furnish only the name and occasion of the disquisition. I do not arraign the keenness, or asperity of its damnatory style, in and for itself, as long as the author is addressed or treated as the mere impersonation of the work then under trial. I have no quarrel with them on this account, as long as no ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was a sudden increase of the firing in front. The clouds and vapors rolled back, and the dancing figures in the thickets took on more semblance of reality. Suddenly Henry uttered a cry. His eyes of almost preternatural keenness had recognized one ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... tended to foster the most delicate of all passions, more than the rough ministrations of terror and the knowledge that each was the occasion of injury. A woman's heart is peculiarly unfitted to sustain this conflict. Her sensibility gives keenness to her imagination and she magnifies every peril, and writhes beneath every sacrifice which tends to humiliate her in her own eyes. The natural pride of her sex struggles with her desire to confer happiness, ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... little zauberfest of Christmas-eve was over. Christmas morning came. I remember that morning well—a gray, neutral kind of day, whose monotony outside emphasized the keenness ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... charge of a quick-eyed little woman of six and thirty perhaps, and she regards us with a certain keenness of scrutiny. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... consciousness seemed to embrace all the details of the situation with a keenness ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... consciousness. This sharpens the senses, i.e., it gives to the organs of sense a greater degree of energy, so that the watching eye now sees, and the listening ear now hears, that which ordinarily would pass unnoticed. The events of apperception give to the senses a peculiar keenness, which underlies the skill of the money-changer in detecting a counterfeit among a thousand bank-notes, notwithstanding its deceptive similarity; of the jeweler who marks the slightest, apparently imperceptible, flaw in an ornament; of the physicist who perceives ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... paper and fixed the young man with the gray, unsheathed keenness that had sent so many witnesses grovelling to the naked truth. "No doubt whatever. I always held, and so did both the physicians, that his lack of balance was a temporary and sporadic thing, brought on by overwork—and certain unhappy conditions ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... take hold of us. There can be no aggregate of suffering among lower, any more than among higher, organisms; and the amount of pain which individual animals have to endure—even animals of those species which we can suppose to possess a certain keenness of sensibility—is probably, in the vast majority of cases, very trifling. Half the anguish of humanity proceeds from the power of looking before and after. The animal, though he may suffer from fear of imminent, visible ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... assistance; and in the castle they helped to serve the guests at table. After months of such service, they went through a beautiful ceremony and were made knights. In the country round about, Arthur, of all the squires, was the most famous for his skill in the use of the lance and the sword, for his keenness in the hunt, and for his ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... suddenly to himself, out of the exalted regions of the spirit in which he had been dwelling. His throat was sore from excessive shouting and the sting of the dust, and it was a few minutes before he was able to clear his eyes and see with his usual keenness. Then he found that his body, too, ached from his flight with the ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... them, and that serves but for fuel to foment their untamed desires. Like as in those that dream they are a-dry or in love, their unaccomplished pleasures and enjoyments do but excite the inclination to a greater keenness. Nor indeed can the remembrance of past enjoyments afford them any real contentment at all, but must serve only, with the help of a quick desire, to raise up very much of outrage and stinging pain out of the remains of a feeble and befooling pleasure. Neither doth it befit men of ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... parties, and seemed to him to threaten a change in the relations of Canada to the empire. But these explanations do not alter the fact that his attitude caused the Liberal party to lose touch with a movement characterized by intellectual keenness and generosity of sentiment, representing a real though ill-defined national impulse, and destined to leave its mark upon the history of ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... daughter of a minister of the gospel, herself a Christian, she had never before heard a lady pray in the presence of gentlemen. She had heard of their doing so; heard them criticised with sharp sarcasm. Some of the criticisms which had sounded full of keenness and wit when she heard them, recurred to her at this time, and some way, with Flossy's low, earnest voice filling her heart, they dwindled into shallowness and coarseness. All the same, their baneful influence was on her, and helped to hold her back from opening her lips, for the critic ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... had now reached the pitch of exquisite keenness that made it something spiritual. Solicitously they kept him alive, and far back in his mind Sime wondered why they bothered to do that. Couldn't they be satisfied with what ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... how many Christians there are who so thoroughly believe God made them that they can laugh in God's name; who understand that God invented laughter and gave it to his children. Such belief would add a keenness to the zest in their enjoyment, and slay that sneering laughter of which a man grimaces to the fiends, as well as that feeble laughter in which neither heart nor intellect has a share. It would help them also to understand the depth of this miracle. The ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... set it on a flat cornice jutting from the stone wall. Rachel obediently steadied it. He selected from his tools a knife with a rounded point of wonderful keenness and smoothed away the chalk in bulk. They stood close together, the sculptor bending from his commanding height to work. From time to time he shifted his position, touching her hand often and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... to have spoken it perfectly; yet his verse ranks with the best products of Germany in fluency and in form. Much of it, especially that with woman's love as its theme, is extremely German in thought and feeling, though perhaps French in its keenness of analysis. So German is Chamisso felt to be that at his best he is ranked with Goethe ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... whistle in reply came from a grove just ahead, and fourteen men, all of middle years or beyond, emerged into view. Though elderly, not one among them showed signs of weakness. They were mostly tall, they held themselves very erect, and their eyes were of uncommon keenness and penetration. They were the fourteen sachems of the Onondagas, and at their head was the first in rank, Tododaho, a name that never ceased to exist, being inherited from the great chief who founded the League centuries before, and being passed on from successor to successor. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... Much that had lain dormant in the great hound since the adventurous days of his leadership of a dingo pack had waked into active, insistent life that evening, and, brushing aside the habits of a year's soft living, had filled him once more with the keenness of the hunter and the fire of the masterful mate ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... which is favorable to vegetation. Chemically considered, the bracing breeze of the more sterile soil is the most conducive to health, and is practically so, when the frame is not perpetually exposed to it; but the keenness which checks the growth of the plant is, in all probability, trying, to say the least, to the ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... character of a mountebank are well known, and the speech which he made upon the occasion of his first turning itinerant doctor, has been often printed; there is in it a true spirit of satire, and a keenness of lampoon, which is very much in the character of his lordship, who had certainly an original turn for invective and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... certainly, but no fitting time. Romance would hardly mitigate the keenness of the air, or diminish the probability of taking cold, were you to stand here listening to Indian legends. Besides, the tale is in manuscript, and I should not be able, relying on memory, to do ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... The keenness of the crew to get to work was evidenced by the fact that although the men's dinner was now ready, it was with the utmost difficulty that they could be persuaded to go below and eat it; and when at length they went, in obedience to the Captain's imperative ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... not as big as elephants, as swift as stags, as light as birds, as strong as bulls; that the skins of seals are stronger, of hinds prettier, of bears thicker, of beavers softer than ours; that dogs excel us in delicacy of scent, eagles in keenness of sight, crows in length of days, and many beasts in ease of swimming. And although nature itself does not allow some qualities, as for example strength and swiftness, to be combined in the same person, yet they call it a monstrous thing that men are not compounded of different and inconsistent ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... not spring upon his foster-brother. Even as they looked, the fire went out in his eyes, spark by spark, until they were lustreless as ashes, and at last he put up his hand and wiped great drops from his forehead. "Never had you the keenness to father that judgment," he said in a strangely dull voice. "It must be that a god spoke through your mouth." Leaving them, he moved forward to the well and stood gazing into it, his fingers mechanically raking together and crushing the dead ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... masons, who, from the beginning, mentioned that they would decline working on Sundays. It may here be noticed that throughout the whole of the operations it was observable that the men wrought, if possible, with more keenness upon the Sundays than at other times from an impression that they were engaged in a work of imperious necessity, which required every possible exertion. On returning to the floating light, after finishing the tide's work, the boats were ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and shook the offered hand. He was tall and lean, and brown-faced as a soldier back from the war. He had a boyish air, younger than his thirty-one or thirty-two years: but under that look was the same sort of hardness and keenness which was the first thing ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... an almost unbroken accompaniment we managed also to do a bit of literary discussion, and, though Loken's reading of Bengali literature was less extensive than mine, he made up for that by the keenness of his intellect. Among the subjects ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... for the stone itself). It is keen and cold and glittering, having a metallic suggestion. A very large per cent. of the light that falls upon the surface of a diamond at any low angle is reflected, hence the keenness of its luster. If a diamond and some other white stone, say a white sapphire, are held so as to reflect at the same time images of an incandescent light into the eye of the observer, such a direct comparison ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... supernaturalism of the Old Testament on which they fed, were especially men to whom anything resembling an apparition had a prophetic significance. And Cecil Grey, though liberal beyond most New England clergymen, was liable by the keenness of his susceptibilities and the extreme sensitiveness of his organization to be influenced by such delusions,—if delusions they be. So he stood awed and trembling, questioning within himself, like some seer to whom a dark and uncertain revelation ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... school. I was given a little teaching to do, and found it perfectly enchanting. Imagine children with everything greedy and sensual gone, with none of the crossness or spitefulness that comes of fatigue or pressure, but with all the interesting passions of humanity, admiration, keenness, curiosity, and even jealousy, emulation, and anger, all alive and active in them. They were not angelic children at all, neither meek nor mild. But they were generous and affectionate, and it was easy to evoke these feelings. The one thing absent from the whole place was any touch of sentimentality, ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... parcels office clerk in the North Eastern Railway Station at Hull, and that since the 13th of May until the day before yesterday he'd been away in the North of Scotland on his holidays—been home to his people, in fact—he is a Scotsman, which, of course, accounts for his keenness about the money. Now, then—on the night of May 12th—the night, as you know, Mr. Allerdyke, of your cousin's supposed murder, but anyway, of his arrival at Hull—this young man Martindale was ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... church in Sonora for some weeks before he made himself known to me. As I learned afterward, he was weighing the young preacher in his critical balances. He had a shrewd Scotch face, in which there was a mingling of keenness, benignity, and humor. His age might be sixty, or it might be more. He was an old bachelor, and wide guesses are sometimes made as to the ages of that class of men. They may not live longer than married ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... the Duncaid. He possessed little originality or creative imagination, but he had a vivid sense of the beautiful, and an exquisite taste. He owed much of his popularity to the easy harmony of his verse, the keenness of his satire, and the brilliancy of his antithesis. He has, with the exception of Shakespeare, added more phrases to the English language than any other poet. He died on ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... edge of his bunk, produced the captured knife, and commenced to sharpen it slowly, without ostentation, on the sole of his shoe. It was already of a razor keenness. It was a carving knife evidently stolen from the galley of the ship; it had been ground so often that the steel which remained was thin and narrow. A sharp blow with that knife would drive it to the handle ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... the exultation of the detective as he elicited the description we have recorded, and indeed he had reason to exult, for he had secured a clue in the most remarkable manner. His keenness had been marvelous; his success was equally wonderful; but he had after all only secured a starter. But there was a revelation to come that caused him to stop and consider whether or not any credit really was due him, ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey
... It seemed a very short time indeed till the door, usually left ajar, was pulled open and Dr. Winchester emerged, taking off his respirator as he came. His act, when he had it off, was demonstrative of his keenness. He turned up the outside of the wrap and smelled ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... gifted with marvellous keenness of sight, which enabled him to see a hundred miles off as plainly by night as by day. His Giallar-horn, which could be heard throughout all the world, proclaiming the gods' passage to and fro over the quivering bridge Bifroest, was like the trumpet of the goddess ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... curtain to keep off the draught, and food and bedding on the floor. I sank down on the straw they had prepared for me, and never was couch of down more grateful to a luxurious man than this poor pallet to me. La Croissette viewed the whole party with keenness, then, putting his bottle to my lips, said, "Take this; there's a little left." Whatever it was, it revived me; and then he nodded, said "Bon ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... flooded with candidates is to make the examinations crushingly severe. Children are early made to realise that all hope of succeeding in life rests upon the passing of these examinations. Thus the despair which often leads to suicide on the one hand and knowledge without keenness on the other. ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... susceptible of pleasure, I would be willing to encounter all the keenness of pangs suffered by such natures. For such, the rational delights of a year are crowded into a day, an hour; and the ignorant reader of their obituary sighs mournfully, computing their lives by a false reckoning. Yet after all, we ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Agatha had dressed for the last of those formal dinners to which she had never been able quite to reconcile herself, she took refuge in Elizabeth's room. Thither she had of late absented herself; there was something so formidable in the keenness of Elizabeth's silent eyes. Hesitating before the door, she remembered when she had last quitted it. It required all her bravery to cross the threshold ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Speaking about this, some said, Well enough—he has become quite incompetent of late. Getting stale, probably. Unable to discover the obvious, losing his keenness. Ten years in the Far East about does for one. But with Lawson, the situation was different. He had become so tired of boundary lines, of perpetual swaying back and forth from one side to the other, without conviction. Geographical and moral concessions, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... Illinois, Maine or Massachusetts but are just human beings as they are. We are not queens but political and industrial serfs. We are not angels but our better natures, our higher selves are becoming aroused by the needs of our common humanity with a solidarity of purpose, a keenness of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... a performance of Tannhauser, at which he was present, he called on me one morning and declared himself fully and decidedly in favour of my work. The only objection he had to make was that the stretta of the second finale was too abrupt, a criticism which proved his keenness of perception; and I was able to show him, by the score, how I had been compelled, much against my inclination, to curtail the opera, and thereby create the position to which he had taken exception. We often met when out walking and, as far as it was possible with ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... proposed me.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, they knew, that if they refused you, they'd probably never have got in another. I'd have kept them all out. Beauclerk was very earnest for you.' BOSWELL. 'Beauclerk has a keenness of mind which is very uncommon.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, sir; and every thing comes from him so easily. It appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing.' BOSWELL. 'You are loud, sir; but it is not ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... ingenious improvement of his own devising. Upon the preternaturally acute observer who was to control the machinery of the tale, the American poet bestowed a companion of only an average alertness and keenness; and to this commonplace companion the romancer confided the telling of the story. By this seemingly simple device Poe doubled the effectiveness of his work, because this unobservant and unimaginative narrator of the unraveling ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... seeking neither for the old nor the picturesque, which are not always synonymous, but was in full sympathy with the fresh, active, and, on the whole, joyous life around her. It was sufficient to her to be a part of the human tide, and to feel by contact the keenness and zest of the human endeavor. She was not troubled by the ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... examined the edge to see that nothing had blunted its razor-like keenness, and then took his stand at the foot of the bed. Twice he raised his weapon; and then let it fall, with a drawing motion. The keen blade cut through the rug, as if it had been pasteboard; and, at the same instant, Tim sprang from the other side of the bed, and fainted in the ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... "you have a keenness of wit, and a certain decision, which I confess I overlooked in you ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... — greeting Fergus. — He is welcome. Let you rest, Fergus, you should be hot and thirsty after mounting the rocks. FERGUS. It's a sunny nook you've found in Alban; yet any man would be well pleased mounting higher rocks to fetch yourself and Naisi back to Emain. DEIRDRE — with keenness. — They've answered? They would go? FERGUS — benignly. — They have not, but when I was a young man we'd have given a lifetime to be in Ireland a score of weeks; and to this day the old men have nothing so heavy as knowing it's in a ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... period after Wellington's death, the nation once more found itself drawn into a European war, there were many whose regret for his removal was quickened into greater keenness. "Had we but the Duke to lead our armies!" was the common cry; but even his military genius might have found itself disastrously fettered, had he occupied the position which his ancient subordinate and comrade, Lord Raglan, was made ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... these memoirs afford us the harshest and most repulsive views of Napoleon's character that we have yet seen. His affectionate consort was undoubtedly discerning, and used her keenness of perception with proper diligence to discover all her husband's faults. We have never shared in the excessive and extraordinary admiration with which the character of this man-hater and earth-spoiler is regarded in this land of liberty; but it seems to us that the portraiture ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... societies, and fruit and garden produce societies (but not nearly enough), besides a thousand or so societies of allotment holders which, thanks largely to our friend, George Nicholls, set all the others an example in keenness and loyalty to their ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... those in whom it is most difficult to arouse wants, those in whom it is hardest to inspire the desire to rise out of their condition; so that man must already have gained a certain degree of comfort by his labor, before he can feel with any keenness that need of improving his condition, of perfecting his existence, which I call ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... illustrious father, Lord Chatham. Such powers, evinced by one who was but just stepping upon the stage of public life, first excited surprise, which was quickly followed by admiration. That strength of thought and keenness of analysis, which, seizing upon a subject, bring out at once its real elements of importance, and present them in their practical bearings, deducing the course dictated by a wise policy, had hitherto ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... a rather woolly and unintelligible interlude—we see Joseph retiring to his couch in an alcove behind the place where the banqueting-table had been. You will judge how urgent was the lady's keenness to probe the mysteries of his divine nature when I tell you that she could not wait till the morning to pursue her enquiries, but must needs visit him in his chamber at dead of night, and wearing the one garment of the hour. At first, still half dreaming, he mistakes her for an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... a poor man; he had no choice of gifts; he had only a pig, he repeated; and I had refused it. I have rarely been more wretched than to see him sitting there, so old, so grey, so poor, so hardly fortuned, of so rueful a countenance, and to appreciate, with growing keenness, the affront which I had so innocently dealt him; but it was one of those cases in which speech ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some bare-footed peasant or some monk with the rope around his waist, it was complete solitude; and on moonlit nights they sat by the waterfalls in an atmosphere that had the lightness of mountain air without its keenness. On one occasion they climbed by dry torrent courses five miles into the mountains, baby and all, on horseback and donkeyback—"such a congregation of mountains; looking alive in the stormy light ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... rich. It looked as if Daly might have some other object in tracking Lawrence, but Foster could not see what it was. Indeed, he was frankly puzzled. There was a mystery about Carmen's packet, he had been warned out of Edinburgh, and inquiries about him were afterwards made, while Daly's keenness was not quite explained. He wondered whether these things were somehow related, but at present they only offered him tangled clews that led nowhere. Well, he might be able to unravel them by and by, and getting ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... be it spoken!—from that grand arsenal of truth and power built by the hands of the great holy men of holy times. But who made the many tough old blades which have a temper that outlives time,—whose rugged points have never lost a whit of their keenness, after having torn their way through human bosoms, been hung up and taken down again for centuries, and never a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... well illustrates his keenness and foresight in preparing the corps for their ordeal of 1914. He was a great disciplinarian, he knew every officer and man individually, he was universally liked, and he did more perhaps than any one else to hold the corps together and to train it in an efficient ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... the other with eager eyes, and mouth agape with excitement. She knew perfectly well that the conversation was planned for her benefit, and more than guessed its imaginary nature, but it was impossible to resist a thrill—a fear—a doubt! The bread-and-butter was arrested in her hand in the keenness of listening. ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a judge,—proffer our petitions of the things which we deem needful unto ourselves, as unto advocates[29] informed by experience of our frailty. And this more we discern in Him, full as He is of compassionate liberality towards us, that, whereas it chanceth whiles (the keenness of mortal eyes availing not in any wise to penetrate the secrets of the Divine intent), that we peradventure, beguiled by report, make such an one our advocate unto His majesty, who is outcast from His presence with an eternal banishment,—nevertheless He, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... assembled at the time appointed, for my previous achievements had led the black-fellows to suppose I had some marvellous manifestation in store for them. Never can I forget the keenness with which that great assembly anticipated the entertainment in store for them. And remember, they were growing pretty blase by this time, having ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... habit was modest and his looks were not of a kind at once to tickle the fancy of such as she. Yet Dante looked at her curiously, though without ostentation, as one whose way it is instinctively to observe all men and all women with an exceeding keenness and clearness of vision. ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and remain without a rival in your many- sided excellence, and praise of you strikes at none of those who have survived your day. The increase of time only mellows your renown, and each year that passes and brings you no successor does but sharpen the keenness of our sense of loss. In what other novelist, since Scott was worn down by the burden of a forlorn endeavour, and died for honour's sake, has the world found so many of the fairest gifts combined? If we may not call you a poet (for the first of English writers of light verse did ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... vague bulk of the mountains rose on either side of her in a mystery that was not of this life. Yet it was not oppressive; neither was its restfulness and quiet suggestive of obliviousness and slumber; on the contrary, the highly rarefied air seemed to give additional keenness to her senses; her hearing had become singularly acute; her eyesight pierced the uttermost extremity of the gorge, lit by the full moon that occasionally shone through slowly drifting clouds. Her nerves thrilled with a delicious ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... rejuvenated, and although he appeared to miss his old friend and antagonist, Senator Thurman, he gave potent evidence during the afternoon of his ability as an intellectual gladiator, strong in argument, ready in retort, and displaying great parliamentary keenness and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... heart beating and felt half amused by his keenness when the steward tied the string to his leg. After his adventures on the Caribbean and the stakes he and Adam had played for, it was strange he should be eager to win a box of plated forks at a rustic show. Yet, he was eager; Grace had ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... the first shrinking, was possessed by a sense of anti-climax. Life had a brassy ring. She had come home with at least something of her mother's military keenness for the "campaign" of vindication, but within a day or two she was thinking, rather cynically and cheaply, that the game was not worth the candle. What difference did it all make, in her actual life? People might whisper and nudge behind her back, but their invitations seemed to come ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... thinkers and speakers in the Upper House. Irregularity of life had somewhat blunted what must once have been a very superior mind. His statesmanship was of a high order; his oratory ingenuous, generally courteous and conciliatory, and always entertaining, from its lucidness and keenness. He was decidedly popular in social circles, genial and good-natured, and full of animal spirits. His excesses, indeed, rather tended to make him the more companionable, though they undoubtedly undermined an uncommonly fine intellect; and certainly nothing can ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... well-bred, were closely allied to the Cuban blood-hound, too frequently employed in hunting runaway slaves, although equally useful for driving game out of thick coverts or protecting the camp when committed to their charge. They were possessed of great keenness of scent, were fierce, courageous, and very powerful animals, and could endure the intense heat of a tropical sun. They could follow the wily ocelot, making their way noiselessly through the dense palmetto-scrub, and could fearlessly tackle ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... are remarkable for the elegance of literary style, tenderness of spirit and keenness of observation. He excels in ironical sketches. He has often been compared to Eugene Sue, but his touch is lighter than Sue's, and his humor less unctuous. Most of his little sketches, originally written for La Vie Parisienne, were collected in his 'Monsieur et ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... manifestation of the unusual phenomena in November, 1875, Edison's keenness of perception led him at once to believe that he had discovered a new force. Indeed, the earliest entry of this discovery in the laboratory note-book bore that caption. After a few days of further experiment and observation, however, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... and he had called to-day more to keep his word with Bart than to enter upon an actual business transaction. Nothing could be franker and more open than his way and manner in saying this; and as he was trained to keenness of observation, he may have detected the flitting smile that just hovered on Bart's lips. After a little pleasant commonplace talk of common things, the leisurely Greer took a cordial leave, and never ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... of myself. My ever-wakeful reason and the keenness of my moral feelings will secure you from all unpleasant circumstances Connected with me save only one, viz., the evasion of a specific madness. You will never hear any thing but truth from me. Prior habits render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but unless ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... that the American Indian displays a wonderful keenness of sight and hearing. The chief sat motionless, peering into the gloom and listening. None could know better than he that he had taken a most ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... nature had been, in a way, impersonal; his present battles were wholly with the males of his species, and the hardships of the trail, the river, and the frost marred him far less than the bitter keenness of the struggle with ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... coming had terribly augmented his bitter hate of himself. She was going to fail to help him. She experienced a sensation of impotence that amounted almost to distress. The situation assumed a tragic keenness. She had set forth to reverse the tide of a wild cowboy's fortunes; she faced the swift wasting of his life, the damnation of his soul. The subtle consciousness of change in her was the birth of that faith she had revered in Stillwell. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... manner Northrup, now, was aware of a painful keenness of his senses. Heathcote looked large and his voice vibrated in the quiet room; Aunt Polly seemed dwindling, physically, while something about her—the light playing on her knitting needles and spectacles, probably—radiated. ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... second had been enough. She had seen his face. She had seen—and it was not her imagination, but a real and bitter irony—that of all the people in the room she alone had been the object of his quiet greeting. She knew then—for her eyes had not lost their keenness—that the eighteen months in which they had scarcely met had made no difference to him. He still reverenced and loved her. For him she was still "Lakshmi," the goddess of beauty and perfection; for him she was still the ideal, the woman of goodness and truth and purity. Her victory ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... efforts by which he clung to truth in the cruel darkness of mental disease, and the innocent gayety and light-heartedness which alternated with gloom. Like Rousseau, Cowper had, by the very reaction from sadness, a rare keenness of enjoyment. Little things were enough to feast it, and hence the most trivial matters came naturally into his verse. His poems have certainly had a varied history. Written to afford occupation to a mind on the verge of madness, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... halves ever getting the ball out to them. The team looked on those two unknown halves as timid novices, who would lose their heads at the kick-off. As a matter of fact, the system of football teaching at Ripton was so perfect, and the keenness so great, that the second fifteen was nearly as good as the first every year. But the Wrykyn team did not know this, with the exception of Allardyce, who kept his knowledge to himself; and they arrived at Ripton ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... to serve this purpose. By her side is a crude wooden comb with which she strikes a few stitches into place. When she wishes to wedge the yarn for a complete row—from side to side—she uses a flat broad stick, one edge of which is sharpened almost to knife-like keenness. This is called the "batten." With the design in her brain her busy and skilful fingers produce the pattern as she desires it, there being no sketch from which she may copy. In weaving a blanket of intricate pattern and many colors the weaver finds it easier to open the few warp threads needed ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... very soft wicket which he found on arriving, this place was once christened by a well-known cricketer Bourton-on-the-Bog. Indeed, it is often a case of Bourton-under-the-Water; but, in spite of a soft pitch, there is great keenness and plenty of good-tempered rivalry about these matches. Bourton is a truly delightful village. The Windrush, like the Coln at Bibury, runs for some distance alongside ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... and a sweet dignity, which was not without its effect upon the prince, although it sharpened to the refinement of torture the keenness of his ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... individual mental faculties of these individuals? In other words, is their inferiority a quantitative or qualitative one? Taking pure intelligence into consideration we find that they show no deficiency in this particular sphere. On the contrary, most or all of them show a degree of shrewdness and keenness which absolutely precludes the existence of an intelligence defect per se. Their recidivism is not due to an inability to distinguish between right and wrong. They know very well what is and what is not right, at any rate, ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... as Margaret was with ecstasy, she was yet more than willing,—even glad,—to bear her share in the universal sorrow. Well she knew that pain must be proportioned to the fineness and fervor of her organization; that the very keenness of her sensibility exposed her to constant disappointment or disgust; that no friend, however faithful, could meet the demands of desires so eager, of sympathies so absorbing. Contrasted with her radiant visions, how dreary looked actual ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Indeed, the set policy of his band was to take refuge in flight whenever, in the daytime, a man was descried, no matter at what distance. Lobo's habit of permitting the pack to eat only that which they themselves had killed, was in numerous cases their salvation, and the keenness of his scent to detect the taint of human hands or the poison itself, completed ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... setting of bare grey ash-trees or twisted grey alders, with the brown hills behind and the brilliant blue of the sky overhead. The air here is keen and brilliant; there is an edge to all outlines, and a keenness to all colours, which the softer and more humid air of sheltered country does not give. The yellow of the primroses which cluster thickly in hollow and on bank has a brilliance and delicacy which I have never seen in valley primroses, and I cannot describe the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... the fire, the ramping keenness of the Ironwoods, the spirit and dash of the Finger Marks. For a long time the girl in the willows watched them. Then as they came near she rose and caught ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... quarrel one week-day. One of them was very teasing, the other very passionate. The latter ran to a butcher's window close by, seized the large knife, and plunged it into the left side of his companion. Most mercifully the wound was not dangerous: the keenness of the knife was in his favor; it penetrated to within a short distance of the heart, but separated no large vein, and within a few days the boy was out again. The Sunday after it occurred my party were exceedingly ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... I took part, with great keenness, in cricket and foot-ball, and was very ambitious to excel in everything in which I took an interest, but I always had other tastes as well, which were more precious to me, for example, the love for science, history, and poetry. Until I was past ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "confusion was inevitable. Mr. Durant hovered about, excited, anxious, yet reassured by the enthusiasm of the students, who entered with eagerness into the new world. He superintended feeding the hungry, answered questions, and studied with great keenness the faces of the girls who were entering Wellesley College. In the middle of the afternoon it had been discovered that no bell had been provided for waking the students, so a messenger went to the village to beg help of Mrs. Horton (the mother of the professor of Greek), who promptly provided ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... an affection which remained undiminished to the end. Lyell was twelve years senior to Darwin, and died seven years before his friend. During the last year of Lyell's life, I spent the summer with him at his home in Forfarshire. How well do I recollect the keenness with which—in spite of a near-sightedness that had increased with age almost to blindness—he still devoted himself to geological work. The 264 note-books, all carefully indexed, were in constant use, and visits were made to all the haunts of his youth, with the frequent pathetic appeal to ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... would perhaps be wrong to accompany them in this removal. The state of calamity to which my inexorable prosecutor had reduced me, had made the encounter even of a den of robbers a fortunate adventure. But the time that had since elapsed, had probably been sufficient to relax the keenness of the quest that was made after me. I sighed for that solitude and obscurity, that retreat from the vexations of the world and the voice even of common fame, which I had proposed to myself when I broke ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... scarcely lessened the keenness of the sensations I endured, as memory traces the feelings and incidents of that day. From the hour when I sailed from home, Lucy's image was seldom absent from my imagination, ten minutes at a time; I thought of her, sleeping and waking; in all ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... said between the two about Rebecca Mary's loss, but Aunt Olivia recognized the keenness of it to the child. She worried a little about it; it reminded her of that other time of worry when Rebecca Mary and she had nearly starved. Sheets and roosters—there were so many worries ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... bald air about town and house and master, which is utterly revolting to the lad, whose childish feet had pattered beside the tender Rachel along the embowered paths of Ashfield. The lack of congeniality affronts his whole nature. In the keenness of his martyrdom, (none the less real because fancied,) the leathern-faced, gaunt Brummem takes the shape of some Giant Despair with bloody maw and mace,—and he, the child of some Christiana, for whose guiding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... hung motionless over the pool, and Diana's eyes watched it movelessly, and the liquid sweetness of the water's talk with the stones was heard,—as one hears things when the senses are strung to double keenness. Diana heard it, at least, and listened to something in it she had never perceived before; something not only sweet and liquid and musical, but in some odd sense admonitory. What did it say? Diana hardly questioned, but yet she heard,—"My peace never changes. My song never dies. Listen, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... on yesterday; but they arouse themselves at length, and after watering their animals, commence cooking. We see the crimson streaks and the juicy ribs smoking over the fires, and the savoury odours are wafted to us on the breeze. Our appetites are whetted to a painful keenness. We can endure no longer. A ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... my eyes. I heard a pebble stir under their feet. The tinkle of water falling down its ferny tunnel could be guessed at; and the beauty of the world stabbed one with such keenness that the stab ...
— The Blue Man - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... now arrived when it became necessary for Leslie to come to some definite conclusion as to how far he would take these two men into his confidence. He had watched them both with the utmost keenness from the first moment of his connection with them, and everything that he had seen in their speech and behaviour had led him to the conviction that they were absolutely honest, loyal, and trustworthy. On the other hand, he had heard of cases wherein men even as trustworthy ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... was thus mutely pondering within myself, and recording my sorrowful complainings with my pen, it seemed to me that there appeared above my head a woman of a countenance exceeding venerable. Her eyes were bright as fire, and of a more than human keenness; her complexion was lively, her vigour showed no trace of enfeeblement; and yet her years were right full, and she plainly seemed not of our age and time. Her stature was difficult to judge. At ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... a man of his age, a good quiet citizen of Paris, rich, and esteemed by all! And to think that he had been proud of his exploits, that he had boasted of his cunning, that he had plumed himself on his keenness of scent, that he had been flattered by that ridiculous sobriquet, "Tirauclair." Old fool! What could he hope to gain from that bloodhound calling? All sorts of annoyance, the contempt of the world, without counting the ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... The keenness of a dog's nose is, of course, proverbial, and I have only put a few tests to Lola in this particular, yet, such as they are (proving perhaps no more than is already known) I will here set down. I put the first of these ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... me as one of the most brilliant and entertaining of its kind I had ever read; it was not long indeed before it appeared that the same view of it was taken by many others throughout the country. The peculiar wit of the comment, the keenness of the satire made so much of an impression upon me that I called Warner away from his work to look at it. At my request he hastily glanced over it, but somewhat to my chagrin failed to evince any enthusiasm about it. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... exhilaration in the dry tree may be sustained working keenness in the green. The stimulus to the young mind of progress swift and sure is immense. A child who has learnt to read, write, and speak Esperanto in six months, as is very possible within the natural limits of power ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... Charchester versus Beckford; and as Pringle was almost exactly twice as good as each of the twins taken individually, when they combined it made the sides very even, and the test matches were fought out with the most deadly keenness. ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... still a long while, surveying the hill-side. In his eyes was a curiosity, new-aroused and burning. There was an exultance about his bearing and a keenness like that of a hunting animal catching ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... brigantine loaded with provisions. This was welcome intelligence, as their provisions were nearly exhausted. Deeming this too important a business to trust to foreign hands, Roberts, with forty men in the sloop, gave chase to that sail. In the keenness of the moment, and trusting in his usual good fortune, Roberts supposed that he had only to take a short sail in order to bring in the vessel with her cargo; but to his sad disappointment, he pursued her ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... danger of this is specially noticeable in the case of the girl, because, as we have seen, the effects of excess are more serious in her case, and also because girls are very apt to take things up with immense keenness, and sometimes, in even greater degree than their brothers, to devote themselves too much to the competitive aspect of things. The girl should certainly be content to play a game for the joy of it, and be scarcely less happy ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... Dialect; the Language of the Sword puzzled his Understanding; the Keenness of which was too sharp for his Wit, and over-rul'd his Robes— therefore he very mannerly kiss'd his Hand, and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn |
