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More "Earnestness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gratitude. In the words of Roosevelt, "their prejudices and narrow dislikes, their raw vanity and sullen distrust of all who were better schooled than they, count for little when weighed against their intense earnestness and heroic self-sacrifice." ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... that no one else in all the world would have dreamed of doing so wrong a thing; pointed out her mother and father and pretty Dot, Mrs. and Mr. Sharman as examples of great goodness. When the baby was placidly sleeping, she sat upright on the end of her mother's bed in her earnestness to "see" if any of those righteous five would be guilty of the wickedness of becoming ghosts to frighten an old man. She would have felt easier at once if she could have convinced herself that they would; but she could only see each ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... argument against the theory of "untouchableness" and against priestly intolerance, the Gaekwar urges not only upon Hindus, but upon Government the duty of attacking in all earnestness this formidable problem. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... in Manx. It told of the loss of the herring-fleet in Douglas Bay in the last century. After that there was yet another and another carol—some that might be called sacred, others that would not be badly wronged with the name of profane. As I recall them now, they were full of a burning earnestness, and pictured the dangers of the sinner and the punishment of the damned. They said nothing about the joys of heaven, or the pleasures of life. Wherever these old songs came from they must have dated from some period of religious revival. The Manxman may have appropriated ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... what he said. He had spoken quickly, impulsively, but with the perfect understanding in his own mind that his proposition meant the complete abandonment of his rendezvous with Susy. Mrs. Peyton was astounded and slightly stirred with his earnestness, albeit unaware of ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... and gray professors, and by the athletes and the football giants. But not one of them made love to me as Ernest did. His arms were around me before I knew. His lips were on mine before I could protest or resist. Before his earnestness conventional maiden dignity was ridiculous. He swept me off my feet by the splendid invincible rush of him. He did not propose. He put his arms around me and kissed me and took it for granted that we should be married. There was no discussion about it. The only discussion—and that ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... a joyous meal, and of a character quite new to Hector. Grave himself, Turenne's entertainments were marked by a certain earnestness and seriousness. He set, indeed, all his guests at ease by his courtesy and the interest he took in each; and yet all felt that in his presence loud laughter would be out of place and loose jesting impossible. Enghien, on the other hand, being a wild and reckless young noble, one who ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... casting about for mutual interests before really knowing each other. Thus the talk drifted for a few moments, with a shy word now and then from David. And presently a chance reference to the epidemic brought a new light into the doctor's eyes, and a new earnestness into ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... an unaccountable pitch of spirits. Adventure had taken hold of him like liquor. He made a start for the door as if to carry out his expressed intention in all earnestness. ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... him from testifying against joint services. He declared that in such union, without unity in the faith, the pastor was required to become 'either a dumb dog or a mameluke'; the theme of his sermon here was: 'Our Duty to Defend the Truth against the Gainsayers.'" (207.) The same earnestness characterized Berkenmeyer's dealings with pastors, whom he recognized only after they had confessed their Lutheranism in ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... a little bewildered by the girl's earnestness, her energy, and the perfect simplicity of her evident belief that she was saying nothing unreasonable. She saw reluctance and hesitation in ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... of English origin, or of our own production; but many of the sweetest of them are free versions from the German hymnists. The Rationalists, not being content with their present laurels, began in great earnestness to despoil the hymn-books of the Protestant church of everything savoring of inspiration or of any of the vital doctrines already rejected. They looked upon those songs of devotion as composed during the iron age of truth, and therefore unfit to be sung by the congregations ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... ought to have made us better, more useful, more worthy. We may have been disappointed in our lofty ideas of what ought to be done, but we may have gained more clear and practical notions of what can be done. We may have lost in enthusiasm, and yet gained in earnestness. We may have lost in sensibility, yet gained in charity, activity, and power. We may be able to do far less, and yet what we do may be far better done. And our very griefs and disappointments—have they been useless to us? Surely not. We shall have gained instead ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... beloved dear lady, for my company, I hope, will very soon be answered. My papa was so pleased with your sweet earnestness on this occasion, that he joined with my mamma; and both, with equal cheerfulness, said, you should not be many days in London before me. Murray and his mistress go on swimmingly, and have not yet had one quarrel. The only person, he, of either sex, that ever knew Nancy so intimately, and ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... very fidgety and uncomfortable during this speech. She had an exquisite art, which she sometimes practised, of dropping her husband, or rather bringing him down. So, when there was a pause, everybody being moved at least by his earnestness, she said: ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... said, with great earnestness, "the greatest enemies of our country are those who try to arouse sectional feeling. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... begging for a season ticket," she laughed. "They have reduced me to such a condition that I don't know whether they are amusing me or breaking my heart. Tell me, come, which is it? Did you ever hear blank verse recited with tense and reverent earnestness ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... on the subject of the dates of discoveries in the arts and sciences, but well do we remember the earnestness and single-minded devotion to a laudable purpose, with which our worthy friend first communicated to us his ideas on the subject of using the electric spark by way of a telegraph. It was in Paris, and during the winter ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... at his demand, after he had already been made acquainted with the measures she had taken to effect a reconciliation between the courts of Vienna and Berlin. He might easily conceive, as matters were then situated, that the earnestness with which he now urged the same propositions, must necessarily surprise her imperial majesty, as it showed but little regard to her former declaration. The empress, therefore, commanded his excellency to be told, that as her intentions contained in her first answer remained absolutely invariable, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Chaucer was a very free-spoken critic of the life of the clergy—more especially of the Regular clergy,—of his times. In this character he comes before us from his translation of the "Roman de la Rose" to the "Parson's Tale" itself, where he inveighs with significant earnestness against self indulgence on the part of those who are Religious, or have "entered into Orders, as sub-deacon, or deacon, or priest, or hospitallers." In the "Canterbury Tales," above all, his attacks upon the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... stronger for being so. Believe that I am grateful to you—how grateful, cannot be shown in words nor even in tears ... grateful enough to be truthful in all ways. You know I might have hidden myself from you—but I would not: and by the truth told of myself, you may believe in the earnestness with which I tell the other truths—of you ... and of this subject. The subject will not bear consideration—it breaks in our hands. But that God is stronger than we, cannot be a bitter thought to you but a holy thought ... while He lets me, as ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Buck burst out, a look of alarm in his face, "Don't say it, Mr. Sayler,—I know,—I know. I told him it'd be no use. Honest, he ain't as bad as you think,—he don't know no better, and it's because he liked and still likes you that he wants you back." He leaned across the desk toward me, in his earnestness,—and I could not doubt his sincerity. "Sayler," he went on, "take my advice, get out of the state. You ain't the sort that gives in, and no more is he. You've got more nerve than any other man I know, bar none, but don't waste ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... thirst, would have relished something of a similar kind. As the crystal drops fell back from the acacia leaves, the huge animal was heard to utter a low grunt expressive of gratification. The hunters hoped that this was the prelude to his sleep, and watched him with intense earnestness. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... except when his partner took it into his head to go away for a month's vacation at the slack season of the year. At such periods Mr. Dodge, being ages younger than the junior member of the firm, made it his practice to go down to the office and attend to the business with an earnestness that surprised every one. He gave over frolicking and stuck resolutely to the "knitting" that Johnson had left behind. Possessed of a natural though thrifty intelligence,—one that wasted little in public,—and a latent energy that could lift him occasionally above a perfectly normal ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Greek sage and statesman, my father might have declared that old age found him ever learning. Not indeed with the fiery earnestness of his young days of stress and storm; but with the steady advance of a practised worker who cannot be unoccupied. History and philosophy, especially biblical criticism, composed his chief ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... of venturing to sound Mr. Billy Peasemarsh at the Saracen's Head on the subject of a horse and carriage. The boys would have given up the idea, but Jane was always a hopeful child, and Anthea generally an obstinate one, and their earnestness prevailed. ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... with Burns was altogether a labour of love. The idea of writing a song with a view to money-making was abhorrent to him. 'He entered into the views of Johnson,' writes Chambers, 'with an industry and earnestness which despised all money considerations, and which money could not have purchased'; while Allan Cunningham marvels at the number of songs Burns was able to write at a time when a sort of civil war was going on between him and Creech. Another reason for staying through the winter in Edinburgh ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... especial manner on such. Commandments or other parts as seem to be most of all misunderstood or neglected by your people. It will, for example, be necessary that you should enforce with the utmost earnestness the Seventh Commandment, which treats of stealing, when you are teaching workmen, dealers and even farmers and servants, inasmuch as many of these are guilty of various dishonest and thievish practices. So, too, it will be your duty to explain and apply the Fourth ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... they were talking about. Broddock, tipsy as usual, was urging something on her in low, insistent tones. His manner was that of one who espouses a forlorn hope; he argued with the insinuating, doubting earnestness so characteristic of the man who knows that he is operating against his own best interests in the face of one who fully understands the weakness that impels him. Mrs. Braddock stood before him, cold, passive, ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... With the reporters, as far as Madison was concerned, it was simple enough; he had but to let them go their way, to let them revel in the stories that were on every tongue, to let them view with their own eyes facts, while he, modestly and diffidently, full of quiet earnestness, effaced himself, never thrusting himself forward, talking to them only when they pressed him—but the handling of the sufferers who would flock to Needley in response to a newspaper publicity and endorsement that had ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... better. Still, he professed to see in their present state of mind nothing but youthful feeling, excited by the peculiar circumstances of the last few weeks. But when they began in their childish ardor to exhort him also to seek the Lord, he checked their simple earnestness with a peculiar sternness which said to them: "The ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... cast only the most casual sidelong glances, it was clear that his mind, far from being occupied with internal questionings, was measuring even then the probable extent to which this visit might serve some ultimate important purpose upon which the whole gravity and earnestness of his being seemed to be concentrated; and if his solemn features occasionally relaxed into a smile, it was precisely the habitual gravity of his mien that lent his passing levity ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Republican government. In spite of his ramblings, and in spite of some discouraged moods, some unexamined idea always urged him on, and the result was that in two months he had prepared rough sketches of his work, and his parents were, this time, convinced of his earnestness. ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... after the execution of the deed, Mr. Ferret the attorney appeared on the stairs. His hands were full of papers, and he was, as usual, in hot haste; but he stopped abruptly as his eye fell upon the departing visitors, looked with startled earnestness at Miss Willoughby, whom he knew, and then glanced at Mr. Harlowe with an expression of angry surprise. That gentleman, who did not appear to recognize the new-comer, returned his look with a supercilious, contemptuous stare, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... in view of the difficulties with which it has had to contend, we have a sure guarantee, that it will yet be a success and will realize all your reasonable expectations. Let me ask of you, in all earnestness and candor, to give it now your warm, your hearty support, so that you may not only assist in securing for yourselves and the public the great end of its establishment, but that you may, by and by, safely, and without the fear of successful contradiction, lay claim to the honor of being among its ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... never did," Joan answered again. A shadow of a smile hovered over her face, and there was no derision in it, only a warming recollection of his earnestness when he had said the words she quoted: "He is what they call in New York 'dead ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... well enough that the fault lay somewhere within himself. She was as she had ever been, but he lacked the strength to rise to her. Why? Why? He searched himself with a desperate earnestness, but he could find no answer to his questioning. In himself, as in her, there had come no change. She was still to him all that she ever had been—the star of his destiny, the pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day, to guide him on ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... not thrust out by an easy-going superficiality. The expert ought to replace the amateur in every field. Every society which allows successes to superficiality diminishes its chances for mental health. Yet while thoroughness demands concentration in one direction, society must with the same earnestness insist on well-rounded general education and continuity of general interests through life. Literature and the libraries, the newspapers and the magazines play there a foremost role, and again the mental health of the community has to pay the penalty if its newspapers work against general ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... great chance of this generation. Letheringham's Cabinet, of course, would be a moderate Liberal one, a paragon of milk and water in effectiveness. If I go in alone we make history. The moment of issue has come. And, Prince, although I have pleaded with all the force and all the earnestness I know, Lucille remains elusive. If I choose for her side—she promises me—reward. But it is vague to me. I don't, I can't understand! I want her for my wife, I want her for the rest of my life—nothing else. Tell me, is there any ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... guessed at my complaint. "What are you doing here?" he asked; "it is an unwholesome place for grief. Return to our mountains. Your native air will do you good. Come with me; I promise you that your unhappiness will not hold out against the perfume of broom and heather." Then he spoke with tender earnestness of my duties. He did not conceal from me the obligations my fortune and the position left me by my father, laid me under to the land where I was born; I had neglected it too long, and the time had now come when I ought to occupy myself ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... if you can," answered mother, rather oblivious, to tell the truth, of the child's earnestness in putting the question; for she was at the moment writing an answer to a note which ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... hand, and stood up, facing him. Her countenance, turned to the light, shone like a white flame; it was tensely aquiver with passionate earnestness, lambent with the flowering of her body, of dim desire, the heritage of flesh. She spoke in a voice that startled Gordon by its new depth, the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... swallowing insult and stifling my sense of decency as far as possible, in order that I might serve you and prove myself worthy to be your friend," replied Surigny, with such earnestness that Darrin now found himself staring in open-eyed astonishment at the ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... with passionate earnestness, which I can never forget. He pleaded for her love as a man fearful of death might plead for his life. But to all his petitions ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... communications only maintained and represented by the wearying flight of the camel across the desert, treachery and hostility to his plans, if not his person, among his colleagues—all these difficulties and dangers overcome and rendered nugatory by the earnestness and energy of one man alone. Well might his indignation find vent in such a grand outburst ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... 'Terrible in its earnestness, in its "untouched" photography of the desperate struggles and bitter misery of the London poor; never was word-painting more thoroughly and ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... great venture we're trying in America. I wish every one would try to look at it in that light," said Robinette with a slight flush of earnestness. ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not disappointed in Pestalozzi, and certainly Pestalozzi was delighted and a bit amused at the earnestness of the young man. Pestalozzi was working in a very economical way, but all the place lacked Froebel, in his ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... paragraph. He never smiled he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle flowing key to which he tuned his initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... author of "The Jew," whose acquaintance I made, is himself a Jew, and a man of great earnestness and enthusiasm. He is the editor of the "North and South," a monthly periodical, and had just completed, as he informed me, a second romance, which was soon to be published. Like most of the authors and editors in Northern Europe, he is well ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the lady of Last Chance," came in the deep voice of Doctor Dick, from the top of the coach, and they were given with savage earnestness. ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... possessed; and had he lived Sixty Years later, his ambition and love of rule would have lacked the fuel which his situation now afforded. He was indeed, within his little circle, as perfect a politician as Castruccio Castracani himself. He applied himself with great earnestness to appease all the feuds and dissensions which often arose among other clans in his neighbourhood, so that he became a frequent umpire in their quarrels. His own patriarchal power he strengthened at every expense which his fortune would permit, and indeed stretched his means to the uttermost to ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... discussing some scientific question with great earnestness, and Elsie began to feel a little impatient as they talked on and on without seeming to come any nearer to a conclusion: but at last Edward rose and left the room in search of a book which he thought would throw some light on the subject; and then her father turned ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... said Nelson, good-naturedly, but with marked earnestness, too. "You're patronizing the barroom side of the hotel altogether more than is good for you, and if you don't know it yourself, Walky, I feel myself enough your ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... said he would and went back to his little room over the shop. As he was leaving she put out her hand and said, with impulsive earnestness: ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... met with some of the natives, who related to him the story of a ship being lost, and the people being killed; but added, with great earnestness, it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Smellie, "let me recommend you to pray now—to pray with all the earnestness and sincerity of which you are capable. Make your peace with God, if you have not already done so, whilst you have the opportunity, for, unless I am very greatly mistaken, it is our doom ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... authority of a decree of the King's Council of State, of a large number of seigneuries—a matter of the highest importance for the development of the colony. He set himself to the task with his usual activity and earnestness. From October 10 to November 8 he authorized about sixty seigneurial concessions to officers and others desirous of forming settlements. In one day alone (November 3) he made thirty-one grants. The autumn of 1672, during which all these seigneuries ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... order to remove the exclusive reference to Christ, appears, e.g., from his remark, S. 132, that "the chastisement of our peace" designates an actual chastisement, which convinces them of their sin, and of the earnestness of divine holiness, and thus serves for their salvation. Surely Gesenius and Hitzig's explanations are far ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... respectably," said the parson, when the two were left alone. "I detect a certain earnestness in her, though I cannot say as yet how far it is based ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the table on a roar, not one now, to mock his own grinning!—quite chap-fallen.'—The conversation was of death and the grave. And when one of his friends said, that life was not the highest good, Hoffmann interrupted him, exclaiming with a startling earnestness; 'No, no! Life, life, only life! on any condition whatsoever!' Five months after this he had ceased to suffer, because he had ceased to live. He died piecemeal. His feet and hands, his legs and arms, gradually, and in succession, became motionless, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... inhabited by two families of a better sort in knowledge and behaviour. The men, unfortunately, were gone out, but they "would not have gone, by no means, if they had known that his reverence was in the bay." The women were very anxious to have their children duty baptized, and listened with much earnestness to some words of advice and instruction, and were very thankful for the books. Since my last visit here a Nova-Scotian has built a store in this cove, and will be, I greatly fear, a cause of misery to at least one of the families. ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... get into the City Academy, I should be the happiest boy alive. But it is so hard to get a permit. I know I am quite far enough advanced to be able to keep up with the boys. I could live on bread alone to be able to acquire knowledge,' said the boy, with great earnestness. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... further; and on taking him into the drug store above, and examining his feet, I found them in a most shocking condition! Why, sir, in twelve hours mortification would have commenced, when nothing could have saved his life but the amputation of both limbs." The sober earnestness of Doctor R—caused Sharp to feel ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... from a sound knowledge and love of scripture truth; those who were honoured with his confidence, and who saw him at all times, and under different circumstances, particularly in the hour of sickness and in affliction, can testify with what earnestness he turned to the great source of strength and consolation, with what warmth of feeling he spoke of the redeeming mercies of God in Christ Jesus; it was a theme to which he delighted to give utterance, and in a way which convinced those who heard him, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... sight. Therefore, without waiting for any further application, he took him up, and such of his companions as he thought proper, and then hoisted sail. The persons Pompey took with him, were the two Lentuli and Favonius; and a little after, they saw king Deiotarus beckoning to them with great earnestness from the shore, and took him up likewise. The master of the ship provided them with the best supper he could, and when it was almost ready, Pompey, for want of a servant, was going to wash himself, but Favonius, seeing it, stepped ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... her recital of unimportant matters. She now saw that the captain knew she did not care to talk of these things. She knew that he was waiting for an opportunity to turn the conversation into another channel,—waiting with an earnestness that was growing more and more apparent,—and as she perceived this, and as she steadily talked to him, she assured herself, with all the vehemence of which her nature was capable, that she and this man were two people connected by business interests, and that she was ready to discuss that ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... him, and listened, while, with a serious earnestness of manner, he detailed to her something of the physiology of the singular class of beings which the concurrence of all circumstances ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... better life were stronger in her than were these vain desires, there was now held out to her the promise of a haven of rest. She was to become the wife of a prince famous, not for grace and culture, but for his good sense and earnestness. She had seen him once in Rome, in her early youth, when she was Sforza's betrothed. No sacrifice would be too great for her if it would wipe out the remembrance of the nine years which had followed ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... entirely ignorant of what was in the Bible, as I found by questioning him; but I doubt whether I know any Christian on whom a Bible oath would be more binding than was to him his own by the dead. To me there was something deeply moving in the simple earnestness and ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... God I acknowledge my lifelong debt to Christian Science. In 1895 I attended my first Christian Science meeting, and was deeply impressed with the earnestness of the people and the love reflected, but as for the spiritual healing of the physical body, I did not believe such a thing to be possible. I bought Science and Health and studied it to be able to dispute intelligently with the supposedly deluded ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... she desired, he took from her; but he came straight back to what he had originally said. "I haven't a notion, all the same, of what he thinks." She faced him, visibly, with the question into which he had already observed that her special shade of earnestness was perpetually flowering, right and left—"Are you very sure?"—and he could only note her apparent difference from himself. "You, I judge, believe that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... and getting her interpretation of "God bless you" in Romany, which is Mi-Doovel-Parik-tooti—and she was the only Gipsy round London who could put the words in Romany—and some other conversation accompanied with "coppers and baccy," &c., and to which she replied, "Amen!" with as much earnestness as if she was the greatest saint outside ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... sound of a man running towards us," she answered, and then, suddenly dropping the last semblance of self-command, she tell upon her knees beside the table and began praying aloud with that frenzied earnestness which intense, overpowering fear can produce, breaking off now ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to-night, after so many days, it is not amiss to ask ourselves "what might have been?" Granting that the death struggle between Slavery and Freedom was to come in 1861, what a part in it must this grand old man have borne! With his terrible earnestness and indomitable will, with his ability to weld as it were, to himself all those who came under his influence, what an avenger he would have been on the tracks of such chivalrous Southerners as Quantrell of Lawrence-burning notoriety, and ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe
... their comfort there. She began to have an unutterable sense of want and longing creeping over her; she stole shy glances at Marion to see if she felt this, but Marion was absorbed just then in catching the speaker's last sentence and writing it down. Her face expressed nothing but business earnestness. Speech-making concluded, there came ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... his feet, and going directly up to his little preserver, shook him with gentle earnestness by the hand, evincing in the simple act and the look attending it the utmost thankfulness of heart, mixed with respect and admiration. Then he went to the log, against which still leaned a loaded rifle, and was picking it up when Burl, suspecting ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... it bears a moral aspect, immediately passes into the field of religious speculation. Religion had thus become the great organ of human culture. Lady Carbery advanced half-way to meet me in these new views, finding my credentials as a theologian in my earnestness and my sincerity. She herself was painfully and sorrowfully in earnest. She had come at this early age of seven or eight and twenty, to the most bitter sense of hollowness, and (in a philosophic sense) of treachery as under-lying all things that stood round her; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... blandly and with grave earnestness, "I think from what Mr. Abbey has told us that you are bent on doing the Tribune and its staff a great injustice. It was not the Tribune that published the poker story that caused you so much just annoyance. It was our rival, the Republican, a very disreputable newspaper, which is ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Her face glowed with earnestness and enthusiasm—what a contrast from Vere's fretful, restless expression, which always seems asking for something more, something she has not got, something she cannot even understand. Even Vere realised the difference, and her fingers closed over ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... his protecting arm. But now I regard him less, pray less, read less, and give less." And then she revealed to her brother her beautiful experience—beautiful till she grew negligent and formal—with a truth, an earnestness, a loving simplicity, that for the first time gave him some insight into the nature ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... custom," the princess said, "to receive messengers from his highness, but it is my custom daily to visit these rooms for a few moments at this time to look at one of the pictures they contain, and at this time his highness leaves the room at my disposal. From the earnestness of your letter, I have, therefore, consented to see you here in the course of this, my daily pilgrimage. What have you ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... length with much unnecessary earnestness, and at last suggested that they find seats. Miss Goodrich agreed, and leading the way to an adjoining room, discovered a cushioned corner near the window. "Do you know," she said, when they were seated, "I, too, feel as ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... bery true," interposed Moses, endeavouring to comfort himself as well as the others by the intense earnestness of his manner. "De only danger, Miss Winnie, lies in your fadder losin' his head at sitch a t'riffic height, an' dar's no fear at all ob dat, for Massa neber loses his head—pooh! you might as well talk ob him losin' his heart. Look! look! he git close to de hole now—he put his foot—yes—next ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... to his generosity was not confined to Washington. On his travels he met President Smith more than once—the Prophet being accompanied by a different wife each time—and naturally Smith made every effort to impress President Roosevelt with his earnestness, the purity of his life, and the high motives that actuated the exercise of his authority. And at this sort of pretense the Lord's anointed are expert. They themselves may be crude in ideas and coarse in method, but their diplomacy is a growth of eighty years of applied devotion ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... at once announced his determination to employ the interval in attempting the pursuit of Jervy. The lawyer—after vainly pointing out the serious objections to the course proposed—so far yielded to the irresistible earnestness and good faith of Amelius as to recommend him to a competent man, who could be trusted not to deceive him. The same day the man had received a written statement of the case; and he had now arrived to report the result of his first ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... that this convent only received young persons of the highest and most wealthy families, and he trusted that she would be happy there. He also promised to call upon her, and talk upon those subjects so dear to his heart, and so necessary to her salvation. The earnestness and kindness with which the old man spoke melted Amine to tears, and the holy father quitted her side to go down and collect her baggage, with a warmth of feeling towards her which he had seldom felt before, and with greater hopes than ever that his endeavours to convert her would not ultimately ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... she possessed unusual facilities—for a woman—for acquiring knowledge; and especially for becoming acquainted with the abstruse sciences. Of these facilities she availed herself with commendable earnestness; and at an early age she had made herself mistress of both Geometry and Astronomy, as far as either science was then understood or taught in any of the schools. As is the case with less profound natures, the mind grew on what it fed upon; reasoning, and the ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... that the style of your public speaking will depend upon the specific purpose you have in view. If you have important truths which you wish to make known, or a great and definite cause to serve, you are likely to speak about it with earnestness and probably ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... a good action would seem to be all the more praiseworthy according as it is done with greater earnestness. Now earnestness seems to make a man do his duty without any delay. Therefore it is apparently more praiseworthy to repay a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... felt the sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. These outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value, and even comfort, for her mother; because there was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child's manifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him a look of what Dr. Harrison might have called "compound interest"; but assured him at the same time with sedate earnestness that the one she had would do ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... ask Hotham to dinner, with what success we have seen. Sent Borck to negotiate, to correspond, to consult with Dickens, to do his utmost in pacifying Hotham. All which Correspondence exists, but is not worth giving. Borck's remonstrances are in rugged soldier-like style, full of earnestness and friendliness. Do not wreck, upon trifles, a noble interest we have in common; King is jealous about foreign interference with his Ministers, but meant nothing; I tell you it is nothing I—Hotham is polite, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... eyebrows. His complexion was warm and brilliant, his beard closely shaven. He had a pleasant smile which, when it deepened, showed a fine set of white teeth. All of these physical signs were in his favor, but there was about his face, so handsome at times, an earnestness that seemed almost painful, when, devoted to the cause, he spoke with the burning, eloquent ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... pulpit. It happened, strangely enough, that a collection for the Missionary Society was to be taken up on this occasion, and the young deacon delivered an exceedingly eloquent discourse advocating the cause of missions, with a warmth and earnestness that carried his hearers along with him, and showed that his heart was in the work. No one who heard him could doubt his ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... earnestness to give your most sincere attention to this matter. It is of the utmost importance to every one of you. Let your next object be to obtain as soon as may be, a competency of the good things of this world; immense wealth is not necessary for you, and would but diminish your real happiness. Abject ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... seated upon a chair, the frame of which he was whittling with such earnestness that he appeared to have quite forgotten where he was. On each side of him were half-a-dozen of jurymen, squatted upon square blocks, which they were also whittling, judge and jurymen having each a cigar in the mouth, and a flask of liquor, with which now and then they regaled themselves. The ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... was not perfectly well known; and, as she received, in return of her first message, a most pressing invitation, she immediately accepted it. Mrs Fitzpatrick, indeed, did not desire her cousin to stay with her with more earnestness than civility required. Whether she had discerned and resented the suspicion above-mentioned, or from what other motive it arose, I cannot say; but certain it is, she was full as desirous of parting with Sophia as Sophia herself ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... whispered quickly, "you must do as Miss Browne wishes." In my earnestness I laid a hand upon his ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... providence, Martin," returned Mr. Travilla, with grave earnestness, "'If God be for us ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... Stone, not to-night. No, by no means, not to-night! It wouldn't do!" The boy's earnestness seemed to me out of all proportion to his simple statement, but I could stand no more and I went home, to spend the night in a dazed wonder, a furious disbelief, and finally an enforced conviction that Vicky Van and Ruth Schuyler ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... residence in that town, the place was so divided into factions, and filled with bloody conflicts, a man could hardly walk the streets with safety; wherefore Mr. Welch made it his first undertaking to remove the bloody quarrelings, but he found it a very difficult work; yet such was his earnestness to pursue his design, that many times he would rush betwixt two parties of men fighting, even in the midst of blood and wounds. He used to cover his head with a head-piece before he went to separate these bloody ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... "these woods, you know, are a bit too big to feel quite at home in—to feel comfortable in, I mean!... Eh?" He merely gave expression to the mood of the moment; he was hardly prepared for the earnestness, the solemnity even, with which ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... officers again urged the evacuation of the place. But the governor demurred, "desiring them with all passionate earnestness to keep the town ... I told them I could neither answer this to the King nor to any man that ever was a soldier, unless they gave under their hands the necessity of my dishonorable quitting the place." This they immediately ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... such a tone. He, an utter stranger, was arrogating to himself the position of friend to the family, presuming to criticise her father's wisdom, to tell her what she should do and should not do. But withal she was impressed by his earnestness. His advice, she could not believe, was entirely disinterested. At the same time, ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... lost my situation in the school, and I had no prospect of getting another. The term of my visit to Emma Cavendish had nearly expired and I had nowhere to go. Governor Cavendish loved me with the idolatrous love of an old man for a young woman, and besought me to be his wife with such insane earnestness that I thought my refusal would certainly be his death, especially as it was well known that he was liable to apoplexy and that any excitement might bring on a fatal attack. Under all these circumstances I think I must have lost my senses; for ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... every point of this exquisite loveliness, ran admiringly over the outlines of the graceful figure, the delicate hands and little feet, the classic curve of the lips, the thin nostrils and tiny ears; then returned to the clear, full eyes, with their pencilled brows and heavy lashes, and smiled at the earnestness of the gaze that met his own. Then, from this lovely and patrician face, the Italian's eyes wandered to Teddy's coarse and unformed features, and figure of ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... of lighter strains to relieve the deadly earnestness of a man who had thoroughly thought out his case. And, curiously enough, these pleasant sallies nearly all had allusion to those tragic nine years of penal servitude through which Davitt has passed. Mr. Dunbar Barton, one of the Orange lawyers, had spoken of himself as ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... was powerfully insistent, it had the note of truth; his wife and children, roused, too, were crying out, in alarm. Henry knocked again on the door and shouted to him in a voice, always increasing in earnestness, to open and flee. Standish could resist no longer. He took down the bar and flung open the door, springing back, startled at the five figures that stood before him. In the dusk he did not ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in 1722. The following year he was appointed as tutor at Yale, a position in which he showed exceptional capacity. In 1726 he went to Northampton, Conn., as minister of a church there, and remained for 24 years, exercising his ministry with unusual earnestness and diligence. At the end of that time, however, he was in 1750 dismissed by his congregation, a disagreement having arisen on certain questions of discipline. Thereafter he acted as a missionary to the Indians ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... true, Captain Cuttwater,' said Alaric, speaking with a sort of mock earnestness which completely took in the captain, but stealing a glance at the same time at the two girls, who sat over their work at the drawing-room table, 'it's too true; and there's no doubt the whole thing must be altered, and that soon. In ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... some earnestness, "to take down the dead body of a criminal, when the fleur de lys was marked on the tree where he was hung ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... wrote neither for nor from any description of men; nor shall I in this. My errors, if any, are my own. My reputation alone is to answer for them." In another place he says, (p. 126,[7]) "I have no man's proxy. I speak only from myself, when I disclaim, as I do with all possible earnestness, all communion with the actors in that triumph, or with the admirers of it. When I assert anything else, as concerning the people of England, I speak from ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... not a few who can praise God that during the past twenty years the watchword BE HOLY has been taken up in many a church and Christian circle with greater earnestness than before. In books and magazines, in conventions and conferences, in the testimonies and the lives of believers, we have abundant tokens that what is called ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... you. Do you remember the first conversation we had together concerning Reine? You spoke of her with so much earnestness that I then suspected you of being ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in his pockets, whistling and thinking, now and then giving vent to his joy. When he saw Louis and me coming, for we all went over to see the ground broken for the schoolhouse, he came toward us hurriedly, saying with great earnestness: ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... Carlyle or not, we must accept for the moment his peculiar view of history, else Heroes can never open its treasures to us. The book abounds in startling ideas, expressed with originality and power, and is pervaded throughout by an atmosphere of intense moral earnestness. The more we read it, the more we find to admire and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... known as "law calf." Others, who had neither briefs nor books, thrust their hands into their pockets, and looked as wise as they conveniently could; while others, again, moved here and there with great restlessness and earnestness of manner, content to awaken thereby the admiration and astonishment of the uninitiated stranger. The whole, to the great wonderment of Mr. Pickwick, were divided into little groups, who were chatting and discussing the news of the day in the most unfeeling ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... present. Fellow-artists visited Ramsay from time to time. Among them was his intimate friend Philip Reinagle—an agreeable companion, and an excellent artist. Reinagle was one day so much struck with my father's earnestness in filling up some work, that he then and there got up a canvas and made a capital sketch-portrait of him in oil. It only came into my father's possession some years after Ramsay's death, and ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... womanish enough to smile at this. "Now I understand why it is that men call you Sigurd Silver-Tongue," she laughed. Suddenly she was all earnestness again. "Nay, but, Sigurd, tell me this,—I do not care how you scold about my dress,—tell me that you do not despise me for it, or for being ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... I myself have forgotten." Then, after a moment's pause, she continued with earnestness: "Yes, forget our happy days together, our long evenings, even our walks by the lake and through the wood; but keep the future ever in mind. Go, Henri; your father was Marechal. Be you more; be you Constable, Prince. Go; you are ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... you, Mrs. Weatherbee," Elsie said with deep earnestness. "I'll be only too glad to stand by you. I'm going upstairs now to get my wraps and I sha'n't be here to dinner to-night. I know Marian will be looking for me as soon as she receives word from you to come to her room. It will be best for me not to see her again ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... is so stupid," she said apologetically. "I find, Mr. Ducaine," she added with sudden earnestness, "the elements of a much stranger story closer ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had been her mistress's favorite argued the question with an earnestness that attracted my attention. Though past sixty years of age, she was straight as an arrow, and her walk resembled that of a tragedy queen. In her whole features she was unlike those around her, except in her ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... chimerical the aspirations of the laboring classes might be deemed, the devotion with which they supported one another in the strikes, which were their chief weapon, and the sacrifices which they underwent to carry them out left no doubt of their dead earnestness. ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... simply. Her earnestness was so large that it had swept away her shyness and her self-consciousness, as a strong wind sweeps away the smoke over the autumn meadows. And yet this very earnestness, this passionate sincerity, added but another fold to the luminous ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... build up a very fine and critical standard of embroidery in America. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the influence of this school of embroidery upon the needlework practice of a growing country. Its qualities of sincerity, earnestness, and respect for the art of needlework gave importance to the work of hands other than that of necessary labor, and these qualities influenced all the various forms of work which followed it. The first divergence from the original work was in its application, ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... more imaginative and more eloquent. His short history of English literature is a book that fills a young head with enthusiasm. He writes as a servant of the great tradition. He is a Whig, where Mr. Saintsbury is an heretical old Jacobite. He is, however, saved from a professorial earnestness by his sharp talent for portraiture. Mr. Gosse's judgments may or may not last: his portraits certainly will. It is to be hoped that he will one day write his reminiscences. Such a book would, we feel sure, be among the great books of portraiture in the history ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... author of the "Lives of the Irish Saints," "has an interest for all candid investigators far beyond the claim of rival nations for the honour it should confer. It has been debated, indeed, with considerable learning and earnestness both by Irish and foreign writers; yet, as Ireland does not prefer any serious claim to the distinction, of which she might well feel proud, so can Irishmen afford to be impartial in prosecuting such an ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... female hand; and turning to the fly-leaf, beheld the name of "Catherine Aubrey." His heart fluttered; he turned towards the piano, and beheld the graceful figure of Miss Aubrey standing beside Lady Lydsdale, in an attitude of delighted earnestness—for her ladyship was undoubtedly a very brilliant performer—totally unconscious of the admiring eye which was fixed upon her. After gazing at her for some moments, he gently pressed the autograph to his lips; and solemnly vowed within himself, in the ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... chiefly smitten by this calamity happened to be that of the celebrated chemist Dumas, now perpetual secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. He turned to his friend, colleague, and pupil, Pasteur, and besought him, with an earnestness which the circumstances rendered almost personal, to undertake the investigation of the malady. Pasteur at this time had never seen a silkworm, and he urged his inexperience in reply to his friend. But Dumas knew ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... honest contempt for the small men of whom, in common with other institutions, she has had her share,—we must not ignore those bright pages of our history adorned with the skill and heroism of her nobler sons. McClellanism did not follow its chief from Warrenton; or Burnside's earnestness, Hooker's dash, and Meade's soldierly stand at Gettysburg, backed as they were by the heroic fighting of the Army of the Potomac, would have had, as they deserved, more ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... want you to have it—that is, if you would like it," Violet said, eagerly, and looking so lovely in her earnestness that he longed to take her in his arms and claim her for his own, then ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the completion of the work of national freedom. The vigour of English life showed itself in the wide extension of commerce, in the progress of the towns, and the upgrowth of a free yeomanry. It gave even nobler signs of its activity in the spirit of national independence and moral earnestness which awoke at the call of Wyclif. New forces of thought and feeling which were destined to tell on every age of our later history broke their way through the crust of feudalism in the socialist revolt of the Lollards, and a sudden ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... during her summer vacation she made many speeches in New Jersey. On one occasion she spoke in the open air, in a beautiful grove where hundreds had come to hear "the girl orator" give her views on temperance and slavery. Her earnestness and conviction of the truth of what she said made a profound impression, and even those who later criticized her speech as being the product of an immature and superficial mind were held as by ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... wise and consistent man succumb to this? Good. Gods! how base would this be! Spartan boys will bear to have their bodies torn by rods without uttering a groan. I myself have seen at Lacedaemon troops of young men, with incredible earnestness contending together with their hands and feet, with their teeth and nails, nay, even ready to expire, rather than own themselves conquered. Is any country of barbarians more uncivilized or desolate than India? Yet they have among them some that are held ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the sailors on either side of him who would catch him should he slip—was obliged perforce to do as all the rest were doing and gaze at the thrilling marine drama that was being acted out with such tragic earnestness on the surface of the deep before ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... who could not understand the enigmatic utterances of the reformers, the dangerous or ludicrous sides of transcendentalism were naturally uppermost. Nevertheless the movement was but a new avatar of the old Puritan spirit; its moral earnestness, its spirituality, its tenderness for the individual conscience. Puritanism, too, in its day had run into grotesque extremes. Emerson bore about the same relation to the absurder out-croppings of transcendentalism that Milton bore to the New Lights, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees of Fate. It was in the midst of her secret great passion that she met him. He fell in love, as men are in the habit of doing, and pressed his suit with an earnestness and an ardor which left nothing to be desired. He pleased her; his absolute devotion flattered her. She fancied there was a sympathy of thought and taste between them, in which fancy she was mistaken. Add to this the violent opposition ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... sheltered nook, then, our travellers found a young man about two or three and twenty, holding the unresisting hand of a very beautiful and bashful-looking girl, not more than nineteen, between his. From their position, and the earnestness with which the young peasant addressed her, there could be but little doubt as to the subject matter of their conversation. If a bolt from the thunder which had been rolling a little back among the mountains, and which was still ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... of probity and earnestness, but perhaps of insufficient ability to deal with such grave matters as now fell almost entirely upon his shoulders, soon afterwards obtained audience of the King. Being most sincerely in favour of the annexation of the Netherlands to France, and feeling that now or never was the opportunity ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... you're doing?" she demanded. "She's young, you're both young; and marriage—" Here she ceased. They begged her, however, to continue, with such earnestness in their voices, as if they only craved advice, that she was ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... of charity." The poetry of peace is more entrancing than the poetry of carnage. To this primary element in the mind of the undergraduate—the imagination—our great cause therefore makes an appeal of peculiar earnestness. ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... their manner with knives and lances, till the blood gushed out upon them. And it was so, when midday was past, that they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening oblation; but there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded." The sincerity, earnestness, and perseverance of these people are commendable, but they were wrong. Sincerity, although a most desirable trait, can not change a wrong act into acceptable service to God, nor can earnestness and perseverance make such a change. It is necessary both to be honest and to do the ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... Devorgoil. His letters to Terry are of course full of that subject, but they contain, at the same time, many curious indications of his views and feelings as to theatrical affairs in general—and mixed up with these a most characteristic record of the earnestness with which he now watched the interior fitting up, as he had in the season before the outward architecture, of the new edifice at Abbotsford. Meanwhile it will be seen that he found leisure hours for various contributions to periodical works,—among ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... conversation with great earnestness: they believed the stranger; yet every one of them brought forward some superstitious device of his own, in which the speaker himself always put still greater reliance. Edward, in spite of the disgust this gossiping excited in him, was almost unconsciously held fast within ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... a moment towards the pair, and then passed on with a slight frown upon her honest face, for Thurston bent over his companion with something that suggested deadly earnestness in his attitude, and the spectator assumed that Millicent Austin's head was turned away from him, because she possessed a fine profile and not because of excessive diffidence. Nor was the observer wrong, for ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... while in the presence of his young wife, that she often looked into his face with more than usual earnestness. This not only embarrassed but slightly fretted him, and led him to speak once in a way that brought ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... he had an innate love of perfect form, an innate "sentiment against hideousness and rawness," and so he was a classicist by temperament. Then his training was essentially classical. He used to protest, with amusing earnestness, against the notion that his father had been a bad scholar. "People talk the greatest nonsense about my father's scholarship. The Wykehamists of his day were excellent scholars. Dr. Gabell made them so. My father's Latin verses were not good; but that was because he was not poetical—not ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... with a thoughtful earnestness that Rainbow would scarce have credited, he quoted a verse from what he was wont to ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... a separate and important trade, than men began to discuss with earnestness the question whether it would be expedient to erect a national bank. The general opinion seems to have been decidedly in favour of a national bank; nor can we wonder at this; for few were then aware that trade is in general carried on to much more advantage ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... brothers, and sister, were still grinding in the prison-house of bondage, in common with three millions of our Father's children—sustained by an unfaltering faith in the omnipotence of truth and the final triumph of justice—to plead the cause of the slave, and by the eloquence of earnestness carried conviction to many minds, and enlisted the sympathy and secured the co-operation of ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... tendency our little child is not ideal,—that is, natural,—let us with all the more earnestness learn to be quiet ourselves that we may lead him to it, and thus open the ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... said with pretty earnestness; "it's only that he has always talked about you as his best friend, and I imagined you would ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... been made to black his Sunday boots, he had been washed with such desperate earnestness that his face and neck tingled, and he diffused an atmosphere of yellow soap as he walked. He was in his best clothes, which fitted him as a sausage is fitted by its skin; he was guillotined in a white ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... home to supper, and after to set some things right in my chamber, and so to bed. This morning, before I went to the office, there come to me Mr. Young and Whistler, flaggmakers, and with mighty earnestness did present me with, and press me to take a box, wherein I could not guess there was less than L100 in gold: but I do wholly refuse it, and did not at last take it. The truth is, not thinking them safe men to receive such a gratuity from, nor knowing ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the harbor of Caribou Island, a mission-station, and left again on the 20th, after a quiet Sunday,—Bradford having gone with others to church, and come back much moved by the bronze-faced earnestness, and rough-voiced, deep-chested hymning of the fisherman congregation. Far ahead we saw the strait full of ice. Not that the ice itself could be seen; but the peculiar, blue-white, vertical striae, which stuccoed the sky far along the horizon, told experienced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... so!" continued the enthusiast, his face kindling with earnestness. "Why, before that I never bothered my head much about the habits of foxes, 'coons, squirrels, minks, bobcats, or anything that had its hiding-place in the woods or in burrows under the rocks. But now I'm forever trying to learn new things about the way they live, ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... never could get reconciled to that blanket-coat and top-boots; but he's a good man—a very good man, I am sure. I found him speaking to Andy Callaghan in the kitchen about his soul; and really Andy looked quite moved by his earnestness. It seems he makes it a rule never to meet any person without speaking on the subject: I must say I highly approve of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... home are unavailing unless enforced by a corresponding example. Nothing is so forcible and encouraging as the "Follow me." It proves sincerity and earnestness; and is adapted to the imitative capacity and disposition of the child. It is all-commanding and resistless. Says Solomon, "Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." Says Paul "It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... rapidly and with great earnestness. Ebenezer listened, at first silently, then breaking in with ejaculations and grunts of astonishment. He sat up on the ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... young man, touched by the gentle earnestness of this exquisitely beautiful woman, "do you know that what you propose doing is man's work?—you cannot possibly journey to Calais alone. You would be running the greatest possible risks to yourself, and your chances of finding your husband ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... to the wonderful whip-poor-will. One came every night about dusk and sat on a log about twenty or thirty feet from our cabin door and began shouting "Whip poor Will! Whip poor Will!" with loud emphatic earnestness. "What's that? What's that?" we cried when this startling visitor first announced himself. "What ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... presence, and it was no small trial to part from those whom we had learned so truly to love in the LORD. Thirty or forty native Christians had been gathered into the recently organised church; and the well-filled meetings, and the warm-hearted earnestness of the converts, all bespoke a future of much promise. At last, however, completely prostrated by repeated attacks of illness, the only hope of restoration seemed to lie in a voyage to England and a brief stay in its more bracing climate; and this ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... that a rebuke should proceed from the throne against him? And this, indeed, our Advocate calls for from the hand of his Father, saying, O enemy, "the Lord rebuke thee"; yea, he doubles this request to the judge, to intimate his earnestness for such a conclusion, or to show that the enemy shall surely have it, both from our Advocate, and from him before whom Satan has so ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was a tall, well-knit figure, whose high, square brow, benign smile, and frank earnestness bespoke a man of moral energy, vigorous intellect, and warm, candid, tender soul. Traces of suffering, of thought, of stern purpose were, indeed, apparent; but with and above them, the ingenuousness and the glow of a brave and ardent man. This was ELEUTARIO FELICE FORESTI,—subsequently, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... elections. These laws have for several years past been the subject of vehement political controversy, and have been denounced as unnecessary, oppressive, and unconstitutional. On the other hand, it has been maintained with equal zeal and earnestness that the election laws are indispensable to fair and lawful elections, and are clearly warranted by the Constitution. Under these circumstances, to attempt in an appropriation bill the modification or repeal of these laws is to annex a condition to the passage of needed and proper appropriations, ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... improve the farm, and he did say that if HE owned the farm the first thing he'd do would be to drain the pond and plant it in corn. It was his friend that suggested the electric lights—and he wasn't joking, either, Uncle Joe," stoutly declared Bob with much earnestness. ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... of real interest from his letters at this time is the absolute failure of his home life and affections to content his aspirations,—the emptiness both of mind and heart, which caused his passionate eagerness for external employment to fill the void. Earnestness appears only when he is brooding over the slight with which he was treated, and the resultant thwarting of his career. For both mind and heart the future held in store for him the most engrossing emotions, but it did not ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... really play in earnest. The reverse art—handling serious issues with a light touch—he was less good at. Grave subjects, like the blue of the sea or the shape of a goblet, he approached with the same solidity of earnestness which he brought to bear on sand cathedrals. It was just this that made him ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... gathering in some cabin and excuse himself with the remark that he "reckoned he'd put in an hour's work in Uncle Billy's tailings!" And yet, as before, it was very improbable if any of these reckless benefactors REALLY believed in their own earnestness or in the gravity of the situation. Indeed, a kind of hopeful cynicism ran through their performances. "Like as not, Uncle Billy is still in 'cahoots' [i. e., shares] with his old pard, and is just laughin' at us as he's sendin' him accounts ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... he looked in vain. They are passionate prayers for the performance of a public duty, and as such are altogether to the writer's credit. His letters to Plancus are beautiful in their patriotism, as are also those to Decimus Brutus. When we think of his age, of his zeal, of his earnestness, and of the dangers which he ran, we hardly know how sufficiently to admire the public spirit with which at such a crisis he had taken on himself to lead the party. But our guide to his inner feelings is gone. There are no further letters to tell ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... castle, deposited upon a bed, and every mode of recovery resorted to, which the knowledge of the times, and the skill of Henry Warden, who professed some medical science, could dictate. For some time it was all in vain, and the Lady watched, with unspeakable earnestness, the pallid countenance of the beautiful child. He seemed about ten years old. His dress was of the meanest sort, but his long curled hair, and the noble cast of his features, partook not of that poverty of appearance. The proudest noble in Scotland might have been ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... and snorted. Mrs. Dale's eyebrows had drawn so close together that they almost touched; her eyes appeared darker, smaller, more opaque. Mr. Ridgett continued talking in a tone of light facetiousness that seemed to cover a certain deprecating earnestness. ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... with an earnestness that was comical, in spite of itself; "I wish you'd please to scold me. I should feel ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... path to slaughter. But the voice outside was powerfully insistent, it had the note of truth; his wife and children, roused, too, were crying out, in alarm. Henry knocked again on the door and shouted to him in a voice, always increasing in earnestness, to open and flee. Standish could resist no longer. He took down the bar and flung open the door, springing back, startled at the five figures that stood before him. In the dusk he ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... first spring of his captivity, but it is not probable that he learned their melodies so early in life. As the next spring approached, he began to sing the very medleys that the wild thrashers sing with so much earnestness and skill, and this was long before any thrashers had come back ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... thick walls round and a stack of peat at hand,' said Hal, his heart beating violently as more and more he felt that the maiden did not speak in jest, but in full earnestness of love. ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... close. And yet few books have been written of deeper and more permanent fascination than these. Their grim veracity; the creative sympathy and steady dispassionateness of their portrayal of mankind; their constancy of motive, and their sombre earnestness, have been surpassed by none. This earnestness is worth dwelling upon for a moment. It bears no likeness to the dogmatism of the bigot or the fanaticism of the enthusiast. It is the concentration of a broadly gifted masculine mind, devoting its unstinted energies to depicting ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... had been almost famished on their march. They had no provisions left but a few dried salmon, yet finding the white men equally in want, they generously offered to share even this meager pittance, and frequently repeated the offer, with an earnestness that left no doubt of their sincerity. Their generosity won the heart of Captain Bonneville, and produced the most cordial good will on the part of his men. For two days that the parties remained in company, the most amicable intercourse prevailed, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... just started on their humane duty, performing it with that tenderness and earnestness which the brave alone show to those in their power, when his attention was attracted by a low moan in the tall grass near by. He stopped and listened. Another half-suppressed groan was heard, apparently coming from the ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... The boy stood like a statue—there was no trembling to his young arms. "Back! If you come a yard nearer I will fire!" he cried. He did not recognize his own voice, but Halpen heard him plainly and was impressed with his earnestness. He stopped suddenly, half raising his own gun. "Don't do that!" cried Enoch, instantly. "Keep your gun down. Why, I have but to press this trigger and you will drop where ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... was remarkable. Sometimes in the evening, while the others were smoking together or playing whist, Waldershare and Imogene, sitting apart, were engaged in apparently the most interesting converse. It was impossible not to observe the animation and earnestness of Waldershare, and the great attention with which his companion responded to his representations. Yet all this time he was only giving her a ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... this, and, if he could not, though I abhor asking a minister for anything, I should, under the circumstances, feel perfectly justified in speaking to the Duke on the subject myself, and,' added his Grace, in a lowered tone, but with an expression of great earnestness and determination, 'I flatter myself that if the Duke of Bellamont chooses to express a wish, it ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... a little thrown off my guard at this unexpected earnestness, so different to the ton of the day, and I began hardly to know What to answer, my real objection being such as I could by no means publish, though his urgency and his politeness joined would have made me give ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... elements or qualities combine to render any popular convention every way successful, were most felicitously blended in this gathering in Washington. In numbers, interest, earnestness, variety and especially ability, there was surely little left to be desired. As to numbers in attendance, from Maine, California, and all the way between, it is sufficient to say that although the first session was most encouragingly large, there was a constant increase ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... transport, devotion, extravagance, inspiration, vehemence, eagerness, fanaticism, intensity, warmth, earnestness, fervency, passion, zeal. ecstasy, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... resting on the back of the chair. "Why do you hold me off with such stubbornness? Why continue to be so unnatural a child, so incomprehensible a woman?" Even now he did not forget to measure his sentences, but with the depth of his earnestness his ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... and overshadowed; —not under fear, because fear is no part of his nature; but yet never knowing when the order for his death may come. They read all this in his mind, his atmosphere. They see him deep in his books: a soul burning with earnestness, but discontented, and waiting for something: all the images of Homer rising about him beckoning on the one hand, and on the other a grim something that whispers, These are false; I alone am true! —"What of him?" says Zeus; "he too is a Christian."—"Watch!" says Sol Invictus; "I have sent my ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... for information," was mournfully replied; and the elder again regarded her affectionately; then with subdued earnestness, and in an ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... croquet after lunch,—a game of which I am a poor performer. Phyllis Derrick and I played the professor and Tom Chase. Chase was a little better than myself; the professor, by dint of extreme earnestness and care, managed to play a fair game; ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... society, but is content to retail vague bits of town talk to customers who might be deluded into imagining them of importance. "The new created Vizier," the airy correspondent reports, "might have succeeded better in another Post, than in this, which with so much earnestness he has sollicited. For, notwithstanding the Plaudits he has received from our Princess, and the natural Propensity to State-Affairs, given him by his Saturnine Genius; his Significator Mars promis'd him greater ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... a tinge of earnestness in this good-natured banter, but it was instantly dissipated by ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... our little friends, and their little friends, were earnestness itself as they concentrated on the great work in the glow of the sunset. They had no eyes for its glories. The lamplighter even, dropping jewels as he went, passed them by unheeded. The organ interpreted Donizetti in ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... spontaneity, a youthful vivacity, in her manner, which saved it from the charge of conceit; she spoke with a naive earnestness pleasantly relieved by the smile in her grey eyes and by something in the pose of her head which ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... tell you. Do you remember the first conversation we had together concerning Reine? You spoke of her with so much earnestness that I then suspected you of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... persuade him to come on. He came on suddenly. The two men were soon writhing together on the guard deck, and I was pleased to observe the desperado was undermost. The Englishman was full of fear, and was fighting for his life. He was doing it with great earnestness. He was grasping the throat of his enemy tightly with both hands, and pressing his thumbs on the wind-pipe. We could see he was going to win in his own simple way, without any recourse to science, and he would have done so very soon had he not been ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... not the most genuine element of progress; but that which elevates our moral plane and enriches the great deep of our spiritual being. The steamship and telegraph are not absolute tokens of this progress, but the moral earnestness and the Christian charity that work through them are; and these must spring up in hearts that are not merely adjusted to the world, but lifted above it—that are not so occupied by mere machinery as to neglect the living streams of ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... hearty thanks for your kind letter, which has given me much joy. I confess that I scarcely thought this the time to gain sympathy for my works, less on account of the present political commotion, than because of the absence of all real earnestness, which has long ago disappeared from the public interest in the theatre, giving way to the most shallow desire for entertainment. You yourself are anxious about the reception of my opera at the hands of the Weimar public, but as at the same time you evince your sympathy for ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... of these proceedings, Jugurtha, with extraordinary earnestness[159], sent deputies to sue for peace, offering to resign every thing to Metellus, except his own life and that of his children. These, like the former, the consul first reduced to treachery, and then sent back; the peace which Jugurtha asked, he neither granted nor refused, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... and resented, the affair at the mill again made him the chief topic of talk in the neighborhood, and the question of his guilt or innocence of the murder of his stepfather was again debated with as much earnestness as it had been when the murder was first committed. There was this difference, however, that whereas before he had found but few defenders, for the impression that he was guilty was almost universal, there were now many who took ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth," urging upon the students the importance of accepting Christ at the beginning of life. After the sermon we had a prayer and testimony meeting, in which a large number took part with great earnestness and deep feeling. At the close all but two of our boarding students rose either to indicate a desire to be given up more fully to Christ's service or to say that they wished to ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 1, March, 1898 • Various
... closed—which would be bad, by the way, for the Democrato-Rum-elected Governor Seymour, for the whole alcoholic vote was cast in his favor. There will, we believe, come a time when the party of progress will urge an enlarged provision of education and recreation for the people, with the same earnestness which it now shows ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... not ridiculous, Mr. Jarvis. It was in life-and-death earnestness. I would not have felt that I could truly trust you unless you had gone through that. Remember, I am a product of a different civilization from your own: I am still superstitious, if you please to term it so, in the Old-World sense. I ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... very good friend," said the first speaker, with positive though not disrespectful earnestness, "that may be all very fine for you, who have a constitution like a horse; but I am quite a—what call you it—an invalid, eh? and have a devilish cough ever since I have been in this d—d country; beg your pardon, no offence to ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him. He bent forward with humorous earnestness. He had written some novels, and now edited a weekly of precious ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Hewett,' he began, with blunt earnestness. If any harm came to Clara I should feel it every bit as much as you, and that you ought to know by this time. All the same, what I've got to say is this: Let her go to Mrs. Tubbs for a month's trial. If you persist ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... towards the car. He was armed. Could it be that he and the station man were road-agents, plotting some act of violence? They were certainly talking about the machine, or its owner, with exceptional earnestness of purpose. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... hundred pounds in a year, or two thousand pounds in five years, which was a considerable sum. And then he spoke so ingenuously and sincerely of the sacrifice he made in withdrawing himself for a time from Ada, and of the earnestness with which he aspired—as in thought he always did, I know full well—to repay her love, and to ensure her happiness, and to conquer what was amiss in himself, and to acquire the very soul of decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorely. For, I ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... favourably impressed. If this was Society, he did not want it! Everyone seemed blase and satiated with pleasure. The conversation was clever, but superficial. It seemed to him as though almost everyone lacked earnestness—lacked reality. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... ten, or twenty, years older than he is in certain directions, and you must lecture him accordingly. Be firm; be decisive. Explain to him that life is real and that he must approach it with the same degree of earnestness and self-discipline as he devotes to running and playing games and the like. I feel sure you will carry great weight. He is far from being a fool. In fact he is a very intelligent young man with excellent brains, and if he would devote them to the business, you would soon ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... his wont; and yet his declamations always flowed with such a graceful ease,—a simple, smiling earnestness,—an unpractised melody of voice, that what would have been rant from other lips, from his showed only as the healthy enthusiasm of the ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... a glass of water. With the first recovery of speech, I asked them what little Francis had meant by saying that he had seen his mother in her bedroom. Their reply was—that they were as much at a loss to discover his meaning as I was; that he had made the same assertion to them, and with so much earnestness, that they had, all in succession, gone up-stairs to look for her, and with the fullest expectation of finding her. This was a mystery which remained such to the very last; there was no doubt whatsoever that the child believed himself to have seen his mother; that he could not have seen ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... appearance, perhaps on account of her name, and I had imagined her tall and superb. But she was, really, rather small, though not below the woman's average, and she had a face more round than otherwise, with a sort of business-like earnestness, but a very charming smile, and presently, as I saw, an American sense of humor. She had brown hair and gray eyes, and teeth not too regular to be monotonous; her mouth was very sweet, whether she laughed or sat gravely silent. She at once affected me like a person who ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... heavens! With one's own wife and daughters! [With great earnestness] Now, look here, Julia, you haven't lived with me all this time without knowing that I'm a man of strong passions; I've been a faithful husband to you—yes, I have. And that means resisting all sorts of temptations you know nothing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... whose fraternal easy manner immediately makes you feel at home,—the coming of the children to greet you, each holding up a velvety brown cheek to be kissed, after the old-time custom,—the romance of the unconventional chat, over a cool drink, under the palms and the ceibas,—the visible earnestness of all to please the guest, to inwrap him in a very atmosphere of quiet happiness,—combine to make a memory which you will never forget. And maybe you enjoy all this upon some exquisite site, some volcanic summit, overlooking ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... mother to rank her with your mulatto mistress. I like Emily very much; she has been kind, affectionate, and faithful to you. Yet I really can't see the propriety of your making a shipwreck of your whole life on her account. Now," continued uncle John, with great earnestness, "I hoped for better things from you. You have talents and wealth; you belong to one of the oldest and best families in the State. When I am gone, you will be the last of our name; I had hoped that you would have done something to keep it from sinking into obscurity. There is no honour ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... they had chosen for their model the florid confusion of a tenth-rate novel;—the French write on scientific subjects with simplicity and precision, and on moral, aesthetic, and theoretical questions with spirit, earnestness, and sensibility. Having said so much, we must however add, that a liberal and ingenious acknowledgment of error is not among the shining qualities of our neighbours. When a question is at issue in which they imagine the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... crooked work," he muttered, with deadly earnestness, "both of 'em have got to settle ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... Wayne, who, in his earnestness to win, kept cheering his comrades. "Do something. Get your base any way you can. Get in front of one. We must score ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... appetites. When his money was all spent, and the disorder of his dress evinced the extremity of his recent intoxication, he asked in charity means for the prosecution of his journey to Richmond. There, after a few days, he joined a temperance society, and his conduct showed the earnestness of his determination to reform his life. He delivered in some of the principal towns of Virginia two lectures, which were well attended, and renewing his acquaintance with a lady whom he had known in his ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... appealed to Penhallow's not very ready sense of humour that he felt it needful to control his mirth as he saw her watching earnestness. "Grey, I presume, called on that rascal Swallow, Mr. Woodburn is sent for, and meanwhile Josiah is told and wisely runs away. He will never be ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Hugh. The Provost was very kind and wise. He said, 'Such a change is a testimony of sincerity and earnestness'; he went on to tell a story which Jowett told him of Dr. Johnson, who said, when a husband and wife of his acquaintance went over to Rome, 'God bless them both.' At the end of the walk he said to me, 'When you write to your brother, remember me very kindly to him, and give him, as a message ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... says:—"They are all curious and interesting specimens of their class, and the circumstances in which they manifest themselves are contrived with the skill of an accomplished writer. The earnestness and natural simplicity of this gifted writer's style are seen to excellent advantage in the book, and serve well to heighten the effect and illusion of the supernatural passages. The stories will be heartily enjoyed by every reader who is fond ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... elbow, and her face flushed with feverish earnestness. "Ah, but it is the waste of himself that I mean; his lashing himself out on stupid and uncomprehending people until they take ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... took fast hold of whatever task she gave herself to do, and lived in it heartily while duty made it right, or novelty lent it charms. But when she saw the error of a step, the emptiness of a belief, with a like earnestness she tried to retrieve the one and to replace the other ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... for the archaic and oriental to become unnecessarily pronounced. To these latter gentlemen the day brought gloomy forebodings. Even their morning devotions, which were marked by unusual sincerity and earnestness, failed to bring them that calmness of mind which these exercises are supposed to afford. For their slender ray of hope that their memory of the English text might not fail them in the hour of trial was very materially clouded by the dread that in their embarrassment ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... Kraster's house—a "plant," of course. Such an offence was then capital, and, as Phillipson was the magistrate, Kraster and Dorothy were sentenced to death. Thereupon, Dorothy arose in the court-room and addressed Phillipson in words that rang through the building and impressed all for their awful earnestness: ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... the earnestness of her artless speech were to Richard almost pathetically engaging. His irritation vanished. He smiled, looked up at her, his own face flushing ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the Quakers to Pennsylvania; political and economic radicalism made the Revolution against the will of American conservatives; political and social radicalism made the Civil War inevitable and gave it moral earnestness. Radicalism, whether you like it or not, is much more American than what some people mean by "Americanism" to-day. And its bitterest opponents in our times would quite certainly have become Nova Scotian exiles if they had been alive and ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... a time, and then I said, with affectionate earnestness, "Dear William, why trouble yourself with these things in your weak and exhausted state? Surely, the care of your health is enough for you, now. By-and-by, when you have in some measure regained your strength, look seriously into this subject, if you wish. It is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... especially when he undertook to cheer his disciples, to fortify them against temptations and deliver them from their power, that Francis was most successful. However anxious a soul might be, his words brought it back to serenity. The earnestness which he showed in calming sadness became fiery and terrible in reproving those who fell away, but in these days of early fervor he seldom had occasion to show severity; more often he needed gently to reprove the Brothers whose piety led ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... is certainly one of the most obliging personages in the world. The prince had scarcely left me the other day before I received a note from the marquis enforcing his former offers with renewed earnestness. I instantly forwarded, in the prince's name, a bond for six thousand zechins; in less than half an hour it was returned, with double the sum required, in notes and gold. The prince at length assented to this increase, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... serpent. During the night not one fish is taken up, but at daybreak the managers go down the river to investigate the effect of the poison, and upon their return the fish are gathered in, the men often diving into deep water for them. The work is done with great earnestness and almost in silence, the women helping the men in catching the fish. While. the fishing is going on they do not eat any of the fish, for fear of not getting more, but during the day quantities are broiled and eaten, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... with sudden earnestness, "I'm almost tempted to take a chance with you. Will you go down to the post to-night, in some way gain access to Meleese, and give her a ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... you when you were married?" William asked, with a manner of peculiar earnestness;—it was the manner of one who ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... same unfortunate direction was the tendency of a habit grown insidiously upon him,—a habit against the damning control of which (as no one better than the writer of this article knows) he wrestled with an earnestness indescribable, resorting to all the remedial expedients which professional skill or his own experience could suggest, but never entirely delivering himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... from those in charge if he was willing to do his best. There was little boisterousness or horse-play among the recruits, the dark shadow was too close for that; and the spirit among my new comrades was one of great earnestness. For the first two or three weeks we were trained in Town near the H.Q. of the Battalion in Lincoln's Inn. After that recruits were sent on to the camp at Berkhamsted for field training. We were billeted on the local inhabitants. I stayed ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... semi-savage converts wrangling over rites and ceremonies and discussing points of theology which might well puzzle a Greek metaphysician. Such incidents were but an efflorescence on the surface of what for a number of years was a true and general earnestness. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and full of sympathy.—The earnestness of Christ aroused the populace to shout "Hosanna!" and provoked the bitter hostility of his enemies. It drew multitudes into the wilderness and attracted crowds wherever he went. His sympathy went out to the people as "sheep ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... at once to the earnestness of my appeal. "I'm ready to go back," she said. "There's only one thing to keep me here, and that is Jessie's grave," (Poor little girl! It did seem a bleak place in which to leave her lying alone) but the old soldier was still too proud, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... not forgive Elizabeth," returned he with earnestness. "Had I known I would have delayed seeking an audience but methought it was your wish that I should come to you upon my first arrival. Forgive me that ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... and two lieutenants were talking. One of the young men appeared to take little interest in the conversation; but the other was evidently urging some point, with great earnestness; and the major was equally plainly refusing his request, for he stamped his foot angrily, ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... fellow roared his reply Armitage snatched from the rack a heavy iron boiling-pot, swung it high by the bail with both hands and let it fly with all his might at the Servian's head, upturned in the earnestness of his bawling. On the instant the revolver roared loudly in the narrow kitchen and Armitage seized the brass lamp and flung it from him upon the hearth, where it fell with ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... give him that comfort, and she gave it him with loving earnestness. "Of course I will; and it shall not be very long. Whilst you are making your fortune, to please papa, I will keep fretting, and pouting, and crying, till ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... His last petition is beautiful, both in its consciousness of power with God and recognition of his place as a prophet, and in its lowly subordination of all personal aims to the restoration of Israel to the true worship. He asks, with reiteration which is earnestness and faith, and therefore the sharpest contrast to the mechanical repetition by Baal's priests, that God would hear him; but his sole object in that prayer is, not that his name may be exalted as a prophet, or that any good may come to him, but that the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... gaunt ascetic pouring out words which they would have thought wild, to a crowd of Jews, and been told that that was the greatest man in the world (except One)! The elements of greatness in the estimate of God which is truth, are devotion to His service, burning convictions, intense moral earnestness, superiority to sensuous delights, clear recognition of Jesus, and humble self-abnegation before Him. These are not the elements recognised in the world's Pantheon. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that a serious-minded earnestness always goes with cobbling? Though I'm not really a practical cobbler, but a proprietary one. Our friend, Bertram, will dress and act the practical part. I've wired him and he's replied, collect, accepting the job. You and I will be in ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... I next quote, is a further specimen of the impressive and even eloquent earnestness with which he ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... her joking tone turning to seriousness, her blue eyes to earnestness, "I and Lionel have ever been good friends, fond of each other, I believe, in a sober kind of way: but—any closer relationship, we should both have run apart from, as wide as the two poles. I can answer for myself; and I think I ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... it is the prerogative of a Christian to be conqueror over Doubt. Brethren, do we all know what doubt means? Perchance not. There are some men who have never believed enough to doubt. There are some who have never thrown their hopes with such earnestness on the world to come, as to feel anxiety for fear it should not all be true. But every one who knows what Faith is, knows too, what is the desolation of Doubt. We pray till we begin to ask, Is there one who hears, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... Y.M.C.A. did for me: I found on the bulletin board one day an announcement of the summer term of Mt. Hebron Preparatory School.... It was a school for poor boys and men ... neither age nor even previous preparation counted ... only earnestness of purpose. And, as each student had his two hours' work a day to do, the expense for ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... spoke of these matters in well-weighed and well-chosen phrases, which carried conviction of his earnestness and sincerity to the minds of his hearers; and we observed that the audience was evidently profoundly impressed by the importance of his statements. This fact seemed to us very significant, as he was addressing one of the most ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... and mother, now helping the one in her delicate fancy-work, now arranging the lamp for the other's reading, continually in request by both, or when left quiet for a minute, watching both with anxious earnestness, there was quite enough in Olive's manner to show that she had entered on a woman's life of care, and had not learned a woman's wisdom ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... equipped with proper aids, he who sets himself to accomplish his tasks never meets with failure. As the rays of light never abandon the Sun, even so prosperity never abandons one who is endued with undoubting faith. That act which a man of stainless soul does with faith and earnestness, with the aid of proper means, without pride, and with intelligence, becomes never lost. A creature obtains from the very time of his abode in the mother's womb all his own acts good and bad that were achieved by him in his past lives. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... in what field Jay did the best work. He excelled in whatever he undertook. He had poise, forcefulness, moderation, moral earnestness, and mental clearness. Whether at home or abroad the country knew his abiding place; for his well-doing marked his whereabouts as plainly as smoke on a prairie indicates the presence of a camp. He has been called the draftsman of the Continental Congress, the constitution-maker of New ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... distinguished author of the "Lives of the Irish Saints," "has an interest for all candid investigators far beyond the claim of rival nations for the honour it should confer. It has been debated, indeed, with considerable learning and earnestness both by Irish and foreign writers; yet, as Ireland does not prefer any serious claim to the distinction, of which she might well feel proud, so can Irishmen afford to be impartial in prosecuting such an enquiry" (St. Patrick, ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... firm hand of his friend Steele that helped Addison up to the place in literature which became him. It was Steele who caused the nice critical taste which Addison might have spent only in accordance with the fleeting fashions of his time, to be inspired with all Addison's religious earnestness, and to be enlivened with the free play of that sportive humour, delicately whimsical and gaily wise, which made his conversation the delight of the few men with whom he sat at ease. It was Steele who drew his friend towards the days to come, and made his gifts the wealth of a whole people. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... greatest blessing, His unspeakable gift; and that he who received Him was in truth possessed of all things. When he came near the end of his sermon, he bent forward over the pulpit cushion, and spoke with affectionate earnestness ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... the afternoon was broken by a piercing childish yell which lacked no element of earnestness. Ab leaped to his feet and was by the youngsters in a moment. He saw the terrified Beechleaf standing, screaming still, with a fat arm outheld, from which dangled a little shaft of wood which had pierced the flesh just deeply enough to give it hold. Bark stood looking at her, astonished and alarmed. ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... fearful of awaking his uncle. The two ladies had heard his step, cautious though he had been, and lifted their heads to look at him. My lady's face, quietly watching the sick man, had worn an anxious earnestness which made it only more beautiful; but the same face recognizing Robert Audley, faded from its delicate brightness, and looked scared and wan ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Just let me show you," begged the girl, in her earnestness clinging to his arm with ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... Mind the paint!" —looked after her like a father. Uncle Lal she calls me. [Reassuringly.] I'm a married man, you know; [FARNCOMBE nods] but the wife has plenty to occupy her with the kids and she leaves the drama to me. She prefers Bexhill. [Leaning forward and speaking with great earnestness.] Farncombe, ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... "and plunge into the river that glides past the bottom of your garden. Take likewise a vase of the same water, and sprinkle it over any object that you may desire to change back again from gold into its former substance. If you do this in earnestness and sincerity, it may possibly repair the mischief ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... has failed, Captain?" Anton asked, turning quickly toward him. The earnestness of the question, added to its seeming absurdity, was startling. Could there be ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... house. One of the members was a wilder specimen of humanity than even our legislative bodies at home have ever presented to an admiring world. He was a re-captured African, representing New Georgia, an uncouth figure of a man, who spoke very broken English, with great earnestness, and much to the amusement of his brother counsellors and the audience generally. I regret my inability to preserve either the matter or the manner of so original ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... down on the girl's skirt. He clasped his little hands and began to say his prayers, at first with great care and earnestness, for he knew the beginning very well, then slowly and with more hesitation, and finally repeating word by word after Marie, when he came to that place in his prayer where sleep overtook him so invariably that he had never been able to learn the end. This time again the effort ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... we humans. 'Tain't no good tryin' to train a child by lettin' him do jes' whatever he pleases. You wouldn't call that training, now, would you? Say!' Jerry looked up from the pipe he was filling to put the question, with some little earnestness. ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... ignominy, the few persons who still remained faithful to her interests, and who sincerely sympathized in her sufferings; and although the Duke ventured again and again to recur to the subject, and always with the same earnestness, Marie continued to reject his counsel as steadily as when it was ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... to a great career for him: he had so many qualities to ensure success: a sharp, keen mind, which proved its literary quality also at Oxford, an unfailing earnestness and high purpose and a white character: no one could deny the brilliance and the steadiness of ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... fairly comprehensive idea of the nature of the widespread influence which he exerted on English life and thought during the whole of the second half of the nineteenth century. Its style also, in its earnestness, its richness, and its lofty eloquence, exemplifies the pitch to which he brought the tradition of the highly decorated prose cultivated by De Quincey in the previous generation, a pitch of gorgeousness in color and cadence which has ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... to be unwound. The car could descend no farther. His feet were as wet as they could get. Unless the river rose to unbelievable height, he could not be drowned in the makeshift oubliette, unless he voluntarily lay down in the shallow water and inhaled it. He worked on the panel slowly, but with the earnestness of a very angry victim of a hoax. The panel fell outward with a splash, and floated away. Philo Gubb bent sideways and squeezed out of the ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... which we found on the roof of one of the buildings, where the remains of old dials, horizontal circles and mural instruments lay scattered about. I think the only remark made by either of us was when Bhima Gandharva declared in a voice of much earnestness, from behind a broken gnomon where he had ensconced himself, that he saw Time lying yonder on his back, with his head on a broken dial, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... strange earnestness. "You don't know how true is every word you speak," said he. "There is absolute fatality under all this. On my honor, I believe you are Louise Loisson, born over again! But look how fate brings you and me together: I did not know where Miss Lady Ellison ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... business of his life, seems to cast his better nature to the winds. At another time and place he would lend a sympathetic ear to any tale of woe; now and here nothing seems to interest him but his own immediate welfare, which he pursues with concentrated energy and earnestness. I verily believe that if, at one of two adjoining tables, the chandelier fell on the players' heads to their exceeding detriment, the occupants of the other table would scarcely lift their eyes or interrupt their rubber for one moment. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... would not yourself, in your individual character, and in deliberate earnestness, apply them to modern times ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
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