"Keen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... observe in their turn, and to describe, the metropolis of the East. The ambassador of the great Otho, a bishop of Cremona, has painted the state of Constantinople about the middle of the tenth century: his style is glowing, his narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the prejudices and passions of Liutprand are stamped with an original character of freedom and genius. [11] From this scanty fund of foreign and domestic materials, I shall investigate the form and substance of the Byzantine empire; the provinces and wealth, the civil government ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... will see that one of the pieces is marked with a star. Now when the whole is properly fitted together it will set inside that square and the star will rest directly above the hidden spring. As you have most at stake, it is for you to give to the world the last words of the Rajah. Is your wit keen enough, and your courage high enough to essay and ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... still greater surprise was in store for her, for immediately she discovered sitting upon the biggest branch of the tree twenty-two bluejays, all in a row. They were large, splendidly plumaged birds, with keen eyes and sharp bills, and at their head was the children's ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... with pride and hastily answered that if any one craved news of him he had best apply to Mistress Ursula Tetzel, inasmuch as she was ever wont to have a keen eye on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... spoke rightly. When she is not swept away to hysterical action by her temperament, she has a perception exquisitely keen ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... but far more terrible is Alaska when the great blizzard rages. There remains then no signs of serenity. Whirlwind follows whirlwind; gales from the ends of the earth blow horribly and with frenzied swiftness, bearing upon their breath the icy points of millions of keen needles which bite like the stings of insects. Flying, sifting, drifting snow, which before formed jewels of such exquisite beauty is now piled mountain high, or sucks itself with savage fierceness through crannies and into deep gorges ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... writing such a book! I never met any one who so impressed me with his knowledge. Not pedantry, but with the deep-lying fundamental truth that humanity ought to know. His sympathies are so broad, his intuitions so keen, his ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... of what he said of himself when in one of his moods of free speech, and it gave me a new idea of human nature—a man whose keen and penetrating brain could subject his own consciousness to a cool and correct analysis, seeing clearly the folly which he could not resist. The autobiography of such a man might furnish a curious psychological study, and explain the formation and development in ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... represents them; that represent their intelligence, or their laxity, or their vices:—whether it be sent in by the ballot or by a Praetorian Guard with their caprice and spears. In a pralayic time there is no keen national consciousness, no centripetalism. There was none in Rome in those days; or not enough to counteract the centrifugalism that simply did not care. The empire held together, because Augustus and Tiberius had created a centripetalism in the provinces; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Winchester was supposed partly to have been due to his extraordinary intellectual and mental development, and I am sure that my father was afraid of over-stimulating our mental energies. I feel certain that what was going on in Hugh's case all the time was a keen exercise of observation. I have no doubt that his brain was receiving and gaining impressions of every kind, and that his mind was not really inactive—it was only unconsciously amassing material. ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the keen instinct of the inquiring Yankee to be too neatly made and elegant for a Western Virginian mountaineer employed at twelve dollars a month in caring for cattle in the hackings. When asked the price paid for the boots, the answer was ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Thanksgiving came. Maida hurried home, keen and bright with the thoughts of the blessed morrow. Her thoughts were of purple, but they were white themselves—the joyous enthusiasm of the young for the pleasures that youth must have or wither. She knew purple would become her, and—for the thousandth ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... their noses together, caressingly. The perches above are covered with birds whose natural antipathies have been subdued into mutual affection by the law of kindness. The grave owl is sitting upright, and meditating in the sun, with a keen-sighted sparrow perched between his ears trying to open the eyes of the sleepy owl with ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... life and energy, and in this respect offered a strong contrast to most of his schoolfellows of the same age. For although splendid riders and keen sportsmen, the planters of Virginia were in other respects inclined to indolence; the result partly of the climate, partly of their being waited upon from childhood by attendants ready to carry out every wish. He had his father's cheerful ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... which we tackle certain critical cases, The carrying out of the more commonly considered forms of disarmament will give immensely added importance to other forms of warfare which have already challenged supremacy in the keen competitive atmosphere of the great world war. The outstanding example is the chemical arm, whose peculiar requirements in any scheme of disarmament have been but ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... native who came up to me was a fine specimen of man in an independent state of nature. He had nothing artificial about him save the badge of mourning for the dead, a white band (his was very white) around his brow. His manner was grave, his eye keen and intelligent, and as our people were encamping he seemed to watch the moment when they wanted fire, and presented a burning stick which one of the natives had brought, in a manner expressive of welcome, and an unaffected wish to contribute to our wants. At a distance their gins sat at ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... is being done, do you?" inquired the keen-faced judge sharply. "You understand this means that unless you give bail you will have to stay in jail until the grand jury dismisses the case or finds an ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... steadily, and one by one the purple blotches in his own face paled, and vanished, like the extinguishing of as many hellish lights. And then to Barbara's horror a low groan, more like a dog's than a man's, passed his tightly pressed lips, came out, and was cut short off, as if with a keen knife. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... by their stings. H. Muller (60. 'Anwendung der Darwinschen Lehre auf Bienen,' Verh. d. n. V. Jahrg. xxix.), who has particularly attended to the habits of bees, attributes these differences in colour in chief part to sexual selection. That bees have a keen perception of colour is certain. He says that the males search eagerly and fight for the possession of the females; and he accounts through such contests for the mandibles of the males being in certain species larger than those ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... her own virtue and the virtues of her religion. She was a limpet, with the sensitive side of her stuck to a rock, for ever dead to the rush of fresh and beautiful things past her. The face of this single worshipper became printed on Rachel's mind with an impression of keen horror, and she had it suddenly revealed to her what Helen meant and St. John meant when they proclaimed their hatred of Christianity. With the violence that now marked her feelings, she rejected all that ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... consulting-room suspect him? or did Thomas's shoes creak, and was her sense of hearing unusually keen? Whatever the explanation may be, the event that actually happened was beyond all doubt. Exactly as Doctor Wybrow passed his consulting-room, the door opened—the lady appeared on the threshold—and laid her hand on ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... Michigan Avenue, and when they were ready he journeyed to the latter's office to ask if there were any additional details which Cowperwood might want to have taken into consideration. When he was ushered in, Cowperwood turned to him his keen, analytical eyes and saw at once a personality he liked. McKibben was just remote and artistic enough to suit him. He liked his clothes, his agnostic unreadableness, his social air. McKibben, on his part, caught the significance ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Sharply her keen eyes fixed him. How could a man have got lost near Mammoth and wandered here? He would have had to cross the range, and even a child would have known enough to turn back into the valley ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... state known to history with extraordinary statesmanship but with hardly any political writings—influenced considerably the founder of modern political science, Nicolo Machiavelli, who was himself in truth not a creator of doctrines but a keen observer of human nature who derived from the study of history practical maxims of political import. He freed the science of politics from the formalism of the scholastics and brought it close to ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... opened up the more puzzled I became. By the way, you hardly asked him a thing, though you were keen on tackling ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... of Drosera. As there are various plants upon whose glandular hairs or glutinous surfaces small insects are habitually caught and perish, it might be pure coincidence that the most effectual arrangement of the kind happens to occur in the nearest relatives of Dionaea. Roth, a keen German botanist of the eighteenth century, was the first to detect, or at least to record, some evidence of intention in Drosera, and to compare its action with that of Dionaea, which, through Ellis's account, had shortly before been made known in Europe. He noticed the telling fact ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... force" until the passionate moment arrives, is all that Mr. ALEXANDER has to do; but this he does admirably, never under-acting, never over-acting, always as natural as a quiet gentleman, of a peculiarly romantic turn of mind, yet with a keen but chastened appreciation of a practical joke, kept all to himself for five months, should be. Had he been compelled by circumstances to sustain the alias, and to continue playing the part of a Burchell in GOLDSMITH's Vicar of Wakefield ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... keen, brainy in the wrong way. I like brains, mind you, and I know where they are. But I don't see the fun of having them jumped ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Christopher Marlowe. These errors we must all hope to see rectified in a second issue of the text: and meantime we can but welcome with all possible gratitude and applause the magnificent series of old plays by unknown writers which we owe to the keen research and the fine appreciation of Marlowe's latest editor. Of these I may find some future occasion to speak: my present business is with the admirable poet who has been promoted to the second place in Mr. Bullen's ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in Berlin, in a sort of semi-diplomatic position, when the Assembly of Notables was convened. His keen prescience and profound sagacity induced him to return to his distracted country, where he knew his services would soon be required. Though debauched, extravagant, and unscrupulous, he was not unpatriotic. He had an intense hatred of feudalism, and saw in its varied inequalities the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... word. The attractiveness and rapid growth of the home market provided an outlet for practically the whole output of American mills. With high prices prevailing in the home market, the manufacturer was not called upon to exert himself to stimulate sales in regions where competition would inevitably be keen and profits small. ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... other things. Riding! I could help you to break in horses. All the O'Haras are good on horseback'—at which he laughed immoderately and told her that when she had seen one, Zack Duppo, on a buckjumper, she would not be keen to try that game. But it might amuse her to help cut out a few tame bullocks on a drafting camp if she had a good old station mount that ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... girl of her age ought to be dressed, walked by Rosamund's side and chatted about books, about music, about all sorts of things, the existence of which she had scarcely known a few weeks ago. Her intellect was of such a keen and brilliant order that she grasped knowledge almost as easily as she imbibed her food. Rosamund felt more and more proud ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the thing, Sheard could not but feel the real sincerity of his appeal; and, as he stared, wondering, at the fine brow, the widely-opened eyes, the keen nostrils and delicate yet indomitable mouth and chin, he was forced to admit that here was no mere up-to-date cracksman, but something else, something more. "Is he mad?" flashed ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... was the presiding judge; there was a special jury; the attorney-general, Sir W. Follet, and Mr Wightman appeared for the noble plaintiff; and the keen-witted and exquisitely polished Mr Thesiger (now Lord Cholmondeley), Mr Alexander, and Mr W. H. Watson for the defendant. A great many of the nobility were present, together ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... large canoes, bringing grass-cloth, salt, flour, cassava, fowls, goats, pigs, and slaves. The women are beautiful, with straight noses, and well-clothed; when the men of the districts are at war, the women take their goods to market as if at peace and are never molested: all are very keen traders, buying one thing with another, and changing back again, and any profit made is one of the enjoyments ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... was brought by the help of the razor into as close a resemblance with the rest of the ball as possible. The said face was a pleasant one to look at—of features altogether irregular—a retreating and narrow forehead over keen gray eyes that sparkled with intelligence and fun, prominent cheek-bones, a nose thick in the base and considerably elevated at the point, a large mouth always ready to show a set of white, regular, serviceable teeth—the only regular arrangement in the whole facial economy—and a chin whose original ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... was keen on his line of thought. "Exactly!" said he. "Vermin destroyer. I should be the vermin. But once destroyed, what contrition should I have to endure? Remorse is a game that takes two selves to play at it—a criminal and a conscientious person! Suppose the rat-paste ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... religion, and it alone, is able to prevent these capitulations of conscience. But, ever since 1789 religion has no influence on two thirds of the French people. The peasants, whose minds are keen and whose poverty drives them to imitation, had reached, specially in the valley of Les Aigues, a frightful state of demoralization. They went to mass on Sundays, but only at the outside of the church, where it was their ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... but lately have I seen e'en here, The winter in a lovely dress appear; Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasured snow, Or winds begun through hazy skies to blow. At evening a keen eastern breeze arose; And the descending rain unsullied froze. Soon as the silent shades of night withdrew, The ruddy morn disclosed at once to view The face of nature in a rich disguise, And brightened every object to my eyes. For every shrub, and every blade of ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... chasms from which she was tossed shudderingly upward again as in light contempt, and as she came nearer and nearer into my view I could discern some of the human beings on board—the man at the wheel, with keen eyes peering into the gathering gloom of the storm, his hair and face dashed with spray,—the sailors, fighting hard to save the rigging from being torn to pieces and flung into the sea,— then—a sudden huge wave swept her directly in front of me, and I saw the ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... was usual in those days, and was proceeding toward Massachusetts. I turned, and saw that Mr. Adams was ready to get the floor at the earliest moment possible. His keen eye was riveted on the Clerk; his hands clasped the front edge of his desk, where he always placed them to assist him in rising. He looked, in the ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... the commercial ideal according to which cheap labor is absolutely desirable and needful to produce cheaper products. This ideal has spread to wider circles. Here, for example, are the words of a man who combines wide knowledge of the facts of immigration with keen sympathy for the working classes:[15] "The past industrial development of America points unerringly to Europe as the source whence our unskilled labor supply is to be drawn . . . America is in the race for the markets of the ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... went to the door. The sun was lifting through a narrow pass in the mountains, and the creatures of the thickets and the air were astir. A flock of water fowl was winging swiftly to the north, and what seemed to be the keen eyes of a wolf looked out from the shelter of the undergrowth. The air ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... not a prepossessing person. His blue eyes were keen and glaring; but they were rendered forbidding and even terrible at times by the bad complexion of his face, which was covered with red blotches that told the story of his debaucheries. "Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled over with meal," is the expression that a Greek jester is said ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... did in London was to go and see the Exhibition of the Royal Academy. My wife, like her father, took a keen interest in art, and had been rather well acquainted with French painting for a girl of her age. When she got into an English Exhibition she looked round in bewildered amazement. It was, for her, like being transported ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... desist from pressing his suit. You, well knowing my determination, and carried away by your evil temper, have magnified into a threat what he never intended as such. Pray let me hear no more about these fancied insults." The old man smiled grimly at his keen perception. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... behold Katharine O'Shea—handsome, wistful, winsome, vivacious and intelligent, with a brain as keen as that of Becky Sharp, yet as honest as Amelia—getting her husband transferred from the army ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... beautiful, and Percy stood for some time watching the receding shore, and scanning, with his wonted keen gaze, the various countenances of the passengers. He took a book from his pocket, but did not read long; he looked out on the sea, and muttered to himself, 'What folly now? Why won't that name let one rest? Besides, he looked desperately ill; I must go and see if they have made him ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reputation to Luther only, among the founders of Protestantism, is John Calvin. He was a Frenchman, born in 1509, and was consequently a child when the Saxon Reformation began. He was keen and logical in his mental habit, with a great organizing capacity, naturally of a retiring temper, yet fearless, and endued with extraordinary intensity and firmness of will. A more finished scholar than Luther, he lacked his geniality and tenderness, and his imaginative power. Calvin ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... enthusiasm is great in itself. They admire people for being impressionable. They admire people for being excited. An American so struggling for some disproportionate trifle (like one of my lectures) really feels in a mystical way that he is right, because it is his whole morality to be keen. So long as he wants something very much, whatever it is, he feels he has his conscience behind him, and the common sentiment of society behind him, and God and the whole universe behind him. Wedged on one leg in a hot crowd at a trivial lecture, he has self-respect; his dignity is at rest. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... the English thirteenth and fourteenth century books, is the introduction of many small grotesques in the borders, and these little creatures, partly animal and partly human, show a keen sense of humour, which had to display itself, even though inappropriately, but always with a true spirit of wit. One might suppose on first looking at these grotesques, that the droll expression is unintentional: that ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... would make over to you fifty thousand in Government three per cents? Hard, wasn't it? Suppose that you were earning about two thousand a year, and that the struggle to keep up smart appearances was a keen one. Wouldn't you have been eager to marry, especially the girl you loved? A man can not buy flowers twice a week, dine before and take supper after the theater twice a week, belong (and pay dues and house-accounts) to a country club, a town club and keep respectable bachelor apartments on two ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... nothing that at a first glance seemed to call for a second: his small pinched features, and the downward curl of the lip, which his moustache and clipped beard failed to hide, indicated a nature peevish and severe rather than powerful. On nearer observation the restless eyes, keen and piercing, asserted themselves and redeemed the face from insignificance. When, as on this occasion, their glances were supported by the terrors of the State, it was not difficult to understand why Messer Blondel, the Syndic, though no great man to ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the railway station, intending to take a ticket for Victoria. But half an hour must elapse before the arrival of a train, and she walked about in an irresolute mood. For one thing, she felt hungry; at Sutton her appetite had been keen, and meal-times were always welcome. She entered the refreshment room, and with inward murmurs made a repast which reminded her of the excellent luncheon she might now have been enjoying. All the time, she pondered her situation. Ultimately, instead ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... less sharp than before, but keen enough to stir her anger. She still sat up, but bent forward, clasping her bodice. In the moonlight she could see her heavy shoes on her feet sticking up before her. Realizing that it was a disgraceful thing to lie down with them on, she sprang off the bed, and began to dust the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... to encourage promising but "infant" industries and to tax the luxuries of the rich. Whatever may have been the merits of this policy, which made some commotion for a few years, we can easily understand that it appealed to the imagination of young Lincoln at a time of keen political energy on his part of which we ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... moment remained tensely, watchfully still. She felt his eyes on her; she could not see them in the shadow of his hat, but had an unpleasant sensation of a pair of sinister eyes narrowing in their keen regard of her. She ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... seeming distrust of mankind speaks out of many a passage in his letters, but on the whole he thought too well of his fellow men, and remained blind to the faults of his false friends who basely exploited him for their own ends. Although gifted with keen powers of observation he always followed his kind heart instead of his better judgment and his sister spoke no more than the truth when she said after his death: "Outside of music he was, and remained, nearly always, a child. This was the chief trait ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... uncertain player, now drawing forth a bar of a beautiful melody and then losing it again. He does not know what quiver or what turn his note will take before it ends; the note leads him and completes itself. It is a song which strives to express the singer's keen delight, the singer's exquisite appreciation of the loveliness of the days; the golden glory of the meadow, the light, the luxurious shadows, the indolent clouds reclining on their azure couch. Such thoughts can ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... used to spend their afternoons in pleasant conversation and discourse of future work, was a place of keen interest to Timrod, and when their discussions resulted in the establishment of Russell's Magazine he was one of the most enthusiastic contributors to the ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Christianity, and Mohammedanism, sprang from Semitic soil. To this might be added the religion of Babylonia, which, was unquestionably the noblest of early antiquity. In general the Semitic mind is keen, alert, receptive, and intuitional rather than logical. Restless energy and the tendency to acquire have also tended to make them leaders in the widely different fields of commerce and religion. The patriarch Jacob is a remarkable example of these combined qualities and results. By day ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... thus unpleasantly reflecting, the arras that overhung the chapel door was raised, and a tall priest in his robes came forth, and; giving a long, keen stare at Denis, said something in an undertone ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... speaking. It was trampled, withered grass through which they now crawled. It offered fair concealment, but there was danger of making a noise that might betray them to a keen-eared sentry. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... his head with a little smile, which was infinitely sadder than tears. His cold silence was worse than an outburst of grief; it was like the keen frost that comes before snow, harder to bear than the snow itself. Presently he moved slightly towards his companion so that their arms were touching, and in his soft modulated voice, trained to conceal emotion, he told ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... no doubt, must be taught dogmatically, and they take up an enormous amount of time, particularly in English schools. English spelling is a national misfortune, and in the keen international race among all the countries of Europe, it handicaps the English child to a degree that seems incredible till we look at statistics. I know the difficulties of a Spelling Reform, I know what people mean when they call ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... the strong bow that bends to our hand, then the straight arrow, tough and trim, and the feathers that wing it to its mark. But best of all the steady hand and keen eye that direct our winged shaft. But you have worked well this morning, my men, and now we may rest awhile. Sing us a song, Will Scarlet, while we ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... amiable deevice is out to run its brand onto one of us,"says Jim to me; an' I looks at him. "'An' then, as the fourth finds a white bean in the bag, an' draws a deep sigh an' stands back, Jim says: "Well, Sam, it's up to us." Then Jim looks at me keen an' steady a whole lot, an' the Mexicans, bein' rather pleased with the situation, ain't goadin' of ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... that sorrow, though it had incapacitated him for the management of his own affairs, had not rendered him unfit for the ministrations of his parish. Such were the arguments now used in his favour by the women around him; and the men were not keen to contradict them. The wish that he should be acquitted and allowed to remain in his parsonage ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the few scrawling lines of which the paper boasted with a keen, comprehensive glance. As its import dawned upon her, her brown eyes grew round with amazement. She re-read it twice. "Where did you receive it?" came her sharp question, as she continued to hold it ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... the thudding of the door came gradually to an end, and, at last, I got hold of my courage, and went along the corridor in the half light to cap the lens of my camera. I can tell you, it took some doing; but if I had not done so my photograph would have been spoilt, and I was tremendously keen to save it. I got back to my room, and then set-to and rubbed out the five-pointed star in which I ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... "Are you fearfully keen on Shakespeare? Jean's something awful. It gives me a sort of hate at him ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... he cried. "They're keen on the prize too. Some think they'll grab the lot and have the devil's own drunk when the year's up. But I'll look after that. Besides, when a chap has been living in the pride of cleanliness for a year he'll get into the way of it and be less likely to make a beast of himself. Anyway, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... allegories, the meaning of which will be clear to everybody; he will even go so far as to come and ask why he has not been arrested as yet—hah! hah! And such a line of conduct may occur to a person of keen intellect, yes, even to a man of psychologic mind! Nature, my friend, is the most transparent of mirrors. To contemplate her is sufficient. But why do you grow pale, Rodion Romanovitch? Perhaps you are too hot; shall ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the literature of the world that has suffered more at the hands of men than the book of Jonah. It has been tortured by its enemies and wounded in the house of its friends. We have been so prone to give our attention to the non-essential in the book rather than the essential. We have had such keen eyes for the seemingly ridiculous and the bizarre. For this reason it has come to pass that you can hardly mention the name of Jonah to a modern audience without provoking a smile. Thus Jonah, coming to us as an evangelist, is mistaken by many for ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... connected with the actual outburst. One was an English general, the other an Arab priest; yet, in spite of the great gulf and vivid contrast between their conditions, they resembled each other in many respects. Both were earnest and enthusiastic men of keen sympathies and passionate emotions. Both were powerfully swayed by religious fervour. Both exerted great personal influence on all who came in contact with them. Both were reformers. The Arab was an African ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... slumbering sense. At length he opened his eyes, only to shut them again, because of a bright gleam of light that ran up and down something at his side. Heavily he wondered what this might be, that shone so keen and bright—that shone like a ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... the group, Charley dismounted, and petting and soothing his trembling horse, ran his keen eyes over the animal's legs and flanks. From the little pony's left foreleg trickled ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... with this seemed also to float the peace and great silence of the plains. The little melodeon in the corner, played by one of the ladies at the post, had finished accompanying the hymn, and now it prolonged a few closing chords while the bishop paused before his address, resting his keen eyes on the people. He was dressed in a plain suit of black with a narrow black tie. This was because the Union Pacific Railroad, while it had delivered him correctly at Green River, had ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... security by appearing to give his whole attention to the magnificent sight in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie's eyes turned to her father with the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he answered her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that passed ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... rites; thy daughter— For e'en amid the cloistered shade was noised The funeral pomp, urged me, with ceaseless prayers, To lead her to the festival of Death. In evil hour I gave consent; and, shrouded In sable weeds of mourning, she surveyed Her father's obsequies. With keen reproach My bosom tells (for through the veil her charms Resistless shone), 'twas there, perchance, the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "Well"—his keen, grey eyes swept her face—"there'll be no further postponement. I shall marry you if the whole of your family chooses to die at the same moment. Even if you yourself were dying you should be ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... indifferent to him than to others in Denboro, that was all. And I had taken it for granted that his liking for me was of the same casual, lukewarm variety. To hear him declare himself in this way was astonishing—he, the dry, keen, ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... dismal, very dark, very cold. The Executioner of the Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her head to look down also, flung those who were past all further torturing, down here. 'But look! does Monsieur see the black stains on the wall?' A glance, over his shoulder, at Goblin's keen eye, shows Monsieur—and would without the aid of the directing key—where they are. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... by right." Said Hildebrand, "Now, worst Of Ostrogoths be he who holds me back! My heart is for the fray. Judge comrades who look on, which of us wins The fame, best throws the dart, and earns the spoil." The ashen spears then sped, stuck in the shields With their keen points, and down on the white shields The heavy axes rang with sounding blows, Shattering their rims, the flesh behind ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... because I understood Romany, and sympathized with gypsy ways, and regarded them not as the Gaji or Gentiles do, but as brothers and sisters. I confess that I was indeed moved by the simple kindness with which I was treated, and I knew that, with the wonderfully keen perception of character in which gypsies excel, they perfectly understood my liking for them. It is this ready intuition of feelings which, when it is raised from an instinct to an art by practice, enables shrewd old women to tell fortunes with so ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... By Saturday the keen edge of the disappointment had somewhat worn off, though Elsie had hardly recovered her accustomed spirits, and still grieved for the pony which she had quite made up her mind was to have been a black one, with white socks, and a white star on its forehead. Perhaps the ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... just Death's property, Big Bear," she said, with a wistful little smile. "But he doesn't seem over-keen on having me." ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... picks him up at Gillane Sands to-morrow, Wednesday. He was keen to say good-bye to ye, but, the way that things were going, I was feared the pair of ye was maybe best apart. And that brings me to the essential: how does ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... de' Martelli—whom he married secretly and took away to his favourite Villa del Castello—lived in strict retreat, rarely came into Florence, and kept no sort of state. At the same time two sons of his were sources of keen anxiety. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... made by a sweep's brushes up a chimney. David turned idly towards the open window. The top of it was but faintly illuminated by the light of the conservatory gleaming dully on the transparency over the glass. But David's eyes were keen, and he could see distinctly a man's thumb crooked downwards over the frame of the ash. Somebody had swarmed up the telephone holdfasts and was getting in through the window. Steel slipped well into the shadow, but not before an idea had come to him. He ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... impatient rejection of established forms as worse than useless. Born in the stronghold of squirearchical prejudices, nursed amid the trivial platitudes that then passed in England for philosophy, his keen spirit flew to the opposite pole of thought with a recoil that carried him at first to inconsiderate negation. His passionate love of liberty, his loathing for intolerance, his impatience of control for self and others, and his vivid logical sincerity, combined to make ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... that her mind was expanding, was beginning to understand the psychic meaning of things; and these little scattered gleams in the landscape gave her, all at once, a keen sense of the isolation of all human lives, a feeling that everything detaches, separates, draws one far away from the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... waited and allowed it to settle until the hooks were flat on the bottom on the farther side of the pool. He looked down on the water and saw the silvery mass divided in two sections, as though the line had cut it. The keen eyes of the fish, heedless as they usually are in the spring run, had now grown more suspicious, and they settled apart as the line came across them, visible against the sky as they ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... about two points on our weather bow. The question now arose in my mind whether she would endeavour to dodge us during the night? She would find it exceedingly difficult to do so, for there was now a good moon in the sky, affording sufficient light to enable a man with keen eyes to keep a craft at her distance from us in sight without very much trouble; but, on the other hand, there was a very heavy mass of cloud banking up to windward and fast overspreading the sky. This would obscure the moon later, and perhaps for a time cut off enough ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... flesh; and saws appeared to grin at me, which to look upon, knowing their horrid office, actually turned my teeth on edge. There were the three assistant-surgeons, stripped to their shirts, with their sleeves tucked up ready, looking anxious, keen, and something terrified. As to the burly doctor, with his huge, round, red face, and his coarse jokes, he abstracted something from the romantic terrors of the place; but added considerably to the disgust it excited, as he strongly reminded me of a ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... gives smiles, thy comic sleep. With whate'er gall thou sett'st thyself to write, Thy inoffensive satires never bite. 200 In thy felonious heart though venom lies, It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies. Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame In keen Iambics, but mild Anagram. Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command, Some peaceful province in Acrostic land. There thou mayst wings display and altars[159] raise, And torture one poor word ten ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Sir, form a pretty near guess of what sort of a wight he is whom for some time you have honoured with your correspondence. That whim and fancy, keen sensibility and riotous passions, may still make him zigzag in his future path of life is very probable; but come what will, I shall answer for him the most determinate integrity and honour. And though his evil star should ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... letter to Lord Danesbury admitted of a certain disappointment as regarded Speridionides, it made ample compensation by the keen sketch it conveyed of how matters stood at the Porte, the uncertain fate of Kulbash Pasha's policy, and the scarcely credible ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... that she had taken it while waiting for the photographer to be ready. The daisy-wreathed hat hung from her hand, and she had not known when the picture was taken. It was remarkably lifelike, and the broker regarded it with a satisfaction none the less keen because he let the others do ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... into any suggestion; he suppressed himself and his own tastes completely and utterly; and he found too, to his vast delight, that he could be entertaining and amusing. The books he had read, the fiction with which he had crammed himself, his keen eye for idiosyncrasies and absurdities, all came to his assistance, and he was amply repaid by a smile ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bodily to revisit the United States to-day, how his keen gray eyes would open in amazement, to find that many legitimate fruits of our Union victories had been filched from us; that —save the honorable few, who, accepting the legitimate results of the War, were still honestly striving for the success of principles harmonizing ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... cry Deepened,—the stunning babel shrieked and roared As though some mighty revolution swept The flying hosts along—some pang too keen For the immortal and transcendent pains Of Hell to quench, was ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... delighted Mercer. He was exultant. With the quick reaction of his kind he gloated over the fact before Kent. He let it be known that he was no longer afraid, and from the moment Mooie was out of danger his attitude was such that more than once Kent would have taken keen pleasure in kicking him from the room. Also, from the hour he was safely in charge of Doctor Cardigan's place, Mercer began to swell with importance. Kent saw the new danger and began to humor him. He flattered him. He assured him that it was a burning shame Cardigan had ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... affectation of unpremeditation, evidently had in mind these listeners at the door. To their shadowy presence was, for him, added consciousness of keen eyes watching him from all quarters of the House; some of his friends waiting for sign of readiness to quit Egypt; the Opposition ready to catch at any token of tendency to scuttle. Occasional passages he delivered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... sat with her two hours tte—tte, for her brother was unwell, and she is admirable in close dialogue. I had hardly got home ere she followed me, and stayed till it was time to dress for dinner; when again we met, and only parted for our downy pillows. Her strong sense, keen observation, and travelled intelligence and anecdotes, made the day, thus devoted to her, from ten in the morning to ten at night, pass off with great spirit and liveliness: but Alex, oh! he was in Elysium. Mr. Bowdler took a great fancy to him, and indulged ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... right." Her whole body shook with terror. The sentinel, then, had seen her the entire time. She remembered having heard how keen were the senses of these ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... herself handsome, and cannot have a good opinion of the man who prefers any charms to her own.—I imagine this to be the cause why she looks on me with such disdain, and, whenever you are not witness of her words, is so keen in satyrical reflections.—On our first acquaintance she looked and spoke with greater softness, and I can impute it to no other motive than the pride of beauty, that this ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... and early in the evening he proceeded to a plain little house where the lady, Mrs. Amalie Speir, resided. He found Mrs. Speir awaiting his presence. He was led into a neatly furnished room, and taking a seat spoke about some everyday matter, but his keen, restless eyes were wandering about that room. He was a man of marvelous quick perceptions, and he discerned that no matter what had been the early surroundings of the woman who lived in those rooms, her natural tastes were ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... for reasoning on matters of fact and existence—these are golden rules of philosophical research, principles in which lies the secret of all real progress in any of the higher departments of science. By Hume they were adopted con amore, and with keen appreciation, not more of their practical utility, than of the sport which he perceived them to be capable of yielding. His serious purpose was to unmask the numberless pretences which in politics, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... gorgeous—Sgriol, na Ciche, and the Cuchulins under snow. I've heard (Angus McGeochan, one of our crofters, told me) he was an inventor, and had made a few odd millions out of a machine for sticking labels on canned meat. That and the fact that he is a very keen amateur photographer is the complete history of Mr. Hilderman so far as I know it. Anyway, he has a gorgeous view, hasn't he? It's nearly as ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... Per, who was three or four years older than herself, and who lived in the cottage nearest to the lighthouse. Per was tall and strongly built, with a crop of stiff, sandy hair, and a big hand as hard as horn from constant rowing; his eyes were small and keen, as is often seen among those who from their childhood are in the habit of peering out to sea through ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... had been to Norway, came to Davos about 1893 bringing with them knowledge of the sport and soon gathered round them a keen lot of disciples. The Davos English Ski Club was formed and from now on ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... said Savile thoughtfully. "He's rather a bore, but he's a good sort. Of course, Sylvia ought to marry him. All the pretty girls are marrying these Anglo-Aliens. He's very keen. But about my affairs—I say, Everett, do take ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... mine! I am not trying to marry any girl that isn't just as keen for me as I am for her. Why, I've seen her only twice. Let me talk it over with her, and if she says yes, then you can look me up in Bradstreet and we'll all know ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... the other hand, those whose opinions approached more or less to his, expatiated on the splendour and majesty of his diction. Archbishop Whately went out of his way in a note to his Logic to make a keen thrust at an author whom it was well to depreciate whenever occasion served. "His way of writing," he says, "reminds one of those persons who never dare look you full in the face." Such criticisms are out of date now. The ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... pleasantly modulated, and he spoke English with the faintest slur—perceptible, perhaps, only to the keenest ear—of a French accent. To ears less keen it would merely seem that he articulated with a precision so singular as to ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... shelters of friendship knew my cunning For where I could steal a friend I did so. And wherever I could enlarge my power By undermining ambition, I did so, Thus to make smooth my own. And to triumph over other souls, Just to assert and prove my superior strength, Was with me a delight, The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics. Devouring souls, I should have lived forever. But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis, With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits, Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed. I collapsed at last with a shriek. ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... the greater part of Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland,—almost half of Europe. But Charlemagne was more than a successful warrior, a conqueror of nations. He was a man of powerful intellect, whose keen insight, sound judgment, and iron will enabled him to rule wisely and well the various races of his vast empire. Charlemagne was an earnest student and a man of extensive learning for those days, familiar with Latin and Greek, proficient in logic, rhetoric, music, astronomy, and theology. ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... great mass of steel swung to the unknown. For an hour the unknown guided her. Then fell blackness, sudden, complete. After that radiance the dazzled eye could make out no stars, but the look-out's keen ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... He learnt the struggle of a business life, the duel between man and man, through which thousands pass without gaining anything except business acuteness, but which introduced the great psychologist to hundreds of new types, and showed to his keen, observant eyes man, not in society or domesticity, but in undress, fighting for life itself, or for all that makes life worth living. In the Rue de Lesdiguieres he had struggled with himself, striving in cold and hunger to gain ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... whatever happened, the seat would be yours. This case only gives us the right to go to the poll. We are keen upon Annys because she's our best card, ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... always been addressed with marked deference by the great orators who thundered against each other from his right and from his left. It was not strange that, when, for the first time, he had to encounter keen and vigorous antagonists, who dealt hard blows without the smallest ceremony, he should have been awkward and unready, or that the air of dignity and authority which he had acquired in his former post, and of which he had not divested himself, should have made his helplessness laughable ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... well as flies. The clothes moth loves to lay its eggs in wool. It is very keen in searching out bits of wool and finding a place for its baby to thrive. Unless you have a care it will lay its eggs in your best winter dress which you forgot and left hanging in the hot ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts |
