"Sensitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or else, to artists and writers and their sort, discovered an amazing, discouraging knowledge of the trades by which they earned their living. "One feels," said Mrs. Malcolm, "that one is eyeing a sensitive python. He ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... The wireless transmitter, like that of the wire telephone, contains a sensitive diaphragm which your voice strikes and sets to vibrating. These vibrations compress and release a capsule of carbon granules which agitate and set in motion an electrical current in two magnets connecting with them. The magnets convey the sound-waves in the form ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... to them, so as to produce beautiful and subtle effects of harmony. Many of those old folk-tunes were closely connected with the history of the country to which they belonged; they were often the musical expression of the feelings, struggles, and passions of the people, and to Beethoven's sensitive ear they conveyed a deeper meaning than they did to the simple peasants who hummed or carolled them to the whirr of the spinning-wheel, the blows of the forge-hammer, or the speeding ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... twenty-five, but I don't think that I believed it. Superficially the change was not great. The slight-built, graceful figure; the deep gray eyes, too small for beauty; the clear-cut features, the delicate, sensitive lips, close shaven now, as they had been hairless then,—all were as I remembered them. But the face was paler and thinner than it had been, and there were lines round the eyes and at the corners of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... better clothing than I could afford, one after another began to drop my acquaintance. If I walked in the public streets, I too quickly perceived the cold look, the averted eye, the half recognition, and to a sensitive spirit such as I possessed such treatment was almost past endurance. To add to the mortification caused by such a state of things, it happened that those who had laughed the loudest at my songs and ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... illustrated by the story told by a younger brother, who remembers being wrapped up in a shawl and kept quiet by sweetmeats, while he figured as the dead Caesar, and his brother, the future historian, delivered the speech of Antony over his prostrate body. He was of a most sensitive nature, easily excited, but not tenacious of any irritated feelings, with a quick sense of honor, and the most entirely truthful child, his mother used to say, that she had ever seen. Such are some of the recollections of those who knew him in his earliest ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all these moral strivings? The evil investments still continue to be evil, and still yield profits. Doubtless they rest, in the end, upon less sensitive consciences. Marvellous ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... and of gentle blue-grey, the squirrel-coloured hair of a brighter shade, the sensitive mouth sensuous as well, the little chin pointed. She might have been a few years under thirty; the arrangement of the hair, the cut of the bodice, might have indicated the height of the latest fashion—say, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... without doubt, good-looking, although he certainly had an over-tired and somewhat depressed appearance. His cheeks were colourless, and there were little dark lines under his eyes as though he suffered from sleeplessness. He was clean-shaven and he had the sensitive mouth of an artist. His forehead was high and exceptionally good. His air ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Drood, who had gone with them as far as the door of the seminary, were walking back together. Mr. Crisparkle had told Neville of Drood's betrothal to Rosebud, and Neville now spoke of it. Drood, who had felt all along that he and Rosebud did not get along well together and who was sensitive on the subject, was unjustly angry that the other should so soon know what he considered his own private affair. He answered in a surly way and, as both were quick-tempered, they ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... orator must be a thoroughly representative man, sensitive enough to be moved to the depths of his nature by the master-passions of his time. Henry Ward Beecher was a very great orator,—one of the greatest the country has produced,—and in his speeches and orations inspired by the feelings which evolved the Civil War and were themselves exaggerated ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... so much stress is laid upon the impressionability of first childhood and the ineffaceable marks that are engraven on it, yet as to all that belongs to the mind and judgment this third period, in the early years of adolescence, is more sensitive still, because real criticism is just beginning to be possible and appreciation is in its spring-tide, now for the first time fully alive and awake. A transition line has been passed, and the study of history, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... pipe, filled with ashes, just where the owner's hand had laid it. But what most interested Darrell was a large portrait over the fireplace, which he knew must be that of Harry Whitcomb. The face was neither especially fine nor strong, but the winsome smile lurking about the curves of the sensitive mouth and in the depths of the frank blue eyes rendered it attractive, and it was with a sigh for the young life so suddenly blotted out that Darrell turned to enter the ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... touched his cousin in a sensitive spot; and Marmaduke lent a more attentive ear to the speaker, who, after waiting a moment to see the effect of this extraordinary ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... ignore the gossiping tongue, if we are naturally sensitive and highly strung we cannot help feeling some sting from the unkind or untrue speech. Poor Nehemiah, unmoved though he was by the gossip, yet feels it necessary to remember the meaning of his name, and to turn from Sanballat's letter to 'the ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... fell gently, but all in a moment, on Monckton's shoulder, and they say the shoulder is a sensitive part in conscious rogues. Anyway, Monckton started violently, and turned from pale to white, and instinctively clapped both hands ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... to manage the Kew Observatory, thinking that the phenomena of meteorology would answer further questioning, have sent up a balloon, with instruments and observers, to make a series of observations. The temperature was read off from highly sensitive thermometers at each minute during the ascent, so as to ascertain the difference of the heat of successive strata of the atmosphere, and the rate of variation. In the first flight, the party reached the height of 19,500 feet, and came to a temperature of 7 degrees, or 25 degrees below the freezing-point, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... not to be considered as an order," and yet it is difficult to reconcile the continued inactivity of General McClellan with the claim of his friends that he was a patriotic, not to say an active, supporter of the cause of the Union. With that letter in hand a patriotic and sensitive commander would have acted at once upon one of the alternatives presented by the President, or he would have formed a plan of campaign for himself and ordered a movement without delay, or he would have asked the President to relieve him from duty. No one of these courses ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, as it seemed to me, which was more emotional than logical. Brownson, after his life of varied theological and controversial activity, was drawing toward the Catholic Church, and his virile force fascinated the more delicate and sensitive temper of the young man, and, I have always supposed, was the chief influence which at that time affected Hecker's views, although he did not then enter the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... gas ranges. These devices do not merely measure the heat of an oven, but control it and keep the oven temperature constant. A "temperature wheel" (shown at B) is set for a desired temperature and the oven burner lighted. By the expansion or contraction of a sensitive copper tube placed in the top of the oven (shown at A) the gas valve (shown at C) is opened or closed. When the valve is opened the amount of gas burning is increased or decreased so that the temperature of the oven is kept constant, i.e. at the temperature at which the wheel ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... Father Absinthe ceased watching his companion. He felt weary after the labors of the night, his head was burning, and he shivered and his knees trembled. Perhaps, though he was by no means sensitive, he felt the influence of the horrors that surrounded him, and which seemed more sinister than ever in the bleak light of morning. He began to ferret in the cupboards, and at last succeeded in discovering—oh, ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... What for? Pretty creatur'," said Dave, stroking the hare's brown speckled fur, and laying its long black-tipped sensitive ears smoothly down over ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... fine manners, and with a certain right, since it once fell to me—a blundering innocent in the hands of fate—to put them to severest proof. A candidate for a scholarship at Clifton—awkward, and abominably conscious of it, and sensitive—I had been billeted on Brown's hospitality without his knowledge. The mistake (I cannot tell who was responsible) could not be covered out of sight; it was past all aid of kindly dissimulation by the time Brown returned to the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... widows whom we see growing up from the 'fifties to the latter part of the first decade of the twentieth century. When we meet them first they are young girls—fifteen and sixteen—"rather like racehorses, quivering with delicate, sensitive, and luxuriant life; exquisite, enchanting proof of the circulation of the blood; innocent, artful, roguish, prim, gushing, ignorant, and miraculously wise"—at an age when "if one is frank, one must admit that one has nothing to learn: one ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... most careful manoeuvering, she had an opportunity of studying them at her leisure. She drank in every detail of Berenice's face—the delicately pointed chin, the clear, fixed blue eyes, the straight, sensitive nose and tawny hair. Calling the head waiter, she inquired the names of the two women, and in return for a liberal tip was informed at once. "Mrs. Ira Carter, I believe, and her daughter, Miss Fleming, Miss Berenice Fleming. Mrs. Carter was Mrs. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... is set. The cylinder is provided with a glass gauge, cocks, etc. It was designed for a working pressure of 300 lb., and, at each pumping plant, it has proved to be entirely air-and water-tight. As indicated by sensitive gauges on the pump main, just beyond these large air-chambers, the latter absorb all the water-hammer which gets beyond the air-chamber on ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... her breathed, And freshness of young nature's play, The sensitive plant shrank not away, ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... simple he is, yet keen, sensitive and nobly cautious; for there is no nobility in him who risks a cause for the vanity of his own courage, and who, in blind hatred of his enemies, squanders the devotion of those who love him. In a sense, today, the greater the man the greater the peacemaker, and Leo ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... ground, gave it a little upward twist as the calf passed over it, jerked taut the riata, and caught the animal by the hind leg. In a moment the victim lay stretched on the ground. In the gathering gloom the girl could not quite make out what the men were doing. To her sensitive nostrils drifted an acrid odor of burnt hair and flesh, the wail of an animal in pain. One of the men was using his knife on the ears of the helpless creature. She heard another say something about a crop and an underbit. Then she turned away, faint ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... "your mother's too much of a poet to be trusted alone in an aquarium. It would have driven Shelley crazy—to judge from his Sensitive Plant." ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... following day, to go on shore, than several of the principal persons in the place came along-side of the ship to be received as hostages during the absence of the Spaniards, - a singular proof of consideration for the sensitive apprehensions of her guests. Pizarro found that preparations had been made for his reception in a style of simple hospitality that evinced some degree of taste. Arbours were formed of luxuriant and wide-spreading branches, interwoven with fragrant flowers ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... in which they have shown more superstition and extravagance, than in what regards their dreams; but they differ much in the manner of explaining their thoughts on this matter. Sometimes it is the reasonable soul that wanders out, while the sensitive soul continues to animate the body; sometimes it is the familiar genius that gives good advice about future events; sometimes it is a visit they receive from the soul of the object they dream of. But, in whatsoever way they conceive of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... primitive conditions, in conditions incident to the struggle against nature for existence. It is the single normal way to develop a new generation of strong, healthy, iron men, with at the same time sensitive souls. ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... and generous allowance of lands. I have no further news to communicate, except that I believe Mexico's treachery and insolence will sooner or later call down upon her a severe chastisement from this country; and that our Southern friends in Congress are growing exasperatingly and needlessly sensitive on the slavery question, claiming that Jefferson's {p.50} views would sustain their positions, not knowing the splendid secret of your father's (Rev. James Lemen, Sr.) anti-slavery mission under Jefferson's orders and advice, which saved Illinois and we might say the Northwest Territory, ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... this was quite clear: numerous persons unfriendly for reasons good or bad to the government, and especially the justly-indignant mercantile order, desired nothing better than such an opportunity of annoying the aristocracy in its most sensitive point: he was elected to the consulship by an enormous majority, and not only so, but, while in other cases by the law of Gaius Gracchus the decision as to the respective functions to be assigned to the consuls lay with the senate (p. 355), the arrangement made by the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... look from the poop down upon the screw. The surface-glimmer, which so pesters the eye, was here in a great measure removed. Midway down, a plank crossed the screw-well from side to side; on this I placed myself and observed the action of the screw underneath. The eye was rendered sensitive by the moderation of the light; and, to remove still further all disturbing causes, Lieutenant Walton had a sail and tarpaulin thrown over the mouth of the well. Underneath this I perched myself ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... and yearning hearts upraised; The young, the loved, the honoured, and the praised? Come hither;—look upon the faded cheek Of that still woman, who with eyelids meek Veils her most mournful eyes;—upon her brow Sometimes the sensitive blood will faintly glow, When reckless hands her heart-wounds roughly tear, But patience oftener sits palely there. Beauty has left her—hope and joy have long Fled from her heart, yet she is young, is young; Has many years, as human tongues would tell, Upon the face ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... this rebuke had used the comb with the utmost care, but the great luxuriance of the long, fair, waving locks had presented many an impediment, and Eva seemed unusually sensitive that night. Els thought she knew why, and made no answer to the unjust charge. She knew her sister; and as she wound the braids about her head, and then, in the maid's place, hung part of her finery on hooks, and laid part carefully in the chest, she asked her numerous questions ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... exhilaration of Alpine mornings, but his style was as sensitive as his bronchial apparatus, and he declares that when he tried to write, the style suffered from "yeasty inflation," while his nights were haunted by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pity thrust upon him unless he himself, by his complaints, seems to sue for it, and that was ever far from me, and I was already, although so young, as sensitive to all slights upon my dignity as any full-grown man. So when, one day, lying at full length upon the grass under a reddening oak with a book under my eyes and my pocket full of nuts if, perchance, my little sweetheart should come that way with her black nurse, ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... No human will so strong as that he bent upon it, bound it down with. No sin absolved was ever so forgotten. One wonders if Jamie, at the day of judgment even, will remember it. Perhaps 'twill then be no more the sin he thought it. For Jamie's nature, like that of spiny plants, was sensitive, delicate within, as his outer side was bent and rough; and he fancied it, first, a selfishness; then, as his lonely fancy got to brooding on it, an actual sin. James Bowdoin's unlucky laugh had taught him ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... me, "I love you, Sue, you know full well I do, And evermore whilst I draw breath I vow I will be true; But my feelings are too sensitive, I really couldn't stand A-seeing of that soldier ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... he got out, walked a little way southward in the hot, luminous shade of low-roofed tenement cottages that closed their window-shutters noiselessly, in sensitive-plant fashion, at his slow, meditative approach, and slightly and as noiselessly reopened them behind him, showing a pair of wary eyes within. Presently he recognized just ahead of him, standing out on the sidewalk, the little house that had been ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... the faith of those persons who suffer from them in the power of the charmer and his charms. The writer has had innumerable instances of the efficacy of wart charms, but it is not his intention to endeavour to trace the effect of charms on highly sensitive people, but only to record those charms that he has seen or heard of ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... may have refused from superstitious motives. Muslims are peculiarly sensitive on this subject. In Egypt, Mohammed Ali encountered considerable passive resistance in his endeavours to ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... moment, looking sideways at the girl. The moonlight fell full upon her face, drawing clear the line of cheek and chin; bringing out the curve of the drooping mouth and the shadow from the long lashes. She seemed to the sensitive lad more than human. He had loved her for years, with the pure silent love known only to such a nature as his—and never had he loved her ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... King had known the Duchess of Hanover, he would not have been displeased at her calling him "Monsieur." As she was a Sovereign Princess, he thought it was through pride that she would not call him "Sire," and this mortified him excessively, for he was very sensitive on such subjects. ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... indulgence among people who liked to answer questions and were pleased when he asked them. Very often, as he came into easier relations with his aunt, he was told to take some query she could not answer to Uncle James or the rector. A rather sensitive lad, he soon became aware that his uncle appeared to take no great interest in him, and, too, the boy's long cultivated though lessening reserve kept them apart. Meanwhile, Ann watched with pleasure his gain in independence, in looks and in appetite. While James Penhallow after his ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Edward's hand again with glistening eyes and an emotion that was quite unintelligible to Edward; but not to the quick, sensitive spirits, who sat but ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that characterized his relations with the most implacable of his foes. It is, however, evident that as his health began to fail from the long course of exhausting labours which his office imposed upon him, he became more sensitive to such provocations, and though he carefully concealed it from outward view, an increasing irritability affected his whole ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... strange stories I had read and heard of meteors falling from the sky, and of phosphoric rocks, and of little known chemical elements which were mysteriously sensitive to certain atmospheric conditions, and wondered if Perico's stone could be any of these. All my requests to be allowed to see the wonderful stone, however, proved fruitless, Perico was obdurate. There ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... blind part to lay another straw upon the drift of burden—"leave this—to me. I know better than you do the end of any such mad course as you, in your affection and sense of wrong, might take. Little girl, let me try to show you. Suppose you went to Margaret Moffatt. You know her proud, sensitive nature; her loyalty and absolute frankness. After the shock and torture she would go to her father with the truth—for she would believe you—and announce her unwillingness—I am sure, even though her heart broke, she would do this—to marry Huntter. Then the matter would lie among men; men with ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... maternal tenderness"—this is Lamb's only reference to his mother in all the essays—probably from the wish not to wound his sister, who would naturally read all he wrote; although we are told by Talfourd that she spoke of her mother with composure. But it is possible to be more sensitive for others than they ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... unexpected scruples will display themselves in the most unprincipled knaves. Low as they may descend, there seems always to be some one point on which they are as sensitive ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... conditions, passably good looking. But with his fair hair streaming over his forehead and his hat at the back of his head he lacked fascination. His attempt, aided by a walking-stick used as a balancing-pole, to keep his equilibrium on six inches of kerbing, might have been funny to a less sensitive ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... from the cathode pole of the tube through the glass, and through a substance absolutely opaque, and that these rays were performing their work at a distance on the surface of paper that was ordinarily sensitive only ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... remarks being made and I assure you they cut a sensitive soul to the core. Not for the fat man are the snappy clothes for varsity men and the patterns called by the tailors confined because that is what they should be but aren't. Not for him the silken shirt with the broad stripes. Shirts with stripes that were meant to run ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... the Mess Sergeant thinks that you are uneducated, and that the genuine article will be lost on you, he will treat you accordingly. He is a good man. But, when you are at Mess, you must never talk to your hosts about forced marches or long-distance rides. The Mess are very sensitive; and, if they think that you are laughing at them, will ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... it would be possible to push northward along the flank, threatening the Colesberg road bridge and the enemy's line of retreat, regarding the safety of which the Boers had shown themselves peculiarly sensitive. Seeking a base from which to attack these outlying kopjes, French settled upon Maeder's farm, lying five miles west-south-west of Colesberg, and at 4 p.m. a squadron 10th Hussars moved thither as a screen to the main body,[262] which marched an hour later, and arrived at the farm between 8 p.m. ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... deficit to less than 2% of GDP. Further progress on public finance depends mainly on comprehensive reform of the social welfare system and privatization of Poland's remaining state sector. Restructuring and privatization of "sensitive sectors" (e.g., coal, steel, and telecommunications) has begun. Long-awaited privatizations in aviation and energy are scheduled ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... what is the government worth? If we from Massachusetts, or any other State,—senators or members of the House, are to be called to account by some "gallant uncle," when we utter something which does not suit their sensitive nature, we ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... seen the strong help the weak, as in the case of Czar, who, with his powerful jaws, would break down branches for Misery, then quite young and without the requisite teeth. How fine they look with their long necks stretched upwards with the heads thrown back and the sensitive lips extended to catch some extra fresh bunch of leaves! How cunningly they go to work to break a branch that is out of reach; first the lowest leaf is gently taken in the lips and pulled down until the mouth can catch hold of some ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... it's a wonderful little thing," said Packer innocently, but it was as if he had run a needle into his sensitive employer. Potter instantly sprang up again ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... question, whether the terrific prospect of acquiring that fearful chubbiness of head, unwieldiness of arm, feeble dislocation of leg, crispiness of hair, and enormity of shirt-collar, which they represent as inseparable from Goodness, may not tend to confirm sensitive waverers, in Evil? A most impressive example (if I had believed it) of what a Dustman and a Sailor may come to, when they mend their ways, was presented to me in this same shop-window. When they were leaning (they ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... face-to-face with her—a rare treat "in his life," as he could perhaps have scarce escaped phrasing it; and if he had never seen her so soundless he had never, on the other hand, felt her so highly, so almost austerely, herself: pure and by the vulgar estimate "cold," but deep devoted delicate sensitive noble. Her vividness in these respects became for him, in the special conditions, almost an obsession; and though the obsession sharpened his pulses, adding really to the excitement of life, there were hours at which, to be less on the stretch, he directly sought forgetfulness. He knew it for ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... intelligent animals of the same group (for instance dogs and apes) are, at any rate, much more considerable than the differences in the {124} intellectual life of dogs, apes, and men." Or: "If these brutish parasites are compared with the mentally active and sensitive ants, it will certainly be admitted that the psychical differences between the two are much greater than those between the highest and lowest mammals—between beaked animals, pouched animals and armadillos, on the one hand, and dogs, apes, men, on the other." The fact that in the human individual ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... duties or offices of importance. The flow of the versification in this speech seems to demand the trochaic ending—/u/; while the text blends jingle and hisses to the annoyance of less sensitive ears than Fletcher's—not to ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... of a broken heart cannot be analysed; and this wail of almost inarticulate agony, with its infinitely pathetic reiteration, is too sacred for many words. Grief, even if passionate, is not forbidden by religion; and David's sensitive poet-nature felt all emotions keenly. We are meant to weep; else wherefore is there calamity? But there were elements in David's mourning which were not good. It blinded him to blessings and to duties. His son was dead; ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... well imagine, whether or no they had confessed, whether they were near or far from her, these mercenaries committed all the sins compatible with the simplicity of their minds. But the innocent damsel did not see them. Sensitive to things invisible, her eyes were closed to ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... which of these will their work be of the most distinct value by reason of the natural adaptability, sensitive or artistic temperaments, and ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... (among the civilized peoples) the refusal of war is also bound to come. Two great developments are leading to this result. On the one hand, the soldiers themselves, the fighters, are as a class becoming infinitely more sensitive, more intelligent, more capable of humane feeling, less stupidly "patriotic" and prejudiced against their enemies than were the soldiers of a century ago—say, of the time of Wellington; on the other hand, the horrors, the hideousness, the folly, and the waste of war are infinitely ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... of the picture is a Spirographis, or tube-worm. This savage little beast lives in a tube formed of particles of lime or grains of sand, and stretches its gill-like threads upward, in search of food, in the form of a spiral wreath. It is very sensitive, and at the least touch on the surface of the water, or on the walls of the tank, the threads are instantly withdrawn into ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... it is known that some albino negroes are peculiarly sensitive to the bites of insects; and with Europeans it is a generally observed fact that the fairer individuals are more seriously affected by the bites of fleas and bugs than are darker ones. Dr Twining, in the British Association Reports for 1845, p. 79, cites some ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to be friends with Jack," she went on, and her face lighted up, and her voice grew tender. "He has the artistic temperament, and naturally that makes him sensitive, and a trifle irritable at times. It takes so little to upset him, you see, for he feels so acutely what he calls the discords of life. I think most men are jealous of his talents; so they call him selfish and finicky and conceited. He isn't really, you know. Only, he can't help feeling ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... upright—"yes! You experience this? Good! You are happily sensitive to this type of impression, Petrie, and therefore quite as useful to me as a cat is ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the few hours that remained for preparing for the last great change, in attempts to increase possessions that were already much more than sufficient for his wants. This consideration, in particular, deeply grieved Mary Pratt; for she was profoundly pious, with a conscience that was so sensitive as materially to interfere with her happiness, as will presently be shown, while her uncle was merely a deacon. It is one thing to be a deacon, and another to be devoted to the love of God, and to that ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... psychology was of the simplest: if you were nice to her she would do anything for you, but in spite of all her placidity she was sometimes hurt in her most sensitive places. These wounds she never displayed, and no one ever knew of them, and indeed they passed very quickly—but there they occasionally were. Now on what slender circumstances do the fates of dogs ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... calling the hunters, who were very sleepy from the fact that they had had hardly any sleep for several nights past, sternly threatened the dogs, and thus succeeded in quieting them down. After a time some disagreeably tainted air reached the sensitive nostrils of one of the Indian hunters. He did not require a second sniff to tell him what it indicated. With a bound he was up. Suddenly rousing his comrade, they rushed out into the gloom of the forest. Unfortunately for them, the fire was about ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... Leanders who went to live in New York City was the father of one son, a thin sensitive boy who looked like Elsie. The son died when he was twenty-three years old and some years later the father died and left his money to the old people on the New England farm. The two Leanders who had gone west had lived there with their father's brother, a farmer, until they grew ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... was not inevitable. He was too sensitive, too finely strung, and he possessed too much imagination. The world was too much with him. He projected himself too quiveringly into his environment. Therefore, the last place in the world for him to come was the Solomons. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... from the precinct house, he noticed the sounds first. Under the huge dome that enclosed the main part of the city, the heavier air pressure permitted normal travel of sound; and he'd become sensitive to the voice of the city after the relative quiet of the Nineteenth Precinct. But now the normal noise was different. There was an undertone of hushed waiting, with the sharp bursts of hammering and last-minute work standing out sharply ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... a most dangerous criminal. Even now he could not understand how she could be innocent of a share in Mme. Dauvray's murder. But Hanaud evidently thought she was. And since Hanaud thought so, why, it was better to say nothing if one was sensitive to gibes. So Ricardo sat and talked with her while Hanaud ran back into the restaurant. It mattered very little, however, what he said, for Celia's eyes were fixed upon the doorway through which Hanaud had ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... and emphatic, the jawbone salient. It was, altogether, a disharmonic type, for the head was long and the face short, broad across the high cheekbones; and her large light eyes set in her small dark face produced a disconcerting effect on sensitive people, but more often fascinated them. Clavering had been told that in her California days she had possessed a superb bust, but long years of unremitting work in France and England had taken toll of her flesh and it had never returned; she was very thin ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... given them the rug on their departure and who had omitted to celebrate their birthday. She was an amiable aunt, but she didn't understand about birthdays. It was the first one they had had since they were complete orphans, and so they were rather sensitive about it. But they hadn't cried, because since their mother's death they had done with crying. What could there ever again be in the world bad enough to cry about after that? And besides, just before ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... followed by the same results. Aristocracies or oligarchies have the same tendency and even in a greater degree. They have proved even more selfish and tyrannical than the single ruler. They, like all crowds, are less sensitive in conscience, less moved by appeals to reason, than is the single individual. They offend more the sentiment of equality. The French Revolution was not so much against the king as against the nobility, who with their oppressive feudal exemptions ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... They were supplied with masts and a receiving set sufficiently sensitive to pick up messages from a distance of five ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... speech. He was a man of undoubted courage, and determined. When angry, he indulged in some of the quaintest and wittiest original expressions imaginable; but if you laughed at him, he became very much offended, as he was particularly sensitive about the impediment of his speech. Still, he was a man who appreciated a joke, and enjoyed it even if it ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... extreme of cruelty to a young lad who was guilty of nothing except poverty. But there were many ways in which little Alois was kept away from her chosen companion; and Nello, being a boy proud and quiet and sensitive, was quickly wounded, and ceased to turn his own steps and those of Patrasche, as he had been used to do with every moment of leisure, to the old red mill upon the slope. What his offence was he did not know; he supposed he had in some manner angered Baas ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... feeling ten years ago? My dear girl, that wasn't love! That was just a little girl's first feeling. But look at Fred and Linda after seventeen years. Why, it's sacred—it's holy. Harriet, if once you said you would, it would COME. Why, that's the very proof that you're as fine—as sensitive as you are—that you don't feel it now. But, Harriet," his arm was about her now, his voice close to her ear "don't let those years with rich people spoil you for the real thing, dear! Think of our hunting for an apartment—Fred and I haven't Mother to care ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... sensitive in his own way to the various spiritual movements that swept over the country. This was the period of wild revivals, when religion, entering into the converted soul with inconceivable violence, found expression in gasping shrieks, rigid faintings, and ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... it, and one of his arguments was very characteristic. "In monarchies," he said, "the crime of treason and rebellion may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished; but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death." This was Adams's sensitive point. He wanted the whole world to realize that the rule of a republic is a rule of law and order, and that liberty does not mean license. But in spite of this view, for which there was much to be said, the clemency of the American ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Ionian colonies had carried all the arts just referred to far beyond the Homeric time. And, in addition to the activity and development of the intellect in all its faculties which progressed with the extensive trade and colonization of Miletus (operating upon the sensitive, inquiring, and poetical temperament of the Ionian population), a singular event, which suddenly opened to Greece familiar intercourse with the arts and lore of Egypt, gave considerable impetus to ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... account of the loss of her dear papa, who had died very unexpectedly, in the prime of life, from neglected cold, which terminated in acute bronchitis. This, though it had occurred six months previous to Clara's advent at Oak Villa, was an event still deeply felt and lamented by the sensitive child, and produced a seriousness of character seldom seen in children of her age; but the change was likely to prove very beneficial both to her health and spirits, and it was not long before Aunt Mary saw, with much ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... out of her face. She gazed after the trailer with the unabashed interest of a child, wondering who he might be. In that instant her soul, impressionable and eager, received and retained, like a sensitive plate, every line of his figure, every minute modelling of his face—even his fashion of saddle and the leather of his gun-case remained with her as food for reflection, and as she loitered down the trail a wish to know more ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... proud and religious ladies mix mentalities with sensitive youths of twenty-four, the danger-line is being approached. The Grand Passions that live in history, such as that of Abelard and Heloise, Petrarch and Laura, Dante and Beatrice, swing in their orbit ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... dread to the wise, and not as an end to the pious. Those it presses again into life, and teaches to use it; These by affliction it strengthens in hope to future salvation. Death becomes life unto both. Thy father was greatly mistaken When to a sensitive boy he death in death thus depicted. Let us the value of nobly ripe age, point out to the young man, And to the aged the youth, that in the eternal progression Both may rejoice, and life may in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... pansy flower was told by Pansy little girl what her kind mamma and uncle had planned for her benefit, and with what Pansy called a kiss, a very butterfly kiss it was, for the little girl was as afraid of hurting the pansy as if it had been a sensitive plant, the flower-pot was ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... when I shall know definitely the result of the sale, which, indeed, is the object of the journey. On my return I passed a day with M. A. Monsieur is cold, formal, monotonous, repulsive. Gods! what a mansion is that bosom for the sensitive heart of poor M. Lovely victim! I wish she would break her pretty little neck. Yet, on second thought, would it not be better that he break his? He is often absent days and weeks. She has not seen the smoke of a city in five ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... marvel of wonder, Over the dawn of a blush breaking out; Sensitive nose, with a little smile under Trying to hide in a blossoming pout— Couldn't be serious, try as you ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... abstruse or fanciful, but who did not hesitate, if necessary, to controvert or even confute them. As for Adriana, she literally idolised a friend whose proud spirit and clear intelligence were calculated to exercise a strong but salutary influence over her timid and sensitive nature. As for the great banker himself, who really had that faculty of reading character which his wife flattered herself she possessed, he had made up his mind about Myra from the first, both from her correspondence ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... colors here in his queer sensitive way, and pushes his spectacles up and down his nose, in another nervous fashion of his. After all, it was only this minute he had been accusing old Wynter of anything but good nature. Well! He had wronged him there. He ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... boys followed very meekly, and on arriving at the desk the doctor entered their names in a huge book that lay open before him, using an old-fashioned quill pen that scratched so harshly as to send a shudder through Bert, who was very sensitive to ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... who has been deaf and blind ever since she was a little child, tells us that her hands are a splendid substitute for eyes and ears, and that their sensitive touch has revealed to her the beauties and wonders of the world. In other words, she has seen the world with ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold |
