"Concentration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jest at his expense. Ever since he had quitted Silverquay he had been roving from place to place, seeking forgetfulness, and had at last turned his steps toward Monte Carlo, hoping that in the keen concentration and excitement of pitting his wits against the god of chance he might temporarily drown the memories that pursued him. And then, who should he encounter on the very first night of ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... of iron. And at the same time you will see there is something childlike and frank, with all his concentration and even his reserve. It's true, his frankness is not our poor sort of frankness—the frankness of people who have absolutely nothing to conceal.... But there, I will bring him to see you; ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... interest," said Holmes, who had been examining it with intense concentration. "These are much deeper waters than I had though." He sank his head upon his hands, while the Inspector smiled at the effect which his case had had upon ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Lesson 4, Feeding a city. Lesson 25, Concentration of production in the meat packing industry. Lesson 26, Concentration in the marketing of ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... the supreme artist matures, do we find him disdaining the showier and more evident forms of virtuosity. His colour is more and more marked in its luminous beauty by reticence and concentration, by the search after such a main colour-chord as shall not only be beautiful and satisfying in itself, but expressive of the motive which is at the root of the picture. Play of light over the surfaces and ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... thought once more of that dark period of their dual existence; and it was the last time that she was ever capable of thinking of it seriously and with any real concentration. Had that trouble left any permanent mark on him? Her own suffering had left no mark on her. It was gone so entirely that, as well as seeming incredible, it seemed badly invented, silly, preposterous. All that remained to her was just this ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... to his brain that now, possibly, was coming the moment when he might justify his life, might help this man whom he loved, to peace. The breath he caught was a prayer; his strong, nervous fingers trembled. He spoke in a tone whose concentration lifted the eyes below ...
— The Lifted Bandage • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Toward his father, he was aware of a more active feeling of disapproval, if not indeed one of repugnance. James Blatherwick was of such whose sluggish natures require, for the melting of their stubbornness, and their remoulding into forms of strength and beauty, such a concentration of the love of God that it becomes ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... twenty-five thousand I will have reached it"; when he was worth twenty-five thousand he saw the glow still ahead, beckoning him on to fifty thousand. It never occurred to him to slacken his pace—to allow his mind a rest from its concentration; if he had paused and looked about he might, even yet, have recognized the distant lighthouse on the reef about the wreck of his ideals. But to stop now might mean losing sight of his goal, and John Harris held nothing in heaven or earth ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... to one who had not yet discovered that intense concentration on herself and her family with which, after their quarrel, Mrs. Thrale, not quite an impartial judge, but a very shrewd one, charged her, and which ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... path towards the river. Had Madison Wayne been watching him, he would have noticed that his head was bent and his step less free. But Madison Wayne was at that moment sitting rigidly in his chair, nursing, with all the gloomy concentration of a monastic nature, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... arranges thought beside thought for this being of the species, this being that grows beautiful and powerful, in this persuasion I find the ruling idea of which I stand in need, the ruling idea that reconciles and adjudicates among my warring motives. In it I find both concentration of myself and escape from myself; in a word, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... the muscles. John Penhallow walked slowly up the rough road to where the ruined bastions of Port Putnam rose high above the Hudson. He was aware of being tired as he had not been for years. The hot close air and the long hours of concentration of mind left him discouraged as well as exhausted. He was still in the toils of the might-have-been, of that wasting process—an examination, and turning over in his mind logistics, logarithms, trajectories, equations, and a mob of disconnected ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... resumed Mr Abney, removing his face from a jug of menthol at which he had been sniffing with the tense concentration of a dog at a rabbit-hole, 'is beside the poidt. I berely bedtiod it to explaid why White will accompady you ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... with the new joys I constantly found in the pigeon-toed ladies and slant-eyed warriors. Uncle needed absorption, concentration and occupation. Mine was the privilege to ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... over the other's stump, as one would break one's cane over some people's heads, if one got the chance. In wind action of this kind the amount of actual force used is the least part of the business;—it is the suddenness of its concentration, and the lifting and twisting strength, as of a wrestler, which make the blast fatal; none of which elements of storm-power can be recognized by mechanical tests. In my friend's next letter, however, ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... in these varied efforts for the soldiers a lack of concentration and efficiency which rendered them less serviceable than they otherwise might have been. The different organizations and committees working independently of each other, not unfrequently furnished over-abundant ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... overlaid by the long thick muscles. And this power is instinct with the nervous force of a highly organized being. The lion is quick and intelligent and purposeful; so that he brings to his intenser activities the concentration of vivid passion, whether of anger, of hunger ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... prayer of the infant Christian life was like the feeble breath of infancy. She understood by prayer something far more and higher than the mere preferring of petitions. It was communion; God's Spirit responding harmoniously to our own. With Coleridge she held, that the act of praying with the total concentration of the faculties is the very highest energy of which the human heart is capable. Hence she was accustomed to speak of learning the mysterious art of prayer by an apprenticeship at the throne of grace. She somewhere wrote: "I think many of the difficulties ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... wonder. The outside of the ancient civilization is unequalled by the outside of ours, and for centuries will be unequalled by it. We have not surpassed it there. And we see how it attained this distinction, such as it was. It came by the constant concentration of power. Power in few hands is the secret of its display and glory. And thus that form of civilization attained its very climax in the moment of the greatest unity of the Roman Empire. When the Empire nestled into rest; after the convulsions in which it was born; when a generation ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... condition made, and she had asked herself while she spoke if it wouldn't cause his arm to let her go. The fact that it didn't suggested to her that she had made him, of a sudden, still more intensely think, think with such concentration that he could do but one thing at once. And it was precisely as if the concentration had the next moment been proved in him. He took a turn inconsistent with the superficial impression—a jump that made light of their approach to gravity and represented for her ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... fixation of a brilliant object, so that the muscle which holds up the upper eyelid becomes fatigued, and the concentration of the attention on a single idea, bring about the sleep. The subjects can even bring about this condition in themselves, by their own tension of mind, without being submitted to any influence from without. In this state the imagination becomes so lively ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... she didn't answer? She is several thousand miles and some hundreds of years away, and she can't get back in a hurry—blest be the concentration of childhood!" ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... conflict are partly objective and partly subjective. In my visits to the front and in such war-work as I did at home, I witnessed many striking and even entertaining things, and I saw them at moments of mental concentration and exaltation which no doubt heightened them and sometimes made them assume an interest and importance ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... of trouble of it too, when none of the letters of the alphabet of sensibility might be dropped, involved in being a Frenchman. The liveliest lesson I must have drawn, however, from that source makes in any case, at the best, an odd educational connection, given the kind of concentration at which education, even such as ours, is supposed especially to aim: I speak of that direct promiscuity of insights which might easily have been pronounced profitless, with their attendant impressions and quickened sensibilities—yielding, as these last did, harvests of apparitions. ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... recruiting was formed at Kirkcaldy and men quickly swelled our reinforcements there. After a few days at Blairgowrie, the Regiment entrained for the Brigade Concentration at Huntingdon; but as it was found there was insufficient space for a whole brigade, we were moved to St Ives, about six miles off, where there was a splendid common for drilling and good billets for the men. Very strenuous training occupied our two months ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... system of Yankees, is the above-named plebeian form. The supposition may be correct. Don't we most feel our national troubles, the shock of the great national earthquake, when it causes an upheaval from the depths of the pocket? If Uncle Sam's sentiments are, as they are supposed to be, only a concentration of those of the majority, isn't his lamentation over his run-away South, who has changed her name without his consent, that of Shylock: 'My daughter! Oh! my ducats!'? Though not exactly connected with this branch of selfishness, I may as well, while speaking ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... battle-ships, two first-class cruisers, seven of the second class, and nine gunboats large and small. With this fine force he was instructed to proceed to Cape St. Vincent, and by every means in his power to prevent the concentration of the several divisions of the Armada by cutting off their victuallers, and even destroying them in the ports where they lay. If the enemy sailed for England or Ireland, he was to hang on their skirts, cut off stragglers, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Lincoln's antagonism to Douglas His commitment to anti-slavery cause Rise of the Republican party Lincoln's debates with Douglas Speaks in New York Lincoln as statesman Nomination for the presidency His election Inauguration Lincoln's cabinet; Jefferson Davis Fort Sumter War Lincoln as president Bull Run Concentration of troops in Washington General McClellan His dilatory measures Gloomy times Retirement of McClellan General Pope McClellan restored, fights the battle of Antietam Inaction and final retirement of McClellan Burnside and the battle of Fredericksburg Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation General ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... Austro-Sardinian forces amounting to 52,000 men.[36] Moreover, the allies occupied strong positions on the northern slopes of the Maritime Alps and Apennines, and, holding the inner and therefore shorter curve, they could by a dextrous concentration have pushed their more widely scattered opponents on to the shore, where the republicans would have been harassed by the guns of the British cruisers. Finally, Bonaparte's troops were badly equipped, worse clad, and were not ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... when so directed, "is sent forth in currents," with a force corresponding to the energy we possess. Its motion is "similar to that of the rays from burning bodies;" "it possesses different qualities in different individuals." It is capable of a high degree of concentration, "and exists also in trees." The will of the magnetiser, "guided by a motion of the hand, several times repeated in the same direction," can fill a tree with this fluid. Most persons, when this fluid is poured into them from the body and by the will of the magnetiser, "feel a sensation ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... 140 was made from cooks Nos. 306 and 307, in which more caustic soda was employed than in any previous cooks and at a higher concentration, the fiber yields of which averaged 37.3 per cent of the unsieved hurds. Not much improvement was apparent in the cooked stock, in spite of the increased severity of cooking. The stock was washed and given a medium brush for one hour, bleached with 11.9 per cent of bleach, assisted ...
— Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material - United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 404 • Lyster H. Dewey and Jason L. Merrill
... Vedas to be a sacrifice, and some that regard contemplation to be a great sacrifice which they perform in their minds. The very gods, O monarch, covet the companionship of a regenerate person like this, who in consequence of his treading along such a way which consists in the concentration of the mind, has become equal to Brahma. By refusing to spend in sacrifice the diverse kinds of wealth that thou hast taken from thy foes, thou art only displaying thy want of faith. I have never seen, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the whole, a fair amount of intelligence, although little power of concentration. In disposition they are profoundly egotistical and so preoccupied with their own persons that they will do anything to arouse attention and obtain notoriety. They are exceedingly impressionable, therefore easily roused ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... unjust) sentence of penal servitude. She was positively the only thing, the one point where his thoughts found a resting-place, for years. She was the only outlet for his imagination. He had not much of that faculty to be sure, but there was in it the force of concentration. He felt outraged, and perhaps it was an absurdity on his part, but I venture to suggest rather in degree than in kind. I have a notion that no usual, normal father is pleased at parting with his daughter. No. Not even when he rationally appreciates "Jane ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... trouble, for she was neat and efficient looking, of the type that seems to belong in a well-ordered office, behind a typewriter desk near a window where the sun shines in. The place did not require much concentration—a dentist's office, where her chief duties consisted of opening the daily budget of circulars, sending out monthly bills, and telling pained-looking callers that the doctor was out just then. Her salary ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... closely clad, from head to foot, in the doublet and leggings of the Golden Fleece. One might have thought it had some magic virtue to preserve its wearer's vitality; and possibly, as is sometimes seen in trance, the energy and concentration of the spirit reacted upon ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... say such things to me! Don't you know that to coordinate those brains I worked for years with a devotion, a concentration, a genius you can never hope even to comprehend? Don't you realize they're the most precious possession of the greatest surgeon and the greatest mind in the universe? Don't you understand that I've fashioned a miracle? Realize these things, then, and ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... vexed about something he had done, or about something which had occurred on the previous evening. And he thought abut the evening carefully and minutely. Had she perhaps been upset by Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde? Was she self-conscious as he was, and had she observed their concentration upon herself and him? Or, on the other hand, could she had misunderstood his manner with Miss Van Tuyn? He knew how very sensitive women are about each other. And Lady Sellingworth, of course, was old, although ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... bearing and words had had as much effect on my mind as on the minds of the spectators. The spirit of resistance and the sense of human dignity, dulled in me and paralyzed, as it were, by grief, suddenly awoke again, and in this hour I realized that man is not made for that selfish concentration of despair which is known as resignation or stoicism. No man can cease to have a regard for his own honour without at the same time ceasing to feel the respect due to the principle of honour. If it is grand to sacrifice personal glory and life to the mysterious decrees of conscience, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the Neutral Nation had been abandoned for the time, from the want of missionaries. The Jesuits had resolved on concentration, and on the thorough conversion of the Hurons, as a preliminary to more ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... appropriate replies to some other member of the staff, who had wandered into our room to pass the time of day or read out a bit of his own stuff which had happened to please him particularly. All this gave me a power of concentration, without which writing is difficult in this city ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... degrees, however, and in consequence of the new tendencies of royalty, which were simply directed to the diminution of feudal power, the numerous jurisdictions relating to the various trades gradually returned to the hand of the municipal provostship; and this concentration of power had the best results, as well for the public good as for that ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... harm to help her with her efforts at learning what she most needed, and he found her intelligence and modest power of concentration remarkable. A singularly clear knowledge of her own specialized requirements was a practical background to them both. She had no desire to shine; she was merely steadily bent on acquiring as immediately as possible a comprehension of nouns, verbs, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... discussion of the effects of war when it occurs during a period of great literary and artistic splendor, as in Athens and in the Italian Republics; whether intellectual decline is postponed or accelerated by the interests and passions of the strife; whether the preliminary concentration of the popular heart may claim the merit of adding either power or beauty to the intellectual forms which bloom together with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... as any attempt is made to devise a system which does concentrate responsibility and power, serious difficulties are encountered. Concentration of responsibility can be brought about in one of two ways—either by subordinating the legislature to the executive or the executive to the legislature. There are precedents both here and abroad in favor of each ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... was another line of vendors, dressed in costumes like those from the Cabanal, but more miserable in appearance, if anything, and with more repulsive faces still. They were the women of Albufera, a strange concentration of poverty and degradation, housing in wretched shanties a people that lives among the reeds and mud of the lake marshes, fishing in the murky, shallow waters from black, bluff-bowed boats that look like coffins. ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... covered with papers, to sign a despatch, every word of which had to be carefully weighed; but his son, sitting on his knees, or held close to his chest, never left him. He had such a marvellous power of concentration that he could at the same time give his attention to important business and humor his son. Again, laying aside the great thoughts which haunted his mind, he would lie down on the floor by the boy's side, and play with him like another child, eager ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... artist's hand;" if, like Poe, he could have struck some one vein and worked it for all it was worth, — if, in a word, the varied activity of his life could have given way to a certain definiteness of purpose and concentration of effort, what might have been the difference! Music and poetry strove for the mastery of his soul. Swinburne, speaking of those who attempt success in two realms of art, says, "On neither course can the runner of a double ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... writing—not science. I am afraid that your other suggestions are not germane to the problem of nucleic acid synthesis and metabolism, a problem that has been occupying all my time. In fact, I've been doing with three to four hours of sleep these days. With the kind of concentration that I can offer the problem, there is no question that the data are falling into line, and our research is going rather well. We will show, I hope, fairly conclusively that there is little or no interconversion between the two types of nucleic ...
— On Handling the Data • M. I. Mayfield
... to light conversation, which requires no special amount of mental energy or concentration; in other words, any deviation can be recommended which does not seriously interfere with the enjoyment of your meal. Music, for instance, if it is of a gentle, soothing character, or entertainment of any kind that is relaxing, ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... of self-concentration, by which alone all the other powers of genius are made available, there is, of course, no such disturbing and fatal enemy as those sympathies and affections that draw the mind out actively towards others[53]; and, accordingly, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... is that there is a period of life for the world's work, and a later period for devotion to religion. When dissatisfaction with himself or with the world does overtake him, instinctively there occur to him thoughts of retirement from the world and concentration of his mind, thereby to reach God's presence. Very few spiritually minded Hindus past middle life pass into the Christian Church, as some do at the earlier stages of life. Under the sway of the Hindu idea of salvation, ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... tented field or confined to the battle-line. The eyes of the race are upon that drama, and the heart of the race beats within the breasts of the actors. There is something Roman in the nation's unmoved purpose, the concentration of its whole force upon one fixed mark, disregarding the judgment of men, realizing, however bitter the wisdom, that the Empire which the sword and the death-defiant valour of the past have upraised can be maintained only by the sword ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... conclusion that one should not own one's garden, nor one's beehive, nor one's great noble house, nor one's pigsty, nor one's railway shares, nor the very boots on one's feet. I say, out upon such nonsense. Then they say to me, what about the concentration of the means of production? And I say to them, what about the distribution of the ownership of the concentrated means of production? And they shake their heads sadly, and say it would never endure; and I say, try it first and see. Then ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... by causing three or more columns of smoke to ascend, and signifies danger or the approach of an enemy, and also requires the concentration of those who see them. These signals are communicated from one camp to another, and the most distant bands are guided by their location. The greater the haste desired the greater the number of columns ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... among the later works of Wagner for its brevity and concentration. Although it embraces four scenes, the music is continuous throughout, and the whole makes but one act. Wagner's aim seems to have been to set forth in a series of brilliant pictures the medium ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Marius, Cinna, and Sulla had followed him; but their power had perished with them, leaving no relics in the fundamental principles of the government, except as it marked stages in the general progress. Now other strong men arise who pursue the same course, and lead directly up to the concentration of supreme authority in the hands of one man, and he not a consul, nor a tribune, nor a dictator, but an emperor, a titled personage never before known in Rome. With this culmination the life of the populus Romanus was destined ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... and distrust on a company of foreign intruders, admitted by what they would be very likely to consider the capricious partiality of their king, to a share of their country. This jealousy and distrust was, for a time, suppressed and concealed; but the animosity only acquired strength and concentration by being restrained, and at length an event occurred which caused it to break forth with uncontrollable ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... religion. Her father seemed a puppet at its prayers, the choir a row of surpliced dolls, the organ an empty voice. Only at the end, when silence fell on the kneeling worshippers, did she wake with a start of contrition to the knowledge of her impiety, and blush between her little hands at her concentration upon the suspected sorrow of the young doctor. But in that night and that morning Lily ran forward towards Maurice, set her feet upon the line that divides men from women. She knew that she had done so only ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... quite the august impressiveness of this picture it is because no other action of rustic man has so wide or so deep a meaning for us as this of sowing. All the meaning there is in an action he could make us feel with entire certainty, and always he proceeds by this method of elimination, concentration, simplification, insistence on the essential and the essential only. One of the most perfect of all his pictures—more perfect than "The Sower" on account of qualities of mere painting, of color, ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... endless ramifications. If the former started an extravagant thought, or a quaint image, he was compelled to bring it to a point within his four-lined stanza. The snake was thus scotched, though not killed; and conciseness being rendered indispensable, a great step was gained towards concentration of thought, which is necessary to the simple and to the sublime The manner of Davenant, therefore, though short-lived, and ungraced by public applause, was an advance towards true taste, from the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... and as yet they had not arrived at that period of affection when there was danger of their fall,—their love had not passed the golden portal where Heaven ceases and Earth begins. Everything for them was the poetry, the vagueness, the refinement,—not the power, the concentration, the mortality,—of desire! The look—the whisper—the brief pressure of the hand, at most, the first kisses of love, rare and few,—these marked the human limits of that sentiment which filled them with a new life, which elevated them as with ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Mary Stuart. But the works before us give a truer specimen of their comparative merits. Schiller seems to have the greater genius; Alfieri the more commanding character. Alfieri's greatness rests on the stern concentration of fiery passion, under the dominion of an adamantine will: this was his own make of mind; and he represents it, with strokes in themselves devoid of charm, but in their union terrible as a prophetic scroll. Schiller's moral force is commensurate ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... organization was being determined by the selective service boards. Officers to command the organization were under intensive instruction at Fort Niagara, New York. All that was needed to bring the organization into official military being was a point of concentration. ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... Monkshaven nearly every day at this dead agricultural season of the year; and a public-house is generally the focus from which gossip radiates; and probably the amount of drink thus consumed weakened Robson's power over his mind, and caused the concentration of thought on one subject. This may be a physiological explanation of what afterwards was spoken of as a supernatural kind of possession, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... enough; and the first of these, so characteristic of the Classic Age, is that they abound in fine rhetoric but lack simplicity.[199] In a strict sense, these eloquent speeches are not literature, to delight the reader and to suggest ideas, but studies in rhetoric and in mental concentration. All this, however, is on the surface. A careful study of any of these three famous speeches reveals certain admirable qualities which account for the important place they are given in the study of English. First, as showing the stateliness and the rhetorical power ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... occupied with other thoughts when we should be listening is known as inattention. To listen with full attention, all other things being entirely absent from the mind, is one form of concentration. ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... and to be conscientiously inconsistent with them in their conduct. There is nothing like acute deductive reasoning for keeping a man in the dark: it might be called the technique of the intellect, and the concentration of the mind upon it corresponds to that predominance of technical skill in art which ends in degradation of the artist's function, unless new inspiration and ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... reasons of the most vital importance has been held as an English (civilian?) civic prisoner in the mixed civilian (concentration) camp at Holzminden, has escaped. It is now feared that he has made his way safely to New York. (Memo: Please note the very ingenious use of phonetics to spell out New ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... sunburnt mirth. An instance of Keats's power of concentration. The people are not mentioned at all, yet this phrase conjures up a picture of merry, laughing, sunburnt peasants, as surely as could a long ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... forward to-night to an old age more peaceful, less turbulent, than my youth has been. I reach forward gladly, too, for life holds much that is sweet to old age, which youth can in no wise comprehend. Possibly this is one reason why youth is so anxious to concentrate enjoyment. But I am tired of concentration. There is a wear and tear about it which precludes the possibility of pleasure. I want to take the rest of my life gently, and by redoubled tenderness repay it for rude handling in my youth—that youth which lies very far away from me to-night and ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... reconciling adverse elements in penal colonisation, has been ever visible. The modern principles of colonisation demand concentration: the establishment of so many branch settlements was considered, from the beginning, a great economical error; and by those unaware of its justification, was the subject of strong and pointed condemnation. ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... Evangelical party. Never were the enthusiasm, the activity, the uncompromising devotion to principle which marked the Evangelicals turned to better account. Their very narrowness gave intensity and concentration to their work, and their victory, though deferred, was complete. It has been truly said that when the English nation had been thoroughly convinced that slavery was a curse which must be got rid of at any cost, we cheerfully paid down as the price of its ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... buying or hiring of a machine would be a possibility. During the afternoon he took Marishka's letter from his pocket and studied it again, now quite oblivious of the creature who had curiously enough resumed the same seat opposite him. And in his concentration upon the problem of the note the man was for the moment forgotten. It was only when he glanced up quickly and quite unintentionally that he saw the gaze of his neighbor eagerly watching him. It was only a fleeting glance, but in it, it seemed, the whole character of his fellow traveler had ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... attack on the day's mail, which Abbott had already reduced to its lowest dimensions. Enoch worked with a power of concentration and a quick decisiveness that were ably seconded by Charley Abbott. It was a quarter before seven when Enoch picked up the last letter. He read it through rapidly, then laid it down slowly, and stared out of the window for a long moment. Abbott gave his chief's ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... America; and all operations of war or commerce, of national or social intercourse, must be conducted upon it. This gives it a value beyond estimation, and would involve irreparable injury if lost. In this unity and concentration of its waters, the Pacific side of our continent differs entirely from the Atlantic side, where the waters of the Alleghany mountains are dispersed into many rivers, having their different entrances into the sea, and opening many lines ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... had failed. But on the night of the 12th the rain fell fast and steadily, the Nive was flooded, the bridge of boats which spanned it swept away, and Hill was left at St. Pierre isolated, with less than 14,000 men. Soult saw his opportunity. The interior lines he held made concentration easy, and on the morning of the 13th he was able to pour an attacking force of 35,000 bayonets on Hill's front, while another infantry division, together with the whole of the French cavalry under ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... is the case with all men of rare capacities, there was a concentration of powers in the mind of my ancestor, which soon brought all his errant sympathies, the mere exuberance of acute and overflowing feelings, into a proper and useful subjection, centring all in the one absorbing and capacious receptacle ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Mobile, Alabama, was our objective where we arrived on the 22nd of the month. Here began the ceaseless preparation for the part the regiment was to play in the grand drama of war that was to follow, all this camp life and concentration ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... is the unison upon the subject of three male minds, which, for width of culture, power of self-concentration and dignity of aim, take rank as the prophets of the coming age, while their histories and labors are rooted ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... initials of the examiner, and possibly a case number, and it should be hand-written. The tag is placed near the latent prints being photographed so that it will appear in the picture. It should be borne in mind that concentration should be on the latent impressions, which must be centered, and the identification tag should be to one side and not covering any of the latent prints. Another method of identification, if the surface permits, is ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... composition of the detachments. First of all, the regiments which were to make up the army corps in Peshawar and Quetta were all jumbled up together, because as soon as ever they appeared to be ready to march, they were separately taken away from their garrisons and placed upon the railway. Concentration upon Mooltan and the hurried march to Lahore had resulted in downright ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... questions. In a situation which might well have thrown the quickest-witted of men off his balance, he acted with promptitude, intelligence and despatch. The fact is, George had for years been an assiduous golfer; and there is no finer school for teaching concentration and a strict attention to the matter in hand. Few crises, however unexpected, have the power to disturb a man who has so conquered the weakness of the flesh as to have trained himself to bend his left knee, raise his left ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... susceptible to diversion which affords a degree of alleviation for grief. Many older people have the same facility of turning before the impetus of circumstances to another view of life, which serves to take their minds off too close concentration upon sorrow, but it is not so universal. Maria, although she was sadly lonely, in a measure, enjoyed taking her meals at Mrs. Jonas White's. She had never done anything like it before. The utter novelty of sitting down to Mrs. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Stephen was with her, for she could feel him, although she was quite certain that she never laid an eye on him during the whole time. Her people were there, so were her many friends and acquaintances, and Stephen's relatives and friends as well, but these, too, were absent as far as her concentration of mind was concerned. Only one thought was uppermost in her mind and that was to leave the church as soon as possible, for she felt that every eye was ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... a concentration, a quintessence of Protestant feeling," answered Vincent; "I consider myself a good Protestant; but the pleasure you have in hunting these men is ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... deeper and deeper into dream, it was with a concentration of his will upon one point—the handkerchief, which, if smelled by anyone, would ruin all; and finally, as he drew the last gasp of consciousness, he waved it languidly from him under the shelf; then, with a sigh, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... license peculiar to his age and character, had diffused the action of his play over Italy, Greece, and Egypt; but Dryden, who was well aware of the advantage to be derived from a simplicity and concentration of plot, has laid every scene in the city of Alexandria. By this he guarded the audience from that vague and puzzling distraction which must necessarily attend a violent change of place. It is a mistake to suppose, that the argument ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... interference with slavery at this time would cause a speedy removal of Tennessee population since slave-owners would seek other States with their slaves, and that if Tennessee should free all her slaves, there would be a greater concentration of all the slaves of the United States, giving slaves more advantage in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... deeper than this into the possible evils of dogma. It is felt by many that strong philosophical conviction, while it does not (as they perceive) produce that sluggish and fundamentally frivolous condition which we call bigotry, does produce a certain concentration, exaggeration, and moral impatience, which we may agree to call fanaticism. They say, in brief, that ideas are dangerous things. In politics, for example, it is commonly urged against a man like ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... blissful week-end, returned to Grovebury by the early train on Monday morning, and, wrenching her mind with difficulty from the interests of Wynch-on-the-Wold, focused it on school affairs instead. There was certainly need of mental concentration if she meant to make headway in the College. The standard of work required from VA. was very stiff, and taxed the powers of even the brightest girls to ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... relative and not an absolute increase in the number of red corpuscles. E. Grawitz, for example, has expressed the opinion that the raised count of corpuscles may be explained chiefly by increased concentration of the blood, due to the greater loss of water from the body at these altitudes. The blood of laboratory animals which Grawitz allowed to live in correspondingly rarefied air underwent similar changes. Von Limbeck, as well ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... and which only total failure can diminish. Their favorite doctrine, that governments within a government cannot exist, and that our Constitution is weakened by the accession of every new State and the rise of every new disagreement, is meeting its refutation every day. A concentration of extraordinary power at the centre does not seem to shatter every bond of union, as they have predicted,—and the States hold together and work together with amazing zeal for so feeble a tie as that they have represented. In their intercourse with our Government, they have illustrated the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... us a two-fold tendency,—one of divergence from some common stem, followed by one of concentration, of unity, in the literature. Thus, in France, the Langue d'Oil superseded the richer and more melodious Provencal; in Spain the Castilian predominated; while for several centuries it has been the steady tendency of the High-German to become the language of letters and of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... matter of fact, he himself was the worst shirker in the artel [Workman's union]. True, he was also a first-rate hand at his trade, and a man who could work quickly and well and with skill and concentration; but, unfortunately, he hated putting himself out, and preferred to spend his time spinning arresting yarns. For instance, on the present occasion he chose the moment when work was proceeding with a swing, when everyone was busily and silently and wholeheartedly labouring with the object of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... working man. The record of each of his days at Berlin or Potsdam, as given in the press, shows that every hour, from dawn to long after dusk, brings its duties—duties demanding wide observation, close study, concentration of thought, and decision. Nor is his attention bounded by German interests. He is a keen student of the world at large. At various interviews there was ample evidence of his close observation of the present President of the United States, and of appreciation of his doings and qualities; ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... man's trip-hammer, the deer's swift flight is slowness to man's electric speed, the eagle itself cannot outrun his flying speech. It is as if all the excellences of the whole animal creation were swept together and compacted in man's tiny body, with the addition of new gifts and faculties; but this concentration of all the gifts distributed to the animal world in man means that the dangers and difficulties that are distributed over all the rest of the animal creation will also be concentrated upon his single person. The increase of his treasure carries with it the increase ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... and waited for the hours to pass. The new nurse had arrived and moved quietly about the room. There was no sound at all save the monotonous whispering beseeching little cries that came from the bed. One had heard that concentration of will might do so much in the directing of such a battle, and surely great love must help. Peter, as he sat in the half-darkness thought that he had never before realised his love for the boy—how immense it was—how all-pervading, so that if it were taken from him ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... heat of their discussion, they hadn't been noticing the roadway. It was full of soldiers, trudging south. The rumble had become a series of reports. The look of the peaceful day was changing. Barkleigh turned from his concentration on the girl, and glanced ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... that which opposes the shrinkage in dimensions, otherwise determined by the action of the alkali. The following table exhibits the variations of shrinkage of Egyptian when mercerised without tension, under varying conditions as regards the essential factors of the treatment—viz. (1) concentration of the alkaline lye, (2) temperature, and (3) duration of action (the ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... specialization of function. There is a manifest gain in productive power when social growth has gone so far that instead of every producer being summoned from his work for fighting purposes, a regular military force can be specialized; but this inevitably tends to the concentration of power in the hands of the military class or their chiefs. The preservation of internal order, the administration of justice, the construction and care of public works, and, notably, the observances of religion, all tend in similar manner ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Further, both the prevalent disorder and the centralization of authority impelled the educated and well-to-do classes to take up their residence at the seat of government. Not a few of the uprisings were, in fact, protests on the part of the neglected folk in the interior of the country against concentration of population, wealth, intellect, and power in ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... soul in the beatific self-surrender. But Anne's sufferings had brought her a little further on her path. She had come to recognise that supine state as a great danger to the spiritual life. It was not by lassitude, but by concentration that the intense communion was attained. She lifted her bowed head as ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... of that, you scoundrel!" said the voice of the stout gentleman in a tone of quiet concentration. "Come out. This side, and now. None of your ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... operations should also be directed against two other strong outposts, one to the north, the other to the northeast, of the town. There was to be a genuine effort to capture Mt. Faron on the north and a demonstration merely against the third point. But the concentration of force was to be ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... dimness and in the noises of evening which rose from the Grande Rue. Yet something of her remained and was very definite, so definite that even Dion, broken on the wheel and indifferent to casual influences as few men are ever indifferent, felt it almost powerfully—the concentration of her will, the unyielding determination of her mind, active and intense behind the pale mask of her ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... strength which are entailed by the continued and steady application to one branch of labour or to one particular profession. There is no doubt that a girl cannot take up an engagement which demands her daily presence at a stated place and at a given time, to perform duties which perhaps require the concentration of mental powers, and very frequently the maintenance of the body in one position for many hours together. There is no doubt, we repeat, that unless such avocations are begun and continued with decidedly common-sense views as to diet, hygiene, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... exercised by the popes during the later Middle Ages were not secured without a struggle. As a matter of fact the concentration of authority in papal hands was a gradual development covering several hundred years. The pope reached his exalted position only after a long contest with the Holy Roman Emperor. This contest forms one of the most noteworthy ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... boiling to grain may be described as follows: A portion of the sirup is taken into the pan, and boiled rapidly in vacuo to the crystallizing density. If in a sirup the molecules of sugar are brought sufficiently near to each other through concentration—the removal of the dissolving liquid—these molecules attract each other so strongly as to overcome the separating power of the solvent, and they unite to form crystals. Sugar is much more soluble at high than at low temperatures, the heat acting in this as in almost all cases as a repulsive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... eschewing worldly honor, not being puffed up by learning nor delighting in laying down the law, helping one's neighbor bear the yoke, inclining toward a favorable judgment of others, steadfast in the truth, steadfast for peace, concentration in study, asking, answering, listening, enlarging, learning with a view to teach, learning with a view to act, enabling one's teacher to become wiser, thoroughly understanding what one hears, and repeating every dictum in the name of him who uttered it." I recommend this list ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... of light that usually enter and give all their exquisite pleasure through the eye-ball are in his case compensated for by the pulsations of sound, which strike on an ear possessed of nerves of double delicacy and vital energy from the absorption and concentration ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... and the conviction fortified him to trust the result to time. Pride and principle were in arms now, holding love in check, but it would not be so always; soon her woman's heart would speak, would wield an influence more powerful and resistless, from the concentration engendered by repression. Now, too, she was braced by the excitement of personal resistance; she was measuring her will, with his will, her strength with his strength. Let him withdraw for a time, and what would follow? The outside ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... went to sleep again. The sickness, the wounded spirit, the altered scene, and we may add seclusion from the society of formal religionists, had each its wholesome influence; and, finding how much was required of him as a pastor and a tutor, he set to work with the concentration and energy of a startled man, and the first true rest he took was twenty years after, when ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... unassailable by the acid, and in which the transformation is performed, etc. The engineer had none of these at his disposal, but he knew that, in Bohemia especially, sulphuric acid is manufactured by very simple means, which have also the advantage of producing it to a superior degree of concentration. It is thus that the acid known under the name of Nordhausen acid ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... on, with painful concentration on Douglas' blue eyes. "I hadn't known it, till this minute, Doug. I thought I was through. I'm fifty-six. God! Does life never finish with a man?" He laughed drearily. "Don't look at me like that, Douglas! You and I ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... for his pistol, but before his hand was fairly on the butt, Randall had thrust the muzzle of a small revolver beneath his nose. His pale blue eyes had lit with concentration, his bleached eyebrows were drawn together. For an instant the thought flashed across my mind that this was a genuine hold-up; and I am sure Johnny caught the same suspicion, for his figure stiffened. Then Randall ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Fats. We have now come to the last group of the real Coal foods, namely, the fats. Fats are the "hottest" and most concentrated fuel that we possess, and might be described as the "anthracites," or "hard coals" of our Coal foods. They are, also, as might be expected from their "strength" or concentration, among the slowest to digest of all our foods, so that, as a rule, we can eat them only in very moderate amounts, seldom exceeding one-tenth to one-sixth of our total food-fuel. It is not, however, quite correct to say that fats are hard to digest, because, although from their solid, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... pastor, in his farewell discourse, "have not been the result of accident. They were thoroughly planned and provided for, and sought of the Lord. We have found that appropriate means was wisdom, that persistent concentration was power; that enthusiasm for souls was force; and that belief ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... eggs. If he would merely rob them and go away it wouldn't matter so much. They could always begin again after a decent interval. But a naturalist of the modern school doesn't want a bird's eggs; he wants to watch her sitting on them. Now sitting is a business that demands concentration, a strong effort of the will and an undistracted mind. How on earth is a bird to concentrate when she knows perfectly well that Brown, disguised as a tree or a sheep or a haycock, is watching her day after day ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... the bright appearance of Clairette at the window, and the sympathy awakened by her love for the devil-may-care revolutionary poet seduced Kate like a sensual dream; and in all she saw and felt there was a mingled sense of nearness and remoteness, an extraordinary concentration, and an absence of her own proper individuality. Never had she heard such music. How suave it was compared with the austere and regular rhythm of the hymns she sang in church! The gay tripping measure of the market-woman's song filled her with visions and laughter. There was an accent of insincerity ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... them the piles of hemlock branches which they had arranged for couches. Arundel listened to the conversation between the Knight and the Indians with that strained attention with which one unacquainted with a language will sometimes hang upon its sounds, as if by a concentration of the faculties to wring a sense out of it; and if he was unable to make out the meaning of the words, he at least satisfied himself, both from the intonation of the voices and expression of the faces, that no immediate injury was designed. To the appealing looks which Arundel ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... find we cannot do any work that requires concentration of thought. So we all knit furiously, because we can do that mechanically. At least the dreadful waiting is over—the horrible wondering where and when the blow will fall. It has fallen—but they ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for finding strange words, or coining new ones, which should give melody, to his verse. Whether this was a process of development or not, he has in his later works gotten rid of much of this apparent mannerism, while he has retained, and even improved, his harmony. He exhibits a rare power of concentration, as opposed to the diffusiveness of his contemporaries. Each of his smaller poems is a thought, briefly, but forcibly and harmoniously, expressed. If it requires some exertion to comprehend it, when completely understood it becomes a ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... realize that a despotism of dollars is being organized among them; that the cherished institutions of generations are the instruments by which a few daring schemers are concentrating into their own hands the money of the nation, and that this concentration can have no other result than the abject slavery of ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... with him, and he was proud of the natural taste and instinct, which generally led him right. But for 'aesthetics'—the philosophy of art—he had nothing but contempt. The volatile, restless mind escaped at once from the concentration asked of it; and fell back on what the Buddhist calls 'Maia,' the gay and changing appearances of things, which were all he wanted. And it was because the war had interfered with this pleasant and perpetual challenge to the senses of the outer world, because it forced a man back on general ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... decided upon this group, Mr. Simmons was requested to prepare a model. This proving eminently acceptable, Mr. Simmons found himself, quite to his own surprise, fairly launched on this arduous work, involving years of intense concentration and labor. For this monumental work was to be not merely that of the brave and gallant military leader,—a single idea embodied, as in those of Generals Scott, Sheridan, Thomas, and others,—but it was ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... loudly, and resumed his accustomed silence, perfectly assured of his own applause. If the matter of Myndert's discourse wears too much the air of an unvided attention to his own interests, the reader will not forget it is by this concentration of individuality that most of the mercantile prosperity of the world is achieved. The seamen listened with admiration, for they understood no part of the appeal; and, next to a statement which shall ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... temperament of the people, this community is scattered either widely in separate steadings or drawn together into villages. At one extreme, over large areas of thin pasture this agricultural community may verge on the nomadic; at another, in proximity to consuming markets, it may present the concentration of intensive culture. There may be an adjacent Wild supplying wood, and perhaps controlled by a simple forestry. The law that holds this community together is largely traditional and customary and almost always as ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... time, she turned to the manuscript which her brother had brought her, and, with a far greater concentration of mind than she had thought it possible she could bring to it, considering the many painful subjects of contemplation that she might have occupied herself with, she read the pages with very great ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... almost be too artificial were it not broken by the luminous distance where the troop of horsemen are waiting for the kings. These, with a dog running at full speed, at once interrupt the symmetry of the lines, and form a point of relief from the over concentration of all the rest ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... manliness, that the rash courage of the brute is above the moral courage of a man; forgetful of the meaning of human life; thoughtless of a thing so common as death; heedless of its eternal consequences. No wonder Channing cried so bitterly: "War is the concentration of all human crimes. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, rapacity, and lust. If it only slew men, it would do little. But it turns man into a beast of prey. Here is the evil of war, that man, made to be the brother, becomes the deadly foe of his kind; that ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... fine afternoon to write out the first fifty lines of the Iliad. His curly hair was ruffled, his mouth was twisted with disgust, and he pushed his big body about in his chair, kicked out his legs and drew them in as though beneath his concentration on his letters he was longing to spring up, catch his enemy by the throat, roll him over on to the ground and ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... secure she rested one arm on the gunwale and dropped the other across her knees, relaxing in every muscle a moment before departure. And, somehow, to Hamil, the unconscious grace of the attitude suggested the "Resting Hermes"—that sculptured concentration of suspended motion. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... through the window on to the thin black London turf outside, and her eyes were blank from the intensity of concentration. She had no thought for the lawyer; if he had been sympathetic even to impertinence she would not have ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... is that the men and women of principle are a pretty dangerous class, generally speaking—and they are generally speaking. It is they that hamper us in every war. It is they who, preventing concentration and regulation of un-abolishable evils, promote their distribution and liberty. Moral principles are pretty good things—for the young and those not well grounded in goodness. If one have an impediment in his thought, or is otherwise unequal to emergencies ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... lightly over many subjects; for a hearty meal, and the peace of soul which repletion brings with it, are not conducive to concentration of attention, nor yet to activity of mind. The Malay, too, is always superficial, and talk among natives generally plays round facts, rather than round ideas. Che' Seman, the owner of the house, and his two sons, Awang and Ngah, discussed the prospects ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... nationhood is made. Men who build temples of their lives for ideals do not cement national mortar with graft. They build with integrity for eternity, not time. Their consciousness of an ideal gives them a poise, a concentration, a stability, a steadiness of purpose, unknown to mad chasers after wealth. Obstinate, dogged, perhaps tinged with the self-superior spirit of "I am holier than thou"—they may be; but men who forsake all for an ideal and pursue it consistently for a century and a ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... much besides. Moreover, every man gets his sympathies enlisted for the people of his charge. This is probably necessary to enable us to labor with energy, and suffer with patience; but this needful concentration of feeling precludes the idea of universality ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... hair. The present mission had nothing in common with those fanciful adventures that had served to make the boy the wonder and despair of his native township. Richard Haddon was entirely forgotten for the time being, and this concentration of mind and energy served to carry the boy bravely over ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson |
