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More "Keenness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... running stream; where, turning their horses loose to graze till morning, they would build a cheerful fire of the dry brushwood close at hand, and prepare their evening meal, which they would eat with a keenness of appetite known only to the tired and hungry hunter. Each man was his own cook; their food consisting chiefly of venison and wild turkey their rifles procured them, and fish drawn from the neighboring brook, which they would broil on the glowing coals, fastened to a forked stick ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... work at the bar on Saturdays, in order to devote that day to hunting. He used to say that his great incentive to hard work at his profession in early days was his desire to keep hunters, and he retained his keenness as a sportsman as long as he was able to indulge it. Of his personal characteristics, it may be said that he was a spare man, with a Scottish, not an Irish, cast of countenance. He was scrupulously neat in his personal appearance, faultless in bands and necktie, and fond of wearing a flower in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... are not always synonymous, but was in full sympathy with the fresh, active, and, on the whole, joyous life around her. It was sufficient to her to be a part of the human tide, and to feel by contact the keenness and zest of the human endeavor. She was not troubled by the ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... beauty of the body, to train his mind to move graciously and harmoniously both in itself and in relation to those around him, finally, to make his whole life rhythmic—such an ideal is not only possible but almost inevitable to the pupil at Hellerau. The keenness which possesses the whole College, the delight of every one in their work, their comradeship, their lack of self-consciousness, their clean sense of the beauty of natural form, promises a new and more harmonious race, almost a realization ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... moon obscured, but the phosphorescence of water common in these latitudes at this season marked the prow and wake of the advancing ships with lines of smoky flame. It was this, perhaps, that saved us from disaster—this and the keenness of American eyes, and the straightness of American shooting. From the high-flung superstructure of a big ship one of the eager lookouts noted an unwonted line of shining foam on the port bow. In a second he realized ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... Most of the men sat with their arms crossed, and bodies half-turned, regarding the scene, while the two officers, the master and boat-steerer, if the latter could properly be thus designated, watched each evolution with a keenness of vigilance that let nothing like a sign or ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... that of suggesting the forms of proof together with the ways in which they may be used; that of helping the speaker to test the strength of his arguments; and that of enabling the speaker to attack his opponent's arguments with both keenness ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... down by memory from generation to generation, and a recitation of the whole "Odyssey" was not too much for a dinner-party,—the era of Periclean culture, when the Athenian populace was wont to pass whole days in the theatre, attending with unfaltering intellectual keenness and aesthetic delight to three or four long dramas, either of which would exhaust a modern audience,—the wild and vast systems of imaginary abstractions, which the Neo-Platonists, as also the German transcendentalists, so strangely devised and became enamored of,—the grotesque views of men and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... advance to Delhi, was unopposed. Whatever the sepoys may have been in British pay, in revolt they were energetic and persevering, and, as long as they entertained any hope of success, fought with keenness; as a loyal native in Delhi described them, "they were willing to take life, and willing to give their lives away." It had been arranged, before General Anson's death, that a brigade should advance from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... now reached the pitch of exquisite keenness that made it something spiritual. Solicitously they kept him alive, and far back in his mind Sime wondered why they bothered to do that. Couldn't they be satisfied with what ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... you've had, she puts all right." The man was right—the most delightful conversation that can be held is between a rational man and woman who love each other, who understand each other, and who have sufficient worldly keenness to keep clear of lowering cares. A man rightly mated feels it an absolute delight to confide the innermost secrets of life to his wife; and the woman would feel almost criminal if she kept the pettiest of petty secrets from her partner. They are ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... differences, the little characteristic meannesses or felicities that distinguished one from another, did not count for very much in his estimation. When a knowledge of such individual traits was essential to his plans, he mastered them with singular keenness and quickness of comprehension. When such knowledge was unnecessary, or as soon as it ceased to be of service, he dismissed the extraneous personalities from his mind almost as completely as if they had had no existence. Few men were less embarrassed with acquaintances than he; yet he had an ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... reckoned among the daughters of gluttony, which are the results of eating and drinking immoderately. These may be accounted for either on the part of the soul or on the part of the body. On the part of the soul these results are of four kinds. First, as regards the reason, whose keenness is dulled by immoderate meat and drink, and in this respect we reckon as a daughter of gluttony, "dullness of sense in the understanding," on account of the fumes of food disturbing the brain. Even so, on the other hand, abstinence conduces to the penetrating ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... down his glass with a jerk as though he had been struck. He looked around on the company that filled the front room of the Faisan d'Or, and on the faces of the men who had looked up to him for years as the hero of 1870 he now saw only the keenness to fight. He was old, forgotten, and no longer respected, and the blow was ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... second one upon the world. Against this there should be no objection on the score of patriotism. He naturally turned for his subject to the Revolution, with the details of which he was familiar by his acquaintance with the men who had shared prominently in its conduct, and had felt all the keenness of a personal triumph in its success. The very county, moreover, in which he had made his home was full of recollections. Westchester had been the neutral ground between the English forces stationed in New York and the American army encamped in the highlands ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... over the carcass of his kill: but with the falling of night came renewed hope for, in common with the great cats, Tarzan was, to a greater or lesser extent, a nocturnal beast. It is true he could not see by night as well as they, but that lack was largely recompensed for by the keenness of his scent and the highly developed sensitiveness of his other organs of perception. As the blind follow and interpret their Braille characters with deft fingers, so Tarzan reads the book of the ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... has it perfect by the beginning of June; that cry, long, repeated, loudening and sharpening in the intensity of rising passion, till it stops suddenly, exhausted at the point where pleasure, from very keenness, turns to pain; ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... began, and yet speaking retreated from mortal view, vanishing into thin air away out of their eyes. The Dardanian princes knew the god and the arms of deity, and heard the clash of his quiver as he went. So they restrain Ascanius' keenness for battle by the words of Phoebus' will; themselves they again close in conflict, and cast their lives into the perilous breach. Shouts run all along the battlemented walls; ringing bows are drawn and javelin thongs twisted: all the ground is strewn with ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... the sense in which after-dinner speaking is called 'good,' as good whist after dinner. It may seem otherwise, even to the spectators; but having themselves dined like the rest, they are not in a position to give an opinion. The keenness of observation is blunted by food and wine; the delicate perceptions are gone; and what is left of the intelligence is generally devoted to finding faults in your partner's play. The consciousness of mistakes on your own ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... that his master did not like to have them play. Then I learned the reason, and from that time I noticed a decided coolness on the part of Ratu Lala toward me. The fact, no doubt, is that Ratu Lala being exceptionally keen on sport, this very keenness made him impatient of defeat, or even of any question as to a possible want of success on his part, as I afterwards learnt ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... A keenness in the observation of facts, characteristic of the mind of the man, had led Harvey to doubt the truth of existing doctrines as to the phenomena of the circulation. Galen had taught that "the arteries are filled, like bellows, because they are expanded," but Harvey thought that ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... confidence is to believe that I shall preach well next time. However, there may be some advantages in hearing one who is not too far away from the difficulties with which you will soon be contending yourselves; and the keenness with which I have felt these difficulties may have made me reflect, more than others to whom the path of excellence has been easier, on ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... the destinies of mankind. To his friend's astonishment, Frederick did not display his old incisiveness in debate, whether in attack or defence. There was a cheerful placidity about him which took the keenness from any hope or fear of a universal character upon which they ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... across the narrow table; but Margaret innocently had begun a conversation with Bud about the school, and had to be addressed by name each time before Mr. West could get her attention. Bud, with a boy's keenness, noticed her aversion, and put aside his own backwardness, entering into the contest with remarkably voluble replies. The minister, if he would be in the talk at all, was forced to join in with ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... natural phenomena were written; opportunities were given for the naturalists to collect specimens, and for the artist to make drawings. The net was frequently drawn in the bays for examples of marine life. Everybody when ashore kept a look out for plants, birds, beasts, and insects. In short, a keenness for investigation, an assiduity in observation, animated the whole ship's company, stimulated by the example of the commander, who never spared himself in his work, and interested ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... ravenously. He said it was the best morsel he ever tasted! It was scant times when a Colonel of artillery was as famished as he was! I cut up the rest of the beef, and divided among several of us, and we cooked it on a stick, the only cooking utensil we had at hand, and ate it, with a keenness of enjoyment that terrapin, canvass back duck, and Lynnhaven oysters could not provoke me to now. My dear! but that hot meat was good, to palates accustomed, mostly, to nothing, and no salt on that, ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... Meredith, and it was evident that he was bringing to bear upon the matter in hand that intelligence and keenness of perception which had made him a person of some prominence in other scenes where Nature has ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... his curiosity. Probably his ride, and a natural desire to return to the ranch as quickly as possible, had dulled the keenness of his faculties of observation. Certain it is that, squalid as the place was, there was an air of recent habitation about it that he missed. He took it for a deserted shack merely, and gave it no ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... his left hand, as it hung carelessly beside him, here interrupted Huldbrand's relation, and drew his eye to the part affected. Undine had fastened her pearly teeth, and not without some keenness too, upon one of his fingers, appearing at the same time very gloomy and displeased. On a sudden, however, she looked up in his eyes with an expression of tender ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... born of their first meeting at court, becomes stronger and truer amid scenes of delicate comedy and merry laughter. Once in Arden, Orlando ceases to brood morosely over the wrongs done him; Rosalind's wit becomes sweeter while losing none of its keenness; and Touchstone feels himself no longer a plaything, but a man. So we are not surprised when Oliver, the wicked brother, lost in the forest and rescued from mortal danger by the lad he has always sought to injure, awakens to his better self; nor when ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... the front the fulfillment of what she has only seen as intention and promise during the other rehearsals. But I am afraid that beginners now are not so keen as they used to be. The first wicked thing I did in a theater sprang from excess of keenness. I borrowed a knife from a carpenter and made a slit in the canvas to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... further incensed by an incident which happened several weeks after the auction. Tom Fletcher was determined that he would question the parson some day, in the presence of others. He prided himself upon his keenness of observation and shrewdness in detecting a guilty manner in those whom he suspected of wrong-doing. The first opportunity he seized when he met the parson at the blacksmith shop, waiting for his ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... by the Roman Catholics that this statement of Lafayette's was ingeniously extracted from a sentence in a letter of his to a friend in which he assures this friend that such a fear is groundless. Morse followed the matter up with the patience and keenness of a detective, and proved that no such letter had ever been written by Lafayette, that it was a clumsy forgery, but that he really had made use of the sentiment quoted above, not only to Morse himself, but to others of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... according to the testimony of my old nurse, had belonged to several of my ancestors, had been in my case transformed in kind without losing its nature, transferring its abode from the sight to the hearing, whence resulted its keenness, and my ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... first notice me?" she demanded. "In bathing. That bathing suit cost more than any two of my dresses. It is absolutely right." August was confused by the keenness of her perception. It wasn't proper for a woman to understand such facts. He was at a loss for a reply. "Seven men spoke to me in it on one afternoon. It is no good for you to try to reassure me with platitudes; I know better. I ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... knowledge of mankind and their affairs great and multifarious"; but it did not state truly, that, "in all his essays, verse or prose, serious or comic, he never trespassed against decorum or sound morals," or that "the keenness of his wit was combined with such playfulness of fancy, good-humor, and kindness of natural sentiment, that his merits were ungrudgingly acknowledged even by those of politics most different from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the barb turned on a stout pivot of steel, but was kept in line with the shaft by a tiny wooden peg which passed through barb and shaft, being then cut off smoothly on both sides. The point of the harpoon had at one side a wedge-shaped edge, ground to razor keenness, the other side was flat. The shaft, about thirty inches long, was of the best malleable iron, so soft that it would tie into a knot and straighten out again without fracture. Three harpoons, or "irons" as they were always called, were placed in each boat, fitted one above the other ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... which followed, the man of the cheery voice seemed to the youth to possess a wand of a magic kind. He threaded the mazes of the tangled forest with a strange fortune. In encounters with guards and patrols he displayed the keenness of a detective and the valor of a gamin. Obstacles fell before him and became of assistance. The youth, with his chin still on his breast, stood woodenly by while his companion beat ways and means out ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... certainly was not my friend. I do not know that I deserved to find a friend in my new master, but I think that a man with better judgment would not have formed so low an opinion of me as he did. Years have gone by, and I can write now, and almost feel, without anger; but I can remember well the keenness of my anguish when I was treated as though I were unfit for any useful work. I did struggle—not to do the work, for there was nothing which was not easy without any struggling—but to show that I was willing ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... eighteenth there was a gradual progress toward religious liberalism. The population steadily increased, and New England's unremitting struggle with a not too friendly soil, her hardihood upon the seas, and her keenness in trade, became proverbial throughout the country. Her seaport towns were wealthy. The general standards of living remained frugal, but extreme poverty was rare. Her people still made, as in the earliest ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... of the excellence of all he had left behind him in the north. He incarnated that aristocratic temper which has in all times, since Duke William crossed the water, leavened the strong mass of the Anglo-Saxon character, balancing its rude democratic strength with the keenness of a higher physical organization and the nobility of a more disinterested daring, and again and again rousing the English-speaking races to life and conquest, when they were sunk deep in the sordid interests of trade and money- making. So when Arnold talked of laws and institutions ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... threatening to cut off the English settlers from expansion to the west. A glance at the map will reveal the immense strategic importance of Newfoundland to two Powers with the possessions and claims indicated above. No doubt a consciousness of deeper differences underlay the keenness of commercial rivalry. ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... seasons rarely granted to people of importance. Their debts to the worlds of business or society or literature held in abeyance, they were lightly devoting their days to fishing and hunting, sailing and riding, while the keenness of their intellectual interests—they belonged to a very different set from Quadratilla's—was restfully tempered and the sincerity of them ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... is this: it covets praise. It feeds and fattens on commendation. It constantly seeks to be highly esteemed, to have its worth properly appraised. It is immensely impressed with its own importance, its value to society, its keenness, wisdom or aptness, and wishes others to be so impressed also. It is fond of a mirror, especially one made to magnify. It seeks recognition. It presses forward, rudely or politely, according as its ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... the Esquimaux of Labrador, for they nearly resemble that people. They are short, and somewhat corpulent; and have broad faces, flat noses, thick lips, black hair, and a yellowish tawny complexion. The keenness of the wind and the glare of the snow, render them subject to painful disorders in the eyes: they are also afflicted with many diseases, which tend to render them short lived. They are a quiet, orderly, and good-humoured people; but of a cold, phlegmatic, and indolent disposition. They never wash ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... in tracking Lawrence, but Foster could not see what it was. Indeed, he was frankly puzzled. There was a mystery about Carmen's packet, he had been warned out of Edinburgh, and inquiries about him were afterwards made, while Daly's keenness was not quite explained. He wondered whether these things were somehow related, but at present they only offered him tangled clews that led nowhere. Well, he might be able to unravel them by and by, and getting up ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... wished to be held a stranger to falsehood; and accordingly he mingled craft and candour in such wise that, though his words did lack truth, yet there was nothing to betoken the truth and betray how far his keenness went. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... The rapid keenness of vision that accompanies cataclysms spared him no detail. He saw that he was almost certain to be unseated now that Mora would not be at hand to plead his cause; and the consequences of defeat, bankruptcy, poverty and something worse, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... may be printed here, all testifying to the multifarious interests of this remarkable man, who not only knew everyone worth knowing, but projected himself into their careers with so much sympathy and keenness. The first is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... and Carnaby—when I ask for it, with all that lies beneath me here," he said, and sat very still a space, with eyes that had lost their keenness fixed upon the bush. He did not see the big balsam in front of him nor the dusky firs, for it was once more the picture of a woman with red-gold hair standing in an English rose garden his fancy ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... footsteps creeping softly along the hall and a glimpse of an awed, tear-stained face peering at her from the doorway suddenly recalled to her mind the scene of yesterday, and the bitter truth rushed over her with agonizing keenness. She could never walk again! All her days must be spent in a wheel-chair, a helpless prisoner! The Lilac Lady was right,—she wanted to turn her face to the wall, to say good-bye to her friends and hide,—hide from the ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Comedy is beyond dispute the greatest book of personal and experimental religion the world has ever seen. The consuming intensity of its author's feelings about sin and holiness, the keenness and the bitterness of his remorse, and the rigour and the severity of his revenge, his superb intellect and his universal learning, all set ablaze by his splendid imagination—all that combines to make the Divine Comedy ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... research, and it requires much experience in selecting suitable men and in training them to the desirable degree of efficiency, after having determined the special qualities required. Important qualifications in industrial researchers are keenness, inspiration and confidence; these are often unconsidered by manufacturers, who in endeavoring to select, say, a research chemist, are likely to regard every chemist as a qualified ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... humor, Mr. Clarence Day, Jr., speculates with so much whimsicality upon the possible effects of surgical rejuvenation of men that one might overlook the keenness of his observation in a hurried perusal of his article. For the sake of preserving it for more leisurely study, and because the points raised are really worthy of attention, the article is reproduced here in full, with acknowledgments to The Literary Review, in which it first appeared, of date ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... is faithful to right order as far as he understands it. But one who sees right and wills wrong is in no sense good, but altogether bad. Allowing that for the solution of some delicate moral problems a certain height of tone and keenness of insight inseparable from habitual conscientiousness is necessary, yet mere intellectual acumen, in the absence of any notably biassing influence, suffices to give us as great a teacher as Aristotle, who, if exonerated from graver charges, offers no ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... shrinking, was possessed by a sense of anti-climax. Life had a brassy ring. She had come home with at least something of her mother's military keenness for the "campaign" of vindication, but within a day or two she was thinking, rather cynically and cheaply, that the game was not worth the candle. What difference did it all make, in her actual life? People might whisper and nudge ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the young painter's fears; he colored as he looked at Adelaide's mother, but he saw nothing in her countenance but the expression of the frankest good-nature; no double meaning marred its charm; its keenness was not perifidious, its humor seemed kindly, and no trace ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... quietude, and had even begged Mrs. Winthrop and Aaron, who had naturally lingered behind every one else, to leave him alone with his child. The excitement had not passed away: it had only reached that stage when the keenness of the susceptibility makes external stimulus intolerable—when there is no sense of weariness, but rather an intensity of inward life, under which sleep is an impossibility. Any one who has watched such moments in other men remembers the brightness ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... tones while her father listened with a deep interest. The well tried soldier, the gallant commander at Badajos, at Corunna, the hero of many fierce conflicts, and the firm friend and favourite of the Duke of Wellington, listened to the conversation of his daughter with as much keenness as a question involving the ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... It is rather keenness that is akin to beauty, as the thorn to the flower. So sarcasm is not unbecoming in woman, though coming from her it hurts. But ridicule which savours of bulkiness woman had better leave to our sublime sex. The masculine Falstaff makes our sides ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... Germantown and Monmouth,—the reduction of the forts at Verplanck's Ferry, and the forays led against New Bedford and the Vineyard,—all these familiarized him with the bloody fruits of civil strife. But they never blunted for one moment the keenness of his humanity, or warped those sentiments of refinement and liberality that always distinguished him. Within the limited range of his narrow sphere, he was constantly found the friend and reliever of the wounded or captive Americans, and the protector and benefactor of the followers of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... banishment from London without remonstrance. He was not astonished at the result of the talk against him. That his one great enemy should have poisoned the wells so easily was not very surprising. He could not help knowing that the very keenness and ardour of his friends had produced prejudice against him. There was, among the religious circles in London, a perhaps healthy suspicion of hero worship for popular preachers, and of any indiscreet zeal. The great Religious Orders knew how to deal with life, and it was safer to have an enthusiasm ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... rapture higher, and she was always new. These are the wondrous pains, and wondrous pleasures that love by turns inspires, till it grows wise by time and repetition, and then the god assumes a serious gravity, enjoyment takes off the uneasy keenness of the passion, the little jealous quarrels rise no more; quarrels, the very feathers of love's darts, that send them with more swiftness to the heart; and when they cease, your transports lessen ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... wayward and impulsive Emilia the good lady was far more merciful. With all Aunt Jane's formidable keenness, she was a little apt to be disarmed by youth and beauty, and had no very stern retributions except for those past middle age. Emilia especially charmed her while she repelled. There was no getting beyond a certain point with this strange girl, any more than with Philip; but her depths ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... had proceeded many rods, the Indians stopped, and appeared to gaze at some signs on the earth with more than their usual keenness. Both father and son spoke quick and loud, now looking at the object of their mutual admiration, and now regarding each other with the most ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... turned his face to Gardiner with an expression of inquiry. In his exasperated mood against the queen, the crafty priest's ambiguous remark struck him with double keenness. ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... might be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely: but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an austere ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... during this brief rest—in a deep peat-hag, down which trickled a little stream of rain-water—that Lionel discovered two things: first, that he was wet to the skin, and, second, that the wind in these altitudes was of an Arctic keenness. So long as he had been kept going, he had not paid much attention; but now this bitter blast seemed to pierce him to the very marrow; and he began to think that these were very pleasant conditions for a professional singer to be in—for ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... always a warmish game. The rivalry between the various Houses was great, and the football cup especially was fought for with immense keenness. Also, the match was the last fixture of the season, and there was a certain feeling in the teams that if they did happen to disable a man or two, it would not matter much. The injured sportsman would not be needed for School-match purposes for another ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... both causes. His temper was reserved and proud; he had few friends—no bosom-companion; he lived by himself, and among his books and maps. M. Bourienne, whose friendship for him commenced thus early, says—"Buonaparte was noticeable at Brienne for his Italian complexion, the keenness of his look, and the tone of his conversation both with masters and comrades. There was almost always a dash of bitterness in what he said. He had very little of the disposition that leads to attachments; ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... St. Germain d'Auxerre, who at a certain period was the patron of sportsmen, made hunting his habitual relaxation. He devoted himself to it with great keenness in his youth, before he became bishop, that is, when he was Duke of Auxerre and general of the troops of the provinces. Subsequently, when against his will he was raised to the episcopal dignity, not only did he give up all pleasures, but he ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... forgotten his keenness of sight. His face flashed suddenly into a grim smile. The tail of his eye resting upon us, and seeming to forbid us to move, he gave some orders. The colour fled from my face. To escape indeed was impossible, for we were hemmed in by the press and could scarcely stir ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... effort. Captivated by its grace of motion, and jealous of its freedom, I would for hours watch it. And this eagle I knew, from the height and distance from which it would swoop down on its prey, to be possessed of eyesight of unrivalled keenness in addition to ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... endeavour of the wrestler and the runner and the player of games—all will compete, not for sordid coin and base material reward, but for the joy that shall be theirs in the development and vigour of flesh and in the development and keenness of spirit. All will be joy-smiths, and their task shall be to beat out laughter from the ringing anvil ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... and keenness of perception. We did not take off our clothes nor unsaddle our horses, tired as we were. I put my Mauser inside my coat and began to look about and scrutinize the people. The first thing I discovered was the butt end of a ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... had no favourites and let no unjust acts be imputed to him. He was stern towards the great and careful for the common people; at his first word men could tell what they had to expect from him. The French were frightened at the keenness of his expression, but they reverenced his high spirit, his bravery and truthfulness. 'He transacts all his affairs himself; he considers them well before he undertakes them; he never does anything fruitlessly. He is free from ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... does not matter, for he is able to point out that an Australian Legislature had at one time passed a resolution, and agreed on a petition to the Imperial Parliament, in reference to the Corn Laws. Just fancy the keenness, the omnivorousness, the promptitude of that marvellous Old Man, who had read one of the most recently published works, and had promptly seized on a point bearing reference to a detail ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... soon as it establishes a connection with the history of kingdoms, and the ambitions, passions, or fortunes of mankind; so that men may pore over a map with more eagerness than the greatest of romances can excite, or scan a countryside with a keenness that the beauty of no picture could evoke. To Captain Dieppe, a soldier, even so much apology was not necessary for the careful scrutiny of topographical features which was his first act on reaching the Cross on the hillside. ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... along its wooded course; the range greenly aflame with new foliage rose into radiant space; flickers hammered on resonant, dead wood. Gordon banished the somber memory of the priest. He was conscious of a sudden excitement, a keenness of response to living like a renewal of youth. He wished that Meta Beggs would appear; his direction to her had been vague; she might easily go astray and miss him. But he saw her, after what seemed an interminable period, leaving the road and crossing the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... have fallen into a fireside, dilettante culture of ideas as an intellectual pleasure. Amos and Isaiah do not deal in ideas. Their strength lies in love and hatred, in the keenness and depth of their division between right and wrong. They repeat the work of God the Creator: chaotic sameness becomes diverse; the heavenly firmament mounts on high; there is Light and ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... joint fabrication of his friends Wilson and Lockhart.[39] This singular production produced a sensation in the capital unequalled in the history of any other literary performance; and though, from the evident personalities and the keenness of the satire, it had to be cancelled, so that a copy in the pages of the magazine is now a rarity, it sufficiently attained the purpose of directing public attention to the newly-established periodical. The "Chaldee Manuscript" appeared ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... it, for he was treasurer. "We'll have a hefty brew. You'd pretty average cool cheek, Turkey, to jaw about our keenness an' punctuality." ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... next day, perhaps. At present I have a very difficult task before me. Good-bye for the present." And hailing a hansom he jumped in and drove away, being careful not to give the address to the driver while within my hearing. Ambler Jevons had been born with the instincts of a detective. The keenness of his ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... with common sense. There was benevolence in the expansive brow and kindliness and humor as well as character, about the lines of the nose and the wide, full-lipped mouth, and the eyes diffused a light which was not only bright but genial, and which robbed them of keenness as they rested upon the pathetic and at the same time distinguished figure before him. What the kindly eyes took in a glance was that the pale and haggard young stranger with the big brow and eyes and the clear-cut features, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... a century. There was, he said, the individuality of an age, but not of a country. Morritt, a zealous worshipper of the old bard, was incensed at a system which would turn him into a polytheist, gave battle with keenness, and was joined by Sotheby, our host. Mr. Coleridge behaved with the utmost complaisance and temper, but relaxed not from his exertions. "Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words." Morritt's impatience; must have cost him an extra sixpence worth ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Adolphe, she rather avoided than encouraged him. Her woman's keenness of observation showed her that he sympathised with her and admired her—in fact, that he was deeply in love with her, though he strenuously endeavoured not to ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... wit, born in London, son of a theatrical magistrate; began life as a printer; composed "Black-eyed Susan"; contributed to Punch "Mrs. Caudle's Lectures" among other pieces, and edited magazines; the keenness of his satire was the reflex of a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... was therefore purely local. How narrow and provincial seems his experience of life! A little city, an isolated society, a country village! Yet through books, and through intercourse with intelligent persons, he was really "set in a large place." The proof of this largeness, and of the keenness of his mental and moral vision, is that, in regard to some of the chief concerns of mankind, he was a seer and a fore-seer. This prophetic quality of his I hope to demonstrate to-night in three great fields of ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... praiseworthy manner, and exhorted the people to be quiet; but my own impression is that they were already completely cowed by the sudden appearance of the military from two quarters at once. By no means wanting in keenness of perception, they knew that, if ordered to do so, the soldiers will fire "at" them, and not vaguely, after the manner of the police. So the whole affair passed off quietly, and after trebling the ordinary ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... which the swarming spies laid bare. The group, of whose scrutiny we had become aware, was made up of ouvriers and ouvrieres, the men in the invariable blouse, with dark matted hair and black eyes, sometimes with a ratlike keenness of glance as they surveyed us. The women were roughly dressed, sometimes in sabots, with heads bare or surmounted by conical caps. They belonged to the proletariat, the class out of which had come in the Reign of Terror the sans-culottes of evil memory and the tricoteuses ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... watchfulness, the year seems to have escaped us. We know that the birds sang, that the flowers bloomed, that the grass was green, but it seems to us that we did not take our joy of them with sufficient keenness; our sweetheart came, but we did not look deep enough into her eyes. If only we live to see the wild rose again! But meanwhile here ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... among women;—for to this silent ministry their nature calls them, endowed, as it is, with fineness of fibre, and a subtile keenness of perception outrunning slow-footed reason;—and she of whom we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... royal Winchester, held the balance between Maud and Stephen, and with the election of Henry II., the first Plantagenet, we come upon the establishment of the modern municipal constitution and the long battle for freedom. The Londoner set a pattern to other English burghers. His keenness in trade, his vivacity, his tenacity of liberty and, perhaps above all, the combination of duty and credit which brought him wealth, have made his city what it is—the central feature of ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... lucrative use can only be found for the excess. This excess, not being able to earn so much as when capital was less plentiful, competes for safe investments and forces down the interest rate on all capital. Mr. Charles A. Conant has well described the keenness of the scramble for safe investments, even at the prevailing low rates of interest. At the close of the war with Turkey, the Greek loan, guaranteed by Great Britain, France, and Russia, was floated with ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... that their part can be written below that of clarinets or hautboys, frequently transpose entire passages an octave higher. The conductor, if he does not carefully peruse his score, if he is not thoroughly acquainted with the work he is conducting, or if his ear lacks keenness, will not perceive the strange liberty thus taken. Nevertheless, multitudes of such instances occur, and care should be taken to banish ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... of miscellaneous flirtations, or more or less innocent dalliance, had ever weakened the witchery of woman's charms to him, or dulled the keenness of his sensibility to the heaven she can bestow. For an hour he wandered about the dark and silent village street, waiting for the tumult of his emotions to subside sufficiently to leave him in some ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... a look of such keenness that Prescott saw again the strength and penetration underlying her timid and doubtful manner. She seemed to be reassured ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... they caused a stirring of their whole being, a kind of riot of the senses to which they returned on other evenings as a drunkard to his cups. After such an evening they found themselves, on the next morning, confused and filled with vague longings. They had lost their keenness for fun, they heard without hearing the talk of the men about the station and in the stores, they went slinking through the streets in groups and people seeing them nodded their heads and said, "It is ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... time for revery. Roy was speaking again, asking another of those sharp questions that showed very well why he should have been chosen as a spy hunter, or for anything else that required keenness of mind. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... enough if I remember; and Horace and Martial cry "Carpe rosas" perpetually. Are the modern inhabitants still more refined than they in their researches after pleasure? and are the present race of ladies capable of increasing, beyond that of their ancestors, the keenness of any corporeal sense? I should think not. Here are however amusements enough at Rome without trying ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... period to save Burgoyne, and though the passes in the Highlands were acquired, they could not be retained. The British had reduced to ashes every village and almost every house within their power, but this wanton and useless destruction served to irritate without tending to subdue. A keenness was given to the resentment of the injured, which outlived the contest ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... English child, a Nature lesson in Utopia would come as a revelation. He would learn for the first time that, far from being innately stupid, the average English child has it in him to reach a very high level of keenness, acuteness, and intellectual activity. Whenever a lesson is given on a natural object, e.g. a flower or a leaf, every child has a specimen and a lens. The object is then closely and carefully observed, in the ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... phases of the emergency, there are some which directly affect the wage-earner. One is the failure of wages to keep pace with the higher cost of living; another is the increase in the number and proportion of wage-earning women and the resultant keenness of competition for places; another is the fact that women workers are for the most part unorganized and unprotected; another is the occasional effect of supplementary wages of vice in lowering the wages ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... want, and a brother-in-law he wanted less, with only a third of that which his greedy heart thirsted for. No, he would measure swords with Jean, and though his blade was less stout than that of the stolid giant he relied upon its superior keenness and ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... considerations. The first is purely philosophical, and stops the inquiry at once if it can be settled in the negative. The other calls in also the aid of history and criticism. Both questions have been followed out of late with great keenness and interest, but it is the first which at present assumes an importance which it never had before, with its tremendous negative answer, revolutionising not only the past, but the whole future of mankind; and it is to the first that Mr. Mozley's ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Melinoff of old, then a sprightly enough man for his years, was no more, and it was a decrepit, stoop-shouldered, dirty and grey-bearded figure that shuffled now around the old-clothes shop, apathetic of "bargains," where before it had been a man whose keenness was matched only by the sort of eager craft and low cunning with which he had conducted ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... which had been so keen and saddening at first, wore gradually away from the radiant face of the slave, though she thought no less earnestly and dearly of her friends and her home, far away in the Circassian hills; yet absence and time had robbed her grief of its keenness, while the easy and luxuriant mode of living that she enjoyed had again restored the roundness of her beautiful form, had once more imparted the rose to her check, and the elasticity of her childhood's day to her ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... cause to repudiate this opinion in a conviction which was less to the credit of the acumen of Tsiskwa than a full confession of his breach of etiquette in tormenting his young "grandfather" might have been. At the time Savanukah felt a certain, malicious pride in the old man's keenness and poise and capacity, and he said apart to the inquisitive bystanders that, as might have been expected, the big bird, Tsiskwa-yah, had pounced upon the little bird, Tscholen-tit—for the name of each signifies ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... required; and he was in Canada looking round and negotiating. He was already known to the Chief Justice and Mariette, and Elizabeth fell quickly in love with his white hair, his black eyes, his rapier-like slenderness and keenness, and that pleasant mingling in him—so common in the men of his race—of the dry shrewdness of the financier with a kind of ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... taken up the matter with the greatest keenness. She was evidently in dead earnest about it. Marjorie was agreeably surprised, and on the strength of this mutual confidence her old affection for her chum revived. Once more they went about the school arm in arm, sat next to each other at tea, and wrote each other private ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and the captain was near to suffocation when it was finished, but he watched her with anxious keenness as he waited for her to reply. The stern lines of her mouth relaxed slowly. A brilliant red geranium in the window glowed in the sunlight which had just reached it. The world was not all dark. The room seemed less lonely with the captain in it, as she glanced around it a second time. She scanned ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... meant as plainly as though he had spoken in so many words: "Stay where you are and I don't care in the least what you do, but don't try to cross this entrance if you fear the length of my teeth and the keenness thereof." And she did fear them, very much, for she remembered the gashes across the back and the terrible rips up the side, of the ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... almost unbroken accompaniment we managed also to do a bit of literary discussion, and, though Loken's reading of Bengali literature was less extensive than mine, he made up for that by the keenness of his intellect. Among the subjects we discussed ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... The keenness of my appetite being satisfied, I felt that I could wait till the rest was more properly cooked. I now bethought me that it would be wise, while the hare was roasting, to bring in the lynx, at all events; for though not dainty food, I had seen Indians eat the flesh of the animal, and it was very ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... glanced often at the man, who did not look in the least as she had fancied, except that he really did have a high nose and terribly keen eyes with something behind the keenness that baffled her. And his mouth was pleasant, especially when that smile hid just behind his lips; also, she liked his hair, which was thick and brown, with hints of red in it here and there, and a strong inclination to curl ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... which young people are thus induced to acquire knowledge, without study and labor, is not education. It occupies but does not enrich the mind. It imparts a stimulus for the time, and produces a sort of intellectual keenness and cleverness; but, without an implanted purpose and a higher object that mere pleasure, it will bring with it no solid advantage. In such cases knowledge produces but a passing impression; a sensation, gut no more; it is, in fact, the merest epicurism of intelligence—sensuous, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... formations, configurations, and processes yields each its own special phase of discipline and its own measure of information. The work takes on various chemical, mechanical, and biological aspects. As a means of discipline it calls for keenness and diligence in observation, circumspection in inference, a judicial balancing of factors in interpretation. An active use of the scientific imagination is called forth in following formations to inaccessible depths or ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Barrie's genius, as of all genius, eludes analysis; but some of its characteristics are not hard to define. His wonderful keenness of observation and tenacity of remembrance of the pettinesses of daily existence, which in its amazing minuteness reminds us of Dickens and Mark Twain, and his sensitiveness to the humorous aspects of their little misfits and hypocrisies and lack of proportion, might if ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... called forth by the war. When, therefore, the fourth Colonial Conference was summoned to meet in London in 1902 on the occasion of the coronation of Edward VII, Chamberlain urged with all his force and keenness a wide programme of centralized action. "Very great expectations," he declared in his opening address, "have been formed as to the results which may accrue from our meeting." The expectations, however, were doomed to disappointment. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... given a little teaching to do, and found it perfectly enchanting. Imagine children with everything greedy and sensual gone, with none of the crossness or spitefulness that comes of fatigue or pressure, but with all the interesting passions of humanity, admiration, keenness, curiosity, and even jealousy, emulation, and anger, all alive and active in them. They were not angelic children at all, neither meek nor mild. But they were generous and affectionate, and it was easy to ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... curiosity. I speak particularly of the young ladies. St. John's eyes, though clear enough in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom. He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people's thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... bitterly. "You do not know the Baggaras. They are keenness itself. It is real enough, but I am well ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... listening idly to the sound from below. She could hear John Coulson's low, deep voice, and Sarah Emily's loud lamentations. She wished she could act like Sarah Emily, it seemed so much more sympathetic. Her mind seemed to have become possessed of a keenness never felt before. She thought out every detail of the changed circumstances John's death must bring, forgetting nothing. It would mean that she could not leave home quite so soon, she reflected, and even wondered how Mrs. Jarvis would feel when she learned that ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... from the beginning, mentioned that they would decline working on Sundays. It may here be noticed that throughout the whole of the operations it was observable that the men wrought, if possible, with more keenness upon the Sundays than at other times, from an impression that they were engaged in a work of imperious necessity, which required every possible exertion. On returning to the floating light, after finishing the tide's work, the boats were received by the part of the ship's crew ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a studio before?" asked Mr. Debris, giving her a glance that was surely the quintessence of keenness. "No? Well, I'll explain exactly what's going to happen. We're going to take what we call a test in order to see how your features photograph and whether you've got natural stage presence and how ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... mendicants or thieves, feet and head uncovered through frost and heat, to steal their sustenance, under penalties if detected—"a survival," as anthropologists would doubtless prove, pointing out collateral illustrations of the same, from a world of purely animal courage and keenness. Whips and rods used in a kind of monitorial system by themselves had a great part in the education of these young aristocrats, and, as pain surely must do, pain not of bodily disease or wretched accidents, but as it were by dignified ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... back in his chair he tossed the violet letter over to Mr. Meyers without seeming to know that he did so. Then he plunged back into his absorption without seeing his henchman read rapidly through the missive, look at him once with a gem-like keenness, and again begin to read the ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... all the signs of a man who has lived clean and has been almost an ascetic. One to whom the joys of the flesh have had little meaning. A cold, controlled man whose one passion is for power. Distinctively a man of power. An eagle-like man, who, by keenness of brain and force of character, has carved out a fortune of hundreds of millions. In short, an industrial and financial magnate of the first water and of the finest type to be found in the United States. Essentially a moral man, his rigid New England morality has suffered ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... gaudily dressed boy who a year before had driven the pink car, in this serious young professional clad in the Mercury's racing gray and bearing the Mercury's silver insignia on his shoulder. The bend of his mouth was firmer, his dark-blue eyes had acquired the steady, all-embracing keenness of Gerard's—the gaze of all those men with whom the inopportune flicker of an eyelid may mean destruction. He was clothed with his virile youth as with a radiant garment, as ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... is to measure inborn traits, not achievement. Hence the results from actual measurement are very few and are confined to the sensory and sensorimotor traits. Woodworth, in summing up the results of these tests, says, "On the whole, the keenness of the senses seems to be about on a par in the various races of mankind.... If the results could be taken at their face value, they would indicate differences in intelligence between races, giving such groups as the Pygmy and Negrito a ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... one that should light his face. She did not know the word, but he looked, despite his smile, cynical, rather weary. Yes, she knew she should like him, for in some indefinite way he reminded her of her father. Was it the brown, rather nearsighted eyes? Surely they were keen, yet behind their keenness dwelt a softness; perhaps he, too, once ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... was still in Barrington's, and he felt her fingers tighten. To her the house was as still as death, the blackness of it empty; but to her companions whose ears were trained to keenness, there was movement in ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... untiring traveller, always eager to be going on, delighted with every place he visited, and yet anxious for constant change of scene and for new experience. To be amusingly and simply selfish is ever part of the charm of Montaigne. He adds to his reader's pleasure in life by the keenness with which he relished his own existence, and savoured every little incident as a man relishes the bouquet of wine. Without selfishness, how can this be managed? and without perfect simplicity and the good faith on which he prided ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... thraldom, because his skin has darkened under a hotter sun? Shall he be the perpetual servant of his fellow man, because deficiency of intellectual power, naturally resulting from a want of education and opportunity, have given him less keenness of perception, disqualified him to stand forth the vindicator of the oppressed, to assert his rights, and demand redress for his injuries? No! We trust that there is a redeeming virtue in our fellow citizens, which ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Says he to himself, "I shall certainly be on the sharp out-look for that ascent of the Dewdrop. I can at all events be a silent spectator, if my services cannot otherwise be of use." And, to be sure, he did not require to watch long; for, with that keenness of perception that belonged to all his ancestors, he found that he had soared right into the very midst of a golden mist. Some people say and believe (though I am not wise enough in bird-lore to know the truth of it), that the lark family have eyes almost like a microscope; things invisible to ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... their king, every one, even the priests, were full of his praises. The wisdom and circumspection of his plans and modes of government, his unwearied industry, the moderation he had always shown, the keenness of his wit, were, each and all, subjects of admiration. "How Egypt has prospered under Amasis' government!" said a Nomarch. "And what glory he gained for our arms, by the conquest of Cyprus and the war with the Libyans!" cried one of the generals. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... my unique position I witnessed the trial of them all. I saw tanks dragging rotary plows and others equipped with devices like electricfans but with blades of hardened steel sharpened to razor keenness. The only thing this latter gadget did was to scatter more potential nuclei to ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... could still hear and see and smell with all the keenness of a young animal or a savage. And that must have made his sense of being alive very much more vivid than is the case ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... sharp change. And what we need in change is surely keenness. For instance, if one wanted to go sailing in the old days, one left London, had a bleak drive in the country, got nearer and nearer the sea, felt the cold and wet and discomfort growing on one, and after half a day or a day's gradual introduction to the thing, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... his contribution to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his master. Surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department of human inquiry than Plato. He may not have had the originality or keenness of Socrates, but he was more profound. He was pre-eminently a great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his "Dialogues" are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... in its interests doing much for the men. And in his principle of action he is not an exception, but a common type of the Anglican padre as I have met them in many lands. They are trained and encouraged to 'push their own show.' But this keenness on one's 'own show' rather than on men, is the very essence of the sin of schism, and the very root of Pharisaism. Now, as a rule, all the sects stand for their 'own show' first, and men know it. I am ashamed to be a parson today. Men were not made for any ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... no means ended. Felgate, to all appearance docile and penitent, nursed his wrath within him, and kept his eye open, with all the keenness of a sportsman, to the slightest opening for a revenge. In a quiet way he continued to do a great deal in the house to thwart the spirit of enterprise which was at present knitting all factions together. He sneered in a superior way at the enthusiasm all round him, and succeeded in making ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... correctness of his personality. Clothes, slight figure, clear-cut, thin, sun-tanned face, pose, all this was so good that it was saved from the danger of banality only by the mobile black eyes of a keenness that one doesn't meet every day in the south of France and still less in Italy. Another thing was that, viewed as an officer in mufti, he did not look sufficiently professional. That imperfection was ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... quite a different key from his key of business, turned also low and gentle, and soothed and secretly won the hearer by its deep, rich and pleasant modulation and variety; and his eye turned deeper in color, and, losing its keenness and restlessness, dwelt calmly and pensively for minutes at a time upon some little household object close to Susan; seldom, unless quite ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... dreamland of the new reason that More touches the great problems which were fast opening before the modern world, problems of labour, of crime, of conscience, of government. Merely to have seen and to have examined questions such as these would prove the keenness of his intellect, but its far-reaching originality is shown in the solutions which he proposes. Amidst much that is the pure play of an exuberant fancy, much that is mere recollection of the dreams of ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... my grandfather and that proud day for Clump, the keenness with which he had felt our rudeness, and the excitement of recital were, all together, too much for our good old castellan. The erectness of his figure gave way as he concluded, the enthusiasm in his features faded into dejection, and, as he turned from ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... the back iron which is fixed on the saw will ensure the saw feeding into the work quite fast enough. If the saw is newly sharpened it will, in fact, be an advantage to slightly ease the weight of the saw from off the wood, owing to the keenness of its edge. If the halving is a very wide one, additional cuts may be sawn between the outside marks, and these will greatly facilitate the removal of the waste wood when paring it away. For sawing the joint reference may be made to the chapter ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... route to the east, as he saw the high elevation in that direction, and George laughed, as he said, slyly: "John is still after the caves," and Harry laughed, as he recalled the keenness with which John had arranged ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Cotabanama bent his gigantic bow, and was on the point of launching one of his three-pronged arrows, but Lopez rushed upon him and wounded him with his sword. The other Indians, struck with panic, had already fled. Cotabanama, dismayed at the keenness of the sword, cried out that he was Juan de Esquibel, claiming respect as having exchanged names with the Spanish commander. Lopez seized him with one hand by the hair, and with the other aimed a thrust at his body; but the cacique struck down the sword with his hand, and, grappling with his antagonist, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the fire I will strive to follow With all the strength and endurance of my body, The power of my will, The keenness of my mind, The warmth of my heart, And ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... has often more weight than many words spoken; and Ruth, who read the good doctor's face with the keenness of a child's perception, was the first to see an expression of hope shining upon it. When the day came for the bandages to be removed, Eva's father and mother were so dreadfully agitated, that they had to leave the room. Trembling, they stood outside in the hall, waiting for the happy ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... movement. All about him had become alive. Vitality, like the vitality of youth upon mountain tops, pulsed and whirled about them, pouring into them the currents of a rushing glorious life, undiluted, straight from the source. In his little person he felt both the keenness of sharp steel and the vast momentum of a whole ocean. Thus he describes it. And the more clearly he uttered in his thoughts the sound given to him by his leader, the greater seemed the influx of strength ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... from the hand of a horseman a long, curved blade of razor-keenness and with a heavy back. The Master glanced significantly at Brodeur, who knelt by the switchboard with one steady hand on a brass lever, the other on the control ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... attained by the myriad lessons in nicety of balance and of aim that only practice can give. The danger of the inverse procedure, judging of self by what one observes in others, if it is carried on with much impartiality and keenness of discernment, is that it has a laming effect, enfeebling the energies of indignation and scorn, which are the proper scourges of wrong-doing and meanness, and which should continually feed the wholesome restraining power of public opinion. I respect the horsewhip when applied ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the set policy of his band was to take refuge in flight whenever, in the daytime, a man was descried, no matter at what distance. Lobo's habit of permitting the pack to eat only that which they themselves had killed, was in numerous cases their salvation, and the keenness of his scent to detect the taint of human hands or the poison itself, ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... of her mind seemed read by Mrs Delvile, who examined her with eyes of such penetrating keenness, that they rather made discoveries than enquiries. She was silent some time, and looked irresolute how to proceed; but at length, she arose, and taking Cecilia by the hand, who almost drew it back from her dread of what would follow, she said "I ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... action is such as would be ordered by the commander, were the latter present and in possession of the facts, has enough encouragement to go ahead confidently. He must possess the loyalty to carry out the plans of his superior and the keenness to recognize and to seize opportunities to further ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... expectancy in it. Byrne was conscious of being warm, too warm. It was close in the room, and he was weighted down. It was as if another presence had stepped into the room and stood invisible. He felt it with unspeakable keenness, as when one knows certainly the thoughts which pass in the mind of another. And, more than that, he knew that the others in the room felt what he felt. In the waiting silence he saw that the old man ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... her face with a keenness that somewhat belied his professed incapacity to be in earnest, and remarked ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... were not of a kind at once to tickle the fancy of such as she. Yet Dante looked at her curiously, though without ostentation, as one whose way it is instinctively to observe all men and all women with an exceeding keenness ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... be delighted by the keenness of Clarendon's observations, and by the sober majesty of his style, till we forget the oppressor and the bigot in the historian."—Macaulay, Essays, vol. ii. ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... places they were of their old flinty hardness. Yet Piegan crossed at a lope places where neither MacRae nor I could glimpse a sign—and when we would come again to soft ground the trail of the three would rise up to confront us, and bid us marvel at the keenness of his vision. He had a gift that ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... intelligence and keenness enough to see his peril—the danger threatening his character as a man, just as much as that which threatened his life. He cared vastly more, he discovered, for what he considered honor and integrity than he did for life. He saw that it was bad for ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... and I saw The Bradder nearly every day. His keenness on the college increased instead of wearing off with time, and he seemed to be exactly the right kind of man to be a don. His energy was really terrific, and I received more goads than I could endure conveniently, so I passed some of them on to Jack and chose those which I liked ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... brought from Bart was a quick turn of the head and a warning growl. It meant as plainly as though he had spoken in so many words: "Stay where you are and I don't care in the least what you do, but don't try to cross this entrance if you fear the length of my teeth and the keenness thereof." And she did fear them, very much, for she remembered the gashes across the back and the terrible rips up the side, ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... at the keenness of his sight; for, inclosed in each man's body, he saw the outline of his soul. But the dead man's body was empty, like a cage without a bird. He also read the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the circle of this work. Read prayerfully. We learn how to pray by reading prayerfully. This Book does not reveal its sweets and strength to the keen mind merely, but to the Spirit enlightened mind. All the mental keenness possible, with the bright light of the Spirit's illumination—that is the open sesame. I have sometimes sought the meaning of some passage from a keen scholar who could explain the orientalisms, the fine philological distinctions, the most accurate translations, and ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... we are told, "confusion was inevitable. Mr. Durant hovered about, excited, anxious, yet reassured by the enthusiasm of the students, who entered with eagerness into the new world. He superintended feeding the hungry, answered questions, and studied with great keenness the faces of the girls who were entering Wellesley College. In the middle of the afternoon it had been discovered that no bell had been provided for waking the students, so a messenger went to the village to beg help of Mrs. Horton (the ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Children have a keenness of judgment, and a delicacy of impression which would not be imagined, unless one has studied them. Justice and equity are easily born in their minds, for they possess, above all things, positive logic. Profit by all this. There are unjust and harsh words which remain ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had commenced in the seemingly dead mass of human affection that had lain so long neglected in his being, and it seemed strange to him that, while he was living for the child in the City, she should be so indifferent to him at home. For already he had begun to keep his vow, already his greater keenness in business was remarked in the City. But it boded little good for either that the gift of God should stir up in him the worship of Mammon. More sons are damned by their fathers' money than by anything else whatever outside ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... bed) on a business footing. She found in him the same carelessness of the world and its obligations that there was in herself, but found it carried to the point of scorn and allied to a tenacity of purpose and a keenness of vision which she had never owned. Not a reproach escaped him—less, she thought, from generosity than because he chose to concentrate his mind on something useful. It was no use lamenting the past; it might be possible to undo it for all practical purposes. The affair ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... the morning after her translation to the Emporium Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical satisfaction. The force of contrast gave an added keenness to the luxury of lying once more in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking across a spacious sunlit room at a breakfast-table set invitingly near the fire. Analysis and introspection might come later; but for the moment she was not even troubled by the excesses ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... that in examining himself in prospect of his approaching licence he had felt afraid that he loved the thought of a study, and a pulpit, and a manse, and its inhabitants, and, indeed, the whole prospective life of a minister, with more keenness of affection than he loved the souls of men, or even his Master Himself. And he put that most distressing difficulty also before Rutherford. Now there was an expression on that matter that was common in the pulpits of Rutherford's ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... his two young uninvited guests with new keenness in the morning light. Molly was demure enough, though there was a lurking gleam in her dark eye which suggested rather armed truce than accepted peace. As for Madeleine, though to be serene was an actual necessity of her delicate nature, there was more than resignation in the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... espied Sir Tristram's sword, and the strange device of a serpent which was upon the handle. She said it was a marvellous piece of work, and never had she seen the like of it. Then, by ill hap, she drew the sword from the scabbard, and they both admired it a long time, looking at its keenness and brightness and the words ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... Kate Hogan was sitting in the chimney corner, smoking a pipe, and as she took it out of her mouth to whiff away the smoke from time to time, she turned her black piercing eyes alternately from Bryan M'Mahon to Kathleen with a peculiar keenness of scrutiny. ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... depends upon the keenness of vision of the observer, and the transparency of the atmosphere. Argelander counted at Bonn more than 3,000 stars, and Hozeau, near the equator, where all the stars of the sphere successively appear in ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... and establishing competing telephone exchanges all over the country, greatly facilitated the spread of the idea and the growth of the business, and familiarized the people with the use of the telephone as a business agency; while the keenness of the competition, extending to the agents and employees of both companies, brought about a swift but quite unforeseen and unlooked-for expansion in the individual exchanges of the larger cities, and a corresponding advance in their importance, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... in Munich several influential Bavarians, thanks to the hospitality and keenness of our Consul-General there, Mr. Smallbones. There was no ill-feeling of any kind towards English people, and, indeed, I met with no insult or cold treatment either from the working class or upper classes in Bavaria—only some surprise as at a rare visitor. For there are extremely ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... But it had to be passed to gain the skiff; and with collar turned up and hat-brim pulled down and head hunched low, he entered the dim sphere of betrayal, walked under its penny's-worth of flame, and glided toward the shadows beyond, his eyes straining with the preternatural keenness of the hunted at every ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... he hastened into the courtyard, attended by Gregory's grandchildren. One was in his arms, two others held by his plaid, and a third played with the sword he had unbuckled from his side. It was a clear frosty day, and the keenness of the air brightened the complexion of Wallace, while it deepened the roses of his infant companions. The leader of the Scottish escort immediately proclaimed to the embassadors that this was the regent. ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... arose in this small space; torches and firebrands were brought from all quarters to consume this formidable engine, while arrows and bullets were showered down without cessation on the assailants. But the keenness of the ram prevailed over every means of defence, digging through the mortar of the recently cemented stones, which ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... had cause to repudiate this opinion in a conviction which was less to the credit of the acumen of Tsiskwa than a full confession of his breach of etiquette in tormenting his young "grandfather" might have been. At the time Savanukah felt a certain, malicious pride in the old man's keenness and poise and capacity, and he said apart to the inquisitive bystanders that, as might have been expected, the big bird, Tsiskwa-yah, had pounced upon the little bird, Tscholen-tit—for the name of each signifies a bird in their respective languages, and the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... his power and his success? First undoubtedly was the keenness of his eye. "I have been all over the world and I have never come across a man with as keen an eye as Mr. Style" said one of his former pupils. He seemed to look quite through a man and there was no thought of evasion with him. Then there was his thoroughness. ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... to recall that morning! I had brought fifty-three men from the Base, reinforcements for the Divisional Artillery, and half-believed that the war could not proceed unless I delivered them to their destination in the shortest possible time; and my indignant keenness when I reached the village behind the long dark wood and learned that no one there knew anything about the two lorries that were to transport my party the remainder of the journey to the Front! Did I not rouse ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... of the deepest friendliness and sympathy with you—as a fellow-member of the same family, I may say—and with the highest ideals and the honor of that family always in view. [CURT makes no comment. SHEFFIELD unconsciously begins to adopt the alert keenness of the cross-examiner.] First, let me ask you, is it your intention to take that five o'clock ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... period after Wellington's death, the nation once more found itself drawn into a European war, there were many whose regret for his removal was quickened into greater keenness. "Had we but the Duke to lead our armies!" was the common cry; but even his military genius might have found itself disastrously fettered, had he occupied the position which his ancient subordinate and comrade, Lord Raglan, was made to assume. It may be doubted ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... real life, but on the merits of the debaters. Among those merits the substance should count much more than the form. Of the points that count in judging the substance of the debate the instructions may note keenness of analysis, power of exposition, thoroughness of preparation, judgment in the selection of evidence, readiness and effectiveness in rebuttal, and grasp of the subject as a whole. For form the instructions may mention bearing, ease and appropriateness of gesture, quality and expressiveness of voice, ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... essays on the most interesting subjects of the time, religious, or political; in which the titles of the books or pamphlets prefixed furnish only the name and occasion of the disquisition. I do not arraign the keenness, or asperity of its damnatory style, in and for itself, as long as the author is addressed or treated as the mere impersonation of the work then under trial. I have no quarrel with them on this account, as long as no personal allusions are admitted, and no re-commitment (for new trial) of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the emergency, there are some which directly affect the wage-earner. One is the failure of wages to keep pace with the higher cost of living; another is the increase in the number and proportion of wage-earning women and the resultant keenness of competition for places; another is the fact that women workers are for the most part unorganized and unprotected; another is the occasional effect of supplementary wages of vice in lowering the wages of women in industry; still another is the constant temptation of shop-girls ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... upon the table so that the one I had marked stood by my plate. Eight o'clock struck during these preparations; supper was brought and we immediately took our places. The crew lay about on the deck, and seemed very good humored. When the keenness of their appetite was appeased, they began to drink, and the officers broke the necks ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... me of an admirable epigram that was produced in Rhodesia. Out there food is commonly known as "skoff," just as "chop" is the equivalent in the Congo. A former Resident Commissioner, noted for the keenness of his wit, once asked a travelling missionary to dine with him. After the meal the guest insisted upon holding a religious service at the table. In speaking of the performance the Commissioner said: "My guest came to 'skoff' ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... helpless before their own consciousness, and Mikky, divining the trouble with that exquisite keenness of a spirit sent from heaven to make earth brighter, conceived the bright idea of giving each of his comrades some article of his apparel as a remembrance. Mr. Endicott came upon the scene just in time to keep Mikky from taking off his overcoat and enveloping Buck in its ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... those well-poised pinions Faltered, and beat the air unevenly; Nor shall the Bird maintain its proud dominions If those wings lapse from rhythm, pulse awry. Vain power of beak and claw, keenness of eye, Or pride of crested head, if those broad vanes Beat without balance true the clouded sky. The lord of those etherial domains, Once wing-maimed, pitiless fate to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... me with the keenness of a Venetian. He accosted me and congratulated me on my luck, but I gave him no answer, and seeing that I wished to remain incognito he ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... midway between things and persons. We own them, use them, kill them, even, for our own purposes. Yet they have feelings, impulses, and affections in common with ourselves. In some respects they surpass us. In strength, in speed, in keenness of scent, in fidelity, blind instinct in the animal is often superior to ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... kirtle and cloak, and armed as yet only with a gilded helmet, surmounted with a pair of hawk's wings, and a sword girt to his side. His face, though regular and handsome, would have been rather too grave and reserved but for the keenness of his eyes, and a very pleasant smile which at times lit up his features ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... an attack from a churchman of extraordinary keenness and insight into the progress of the new philosophy. In the Systme de la Nature he recognized the hand of the author of La Contagion sacre and the Essai sur les prjugs and dealt with it as he did the Christianisme dvoil. Buzonniere, Rochfort and Fangouse are milder and more naive ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... me and leading me forth with His hand through my whole life, I shall willingly, since it hath seemed good to Him, have given my eyes their long holiday. And to you I now bid farewell, with a mind not less brave and steadfast than if I were Lynceus himself for keenness of sight." Religion and philosophy, of which no brighter example was ever given, did not, in this sore trial, disdain the support of a ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... dangerous effect upon the mind, relaxing the brain, and even causing some of its functions to cease. It hinders clear reasoning, and in many cases brings on incipient paralysis. It is a fruitful source of cancerous diseases of the mouth. It destroys keenness of vision. It is of no use to quote exceptional cases in such an argument. Great men have smoked, as some great men have habitually drunk, to excess. But that is no argument for the average man of whom we speak. The very difficulty he has in giving up the use of tobacco indicates a diseased state ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... was an anxious moment, as any one who has gone through a closely-contested parliamentary election can testify. For ten days or more the strain had been great, but, curiously enough, now at its climax it seemed to have lost its grip of me. I watched the denoument of the game with keenness and interest indeed, but as though I were not immediately and personally concerned. I felt that I had done my best to win, and no longer cared whether my efforts ended in success or failure. Possibly this was the result of the apathy that falls upon overstrained nerves. Possibly I was oppressed by ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... appearance gone, and would have liked to win himself a considerable position and a little (very little) money as a lawyer; but the study, in the broadest sense, of which these years were full, evidently contemplated a larger education of himself as a man than professional keenness, or any such interest as he had in law, will explain. Middle-aged and from his own point of view a failure, he was set upon making ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... his uncle could he be so cruel to leave him the chateau and no money?" Mademoiselle asked; and Kathleen and Jimmy stood amazed at the sudden keenness of her interest in what seemed to them the ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... they were not in such soft condition as one might have anticipated, seeing that they had been confined within the barbed-wire entanglements about Ruhleben for many months past. The keenness and energy of youth, the fact that they had many companions, had helped them to keep their muscles in tolerable order, for games had been possible and football was quite a favourite. Hence a sprint along that road was not beyond them, and, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... gentlemen residents, called by Thomas Goadsby, Esq., Mayor of Manchester, was held in the Town Hall of that city, to consider the propriety of forming a relief committee. '"The late Mr Richard Cobden, M.P., attended, and recommended a bold appeal to the whole country, declaring with prophetic keenness of vision that not less than 1,000,000 pounds would be required to carry the suffering operatives through the crisis, whilst the subscriptions up to that date amounted only to 180,000 pounds." On the motion of a vote of thanks to the Mayor of Manchester, ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... 'or if it's to be Master Archdale,'" retorted Elizabeth, smiling into the laughing eyes fixed upon her face, and making them fall at the keenness of her glance, while a brighter rose than Katie cared to show tinted the creamy skin and made her bend a moment to arrange the rosette of her slipper. The movement showed her hair in all its perfection, for at this early hour it had not been tortured ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... morals is higher than it was. For, if we omit, as excluded from the question, the penal restraints—religious and legal—and ask what is the ultimate moral restraint to the aggression of man on man, we find it to be—sympathy with the pain inflicted. Now the keenness of the sympathy, depending on the vividness with which this pain is realised, varies with the conditions of the case. It may be active enough to check misdeeds which will cause great suffering; and yet not be active enough to check misdeeds ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... have a second line to fall back upon when the wall gives way, which it will do ere long, for it is sorely shaken and battered. It is most important to keep this from the knowledge of the Spaniards. Now, lads, you have shown your keenness by taking notice of what is going on, see if you cannot go further, and hit upon some plan of catching this traitor at his work. If before night we can think of no scheme, I must go to the governor and tell him frankly that we have suspicions of treachery, though we cannot prove them, and ask ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... man suffered more than he, passed through greater tragedies, experienced keener remorse, and withal he came and went in a careful, correct way, ever and ever prolonging his career of mediocrity, like one whom many may have forgotten, but whom keenness ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... not know why he said this, unless in the first keenness of his disappointment there was a satisfaction in telling her that the objection to his age would apply also to Guy. But it did not affect Maddy one whit, or give her the slightest inkling of his meaning. He saw it did not, ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... expense of ease, of leisure, of the comforts and luxuries of life, and a zeal for the cultivation of the mental faculties. It is of the soul and not of the body; it refines, elevates, adorns. It is allied to sensibility, to keenness of vision, to the close observation of mental phenomena. Its possessor becomes a citizen of the known world. His mind broadens; he compares, contrasts, conciliates; he brings together the new and the old, the near and the distant, the permanent ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... what's in his hand," said "Peachy," when the moment for prayer arrived. "Peachy" was not unfamiliar with religious services, and had, with unusual keenness of observation, noted that when a man undertook to pray he must, if he be true, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... immovable, waiting for what would happen. The rhinoceros, too, held himself rigidly immovable, his nostrils dilating between snorts, his ears turning; for his senses of smell and hearing made up in their keenness for the defects ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... And what can be a more monstrous anachronism than to turn a flat-headed savage into a clever, self-conscious, argumentative utilitarian of the eighteenth century; working the social problem out in his flat head with a keenness, a consistency, a grasp of first principles, that would have entitled him to a chair in the institute of moral sciences, and entering the social union with the calm and reasonable deliberation of a great statesman taking a critical step in policy? Aristotle was wiser ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... entertain in the lavish fashion for which he had gained a reputation; but sometimes he was alone, and then his solitude became more oppressive than it had ever been even in the farthest wastes of the northland. He was made to feel his responsibility with dreadful keenness, for his associates were in a panic and bombarded him with daily inquiries, vexatious and hard to answer. He had hoped that in this extremity they might give him some practical help, and they did make a few half- hearted attempts, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... although it required all her keenness to detect it, there seemed to be something of unusual respect in the voice and manner of Dolores whenever she spoke to Rita. A touch of special kindness came with it. Not a sign of harshness showed itself all the ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... destinies, immediate as well as remote, there were moments when its pulses were deadened, and a thick, brooding, unhappy melancholy took possession of it, as she thought of what she had lost. A pang—it was that of disappointed love—from time to time made itself felt with keenness, and the morning found her restless and ill at ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... corners of the world—and his books of travel were uniformly interesting and successful. They do not attract to-day, not, as Park Benjamin put it, because Taylor travelled more and saw less than any other man who ever lived, but because they lack the charm of style, depth of thought, and keenness of observation which the present ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... took so familiar an attitude toward him—this was the judge's "ministerial" friend! Yet, had there not been mention of "ritualistic work" and "Early Christians" in his conversation? And this woman of whom he spoke,—it took no great keenness of perception to see that the "strawberry blonde" must be the "child of six or eight years" whom he had called "Daisy," and sometimes "Strawberry!" Here was confirmation of Alvord's suspicion, if his allusion to the violation of an "obligation" expressed suspicion. Here was ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... there proposed, with a capital of L200,000. More than this, the all absorbing subject in all the West India papers at the present moment is that of the currency. Why such anxiety to provide the means of paying for labor which is to become valueless? Why such keenness for a good circulating medium if they are to have nothing to sell? The complaints about the old fashioned coinage we venture to assort have since the first of August occupied five times as much space in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... nuns' perpetual black dress, and ungraceful headgear,—Madelon hated them all, as she gradually recovered from her first desolation, and became alive again to external impressions; and, as the first keenness of her sorrow wore off, this vague sense of general unhappiness and discomfort showed itself in an attitude of opposition and defiance to every one and everything around her. From being helplessly wretched and cross, she became distinctly naughty, and before ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... before them, studded with dwarf pines and cedar thickets. They are evidently traveling with caution, for the quick eye of Antoine, the guide, has discovered recent Indian signs upon the trail, and with the keenness of a mountaineer he at once sees that it is that of a war-party, for there were no horses with them and after one or two of the moccasin tracks there was the mark of a rope which trailed upon the ground. This was enough to show him that the Indians were provided with the usual ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... It was long an unsettled point whether the condor discovers the dead animals on which it feeds by the power of sight or of scent; but Darwin, by several experiments, has settled the question in favour of the bird's keenness of vision. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... with rigid accuracy: I will do them justice—to do it perfectly; but granted that, as speedily as possible: and, their work over, to amuse themselves—literally: to play games that they enjoyed with childish keenness, and fill up all the day with them; to read the papers; to play whist; to smoke in the sun; to get through a certain amount of general reading for conversational purposes, and to gossip about one another and their doings, and talk ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... watch? Not at all: a telescope might have swept the parishes of Tipton and Freshitt, the whole area visited by Mrs. Cadwallader in her phaeton, without witnessing any interview that could excite suspicion, or any scene from which she did not return with the same unperturbed keenness of eye and the same high natural color. In fact, if that convenient vehicle had existed in the days of the Seven Sages, one of them would doubtless have remarked, that you can know little of women by following them about in their pony-phaetons. Even with a microscope directed on ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... for dinner Elsa discovered a note on the floor of her cabin. The writing was unfamiliar. She opened it and sought first the signature. Slowly her cheeks reddened, and her lips twisted in disdain. She did not read the note, but the natural keenness of her eye caught the name of Warrington. She tore the letter into scraps which she tossed out the port-hole. What a vile thing the man was! He had had the effrontery to sign his name. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... been more alert than they. Five pairs of trained ears listened for every sound that rose above the steady drip of the rain, five pairs of eyes, uncommonly keen in their keenness, watched the bushes whence the first faint signals of approach had come. Now they heard more distinctly that brushing of clothing against the bushes, and then a muttered oath or two. Evidently the strangers were white men, perhaps daring hunters who were not afraid to enter ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Maurier could have written "Trilby," it seems to me it would have been an American rather than a full-blooded Englishman. The keenness of the American appreciation of the book corresponds to elements in the American nature. The Anglo-French blend of Mr. Du Maurier's literary genius finds nearer analogues in American literature than in ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... but should doubtless receive full instructions in a day or two; and he had called to-day more to keep his word with Bart than to enter upon an actual business transaction. Nothing could be franker and more open than his way and manner in saying this; and as he was trained to keenness of observation, he may have detected the flitting smile that just hovered on Bart's lips. After a little pleasant commonplace talk of common things, the leisurely Greer took a cordial leave, and never ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... the sere ground and under the stripped trees. The flecklessness of her long gloves drew your thoughts to winter rather—to its one beauteous gift dropped from soiled clouds. A slender toque brought out the keenness in the oval of her face. From it rose one backward-sweeping feather of green shaded to coral at the tip; and there your fancy may have cared to see lingering the last radiance ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew, Thou mak'st thy knife keen; but no metal can, No, not the hangman's axe, bear half the keenness Of thy sharp envy. Can ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... surprised her. She smiled tremulously. She had always considered the wary German worth capturing, but he was an elusive bird. Admiration had never before got the better of his self-possession; now for the first time he appeared to be carried away by it. The keenness of conquest thrilled her. Jack?—ah, yes, poor Jack! But he was practically lost to her for ever. She sighed a little; she had been fond of Jack, but the love that can stand against the inevitable was not hers. She reminded herself that Jack had preferred Valerie—but, ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... Mr. Clarence Day, Jr., speculates with so much whimsicality upon the possible effects of surgical rejuvenation of men that one might overlook the keenness of his observation in a hurried perusal of his article. For the sake of preserving it for more leisurely study, and because the points raised are really worthy of attention, the article is reproduced here in full, with acknowledgments to The Literary Review, in which it first appeared, of ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... now in the keenness of his remembered emotion: the church faded into a far horizon, he felt the slight heave of the ship and heard the creaking of the wheel as the steersman shifted his hands; from aloft came the faint slapping of the bunt lines on rigid canvas, the loose hemp slippers of the crew sounded across ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... stealth and painful slowness. A broken cane here and patch of dead leaves crushed into the black mold there gave slender hints that a party might have passed that way; and every ear was attuned to preternatural keenness for human sounds, for the eye could not pierce ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... in imminent danger; we had out all the firearms we could muster; these amounted to two rifles, two shot guns, and five revolvers. I watched with great keenness the motion of their arms that gives the propulsion to their spears, and the instant I observed that, I ordered a discharge of the two rifles and one gun, as it was no use waiting to be speared first. I delayed almost a second too long, for at the instant ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... him by these wolves in sheeps clothing? Even Mr. Thompson, whose attention is apt to be otherwise directed, the moment he falls in conversation with Palmer and Bunce, scents out the fraud with all the instinctive keenness of a blood hound—Mr. Kasson on the same track, hardly the length of a nose behind, and unwilling to be outdone in sagacity, echoes the howlings of his leader. Judge Stillwell, tho' it seems the dullest of the pack, follows hard and ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... brightness was answered by our own.' Sir Charles occupied himself with buying land at Broadstairs, where the climate was specially favourable to his wife's health, but as the plans for building on it progressed, he could note that the keenness of her interest 'drooped and died.' After the beginning of August there were no more dinner-parties, and although those who came to the house—of whom Sir William Harcourt was the last to be admitted—found its mistress wearing a gay face, the gloom deepened over her, and she suffered acutely ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... that colours his criticism of political vice or weakness. Some of the national failings on the social side which Shakespeare rebukes may seem trivial at a first glance. But it is the voice of prudent patriotism which prompts each count in the indictment. The keenness of Shakespeare's insight is attested by the circumstance that every charge has a modern application. None is yet ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... ready raconteur. We were such friends! Again Miss Walker had both of us for attendants; but upon such widely different footing. I was a suitor with many doubts. Douglas was not a suitor at all. He came to her to enjoy the keenness ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... She had settled at Pera for the winter, and she had arranged his life for him. From the moment of Jimmy's departure Dion had given himself entirely to her. He had even given himself with a sort of desperation. She had been aware of his fierce concentration, and she had tasted it with a keenness of pleasure, she had savored it deliberately and fully in the way of an epicure. The force of his resolution towards evil—it was just that—had acted upon her abominably sensitive temperament as a strong tonic. That period had been the time when, to her, the game was worth the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... that this might do for men, but that women were far more conscientious, and, if they were once compelled to vote, they would wish to know what they were voting for. This seemed to me to contain the whole philosophy of the matter; and I respected the keenness of her suggestion, though it led me to ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... declared that she was positively in love with her host; but she could hardly make this declaration—even in the strictest confidence—to Acton himself. It gave her, nevertheless, a pleasure that had some of the charm of unwontedness to feel, with that admirable keenness with which she was capable of feeling things, that he had a disposition without any edges; that even his humorous irony always expanded toward the point. One's impression of his honesty was almost like carrying a bunch of flowers; ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... keenness that is akin to beauty, as the thorn to the flower. So sarcasm is not unbecoming in woman, though coming from her it hurts. But ridicule which savours of bulkiness woman had better leave to our sublime sex. The masculine Falstaff makes our sides split, but a feminine ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... those lively streets of Paris that mask the keenness of their commerce with so festive a face, were sunlit as they passed on their way, and along the boulevards the trees were gracious with young green. They went at the even and leisurely pace which is natural in that ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... means ended. Felgate, to all appearance docile and penitent, nursed his wrath within him, and kept his eye open, with all the keenness of a sportsman, to the slightest opening for a revenge. In a quiet way he continued to do a great deal in the house to thwart the spirit of enterprise which was at present knitting all factions together. He sneered in a superior way at the enthusiasm all round him, and succeeded in making one or ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... task for which he seemed providentially set apart. But beneath these arguments, which rise Alp on Alp, there lurked a quiet perception of humor, and the reductio ad absurdum, which he occasionally drives home, showed the keenness of Puritan wit. How he must have smiled, nay even laughed, in the midst of his abstractions at that[E] metaphysical animal which illustrates the absurdity of his opponents. When 'The Freedom of the Will' was finished, and the author had sent it forth to do battle, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... favored people for their defence. The history of later nations has shown us that they have found more in the strength of the hills than defences against the attacks of outside enemies; that they have drawn from them a moral vigor of character, a keenness and activity of intellect, and a love of country, which has produced the most enduring and elevated patriotism. And, indeed, we must bless God for mountains; those who live near them are larger, better, nobler than the denizens of the plains. "Flee to the mountains," cried ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... eyes. I heard a pebble stir under their feet. The tinkle of water falling down its ferny tunnel could be guessed at; and the beauty of the world stabbed one with such keenness ...
— The Blue Man - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... in his keenness, was spending the night on deck, "we ought by this time to be able to see something of that craft, a binnacle light, or a glimmer of some sort, to show us where she is! We are nearly abreast of the flag-ship, and I cannot ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... reflection. No, my Lord; I had, or, at least, I thought I had, better reasons. I remembered that you had once condescended to address me 'candidly, not critically,' that you had even kindly interested yourself on my behalf. I thought that, amid all the keenness and poignancy of your habitual feelings, as powerfully pourtrayed in your writings, I could discern the workings of a heart truly noble. I imagin'd that what to a superficial observer appear'd only the overflowings of misanthropy, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... activities. But this was different. With her own brother Will fighting in France, and another girl's brother Will a doctor in the American Hospital at Neuilly, near Paris, Grace was heart and soul with the Allies. Harry might have done much in other lines without attracting her attention, but his keenness to become a flier at the front had appealed to her pride, and she felt deeply any attempt to belittle the spirit that animated the boys, however remote might be the possibility ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... eye, whereof the keenness was but just duly chastened by courtesy, took note of that delicate and frail refinement which belonged both to Eleanor's person ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the citizen of Geneva a wrong. The ulterior motive is there, and the faint taste of a thesis in the most modern manner. But the method is saved by the perception which, though it sometimes lacks the perfect keenness of complete understanding, is exquisite enough to suggest the answer to the questions it does not satisfy. Though the environment is lavish the man is ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... time-honored refuge of tender and exalted souls, finding little solace in the domestic affections which played so small a role in their lives, they turned the whole force of their clear and flexible minds to this new species of sovereignty. Their keenness of vision, their consummate skill in the adaptation of means to ends, their knowledge of the world, their practical intelligence, their instinct of pleasing, all fitted them for the part they assumed. They distinctly ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... poems, and more frequently in his letters, are assuredly the natural outcome of these unsocial and laborious years. Burns was a man of sturdy independence; too often this independence became aggressive. He was a man of marvellous keenness of perception; too frequently did this manifest itself in a sulky suspicion, a harshness of judgment, and a bitterness of speech. We say this in no spirit of fault-finding, but merely point it out as a natural consequence of a wretched and leisureless existence. ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... angry to speak; but Miss Crawford, looking for a moment with astonished eyes at Mrs. Norris, and then at Fanny, whose tears were beginning to shew themselves, immediately said, with some keenness, "I do not like my situation: this place is too hot for me," and moved away her chair to the opposite side of the table, close to Fanny, saying to her, in a kind, low whisper, as she placed herself, "Never mind, my dear Miss Price, this is a cross evening: everybody is cross and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... words. Her eyes were brimming with life, her cheeks still touched to a deep, soft color by the keenness of ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... day, when Loveday came, nothing had been done—no chance of tete-a-tete with Hogarth: and that day was O'Hara an anxious and tremulous man, living on the tip-toe and qui vive of lynx-eyed keenness. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... endeavour and the triviality of the thing he attempted. The unhappiness of Philip's life at school had called up in him the power of self-analysis; and this vice, as subtle as drug-taking, had taken possession of him so that he had now a peculiar keenness in the dissection of his feelings. He could not help seeing that art affected him differently from others. A fine picture gave Lawson an immediate thrill. His appreciation was instinctive. Even Flanagan felt certain things which Philip was obliged ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... respected; a man universally acknowledged of infinite wit and most excellent fancy; one who gave peculiar grace to the jest, and could set the table in a roar with flashes of merriment: but wit and humour were not his only excellencies; he possessed a keenness of satire, that made Folly hide her head in the highest places, and Vice tremble in the bosoms of the great: but now, blessed with that affluence which genius and prudence are sure to acquire in England, the liberal patroness ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
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