"Directness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the fact of it is," continued old Mr. King, still keeping to the main point with wonderful directness, "I think the time has come for us to act, which is much better than talking, in my opinion; and I want to do something ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... "gay young sparks," and, even in their boyhood and school days, earn a reputation for being bons camarades (though with it all they come in for some hard knocks) for the reason that their faces evince an element of frankness, directness, and enterprise which enables them soon to make friends, and, almost before you have had time to look around, to start addressing you in the second person singular. Yet, while cementing such friendships for all eternity, almost always they begin quarrelling the same evening, since, throughout, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... will, firmness of conviction, energy of character are conducive to strength. Where these exist there will be directness of aim, and the style will be clear, unwavering, and strong. There will be positiveness of statement, and sometimes intolerant dogmatism. Carlyle and Macaulay are among our strongest writers, the former being ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... usually are, I believe, and Adah forgot her sewing, and her blue eyes rested on me with an intentness that at last grew a little embarrassing. She said comparatively little, and her words had much of their old directness and simplicity; but the former flippancy and coloring of small vanity was absent. Her simple morning costume was scrupulously neat, and quite as becoming as the Sunday muslin which I had so admired, and she ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... conventional people, who could never appreciate the fine directness and simplicity, of Dad's nature—not if they lived to be a thousand years old. But Mr. Blakely Porter understood perfectly; I know he did, for he told me so afterwards. "It was the greatest compliment I ever had paid me in my ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... to the northward in the direction of the creek. They turned aside a little from the direct course so as to hunt for Brindle, that Fred had seen, but she was not found. To their delight, however, they saw her footprints on the edge of the creek, proving that she had gone home with the directness of one who felt remorse for wandering from the straight path. She had swum the stream, and was doubtless before the ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... in which the officers ordered the men about shocked him. So rough, so unmannerly, so unkind. He could not understand the cheery lack of resentment with which the men obeyed. He could not get into the way of military directness, could never check the polite "Do you mind" that came instinctively to his lips. Now if you ask a private soldier whether he minds doing a thing instead of telling him to do it, his brain begins to get confused. As one defaulter, whose confusion of brain had led him into trouble, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... out, with plainness and directness. When you had to deal a mortal blow, why try to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... household that if anything was desired, you should not, as my Mother said, 'lose any time in seeking for it, but ask God to guide you to it'. In many junctures of life this is precisely what, in sober fact, they did. I will not dwell here on their theories, which my Mother put forth, with unflinching directness, in her published writings. But I found that a difference was made between my privileges in this matter and theirs, and this led to many discussions. My parents said: 'Whatever you need, tell Him ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... I thought I had once more "got upon" her nerves with my rude directness. How eagerly sensitive our nerves are to bad impressions of one we don't like, and how coarsely insensible to bad impressions of ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... went on, to lose its character. Whether from weakness or uncertainty Blood's steps had become wandering, and they noticed that he paid less attention to directness, but shunned every obstacle that called for climbing, struggling great distances around rough places to avoid them. They knew it meant that he was husbanding failing strength and was striving to avoid ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... "Vigour and directness," "transparent honesty and complete fearlessness," are the qualities that impress this able editor as he reads the letters of the man who, in his opinion, "was less tainted with the sordid commercialism and ever-increasing snobbery of that century [the nineteenth] ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... faintest doubt she was lying. What was I to her? The times were fearfully out of joint; women as well as men were taking war's licenses, and with a boy's unmerciful directness I sprang to the conclusion that here was an adventuress. Yet I had some better thoughts too. While I felt a moral tipsiness going into all my veins, I asked myself if it was not mainly due to my own inability ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... spoke, as she did at once, the sound of her voice was strange and alien to him. With an extreme directness, and with a deep sincerity of accent which, even to his ears, made his own impassioned outcry to her sound inflated and false, she said earnestly, "I don't believe I can tell you what has happened. I don't believe ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Isabelle's talk was not to be stayed. She was excited and keyed up high. There was a simplicity and directness about this Judd woman that made her think of Mrs. Benjamin, so she told all about Hill Top and her life there, her love of it, her despair at Mrs. ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... "I like your directness. But I do not know—I do not know!... I mean to be his following fiend. To have him ever feel me—when he turns his head ever ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... is also the least literary and the most popular. Unamuno, who lives in close touch with the people, has enriched the Spanish literary language by returning to it many a popular term. His vocabulary abounds in racy words of the soil, and his writings gain from them an almost peasant-like pith and directness which suits his own Basque primitive nature. His expression occurs simultaneously with the thoughts and feelings to be expressed, the flow of which, but loosely controlled by the critical mind, often breaks through the meshes of established diction and gives birth ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... and carefully directed bootblack, and a broad leather belt from which only half an eye was required to see that a holster had been detached with a becoming regard for neatness. His hair was thick and sun-bleached; his eyes, dark and unafraid, met the stern gaze of the captain with directness and respect; his lips and chin were firm in repose, but they might easily be the opposite if relaxed; his skin was so tanned and wind-bitten that the whites of his eyes were startlingly defined and vivid. He was not a tall man,—indeed, one would have ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... yet have been able to have a direct question answered by a true mountaineer or plainsman by a simple yes or no. Is there something in the bigness of their surroundings that causes the mind to spread over an idea and lose directness like a ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... a charming voice. As she went on with her simple narrative the muscles of Mr. Gaythorne's face insensibly relaxed; hesitation, nervousness, a touch of self-consciousness even, would have repelled him; but her gentleness and childlike directness seemed to soothe him in spite of himself. And as she repeated Mrs. Broderick's message, though he shrugged his shoulders and muttered "Pshaw," she could see that he was gratified; and even his remark—"that Mrs. Broderick must be a very emotional ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... drag up the heel of her dreadful shoe, she answered him with an unprejudiced directness which might have been appalling if he had been in the mood to ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a decision by the increasing shadow of persecution. Had they remained in England, there is little doubt that Anne Bradstreet's mind, sensitively alive as it was to every fine influence, would have developed in a far different direction to that which it finally took. The directness and joyous life of the Elizabethan literature had given place to the euphuistic school, and as the Puritans put aside one author after another as "not making for godliness," the strained style, the quirks and ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Noble, a soul apparently so largely derivative and abstractive, is more complete and balanced, and penetrates to the specific genius of Christianity more deeply, than Saints Paul and Augustine with all their greater directness and intensity. We saw how the deepest originality of our Lord's teaching and temper consisted in His non-rigoristic earnestness, in His non-Gnostic detachment from things temporal and spatial. The absorbing expectation of the Second Coming, indeed ...
— Progress and History • Various
... their deficiencies, certainly; but there was a simplicity and directness in these old writings that we would do ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... successful in his love affairs. It does not certainly read like a description of the hero of a novel written by The Duchess or even by Miss Jane Austen. Yet this is the picture of a man plentifully beloved, large-minded but strangely naif; a revolutionist of childlike directness. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... despair, sympathetic friend, adoring midinette, and so on. But Mr. JULES DELACRE, who played his own part, Pierrot, with a fine sincerity and a sense of the great tradition in this genre, got his effect across to us with an admirable directness. Miss PHYLLIS PINSON looking charming in a mid-Victorian Latin-Quarterly sort of way (which is a very nice way), danced seriously, fantastically, delightfully, and with quite astonishing command ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... exactly what she seemed to be; and presently she was saying in a low voice, with her smiling, unoffending directness: ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... writer must have had to make a virtually new departure to get his own simple narrative. A re-revelation would be required. As to all other cosmogonies, Egyptian, Indian, and Buddhistic, nothing can be more opposed in principle and in detail than they are to the severe and stately simplicity and directness of the Mosaic. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... quite taken aback by the personal directness of these questions, but deciding within herself that Morgana must be contemplating marriage on her own behalf, answered ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... put the letter back in its envelope. She was not angry, she was disturbed. There was an assurance about Silas Grangerson daunting in its simplicity and directness. Something that raised opposition to him in her heart, yet paralysed it. Instinct told her to avoid him, to drive him from her mind, ay and something more than instinct. The spirit of Vernons, the calm sweet soul of the place, that seemed to ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... man puffed away in silence for a moment, then with logical directness continued: "Perhaps the string that's mute upon Diotti's violin is mute for ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... Schiller, in his aesthetic writings, lays down the same rule. Yet this censurable habit does not seem to proceed from anything cynical in the author's own nature, but rather from inexperience, and from a personal directness which moves only in straight lines. It seems as if she were so single-minded in her good intents as to assume all bad people equally single-minded in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... his career and character. Both were anomalous in our history. In an era remarkable for patriotic self-sacrifice, he became infamous for treasonable ambition; among a phalanx of statesmen illustrious for directness and integrity, he pursued the tortuous path of perfidious intrigue; in a community where the sanctities of domestic life were unusually revered, he bore the stigma of unscrupulous libertinism. With the blood of his gallant adversary and his country's idol on his hands, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... that is just what I can't see. What he has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of touch—marvellous! ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... treatment of early Buddhism is in some places of an inconclusive character. This is largely due to the inconclusive character of the texts which were put into writing long after Buddha in the form of dialogues and where the precision and directness required in philosophy were not contemplated. This has given rise to a number of theories about the interpretations of the philosophical problems of early Buddhism among modern Buddhist scholars and it is not always easy to decide one way or the other without running the risk of being ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... yield—yield by a long way—to Dryden in strength and easy command of whatsoever craft he tried, to Coleridge in depth and range and philosophical grasp, yet he has his revenges. Beside his delicacy and his cosmopolitan accomplishment, Dryden is blunt and unscholarly; beside his directness of aim, if not always of achievement, his clearness of vision, his almost business-like adjustment of effort to result, the vagueness and desultoriness of Coleridge look looser and, in the literary sense, more disreputable than ever. Here was a man who could not only criticise ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... wished might be done. News of Mrs. Nation's swift and decided action went all over the country, like a stiff, healthy gale. She was sharply criticised—but there lurked very often a "dry grin" behind the criticism. This smashing was all very direct and unique and Americans are in general fond of directness and uniqueness. It was, technically, illegal; but, even so, it was remarked that the saloons which Mrs. Nation wrecked, were themselves in brazen defiance of the laws of the state of Kansas—unenforced on account of the fear or ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... the world of Emerson, Longfellow, Thoreau, was interested. Mr. Brisbane is a very distinguished man, quite over and above the fact that he is paid the greatest salary of any journalist in the world. He writes with a wit and directness that no other living man can rival, and he holds up constantly what is substantially the American ideal of the past century to readers who evidently need strengthening in it. It is, of course, the figure of a man and not of a State; it is a man, clean, clean ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... geographers, he followed it up almost to Bangor. On regaining the sea he endeavoured to reach the mouth of the Kennebec, but when within a few miles of it was driven back to St Croix by want of food. In closing the story of this voyage, which had occupied a month, Champlain says with his usual directness: 'The above is an exact statement of all I have observed respecting not only the coasts and people, but also the river of Norumbega; and there are none of the marvels there which some persons have described. I am of opinion that this region is as disagreeable in winter as that ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... to," she laughed, delighted, reveling in this freedom of speech, in his directness. His manner touched a spark somewhere in her, she felt strangely elated, exhilarated. When she reflected that this was only their second meeting and that she had not been conventionally introduced to him, she was amazed. Had a stranger ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... he managed to say, aware of an innocence and directness of thought and speech which were awaking in him faintest responsive echoes. They were the blessed echoes from the dim, fair land of childhood, but ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... would certainly not be "reformed" in any way. In hospital, Major Jackson of the Royal Army Medical Corps, a Visitor of the Duri Jail, paying his periodical visits, grew interested in the sturdy bright boy and soon came to like him for his directness, cheery courage, and refreshing views. When the boy was convalescent he took him on the surrounding Duri golf-links as his caddie in his endless games with his poor friend Sergeant-Major ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... flood; one half of the nation rocking its conscience to sleep with the false lullaby of commercial greatness and material prosperity, and the other, left to do the governing, with seemingly no conscience at all, going to work with satanic directness and acuteness, to undermine the principles thus left without a guardian, and to inject the black blood of slavery into the veins of the body politic, till the name democracy became a misnomer the most wretched, a sarcasm the most touching. I do not imagine we shall ever ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... out of our rapid and complex industrial development is more important than that of the employment of women and children. The presence of women in industry reacts with extreme directness upon the character of the home and upon family life, and the conditions surrounding the employment of children bear a vital relation to our future citizenship. Our legislation in those areas under the control of the Congress is very much behind the legislation of our more progressive ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... lack things to do and say. Their minds are active enough to entertain one another as well as adults do, and not seldom better. In fact, if they remain natural, they are often more interesting to adults than other adults are. They reach even profound thoughts with peculiar directness. When I was attempting, one day, to throw a toy boomerang for some children, one of the little girls, observing my want of success, remarked, "I saw a picture of a man throwing one of these things. He stood at the door of his house, and the boomerang went clear around the house. But I suppose that ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... neck—for a cursore. He does without a spiral gullet. The festive cassowary—which, by-the-bye, doesn't abound—or exist—on the plains of Timbuctoo, as the rhyme says—the festive cassowary, I say, wears his gullet plain. The rusty rhea takes things below with perfect directness. The lordly emeu gets his dinner down as quickly as the length of his neck will permit. It is only when one reaches the top of the cursorean thermometer, all among the boilings, so to speak, that the ostrich, with the longest neck of all, must poach another few inches by going ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... write a more brilliant letter than the one you have written to me, but there are not many men, even among professional writers, who could write a better one. What I like is the spirit of earnestness and the simple directness of it. You say that you have "Read lots of things in the papers about the Socialists' ideas and listened to some Socialist speakers, but never could get a very clear notion of what it was all about." And then you add "Whether Socialism is good or bad, wise or ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... future, that it attracts us more than many forms of beauty. They have something of the merit of a rough sketch by a master, in which we pardon what is wanting or excessive for the sake of the very bluntness and directness of the thing. It gives us pleasure to see the beginning of gracious impulses and the springs of harmonious movement laid bare to us with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sturdy directness of Oliver Cromwell to put an end to these outrages. He sent word to the Spanish minister that there must be a stop put to the practices of the Inquisition and to the restriction of free navigation in the West Indies. The minister replied, that to ask for these two ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... change. The functions performed by them have to constitute a moving equilibrium; and the function of one cannot, by alteration of the structure performing it, be modified in degree or kind, without modifying the functions of the rest—some appreciably and others inappreciably, according to the directness or indirectness of their relations. Of such inter-dependent changes, the normal ones are naturally inconspicuous; but those which are partially or completely abnormal, sufficiently carry home the general truth. Thus, unusual cerebral ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... have been given, in substance, at various gatherings in Great Britain, Continental Europe, and parts of the Far East, during the past four years. The simple directness of the spoken word has been allowed to stand. Portions of chapters three, four, six, and eight have appeared at various times in "The Sunday ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... words were snapped out with a force and directness that William afterwards declared put him "on the blinks" for a ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... very sweet side, as well as an inconvenient and irritating one, to the old-fashioned rural notion that the parish has almost as much right to the minister's wife as to the minister. Draxy saw only the sweet side. With all the loyalty and directness which had made her, as a little girl, champion and counselor and comfort to her father, she now set her hand to the work of helping her husband do good to the people ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... with nothing but ideal entities, verbal, moral, or mathematical, Plato saw in concretions in discourse the true elements of being. Definable meanings, being the terms of thought, must also, he fancied, be the constituents of reality. And with that directness and audacity which was possible to the ancients, and of which Pythagoreans and Eleatics had already given brilliant examples, he set up these terms of discourse, like the Pythagorean numbers, for absolute and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... thrown out of countenance by so much directness, could only stare; the same did the others, though some few tittered, for Mr. Craske, when all was said, was held in no great esteem ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... intervals, and is to me an object of curious interest. He is a Fellow and Lecturer of his College. He came up there on a scholarship from a small school. He worked hard; he was a moderate oar; he did not make many friends, but he was greatly respected for a sort of quiet directness and common-sense. He never put himself forward, but when it fell to him to do anything he did it with confidence and discretion. He had an excellent head for business, and was Secretary or Treasurer of most of the College institutions. After taking an ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of his heart, I am aware, and a certain simplicity and directness," says Adrian. "But all the same he mustn't spoil ladies' dresses—beyond a certain point, of course. I have been very curious to know, Lady Gwendolen, whether his paws came off—the marks of them, I mean—on that lovely India muslin I saw you in three weeks ago, just before ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... eldest son of Alexander II,—a young man of gentle characteristics, greatly resembling his father,—died upon the Riviera, the next heir to the throne was his brother Alexander, a stalwart, taciturn guardsman, respected by all who knew him for honesty and directness, but who, having never looked forward to the throne, had been brought up simply as a soldier, with few of the gifts and graces traditional among the heirs of the Russian monarchy ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... teaching remarkably like what is to be found in certain of the chapters of Unto This Last. A reader cannot fail to be struck by the wonderful modernness of Xenophon's writing, his love for the country, his simple and genuine piety, his soldierly directness, and his practical common sense. Here is a delightful sidelight on Greek family life, written twenty-three centuries ago, but which might have been spoken yesterday: "My wife," says one of the characters, "often puts me ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... it's infernal to think that some one may be shedding precious tears on your grave and you not there to see. I've often wondered if one could get a ticket of leave for such an occasion." He smiled down at her with baffling directness. "I should value those tears unspeakably," ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... for his directness; and so great was his aversion to an evasive or unmeaning expression, that he never could bear the person who made use of such, and was sure to give him the name of Niesnion, which may be translated, "I don't know," "possibly," or "perhaps." He would take no such answer; ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... concentration. All his waking time, except what he gives to the Post, goes to that awful book of his. He is ridiculous now because his theory of life is ridiculous. But suppose it popped into his head some day to switch all that directness and concentrated energy in some other direction. Don't you think he might be rather a ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... account has a dignity, a clearness and cogency of statement, worthy of Blackstone or Marshall. It is in marked contrast to the evasive reply of Secretary Cass, both for its fine English and for the directness of its logic. It is published at length in Julian Hawthorne's biography of his father, and is unique for the insight which it affords as to Hawthorne's mental ability in this direction. We may infer from it that if ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... I was entirely unused to the amenities of society. I used no subterfuges, and made no attempt to disguise my interest in Cynthia, or to pretend to other interests. I dare say my directness was smiled upon, as part of the eccentricity of these literary people; one of Ernest's friends, quite a recluse, and so forth. I gathered as ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Deleah's handkerchief Bessie rolled it into a ball and flung it across the table, with greater force of will than directness of aim, at Bernard's face. "You beast!" she choked. "Mama, Bernard's laughing at me. Oughtn't Bernard to know how to behave better? Because I'm so unhappy isn't a reason ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... occasional fits of inexplicable weeping; but as a general rule she shared with Borrow himself a proud contempt for that mad puppy gentility, and her predominant characteristic, like his, was the simplicity that puzzled by reason of its directness and its purity. {52} That these qualities were not unaccompanied by a considerable amount of hauteur, is shown by her uncompromising rejection of the ceremonial advances made to her by that accomplished courtier, the man ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... to the infinitely deeper misery of my present situation, and conscious of the conclusions which might be drawn from such impulsive utterances, I pulled myself together and proceeded to finish my story with greater directness. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... so to me," said Anna, a little abashed by this directness of speech, "but I certainly don't know much about music; Aunt Sarah says I need not go on with it while I ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... and alternately their axes bit deep. It was a beautiful sight this, of experts wielding their tools. The craft of the woodsman means incidentally such a free swing of the shoulders and hips, such a directness of stroke as the blade of one sinks accurately in the gash made by the other, that one never tires of watching the grace of it. Tom glanced up as ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... rapidity and vigour of these two poems will save them from death; the splendid qualities of direct narration, constructive skill, dignity and poetical power will always make Homer a name to love. Those who know no Greek and therefore fear that they may lose some of the directness of the Homeric appeal might recall the famous sonnet written by Keats who had had no opportunity to learn the great language. His words are no doubt familiar enough; that they have become inseparable from Homer must be our apology for ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... impossible for him to know how in her new sensitiveness this careless speech, which a day earlier would have passed unheeded, aroused all her instincts of defense. She was half-aware of the irony by which their talk about the nephews of Jack Holton had carried them with so fateful a directness ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... which has been restricted since to the physical and natural sciences and been supplemented by similar bodies representing literature and learning only in our own day. Clearness, plainness, conversational ease and directness were the aims the society set before its members where their writing was concerned. "The Royal Society," wrote the Bishop of Rochester, its first historian, "have exacted from all their members a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... comradeship between Huxley and his wife reads like a good old-time romance. He was attracted to her at first by her "simplicity and directness united with an unusual degree of cultivation," Huxley's son writes. On her he depended for advice in his work, and for companionship at home and abroad when wandering in search of health in Italy and Switzerland. When he had been separated from her for ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... solitude of the Avenue MacMahon, the shadow which she had seen at the corner of the Rue Galilee came near her with a directness that was unmistakable. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... to instruct the congregation, but speaks with simplicity and directness, to Him who ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... British Tories, who professed to fear for the existence of the Church of England itself. The majority of the English clergy denounced the proposition, and some even declared its author a madman; but Mr. Gladstone pursued his chosen way with energy and directness. In one of those elevated speeches with which he was accustomed to ennoble debate, he laid the details of his plan open to the Commons. The Irish Church was to be disestablished and disendowed, its bishops were to lose their seats in Parliament, and it was to become a free and ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... him with grave wonder, and then said with her old directness: "But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I should have told you." She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color. "I mean," she said hesitatingly, "of course you have acted nobly, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to our immediate marriage," Cyrene said with desperate directness, and tremblingly taking the chair which Germain proffered, sat down with white face, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... 4. Directness of Relation—Functions of Priests.—In contrast to all this precision of ritual, which tends almost to alienate humanity from deity, we may turn to another hardly less prominent feature of the Roman religion—the immediateness of relation between the god and his worshippers. ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... talked with her servant for the space of half an hour," answered Zoroaster, without hesitation, though he was astonished at the suddenness and directness of the question. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... had drawn her features to haggardness and put in her eyes a look of sharpened apprehension as though dread of the nearing ordeal of suffering and danger overrode the hope which, along with the new life, was quick within her. She greeted Judge Priest with a matter-of-fact directness. Her expression plainly enough told him she was at a loss to account ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... smile. "What would you like to know about me?" she asked, with a sober directness, which, like her smile, was friendly and brave. "You heard something last night. I am entirely willing to tell you more. But is it not wise for us to know as little ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... went there with a youthful idea of reforming the church. At any rate his boldness of thought and free utterance brought him into suspicion with his fellow students, and at one time reports were in circulation that he was to be expelled for heresy. With his customary directness he went to the president, Dr. Pond, and inquired if there was any truth in this. The doctor, who really liked Wasson, received him with a kindly, patriarchal manner and said: "Do not be troubled, my young friend, we all have our ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... course in unhurried strokes toward the bar. This swimmer had come alone from the hotel bath-houses and had strolled down into the streaming bubbles of an outgoing wave without halting to inspect the other bathers. There was a businesslike directness in the way he kept onward and outward until a comber lifted him and ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... considerations, it will not be matter for surprise that a man who thinks for himself can easily be distinguished from the book-philosopher by the very way in which he talks, by his marked earnestness, and the originality, directness, and personal conviction that stamp all his thoughts and expressions. The book-philosopher, on the other hand, lets it be seen that everything he has is second-hand; that his ideas are like the number and trash of an old furniture-shop, collected together from all quarters. ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Civil War period with admirable exhaustiveness and accuracy; Justin Winsor, Woodrow Wilson, William M. Sloane, and John Fiske. John Fiske's work, which deals wholly with the different periods of American history, is especially suited to young people because of its simplicity and directness, and because, while accurate, it is not ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... to obscure the significance of words. To disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the "Discoveries," is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in the subtler ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... good counsel and cheerful comfort. The strong personality of the writer sometimes interferes with the expansiveness of his views, as for instance in the discussion on pulpits; but it may perhaps be to that very strength of personality that we owe the force and directness of the lessons he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... supplants the ambition for predominant political influence abroad. This difference is expressed, despite the strong personal resemblance to his father, in the more frank and gentle eye, the fuller and more sensitive mouth, and the rounder lines of jaw and forehead. A frank, natural directness of manner and speech is his principal characteristic. He wears easily, almost playfully, the yoke of court ceremonial, temporarily casting it aside when troublesome. In two respects he differs from most of the other European rulers whom I have seen: he looks the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... ordinance, and the grounds upon which those scruples were founded. This discourse, as his only printed sermon, and as one which heralded a movement in New England theology which has never stopped from that day to this, deserves some special notice. The sermon is in no sense "Emersonian" except in its directness, its sweet temper, and outspoken honesty. He argues from his comparison of texts in a perfectly sober, old-fashioned way, as his ancestor Peter Bulkeley might have done. It happened to that worthy forefather of Emerson that upon his "pressing a piece of Charity disagreeable ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... The directness of the question startled the gambler. "I have, no peace of any kind; my heart is full of storms and my life is a ruin," he ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Thus her directness baffled all the efforts of the prosecution to trap her into betraying any of her friends. The court, however, sentenced her to death. She was ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... him as at a deep mystery, but with the searching directness characteristic of her, a fearlessness so absolute that it embarrassed ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... heads among the assemblage nodded their recognition of the wisdom of this question. The sheriff, however, saw nothing consequential in the inquiry; he answered, with simple directness— ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... almost immediately by a gruff voice inquiring with simple directness what the dickens all this noise ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... sensitiveness as to close unity and slight diversity, as to what is principal and what is subordinate, as to what is in the direct, main line of thought, and what is by the way, casual, or merely a connecting link. This sense of proportion, of close or remote relation, of directness and indirectness, the feeling for perspective, so-called, can be acquired only by continued practice, for sharpening the faculty of apprehension and appreciation. It is usually the last attainment in the student's work, but the neglect ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... concentrated on her, slender, warm-hued as an houri in the ivory and gold palace of one of the old khans—but an houri with disconcerting straightness of gaze, and crisp matter-of-fact directness of utterance. "You are cruel; you have always been," he said. "I offer you ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... involved therein. During the revolutionary war, he faithfully maintained his testimony against the shedding of blood, and suffered considerably for refusing to pay military taxes. Isaac's mother was noted for her fearless character, and blunt directness of speech. She was educated in the Presbyterian faith, and this was a source of some discordant feeling between her and her husband. The preaching of her favorite ministers seemed to him harsh and rigid, while she regarded Quaker exhortations as insipid and formal. But as ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... part come in?" she asked with a certain sweet directness which was sometimes hers. "Wouldn't I be a hireling too if—if I had ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... please,' said Gladys, with that simple directness which made evasion of any question impossible to her, or to ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... immediate object of your coming, namely, your desire for boots, "cheap and good." This gross, material man cared, apparently, nothing for the niceties of retail dealing. It was necessary with such an one to come to business with brutal directness. George abandoned "Mr. X," and turning back to a previous page, took a sentence at random. It was not a happy selection; it was a speech that would have been superfluous made to any bootmaker. Under the present circumstances, threatened and stifled as we were on ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... friendship. She wasn't the least bit in love with him albeit she realized he was rather lovable. The delight which she had experienced in his society lay in the fact that he was absolutely different from any other man she had met. His simplicity, his utter lack of "swank," his directness, his good nature, and dry sense of humour made him shine luminously in comparison with the worldly, rather artificial young men she had previously met—young men who said and did only those things which time, tradition, and hallowed memory assured them were done by the right sort of people. Shirley ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... coaxing and pulling got him into the kitchen, and Puss tumbled over herself to set out coffee and rolls. He showed himself ravenously hungry, and ate with a simple directness that speedily accounted for everything in sight. "You have saved my life. Now I am going, and thank you a thousand times. There, by Heaven, I've forgotten Wickwire! He is with me—waiting down in the cottonwoods at the fork. Could Puss put up a lunch I could take to ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... in its strength of portrayal and its directness of development. It cannot be read ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the rest. Here, mis'ess, take off your things, and help him out in his baking, or he won't get done to-night. I'll finish heating the oven, and set you free to go and skiver up them ducks." His eye had passed with pitiless directness of criticism into yet remote recesses of Winterborne's awkwardly built premises, where the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... would say; Andalusian, or, better still, Basque; that compound, like the diamond, of darkness and fire. Hair, the shade of purple grapes viewed at midnight. Eyes, long, dusky, and disquieting with their untroubled directness of gaze. Face, haughty and bold, touched with a pretty insolence that gave it life. To hasten conviction of her charm, but glance at the stacks of handbills in the corner, green, and yellow, and white. Upon them you see an incompetent presentment of the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... here—and if he did he wouldn't know you. He couldn't recognize your face by the number of your car, you know!" Then she added, with beautiful directness, "It wouldn't be so bad, if you hadn't been the ringleader and put the other boys up to robbing cars. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... for the fatal resemblance between the two daughters of one father, the conspiracy of which Anne had been the innocent instrument and Laura the innocent victim could never have been planned. With what unerring and terrible directness the long chain of circumstances led down from the thoughtless wrong committed by the father to the heartless ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the smallest doubt. But it was not Mr. Timson's way to take things for granted in silence, and it must be admitted that his curiosity in this particular case was not without warrant. After a scrutiny of John's face and person, which was not brief enough to be unnoticeable, he said, with a directness which left nothing in that line to be desired, "I reckon you're the new man Dave's ben ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... shows a hearty, wholesome, human spirit, sometimes overflowing into downright fun, and a straightforward directness always. It is a pleasant book, sure to be welcomed ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... been used to luxury. It had not spoiled her. MacRae granted that. It had not made her set great store by false values. MacRae was sure of that. She had loved him simply and naturally, with an almost primitive directness. Spoiled daughters of the leisure class are not so simple and direct. MacRae began to wonder if she could possibly escape resenting his share in the overturning of her father's fortunes, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the settled conviction that she should never meet any one quite like him again. He was true to his promise to help her; (he never made a promise that he did not honestly try to keep;) and he applied himself to the by no means thankless task with the good-humored directness and energy that characterized all his actions. There was quite a number of young girls in his parish, more proportionately than in the others. Bell Masters and Amy Duckworth had long been hovering on its borders, and the ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... the lives of people, and yet to do it so (apparently) artlessly. This struck me so forcibly that it was not till later I began to realise with a sigh—if one himself is a writer, a sigh of envy—that Nene has a directness, a simplicity, a principle of internal growth or dramatic life of its own, which, alas! most of us ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... see her face, but he knew that for once she was not looking at him; for once that head was bent. And then, preposterously, without volition, without foreknowledge, he was holding her tightly in his arms; holding her tightly and kissing her with a simple directness that "Napoleon, Man and Lover," could ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale—young clergyman, who had come from one of the great English universities, bringing all the learning of the age into our wild forest land. His eloquence and religious fervour had already ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... He commanded the bier to be set down. The Mn.E. passive in such sentences is a loss both in force and directness.] ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... This route is held to be the best, I believe, for passing out into the open Atlantic from the labyrinthine groups of islands and innumerable islets that gem the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. It is a course, too, which by its directness and the northerly current and westerly wind there to be met, saves a lot of useless tacking about and beating to windward, as you, no doubt, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... Fichte, whom she ridiculed, as well as other obscure though profound writers, who disdained style and art in writing, for which she was afterwards so distinguished. I believe nine-tenths of German literature is wasted on Europeans for lack of clearness and directness of style; although the involved obscurities which are common to German philosophers and critics and historians alike do not seem to derogate from their literary fame at home, and have even found imitators in England, like Coleridge and Carlyle. Nevertheless, obscurity ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... of the camp that evening under the foot-hills will never be forgotten by those of us who composed the happy number, and who listened with streaming eyes and aching sides to the narrative of our unfortunate guest. He told his story with a directness and simplicity of narrative, with a gravity of countenance and plaintiveness of voice, which heightened the humor of the substance. Never did the stars, which have seen so much of human happiness, which have listened to so much of the rollicking humor of those who were fashioned ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... undoubtedly saved the scoundrel from a summary vengeance; possibly I might not have done it, had I known what the alternative would be. Where is that man now?" he asked, with sudden directness. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... mild eye; the clustering curls, and, above all, the happy, rejoicing smile, and the transparent frankness and simplicity of expression which beamed like sunshine about her, all formed a combination of charms that took our hero quite by surprise; and when Silence, who had a remarkable degree of directness in all her dealings, called out, "Here, Susan, is Joe Adams, inquiring after you!" our practised young gentleman felt himself color to the roots of his hair, and for a moment he could scarce recollect that first rudiment of manners, "to make his bow like a good boy." Susan colored also; ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... overmuch involved plot and diction in the writing of novels, a book like this brings a sense of refreshment, as much by the virility and directness of its style as by the interest of the story it tells.... The human interest of the book is absorbing. The descriptions of life in India and England are delightful. ... But it is the intense humanity of the story—above all, that of its dominating ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... Lady Tweedmouth, Lord and Lady Lamington, Lord Brassey, Lord Avebury, Sir Frederick Young and many other interesting or important personages. The speech delivered by the Prince of Wales was one which startled England from its directness of statement and its eloquence of style and delivery. It was not merely a clear, or good description of the tour; it was the utterance of one who was both statesman and orator. His Royal Highness referred to the historic title ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... like you?" resumed he, after a moment's more contemplation, which, spite of its directness, had in it a certain element of unsophisticatedness that prevented it ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... was impossible to deny that Curtis Jadwin—"J" as he was called in business—was in love with her. The business man, accustomed to deal with situations with unswerving directness, was not in the least afraid of Laura. He was aggressive, assertive, and his addresses had all the persistence and vehemence of veritable attack. He contrived to meet her everywhere, and even had the Cresslers and Laura over to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... pushing symbolism too far to attempt an interpretation of this fable, recounted with all the simplicity of the antique world, with greater directness, indeed, than I have ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... at him with her childlike directness as she had done at the bazaar, and said, "I want to tell you everything." But her eyes filled fast with tears as she said it, and all the pent-up excitement of her humiliating walk would have its vent before ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... minute she opened the door, and answered the mortgage-jobber's embarrassed greeting with a frigid stare. Having had some experience with Sally's uncompromising directness, he was inclined to fancy that the game was ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... true that the disjunctive proposition, more than any other form, except U, seems to convey two statements in one breath. Yet it ought not, any more than the E proposition, to be regarded as conveying both with equal directness. The proposition 'No A is B' is not considered to assert directly, but only implicitly, that 'No B is A.' In the same way the form 'Either A is B or C is D' ought to be interpreted as meaning directly no more than this, 'If ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock |
