"Acute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... both acute and chronic, of tropical countries—those which formerly caused such ravages among the white settlers, and gave rise to the prevalent theory that Europeans can live only in the temperate zone—are all microbic in ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... abyss of ruin. The sin of the first parent helped much toward the solution of this perplexing problem, as well as to exalt the credit of the oracle, when made to assume the shape of an unnoticed prophecy. In the affecting story of Solon and Croesus, the Lydian king is punished with an acute domestic affliction because he thought himself the happiest of mankind—the gods not suffering any one to be arrogant except themselves; and the warning of Solon is made to recur to Croesus after he has become the prisoner of Cyrus, in the narrative of Herodotus. To the same vein of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... at us. The beast is extremely rare; it ranges over a wide area; it inhabits the thickest sort of cover in a sheer mountainous country; its senses are wonderfully acute; and it is very wary. A man might, once in a blue moon, get one by happening upon it accidentally, but deliberately to go after it was sheer lunacy. So we were told. As a matter of fact, we thought so ourselves, but Greater Kudu was as good an ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... of consecutive and homogeneous sounds rising from the grave to the acute, produced by the development of the same mechanical principle, the nature of which essentially differs from any other series of sounds equally consecutive and homogeneous, produced by another ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... of the stage, the lines may be perceived from that part of the pit and boxes which are near the orchestra; even then the shades are so very much softened by youth, and the parts so rounded, and so utterly free from acute angles, that they can, as yet, but faintly express strong, turbulent emotions, or display the furious passions. In a boy of his age, this, so far from being a defect, is a beauty, the reverse of which ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... of a mind at great tension, his senses became particularly acute for a single moment. He saw the silver-pierced vault of the sky, smelled the fragrance of the plains borne on the gentle wind, and heard the rustle of the dappled cottonwoods and the howling ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... Castle was treasonable, but it was not followed by an overt act,—and the overt act of the tar-barrel signal on the beacon-pole was treasonable, but it could not be traced to a prior consultation so as to evidence the intent. So these acute crown officials went on in their deliberations, and came to the conclusion, which Bernard officially communicated (May 25, 1769) to Lord Hillsborough, in the long letter above referred to, that they could not fix upon any acts "that amounted to actual treason, though many of them approached very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... finally settled in Jack Bint's limbs, reducing the most active and handy man in the parish to the state of a confirmed cripple, poor Jack, a thoughtless but kind creature, looked at his three motherless children with acute misery. Then it was that he found help where he least expected it—in the sense and spirit of his young daughter, a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... North's lips were tightly compressed. He merely looked at this young officer, but Algy found that look to be the same thing as acute torment. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... go a-soldiering yourself. In cases, however, where circumstances rendered that obviously impossible, as when people were too old or infirm, or were women or girls, this thrill of discontent, seldom very acute, soon subsided, by virtue of the self-preserving instinct which forbids us to persist in knocking our heads hard against our stone walls. But it was different where the beholder was so situated that he could imagine himself riding or striding after the rapturous march-music to fields of peril and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... His acute ears brought him the sound of Haskell moving a little in his own particular hollow. The lonesome owl hooted twice more, but there was no sound to betoken the approach of Union troops in the forest. The duel of weapons and wits would have ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Something in Leam's manner to Edgar struck him with an acute sense of distress, and seemed to tell him all that he had hitherto failed to understand. But he felt indignant with Edgar, even though his neglect, at which Leam had been so evidently pained, might to another man have given hopes. He would rather ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... that it had been a POINT with the writer to run his words together without division, so as to increase the difficulty of solution. Now, a not over-acute man, in pursuing such an object, would be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of his composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to run his characters, at this place, more than ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... from the vine, becomes wine. And when Lachesis has no more thread, this soul is loosed from the flesh, and virtually bears away with itself both the human and the divine; the other faculties all of them mute,[8] but memory, understanding, and will[9] far more acute in action than before. Without staying, it falls of itself, marvelously to one of the banks.[10] Here it first knows its own roads. Soon as the place there circumscribes it, the formative virtue rays out around it in like ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... with problems in hydrostatics and on other matters unconnected with astronomy: a large piece of work which I must pass over. Most interesting and acute it is, however. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... feeling and a faculty, is carried out and acted upon according to its instinctive impulses, that it becomes an effective agent of good. This, however, is not always done. Often it is neutralized by not being permitted to express itself according to the laws of its own operation. Many members have acute feelings and great powers of sympathy, but it exists in them only as feeling, only as a stimulus, a sentiment, and is, therefore, nothing but home-sentimentalism,—a disease of home-sympathy. Thus, for instance, parents may weep over the wickedness of their children, and the pious wife ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Spencer, has been his superior, for the lonely socialist could claim a comprehensiveness, a grasp of relations and a power of generalization, together with a boldness of conception, which place him in a class by himself. Engels was the able co-adjutor and co-worker with Marx. He was a deep and acute thinker, a most patient investigator, a careful writer. More practical than his friend, he was better able to cope with material problems, and his advice and his purse were always ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... acute case of illness can usually be better and more economically cared for in a hospital than in a poor home. In fact, although hospitals were intended originally for the destitute sick, the practice of ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... Elma, her head bowed on her breast. She felt stunned and cold. The dreadful blow had fallen; but the acute misery which was immediately to follow was not at present ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... hiding-place, and see, at least, if he could not be persuaded either to return or suffer her to join him, that he was not left destitute and comfortless. Nor was this an idle promise. George, though his inquiries were unceasing, crippled by the restraint imposed on them, was so acute in divining, and so active in following up each clue to the wanderer's artful doublings, that more than once he had actually come upon the track, and found the very spot where Waife or Sir Isaac had ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the acute trouble the Canon was going through to-day had been a visit of the day before from Mrs. Delaport Green. Adela, who, as he had once told Mark, sometimes looked in for a few minutes, was under the impression that she very often called on the old blind priest, and often mentioned her little attempts ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... time it was directly overhead Sime had stopped sweating. The dry atmosphere was sucking the moisture out of his body greedily, and his skin was burned red. His suffering was acute. ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... imagine that the air of Pall Mall, Paddington and Stowe, would have kept away such heavy misfortunes, and that you would have been easier and happier than you are now. I sometimes think, that idle men with good fortunes are happier than busy men; their enjoyments perhaps are not so acute, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... Finney, who was at the zenith of his power sixty years ago, bombarded the consciences of sinners with a prodigious broadside of pulpit doctrine; and many acute lawyers and eminent merchants were converted under his discourses. No two finer examples of doctrinal preaching—once so prevalent—could be cited than Dr. Lyman Beecher and Dr. Horace Bushnell. The celebrated sermon ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... me forever! Oh! when I think of that poor old man, with his venerable white hair,—that aged, helpless man, who was so kind to me, who loved me so well, and whom I so cruelly abandoned. But tell me, signor," she exclaimed, in suddenly altered tone, while her breath came with the difficulty of acute suspense,—"tell me, signor, does that ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Text, "mais il est moult cele" The latter seems absurd. I have no doubt that scue is correct, and is an Italianism, saputo having sometimes the sense of prudent or judicious. Thus P. della Valle (II. 26), speaking of Shah Abbas: "Ma noti V.S. i tiri di questo re, saputo insieme e bizzarro," "acute with all his eccentricity." ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in view, he resumed his economic studies in 1850, soon after his arrival in London. The work proceeded slowly, however, principally owing to the long and bitter struggle with poverty which encompassed Marx and his gentle wife. For years they suffered all the miseries of acute poverty, and even afterward, when the worst was past, the principal source of income, at times almost the only source in fact, was the five dollars a week received from the New York Tribune, for which Marx acted as special ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... been without an ulterior object that the acute and self-controlling mind of Adrian had hitherto sought to prolong the parley. Even as he first addressed Orsini, he had perceived, by the moonlight, the glitter of armour upon two men advancing from the far end of the street, and judged at once, by the neighbourhood, that ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of this future combined with the acute discomfort of the present to make her desperate. She cast about for a way of escape, a pathway to the sun. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... able to sit up and work and read; head and eyes had come back to their normal condition, but the treacherous disease had left its poison in foot and ankle, and the pain on movement became more and more acute. It required all the cheer that the new friend could give to hearten the invalid when once more she was sent back to counterpane land, with a big cage over the affected part to protect it from the bedclothes, and all ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... them. "I don't know enough yet," he said once to Henry, "but I'm learning...." His dramatic criticism was very pointed, and he speedily acquired a reputation among people who are interested in the theatre, as an acute but harsh critic, and already attempts had been made by theatrical managers either to bribe him or get him dismissed from his paper. The bribing process was quite delicately operated. One manager wrote to him, charmingly plaintive about his criticism, and invited him to put ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... that morning's Times. It was written by Lord S., who had played the part of public "fool" for half a generation. To be praised by him was disaster, and Cliffe's flush showed at once that the letter had caused him acute annoyance. He and Ashe fell upon the writer, vying with each other in anecdotes that left him ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Constance had been forgotten by the world of Bursley, which could pay small heed to sciatical old ladies confined to sofas and firesides. She was in acute pain, as Mary could see when at intervals she hovered round her. Assuredly it was one of Constance's bad days, one of those days on which she felt that the tide of life had left her stranded in utter neglect. The sound of the Bursley Town Silver Prize Band aroused her ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... 76. Lamb affected with stomach worm disease. 77. Whip-worms attached to wall of intestine. 78. Pin-worms in intestine. 79. A hog yard where disease-producing germs may be carried over from year to year. 80. Carcass of a cholera hog. 81. Kidneys from hog that died of acute hog-cholera. 82. Lungs from hog that died of acute hog-cholera. 83. A piece of intestine showing intestinal ulcers. 84. Cleaning up a hog lot. 85. Hyperimmune hogs used for the production of anti-hog-cholera serum. 86. Preparing the ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... BULLEYN practised physic at Durham. He died in 1576. He had the misfortune to lose great part of his library by shipwreck. He was thrown into prison for debt, where he wrote a great part of his medical treatises. Bishop Tanner says he was a man of acute judgment, and true piety. He was universally esteemed as a polished scholar, and as a man of probity, benevolence, and piety. I gather the following from Dr. Pulteney:—"Of Dr. Bulleyn there is a profile with a long beard, before his "Government of Health," and a whole length of him, in wood, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... and Mr Robertson, who was a man of quick temper and stinging speech, had made some very cutting remarks upon him, and sent him, moreover, to detention—a punishment which caused to his sensitive mind a pain hardly less acute than the master's pungent and undeserved sarcasm. This mishap, joined to his low weekly placing, very nearly filled him with despair, and this day might have turned the scale, and fixed him in the position of a heavy and disheartened boy, but for Power, who had come to Saint Winifred's ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... so far very intelligent and attractive. The child took the breast only once in a journey of twenty miles, but before arriving at destination she vomited several times, with no interruption but that of stupor, and after an acute fever the little girl settled down into the condition of a cripple ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... matter? He will be frightened out of his life; he's so young," cried Erebus in a tone of acute distress, gazing after their receding friend with very anxious eyes. "He's not like us; he won't cheek the keeper all the way like ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... ulterior thought was in their minds, they were bent only on one thing at that moment,—on entering the house at any hazard. Mrs. Peyton had lived long enough on the frontier to know the magic power of POSSESSION. Susy already was old enough to feel the acute feminine horror of the profanation of her own belongings by alien hands. Clarence, more cognizant of the whole truth than the others, was equally silent and determined; and Mary Rogers was fired with the zeal ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... said the acute banker—his father had been one of the builders of the "Rum Hospital"—"it is not the custom of our bank to make inquiries into the previous history of its customers. The bills were good, you may depend, or we should not have honoured them. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... sound dependent upon its number of vibrations per second; (usually indicated by its place in the musical scale; high or 'acute,' low or 'grave'); 5 f., 35 ff.; sometimes functions in verse for emphasis or for stress, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... sorrow he had seen his only child suffer during the hours of this long afternoon. But he knew the law would not so regard it. Even the lax Welsh law of those days could not fail to examine into the death of a man of Squire Griffith's standing. So the acute Ellis thought how he could conceal the ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and would do anything for him. They liked him for his bluff, John-Bullish, and rampant manner. The enlisted man is a curious differentiation from the class to which he belongs. His democratic instincts become less acute when he shoulders the Lee-Metford, and he readily accommodates himself to the will of a benevolent despot of robust appearance, and blunt and somewhat contemptuous address; whom in fact he prefers ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... weapons of wood, iron, or stone,—pressing with main force against various parts of the body with sharp-pointed swords,—pressure under enormous weights,—exposure to excessive heat, etc. Montgeron, viewing the whole as miraculous, says,—"God frequently causes the convulsionists the most acute pains, and at the same time intimates to them, by a supernatural instinct, that the formidable succors which He desires that they should demand will cause all their sufferings to cease; and these sufferings usually have a sort of relation to the succors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... into it, to forget for a while all their pains and maladies, and to enjoy that indescribably delightful sensation of having the joints gently unscrewed and fresh oiled. Others, whose shoulders and backs have known the pangs of lumbago and acute rheumatism, are put under one of the douches; and down comes on them a discharge of the hot fluid as if from the hose of a fire-engine, or as though shot out from some bursting steam-boiler. Away fly the pains ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... "interested himself in the spreading of this rumour." His arrest was actually ordered, when Hand succeeded in persuading him to surrender. At the German court, the case was dismissed "wegen Nichtigkeit"; and the acute stage of these distempers may be said to have ended. Blessed are the peacemakers. Hand had perhaps averted a collision. What is more certain, he had offered to the world a perfectly original reading of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... speculation as to its authorship. The secret leaked out in time, as all secrets will, but not by my aid; and then I used to derive a good deal of innocent amusement from the vehement assertions of some of my more acute friends, that they knew it was mine from the first paragraph." "As the Times some years since referred to my connection with the review, I suppose there will be no breach of confidence in the publication ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... a woman's love is quenched by a man's crime. Women in this respect are more enduring than men; they have softer sympathies, and less acute, less selfish, appreciation of the misery of being joined to that which has been shamed. It was not many hours since Gertrude had boasted to herself of the honour and honesty of her lord, and tossed ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... (whose opinion I quote not because I attach any value to it personally, but in deference to the judgment of those who do) prophesies that the "silent war" between men and women in the United States "will soon become so acute that it will cease to be silent." It is to be borne in mind, of course, that the Doctor's experience in the United States has as ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... with an apparent frankness that his Scottish intonation of voice, Scottish accent, and Scottish modes of expression were singularly adapted to sustain. He owed his preferment, indeed, to a long-exercised deference to Lundie and his family; for, while the Major himself was much too acute to be the dupe of one so much his inferior in real talents and attainments, most persons are accustomed to make liberal concessions to the flatterer, even while they distrust his truth and are perfectly aware of his motives. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... and probably shed a few tears over the sorrows of a noble and generous youth driven to crime by persecution, and outlawed through the machinations of an unscrupulous constabulary. So real could he make these sentimental fancies that her keen sorrow for him filled him with acute emotions of self-pity, and a large tear actually rolled down ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... A. ACUTE Acute Laminitis Definition Causes Symptoms Pathological Anatomy Complications Diagnosis and Prognosis Treatment Broad's Treatment for Laminitis Smith's ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... Darvid, "marbles, alabasters, laces, diamonds, pearls! But there was nothing of all this in fact! There was nothing but dry trunks, branches, snow, and hoar-frost. That is exaltation! And you see how destructive it may be! It brought you acute inflammation of the lungs, the traces of which are not ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... thoughts, compulsive behavior and cases of hysteria, where phobias and obsessions play a chief role, also somatic phenomena of hysteria which do not need to be acted upon quickly, such as, for example, anorexia. In acute cases of hysteria it is better to wait for a calmer period before applying psychoanalysis. In cases of nervous prostration this manner of treatment, which demands the serious co-operation and attention of the patient, which lasts a long time ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... proportion as he has been accustomed to contemplate and discriminate objects extensive and complicated in their nature. The faculties of the mind itself have never yet been distinguished and defined, with satisfactory precision, by all the efforts of the most acute and metaphysical philosophers. Sense, perception, judgment, desire, volition, memory, imagination, are found to be separated by such delicate shades and minute gradations that their boundaries have eluded the most subtle investigations, and remain a pregnant ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... parents; of the aliments with which his frame has been nourished; besides a thousand trivial, inappreciable causes, which congregating themselves by degrees produce in him the gouty humour; the effect of which is to make him feel in an acute and very lively manner. The pain of the gout engenders in his brain an idea, so modifies it that it acquires the faculty of representing to itself, of reiterating as it were, this pain when even he shall be no longer tormented with the gout: his brain, by a series of motion interiorly ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... little. Two or more joints would have been taken for each jar, and the partitions between them broken through, so as to admit the water into the hollow spaces within. The pair of "jars" he would have then bound together at a very acute angle—something after the form of the letter V—and then to carry them with ease he would have strapped the bamboos to his back, the apex of the angle downwards, and one of the ends just peeping over each shoulder. In this way he would have provided himself with a water-vessel that ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... not utter a word of complaint at this disturbance of her labours; and that she drew the old man's chair close up to the oven with her own hand. She was so much affected by the behaviour of his dog, that she admitted him even to the hearth; on which puss, being acute enough to see how matters stood, lay down with her back so close to the spaniel's that Kitty could not expel ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the right of private judgment, concerned the future leader of Canadian Liberalism and became acute in connection with the Institut Canadien of Montreal. This was a literary and scientific society, founded in 1844 by some members of the same group who later organized the Rouge party. It supplied the want of a public library and reading-room ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... years gone by could look upon them. Several of the younger people admitted became interested under the preaching of Mr. Moore over a year ago, and have stood to their post manfully ever since. The present severe weather causes much acute distress. A recent case had its humorous, as well as pathetic side. In the bitter zero weather of Friday's blizzard a microscopic male beggar unfolded a doleful tale, as he basked in the warmth of the kitchen fire. He gave very unsatisfactory directions to his home, and we were unsuccessful ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 49, No. 5, May 1895 • Various
... Dunham, in acute protest, "would you mind taking your head out of that curtain? Why, it ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... And as she so uttered his name twice, there came a look of acute distress and then of sudden resolution on her face. "I wish you to know," she exclaimed, "that—that—if I were a wicked woman I should perhaps be to you a better wife!" Thanks to the language in which she spoke, there was a play on the word—that ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... is not usually dangerous, but it is horribly painful while it lasts. Your eyes swell up and are stabbed continually by cutting pains; your head seems full of acute neuralgia, and often there is fever and other complications. The Colonel's was a bad case. But he was a giant for strength and "sound as a dollar," as the Boy reminded him, "except for this little bother with your eyes, and you're a whole ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... bolted upsetting the sleighs and throwing Col. Lucas into the neck-deep snow. The Americans returned the fire and slowly retired with the loss of but one man killed. Crawling in the snow for a great distance gave many of them severe frost bites, one of the most acute sufferers being the French Col. Lucas. The detachment returned to Chinova to report by telephone to Chekuevo and to organize a defensive position in case the enemy should advance toward Chekuevo. The enemy did ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... very good pitch; but there is yet somewhat more to be added, which he seemed to want time to complete. By this, as by that {78} art of algebra in geometry, 'twill be very easy to proceed in any natural inquiry, regularly and certainly.... For as 'tis very hard for the most acute wit to find out any difficult problem in geometry without the help of algebra ... and altogether as easy for the meanest capacity acting by that method to complete and perfect it, so will it be in the inquiry ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... ostentation of elegance and literature." But surely the author of such a popular poem as the "Pleasures of Imagination" had no need to claim notice by an ostentatious display of his parts, and had too much good sense to imagine that such a vain display would conciliate any acute and sensible person. Johnson, in fact, throughout his cursory and careless "Life of Akenside," is manifestly labouring under deep prejudice against the poet—prejudice founded chiefly on Akenside's ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... unanimous approval of the parishioners. The possession of high musical attainments makes her temperament all the more interesting, and accounts for the presence in so remote a district of her German friend whose acute sense of the ridiculous leads to such untoward results. It is hard to say whether the author's talents are best evinced by her true pathos or by the delicate touches of humour which pervade the book. Another commendable feature of the novel is an alert skill in construction ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... His brain, too, was his accuser. He saw with a hideous clarity that even the excuse of motive was denied him. It was a sense of personal loss which had driven him out on to that canal path, a murderer at heart. It was something of which he had been robbed, an acute and burning desire for vengeance, personal, entirely egotistical. It was not the wrong to the woman which he resented, had there been any wrong. It was the agony of his own personal misery. He rose from his bed and stamped up and down his little chamber ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... immune. With the second class the power of resistance is great, and can be renewed from time to time by a spell home in a European climate. In the third class the state is that of cumulative poisoning; in the fourth of acute poisoning. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... all the materials of a confession ready made, but not of a confession identical with Bedloe's. He was 'one of the most acute and audacious of the Jesuit agents,' says Mr. Pollock.* Yet Mr. Pollock argues that for Prance to tell the tale which he did tell, in his circumstances of cold and terror, required a most improbable 'wealth of mental equipment,' ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... expected, the sudden tilting of the boat at an acute angle threw the occupants all into one end. There were yells and shouts, and then came splashes, as one after another fell ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... I began to have influence, which steadily increased for a course of years. I gained upon my pupils, and was in particular intimate and affectionate with two of our probationer Fellows, Robert Isaac Wilberforce (afterwards Archdeacon) and Richard Hurrell Froude. Whately then, an acute man, perhaps saw around me the signs of an incipient party, of which I was not conscious myself. And thus we discern the first elements of ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... First in the Modern History School in 1895. No one ever experienced more keenly the tingling thrill of the eager student who finds himself cast into the heart of Oxford's abundant life: the thousands of books so generously alive; the hundreds of acute and worthy rivals crossing steel on steel in play, work, and debate; the endless throb of passionate speculation into all the crowding problems of human history. The zest and fervour of those younger days he has never outgrown, and there are few writers of our time who have appealed ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... observation carried to perfection, or, rather, the ordinary pictorial observation. The Goncourts only tell you the things that Gautier leaves out; they find new, fantastic points of view, discover secrets in things, curiosities of beauty, often acute, distressing, in the aspects of quite ordinary places. They see things as an artist, an ultra-subtle artist of the impressionist kind, might see them; seeing them indeed always very consciously with a deliberate attempt ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... now dead, and then first met, I am specially bound in gratitude—the late Mr. J. F. M'Lennan. Mr. M'Lennan had the most acute and ingenious of minds which I have encountered. His writings on early marriage and early religion were revelations which led on to others. The topic of folklore, and the development of custom and myths, is not generally ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... up at her swiftly and suddenly, and she saw that his agony of sorrow was acute beneath all his attempts at superiority, his courteous fractiousness, and his set face. She was filled ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... Philosopher. "Sparrows, again, are a highly acute and reasonable folk. They use water to quench thirst, but when they are dirty they take a dust bath and are at once cleansed. Of course, birds are often seen in the water, but they go there to catch fish and not to wash. I have often fancied that ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... in truth suffer dreadfully. There are men to whom such a disappointment as this causes enduring physical pain,—as though they had become suddenly affected with some acute and yet lasting disease. And there are men, too, who suffer the more because they cannot conceal the pain. Such a man was Lord George. He shut himself up for months at Manor Cross, and would see no one. At first ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... certain measure no doubt, for who escapes them? But to that life of hers the scorching fires that had worked so hard to slay her sister's heart, and failed so signally, had never penetrated. Indeed, the only really acute grief of her placid life had been the supposed death of this very sister, now so near her, unknown. Still, Gwen might, of course, have taken just as strongly to Granny Marrable if some slight chance of ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... misdirection, partly by a process of energetic stamping out. The shameful Chinese opium war, the Cabul disasters, and the fearful Sepoy rebellion were, as yet, only slow, simmering horrors in the black caldron of the Fates. Irish starvation had not set in, in its acute form, and Irish sedition was, as yet, taking only the form of words—the bold, eloquent, magnificent, but not malignant and scarcely menacing words of Daniel O'Connell In the Infernal Council Chamber below, the clock whose hours are epochs of crime, had not yet struck for the era ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... as if she had stepped aside for an instant, solely to snatch the relief of a brief fit of madness. Persons in acute trouble, or laboring under strong excitement, with a necessity for concealing it, are prone to relieve their nerves in this wild way; although, when practicable, they find a more ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his head to the left: at that moment, another whistle, more acute and lower than the first, cut the air. The boy was thoroughly aroused. "Deuce take them!" he exclaimed. "They actually are aiming at me!" The bullet had passed at a ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... pulse be quickened. And mark, for a last differentia, that this quickening of the pulse is, in almost every case, purely agreeable; that these phantom reproductions of experience, even at their most acute, convey decided pleasure; while experience itself, in the cockpit of life, can ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... calmly contemplate the approach of the last hour. But I confess I do shrink from encountering an undefined period of bodily and mental imbecility; of being helpless, useless, a burden. I have been so distressed to see all this come upon our bishop, Dr. Terrot; the once clear, acute, sharp, and ready man. Oh, it is to my mind the most terrible affliction of our poor nature. I have known lately an unusual number of such cases before me, and I hope I am not unreasonably apprehensive as to what may come. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... Those numberless productions with which the press then abounded; the cant of the pulpit, the declamations of party, the subtilties of theology, all these have long ago sunk in silence and oblivion. Even a writer such as Selden, whose learning was his chief excellency, or Chillingworth, an acute disputant against the Papists, will scarcely be ranked among the classics ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... formed by four equal and parallel lines but not rectangular, two of its opposite angles being acute, and two obtuse. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... sudden the light went out. Hal, his ears unusually acute now, heard their moving footsteps. Then all ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... so very confident before, Max now experienced a new feeling of acute alarm. What if the imprisoned man succeeded in breaking out of his place of confinement, would he not be raging mad in every sense of the word, and in a humor to attack the camp of the ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... lay, of course, partly in the presence of his father and in the sense that he had had growing upon him, during the last two years, that their relationship, the one to the other, would, suddenly, one fine day, spring into acute emotion. They were approaching one another gradually as in a room whose walls were slowly closing. "Face to face—and then body to body—at last, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Mary! my hand is so scalded. What shall I do? I cannot bear it. It's all about my feet on the ground." She kept shaking her hand to cool it by the action of the air. Mary thought that she herself was dying, so acute and terrible was the pain; she could hardly keep from screaming out aloud; but she felt that if she once began she could not stop herself, so she sat still, moaning, and the tears running down her face ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... traced down the centuries in all lands and under all conditions. For the most part of two days he had wandered over the moor in the bright, cold November weather reconstructing the scene in Israel on Scottish lines, and he entered the pulpit that morning charged with the Epic of Puritanism. Acute critics, like Elspeth Macfadyen, could tell from Carmichael's walk down the church that he was in great spirits, and even ordinary people caught a note of triumph in his voice as he gave out the first Psalm. For the first few sentences of his sermon he spoke quietly, as one ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... have wholly escaped my observation in my passage through it. I have sought the acquaintance of that gentleman, and have seen him in all situations. He is a true genius; with an understanding vigorous, and acute, and refined, and distinguishing even to excess; and illuminated with a most unbounded, peculiar, and original cast of imagination. With these he possesses many external and instrumental advantages; and he makes use of them all. His fortune is among the largest; a fortune which, wholly unincumbered, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... had been sick in bed for seven years with a nervous derangement, which baffled the most skilful physicians who had visited her. Her senses were so acute, that one morning she fell into convulsions from the effect of distant music which she heard. None of us could perceive it, and we fully believed that her imagination had produced this result. But she insisted upon it; telling us that the music was like ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... considerably wetted before his return to the house. About one o'clock he was seized with chilliness and nausea, but having changed his clothes he sat down to his indoor work. At night, on joining his family circle, he complained of a slight indisposition. Upon the night of the following day, having borne acute suffering with composure and fortitude, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... lighted upon the presence of Mrs. Herman at the studio. He raged against himself, against chance, most of all against the unmannerly and coarse-minded fellow who had forced himself into the studio, and then persisted in imagining evil which had never existed. He experienced all the acute anguish of finding himself in the toils, and of the added sting from wounded vanity, since he felt that he had been wanting in adroitness and presence of mind. It is to be doubted if he did not suffer more than would have been the case had the injurious ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the relations of the army with Seuthes, and of the warfare carried on against the hostile Thracian tribes—interesting as it is from the juxtaposition of Greek and Thracian manners. It seems to have been composed by Xenophon under feelings of acute personal disappointment, and probably in refutation of calumnies against himself as if he had wronged the army. Hence we may trace in it a tone of exaggerated querulousness, and complaint that the soldiers were ungrateful to him. It is true that a portion of the army, under the belief that ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... utterly oblivious of his surroundings, did not notice the question and Browne replied to it for him. "I should be only too happy to fetch an officer for you, if you wish," he said. Have you ever noticed how acute the mind is for trifles and slight incongruities when under the severe tension of such a shock as we had experienced? Such attacks, threatening to invade and forever subjugate our happiness, seem to have the effect of so completely manning the ramparts of our intellect the ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... among the intellectually ablest. At first, owing to my confusing the quality of which I am speaking with that of nervous irritability, I fancied that women of delicate nerves who are distressed by noise, sunshine, etc., would have acute powers of discrimination. But this I found not to be the case. In morbidly sensitive persons both pain and sensation are induced by lower stimuli than in the healthy, but the number of just perceptible grades of sensation between them is not ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... origin: sign-boards are the origin, or one origin. But what was the origin of sign-boards? 'We carry the pictures of saints on our banners because we worship them; we don't worship them because we carry them as banners,' says De Brosses, an acute man. Did the Indians worship totems because they carved them on sign-boards (if they all did so), or did they carve them on ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... by the machinations of some enemy. Seeing a Tatungolung very lame, I asked him what was the matter? He said, 'Some fellow has put bottle in my foot.' I asked him to let me see it. I found he was probably suffering from acute rheumatism. He explained that some enemy must have found his foot track, and have buried in it a piece of broken bottle. The magic influence, he believed, caused it to enter his foot.... Phthisis, pneumonia, bowel complaints, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1788. I cannot tell why my father's mind did not appear to me fitted for advancing science, for he was fond of theorising, and was incomparably the most acute observer whom I ever knew. But his powers in this direction were exercised almost wholly in the practice of medicine and in the observation of human character. He intuitively recognised the disposition or character, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... in which I paid my way among this credulous race. Ninety per cent. of our visitors would have accepted the remark as natural in itself and creditable to my powers of judgment, but it appeared my lawyer was more acute. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vague instinct which compels humanity in moments of doubt and perplexity to seek this change of observation or superior illumination. Not that Mrs. Wade's disturbance was of a serious character. She had passed the acute stage of widowhood by at least two years, and the slight redness of her soft eyelids as well as the droop of her pretty mouth were merely the recognized outward and visible signs of the grievously minded religious community ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... I received a vast impression of space and multitude and opportunity; intimate things also were suddenly dragged from neglected, veiled and darkened corners into an acute vividness of perception. Close at hand in the big art museum I came for the first time upon the beauty of nudity, which I had hitherto held to be a shameful secret, flaunted and gloried in; I was made aware of beauty as not only permissible, but desirable and frequent and of a thousand hitherto ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... whatever they want. They employ also several vessels in transporting lumber to the West Indian Islands, from whence they procure in return the various productions of the country, which they afterwards exchange wherever they can hear of an advantageous market. Being extremely acute they well know how to improve all the advantages which the combination of so many branches of business constantly affords; the spirit of commerce, which is the simple art of a reciprocal supply of wants, is well understood ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... well have been—your head," Paul answered, with a twist of his sensitive mouth. He had not quite got over his few moments of acute suspense. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... gradually faded away, dying at last when I was only about seven years old. Even then I used to appear upon the stage in parts suitable to my age. I was a precocious little thing in many ways. My mother's death caused me a grief far more acute than most children, even a good deal older than I was then, are capable of feeling. How well I remember being punished because I refused to act the part of one of Medea's children, the day after she died. But my grief was not very long-lived—I was but a child after all, and the actors and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Nito has the net, but he will not go into the sea. Per Dio, he is birbante. He will say he has the rheumatism, I know, and walk like that." (Gaspare hobbled to and fro before them, making a face of acute suffering.) "He has asked for me. Hasn't ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... appearance of its being an accidental error; so that, in order to draw the eye to it, and show that it is done on purpose, the upper triangles are made about two inches higher than the lower ones, so as to be much more acute in proportion and effect, and actually to look considerably narrower, though of the same width at the base. By this means they are made lighter in effect, and subordinated to the richly decorated series of the lower band, and the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the time," said Mrs. Lorton; "but I do not complain. I never complain, Eleanor. A Wolfer should at least know how to suffer in silence. I hope it is hot—really hot; yesterday it was cold—quite cold, and it caused me that acute indigestion which, I trust, Eleanor, it will never be your ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... quite knew how he got into the horrors of the saddle, still less how he and "Matchbox" got into the road. At one acute moment, indeed, he had believed he was going to precede her thither, but they alighted more or less together, and turning her, by a handy gap, into the field on the other side of the road, he set off at ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... suspicious to the acute lad. Noting particularly the composition of the dish, he betook himself to the street, where he began again to exalt the merits of his pies and to entertain the passers-by with ballads. He kept in the vicinity of the boyar's house until the czar arrived, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... repartee, which his annals afforded, and charitably bottomed thereupon a hypothesis that David Gellatley was no farther fool than was necessary to avoid hard labour. This opinion was not better founded than that of the Negroes, who, from the acute and mischievous pranks of the monkeys, suppose that they have the gift of speech, and only suppress their powers of elocution to escape being set to work. But the hypothesis was entirely imaginary; David Gellatley was in good earnest the half-crazed simpleton which he ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... he discovered the right remedy for the harm which he was desirous of removing, is much more questionable. To magnify any branch of human knowledge beyond its just importance, may indeed tend to weaken the force of religious faith; but many acute metaphysicians have been good Christians, and before the question thus agitated can be set at rest, we must suppose a proficiency in those inquiries which he would proscribe as dangerous. After all, we can discover no more reason why sciolists in metaphysics should bring that study into discredit, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... light, pattering footsteps immediately behind me. The place was quite deserted at that hour, and although I was so near home, the worst would have happened, I fear, if my sense of hearing had been less acute. I turned in the very instant that a man was about to spring upon me from behind. He was holding in his hand what looked like a large silk handkerchief. This encounter took place in the shadow of some trees, and beyond the fact that my assailant ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... and remaining in their places by reciprocal resistance. Characteristic of it is the general tendency to use vast blocks of stone for the jambs and lintels of doors, for instance, and in the construction of gable-shaped passages; two rows of such stones being made to rest against each other at an acute angle, within the thickness of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... uttered the name, when the lady's face showed signs of acute irritation. She almost shrieked, and interrupted him ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... announced to be brought on the stage with whole force of the Faculty, read by our Frederick, (no such person, of course,) than say the best things I might by any chance find myself capable of saying. Of course, if I come across a real thinker, a suggestive, acute, illuminating, informing talker, I enjoy the luxury of sitting still for a ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... enterprise, which distinguishes the Anglo Saxon genius, and which gives him such a preponderance over the impassive and contemplative Oriental, but, on the other hand, the native of India possesses in a high degree that acute perception and common sense strengthened by numerical traditions and maxims, which enable him to judge correctly of both the acts and motives of his Foreign superior. It should be recollected to their credit, that the germ of almost every known invention, ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... was now acute. It was impossible to go back, and to go ahead meant to advance on foot along roads crowded with silent soldiers—meant going forward, too, in a pouring rain and in high-heeled shoes. For that was another idiocy I ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dignity of the position that the holder may be frank and hearty at his own pleasure, without danger of impairing it. Certainly, we found Sir Fenwick a most genial and charming gentleman. The Alabama claims were then in their acute stage, and he expressed the earnest hope that the two nations would not proceed to cutting ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... I am obliged to do it. If I restrained my imagination when the fit is on me, I should go mad. I let myself loose. It lasts for hours. It leaves me with my energies worn out, with my sensibilities frightfully acute. Rouse any melancholy or terrible associations in me at such times, and I am capable of hysterics, I am capable of screaming. You heard me scream. You shall not see me in hysterics. No, Mrs. Valeria—no, ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... [208] Bunyan had an acute sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and no saint had suffered more severely from despair. One of his great objects, in most of his works, is to arm poor pilgrims against desponding fears. Thus, in his first treatise on Gospel Truths-"He (the devil) will be sure to present to thy conscience ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... seemed shed over the room. The murmur of voices sounded like rushing waters in my ears. I gradually lost all power of volition, while my consciousness remained unimpaired, or, if any thing, became more acute than ever. The guests, if such they were, broke up their carousal about this time, and began to drop off one by one, each bowing profoundly to the landlord, and crossing himself devoutly, and bowing three times again before ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... to regard him alertly with an expression which can be described only as one of infinite distaste—with the acute discomfort of an irrepressible creature who shrinks from ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... the pursuit of improvement. The secret of Bentham's immense influence in England during the past thirty years is his success in placing such an object before the country. He gave us a clear rule of reform. English lawyers of the last century were probably too acute to be blinded by the paradoxical commonplace that English law was the perfection of human reason, but they acted as if they believed it for want of any other principle to proceed upon. Bentham made the good of the community ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... more acute. Of an evening, in the yellow drawing-room, when Granoux's growl was rendered indistinct by fright, he would draw near to Felicite and whisper in her ear: "Come, little one, the fruit is ripe—but you ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... germs of many controversies. However, while in the beginning its offensive doctrinal features were not fully and generally recognized and realized, the Emperor's demand for, and approval of, the Wittenberg and Leipzig theologian's reintroduction of the Romish ceremonies immediately created an acute situation and a great commotion everywhere. The resulting theological conflict pertaining to the latter point in particular was called the Adiaphoristic or Interimistic Controversy. And, as explained ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... seems to span half the horizon. I could not but think of Valhalla and the Bridge of the Gods in the Rheingold. Elevator architecture necessarily sends one to Scandinavian mythology in quest of similitudes.) It is with acute regret that I turn my back upon New York, or, rather, turn my face to see it receding over the steamer's wake. Not often in this imperfect world are high anticipations overtopped, as the real American has overtopped my half-reminiscent dream of it. "The real America?" That, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... action over for the immediate present, Madeline became conscious that she was quivering and almost breathless. Her skin felt tight and cold. There was a weight on her chest; her mouth was dry, and she had a strange tendency to swallow. Her listening faculty seemed most acute. Dull sounds came from parts of the house remote from her. In the intervals of silence between these sounds she heard the squeaking and rustling of mice in the hay. A mouse ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... on follies of words. Biron and Rosaline are evidently the pre-existent state of Benedict and Beatrice, and so, perhaps, is Boyet of Lafeu, and Costard of the Tapster in Measure for Measure; and the frequency of the rhymes, the sweetness as well as the smoothness of the metre, and the number of acute and fancifully illustrated aphorisms, are all as they ought to be in a poet's youth. True genius begins by generalizing and condensing; it ends in realizing and expanding. ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... reprobated, and many are reprobated who in the opinion and sentence of man stand elected. There will appear, at the last day, strange and unexpected examples, both of his justice and his mercy; and, therefore, to define either is folly in man, and insolency even in the devils. These acute and subtile spirits, in all their sagacity, can hardly divine who shall be saved; which if they could prognostick, their labour were at an end, nor need they compass the earth, seeking whom they may devour. ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... be largely imaginative; because in our history such a condition has never yet arisen. Although wars have happened in the past in which there has been a blockade of our coast more or less complete, peace has been declared before the suffering produced had become very acute; and furthermore the conditions of furious trade which now exist have never existed before. Disasters would ensue, apart from the actual loss of money, owing simply to the sudden change. In a railroad-train standing still or moving at a uniform speed, ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... cases were observed with Drosera. The movements of a young leaf, only 3/4 inch in length, of Petunia violacea were traced during four days, and offers a better instance (Fig. 111, p. 248) as it diverged during the whole of this time in a curiously zigzag line with some of the angles sharply acute, and during the latter days plainly circumnutated. Some young leaves of about the same age on a plant of this Petunia, which had been laid horizontally, and on another plant which was left upright, both being kept in complete darkness, diverged in the same manner for 48 h., and apparently ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... killed pretension and stifled shams. The pedant or the conceited person silently drifted away. How could it be otherwise, while a famous painter was describing some scene, or a noted philosopher illustrating some theory, or an acute statesman drawing some historical parallel, than that the egotist should drop himself, and the proser forget to prose?" The late Clarence King was in his day a leader in the Century talk, and his comment ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... clouds of black smoke blowing across his father's ground during the winter; so they could not have lived very far from the Worcester railroad. Horace Mann's house is still standing, opposite a school- house on the road from the station, where a by-way meets it at an acute angle. The freight-trains and their anthracite smoke must have had a disturbing influence on ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... which was at once a profound repose and a clear consciousness, for perhaps an hour longer, when suddenly the stillness of the scene was stirred by a sound so slight that it could only have been heard by one whose senses were, like hers at that time, preternaturally acute. The sound was of the slow, cautious turning of a door upon ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... exaggeration of the Christian austerity in her hate of all the brutalities and all the careless morals that paganism condoned. Nevertheless, this rigid soul knew how to bend when it was necessary. Monnica had tact, suppleness, and, when it was needed, a very acute and very reasonable practical sense of which she gave many a proof in the bringing up and management of her son Augustin. This soul, hard for herself, veiled her uncompromising religion under an unchangeable sweetness which was in her rather the work ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... she was a prey to acute anxiety, and she was dreading most of all the first look which would show on the face of her father when he knew that his family had come to him. If the look were pleasure, then everything would be possible, and nothing else would matter; but if there were dismay or regret in his expression, ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... swallow up all other things, that I think I shall suppress my next week's readings here (by good fortune not yet announced) and watch the course of events. Dolby's sudden desponding under these circumstances is so acute, that it is actually swelling his head as I glance at him in the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... is a man of wonderfully acute intellect. For many years he served his people in the Legislature of New Hampshire and was a member of the Senate of the United States for several terms. After he retired from the Senate in 1901, President ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... discipline supplied by subsequent desultory application. He seems to have been born with a rare sense of literary proportion and form; into this, as into a mould, were run his apparently lazy and really acute observations of life. That he thoroughly mastered such literature as he fancied there is abundant evidence; that his style was influenced by the purest English models is also apparent. But there remains a large margin for wonder how, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... the practice satisfy me of following the lessons in the College Chapel: and this for reasons so obvious that I will not stop to point them out. Nor even is the reading of the Bible in College Lecture, the thing I mean; for reasons also which any acute person will readily ascertain for himself. None of these methods of acquainting yourselves with the contents of the Bible come up to the thing I contemplate, although each is good in its way; and of course I am not speaking ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... unpractical they might find the development of his ideas, and his deductions from them. And in Oxford the questions which had stirred the friends at Hadleigh had stirred others also, and had waked up various responses. Whately's acute mind had not missed these questions, and had given original if insufficient answers to them. Blanco White knew only too well their bearing and importance, and had laboured, not without success, to leave behind him his own ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... keenly acute conscience about evil, and about compromise with evil; and yet with it a sanity of judgment on particular questions arising, and a gentle consideration for others who see otherwise, or think they do. Evil grows in subtlety ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon |
