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More "Sharpness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the pond nor took to his bed. He went round his fields just the same as before—perhaps a little more mechanically; but still the old routine of daily work was gone through. Leases, though for a short period, do not expire in a day; after awhile time began to produce its usual effect. The sharpness of the pain wore off, and he set to work to make the best of matters. He understood the capacity of each field as well as others understand the yielding power of a little garden. His former study had been to preserve something like a balance between what he put in and what he took ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of 94 years, and then came two old fellows who had each attained 93 years. Many of the recipients were too infirm to appear, but the oldest of them all, the lady of 96 came into court despite the sharpness of the wind and the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... life and liberty into his enemies' hands, by that action manifesting that he had absolute confidence in them, to the end they might repose as great an assurance in him. Caesar only opposed the authority of his countenance and the haughty sharpness of his rebukes to his mutinous legions in arms ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... he did lick with his tongue the mote out of his brother's eye, he did it with all tenderness, and with the tear in his own. His words wanted neither point nor edge for drawing the blood, when the case of the offender made it an indispensable duty; and when he was necessitated to use sharpness with any, they were convinced that he honestly and sincerely intended their spiritual good. His compassion on the ignorant and them that were out of the way, made it evident how much he considered himself as encompassed with infirmities, and so within the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... embraced, and so long and dearly prized, seemed in her altered views, inconsistent with self-respect. The corporal penances hitherto lightened and sweetened by the unction of Divine love, now assumed their worst sharpness, and excited her strongest repugnance. Importunate scruples were added to temptation, and while thus violently assailed on many sides, she seemed not to receive light or comfort from any. Her only support in these terrible interior trials ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... snapped Sinclair. Roger jerked back. Astro and Tom looked at the planter, startled by the sharpness in ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... cosmopolitan industrialism is capable of arousing in countless worthy breasts is shame at the idea of belonging to such a collectivity. It is obvious that the United States of America as they exist to-day impress a mind like General Lea's as so much human blubber. Where is the sharpness and precipitousness, the contempt for life, whether one's own, or another's? Where is the savage "yes" and "no," the unconditional duty? Where is the conscription? Where is the blood-tax? Where is anything that one ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... started, the neighbourhood was open; there was a suburban look about the locality; but entire rows of new dwellings now surround the school; the part in which it stands is densely populated; all grades of men, women, and children inhabit it; "civilisation"—rags, impudence, dirt, and sharpness, for they mean civilisation—has long prevailed in the immediate neighbourhood; a fine new brewery almost shakes hands with the building on one side; the "Sailor's Home" beershop stands sentry two doors off on the other. What more could you desire? A large ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... the autumn, and winter came, and I fared as I was wont, setting springes for fowl and small-deer. And for all the roughness of the season, at that time it pleased me better than the leafy days, because I had less memory then of the sharpness of my fear on that day of the altar. Now one day as I went under the snow-laden trees, I saw something bright and big lying on the ground, and drawing nearer I saw that it was some child of man: so I stopped and cried out, 'Awake and arise, lest death come on thee in this bitter cold,' ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... whole is in the most perfect keeping. The execution is not less remarkable, the relief is extremely high in parts (although it does not at first appear to be so, owing to the breadth of the composition), but, in spite of this difficulty, the truth, sharpness, and finish of every part have been preserved as well as they could possibly be on a medal, or even on a coin. The smaller seals for the provinces are engraved on one general design. The crown surmounts a central shield bearing the Royal Arms, below which ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... who had replied with insolent sharpness to a legitimate claim advanced by a certain princeling of the Confederated States—the Regent of Lippe-Detmold, Count Ernest von Lippe-Biesterfeld, has had occasion to see that public opinion severely condemns ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... She sat down. The sharpness had gone and her voice was shaking as she said: "You certainly must know, Ann, that he can't ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... station, for any one to see, and she thought to herself what a terrible disappointment it would be if, after all, this delightful, long-talked-of visit to Paris, were to turn out not delightful at all. And through Sylvia's honest little heart there darted a quick sting of pain and regret for her sharpness to Molly. How was it that she could not manage to keep the resolutions so often and so conscientiously made? How was it that she could not succeed in remembering at the time, the very moment at which she was ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... commonplaces are as fully conscious of the market value of their goods as any later poet who has borrowed from them their giants and enchanters, their forests and their magic castles; and these and similar properties are used in the twelfth century with the same kind of literary sharpness, the same attention to the demands of the "reading public," as is shown by the various poets and novelists who have waited on the successes, and tried to copy the methods, of Goethe, Scott, or Victor Hugo. Pure Romance, such as is found in the old Northern ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... She has the firmness and weight (without sharpness or pounding) of a man's playing—the strength and surety that most women lack and that some women know they lack. When she makes a slip she is ruthless with herself, and replays until the difficulty is overcome. And she ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... short-sight, "C'est le travail assidu, de pres.") states that he has repeatedly observed Europeans, who had been brought up and spent their whole lives with the wild Indians, who nevertheless did not equal them in the sharpness of their senses. The same naturalist observes that the cavities in the skull for the reception of the several sense- organs are larger in the American aborigines than in Europeans; and this probably indicates a corresponding difference in the dimensions ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the most part, in the Dutch school, and in architectural paintings, fruit-pieces, &c.; and we find that in proportion as the artist discards the comparatively unworthy minute accompaniments of his subject, and aims at unity of effect, so does he neglect sharpness of outline. Which is the correct practice—distinctness, or indistinctness of outline—will be differently judged by those who hold different opinions on painting in general. While one person will maintain that a picture, to be perfect, must be an exact copy of nature, in short ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... observer and noticed that, while eyes, teeth, hair, and rich complexion were identical, also the height and build, the expression was quite different. Where the first-comer was alert, bird-like, and possibly inclining to sharpness, the second was more dreamy, peaceful, and slow. She had called the one "Hope," and saw, with quick pleasure, that she was right, for as the girl stopped suddenly, abashed at finding a stranger in the ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... bowed with great alacrity, and took from the table a small glass cup, containing a fluid reddish in hue and subacid in taste. This was srub, a beverage in local repute, of questionable nature, but suspected of owing its tint and sharpness to some kind of syrup derived from the maroon-colored fruit of the sumac. There were similar small cups on the table filled with lemonade, and here and there a decanter of Madeira wine, of the Marsala kind, which some prefer ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... A dangerous, hard-mouthed, high-stalking, ill-given old coach-horse of a Kaunitz: fancy what the driving of him might be, on a road he did not like! But he had a driver too, who, in delicate adroitness, in patience and in sharpness of whip, was consummate: "You shall know it is your one road, my ill-given friend!" (I ostentatiously increase my Cavalry by 8,000; meaning, "A new Seven-Years War, if you force me, and Russia by my side this ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and seem as if just chiselled; but, saving these exceptions, the Cypriot figures have their angles rounded, and their projections softened down. It is like a page of writing, where the ink, before it had time to dry, preserving its sharpness of tone, has been absorbed by the blotting paper and has left ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... we to go?" said Gwendolen, with a trace of sharpness in her tone. She felt a new current of fear passing ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the West Side. You belong on the West Side. By no possibility could your captain have interfered if you chose the public hall for any discussion," said the Madame, with sudden sharpness. "I want all you freshmen to understand that: The school captains must ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... galleries, and arches falling to the precipices below: all this in miniature; built up in a tiny space; all this encompassed with formidable ramparts, and hooked on to the flanks of gigantic Sinai! From the sharpness and thinness of the air, we know that we are at an excessive height, and yet we seem to be at the bottom of a well. On every side the extreme peaks of Sinai enclose us, as they mount and scale the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... small consumption of coal. They were not, however, what "Jack" had been accustomed to consider "dry ships." The ship built Dutchman fashion, with her bluff ends, is the driest of all ships, but the least steady, because she rises to every sea. But the new ships, because of their length and sharpness, precluded this; for, though they rose sufficiently to an approaching wave for all purposes of safety, they often went through the crest of it, and, though shipping a little water, it was not only easier for the vessel, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... pitched and tossed dizzily, and by the cold air that surged on his face, and the spray that spattered him, Ned knew that he was moving at rapid speed. Suddenly a cry rang in his ears with the sharpness of a pistol shot and reverberated through the cavern. An instant later he felt a violent concussion on the right, and reaching out his hand he touched ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... breakfasting yesterday morning, I happened to make this remark (though without any sharpness), and just then our Lucas, who, as an old servant, sometimes allows himself a little familiarity, had the door swung triumphantly open to admit him, bearing something, I knew not what, wrapped in tissue paper, which he deposited with great care on the table, giving ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... oligarch, who got up from a writing-desk with a slightly senile jerk. He had a gleaming bald head and glasses; the lower part of his face was masked with a short, dark beard, which did not conceal a beaming smile, not unmixed with sharpness. He stooped a little as he ran, like some sedentary head clerk or cashier; and even without the cheque-book and papers on his desk would have given the impression of a merchant or man of business. He was dressed in a light grey check jacket. He was the Duke of Windsor, the great Unionist statesman. ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... which is not wintry and forbidding. There is warmth of summer in both tales, and thrilling air and the beauty of the wild countryside. As for the cold, it is severe in most parts of Canada, but the air is dry, and the sharpness is not felt as it is in this damper climate of England. Canadians feel the cold of a March or November day in London far more than the cold of a day in Winnipeg, with the thermometer many degrees below zero. Both ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... both a first- rate sword and a first-rate swordsman, such as both Valiant and his Jerusalem blade were. Ha! yes. This is a right wonderful blade we have now in our hand. For this sword was forged in no earthly fire; and it was whetted to its unapproachable sharpness on no earthly whetstone. But, best of all for us, when a good soldier of Jesus Christ has this sword girt on his thigh he is able then to go forth against himself with it; against his own only and worst enemy—that is, against himself. As here, against his own wildness of head ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... drew Dinah Morris from her favorite aunt, who was a Methodist exhorter, and the power and spontaneity of this novel came from the sharpness and clearness of her early impressions, joined to her love of living over again her girlhood days, before doubt had clouded her sky. Also read Silas Marner with its perfect picture of Raveloe, "an English village where many of the old echoes lingered, ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... sharpness in Steve's demand that suggested doubt. He did not doubt the woman's story. It was her assertion that Cy had murdered his partner. He saw no evidence for her assumption. He felt that she had given run to her own ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... papers into his portfolio, and shut it up with a snap of embarrassment, a sort of confession of weakness. He pushed back his chair with the same sharpness, almost making a noise upon the old Turkey carpet, and he touched his bell so that it sounded with a shrill electric ping, almost like a pistol-shot. Simmons understood all these signs, and he was very sympathetic when he came in to take Mr. Tatham's last orders ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... corresponded not to the splendid and noisy scenes which had filled the beginning and the middle of it. Besides seeing the loss of his foreign dominions, and being baffled in every attempt to defend them, he felt the decay of his authority at home; and experienced, from the sharpness of some parliamentary remonstrances, the great inconstancy of the people, and the influence of present fortune over all ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... hypersensitive nerves could almost have called his smile a leer; but she looked at the man's broad face, whose lines told of no resources of thought, no great natural capacity for heroism, and yet were furrowed by the sharpness of this persecution. The face would have been fat had it not been half-starved. It was pale now under the ill-kempt hair, and the set purpose of helpfulness was stamped upon it. She took back the word "leer" out of mere ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... the sharpness of excitement had gone out of it, was a very pleasant voice. The broken words he used assured Nan that his mother tongue must be French. He was probably one of the "Canucks" she had heard her cousins speak of. French Canadians were not at all strange to Nan Sherwood, for in ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... five," replied the girl, recoiling slightly with a look of dismay, for there was a new raw edge to the sharpness of ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Mrs. Lidcote spoke with a sudden sharpness, her hand stretched to the bell. "When do we dine? At half-past eight? Then I must really send you packing. At my age ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... different. You're one of the big men here. You count for a good deal. We want you. I said I'd give 'em a surprise—let me make the League a present of you." She bestowed upon him a smile which was a startling combination of sharpness and appeal. "I'm certainly going to keep my promise, Mr. Mix. I'm going to give 'em one or the other—you or the five thousand. Only I tell you in all sincerity, I'd ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... consultation, in matters that might involve life and death, with a mere boy! But there was no help for it; besides, to say truth, the extraordinary energy and courage that had been displayed by the lad, combined with a considerable amount of innate sharpness in his character, tended to create a feeling that the consultation might not be altogether without advantage. At all events, it was better to talk over their desperate position even with a boy than to confine his anxieties to his ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... careless along; his cloak well adjusted to the wind, if so be he may please all persons. The simple young King, whom a Maurepas cannot think of troubling with business, has retired into the interior apartments; taciturn, irresolute; though with a sharpness of temper at times: he, at length, determines on a little smithwork; and so, in apprenticeship with a Sieur Gamain (whom one day he shall have little cause to bless), is learning to make locks. (Campan, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... make oath to me." And the folk said, "Indeed, this man doth justice upon himself."[FN483] Whereupon the merchant fell into that which he disliked[FN484] and came nigh upon loss and ill fame. Now he had a friend, who pretended to sharpness and intelligence; so he came up to him secretly and said to him, "Let me do so I may cheat this Cheat, for I know him to be a liar and thou art near upon having to weigh out the gold; but I will parry off suspicion from thee ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... split, rift, crack, slit, incision. dissection anatomy; decomposition &c. 49; cutting instrument &c (sharpness) 253; buzzsaw, circular saw, rip saw. separatist. V. be disjoined &c.; come off, fall off, come to pieces, fall to pieces; peel off; get loose. disjoin, disconnect, disengage, disunite, dissociate, dispair[obs3]; divorce, part, dispart[obs3], detach, separate, cut off, rescind, segregate; set ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... drawers, and outside stockings were drawn on, and Edgar's brain worked the while like the great crank of his own engine; but no feasible plan of escape was evolved. Then the "crinoline" was drawn on, but it added no feminine sharpness to his wits, though it seriously modified and damaged the shape of his person. The crinoline, as we have said elsewhere, is seldom used except at great depths, where the pressure of water is excessive. It was put on Edgar at this time partly because it formed a portion of the dress, and ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... head was the high red Moorish cap, with many folds of muslin twisted round it. The flowing hair fell over his shoulders, above which he wore a soolham of red cloth, while gaily-worked yellow boots, and a pair of spurs of cruel length and sharpness, adorned his feet. He evidently felt his importance, as the protector and fighting-man of the party. Another personage followed, of inferior rank, with a mule, which carried the chief part of the baggage. The country through which they travelled ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... in the sharpness of the lines of demarcation between natural groups and in the absence of transitional forms, with all the confidence of youth and imperfect knowledge. I was not aware at that time that he had been many years brooding over the species ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... paper are pasted with a brush, and are united by successive processes of cold-drying, hot-drying, and hydraulic pressure. Each sheet is large enough for forty cards. The outer surfaces of the outer sheets are prepared with a kind of flinty coating, which gives sharpness to the outline of the various coloured devices. Most packs of cards are now made with coloured backs. The ground-tint is laid on with a brush, and consists of dis-temper colour, or pigments mixed with warm melted ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... and face, and a quick manner of looking from side to side like a little bird. In all his aspect there was nothing but spoke of easy wealth and the serenity of a well-ordered life; there was even that unkindly sharpness of tone and manner that is a dead-weight on the well-to-do. My husband was at work when he drove up, but he straightened his back, squared his broad shoulders, and came up from the mud, walking at the full of his height and ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... "I do not like it, of course. To be so free and active here, and to be bound again in the body, in the close, suffering, ill-savoured house of life! But I have much to gain by it. I have a sharpness of temper and a peremptoriness—of which indeed," he said, smiling, "you have had experience. I am fond of doing things in my own way, inconsiderate of others, and impatient if they do not go right. I am hard, and perhaps even vulgar. ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... won't give him a farthing!" she said with a sudden sharpness that startled him—"not a farthing! If he wants money, let him work for it, as other people do; and then, when he has done that, if he is to have any of my money, he must be beholden for it to his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... went sharply to the hatchway and descended, wondering why one of the sailors had not been sent down to quiet Bruff, and of course ignorant of the fact that they had one and all declined to go and face him, for certain reasons associated with the sharpness of his teeth and strength of his jaws, while the mate felt that it would be an easier way of solving the difficulty to send down the dog's ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... were chained to; they affected some sort of negligee breakfast costume, and Lemuel thought them very fashionable. They nearly all snuffled and whined as they spoke; some had a soft, lazy nasal; others broke abruptly from silence to silence, in voices of nervous sharpness, like the cry or the bleat of an animal; one young girl, who was quite pretty, had a high, hoarse voice, like ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... up straight on his platform. There was actually something military in the bearing of his lean body. His voice lost its squeak and its sharpness became commanding. ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a note, which does not bear reference to anything that occurred at this time. Men, in the midst of their hard earnest toil, perceive great truths with a sharpness of outline and a depth of conviction which is denied to the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... them," said the charioteer. "The horses have become wild so that I cannot go past them. I cannot go past the two iron tyres [Interlinear gloss, fonnod. The fonnod was some part of the rim of the wheel apparently.] of the chariot, because of their sharpness; and I cannot go past the deer, for his horn has filled all the space between the ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... struggle, when the public heard the keenest debates, the sharpest invective. At an anti-slavery meeting the red-hot lava was always on the flow. The anti-slavery men were like anthracite in the furnace,—red hot,—white hot,—clear through. I have little doubt that the sharpness and ruggedness of my writing is due, in some degree, to the curt, sharp statements of that period. When men were feeling so intensely, and speaking with a force and earnestness unknown in these later years, a reporter ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... could be hidden on its side. You do not get a glimpse of it once, until you drive between the bushes and boulders that border its banks, and then it is all before you in amazing beauty. The reflections are wonderful, the high lights showing with exquisite sharpness against the dark green and purple depths of ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... sorrow or towards joy you lift The sharpness of your trembling spears? Or do you seek, through the grey tears That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blue, A deeper, ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... but little sharpness to guess that when two young folk are thrown much together and find each other agreeable, they're likely to fall ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... no sort of men cannot be said to be angry with anyone in particular, but the vices of all. And therefore, if there shall happen to be anyone that shall say he is hit, he will but discover either his guilt or fear. Saint Jerome sported in this kind with more freedom and greater sharpness, not sparing sometimes men's very name. But I, besides that I have wholly avoided it, I have so moderated my style that the understanding reader will easily perceive my endeavors herein were rather to make mirth than bite. Nor have ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... he's a good man," said Shenac with some sharpness; "but that's no reason why he should want to have ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... answer was the echo of his greeting. Without more ado he stepped in. For a moment the sharpness of the contrast of light made it impossible for him to see anything; but presently he became used to the twilight of the interior, and looked about him curiously. It was his first acquaintance with ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... and the lining membrane is richly glandular. In the Insectivora, Carnivora, Perissodactyla, and in most Edentata, Chiroptera, Rodentia and Primates, this primitive disposition is retained, the difference consisting chiefly in the degrees of elongation of the stomach and the sharpness of the distal curvature. In other cases the cardiac portion may be prolonged into a caecal sac, a condition most highly differentiated in the blood-sucking bat, Desmodeus, where it is longer than the entire length of the body. There are two ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... thinking swiftly, and his thoughts covered a very wide range of time and place as he stood there. Then he spoke very deliberately and coolly, but with a certain peremptory sharpness. ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... these prints in the open air, I should have decided upon their being quite fresh, but the even temperature and stillness of atmosphere which reigned in these strange regions might account for the tracks retaining that sharpness of outline which denotes a recent impression. The direction I took led me immediately down the slope I have just mentioned, and its increasing steepness caused me some misgivings as to how I should get back, when suddenly a large stone ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... and old love constrained them, and they had kissed each other, and each knew they were to live together now, and sharpness would be put away perhaps; or, if it were not quite, Andrew would understand, knowing other things, too, and smile ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... design? Do we dream dreams? Is it quite beyond the limits of possibility that an art, that has been repeating itself for ages in Europe—until the original designs are fading before our eyes, until the moulds have been used so often that they begin to lose their sharpness and significance—may not be succeeded by a new and living development which will be found worthy to take its place side by side with the creations of old classic time? Is the idea altogether Utopian—is there not room in the world for a 'new style' of architecture—shall we be always copying, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... it is the emblem of honesty and purity. The jewel illustrates the graces of gentleness, softness, amiability, and obedience, and is therefore emblematic of benevolence and virtue.* The sword indicates the virtues of strength, sharpness, and practical decision, and is thus associated with intelligence and knowledge. So long as all these qualities are exercised in the discharge of administrative functions, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... When Maurice, having explained about the letter box, gave her the usual "present" she made her usual good-natured protest—but this time there was more earnestness in it, and even a little sharpness. "I don't need it; I've got three more mealers—well, one of 'em can't pay me; her husband's out of work; but she don't eat more than a canary, poor thing! I can ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... man of some sharpness, the Sphinx displays his wiles; he spreads his wings and folds them up again; he shows you his lion's paws, his woman's neck, his horse's loins, and his intellectual head; he shakes his sacred fillets, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... missiles, and all is doubt, hesitation, and shivering expectancy. Hence a decisive reluctance to commit one's self. Conscience has lost its strong and on-pressing energy, and the sense of personal responsibility lacks sharpness of edge. The native hue of spiritual resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of distracted, wavering, confused thought. The souls of men have become void. Into the void have entered in triumph the seven devils ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... "full of lusty life," hopeful, and burning for distinction, before the besieged outworks of Badajoz. During the darkness of night the siege was renewed with a terrific vigour that was not to be resisted, and the "unconsidered voluntaries" of Estramadura tasted the sharpness of English steel. The town was taken—but at what a cost! If any one wishes to know more of that fearful carnage let him read the description of it in the pages of Colonel Napier, and he will acquiesce in the chronicler's assertion that, "No age, no nation ever sent ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... health to her face far sooner than anything else could have done. She went down with Captain Levison to meet Mr. Carlyle, the evening he came in, and when Mr. Carlyle saw her behind the cords, as he was going to the custom-house, he scarcely knew her. Her features had lost their sharpness, her cheeks wore a rosy flush, and the light of pleasure at meeting him again ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... on a Riverside Drive bus at Seventy-ninth Street and rode in the mellow gold of autumn up to Broadway and 168th. Serene, gilded weather; sunshine as soft and tawny as candlelight, genial at midday as the glow of an open fire in spite of the sharpness of the early morning. Battleships lay in the river with rippling flags. Men in flannels were playing tennis on the courts below Grant's Tomb; everywhere was a convincing appearance of comfort and prosperity. The beauty of the children, the good clothing ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... that stagnant place, where the sky did nothing but shine, gave nothing forth. The sky was bronze, a vast furnace dome. The folds of light and shadow everywhere were satin-rich; shadows perforce of blackness had light in them, and the light a sword-like sharpness over their edges. It was inanimate radiance. The laurels sparkled as with frost-points; the denser foliage dropped burning brown: a sickly saint's-ring was round the heads of the pines. That afternoon the bee hummed of thunder, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the people of the North; but for nigh three generations they gave themselves up to morbid and fanatical anxieties upon the subject of slavery. To that one single subject they gave the whole bent and sharpness of their intellect, and history records ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... timely than any answer to it. I catch myself in the act of seeing poor anonymous "Dear," as cousin Helen confined herself, her life long, to calling him, in the light of an image arrested by the French genius, and this in truth opens up vistas. I scarce know what it doesn't suggest for the fact of sharpness, of intensity of type; which fact in turn leads my imagination almost any dance, making me ask myself quite most of all whether a person so marked by it mustn't really have been ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... the sound, carrying diluted through the still air, resembled the beating of an artery in the head. Soon a sharpness ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... Yet, even lacking sharpness, a head may be excellent if the forehead sink like a perpendicular wall upon horizontal eyebrows, and be greatly rounded ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... take what does not belong to us," he said, with some sharpness. "My brother and I are named as your trustees. Believe me, we will do ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... When the first sharpness of death had passed from Ansdore, Joanna's sanguine nature, her hopeful bumptiousness, revived. Her pity for the dead lambs and her fellow-feeling of compassion for the ewes would prevent her ever dreaming of a new experiment, but already she was dreaming of a partial justification ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... on the point of denying the fact, but there was sharpness in Angelique's tone, and clearness of all doubt in her eyes. He saw he would gain ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... its sharpness from continuous wear, so dulled the eyes of Carrick in his combat with Death. In the bitterness of his strife he struggled to his elbow. Who can tell of the range of one's soul or the might thereof? On the brink of Eternity, Life wrestled ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... moaned, shuddering with horror as I turned from the unaccustomed sight. 'I have waited so long; do take me to my brother.' 'This is somebody's brother!' said the doctor, sharply. Something in the tone, not the sharpness of it—something half familiar in the broken outline of the form, caused a half-suffocating sense of a vague, unutterable horror. A deathly faintness seized me; I sank into a chair beside the bed. The doctor gave me water to drink—hastily and silently sprinkled some water ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seemed to issue from them; and, but for a slight—very slight palpitation of the bosom, the vital principle might be supposed to be extinct. This lifeless appearance was heightened by the extreme sharpness of her features—especially the nose and chin,—and by the emaciation of her limbs, which was painfully distinct through her drapery. Her attenuated arms were crossed upon her breast; and her black brows and eyelashes contrasted ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... should be of all sorts, (8) having blades of a good breadth and razor-sharpness, and ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... thin for the climate of a Cumbria autumn, and round her singularly small and fleshless neck, a wisp of black velvet. The top of the head was rather flat, and the heavy dark hair, projecting stiffly on either side of the face, emphasized at once the sharpness of the little bony chin, the general sallowness of complexion, and the remarkable size and blackness of the eyes. There was something snakelike about the flat head, and the thin triangular face; an effect which certainly belied the ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from the world, Lockwood very easily allowed his judgment to get, as it were, out of perspective. Class distinctions lost their sharpness, and one woman—as, for instance, Felice—was very like another—as, for instance, the girls his sisters knew "back ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... do you know about Maternus?" Marcia inquired. There was a trace at last of sharpness in her voice. A hint conveyed itself that she could summon the praetorians if ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... three things to be chiefly noticed in the otter—first, the great width of the upper nostril; secondly, the length and sharpness of the hold-fast teeth; and, thirdly, the sturdiness and roundness of the chest or barrel, expressive of singular strength. The upper nostril is so broad that when the mouth is open the lower jaw appears but a third of its width—a mere narrow streak of jaw, dotted, however, with the sharpest teeth. ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... find the trial. The morbid sensitiveness of Carlyle to his own pains and troubles, so often imaginary, joined with his inconsiderate blindness to his wife's real sufferings, led to many heart-burnings. If she contributed to them, in some degree, by her wilfulness, jealous temper, and sharpness of tongue, ill-health and solitude may well ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... but tell me this—why of our copper coin Does one side bear a ship, and one a double head like thine?"[17] "That head is mine; you might have known the likeness of the face But that hoar age and wear have dull'd the sharpness of the trace. As for the ship, attend: the god that bears the scythe whilcome Far-wandering in the Tuscan flood at length had ceased to roam.[18] Well I remember when he came, and hold the memory dear— Saturn, by Jove expell'd from heaven, and kindly welcom'd here. Thence was the land Saturnia ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... amiable and delicate sentiments for that of sombre flights of the soul. A serious mind gifted with a rich imagination, Verdi became the chief of the new school. His music became more intense and dramatic; by vigor, energy, verve, a certain ruggedness and sharpness, by powerful effects of sound, he conquered an immense popularity in Italy, where success had hitherto been attained only by the charm, suavity, and abundance ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... workmen belonging to the different civil branches of the army; and camp-followers in all their varieties, were everywhere squatted on their haunches, and although muffled up to their eyes in wrappers of cotton-cloth, were all looking miserably cold from the sharpness of the morning breeze. The crew consisted of about twenty sailors—half of whom were Europeans, and evidently picked hands. Under the influence of good pay, fresh provisions without stint, sleeping all night in their hammocks, and constant ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... from the waves, Winckelmann, as his manner is, divines the temperament of the antique world, and that in which it had delight. It has passed away with that distant age, and we may venture to dwell upon it. What sharpness and reality it has is the sharpness and reality of suddenly arrested life. The Greek system of gymnastics originated as part of a religious ritual. The worshipper was to recommend himself to the gods by becoming fleet and fair, white and red, like ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... a salad, cut some of the red part of the lobster, and add to it. This will form a pleasing contrast to the white and green of the vegetables. Be careful not to put in too much oil, as shell-fish absorbs the sharpness of the vinegar. Serve it up in a dish, not ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... first question put to him, namely, by the mere manner in which that first question was put? "Now, sir, have the goodness to let his lordship and the jury know what your name is, will you?" Mr. Skimpin, in propounding this inquiry, inclining his head on one side and listening with great sharpness for the answer, "as if to imply that he rather thought Mr. Winkle's natural taste for perjury would induce him to give some name which did not belong to him." Giving in, absurdly, his surname only; and being asked immediately afterwards, if possible still more absurdly, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... and the firm ice above having been removed and pushed away, I rose to the surface. A current of fresh air immediately poured into the small incision made by the saw, which not only took away my breath from its sharpness, but brought on a spitting of blood. Hearing the sound of voices, I considered my deliverance as certain. Although I understood very little English, I heard the name of Captain Parry frequently mentioned—a name, I presume, that your ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the little Delaware girl, came to a stop. It seemed strange that Linna should have caught the sounds noticed by no one else, and that, too, while she was whispering to her companion, Alice; but even at that tender age the inherited sharpness of hearing had been trained to a wonderfully ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... arrived that morning from a near-by camp as Joan was about to set out for Dad Frazer's. From his way of plunging abruptly into this matter, which he never had discussed with her before, and his sharpness and apparent displeasure with her, Joan knew that he had seen Reid overnight. They were beside the sheep-wagon, to a wheel of which Joan's horse was tied, all saddled and ready to mount. The sun was already high, for Joan had helped Charley ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... But if by a magic word extreme equality of material means were created and the mere sensuous enjoyments evenly distributed, in that moment all the other differences from individual to individual would be felt with heightened sharpness, and would be causes for much stronger feelings of ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... shame at the idea of belonging to such a collectivity. It is obvious that the United States of America as they exist to-day impress a mind like General Lea's as so much human blubber. Where is the sharpness and precipitousness, the contempt for life, whether one's own, or another's? Where is the savage "yes" and "no," the unconditional duty? Where is the conscription? Where is the blood-tax? Where is anything that one feels honored ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... simple gases directed our attention to other elementary bodies, the examination of which led to the discovery that the element iodine, dissolved in bisulphide of carbon, possesses the power detaching, with extraordinary sharpness, the light of the spectrum from its heat, intercepting all luminous rays up to the extreme red, and permitting the calorific rays beyond the red to pass freely through it. This substance was then ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... "The freestone of which the monastery of Dryburgh and the most elegant parts of the Abbey of Melrose were built, is one of a most beautiful color and texture, and has defied the influence of the weather for more than six centuries; nor is the sharpness of the sculpture in the least affected by the ravages of time. The quarry from which it was taken is still successfully worked at Dryburgh; and no stone in the island seems more perfectly adapted for the purpose of architecture, as it hardens by age, and is not subject ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... year-long, dramatic version of the story of redemption, he had ever found its greatest day least evocative of proportionate sympathy. The sudden gaieties of Easter morning, the congratulations to the Divine Mother, the sharpness of the recoil from one extreme of feeling to the other, for him never cleared away the Lenten pre-occupation with Christ's death and passion: the empty tomb, with the white clothes lying, was still a tomb: ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... I shall not cease from giving you advice, nor will I, as far as in me lies, allow your praise to be spoken of with a reservation. For all who come from your province do make one reservation in the extremely high praise which they bestow on your virtue, integrity, and kindness—it is that of sharpness of temper. That is a fault which, even in our private and everyday life, seems to indicate want of solidity and strength of mind; but nothing, surely, can be more improper than to combine harshness of temper with the exercise of supreme power. Wherefore ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... and have inhibited in it the feeling for deeper values. But if by a magic word extreme equality of material means were created and the mere sensuous enjoyments evenly distributed, in that moment all the other differences from individual to individual would be felt with heightened sharpness, and would be causes for much stronger feelings of happiness ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... at last, "I'm sorry you're such a simpleton. I had a higher opinion of your sharpness. I think Mr. Roberts meant to do well by you. Who has been filling your head with ...
— Three People • Pansy
... help me." At the words the demons fled, And the fire went out and ended Then they brought me to a plain Where the blackened earth presented Fruits of thistles and of thorns, 'Stead of pink and rose sweet scented. Here a biting wind passed by, Which with subtle sharpness entered Even my bones, whose faintest breath Like the keenest sword-edge cleft me. Here in the profoundest depths Sadly, mournfully lamented Myriad souls, their parents cursing From whose loins they had descended. Such despairing shrieks ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... love could hide itself no longer: to answer Joan's mother with anything like temper was impossible, and, knowing this, her only refuge was in flight. "I don't want to hear any more you may have to say, Mrs. Tucker;" and though Eve managed to keep under the sharpness of her voice, she could not control the indignant expression of her face, which Mrs. Tucker fully appreciating, she speeded her departure by the inspiriting prediction that if Eve didn't sup sorrow by the spoonful before her hair was gray ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... be?—I will be a knight Walled up in armour black, With a sword of sharpness, a hammer of might. And a spear that will not crack— So black, so blank, no glimmer of light Will betray my ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... could not account for the fact, that the worthy gentlemen were cutting at each other, and the timid girl became insensibly alarmed at the unaccountable sharpness of their brief encounter. She looked with an anxious countenance, first at one, and then at the other, but scarcely knew what to say. Woodward, however, who was better acquainted with the usages of society, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... thank you from my heart for the privilege of hearing that letter. I know not which to admire most, your majesty's admirable knowledge of the history of your house, or the quiet sharpness with which you have made your statements. But this I know, that had you forbidden me to accompany you, I should have been, for the first time in my life, rebellious; for if I had not been allowed to fight as an officer, I should have done so ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... character such as his and in the newness of her emotions, for Nannie was not used to contribution, she exaggerated matters and fancied that Steve, thoroughly disgusted with her conduct (as well he might be), had walked off and left her. The sharpness of her terror as she conceived such a possibility took even herself by surprise. Until this moment it had never entered her mind that she might love her husband. Even now she did not fully comprehend the meaning of her unusual emotion. ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... There was a touch of sharpness in his tone. "I am in no mood for sentiment. Say what you have to say and get done with it, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... true,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'but the person I have in my eye (here he looked very hard at Mrs. Bardell) I think possesses these qualities; and has, moreover, a considerable knowledge of the world, and a great deal of sharpness, Mrs. Bardell; which may be of ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... as they expected, entered into conversation with them. After the first remarks—on the sharpness of the weather—Ralph produced a tin of portable soup, and asked the landlord if he would have it heated, ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... had finished writing, she observed smilingly, as she addressed herself to all the young ladies: "I have all along lacked the quality of sharpness and never besides been good at verses; as you, sisters, and all of you have ever been aware; but, on a night like this I've been fain to do my best, with the object of escaping censure, and of not ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... first place that God has endowed human intelligence with a native wit, sharpness and cunning that has its legitimate uses, the exercise of this faculty is evil only when its methods and ends are evil. Used along the lines of moral rectitude strategy and tact for profiting by circumstances are perfectly in order, especially when one acts in the defense of his natural ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... their dream of desert life and desert passion. But the entry into a city for the moment destroyed the dreamlike atmosphere woven by the desert, recalled her town sense, that quick-wittedness, that sharpness of apprehension and swiftness of observation which are bred in those who have long been accustomed to a life in the midst of crowds and movement, and changing scenes and passing fashions. Suddenly she seemed to herself to be reading Androvsky with an almost merciless penetration, which yet she ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... to stop coming to me." Marian put it thus, indefinably, as a picture of privation from which her companion might shrink. Such were the threats she could complacently make, could think herself masterful for making. "But if he won't take you," she continued, "he shows at least his sharpness." ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... elevated her at least to a level with the saint her namesake, Mrs. Rachel Waverley gained some intimation which determined her to prevent the approaching apotheosis. Even the most simple and unsuspicious of the female sex have (God bless them!) an instinctive sharpness of perception in such matters, which sometimes goes the length of observing partialities that never existed, but rarely misses to detect such as pass actually under their observation. Mrs. Rachel applied herself with great prudence, not to combat, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... to hear his wife's remark. His mind dulled by shock and misfortune, was slowly revolving forgotten scenes. He saw with incredible sharpness of view his first home, with its few sticks of second-hand furniture like Pinkey's, and Pinkey's mother, the dead image of her daughter. That was where he belonged—to the old time, when he was young and proud of himself, able to drink his glass and ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the night before had vanished, giving place to her customary sharpness of tone. Lucy paid no heed to ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... ice above having been removed and pushed away, I rose to the surface. A current of fresh air immediately poured into the small incision made by the saw, which not only took away my breath from its sharpness, but brought on a spitting of blood. Hearing the sound of voices, I considered my deliverance as certain. Although I understood very little English, I heard the name of Captain Parry frequently mentioned—a name, I presume, that your highness is well ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... hidden on its side. You do not get a glimpse of it once, until you drive between the bushes and boulders that border its banks, and then it is all before you in amazing beauty. The reflections are wonderful, the high lights showing with exquisite sharpness against the dark green and purple depths of the clear, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... do not like it, of course. To be so free and active here, and to be bound again in the body, in the close, suffering, ill-savoured house of life! But I have much to gain by it. I have a sharpness of temper and a peremptoriness—of which indeed," he said, smiling, "you have had experience. I am fond of doing things in my own way, inconsiderate of others, and impatient if they do not go right. I am hard, and perhaps even vulgar. But ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... said the doctor with a kind sharpness. "You had a blister; it broke and became a sore; then you wore one of those nasty cheap socks and it poisoned it. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... had already passed. 'Looky there, Ted,' quoth the younger of the detectives, with the sharpness of surprise in his voice, and pointed straight to my feet. I looked down and saw at once the dim suggestion of their outline sketched in splashes of mud. For ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... the said harsh consequences, but professedly endeavour also to maintain them, and plead hard for them in large digressions, than to recede in the least from that opinion which he had undertaken to defend. Thirdly, that seeing (out of the sharpness of his wit) a necessity of forsaking the ordinary sublapsarian way, and the supralapsarian too, as it had diversely been declared by all that had gone before him, (for the shunning of those rocks, which either of those ways must unavoidably ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... sounds, movements and even the way of doing things and also of learning and remembering what he has been taught or has seen. I have perceived in him, too, a pronounced rectitude of judgment and a remarkable sharpness of observation when his superstitious terrors do not throw a ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... me fetch thee thirty shillings?" Is it not exquisite—irresistible? Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page are both "merry wives," but how perfectly discriminated! Mrs. Ford has the most good nature—Mrs. Page is the cleverer of the two, and has more sharpness in her tongue, more mischief in her mirth. In all these instances I allow that the humor is more or less vulgar; but a humorous woman, whether in high or low life has always a tinge ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the Water-Mother, East she swam, and westward swam she, Swam to north-west and to south-west, And around in all directions, In the sharpness of her torment, In her body's fearful anguish; Yet no child was fashioned from her, And no offspring ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... dinner and supper, but I never was intoxicated with liquor in my life.' 'Probably, then, you sleep too much?' said the physician. 'As to sleep,' said the gentleman, 'I am in bed nearly twelve hours every night, because I find the sharpness of the morning air extremely injurious to my constitution; but I am so troubled with a plaguy flatulency and heartburn, that I am scarcely able to close my eyes all night; or if I do, I find myself almost strangled with wind, and awake in agonies.' ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... general rate of wages are well fulfilled; or for various unions to merge or act together, if these conditions are well fulfilled between them. G. D. H. Cole has given a case in point. "Clearly the ease with which an industrial union can come into being depends upon the sharpness of the distinction between the skilled and unskilled in the industry concerned. Thus in the mining and textile industries, as we have already noted, there is no very sharp distinction between the two classes of workers. In mining, the boy who enters the pit has every chance of passing before ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... aspirate.—From the sound of p in pat, the sound of f in fat differs in a certain degree. This difference is not owing to a difference in their sharpness or flatness. Each is sharp. Neither is it owing to a difference in their continuity or explosiveness; although f is continuous, whilst p is explosive. This we may ascertain by considering the position of s. The sound of s is continuous; yet s, in respect to the difference ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... head had retreated from the crown in an ever-widening circle. But the old man who now stepped to the door held himself as stiff and erect as ever; the eyes looked forth from beneath the bushy eyebrows with a stern yet kindly gaze, and the deep voice rang out with military precision and sharpness. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... two-thirds of his life, metaphorically, at this woman's feet, and had formed a habit of admiration and lovership which no facts nor developments could ever alter. He was frowning, he replied with a certain sharpness, and yet he leaned towards her as he spoke, and his eyes followed her long, graceful lines and noted the clear delicacy of her features against the crimson background. "How the child looked—how the child looked; Cynthia, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... mingled severity and sharpness, "let us have no masquerading! You are perfectly fit to come home, and you must come at once. The carriage ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... case, too thick to turn in neatly, the corners should be opened out and the leather pared against the thumb nail, and then well pasted and turned back again. The extreme corner may be slightly tapped on the stone with a hammer, and the sides rubbed with a folder, to ensure squareness and sharpness. When all four corners have been mitred, the filling in papers can be pasted in. As they will probably stretch a little with the paste, it will be well to cut off a slight shaving, and they should then fit exactly. When the boards have been filled in and well rubbed down, the book should ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... of relief in that never again should I have to pull and haul on the stiff tackles and hammer ice so that the frozen ropes could run through the frozen shivs. The wind, blowing half a gale, cut with the sharpness that is a sign of the proximity of icebergs; and the big seas were bitter cold to look upon in ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... with insolent sharpness to a legitimate claim advanced by a certain princeling of the Confederated States—the Regent of Lippe-Detmold, Count Ernest von Lippe-Biesterfeld, has had occasion to see that public opinion severely condemns his unjustifiable action. The Confederated Sovereigns and Princes perceive therein a ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... wrong! How helpful could we quote But one poor instance when He interposed Promptly and surely and beyond mistake Between oppression and its victim, closed Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake From our long dream that justice bears no sword, Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves.'"[A] ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... once been Latin, but of which original language few traces remained, excepting here and there the long rolling termination of some word or phrase, set example to his guest, by modestly putting into a very large mouth, furnished with teeth which might have ranked with those of a boar both in sharpness and whiteness, some three or four dried pease, a miserable grist as it seemed for so large and ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... stifling him. In his harsh breathing it seems to me that I can hear his heart beating and muttering. Looking at Volpatte, hooded in bandages, and then at the strong man, muscular and full-blooded, with that profound and eternal yearning whose sharpness he alone can gauge, I say to myself that the worst wounded man is not he ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... a well-known English lady (who is noted on the other side of the Atlantic for the sharpness of her wit) that on one occasion, when a vainglorious American was boasting of his country's prowess in digging the Panama Canal, she calmly waited until he had finished and then replied, with an indescribable smile, "Ah—but you Americans do not know how to write letters." Needless ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... the brother of the first man's wife. In this personification of Death the story differs from all the others which we have examined and marks an intellectual advance upon them; since the power of picturing abstract ideas to the mind with all the sharpness of outline and vividness of colour which are implied by personification is a faculty above the reach of very low intelligences. It is not surprising that the Baganda should have attained to this power, for they are probably the most highly cultured and intellectual of all the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... his triumphant taunts hurled against oppression, are not his glowing effusions to Liberty, but those in which, with a mild melancholy, he seems conscious of his own infirmities of temper, and to feel a wish to correct by thought and time the precocity and sharpness of his disposition. May the quaint but affecting aspiration expressed in one of these be fulfilled, that as he mellows into maturer age, all such asperities may wear off, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... three previous chapters now begins to take more definite thought form. The intellect seeing more clearly, appeals to the intellects of those who listen that they may think with greater sharpness and distinctness the thoughts presented. By aiming to present these thoughts so as to be clearly understood, distinctness and precision of utterance are gained. The elements of speech become more perfectly and beautifully chiseled. ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... whiteness the next. They fly screaming over the plain as though ten thousand devils with whips were after them, and in the sunny intervals there is nothing in any of nature's moods to equal the clear sharpness of the atmosphere, all the mellowness and indistinctness beaten out of it, and every leaf and twig glistening coldly bright. It is not becoming, a north-westerly gale; it treats us as it treats the garden, ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the furnace, and the quantity of clinker that can be left therein without interfering with its operation, thus permitting of having the grates always black. These latter in no wise change, and after five months of work the square bars still preserve their sharpness of edges. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... in the street, and, for no reason perceptible to me, suddenly clutch him by the hair and cuff his ears,—an infliction which he bore with exemplary patience, only snatching the very earliest opportunity to take to his heels. Where a sharp tongue will not serve the purpose, they trust to the sharpness of their finger-nails, or incarnate a whole vocabulary of vituperative words in a resounding slap, or the downright blow of a doubled fist. All English people, I imagine, are influenced in a far greater degree than ourselves by this simple and honest tendency, in cases of disagreement, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... scraper and towel he would be read to or dictate. When travelling he thought of nothing else: at his side was a shorthand writer with a book and his tablets. In winter the writer's hands were protected by mittens, so that not even the sharpness of the weather should rob him of a moment. For the same reason even at Rome he used to ride in a sedan-chair (and not in a litter). I remember how he once took me to task for walking. Said he, 'You need not have wasted these hours;' for he considered as wasted all hours not spent ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... silliness to stay baking in that stagnant place, where the sky did nothing but shine, gave nothing forth. The sky was bronze, a vast furnace dome. The folds of light and shadow everywhere were satin-rich; shadows perforce of blackness had light in them, and the light a sword-like sharpness over their edges. It was inanimate radiance. The laurels sparkled as with frost-points; the denser foliage dropped burning brown: a sickly saint's-ring was round the heads of the pines. That afternoon the bee hummed of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... doubts to Chatterton. This appears to have excited the anger of Chatterton, who, after one or two short notes, wrote Walpole a very impertinent one, in which he redemanded his manuscripts. This last letter Walpole had intended to have answered with some sharpness; but did not do so. He only returned the specimens on the 4th of August 1769; and this concluded the intercourse between them, and as Walpole observes, "I never saw him then, before, or since." Subsequently to this transaction, Chatterton acquired ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... had let down on her question his thought to the basis of life, as if on threads. Now he looked around, and his smile was bristling with pin-points of irony, increasing in sharpness. He thought a long ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... encountered a change, and Beth could scarcely repress a gasp of surprise and apprehension. The trail was laid upon the merest granite shelf, above that terrible chasm. She was terrified, frankly. The man and pony in the lead were cut with startling sharpness against the gray of the rock—the calico coloring, the muscular intensity, the bending of the man to every motion—as they balanced with terrifying slenderness above the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... gayer hours She has a voice of gladness and a smile and eloquence of beauty; and she glides Into his darker musings with a mild and healing sympathy that steals away Their sharpness ere ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... Paradise and return to the condition of the unfallen Adam. "The Noble Virgin" [i.e. Sophia or Spiritual Wisdom], Boehme writes, "showeth us the Gate and how we must enter again into Paradise through the sharpness of the sword," which, in a few lines previous, he calls "the flaming sword which God set to keep the Tree of Life."[39] Fox's experience of the "new smell" of creation is an even more striking parallel. Mystic awakenings and spiritual openings generally impress the ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... well now, but you should see it in winter," retorted Kate. "Great, bare, snake-like things all over the—now, don't cudgel your brains to bring 'plates' or 'crumbs' into that!" she broke off with sudden sharpness. ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... a trace of sharpness in Michael's tone, and the light had faded out of his eyes. After all, there was no cause for him to rejoice; she had not left off her mourning of her own accord. What a fool he had been! Of course, she had only done it to ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... him scornfully, but in the absence of a crushing reply disdained one at all. She contented herself instead by going outside and closing the door after her with a sharpness which stirred every hair on ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... abundance or ornaments or other possessions of an agreeable kind as they do the companionship of persons of the opposite sex. The destroyer, the deity of wind, death, the nether legions, the equine mouth that roves through the ocean, vomiting ceaseless flames of fire, the sharpness of the razor, virulent poison, the snake, and Fire—all these exist in a state of union in women. That eternal Brahman whence the five great elements have sprung into existence, whence the Creator ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... method on them, since yon one did not stop them," said the druid. And the druid froze the grey ridged sea into hard rocky knobs, the sharpness of sword being on the one edge and the poison power of adders on the other. Then Arden cried that he was getting tired, and nearly giving over. "Come you, Arden, and sit on my right shoulder," said Naois. Arden ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... of considerable ability in him that haps to please this way: a slender faculty will serve the turn. The sharpness of his speech cometh not from wit so much as from choler, which furnisheth the lowest inventions with a kind of pungent expression, and giveth an edge to every spiteful word: so that any dull wretch doth seem to scold eloquently and ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... was carefully examined by experienced hands, and a check placed against a fine old Knickerbocker name here and there, but nothing satisfactory arrived at. Then that same still small voice of rumor but now with an easily detected staccato sharpness to it, said that Van Twiller was in love—with an actress! Van Twiller, whom it had taken all these years and all this waste of raw material in the way of ancestors to bring to perfection—Ralph Van Twiller, the net ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... not accustomed to have his plans approved of by midshipmen. However, he only said: "I think it will work. Should any other suggestion occur to you, you will mention it to Mr. Farrance. I am really obliged to you for the idea, which does great credit to your sharpness." ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... round-mouthed in surprise at his sharpness. And then to his amazement she began to giggle, her giggles mixed with her sobs. "You do look so funny," she gasped, "like the stern father of a family. Why don't you fight back always when ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... proving that the cause of short-sight, "C'est le travail assidu, de pres.") states that he has repeatedly observed Europeans, who had been brought up and spent their whole lives with the wild Indians, who nevertheless did not equal them in the sharpness of their senses. The same naturalist observes that the cavities in the skull for the reception of the several sense- organs are larger in the American aborigines than in Europeans; and this probably indicates a corresponding difference ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... course of my first interview with Mr. Darwin, expressing my belief in the sharpness of the lines of demarcation between natural groups and in the absence of transitional forms, with all the confidence of youth and imperfect knowledge. I was not aware, at that time, that he had then been many years brooding over the species-question; and the humorous ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... understood. The change is not in the nature of a transmutation of one thing into another thing entirely different-but is merely a change of degree in the same things, a vastly important difference. For instance, borrowing an analogy from the Physical Plane, it is impossible to change Heat into Sharpness, Loudness, Highness, etc., but Heat may readily be transmuted into Cold, simply by lowering the vibrations. In the same way Hate and Love are mutually transmutable; so are Fear and Courage. But Fear ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... the woods the slate-colored snowbird starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed is almost metallic in its sharpness. He breeds here, and is not esteemed a snowbird at all, as he disappears at the near approach of winter, and returns again in spring, like the song sparrow, and is not in any way associated with the cold and snow. So different are the habits of ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... been successful in all his undertakings, resolved not to be idle in future; he therefore furnished himself with a horse, a cap of knowledge, a sword of sharpness, shoes of swiftness, and an invisible coat, the better to perform the wonderful enterprises ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... answered the young girl, with a touch of sharpness. "Are one's own desires and old associations to count for nothing? This place was very dear to my aunt and to many others. I am sure there is quite enough of Yerbury laid waste now. The town looks as if it were a sort of general house-cleaning, and every ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... too, coming in on a charge as fearless and reckless as any the Confederates had delivered in the past. With the sharpness of one of their own sabers, they slashed out a trotting arc of men, cutting at Armstrong's veterans in the earthworks to be curled back under a withering fire, losing a general, senior officers, and men. But the rebuff ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... feature of Polchester life, and those who were old enough to understand pitied her and offered her many remedies. But the young cannot be expected to realise that there can be anything physically wrong with the old, and Mrs. Sampson's sharpness of manner, her terrifying habit of rapping out a "Yes" or a "No," her gloomy view of boisterous habits and healthy appetites, made her one most truly to be avoided. Before to-day Joan would have willingly walked a mile out of her way to escape her; to-day she only saw a nervous, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... automatically conscious of the physical pleasure of the day; except indeed for recurrent moments, when that very pleasure revived the sharpness of grief. Soon it would be the anniversary of her wedding day. Every hour of that day, and of the honeymoon bliss which followed it, seemed to be still so close to her. Surely she had only to put out her hand to find his, and all the horror and the ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had blessed us. We had met with no serious misfortunes, nor had any of our number been often prostrated by prolonged and dangerous illness. But during the last year my wife had been growing thin, and occasionally her voice had a sharpness which was new. Every month Bobsey became more hard to manage. Our living-room was to him like a cage to a wild bird, and slip away he would, to his mother's alarm; for he was almost certain to get into mischief or trouble. The effort to perform her ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... word was repeated with increasing frequency; its sharpness wore off, and it became as familiar to her ear as scores of other words unintelligible to her. But Sashenka did not please her, and when she came the mother felt troubled and ill ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... that impression of "finish" and sharpness of edge so rarely found among the blurred, vague outlines of English women. There was nothing vague about her. Lord Newhaven said she had been cut out body and mind with a sharp pair of scissors. Her irregular profile, her delicate, pointed speech ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... face did not move; but an indefinable tightness came about her mouth, and an indefinable sharpness to her eyes. She looked at Norma ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... any one to see, and she thought to herself what a terrible disappointment it would be if, after all, this delightful, long-talked-of visit to Paris, were to turn out not delightful at all. And through Sylvia's honest little heart there darted a quick sting of pain and regret for her sharpness to Molly. How was it that she could not manage to keep the resolutions so often and so conscientiously made? How was it that she could not succeed in remembering at the time, the very moment at which she was ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... man at the top of his pride would be a more fitting victim than one who had not yet climbed the ladder. Such was his simple reasoning. Under his long blue coat there hung a long, thin knife, whetted to razor sharpness ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... New York! I made for the river, as I always do wherever a river is, and watched it flowing down in the silver-gray light and catching bits of the rain-washed blue sky. The trees had lost the brittleness and sharpness of winter's drawing and their outlines were softening into greenish velvet. In the coverts, arbutus crept out with a hawthorn-like fragrance from patches of lingering snow. The main street leading into the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... the pythons fed at the zoo once," said Helen with unwonted sharpness. "I will sit here till the scene of savagery is over. You can ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... this time We sweat and bleed: the friend hath lost his friend; And the best quarrels, in the heat, are curs'd By those that feel their sharpness:— The question of Cordelia, and her ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... at the allusion to the extinction of the Danvers family, of which Charles and Ralph were the only representatives. She felt keenly having failed to give Ralph a son, and the sudden smart of the old hurt added a touch of sharpness to her usually gentle voice as she said, "I cannot see what has ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... most of them laughed at Becky's last "move," they were prejudiced against her for it, and thought it another evidence of her stinginess and sharpness. They all agreed, however, that she had "got 'round' Lizzie to that extent that that young woman would stand up for her, anyway, no matter what she'd do ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... conception of the poet-etcher. The grip of reality is shown in such plates as Tourelle, Rue de la Tisseranderie, and La Pompe, Notre Dame. Here are hallucinations translated into the actual terms of art, suggesting, nevertheless, a solidity, a sharpness of definition, withal a sense of fluctuating sky, air, clouds that make you realise the justesse of Berenson's phrase—tactile values. With Meryon the tactile perception was a sixth sense. Clairvoyant of images, he could transcribe the actual with ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Protector, his Father. Were this one Thought strongly fixed in the Mind, what Calamity would be dreadful? What Load can Infamy lay upon us when we are sure of the Approbation of him, who will repay the Disgrace of a Moment with the Glory of Eternity? What Sharpness is there in Pain and Diseases, when they only hasten us on to the Pleasures that will never fade? What sting is in Death, when we are assured that it is only the Beginning of Life? A Man who lives so, as not to fear to die, is inconsistent with himself, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... hands. Here he found his helpmate at the head of the whole militia of the sick lady's apartment, that is, wet nurse, and sick nurse, and girl of all work, engaged in violent dispute with two strangers. The one was a dark-featured elderly man, with an eye of much sharpness and severity of expression, which now seemed partly quenched by a mixture of grief and mortification. The other, who appeared actively sustaining the dispute with Mrs. Gray, was a stout, bold-looking, hard-faced person, ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... A worthy son of your father. I didn't give 'e credit for sharpness enough to perceive that. Can you ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... possess thy seat and throne, If antique Justice o'er the laws of earth Reign with the thunder-god. March on to ruin! Spurned and disowned—the basest of the base— And with thee bear this burden: o'er thine head I pour a prophet's doom; nor throne nor home Waits on the sharpness of the levelled spear: Thy very land of refuge hath no welcome; Thine eyes have looked their last on hollow Argos. Death by a brother's hand—dark fratricide, Murdering thyself a brother—shall be thine. Yea, while I curse thee, on the murky deep Of the primeval hell I call! Prepare These men ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as imperfect discipline of the will. The truism, however, and the commonplace may be stated in a form so fresh, pungent, and free from triviality, as to have all the force of new discovery. Hence the need for a caution, that few maxims are to be taken without qualification. They seek sharpness of impression by excluding one side of the matter and exaggerating another, and most aphorisms are to be read as subject to all sorts of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... be better done than the sketch of the little good-natured, "broad-set" gardener, who acted as the ladies' muleteer, and the recital of the indiscretions by which he was betrayed into temporary desertion of his duties. The whole scene is Chaucerian in its sharpness of outline and translucency of atmosphere: though there, unfortunately, the resemblance ends. Sterne's manner of saying what we now leave unsaid is as unlike Chaucer's, and as unlike for the worse, as it can ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... note in his voice as he spoke. Tired though he was, I detected a sharpness that seemed to indicate at once a relief and an indifference which said plainer than words: "I am now beyond all your power to hurt or harm me." I ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Some slices of fat bacon were sizzling in a pan over the wood-fire, and the pungent smell of the woods, mixed with the sharpness of the morning air, gave him an appetite to which, since his enforced idleness, he had been a stranger. He drew his chair up to the rickety little table with its covering of frayed oil-cloth, and, breaking a couple of eggs over his bacon, ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... the influence of the old Dutch school. A writer in "Moderne Kunst" says, in general, that she shows us real human beings under the "precieuses ridicules," the languishing gallants and the pedant, and often succeeds in individualizing all these with the sharpness of a Chodowiecki, though at times she is merely good-natured, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... the Sergeant shortly. "The stretcher-bearers have their job, and they've got to do it. Your job is here, and you can stop and do that. You've done enough for one day." Then, conscious perhaps that he had spoken with unnecessary sharpness, he added a word. "You've made a good beginning, lad, and done good work for your first show; don't spoil it with ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... The sharpness of Miss Smith's joy did not let her dwell on the proposed "Board of Trust"; of course, it would be a board ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... me do something different. You're one of the big men here. You count for a good deal. We want you. I said I'd give 'em a surprise—let me make the League a present of you." She bestowed upon him a smile which was a startling combination of sharpness and appeal. "I'm certainly going to keep my promise, Mr. Mix. I'm going to give 'em one or the other—you or the five thousand. Only I tell you in all sincerity, I'd rather it ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... the definition and crisp sharpness of some of the results are entirely delightful. The bluntness and weariness of many of the later modelled Roman forms disappear in the new energy of workmanship which was engaged in exploring a fresh field of beauty. These ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... paid him back what he spent on me. You know his story; everybody does. I like him and sponge on him. We irritate each other; I'm a beast to resent his sharpness. But he's not right when he says I never had any illusions.... I had—and have.... I do beastly things, too.... Some men will do anything to crush out the last quiver of pride in them.... And the worst is that, ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... was like some of the fruits of her native hills, full of juices which tend to sweetness in maturity, but which when not quite ripe have a pretty decided dash of sharpness. There are grapes that require a frost to ripen them, and Diana was ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was a just man, ventured to represent that Trafton did not foresee the result of his action; but, in the sharpness of her bereavement, Mrs. Trafton would find no excuse ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... stood still for a few moments, then gave one long gasp, made a few inquiries, and went up to Aubrey's room. The boy was fast asleep; but there was that about him which softened the weary sharpness of his father's manner, and caused him to desire Ethel to look from the window whence she could see whether the lights were out in Dr. Spencer's house. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with a clear sharpness that made the widow start and redden angrily; but the girl walked straight to the gate, her eyes ablaze with all the courage that the mountain woman knew and yet with another courage to which the primitive creature was a stranger—a courage that made ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... discovery, and yet another debating military problems.... Perhaps these arguments are practically unprofitable, but they give a great deal of pleasure to the participants.... They are boys, all of them, but such excellent good-natured ones; there has been no sign of sharpness or anger, no jarring note, in all these wordy contests; all end with a laugh. Nelson has offered Taylor a pair of socks to teach him some geology! This lulls ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... covered the Seine, the stone quays, and the gilded trees. The red sun threw into the cloudy sky the last glories of the year. Therese, as she went out, relished the sharpness of the air and the dying splendor of the day. Since her return to Paris, happy, she found pleasure every morning in the changes of the weather. It seemed to her, in her generous selfishness, that it was for her the wind blew in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... this sombre fact of change, whatever there is in life that is stable stands out with a sharpness that compels notice. Just because the world is so full of variableness, our hearts' affections fasten with the tighter grip upon anything that seems to have the guarantees of permanence. The Book of Common Prayer ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... national feeling and secure her liberties against assault, and it is now time that this unnecessary jealousy and mistrust of a kindred race should cease. The Swedes have all the honesty which the Norwegians claim for themselves, more warmth and geniality of character, and less selfish sharpness and shrewdness. Mugge tells a story of a number of Swedes who were at a dinner party in Paris, where the health of "the King of Sweden and Norway" was proposed and drunk with great enthusiasm. One glass was observed ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... him with all the sharpness and pertness of which she was capable; but do what she would, he received it all with a smiling indifference and civility which ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... doth them tie in cruel chains: Here is a seat for men opprest, Here is a port of pleasant rest; Here may a wretch have refuge from his pains. No gold, which Tagus' sands bestow, Nor which on Hermus' banks doth flow, Nor precious stones which scorched Indians get[138], Can clear the sharpness of the mind, But rather make it far more blind, And in the farther depth of darkness set. For this that sets our souls on work Buried in caves of earth doth lurk. But heaven is guided by another light, Which causeth us to shun the dark[139], And who this ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... was loud with reproaches, for the assayer had pronounced the "gold" only worthless iron pyrites. He had received, too, a jeering letter from his proposed partner in Sparta, who had found sport in playing on his consequential ignorance and fancied sharpness. And now Nate declared that Birt, also, had known that the mineral was valueless, and had from the first befooled him. In some way he would compel Birt to refund all the money that had been expended. How piteous was Nate as he stood and checked off, on his trembling fingers, the surveyor's ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... it into the fashion of a spear-blade, he had plunged into the fire until it had begun to char. He had scraped away the charring with a piece of broken glass, and, as a result of his endeavors, had really a spear with a point of undoubted sharpness and great hardness. He took huge pride in his new weapon, and carried it to school with him for days and on his various woodland expeditions, but there had come no chance to rescue any distressful maiden anywhere, and the envy and admiration of the other boys had but resulted in emulation ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... expected that I should take notice of the severe remarks that have been formerly made upon him by Mr. Rhymer. I must confess, I can't very well see what could be the reason of his animadverting with so much sharpness, upon the faults of a man excellent on most occasions, and whom all the world ever was and will be inclin'd to have an esteem and veneration for. If it was to shew his own knowledge in the Art of Poetry, besides that there ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the depths of the forest she seemed a wild creature to mankind, and a man to the wildest creature. She had now come out of Persia to wreak her displeasure on the Christians, who had already felt the sharpness of her sword; and as she arrived near this assembled multitude, death was the first thing that met her eyes, but in a shape so perplexing, that she looked narrowly to discern what it was, and then spurred her horse towards the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... done so at all with s's to it," exclaimed the Reverend OCTAVIUS, exasperated by so many plurals. "He did it but once, and then he was strongly provoked. EDWIN mentioned the sharpness of his sister's nose to him, and reflected casually upon ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... three or four times, as the Pope's blue eyes turned on him. They were extraordinary eyes, reminding him of what historians said of Pius X.; the lids drew straight lines across them, giving him the look of a hawk, but the rest of the face contradicted them. There was no sharpness in that. It was neither thin nor fat, but beautifully modelled in an oval outline: the lips were clean-cut, with a look of passion in their curves; the nose came down in an aquiline sweep, ending in chiselled ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... up crumbs which the children placed for him on the table, looking up into Mr. St. John's face without the least apparent fear. Boys sometimes call the little blue-tit Billy Biter, no doubt from personal experience of the sharpness of Mr. Tit's beak. The great tit which we can see under the yew tree in our garden, almost any hour of the day, is very common in the neighbourhood, and I dare say if we look well about us during our walk ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... abbot have closed his ears, and, hoping to stifle the remorseful pangs that seized upon his very vitals with the sharpness of serpents' teeth, he strove to dwell upon the frequent and severe acts of penance he had performed. But he now found that his penitence had never been sincere and efficacious. This one damning sin obscured all his good actions; and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Mrs. S., who had a sharp chin, sharp nose, and sharp features throughout; and, with all, rather a sharp voice. She had no children of her own—those tender pledges being denied her, perhaps on account of the peculiar sharpness of her temper. ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... with, in taking care of the lawn, ought not to be overlooked. A mower whose blades are dull will tear the grass off, and make it look ragged, as if gnawed away by animals feeding on it, while the mower whose blades are of the proper sharpness will cut it as evenly and as neatly as if a razor had been applied to it. You cannot appreciate the difference until you have seen a specimen ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... necessity of taking this method, let any one even below the skill of an astrologer, behold the turn of faces he meets as soon as he passes Cheapside Conduit, and you see a deep attention and a certain unthinking sharpness in every countenance. They look attentive, but their thoughts are engaged on mean purposes. To me it is very apparent, when I see a citizen pass by, whether his head is upon woollen, silks, iron, sugar, indigo, or stocks. Now this trace of thought appears or lies hid in the ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... 1:26 26 And ye have murmured because he hath been plain unto you. Ye say that he hath used sharpness; ye say that he hath been angry with you; but behold, his sharpness was the sharpness of the power of the word of God, which was in him; and that which ye call anger was the truth, according to that which is in God, which he could ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... anti-slavery struggle, when the public heard the keenest debates, the sharpest invective. At an anti-slavery meeting the red-hot lava was always on the flow. The anti-slavery men were like anthracite in the furnace,—red hot,—white hot,—clear through. I have little doubt that the sharpness and ruggedness of my writing is due, in some degree, to the curt, sharp statements of that period. When men were feeling so intensely, and speaking with a force and earnestness unknown in these later years, a reporter would insensibly take ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... hill together. It was early yet, and the city was veiled in fine mist through which the river gleamed here and there with a sharpness of steel. The dome of St Peter's was still dark against the greenish pallor ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... nearly a score of years after Hallam's death, reveals Tennyson's personal conquest of pain. His thought has broadened from the sense of loss into a stately march of conquest over death for the whole human race. The sharpness of grief has wakened the soul to the contemplation of sublime ideas—truth, justice, nobility, honor, and the sense of beauty as shown in all created things. The man once loved a person—now his heart goes out ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... nature and how he should classify them. He remarked that they could not be planets belonging to far-off suns, nor distant comets, nor distended stars. Consequently, he concluded rightly that they were nebulae. When observed with large telescopes, they lose their planetary aspect, and their sharpness of outline is less apparent; their discs become broken up into bright and dark portions, and in some, numerous minute stars have been observed, whilst others ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... each of which is held in highest reverence by its own special admirers. The patriotic fervour with which Lord Tennyson has done almost all his laureate work, the lucid splendour of his style, the perfect music of his rhythm, and the stinging sharpness with which he has sometimes chastised contemporary sins, have all combined to win for him a far wider popularity than even that accorded to the fine lyrical passion of Mrs. Browning, or to the deep-thoughted ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... very beautiful rhythmic quality in the play from softness to sharpness on the edges of masses. A monotonous sharpness of edge is hard, stern, and unsympathetic. This is a useful quality at times, particularly in decorative work, where the more intimate sympathetic qualities are not so much ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... words? Can you be loud enough to overpower the voice of all who shall attempt to interrupt or contradict you? Are you mistress of the petulant, the peevish, and the sullen tone? Have you practised the sharpness which provokes retort, and the continual monotony which by setting your adversary to sleep effectually precludes reply? an event which is always to be considered as decisive of the victory, or at least as reducing it to a drawn battle:—you and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... comes to consider the commoner claim, the claim to be felt and respected and regarded in one's own little circle, it is wholesome and humiliating to observe how generously and easily that regard is conceded to affectionateness and kindness, and how little it is won by any brilliance or sharpness. Of course irritable, quick-tempered, severe, discontented people can win attention easily enough, and acquire the kind of consideration which is generally conceded to anyone who can be unpleasant. How often families and groups are drilled ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Phoenicians had no statue of the sun, polished by hand, to express an image; but only had a certain great stone, circular below, and ending with a sharpness above, in the figure of a cone, of black colour. And they report it to have fallen from heaven, and to be the image of ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... time she was speaking, he watched her with ferret sharpness, thinking busily. Before she ended ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... showed me a dagger with a silver hilt, which she had bought at the mart. She was delighted with the beauty and sharpness of the steel. I took the blade, and pressed on her with it, exclaiming, Rather than suffer thee to kill thyself, I myself will do it.' She retreated in alarm, and I flung the dagger away. I took her by the hand, and led her to the garden, into the vine-bower, and said, Thou mayest depend ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of the Body. We do not find the Fury of a Lion in so weak and defenceless an Animal as a Lamb, nor the Meekness of a Lamb in a Creature so armed for Battel and Assault as the Lion. In the same manner, we find that particular Animals have a more or less exquisite Sharpness and Sagacity in those particular Senses which most turn to their Advantage, and in which their Safety and Welfare ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... If it be the King's will to stablish again the old faith, a hammer of iron will I be upon such as do raise their heads against it. It were better ye had never been born, it were better ye were dead and asleep, than that ye raised your heads against me.' He turned, then he swung back with the sharpness of a viper's spring. ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... said, with a slight sharpness in his accent. Then he added quickly, "No, for I am a born shopkeeper in another sense than because I am one of a ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... frankly that he was ashamed, but she, recognizing his tone and the sharpness of it, was not displeased. On the contrary, she felt a warm glow, and the woman in her urged her to go further. She spoke well of the Secretary, his penetrating foresight and his knowledge of the world and its people—men, women and children. Prescott ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... natural helper, was made to feel the power of his arm. This age lasted long, but its rigor slowly passed away, and it merged gradually into the second era, which was one of mind. Here, too, man thought to rule, claiming the leadership by right of possession and natural endowment. But woman's sharpness of intellect was more than a match for him when it was given full opportunity, and she won, as we have seen, after a long struggle. The third and present era is a spiritual one. In the realm of the spirit ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... tone, and old Oliver looked down upon him through his spectacles, with a closer survey than he had given to him before. The boy's face was pale and meagre, with an unboyish sharpness about it, though he did not seem more than nine or ten years old. His glittering eyes were filled with tears, and his colourless lips quivered. He wiped away the tears roughly upon the ragged sleeve ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... delight in all the preparations were too real and manifest, to permit any of the willing helpers to be offended at her sharpness. In her heart Mrs Snow was greatly pleased, and owned as much in private, but in public, "saw no good in making a work about it," and, on behalf of the minister and his daughter, accepted the kindness of the people as their proper right and ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... capital, the capital had altered her superficially. Parisian polish became rust on this coarsely tempered soul. Gifted with a cunning which had become unfathomable, as it always does in those whose celibacy is genuine, with the originality and sharpness with which she clothed her ideas, in any other position she would have been formidable. Full of spite, she was capable of bringing discord into the most ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... British waters is that from Sinclair Bay, Wick, to Sandwick Bay, Shetland, of the length of 122 miles, and laid in 1885. The shortest being four cables across the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, at the latter place, and each less than 300 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... in the nearest capacity for that blessed communion with God. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," Matt. v. 8. Truly it is not profoundness of ingine,(242) it is not acuteness and sharpness of wit, it is not pregnancy in understanding, or eminency in parts, that will dispose the soul to this blessed vision of God, and frame it to a capacity of fellowship with him. No, there needs no extraordinary ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... was at the Prado, seated before a glass of punch and talking with a tall fellow celebrated on account of his nose, which had the singular privilege of being aquiline when seen sideways, and a snub when viewed in front. It was a nose that was not devoid of sharpness, and had a sufficiency of gallant adventures to be in such a case to give good advice and be useful ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... brightly, examined a brace of pistols, which he placed under his pillow, and then, took down a huge heavy sword from a shelf where it lay concealed, pulled it forth from its scabbard, and applied his thumb along the edge, to be satisfied of its sharpness. Having laid the weapon by his bed-side, he commenced, unaided, to undress. This did not occupy him long, though he stopped occasionally, his eye glancing round the apartment, his ear bent, as if some unhallowed noise had struck upon it suddenly. As he moved to his lonely couch, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... not deny that he was—and for the rest he could hardly get his words out with the sharpness of his hunger whetted still keener by the blessed smell of cooking. But he ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... the unheard-of audacity of the youth before him, now felt moved to keep step with the philosopher, whom few could equal in sharpness of wit; and, controlling the raging fury of his blood, he cried, in a tone ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was, however, no time for retreat even had his courage failed him for the door behind him had no sooner clicked together than a boy in a gray uniform came forward. As he approached his eye swept with disapproval the shabby visitor and he said, with an edge of sharpness crisping ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... quadrature preceding opposition he is a morning star. The shadow of the rings on the planet is best seen when the rings are but moderately open, and Saturn is in or near quadrature. When the shadow lies outside the rings it is best seen, as the dark ring takes off from the sharpness of the contrast when the shadow lies within the ring. It would take more space than I can spare here to show how it is to be determined (independently) whether the shadow lies within or without the ring. But the 'Nautical Almanac' gives the ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder and grow sick ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... could not recommend for adoption by the directors of the Company. One of the principal practical objections to this locomotive was the enormous quantity of coke consumed or wasted by it—about 692 lbs. per hour when travelling—caused by the sharpness of the steam-blast in the chimney, which blew a large proportion of the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... magnification than the outer ("barrel-shaped distortion''), or conversely ("cushion-shaped distortion'') (see fig. 7). Systems free of this aberration are called "orthoscopic'' (orthos , right, skopein to look). This aberration is quite distinct from that of the sharpness of reproduction; in unsharp, reproduction, the question of distortion arises if only parts of the object can be recognized in the figure. If, in an unsharp image, a patch of light corresponds to an object point, the "centre of gravity'' of the patch may be regarded as the image ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... jokes, and hovers careless along; his cloak well adjusted to the wind, if so be he may please all persons. The simple young King, whom a Maurepas cannot think of troubling with business, has retired into the interior apartments; taciturn, irresolute; though with a sharpness of temper at times: he, at length, determines on a little smithwork; and so, in apprenticeship with a Sieur Gamain (whom one day he shall have little cause to bless), is learning to make locks. (Campan, i. 125.) It appears further, he understood Geography; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... did not weaken her intrepidity. The struggle was glorious for both parties; but how she escaped through the storm which her mysterious conduct had at once raised and quelled, the sweetness and the sharpness, the commendation and the reprimand of her noble speech in closing the parliament, are told by Hume with the usual felicity ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... at me," called Kells, with piercing sharpness. "I'll be your friend if you let me.... But declare yourself like a man—if you want me for ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... and sharpness of the cry, Charley stood without moving, and was surprised to see his brother pick up one of the wet bricks in both hands, and dash it upon the ground immediately in front of ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... that followed Allen's words lasted long, and the sheriff fidgeted impatiently. When he again spoke there was the sharpness of intolerance ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... that are a mistake." Mr. Saffron spoke with a sudden sharpness, in pointed rebuke. "If I form a right idea of that woman, she's quite capable of going to Mudie's to ask ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... her majesty's mild and gracious clemency, and their slanderous lewdness to be the more condemned, that have in favor of heinous malefactors and stubborn traitors spread untrue rumours and slanders, to make her merciful government disliked, under false pretence and rumors of sharpness and cruelty to those against whom nothing can be cruel, and yet upon whom nothing hath been ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... most profane and offensive sound with it to be sure; and shocks delicate ears very dreadfully: and I used to reprimand my maids at Milan for bringing up the blessed Virgin Mary's name on every trivial, almost on every ludicrous occasion, with a degree of sharpness they were not accustomed to, because it kept me in a constant shivering. Yet let us reflect a moment on our own conduct in England, and we shall be forced candidly to confess that the Puritans alone keep their lips unpolluted by breach of ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... which the mechanism has to be made, by means of fire; either baking it in hot sand or ashes, or otherwise applying heat to a degree just short of charring its surface. The mechanism will then retain the sharpness of its edges under a continuance of pressure, and during many hours of wet weather. The slighter the strain on the springe, the more delicately can ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... by bright and gaudy colours that he will shoot down recklessly on to the pennants of ships as they flutter in the wind, swinging to and fro with the roll of the vessel. He soars to an immense height, like the eagle, and no telescope can match the sharpness of his eyesight. Up aloft he can see the smallest fish disporting itself on the surface of the water. Especially he looks out for flying-fish, and catches them in the air just as they are hovering on expanded fins above the waves, or else dives after them and seizes them ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... travelling glove. Mrs. Whitman took the offered hand and let it drop. She was rigid and prim. She smiled, but the smile was merely a widening of her thin, pale, compressed lips. She looked at the girl with gray eyes, which had a curious blank sharpness in them. Rose Fletcher was so very well dressed, so very redolent of good breeding and style, that it was difficult at first to comprehend if that was all. Finally one perceived that she was a very pretty girl, of a sweet, childish type, ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
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