"Probing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... view, that slavery as well as the slaveholding interest was right, exercised a powerful centripetal attraction; and many minds were betrayed into adopting it as a truth, or using it for a purpose, without probing the depth of apostasy to their own more solid convictions, or of moral disingenuousness, which the practice involved. The South had to be justified, and here were at hand the means of justification. Now that the contest is over, I have no doubt that a large residuum of tolerance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... all its skill as a digger, to set at naught its superb visual alertness, the sand crab has a special enemy in the bird policeman which patrols the beach. Vigilant and obnoxiously interfering, the policeman has a long and curiously curved beak, designed for probing into the affairs of crabs, and unless the "hatter" has hastily stopped the mouth of its shaft with a bundle of loose sand—which to the prying bird signifies "Out! Please return after lunch!"—will be disposed of with scant ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... silent beside Martie, and whenever she glanced at him she met his deep smile. Lydia preserved a forbidding silence, but Malcolm's suspicions of his younger daughter were pleasantly diverted by the novelist. Dean Silver was probing into the early history ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... could even be sitting quietly in an armchair in the Kremlin, probing through several thousand miles of solid earth to peep into the brains of the ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... between life and death. Jeeps and lifters and manipulators and things floated out of her. Scows began landing and unloading prefab-hut elements. A water tank landed, and the cook-shed began going up beside it; a lorry came in with scanning and probing equipment, and a couple of men jumped off and huddled over a photoprint copy of one of ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... needs to strain one's faculties to the utmost before it becomes possible to pick out their variously subtle, their almost invisible, features. In short, one needs, before doing this, to carry out a prolonged probing with the aid of an insight sharpened in ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Springfield, as if in protest, 'there is no need to distress us all by probing the wounds made three years ago. Personally ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... the time the little steel pick was probing about among the wards of the lock with a curious clicking sound, above which Guest could hear the intermittent, harsh breathing of his friend, who watched the illuminated door with a ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... faced each other so, eyes burning into eyes with mute soul-probing and questioning. The sun had disappeared, leaving a stain of fiery red to mark his grave; the weird, radiant light was startlingly vivid and clear. Little crisp puffs and flakes of foam scurried over the point like elfin things. The fresh wind, blowing up the bay, tossed the lustrous ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as dry as a chip. The bird seems to have died, as it had lived, on the wing, and its last act was indeed a ghastly parody of its living career. Fancy this nimble, flashing sprite, whose life was passed probing the honeyed depths of flowers, at last thrusting its bill into a crack in a dry timber in a hay-loft, and, with spread wings, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... and self-worship? Errington shuddered and averted his gaze from that hideous face,—so horribly contorted,—yet otherwise deathlike in its rigid stillness. There was a grave hush. The surgeon still bent over him—touching here, probing there, with tenderness and skill,—but finally he drew back with a hopeless shake of ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... introduced to two old Arcadians who hold long discourse concerning the degeneracy of the age. The simple manners of earlier times are forsaken, constant quarrels occur, faith is no longer untarnished nor modesty secure. In the hope of probing to the root of the evil the two determine to hide close at hand and so overhear the conversations of the younger swains and shepherdesses. The fact is that Arcadia has recently been invaded by a gang of rascally ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... went low like a scarlet eggy probing the mother-of-pearl lake with a long red line of shadow, until it wasted into grayness and so disappeared. Then home-returning sails became spiritualized, and moved in mist as in a dream—foggy lake and sky, as one body, seeming to push in upon ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... examined to see if anything but calcite is in it. This is ascertained by a drop of acid, as explained before, and by the descriptions given further on. The veins of chlorite are not so conspicuous, being of a dark-green color; but by probing along the walls with a stick or hammer, they may be recognized by their softness, or by its dull glistening appearance. They are comparatively few, but from an inch to three feet wide; and minerals are found by digging it out with a stick or a three-foot drill, to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... condescension of foreigners by trying to be American, we have been conscious of this weak- rootedness in our literature and trying to remedy it. This is why our flood of nature books for a century is so significant. They may seem peculiar instruments for probing tradition—particularly the sentimental ones. The critic has not yet admitted some of the heartiest among them—Audubon's sketches of pioneer life, for example—into literature at all. And yet, unless ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... with invisible hands. It played upon his every nerve, his every fiber, the innermost feelings of his sensibility. It grew stronger, this alien probing within him, grew as the glow pulsed in the ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... imparted to the ears of only two men, Plume, the post commander, and Doty, his amazed and bewildered adjutant. But Shannon had with him a trio of troopers, one of whom, at least, had not been proof against inquisitive probing, for the second sensation of the day was the story that one of the two pairs of moccasin tracks, among the yielding sands of the willow copse, led from where Mr. Blakely had been dozing to where the ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... accomplished egotist at nineteen, and regarded her mother as a rather inefficient dame de compagnie. Kitty understood this young lady perfectly, and after luncheon, over her cigarette, her little, sharp, probing questions gave the beauty twenty minutes' annoyance. Then appeared a young man, ill-dressed, red-haired, and shy. Carelessly as he greeted the mother and daughters, his entrance, however, transformed them. The mother forgot fatigue; the beauty ceased to yawn; the ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... they had done especially at Bull Run and Chancellorsville. We fell at once to the discussion of the war-questions of the day. In the midst of our colloquy up came the officer of the guard on his 'grand rounds,' who, after probing me thoroughly, as he thought, with many questions, finally said, 'Had you not better go with me to see ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... On probing the knowledge of these people to the bottom, there was various testimony as to the period when the girl had last been seen. Some said that it was four days since there had been a trace of her; but an English lady, in the second piano of the palace, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... table at the evening meal Henley saw his wife regarding him stealthily as she served the food to him and the others. Her look had a queer, shifting, probing quality, which at any other time would have inspired investigation, but she failed to rivet his attention to-night. There were other things to think of—things as new and startling as the dawn of day must have appeared ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... one of the simplest and most conventional forms of hereditary disease could again excite such a startling revulsion of feeling. Krafft-Ebing and a crew of investigators, Strindberg, Brieux, Hauptmann, and a score of probing playwrights all over the Continent, have gone further and often fared much worse than Ibsen did when he dived into the family history of Kammerherre Alving. When we read Ghosts to-day we cannot recapture the "new shudder" which it gave ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... woodpile, Merriwether," he said. "We are simply being used to do the dirty work up here, and I'm going to do a little probing of my own. I guess I'll turn the company over to you for a day ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... and the low note of singing also arose from the rooms where workmen shuffled about with truck and hook, shifting the cotton bales. An inspector, almost the only white man at the wharf, moved slowly from bale to bale, ripping the covers with his knife and probing with his cotton auger into the middle of each bale to test its quality. Mules dozed about with lopping ears. Nowhere was there haste; neither here nor on the street; nor in the railway offices beyond, where sat John Eddring, agent of the personal injury department ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... she had perished from other means than appeared, I made a most rigid examination of her body, when I discovered under the hair in the nape of the neck, a minute spot, which, upon probing, I found to be the end of a small, thin point of steel. It had been thrust by a careful hand into the most vulnerable part of the body, and death must have ensued ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... French had not enough men to carry their initial success to its conclusion, consequently we will mass a very large number of men behind the attack. With this object undoubtedly in view, the Germans indulged in a succession of feints up and down the whole frontier, feeling and probing the line at all points. This procedure cost them thousands of men, but it probably did not deceive the strategists on the other side. All that remained indeterminable to the French Staff was the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... onions, a carrot sliced, sweet herbs, two or three bay leaves, a large piece of chorissa or a slice of the root of a tongue smoked, a little whole pepper and salt; cover it with a gravy made from the trimmings of the veal, and stew till extremely tender, which can be proved by probing it with a fine skewer, then reduce part of the gravy to a glaze, glaze the meat with it and serve on a ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... Quixotic moment. I must have been troublesome, for they gave me the drug of dreams and I awakened peacefully. I watched the field surgeons gather about a young line officer brought in with a shot through his neck. For the better probing of the wound they removed his head and gave it to me to hold. Seeing that it was Solon Denney's head, I was seized with a mood of jest—I would hide it and make Solon search. I advanced craftily down an endless corridor, but came to the edge of a wood, where there was a wicked spitting of ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... with a half angry, half malicious regard, a regard that seemed ruthlessly probing into every secret ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... and no white showing except his face, and that in the gray light of the dawn was a sickly white, like the belly of a fish. After he had walked to his mark he never took his eyes from me. They seemed to be probing around under my uniform for the vulnerable spot. I had never before had anyone look at me, who seemed to so frankly ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... from the blow that had fallen on him, and with a head still bandaged, she thought it a seasonable opportunity to press him in the way he should go. But she was not one of those who have any taste for probing into young men's lives; she had an instinctive feeling that such a line of ethical exploration lay entirely beyond her; and so when she approached the subject her touch was only ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... with the title "Against Burning of the Urine and Excoriation of the Lower Part of the Yard." Gonorrhea is frankly treated under the name Shawdepisse, evidently an English alliteration of the corresponding French word. As to the instrumentation of such conditions and for probing in general, Ardern suggests the use of a lead probe, because it may readily be made to bend any way and ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... Lady Clifford show so much curiosity about a technical thing like a medical chart? She was told several times a day exactly how her husband was progressing. She seemed to Esther like an importunate child, probing to know the future, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... habit, and such her husband's custom on returning home, or so she said. The lodger had actually all but finished his fuck, before she awakened sufficiently to find out that it was not the legitimate prick which was probing her. Then she alarmed the house, and gave the man in charge for committing a rape. The papers delicately hinted that the operation was complete before the woman discovered the mistake,—but of course it left much to ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... face was turned towards the window which yielded the hum of busy traffic many stories below them. His narrow eyes were earnestly reflective, but there was no concern in them. To the waiting man he was simply measuring the threat against him, and probing its possibilities for mischief. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... her. It was much the same story that Jamie had told Pollyanna in the Public Garden. There was little that was new, nothing that was significant, in spite of the probing questions that Mrs. Carew asked. At its conclusion Jamie turned eager eyes on Mrs. ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... them I said nothing, but I must admit that the whole thing began to assume a suspicious look in my mind in connection with various hints I had heard dropped by organization men about probing into the past, and other insinuations. I felt that far from aiding Carton, things were now getting darker. There was nothing but his unsupported word that he had not been in such groups to counterbalance the existence of the actual pictures themselves, on the surface a graphic ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... for this daily for more than a year, and often wondered at her husband's tardiness. Had she desired it? Ah, that is the probing question. Had she desired an act of law to push them fully asunder—to make the separation plenary in all respects? No. She did not really wish ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... 'Confinement in the Luxembourg;' to end: where? For example, what pale-visaged thin man is this, journeying towards Switzerland as a Merchant of Neuchatel, whom they arrest in the town of Moulins? To Revolutionary Committee he is suspect. To Revolutionary Committee, on probing the matter, he is evidently: Deputy Brissot! Back to thy Arrestment, poor Brissot; or indeed to strait confinement,—whither others are fared to follow. Rabaut has built himself a false-partition, in a friend's house; lives, in invisible ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... forest now, moving lightly over the wet, springy leaves, probing cautiously for dangerous, loose boulders and treacherous slides. When they emerged, it was upon a narrow plateau; the rugged limestone rocks rose on one side, the precipice plunged down on the other. Against the rocks lay patches ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... Mr. Robert. "You see, it's a business errand, in a way. You go as a probing committee of one, ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the Major, to examine his wound, and, with the assistance of Timothy, I stripped him sufficiently to ascertain that the ball had entered his hip, and probing the wound with my finger, it appeared that it had glanced off in the direction of the intestines; the suffusion of blood was very trifling, which ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... in the dingy, and succeeded in finding the true channel of the stream by probing with the twelve-foot pole through the grass. To-morrow we shall begin cutting, as the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... the next ward, a most wretched band Groan'd underneath the bitter tyranny Of a fierce Daemon. His coarse hair was red, Pale grey his eyes, and blood-shot; and his face Wrinkled by such a smile as Malice wears In ecstacy. Well-pleased he went around, Plunging his dagger in the hearts of some, Or probing with a poison'd lance their breasts, Or placing coals of fire within their wounds; Or seizing some within his mighty grasp, He fix'd them on a stake, and then drew back, And laugh'd to see them writhe. "These," ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... the scientific into the philosophic domain. Philosophy has to critically investigate the data of popular thought and of science. It has to discover exactly what is implied in these fundamental principles. Then it has to test their value by erecting a final criterion of truth, by probing the structure of cognition to the bottom, and determining the proper organ of certain or accurate knowledge; or, to put it another way, it has to examine what is meant by reality, whether there is anything real independently of the mind, and if so, what. In ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... sort of thing with which Gargoyle's mind had been carefully inoculated for a long time, baffled, while it reassured Mrs. Strang. Also the sense of sacred trust placed in her hands made her refrain from any psychic probing. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "there never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the southern counties." But he was mistaken: for I myself have seen cottages on the verge of this wild district, whose timbers consisted of a black hard wood, looking like oak, which the owners assured me they procured from the bogs by probing the soil with spits, or some such instruments: but the peat is so much cut out, and the moors have been so well examined, that none has been found of late. Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... occupied by Burgoyne, his quick wit, true sympathies with the Americans, and real abilities might have made for him a different name in the history of America. But his attempt failed, and now, almost inactive in his post at Boston, he was studying the situation, probing the weakness of Gage and learning the difficulties of his position. Gage had little money for secret service, it is true, and the provincials were stubborn foes whose true measure Burgoyne had not yet taken,[84] but he saw how poorly ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... Casserlys to have done a wrong deed at any time, the neighbours would be watching and probing my own brood till they would see might the track of it break out in any way. It ran through our race to be hard tempered, from the ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... welcome the sight of it. Anything seemed better than this silence, with the ever-present feeling that the creature might be lurking in every bush I passed. Later, I grew careless of danger, to the extent of plunging right through the bushes, probing with my ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... questions of Mr. Warmore became quite pointed. Once or twice Tom was disposed to resent them; but reflecting that the gentleman was much older than he, and could have no wrong purpose in thus probing into his personal affairs, he replied promptly to ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... and mutual defense exist. Some of these are familiar, strong hostility in one partner when the other appears to be revealing too much; making jokes to relieve tension when some inner secret of the marriage accidently breaks to the surface; silence or withdrawal when "outsiders" appear to be probing too deeply. These defense systems work so well that it is not unusual when a couple begins divorce proceedings for others in their circle of acquaintance to express astonishment in such terms as "We are amazed! We had no idea that they ...
— Marriage Enrichment Retreats - Story of a Quaker Project • David Mace
... get over that feeling," observed Mr. Carr, disregarding the hint, and taking out his probing-knife. "And the sooner it is got over the better for all parties. You cannot become an exile from your own place. Are they ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... hissed Istafiev, probing the motionless, naked body. "He just got here, told what had happened, and died. He was hurt too badly to think of taking off the gas cylinder or putting on a coat. Well, it makes no difference.... Here, Grigory, take off ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... surged to and fro, indeed, as Ancrum talked between the poles of repulsion and response. His nature was not as Ancrum's, and every now and then the quick critical intellect flashed through his misery, detecting an assumption, probing an hypothesis. But in general his feeling gave way more and more. That moral sensitiveness in him which in its special nature was a special inheritance, the outcome of a long individualist development under the conditions of English Protestantism, made him from the first the natural ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had ploughed a furrow just above his temple; but after some probing Andrieff decided it had passed on without penetrating the skull. His heart was still beating faintly and they forced spirits between his lips until after a time he revived. Paul himself helped put the wounded man in bed and would not leave him until he saw that Baxter had dropped ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... Circumstances favoured their scheme for the loyalty displayed by all the Native States, and the distinguished services rendered in person by not a few Chiefs inclined Government to meet their wishes without probing them too closely, and in the first place to relax the control hitherto exercised by its political officers on the spot—often, it must be confessed, on rather petty and irritating lines. The leading Princes were encouraged to come to Delhi during the winter season, and ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... conversation was interrupted by the hired girl, who came to call Dick to a late supper. The lad was hungry, so he did not refuse. By the time he had finished, Mr. Rover had gone to bed, so his son also retired, without probing the Eclipse Mine affair any further. But it was a long time before Dick got to sleep, so full was his head of the suddenly proposed trip to ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... flawed presidential elections in 1996 and 2001. In 1998, a rebellion broke out in northern Chad, which sporadically flares up despite several peace agreements between the government and the rebels. In 2005 new rebel groups emerged in western Sudan and have made probing attacks into eastern Chad. Power remains in the hands of an ethnic minority. In June 2005, President Idriss DEBY held a referendum successfully removing ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... coming there was a chance for me to look around like a poor trapped animal in a pitfall, loath to die without a struggle, yet seeing not how any less inglorious end should offer. The eye-search went for little of encouragement; there was no chance either to fight or fly. But apart from this, the probing of the shadows revealed a thing that set me suddenly in a fever, first of rage, and then ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... to star and star, Pleiads and Hyads, and Lycaon's child Bright Arctos; how with nooses then was found To catch wild beasts, and cozen them with lime, And hem with hounds the mighty forest-glades. Soon one with hand-net scourges the broad stream, Probing its depths, one drags his dripping toils Along the main; then iron's unbending might, And shrieking saw-blade,- for the men of old With wedges wont to cleave the splintering log;- Then divers arts arose; toil conquered all, Remorseless toil, and poverty's shrewd push In times of hardship. ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... scorn. Juvenal looked down upon the corruption of the age from the eminence of his virtue, and punished it like an avenging deity. Persius, pure in heart and passionless by education, while he lashes wickedness in the abstract, almost ignores its existence, and shrinks from probing to the bottom the vileness of the human heart. His works comprise six satires, all of which breathe the natural amiability and placid cheerfulness of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... his own severest critic; so, at least, he had always believed. He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into the palpitating entrails of his own soul; he was Brown Dog to himself. His weaknesses, his absurdities—no one knew them better than he did. Indeed, in a vague way he imagined that nobody beside himself ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... gigantic predatory system. I saw that its ethical and cultural and artistic features, however sincerely they might be meant by individual clergymen, were nothing but a bait, a device to lure the poor into the trap of submission to their exploiters. And as I went on probing into the secret life of the great Metropolis of Mammon, and laying bare its infamies to the world, I saw the attitude of the church to such work; I met, not sympathy and understanding, but sneers and denunciation—until the venerable institution which had once seemed dignified and noble ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... moment, then pushed him from her, as if his touch, even, caused her to break some vow. He whined, but she hurried away, not waiting to know how he came, or with whom. Perhaps, if Dr. Knowles had seen her face as she looked back at him, he would have thought there were depths in her nature which his probing eyes ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the bow, leaning over the starboard rail. Conseil, stationed beside me, stared straight ahead. Roosting in the shrouds, the crew examined the horizon, which shrank and darkened little by little. Officers were probing the increasing gloom with their night glasses. Sometimes the murky ocean sparkled beneath moonbeams that darted between the fringes of two clouds. Then all traces of light vanished into ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... of Agnes obliged her to lay open her whole soul, who had a right with probing-knife and lancet to dissect out all the finest nerves and fibres of her womanly nature, was a man who had been through all the wild and desolating experiences incident to a dissipated and irregular life in those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... trunk of a tree my brother made a hasty examination of my wound. All this while I was fully convinced I was near death's door. He pronounced my wound at first as fatal, a bit of very unpleasant information, but after probing my wound with his finger he gave me the flattering assurance that unless I bled to death quite soon my chances might be good! Gentle reader, were you ever, as you thought, at death's door, when the grim monster was facing you, when life ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... thought Mr. Schuyler had never been to the house before at all. But may he not have been mistaken? May not Mr. Schuyler have known the lady previously—oh, it is such a moil! But, in any case, Mr. Calhoun, it seems to me that further probing and searching will only pile up opprobrium on the name of Schuyler, and—I can't stand it. I am so unused to notoriety or publicity I can't face all the unpleasantness that must follow! Do help me ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... well that you are not going to give in, you are not going to attempt to stifle that which is the centre of your life; you have not courage for such slow suicide. Don't add insincerity to the other faults that are laid to your account——" She mused over the little self-administered lecture. And probing down into her consciousness, she realized that she could not face the thought of surrender. She meant to fight on. The notion of giving in had been seized instinctively, for a moment of rest. Nothing should really make her cease ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... first, Stefan?" she questioned, probing for the answer she already knew, but still clinging to the hope of being wrong. "I never talked about it because you didn't seem to care. But in the beginning, when you proposed to me—the day we were married—at Shadeham—did you never think of it ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... condition while engaged in thought. The thread of thought is broken, and there appears a vision wholly unconnected with the subject but a moment ago in the mind. It would appear that the soul of the sensitive, while probing the depths of its inner consciousness, suddenly comes into contact with the thin partition which may be said to divide the outer world of thought and doubt from the inner world of intuition and direct perception, and, breaking through, emerges into the light beyond. The same may be said of ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... of a whole world, or rather of several intermingled worlds, set apart in this sleepy hollow in the hills, of beast lore and wood lore and farm craft, at times touching almost the border of witchcraft—passing lightly here, not with the probing eagerness of those who know nothing, but with the averted glance of those who fear to see too much. He told her of those things that slept and those that prowled when the dusk fell, of strange hunting cats, of the yard swine and the stalled cattle, of the farm ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... the big insurance companies is sadly needed, but reformation of a more drastic kind than they'll be willing to administer to themselves. To begin with, there should be a relentless probing of their stock transactions of the last fifteen years, followed by the passage of some simple laws regulating their investments. The relationship between these institutions and the "System" would then at once of necessity terminate, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... with them both, exclaiming brightly at her delight. Then, as they all sat down, she and Helen considered each other. Oddly, Helen had known all along that she would not like Mrs. Murray; now, and after the first probing glance, she was prepared for downright dislike. Longstreet, on the other hand, was obviously very favourably impressed. Nor without more than a little to be said on his side of the question. The woman was young, petite, dark and unusually pretty. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... the lecture I received, the probing into my reluctant heart, the admonition which I could not heed for my fearful watching of ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... laid beside the dispensary ramp for the ambulance to pick up with the surviving victim. Car 119's MSO had joined Kelly in Beulah's dispensary to give what help she might. The four patrol troopers began the grim task of probing the scattered wreckage for other possible victims, personal possessions and identification. They were stacking a small pile of hand luggage when the long, low bulk of the ambulance swung out of the police lane and rolled to a stop. Longer ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... his former pupils, could not find him unbalanced enough to be irresponsible for his crimes. Those long and tiring vigils in the mental clinic will haunt me for life; there was no end to their searching and probing of his subconscious mind, no end to the tests and questions, the examinations and analyses which ended hopelessly against him. But even if they had found him insane, violently and homicidally insane, they would not have dared report such a finding to the court. Society demanded ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... part of that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like the confused beating of hearts, came forth. But when that murmur reached each couple in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and ceased; their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking, searching, probing the blackness. Suddenly, as though drawn by invisible hands, they, too, stepped over the railing, and, silent as shadows, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lips quivered a little as she turned away her head. The soft, childish fingers were probing the wound, and she ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... population. I will touch this subject as tenderly as possible. It is with reluctance that I touch it at all; but in cases of great emergency, the State physician must not be deterred by a sickly, hysterical humanity, from probing the wound of his patient; he must not be withheld by a fastidious and mistaken delicacy from representing his true situation to his friends, or even to the sick man himself, when the occasion calls ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... urged by some unusual emergency, by some extraordinary reward, they extend or exaggerate their old modes of practice without touching their principles. What, for example, in this case of D——, has been done to vary the principle of action? What is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and scrutinizing with the microscope, and dividing the surface of the building into registered square inches; what is it all but an exaggeration of the application of the one principle or set of principles of search, which are based upon ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... life is a matter of our personalities in space and time. Human analysis probing with philosophy and science towards the Veiled Being reveals nothing of God, reveals space and time only as necessary forms of consciousness, glimpses a dance of atoms, of whirls in the ether. Some day in the endless future there may be a knowledge, an understanding of relationship, a power and ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... his patient's anguish when probing a painful wound, or cutting away the mortified flesh? His office is not enviable, but it is necessary, and; if feelingly performed, we love him not the less. Speak out. Don Luis, openly, frankly, yet gently, to the apparently injured husband. Do more: counsel him to act ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... intimations of certain facts which I felt it was well enough for me to know, even if they did not amount to any thing like an explanation of the tragedy. Among these was one which only my fear of showing myself too much interested in her theme prevented me from probing to the bottom. This was, that for a month at least before his death Mr. Barrows had seemed to her like a changed man. A month—that was about the interval which had elapsed between his first visit to the mill and his last; ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... The materials were all in print, and were the daily bread of scholars. A celebrated Anglican described Doellinger at that time as more intentional than Fleury; while Catholics objected that he was a candid friend; and Lutherans, probing deeper, observed that he resolutely held his ground wherever he could, and as resolutely abandoned every position that he found untenable. He has since said of himself that he always spoke sincerely, but that he spoke as an advocate—a sincere ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the green meadows, he alone thinks in hyper-European dimensions. He alone rebuilds the shattered Jerusalem of our souls."All of which shows to what comically delirious lengths this sort of deleterious soul- probing may go. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... known to smile, but at this speech he lifted one eyebrow and turned his saturnine face full at his superior, inquiry written upon every line of it. Captain Swarth was musing, however, and said no more; so the mate, knowing better than to attempt probing his mind, swung his long figure down the poop-ladder, and went forward to harass the men—which, in their opinion, was ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... away, shivering with unhappiness, to the schoolroom, while the others frisked off discussing the wonderful Butterfly's Ball. Lady Merrifield looked in on her, and she hardened herself to endure either another probing or fresh reproaches, but all she heard was, 'My dear, I cannot talk over this sad affair now, as I have to go out. But, if you can, I think you had better write to your father about it, and let him understand exactly how it happened. Or, if you had rather write than speak in ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... obey" him. She wanted a husband who would be "a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew if you wished it." The matrimonial motives are worked to draw out the character of Dorothea, and nowhere does the method of George Eliot show to greater advantage than in probing the motives of this fine, strong, conscientious, blundering young woman, whose voice "was like the voice of a soul that once lived in an AEolian harp." She had a theoretic cast of mind. She was "enamored of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing what seemed ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... several succeeding evenings, Clennam was quite charmed by this investigation. The more he pursued it, and the oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and the shrewd eye kindling with pleasure in it and love of it—instrument for probing his heart though it had been made for twelve long years—the less he could reconcile it to his younger energy to let it go without one effort more. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... He had felt the deep eyes probing his very soul—looking right through him. A sickening sense of weakness was at his heart. He felt that in the presence of this man he did ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from the terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting while being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing station. He did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when with other wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the hospital. During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was able to look ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... morning. I am myself again," and Dick's eyes turned sharply upon him. "All my old powers of observation have returned, my old interest in the great dark riddle of human life has re-awakened. The brain, the sedulous, active brain, resumes its work to-day asking questions, probing problems. I rose early, Margaret," he flourished his hands like one making a speech, "and walking in the fields amongst the cows a most curious speculation forced itself upon my mind. How is it, ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... of his kinsmen, the golden-wing prefers the fields and the borders of the forest to the deeper seclusion of the woods, and hence, contrary to the habit of his tribe, obtains most of his subsistence from the ground, probing it for ants and crickets. He is not quite satisfied with being a woodpecker. He courts the society of the robin and the finches, abandons the trees for the meadow, and feeds eagerly upon berries and grain. What may be the final upshot of this course of living is a question worth the attention ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... like home, Ned," said Jack, who had stopped to watch a pair of vivid sun-birds probing the tiny trumpet blossoms of a white ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... comparatively new science, you will probably be astonished to learn that there are to-day in the United States fifty psychological laboratories. That is to say, workshops fully equipped with every device known for the probing of the human brain. In my laboratory in California alone I have as many as twenty rooms hung with electric wires and equipped with all the necessary instruments—chronoscopes, kymographs, tachistoscopes, and ergographs, instruments which enable ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... her. I was just surprised, that's all. But deep behind the telepathic barrier he had erected against her probing mind, he was thinking something else. He had been assigned to London to capture the Controller—then unknown—who was said to be active in England. But his recall order had been decided upon before ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... that Claude must take her away for a change; even of getting Alston Lake to send a telegram to Jernington saying that his presence was urgently demanded in his native Suffolk. Had he a mother? Till now Charmian had never thought of probing into Jernington's family affairs. When, driven by stress of circumstances, she began to do so, she found that his mother had died almost before he was born. Indeed, his relatives seemed to be as few in number as they were ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Peninsula.[220] It is written in the spirit of a Liberal, but the narrative is distinct and clear, and I should suppose accurate. He has, however, given a bad sample of accuracy in the case of Lord Strangford, where his pointed affirmation has been as pointedly repelled. It is evident he would require probing. His defence of Moore is spirited and well argued, though it is evident he defends the statesman as much as the general. As a Liberal and a military man, Colonel Napier finds it difficult to steer his course. The former character calls on him to plead for the insurgent ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... that had snapped in twain; above aught else the bosom, now caved in. That bosom, flattened, as if it had been operated upon for some terrible disease, suffocated him, and he unceasingly returned to it, probing the sore, trying to find the gash by which life had fled, while his tears, mingled with blood, flowed freely, and stained the statue's gaping ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... this was part of the attraction of the theme for Browning himself. He had inherited his father's taste for stories of mysterious crime.[49] And to the detective's interest in probing a mystery, which seems to have been uppermost in the elder Browning, was added the pleader's interest in making out an ingenious and plausible case for each party. The casuist in him, the lover of argument as such, and the devoted student ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... sword, as trowel, or as pocket-comb, the beak of the bird has to be pointed, the collection of seeds may be conveniently intrusted to this otherwise penetrative instrument, and such food as can only be obtained by probing crevices, splitting open fissures, or neatly and minutely picking things up, is allotted, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... rejuvenation that came to Pascal in his declining years. She came, bringing to him, with her love, sunshine and flowers. Their rapture lifted them above the earth; and all this youth she bestowed on him after his thirty years of toil, when he was already weary and worn probing the frightful wounds of humanity. He revived in the light of her great shining eyes, in the fragrance of her pure breath. He had faith again in life, in health, in strength, in ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... steppes; tramp up and down fertile vales and hills under blue-hot alien suns. Perhaps, they might even contact native species boasting human intelligence: mammalian hunters and fishers, city-building lizards, sky-probing arachnids—who knew what? ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... draining cities. They builded gods in their own shapes and out of their own desires, while the scientists were building roads and bridges. They were describing the earth as the centre of the universe, while the scientists were discovering America and probing space for the stars and the laws of the stars. In short, the metaphysicians have done nothing, absolutely nothing, for mankind. Step by step, before the advance of science, they have been driven back. As fast as the ascertained facts ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... to be probing the very deeps of being, but indeed imperceptibly I fell asleep, and ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... put the probing question to James: "What had he read?" His answer was: "Isaiah." She at once replied that he couldn't have read the whole; and he answered promptly, "Yes, mother, I have, skipping ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... huddled by the fire, probing his wounded feet. "I'm cut to pieces," he said. "I've been over stubbles and flint. This is ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... happiness; because every thing conspired either to give his ideas a fallacious turn, or else to keep his mind in the most profound ignorance; when he was willing to set himself right, when he was sedulous to examine the path which conducted to his felicity, when he was desirous of probing opinions so consequential to his peace, involving so much mystery, yet combining both his hopes and his fears, he was forbidden to employ the only proper method,—HIS REASON, guided by his experience; he was assured this ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... vessels directed their courses at their utmost power; and while the white lights upon the lookout plates moved slowly toward and clustered about the red ones—the ultra-instruments of the Secret Service operatives were probing into space, sweeping the neighborhood of the computed ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... the Christian Faith! You never read it yourselves,—and if we priests read it to you, you never remember it! It is a locked Mystery,—perhaps, for all we know, the greatest mystery in the world,—and the one most worth probing! For the days seem to be coming, if they have not already come, which were prophesied by St. John the Divine, whom certain 'clever' men of the time have set down as mad;—days which were described as 'shaking the powers of heaven and creating ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Probing at random I had touched a very sensitive nerve. We had got down from underneath the political and reached the social. What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is not Slagters Nek, nor Broomplatz, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... answer, more in character than in content, Wagner looked at me wonderingly, as if detecting my falsehood, but did not follow his look with any probing questions, to my great relief. In order to steer the conversation away from this point, I added quickly, "I am not at all disappointed, either, for the landscape is beautiful and the trees and foliage ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn |
