"Sharper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she ordered something done or spent some money in a way that excited the astonishment of Willy Croup—the sharper-witted Betty had gone home, for, of course, Mrs. Cliff could not be expected to be able to afford her company now. But in attempting to account for these inconsiderable extravagances, Mrs. Cliff was often obliged ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... by a steady clicking, such as might be made by gently striking a stick against the pavement; only sharper. This lasted a minute, during which the other ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... country. To one as ignorant as I was of mercantile movement, the story of Colbert's methods, owing to their pure autocracy, was a kind of introductory primer to this element of sea power. Thus received, the impression was both sharper and deeper. New light was shed upon, and new emphasis given to, the commonplace assertion of the relations between commerce and a navy; civil and military sea power. While I have no claim to mastery ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... or injured him in some such silly way; and he had a violent animosity to the old Baron de Magny, both in his capacity of Protestant, and because the latter in some haughty mood had publicly turned his back upon him as a sharper and a spy. Perpetual quarrels were taking place between them in council; where it was only the presence of his august masters that restrained the Baron from publicly and frequently expressing the contempt which he felt for ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... coast of England. That other, in the grey surtout and cocked hat, is Napoleon Bonaparte Smith, assuring France that she need apprehend no interference from him in the present alarming juncture. At that spot, where you seem to see a speck of something in motion, is an immense mass-meeting. Look sharper, and you will see a mite brandishing his mandibles in an excited manner. That is the great Mr. Soandso, defining his position amid tumultuous and irrepressible cheers. That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others, as minute as he, are gazing ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... bitten furze, Within whose scanty shade, at summer-noon, The mother-sheep hath worn a hollow bed— Ye, that now cool her fleece with dropless damp, 40 Now pant and murmur with her feeding lamb. Chase, chase him, all ye Fays, and elfin Gnomes! With prickles sharper than his darts bemock His little Godship, making him perforce Creep through a thorn-bush on yon hedgehog's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... new, sweet cider an infinitely better drink than the ordinary, unripe Tuscan wine. Such as it is, however, the latter fills thousands upon thousands of small, flat barrels, and, still growing thinner and sharper, loses the little life it had, as wine, and becomes apotheosized as ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have laughed at anything as much as I did at him the other day," said Miss Laura. "Uncle asked me if I had ever heard of such a thing as a jealous ox, and I said no. He said, 'Come to the barnyard, and I'll show you one.' The oxen were both there, Duke with his broad face, and Bright so much sharper and more intelligent looking. Duke was drinking at the trough there, and uncle said: 'Just look at him. Isn't he a great, fat, self-satisfied creature, and doesn't he look as if he thought the world owed him a living, and he ought to get it?' Then he got the card and went up to ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... the weeds away, I took up Bobbie's little hoe to help me in the fray. If that little hoe were wanting, I'd take a spoon or fork, or any other implement, but always keep at work. If any one would send me a broader, sharper hoe, I'd use it on those ugly weeds and cut more with one blow; but till I got a better hoe, I'd work away with Bobbie's. I'd ride one steady-going nag, and not a dozen hobbies; help any man or boy, or fiend to do what ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... a satisfaction to be run through the body." As the matter at present stands, it is not to do handsome actions denominates a man of honour; it is enough if he dares to defend ill ones. Thus you often see a common sharper in competition with a gentleman of the first rank; though all mankind is convinced, that a fighting gamester is only a pickpocket with the courage of a highwayman. One cannot with any patience reflect on the unaccountable jumble of persons and things in this town and nation, which occasions ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... moments after Gretry had gone Jadwin heard the ticker on the other side of the room begin to chatter furiously; and at the same time he could fancy that the distant thunder of the Pit grew suddenly more violent, taking on a sharper, shriller note. He looked at the tape. The one-cent rise ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... laughing. The "Origin of Species" was possible because the "Vestiges" had prepared the way for it. The "Vestiges" were made possible by Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin, and these two were made possible by Buffon. Here a somewhat sharper line can be drawn than is usually found possible when defining the ground covered by philosophers. No one broke the ground for Buffon to anything like the extent that he broke it for those who followed him, and these broke it for ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... left in the minds of these girls as a part of their education? As one of the bystanders, himself of the working class, said to me, 'God help their husbands!' Yes, poverty has many stings; but there can be none sharper than the necessity of marrying one of these poor ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... sufficiently regard man as a complicated unity; you represent, if you do not suppose, the several capacities of his nature,—the different parts of it, sensational, emotional, intellectual, moral, spiritual,—as set off from one another by a sharper boundary line than nature acknowledges. They all work for immediate ends, indeed; but they all also work for, with, and upon each other, for other ends than their own. Yet, as they all exist in one indivisible mind, or rather constitute it, they form one most intricate ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... understand, this Lord of Maya, this Master of illusion. He tests the hearts of His beloved, not so much the world at large. To them is the teaching that shall guide them aright. For Arjuna, for Bhima, for Yudhishthira, for them the keener touch, the sharper trial, in order to see if within the heart one grain of evil still remains, that will prevent their union with Himself. For what does he seek? That they shall be His very own, that they shall enter into His being. But they cannot enter therein while one seed ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... most corrupt, the most vulgar, the most ignorant, the most illiberal, and the most time-serving race that are to be found in Europe. It is said that a Bristol man is known all over the world for his underhanded, tricking, overreaching, sharper-like dealing; he is described to be exactly the reverse of a Liverpool merchant; and it is added, (and the sarcasm is not too bitter) that you may know a Bristol merchant, by his always sleeping with one eye open. There are, of course, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... looking across the river to the long, wooded island, and over that to the line of sand-hills that marked the eastern rim of the East Peninsula, beyond which was the Atlantic. The white crests of the hills made the sharper points of the horizon line. Elsewhere clumps of nearer pine-trees intervened, while here and there a tall palmetto stood, or seemed to stand, on the highest and farthest ridge looking seaward. But particulars mattered little. The blue water, the pale, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... two more, but we can not tell much as yet; let us follow up the trail till we come to some spot where we may read the print better. That's her foot," continued Malachi, after they had proceeded two or three yards. "The sole of a shoe cuts the grass sharper than a moccasin. We have no easy task just now, and if the others come, they may prevent us from finding the ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... know why any of us should talk about reading. We want some sharper discipline than that of reading; but, at all events, be assured, we cannot read. No reading is possible for a people with its mind in this state. No sentence of any great writer is intelligible to them. It is simply and sternly impossible for the English public, at this moment, to understand ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... but they rarely distinguished themselves by zeal in this matter. The procedure was that of a grand jury set in motion by common report. Lucius III and Barbarossa, acting together in 1184, prepared a decretal in which the duty of bishops was reaffirmed and an attempt was made to give sharper method to their proceedings. They were to seek out heretics, holders of secret conventicles, or any who "in any way differed, in mode of life, from the faithful in general." Those who refused to be disciplined ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... day and comes home laden with the spoil. The true artist hungers after technic for its own sake, well knowing the nourishment it affords. He even needlessly puts on fetters now and again, that he may find sharper zest in his effort. This ravenous appetite for technic leads many an artist to go outside his own art in search of unforeseen but fascinating difficulties. The painter is tempted to stretch his muscles by a tussle with the unknown obstacles of the sculptor; and the sculptor in his turn ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... confessing to the practice of every vice, of whom Ballio in the -Pseudolus- is a model specimen; the military braggadocio, in whom we trace a very distinct reflection of the free-lance habits that prevailed under Alexander's successors; the professional sharper or sycophant, the stingy money-changer, the solemnly silly physician, the priest, mariner, fisherman, and the like. To these fall to be added, lastly, the parts delineative of character in the strict sense, such as ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... clear that Cupid had found a sharper arrow than usual, and that Mr. Freely's heart was pierced. It was the general talk among the young people at Grimworth. But was it really love, and not rather ambition? Miss Fullilove, the timber-merchant's daughter, was quite sure that if she were Miss Penny Palfrey, ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... beginning, and was not without a good clientage, and some good employments. I was prompt, faithful, and persistently loyal to my clients' interests, trying never to neglect them even when they were small. Then litigations were sharper generally than at present, and often, as now understood, unnecessary. The court-term was once looked forward to as a time for a lawyer to earn fees; now it is, happily, otherwise with the more successful and better ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... a moral form of putting a sharper bit in humanity's mouth; when of course the highest aim, the optimistic view, is to train people to go as fast and straight and far as possible, with the least possible hampering of their natural powers by legislation. "Some men are ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... than her sister, and it was easy to see that her tongue was sharper. She would not have been so soothing to an invalid, but the woman under the pear-tree had her nerves better in hand by now, and felt, somehow, upon her mettle to prove to this broad, curt Ann that there were tasks in the world beyond ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... allow the law to insist on much formality when a sovereign has reason or mind to get rid of his wife. Perhaps too much difficulty of untying the Gordian not of matrimony thrown in the way of an absolute prince would be no kindness to the ladies, but might prompt him to use a sharper weapon, like that butchering husband, our Henry VIII. Sovereigns, who narrow or let out the law of God according to their prejudices and passions, mould their own laws no doubt to the standard of their convenience. Genealogic purity of blood is the predominant ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Marius began more than to suspect what the issue must be, and henceforward could but watch with a sort of agonised fascination the rapid but systematic work of the destroyer, [117] faintly relieving a little the mere accidents of the sharper forms of suffering. Flavian himself appeared, in full consciousness at last—in clear-sighted, deliberate estimate of the actual crisis—to be doing battle with his adversary. His mind surveyed, with great distinctness, the various suggested ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... human nature to be so depraved as you would make it out to be, Eva," remarked Mrs Devitt, who disliked the fact of her unmarried sister possessing sharper wits than her own. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... so certain was intelligent London that in going to hear Arthur Meadows on the most admired—or the most detested—personalities of the day, they at least ran no risk of wishy-washy panegyric, or a dull caution. Meadows had proved himself daring both in compliment and attack; nothing could be sharper than his thrusts, or more Olympian than his homage. There were those indeed who talked of "airs" and "mannerisms," but their faint voices were lost in the ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... but two routes the Indians used started from the head of the lake. He found the marks of the sledge-runners, and then noted with a thrill of excitement that there was something curious about one of the men's tracks. The steps were uneven; one impression was sharper ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... well-warmed inn, close to a mountain stream, which is one of the great ornaments of this side of the road. We have here passed into a region of granite, from that of limestone, and what is called gneiss. The valleys are sharper and closer,—like cracks in a hard and solid mass;—and there is much more of the startling contrast of light and shade, as well as more angular boldness of outline; to all which the more abundant waters add a fresh and vivacious interest. Looking back through ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... not perceptibly changed, I thought my cousin Jane had become more than a little sharper and stiffer. She did not like my uncle's own personal secularization, and still less the glimpses she got of the ampler intentions of his book. She missed the proximity to the church and her parochial authority. But she ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... that th' old missis—she as is mother to Master William—her has a tongue what's sharper nor longer than any vixen's going. But that's ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... he attracted by his own people. They seemed transformed, revivified, changed. Some might be mistaken for field hands on a holiday—but not many. Others he did not recognize—they seemed strange and alien—sharper, quicker, and at once ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that of one born blind. And those fingers were skillful, adroit, alert, their every movement carried out with that smooth, indefinable grace which is almost always possessed by the really high-class card sharper. His fingers were adorned with numerous rings, in which sparkled diamonds and other precious stones. And it was not for nothing that Sergei Kovroff took pride in them! This glitter of diamonds, scattering rainbow rays, dazzled the eyes of his ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... books! The sun was printing over the floor the shadow skeleton of the juniper-tree by the westerly window. That always told me it was one o'clock. And one o'clock meant books again—three long hours of wrangling with dull wits, of fencing with sharper ones; three long hours of a-b-abs, of two-times-twos and three-times-threes; hours of spelling and of parsing, hours of bounding and describing. With it all, woven through it, now swelling, now dying away, now broken by a shrill cry of pain or anger, was the ceaseless buzzing ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... boy, my dear," said the playful old gentleman, patting Oliver on the head approvingly. "I never saw a sharper lad. Here's a shilling for you. If you go on in this way, you'll be the greatest man of the time. And now come here, and I'll show you how to take the ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... interrupted the sharper voice. "Flour on her nose? Oh, ye gods! I don't believe there's a woman in this whole hotel who'd know flour if she saw it! Women don't care any more, I tell ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... no knowledge. We have come to see how great is the unexplored, and many lifetimes will not bring us to the end of our quest. [-But we wish no end to our quest.-] We wish nothing, save to be alone and to learn, and to feel as if with each day our sight were growing sharper than the hawk's and clearer than ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... better edge. For the same reason the people of central Europe sent to the deserts of central Asia for jade wherewith to make axes and knives. Again, for the same reason, jade was discarded, because an alloy of copper and tin produced a bronze that would not only take a sharper edge than stone, but it was hard enough to cut and dress the latter. Egypt rose to a commanding position because of her control of the copper mines in the Sinaitic peninsula, and subsequently of the gold products coming from the ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... and ardent Democrats, but they were in the leading strings of sharper politicians. Perhaps, after all, the fools were more to be feared ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... likened to gigantic Grebes from which they differ externally, chiefly in the full webbed foot instead of the individually webbed toes of the Grebe, and in the sharper, more pointed and spear-like bill. These birds are similar in their habits to the Grebes, except that their homes are generally more substantially built and are placed upon a solid foundation, generally upon an island ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... young people who awaited their coming. They had, as Bob expressed it, cooled off a bit and were no longer in such an agitated frame of mind; nevertheless anxiety had left its mark by keying the master's voice to a sharper note, and shadowing the lady's brow with a frown ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... wit to be under the shrub by the gate at sunset, I shall win more of her. But she's but a poor brain, or I err. Howbeit, I've had my ear-rings' worth. They cost but a halfpenny. Can you see aught from here? Your eyes be sharper than mine." ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... mouth, and even the shape of the forehead sometimes; but the eyebrows change very little, except in color. This I have noticed, because my own may perhaps be a little peculiar; and they have always been so. At school I received a nickname about it, for boys are much sharper than men about such things; and that name after fifty years fits as well as ever. You may smile, if you like; I shall not tell you what it was, but leave you to re-invent it, if you can. Now look at this first-rate miniature. Do you see an unusual but ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... contrary to his usual custom, appears very early on the field, evidently desirous of enjoying the fray to its utmost. He looks quite jubilant and fresh for him, and his nose is in a degree sharper than its wont. He opens an animated discourse with Cecil; but Lady Stafford, although distrait and with her mind on the stretch, listening for every sound outside, replies brilliantly, and, woman-like, conceals her anxiety ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... To the camp Harry hurried, and reached it at length. It was George Washington Harry found stretched in a tent there, and not his brother. A sharper pain than that of the fever Mr. Washington declared he felt, when he saw Harry Warrington, and could give him ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of one or two old women was led to suppose that he possessed abilities of a totally different nature from those which he actually possessed. I do not mean higher abilities, but abilities extending into a field into which his peculiar talents did not reach. Yet no one would have been sharper at discerning the worthlessness of the judgment of the old women had it been other than very flattering to himself. Who is there that does not know that sometimes clever young men are bolstered up into a self-conceit which does ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the muffled but eager monosyllable to a sharper one; and being reminded, felt in her lap, under her napkin, for her "ornaments," ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... requites, As we shall manifest forthwith.— There was a hovel of a smith, Where a poor Viper chanced to steal, And being greedy of a meal, When she had seized upon a file, Was answer'd in this rugged style: "Why do you think, O stupid snake! On me your usual meal to make, Who've sharper teeth than thine by far, And can corrode an ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... to make sharper the edge of my keen disappointment. Brilliant genius! I read the words with the shadow ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... opinions whatsoever to the touchstone of reason:" (p. 307:) [a liberty which has evidently disappeared from English Literature: a right which no man dares any longer exercise under pain of excommunication!] "Collins was not a sharper, and would have disdained practices to which Bentley stooped for the sake of a professorship." (p. 310.) [O high-minded Collins!] "The dirt endeavoured to be thrown on Collins will cleave to the hand that throws it." (p. ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the lumber-yards and doing a man's work, would hardly have recognized in her the merry Glitter-Brita, who in times of old trod the spring-dance so gayly in the well-lighted halls of the Blakstad mansion. And, indeed, she was sadly changed! Her features had become sharper, and the firm lines about her mouth expressed severity, almost sternness. Her clear blue eyes seemed to have grown larger, and their glance betrayed secret, ever-watchful care. Only her yellow hair had resisted ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... it entailed. It was evident that he had thought much and deeply of the future which lay before him. If, as now appeared probable, he should live to man's estate, his life must, at best, be one long endurance, rendered all the sharper and harder to bear because within that helpless body dwelt a soul, which was, more than that of most men, alive to every thing ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... has been dominated by two men of genius. In prose, MAUPASSANT carried on the work of Flaubert with a sharper manner and more vivid style, though with a narrower range. He abandoned the exotic and the historical visions of his predecessor, and devoted himself entirely, in his brilliant novels and yet more brilliant short stories, to an almost fiendishly realistic treatment of modern ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... unless he cease to rail. Attend impartially! and let me once Without annoyance act an easy part; Lest your old servant be o'er-labor'd still With toilsome characters, the running slave, The eating parasite, enrag'd old man, The bold-fac'd sharper, covetous procurer; Parts, that ask pow'rs of voice, and iron sides. Deign then, for my sake, to accept this plea, And grant me some remission from my labor. For they, who now produce new comedies, Spare not my age! If there is aught laborious, They run to me; but if of little ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... Jobbin took to chaffin' of Lancy Doane, and how Faddo's tongue got sharper as the time got on, and many a nasty word was said of coast-guards and excisemen, and all that had to do with law and gover'ment. Cuts there were at some of Laney's wild doings in the past, and now ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her through some sense, sharper than sight or touch, that gave him her inmost immaterial essence. She would be sitting quietly in a room or standing in a field when suddenly he would be thus aware of her. These moments had a reality and certainty more poignant even than ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... there was Pow-wow's behavior on the occasion to be taken into consideration. There was not a dog west or east of the Alleghany Mountains who had a sharper nose than Pow-wow for detecting an ill wind; yet, all this while, he had set there on his haunches, without betraying the least sign of uneasiness or distrust, nor even of curiosity, as if a Manitou to him were a sight as familiar as a jay-bird, and ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... sun flamed whiter and whiter: the flashing of waters before his face began to dazzle like a play of lightning.... Now the islands began to show sharper lines, stronger colors; and Dominica was evidently the nearer;—for bright streaks of green were breaking at various angles through its vapor-colored silhouette, and Martinique still ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... other; in the achievement of nothing else does he condense and concentrate the intensity of his will in so remarkable a manner as in the act of generation." And before all those, Buddha wrote: "Sexual desire is sharper than the hook with which wild elephants are tamed; hotter than flame; it is like an arrow that is shot into ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... activity. She would stand sometimes, with her arms folded, leaning on a stile, and idly watching her men at work, till they wondered what had happened to their mistress. She lost a little of the color from her cheeks, and the full moulded lines of her chin grew sharper. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... sharper trial of Amyas's promise to his mother; and one which made him, for the first time in his life, moody, peevish, and restless, at the thought that others were fighting Spaniards, while he was sitting idle at home. For his whole soul was filling fast with sullen malice ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... was nothing but a sharper!" he ejaculated to himself. "What a fool I was to be taken in by his smooth tongue! He took me for a greeny from the ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... about in a big circle, banking sharply, and then, as he passed over the ground covered a little while before, he, too, looked down, and with sharper glance than he had used ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... appetite is sharper than a scythe; but my indigestion is duller than a whetstone," said the mate, to whom a feast was ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... But now I trembled as I felt my way down the ladder, and groped and stumbled through the black attic for the stairs. Every noise I made seemed louder an hundred fold than the battle had been, and when I barked my shins, the pain was sharper than a knife. Below, on the big stairway, the echo of my footsteps sounded again from the empty rooms, so that I was taken with a panic and fled downward, sliding and falling, until I reached the hall. Frantically as I tried, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... all his time spent here in the world's most prodigious laboratory of minerals, he had purchased a salted mine! A sharper man, that sad-faced, half-sick Selwyn Briggs, had actually trimmed ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... did not come in. No wonder, considering that it was owed by the loafers and ne'er-do-wells of the town and surrounding country, who, because no one else would trust them, bestowed their custom upon good-natured, gullible Captain Dan. The more recent letters from the hat dealers had been sharper and less kindly. They had ceased to request; they demanded. At last they had threatened. And now the threat ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Bob, and so much the greater need that you should look out the sharper. Give the ship plenty of room, and I'll let her run down for the passage, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... the answere of our ambassadours, he sayd nothing, but commaunded his Bashas that they should begin the battell againe to the towne, the which was done, and then the truce was broken, and the shot of the enemies was sharper then it was afore. And on the other side nothing, or very litle for fault of pouder: for that that there was left, was kept for some great assault or neede. Howbeit the sayd Acmek Basha kept one of the ambassadours, and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... best a puny rivulet, and depending for their corrasion on intermittent floods, meet on equal terms the great Colorado, the giant that never for a second ceases its ferocious attack. Admitting that the sharper declivity of the Kanab would enhance its power of corrasion, nevertheless we should expect to see it approach the Grand Canyon by leaps and bounds, like the Havasupai farther down, but, on the contrary, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... to Janet when she was in the mood—delicious scraps of letters, broad-margined, fantastic, each, so far as charm went, a little literary gem disguised in wilfulness, in a picture, in a diamond-cut cynicism that shone sharper and clearer for the "dainty affectation of its setting." When she was not in the mood she did not write at all. With an instinctive recognition of the demands of any relation such as she felt her friendship with ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... that obese old abbe who plays his tricks with the cards in the most artful way, and who robs me of my money. I almost suspect, Tournebroche, you call my attention to yonder coach for the purpose of aiding and abetting that old sharper. Cannot a carriage be on the same road as ours without ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... vaguely entertained the conception, asking Verena whether she would make the visit if it were again to be pressed upon them. It had been pressed, certainly, and the terms of the problem were now so much sharper that they seemed cruel. What had been in her own mind was that if Verena should appear to lend herself to the Burrages Basil Ransom might be discouraged—might think that, shabby and poor, there was no chance for him as against people with every ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... say sae," said David Deans; "but I have maintained my testimony before as great folk, and in sharper times; and though I will neither exalt myself nor pull down others, I wish every man and woman in this land had kept the true testimony, and the middle and straight path, as it were, on the ridge of a hill, where wind and water shears, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... difference as soon as he reached the hills of his native state. People were cooler here and they were more prone to look at the two sides of a question. The air, too, was unlike that of South Carolina. There was a sharper tang to it. It whipped his blood as it blew down from the ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... as Nancy's soft voice reached her. "Dear child, how you startle one! Have you been there long?" Her voice rose to a sharper key. ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... is said now every Session, with sharper point, and even more uncompromising directness, by Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Storey, and others. It was new to the House of Commons twenty-two years ago, and when Mr. Auberon Herbert (to-day a sedate gentleman, who writes good Tory letters ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... as a medical practitioner, with every year, until he has ripened into a well-mellowed maturity. But, to improve, he must be good for something at the start. If you ship a poor cask of wine to India and back, if you keep it a half a century, it only grows thinner and sharper. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... revulsion than the massacre in the flames of many more obscure enthusiasts, whose very ignorance and poverty made their cause seem more popular than it really was. But this last ugly feature was brought into sharper relief, and produced more conscious or unconscious bitterness, because of that other great fact of which I spoke above, which is the determining test of this ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... list to the lay of a poor Irish harper, And scorn not the strains of his old withered hand, But remember the fingers could once move sharper To raise the merry strains of his dear native land; It was long before the shamrock our dear isle's loved emblem. Was crushed in its beauty 'neath the Saxon Lion's paw I was called by the colleens of the village and valley Bold Phelim Brady, the ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... reads Enoch Arden immediately after The Daffodil Fields, it seems to be without salt. It lacks flavour, and is almost tasteless compared with the biting condiments of the other poem, prepared as it was for the sharper demands of twentieth-century palates. We like, as Browning thought Macready would like "stabbing, drabbing, et autres gentillesses," and Mr. Masefield knows how to supply them. Yet I am not sure that the self-denial of Enoch and the timid patience of Philip do not both ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... in the Senate. It had more acrid and irritable members than the Assembly, and its talkers had sharper tongues. In debate, Foster was the most formidable, but Albert Lester's acerbity of temper fixed the tone of the discussion. Finally, when the vote was taken the Democrats broke evenly for and against ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified her sense of beauty and her craving for the external finish of life; there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her own opportunities. This was one of the moments when the sense of contrast was uppermost, and she turned away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset, glittering in serpentine ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... more favoured climes, but rather as diffused smudgy lines, and so they are drawn by the observers. On a few occasions of exceptionally good seeing they have, however, been seen and drawn as finer and sharper lines. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... acceptably if the penitent spared himself no pain nor harmless disfigurement. Scarification, with other crude penances, has now been superseded by benefaction. The founding of a library or endowment of a university is said to yield to the penitent a sharper and more lasting pain than is conferred by the knife or iron, and is therefore a surer means of grace. There are, however, two grave objections to it as a penitential method: the good that it does and the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Did they find any footmarks in the grounds below that torn creeper? Not a sign! You saw how he can jump; he won ten pounds from me that same evening betting on what he knew was a certainty. That's your Dancy—a common sharper! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... my burning pillow, or if indeed my eyelids for very weariness fell down, it was only that I might suffer the stings of anxiety in some sharper form; for my dreams were of flames kindling around me, through which I saw behind the proud and exulting ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... work of that young villain Mortimer," continued Herbert, still reasoning on the subject. "I ought to have been sharper; Bob told me to look out for him. If I had had any sense, I could have seen that he meant to be revenged upon me. I knew it, and yet I didn't want to admit, even to myself, that I was at all uneasy. He must have been the ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... that he was blinded to the deviltries of his associates by his own high intentions, or as shrewdly dishonest as any scoundrel that ever rode the wilds. He could be that, and carry it off before a sharper judge than she. So she said, finding it hard to excuse his blindness, if blindness it might be; unable to mitigate in any degree the blame, even passive knowledge of the intent, of that ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... to stay home nights like I do. Then you'd have time." Ernie paused and added piously, "It makes you sharper on the ...
— All Day Wednesday • Richard Olin
... vitia quam virtutes.—There is almost no man but he sees clearlier and sharper the vices in a speaker, than the virtues. And there are many, that with more ease will find fault with what is spoken foolishly than can give allowance to that wherein you are wise silently. The treasure of a fool is always in his tongue, said the witty comic poet; {33c} and it appears ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... chapel appears, from the raking channel on the transept wall, to have once been higher, with a sharper pitch. The finish to the present gable point has disappeared. On the east wall and on the south-west buttress of the transept there are two interesting old lead rain-water heads. The east wall of the chapel runs on northwards till it becomes a part of the buttress of the choir. The wall between ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... very vagueness, to bind him down to his chair, to make his heart beat fast, and to set him listening intently. No sound stirred in the room, but the familiar sound of the rain against the window, louder and sharper now than he had ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... a sharper man, Gunn," said Rogers, still in the same hot whisper, as he relaxed his grip a little; "you are too simple, you hound! When you first threatened me I resolved to kill you. Then you threatened my daughter. I wish that ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... effective rather than an ineffective person, and when he has purged his fault we continue to punish him in petty and underhand ways, mostly degrading to those on whom they are inflicted and always degrading to those who inflict them. We have found no substitute for the sharper way of our ancestors, which was not only more effective socially, but even more pleasant for the victim. For if it was a cause of temporary triumph to his enemies, it was a source of everlasting exultation ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... idiot, in thy integrity! Thou hast thrown scorn upon one, who has power and the will to pay it back in a coin it may little please thee to take it in. If there be one torment, Galilean, sharper than another, it shall be thine tomorrow; and for one moment that Macer passed upon my irons, there shall be hours for thee. Not till the flesh be peeled inch by inch from thy bones, and thy vitals look through thy ribs, and thy brain boil in its hot case, and each particular nerve be stretched ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... illiterate but it is upon illiteracy in the mass that they must depend to carry out their plans. An ignorant voter may be an honest one but unless he is intelligent enough to study public questions for himself he is an easy prey for the political sharper. It is beyond the power of the pen to portray what a magnificent government would be possible with an educated electorate. The idea can be approximated only when we consider how much we have been able to accomplish even with all the inefficiency, vice and ignorance ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... citizen. Sandersen was one; stocky Buck Mason, carrying two hundred pounds close to the ground, massive of hand and jaw, was a second. After that their choice had fallen on "Judge" Lodge. The judge wore spectacles and a judicial air. He had a keen eye for cows and was rather a sharper in horse trades. He gave his costume a semiofficial air by wearing a necktie instead of a bandanna, even at a roundup. The glasses, the necktie, and his little solemn pauses before he delivered an opinion, had ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... The firing became sharper and quicker and the reports of the guns of the attackers sounded nearer. They were, in fact, creeping up, taking advantage of ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... at the glass bull's-eyes, now and then exclaiming as some shad or other fair-sized fish came into view. Suddenly, however, his exclamation was sharper than usual. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... topsails reefed,—the most glorious event of a landsman's sea-experiences. We had begun the day with a dead calm, but toward night the wind had come out of the eastward. Each plunge the ship gave was sharper, each shock heavier. The topmasts were working, the lee-shrouds and backstays straining out into endless curves. A deeper plunge than usual, a pause for a second, as if everything in the world suddenly stood still, and a great white giant seems to spring upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various |
