"Thoroughness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when they had to deal with lady Feng. But after the expiry of three or four days several concerns passed through her hands, which gave them an opportunity to gradually find out that T'an Ch'un did not, in smartness and thoroughness, yield to lady Feng, and that the only difference between them was that she was soft in speech and gentle in disposition. By a remarkable coincidence, princes, dukes, marquises, earls, and hereditary officials arrived ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... home was built in 1864 and from all appearances should last the century out. He said the lumber was carefully selected, the boards being heavier than usual, and all the important timbers, instead of being nailed, were morticed and dove-tailed. This thoroughness of workmanship accounts for the excellent condition of the wooden buildings in these towns, many of which were constructed over fifty ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... than a year has elapsed since I left off the use of tobacco. This further time has more fully developed the thoroughness of the case spoken of and the completeness of the victory over an evil habit. I am filled with wonder, for I expected a terrible fight with an appetite, strengthened by an indulgence of about thirty-five years, but the enemy has not shown his head. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... news of a successful revolution in Russia astonished the world. From March 9 to March 15, it appeared, the Russian people, headed by Michael Rodzianko, President of the Duma, set about cleaning house with quiet but characteristic thoroughness. Beginning with minor food riots and labor strikes, the cry for food reached the hearts of the soldiers, and one by one, regiments rebelled until finally those troops which had for a time stood loyal to the government of the Czar and his bureaucratic advisers ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... of it. It would have been disgraceful, wouldn't it, to refuse a lady's. request. You don't know how near I was to giving way. I can tell you, now that it's all over. I had never seen a lady of our profession before," he added hastily, "and my curiosity was up. I always had my doubts about the thoroughness of women's study, and I should have liked to see where your training failed. I must say I found it very good,—I've told you that. You wouldn't fail individually: you would fail because you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... senseless extravagance and innate folly, the story of the bridging of the Baiaean Gulf, of this harnessing of old Ocean, affects us moderns with astonishment at the extraordinary thoroughness of all the ancient Roman feats of engineering; had this high road across the Bay been intended to serve any useful purpose, instead of merely to satisfy the passing whim of a selfish tyrant, we could have had no choice but to admire the marvellous speed of the artificers and ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... that was terrible, and she remembered suddenly that the spare bedroom was the very hottest room in the house. It was over the kitchen, and caught every possible gleam of sunshine from morning till evening. Also she knew Betty's thoroughness only too well, and her mind's eye saw poor little Tony buried deep and tucked in completely, head ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the proper and requisite anxiety. It is always the married woman who enjoys the mask with thoroughness. She knows her husband will be watching her; and jealousy is ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... of the Azure Society had been a seminary and schoolmistress's house. The thoroughness with which the buildings had been transformed showed that money was not among the things which the Society had to search for. It had rich resources, and it had also high social standing; and the deferential commissionaires ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... The evident ease, yet thoroughness, with which Mr. Howard prepared for his many tasks, is seen in his extended reading among Civil War records, before writing "Shenandoah." The same "knowledge" sense must have been a constant incentive to Professor Matthews, in the ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... possible successor. Edward Blake had for many years been the choice of a large section of the party in Ontario, and he now became leader by unanimous vote. The new chief was a man of great intellectual capacity, of constructive {55} vision, of untiring thoroughness and industry. He stood easily at the head of the bar in Canada. His short term of office as prime minister of Ontario had given proof of political sagacity and administrative power. He, if any one, it seemed, could retrieve the shattered fortunes ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... broken sailor men attacked the ample venison pasty with a zeal and thoroughness that betokened long abstention from work of a similar nature, and the sack trickled gratefully down parched throats. Morgan and Jeffreys drank to their better fortune, but would not touch the food, pleading ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... very last thing that has been thought of in religion. Religion is being converted before our eyes. It is becoming touched with the temper of science, with the thoroughness, the doggedness, the inconsolableness of science until it is seeing how and ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... want of room, much has to be taken for granted which might readily enough be proved; and hence, while the adept, who can supply the missing links in the evidence from his own knowledge, discovers fresh proof of the singular thoroughness with which all difficulties have been considered and all unjustifiable suppositions avoided, at every reperusal of Mr. Darwin's pregnant paragraphs, the novice in biology is apt to complain of the frequency of what he ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... creed, philosophical, religious, and political, which was to dominate English thought for the next century. Locke was one of the most honourable, candid, and amiable of men, if metaphysicians have sometimes wondered at the success of his teaching. He had not the logical thoroughness and consistency which marks a Descartes or Spinoza, nor the singular subtlety which distinguishes Berkeley and Hume; nor the eloquence and imaginative power which gave to Bacon an authority greater than was due to his scientific requirements. He was ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... and legless men have worked in the munition factories of both France and of England, and the fact that they are able to do so is due to the genius of surgeons and of scientists. Thoroughness and preparation, coolness in execution and scientific accuracy in all directions is the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... one man I am bitter against is Clavering. Now, it may sound presumptuous, and not come very well from me, but I believe that Clavering, for his own purposes, forced your hand, and I had a certain respect for you, if only because of your thoroughness. You see, one can't help realizing that you can look at every question ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... in several unrelated subjects, and achieved preeminence in one, natural history. He had the all-round quality which shows more promise than does a propensity to light on a particular topic and suck it dry; but he had also power of concentration and thoroughness. As I have just said, he was a happy combination of the amateurish and intense. His habit of absorption became a by-word; for if he visited a, classmate's room and saw a book which interested him, instead ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... to the door, punctual as the clock. I didn't expect it of him." He did not add, as he might have added, that how he came to be in that neighbourhood was not by accident; that, since Wildeve's resumption of his right to Thomasin, Venn, with the thoroughness which was part of his character, had determined to see the end of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Fourteenth of Saxe-Drachsen-Wachtelstein, who had stood thirtieth in the order of succession, found himself one day ruler of the British dominions within and beyond the seas. He was one of the unexpected things that happen in politics, and he happened with great thoroughness. In many ways he was the most progressive monarch who had sat on an important throne; before people knew where they were, they were somewhere else. Even his Ministers, progressive though they were by tradition, found it difficult to keep pace ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... parlour was a great change for the better, however, and one of the first uses he made of it was to investigate his father's little library with a thoroughness that until then had been out of the question. It was a queer collection, embracing every form of literature from philosophy to fiction. This catholicity did not mirror the father's taste but resulted ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... chapter of this book I have already paid a tribute to the Second Army, and especially to Sir John Harington, its chief of staff. There was a thoroughness of method, a minute attention to detail, a care for the comfort and spirit of the men throughout the Second Army staff which did at least inspire the troops with the belief that whatever they did in the fighting-lines ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... schoolmaster was endeared to his boys; a kindly, simple-minded, worthy man, teaching, as well as scholastic subjects, behaviour, morals, truth, loyalty; and these as much by example as by precept, impressing ever upon us the virtue of thoroughness in all we did and of truth in all we said. Since those days I have seen many youths, educated at much finer and more pretentious schools, who have benefited by modern educational methods, and on whose education much money has been expended, ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... mistaking her sincerity—it breathed in every tone of her voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring. But the former under-stood in dismay that Anne was actually enjoying her valley of humiliation—was reveling in the thoroughness of her abasement. Where was the wholesome punishment upon which she, Marilla, had plumed herself? Anne had turned it into ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... than he. For though morally sure of his guilt, no one could prove that he had cut the strap, and so he got off unpunished, except that Pink thrashed him—a bit unscientifically, it is true, since he resorted to throwing rocks toward the last, but with a thoroughness ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... Seminary requires but half an hour each day for each of the two hundred and ninety-seven pupils. Much time is spent wisely in the gymnasium, and in boating on the lake near by. Habits of punctuality, thoroughness, and order are the outcome of life in this institution. An endowment of twenty thousand dollars, called "the Mary Lyon Fund," is now being raised by former students for the Chair of the Principal. Schools like the Lake Erie ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... as a whole the Sistrum is an elegant piece of workmanship. The thoroughness of the details of execution is worthy of the Japanese, even the inaccessible and almost hidden portion of the smaller bell being enchased ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... in the moustache—let the sunbeams play over his hair and, turning and bending his head, saw that it was growing thinner and, from the brow to the crown, showed the smooth scalp shining through. The investigation lasted a long while, he performed it with cruel thoroughness, locking himself into his room meanwhile, since he would not allow even his valet to be a witness of the painful discoveries of which he believed that he ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... impossible not to admire the thoroughness with which Sherman had considered all possible or even imaginary difficulties in his way, nor to suppress a smile at the supreme confidence with which he set out, with sixty thousand of the best soldiers in the world, upon a march ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... PROCESSES.—In applying the various mixing processes, it is well to bear in mind that good results depend considerably on the order of mixing, as well as on the deftness and thoroughness with which each process is performed. This fact is clearly demonstrated in a cake in which the butter and sugar have not been actually creamed, for such a cake will not have the same texture as one in which the creaming has been done properly. It is also shown in angel food or sunshine ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... with the trick of a "perfect lady" manner (severely conventional) and the soul of a remorseless brigand. When a woman takes to any sort of unlawful man-trade, there's nothing to beat her in the way of thoroughness. It's true that you will find people who'll tell you that this terrific virulence in breaking through all established things, is altogether the fault of men. Such people will ask you with a clever air ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... stands Escot, long famous for its warm springs. The principal patrons of this modest watering-place are the peasants. It is their Carlsbad, their Homburg, many taking a season as regularly as the late King Edward. The thing is done with thoroughness, but at a minimum of cost. They pay half a franc daily for a room, and another half-franc for the waters, cooking their meals in the general kitchen of the establishment. Where the French peasant believes, his faith is phenomenal. Some of these valetudinarians drink as many as forty-six ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... is a piece of good-fortune which I cannot too highly appreciate, that your studies should have been directed to the most difficult portion of Spanish history, from which you have thus removed for me all the thorns. The conscientiousness and the thoroughness of your researches, the perfect trustworthiness of your conclusions, and the lofty calmness of your judgments, are the precious supports on which I lean; and I have now, for the reign of Philip the Second, a guide whom I shall be ever proud and happy to follow, as I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... approved. Fortunately, there is no part of his policy where his conduct is more simple and his motives are more plain. The Irish policy of Cromwell was the traditional policy of all Englishmen of his creed and party, and was distinguished from theirs only by his personal vigor and thoroughness. He was neither better nor worse than the English Puritans, or rather all English statesmen for many generations: he was only keener and stronger. When he, with Vane, Fairfax, Whitelocke, and other commissioners, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... established for the youth of a race for which high standards and lofty ideals had to be set. She was a woman with a strong, forceful personality, and showed tremendous power for good in establishing high intellectual standards in the public schools. Thoroughness was one of Miss Patterson's most striking characteristics as a teacher. She was a quick, alert, vivacious and indefatigable worker. During Miss Patterson's administration, which lasted altogether twelve years, three important events occurred: the name "Preparatory High School" was dropped; ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... should ever be taken unprepared; and in all these dispositions, you may be sure the despatch-box was not forgotten. Who was to pick it up, who was to set it down, who was to remain beside it, who was to sleep with it—there was no contingency omitted, all was gone into with the thoroughness of a drill-sergeant on the one hand and a child with a new ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strange vagaries, so that its origin is often lost sight of, but which, if it should lose this, would find itself paralyzed; and in trade, and in the mechanic's shop, gives that honesty in performance, that thoroughness and solidity of work, which is a national characteristic. This conscience is one element, and the other is that loyal adhesion, that habit of friendship, that homage of man to man, running through all classes,—the electing of worthy persons to a certain fraternity, to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... to have an antiquarian's thoroughness in his subject, and he has made it an interesting one to Western readers. But he has not succeeded in his translations, partly because he does not respect the usage and associations of the English words he rivets incompatibly together, and partly because success, even for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... the motives governing such a course—sentiment, mutual devotion, and the desire to be humored—are inconsistent with the best kind of nursing. If the nurse knows the patient intimately, undue anxiety may interfere with her judgment; thoroughness in routine duties may be hindered by mistaken consideration for the patient; and in an emergency sympathy rather than reason may guide her. A successful nurse must satisfy at least two requirements; she must be capable professionally ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... dragging his bundle of sharp halberds, poked an inquisitive head out past the captain's, and peered on all sides through the smoke, with comical thoroughness. He dodged back, grinning ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... the end of three weeks or so, his parents—he was a poor hand at dissimulation—discovered what was happening, and interfered with promptness and resolution. He had not learnt the art of disobedience, and while he considered how to begin (having, indeed, taken his passion with a thoroughness that did him credit), Miss Margaret, sorely weeping, was packed off on a visit to her mother's relations near Exeter, where, three months later, she married a young farmer-cousin ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The thoroughness of her own "private religious duties" is shown by the fact that in the year 1700 she made a resolution to spend one hour morning and evening in private devotion. This practice she kept up through life as far ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... when Thyrsis with his remorseless thoroughness would insist on getting out and inspecting some dilapidated and forlorn-looking place—then what agonies would come! Corydon would pass through the rooms, suffering all the horrors which she might have suffered in years of occupancy of them. And there was no use pleading ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... be which, from the beginning excludes the mother tongue of the pupil when he knows no other? it is necessarily confined to dumb show and practice. It is no more to be compared for thoroughness to the Grammatical Method than would be instruction in weaving by a weaver, with the instruction of Master of the Technical School in constructing a piece. Doubtless a person can learn to weave a piece in a Factory ...
— The Aural System • Anonymous
... deliberately to let it manifest in action and to 'create' a new one all you have got to do is to equally deliberately 'express' it in action and thus clinch it into permanent strength. Also you must aim at 'thoroughness' and guard against all compromise with your lower nature. Chastity must be perfect chastity and nothing short of that, and so on in ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... This rapidity of growth has entailed some important consequences. In the first place it obliges the city to make great outlays of money in order to get immediate results. Public works must be undertaken with a view to quickness rather than thoroughness. Pavements, sewers, and reservoirs of some sort must be had at once, even if inadequately planned and imperfectly constructed; and so, before a great while, the work must be done over again. Such conditions of ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... the tune with its words. Sir Felix mounted the platform; and after sipping a little water (such was our thoroughness that a glassful stood ready for each speaker), began to introduce the lecturer, whose name he mispronounced. The missionary was called Stubbs; and by what mnemonic process Sir Felix converted this into Westmacott I have never been able to guess. However, for purposes of introduction that afternoon ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... which in all probability the Methodist Church would cheerfully pay was to be augmented by Poussette's own gift. Not content with presenting his favourite denomination with a building out of debt and ready for use, he proposed also to equip it with a pastor after his own heart, for he combined thoroughness with an impulsive nature in a manner peculiar to himself. This Poussette was indeed a character, an original. Very fat and with every indication of becoming fatter still, fond of tweed suits and ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... a genius whose only mistake is to live and act with modesty, so that as yet people only say that he has "immense talent." No painter or engraver of repute—and he is both—has served a more conscientious apprenticeship, or sets greater store on thoroughness in his art. His drawing is correct beyond reproach—a little stiff, like the early painters. You can guess from his works his partiality for the old masters—Perugino, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Memling, Holbein—who, though not the masters in ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... much-ados-about-nothing. But these "ados" are most cunningly made (her last book, The Italian, is, perhaps, the best place to look for them, if the reader is not taking up the whole subject with a virtuous thoroughness), and Mrs. Radcliffe's great praise is that she induced her original readers to suspend their critical faculties sufficiently to enable them to take it all seriously. Scott, who undoubtedly owed her something, assigned her positive genius: and modern critics, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... to deliver ordinary lectures, and at Vienna the doctors are forbidden to read anything but the Decretals in the morning at ordinary lectures. The instructions given to the Vienna doctors of (p. 142) law illustrate the thoroughness of the medieval lecture in all faculties. They are first to state the case carefully, then to read the text, then to restate the case, then to remark on "notabilia," and then to discuss questions arising out of the subject, and finally, ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... drew up for him a set of instructions as to how he should proceed. These were very explicit as to the good treatment the Indians were to receive at his hands, and required him to make certain scientific observations with due care and thoroughness. He was to leave letters at stated intervals, and also send back to the viceroy reports of his progress, wherever possible. Coronado escorted him as far as the new town of Culiacan, and on March 7, 1539, accompanied by a lay brother, Onorato, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... satisfactory features of Chappell's work is the thoroughness with which he traces the origin of tunes, and his acute discrimination and candid judgment. As an instance of this may be mentioned his article on "God save the Queen"; and wherever we turn, we find the same evidence of honest investigation. So far as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... overjoyed that he has Prussian militarism for the victim of his murderous designs. To this end he has become a soldier, such a bloodthirsty soldier as never was before and never will be again. The thoroughness of it, for an anti-militarist, is almost appalling. The click of his heels and the shine of his buttons frighten me. His salute is such that even the most deserving General must pause and ask himself if it is humanly possible ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... his small sister with thoroughness and despatch, pointing out ... that he "went into all ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... been sustained by the Supreme Court as constitutional and applied with varying degrees of thoroughness. The Court has made exceptions to the application of the prohibition against the stay of proceedings in State courts,[71] but has on the whole adhered to the statute. The exceptions raise no constitutional issues, and the later tendency is to contract ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... suicide, that inferences with regard to individual cases could be drawn only when the material had been studied carefully and examined on all sides. But our criminological statistic is rarely examined with such thoroughness; the tenor of such examination is far too bureaucratic and determined by the statutes and the process of law. The criminalist gives the statistician the figures but the latter can derive no significant principles from them. Consider for once any official report on ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... me to do, and I wish he could have known how I value it. He was the best of men, the kindest and noblest; and he was a wonderful scholar. He had the habit of thoroughness." ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... fury the just and the unjust; how you only need to be a little foolish, quite a little foolish, under conditions that seem to force it upon you, and down they come, sure and relentless, and you are smitten with a thoroughness that leaves you lame for years; how motives are nothing, circumstances are nothing; how the motives may have been aflame with goodness, the circumstances such that any other course was impossible; how ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... The large proportion of unskilled workers whose wage does not exceed one hundred dollars a year, include cash girls and the least intelligent class. It is this class that suffer most from the fine system, since punctuality and thoroughness are the result of educated intelligence. The largest number earn from two to two hundred and fifty dollars, and, as has been said, lose an average of thirty days in the year. The highest average wage, $6.91, is little more than subsistence, and the lowest, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... after reaching the fulness of his powers in his old age, and after he had turned from operas to lyric dramas, is in the highest degree significant of the thoroughness of the revolution accomplished by Wagner. The production of "Otello" and "Falstaff" created as great an excitement in Italy as the first performance of "Parsifal" did in Germany; and it must have seemed like the irony of fate to many that Wagner should have to be ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... had to deal with the subject, have found this report a solid and magnificent monument of research and reflection, which has not even yet been superseded by later treatises. Mr. Adams was honest in labor as in everything, and was never careless at points where inaccuracy or lack of thoroughness might be expected to escape detection. (p. 127) Hence his success in a task upon which it is difficult to imagine other statesmen of that day—Clay, Webster, or Calhoun, for example—so much as making an effort. The topic is not one concerning which readers would tolerate much lingering. Suffice ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... rather extravagant and something of a dandy, he was able to say that he could account for every sixpence he spent after the age of twenty-one. On leaving Oxford he settled down to the life of a country parson with conscientious thoroughness, and was reputed the best magistrate in the South Hams. Farming his own glebe, as he did, with skill and knowledge, perpetually occupied, as he was, with clerical or secular business, he found the Church of England, not then disturbed by ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... battalions, amongst the newest troops, which will go down to history with some of the very best Australia possesses—then I am a German. They have had a wonderful training of late—a training which can only be compared in thoroughness with that of Mena Camp in Egypt where our first troops trained, and with the full experience of this war to back it. The British authorities are equipping the new Australian drafts generously. The discipline of Australians, once they come to understand their work, has ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... while Henry slept amid the herd, the pursuit of him was conducted with the energy, thoroughness and tenacity of which the Indians were capable. The spirit of the great Shawnee chief, Red Eagle, had been stung by his failure to overtake the fugitive, whom he knew to be the youth Ware, their greatest foe, and he was resolved that ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... detail was no longer an obstacle to her ambition, which nerved her onward to the higher slopes of professional occupation, for she now had reliable subordinates trained according to the MacDonald system of thoroughness to complete for her the irksome tasks. Mixed up as the business was in corporation matters, it had much to look after that had fallen to it through legal processes, but which, of itself was pure business management and far away from the law. There ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... their own hands regarding horse-thieves; the third was, while a terrible man on the chase or in a fight, so good-natured and lazy at other times, that the county came to be overrun with rascals. But Charley Mansell fulfilled every duty of his office with promptness and thoroughness. He was not very well known, to be sure, but neither was any one else among the four or five thousand inhabitants of the new county. He had arrived about a year before election-day, and established ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... trustworthy stenographer: more than six months of these little confessions are tabulated here. Warren was evidently so used to this code that he could write in it as easily as I do with the straight alphabet. His training in German universities developed a thoroughness, a methodical recording of every thing, which is apt to cost him dearly. And his undoubted vanity prompted him to have a little volume of his own in that library to which he could turn occasionally for the retrospection ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... failings were forgetfulness and a want of thoroughness in investigation. What misery have I not suffered from insufficient presentation of a case to myself, and from prompt conviction of insufficiency and inaccuracy by the person to whom I in turn presented it! What misery have I not ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... for the moment from the study of more recent turpitude, is preparing an analytical memoir on the first murder, that of ABEL by CAIN. With all his well-known thoroughness he reconstructs the crime and shows in what particulars CAIN, although an innovator, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... hero, and for many years was instant in doing his will. Had the older man taken serious thought of his son's personality and entered into the boy's developmental needs with his wonted intelligence and thoroughness, the two could have grown into a closeness which would have made the Scott name one to be reckoned with in the ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... wedding festivities was on a proportionate scale of thoroughness. They killed the four supernumerary chickens that had just begun to crow, and the little curly-tailed barrow pig, in preference to the sow; not having been put up fattening for more than five weeks it was excellent small meat, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... erudition; a thousand volumes were read for the notes of the first volume and Flaubert is said to have killed himself by the labor of his unfinished investigations. There is no important distinction to be made between the method or the thoroughness with which he collected his facts in the one case or the other; and the story of the war of the mercenaries against the Carthaginians is evolved with the same alternation of picture and dramatic spectacle and the same ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... of the bride's father. Here, after singing and prayer, that chapter of Paul's writings is read wherein, with great plainness of speech, he describes to the Ephesians and the Christian world in general the duties of husband and wife. On this chapter the elders comment "with great thoroughness" to the young people, and "for a long time," as I was told; and after this lecture, and more singing and prayer, there is a modest supper, whereupon all retire quietly to ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... up for what they lack in knowledge and thoroughness, they often resort to trick and fraud, and become not merely contemptible but criminal. Thomas is preparing himself to be one of this class. You can not, boys, expect to raise a good crop ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... set herself to her task with the energy and thoroughness that were characteristic of her. Struggling with complicated scales, Tommy bent her eyes closer and closer over the pages of Czerny's Exercises. Glancing up to turn a page, Tommy, to her surprise, met the eyes of a stranger. They were brown eyes, their expression sympathetic. Below ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... together, and kept going; because of his love for her here was Jerrold, growing into a perfect farmer and a perfect landlord; because of her he had found the one thing he was best fitted to do; because of him she herself was valuable. Anne brought to her work on the land a thoroughness that aimed continually at perfection. She watched the starting of every tractor-plough and driller as it broke fresh ground, to see that machines and men were working at their highest pitch of efficiency. ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... dwellings, often entire neighborhoods, and with a thoroughness which entirely disregarded the possibility of damaging an innocent person's property. These "domiciliary registrations" were, of course, supposed to be unexpected, but in the later Spanish days the intended victims usually had warning from some employee in the office ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... into the firm I had occasion frequently to examine the letter-press copybook in which Lanier's 'abstracts' or reports upon title had been copied. Not only were the books themselves models of neatness, but all his work in the examination of titles showed the utmost thoroughness, patience, and fidelity. The law of Georgia in regard to the registration of titles was by no means perfect at that time; so imperfect, indeed, that I have known prominent lawyers to refuse to engage in the work on account of the risk of error involved. I remained a member ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... communication first. To effect this a sea-going marine of both war and commerce and, for further expansion, stations on the way were essential. The chart of the world furnishes evidence of the wisdom and the thoroughness of their procedure. Taught by the experience of the Spaniards and the Portuguese, when unimpeded by the political circumstances of the time, and provided with suitable equipment, the English displayed their energy in distant seas. It now became simply a question of the efficiency of sea-power. ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... Probably he has. When he takes up a case he goes into it with a greater thoroughness than any ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... a good deal.'" He inspected her with the freedom of an old friend and with the thoroughness of a connoisseur. Women who took pains with themselves and were satisfied with the results liked Stanley Baird's knowing and appreciative way of noting the best points in their toilets. "You're looking fine," declared ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... first rhymes to the walnut-tree, the fountain, and the sea, this mixture of north and south, this plebeian name with the exotic flavor, swiftly became the standing symbol of excellence; for with the painful thoroughness of his experience became associated a rare, tenacious, and ambitious industry, whose struggle with the finical sensitiveness of his taste produced, amid exquisite torments, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... besides, A most accomplished mocker!... My complaint Is quite beyond your counsel. Why, I tell you, I have examined, tried, experienced The passions and the aims of mortal life With the grave thoroughness and good intent That mark a doctor of philosophy Writing his thesis. And my careful search Of life has brought me one great verity: I do not like it! No, I do not like Anything in it: birth, death, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... to the lawyer's mind, confirmed his view that John Dampier, having vanished of his own free will, was living and well—though he hoped not happy—away from the great city which had been searched, or so the police assured the Englishman, with a thoroughness which had never been surpassed if indeed ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... feared that John Appleman, like many a worthier man, preferred the various conditions appertaining to the tented field and the field of battle to that narrower scene of conflict called the home. Before leaving, however, he crept into the cave and varnished those two barrels with exceeding thoroughness. ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... subsistence, so as to prevent the guerrillas from being harbored there in the future their destruction or capture being well-nigh impossible, on account of their intimate knowledge of the mountain region. Merritt carried out his instructions with his usual sagacity and thoroughness, sweeping widely over each side of his general line of march with flankers, who burned the grain and brought in large herds of cattle, hogs and sheep, which ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... my childhood and youth I had what I regard as the best possible opportunities for education, in excellent public schools where the rudiments of English were taught with great thoroughness, and in a fair amount of all kinds of manly sports, and in hard work, mainly on the farm and in building a new home, which left no time and little inclination for any kind of mischief. At sixteen years of age I spent three ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... there were hotels and summer cottages, of various degrees of elaboration, filled with agreeable and talkable folk, most of whom were connected by occupation or marriage with the rival colleges and universities, so that their ambitions for the simple life had an academic thoroughness and regularity. There were dinner parties, and tea parties, and garden parties, and sea parties, and luncheon parties, masculine and feminine, and a horse-show at Bar Harbor, and a gymkhana at North East, and dances at all the Harbors, where Minerva met Terpischore on a friendly footing ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... eulogistic as they are, are the compliments of men three-fourths duped as Partridge was duped by Garrick. By much of her acting they were so completely taken in that they did not recognize it as acting at all. Indeed, none of the six players quite escaped this consequence of their own thoroughness. There was a distinct tendency among the less experienced critics to complain of their sentiments and behavior. Naturally, the author does not share ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... antiquities. I found Pinkerton well up in the situation of these establishments as well as in the current prices, and with quite a smattering of critical judgment; it turned out he was investing capital in pictures and curiosities for the States, and the superficial thoroughness of the creature appeared in the fact, that although he would never be a connoisseur, he was already something of an expert. The things themselves left him as near as may be cold; but he had a joy of his own in understanding how to buy ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Schreiner, who came specially to plead the rights of the civilized men of colour, was in constant intercourse with Sir Charles, and scores of letters on detailed proposals for amendment attest the thoroughness of that co-operation. Dilke, with the support of some Labour men and Radicals, fought strenuously against the clauses which recognized a colour-bar, and in the opinion of some at least in South Africa, the essence of the position ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... valuable are the cases of ordinary life. The engineer on the locomotive; the pilot at the helm of the storm-tossed vessel; the mother in her daily routine of work; the merchant upholding laws of trade in honor; the schoolboy plodding through studies in a manly thoroughness; the reformer of slums letting her little candle of service shine in the dark;—all these and similar instances are full ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... a fine type of modern clergyman. He was broad-shouldered mentally as well as physically, and he brought to philanthropic work the thoroughness, care, enthusiasm and capacity that would have earned him a ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... go, but the simple act was marked by all the thoroughness with which he did everything relating ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... the many places that have been systematically destroyed by the Germans. It is difficult for anyone who has not seen the results with his own eyes to realise the business-like thoroughness which the Hun brings to this congenial task. That a part (and the most beautiful) of the town still stands does not imply that he yielded either to slackness or to aesthetic refinement. True that Miss CICELY HAMILTON relates a pleasing story that Senlis was saved from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... Boston Medical and Surgical Journal for May, 1905, under the title "Certain Aspects of the differential Diagnosis between Epilepsy and Hysteria." In this paper the authors say, "No one, so far as we are aware, has as yet studied with sufficient thoroughness the subconscious memories of epileptics, and for all we now can say, closer resemblances may be found between these and the subconscious states of the hysterics than we now ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... severest studies. In his Britannia, which gives a more complete and instructive picture of the country than any other work, they all took a lively interest. Their works are clumsy and old-fashioned, but they breathe a spirit of thoroughness and breadth which does honour to the age. With what zeal were ecclesiastical antiquities studied in Cambridge, after Whitaker had pointed the way! Men sought to weed out what was spurious, and ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... the Prussian Ministry of War issued a new set of regulations respecting the maintenance of prisoners of war. They show great thoroughness and forethought, but I am afraid the average Englishman would be as unready to believe that they showed genuine good intentions, as the average German would be to believe that favourable regulations issued by the English authorities were really ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... emaciated blond head between his bony fingers and pondered, probing for reason with German thoroughness—that celebrated thoroughness which is invariably riddled ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... musical-drill, gardening, children's games, neat business-like letters, keeping your own accounts, a power of small talk! All these are possible to each of you, and a resolute putting of salt into each day,—some discipline, some self-denial, some thoroughness,—will turn you out able by-and-by to do good work for ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... officer only is needed, you must choose a ruler who has both these qualities—when many, you must mingle some of each, for the temperate ruler is very careful and just and safe, but is wanting in thoroughness and go. ...
— Statesman • Plato
... cave sculptures affords an instance of the thoroughness which Sir James carried into all his investigations. While engaged in the preparation of his original paper for the Society of Antiquaries on the Sculpturing of Cups and Rings, he wished to ascertain all the localities and conditions of their occurrence. After describing ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... it to go, for it now covers the whole story. Henry James was the first writer of fiction, I judge, to use all the possibilities of the method with intention and thoroughness, and the full extent of the opportunity which is thus revealed is very great. The range of method is permanently enlarged; it is proved, once for all, that the craft of fiction has larger resources than might have been suspected before. A novelist in these days is ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... sketch of the institutions provided by the state it will be seen that what especially characterizes public instruction in Norway and Sweden is its undoubted thoroughness and depth, though a serious penalty is paid for this in the extreme length of the course. By the time it is completed, and the young man issues from the protracted ordeal, armed for the battle of life, several of the best years of his youth are passed; he is already between twenty-five and thirty ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... have merit. The work cannot be judged entirely by tallying its meager number of editions, its lack of thoroughness, or its artificial divisions. Its signal contribution rests upon the fact that it is a pioneering effort at permitting the figures to march, for the first time, in English. Here Sherry had an opportunity ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... gave no uncertain word of command, and, let who would yield or make truce, would fight the fight out (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the last drop of blood. Other sides of his character might take hold of and influence boys here and there; but it was this thoroughness and undaunted courage which, more than anything else, won his way to the hearts of the great mass of those on whom he left his mark, and made them believe first in him and then in ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... generator—which at short enough range would short-circuit anything—upon the apparatus in the kiosk. It was perfectly simple, if one knew how. He worked with a sort of tender thoroughness, shorting this item, shorting that, giving this frantic emergency call, stating that baseless lie. When he went out of the kiosk he walked briskly toward ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... an influence in sustaining the war for the Union, it is not likely they will fail to constitute a large element in controlling the political events of the immediate future. Their author is well known to entertain the soundest views in reference to the thoroughness of the measures necessary to restore harmony in the Union, without being of that extreme and impracticable school whose policy would render union uncertain or impossible; and if a ripe experience in public ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... practical man may put it on one side. All that he is asked to consider now is this: that the word "union" represents not so much a rare and unimaginable operation, as something which he is doing, in a vague, imperfect fashion, at every moment of his conscious life; and doing with intensity and thoroughness in all the more valid moments of that life. We know a thing only by uniting with it; by assimilating it; by an interpenetration of it and ourselves. It gives itself to us, just in so far as we give ourselves to it; and it is because ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... is exhilarating, and suggests the daring thought that, if ever their race decides to get on without government of any sort, they will rid themselves of it with a thoroughness and swiftness past the energy of dynamite, and cast church and state, with all their dignities, to the winds as lightly as they have discarded the traditional costumes of Rotten Row. The young girls and young men in flapping panamas, in tunics and jackets of every kind and color, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... assistance of the French six years earlier, might have conquered the colonies to the Atlantic seaboard before the British regulars could have come to their assistance. The tribes swept westward into Pennsylvania, burning, murdering, and leveling every habitation to the ground with a thoroughness beyond anything attempted under the French alliance. The settlers and farmers fled eastward to the towns to live in cellars, camps, and sheds as best they could. * Fortunately the colonies retained a large part of the military organization, both ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... and cautious, they knew and trusted one another, and they observed, with conscientious thoroughness, the unwritten ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... dispensing outdoor relief to the temporarily indigent. In the United States, however, this work of relieving the temporarily dependent in their own homes has been, in our large cities, undertaken with great success by the charity organization societies, which, in general, do the work with such thoroughness as to obviate the necessity for public outdoor relief in our ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... authorities seem to have been absolutely blind to his qualities. Yet this was he of whom Colonel Chesney, a great writer on military matters, said, "If there is a man in the world who can conduct a war with honour, thoroughness, and humanity, and bring it to a satisfactory close without needless delay or expense, England has that man in 'Chinese Gordon.'" It is, of course, quite possible that every army has some men of military genius, whose services are never utilised in positions of importance, for the simple ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... being excluded whose authors hold to "mesmeric" theories, or who are even professional magnetizers. The catalogue is, therefore, as strictly scientific as possible, and, being classified with German thoroughness under the different branches of the subject, such as "hystero-hypnotism," "suggestion," "fascination," etc., it will prove a valuable assistance to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... passionate desire for fellowship. She had denied herself to me, taken herself away; that much I could endure; but now came this blazing fact that showed her as it seemed in the most material and conclusive way—overcome. I had storms of retrospective passion at the thoroughness of her surrender.... Yes, and that's in everyone of us,—in everyone. I wonder if in all decent law-abiding London there lives a single healthy adult man who has not at times ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells |
