"Acuteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sanity of Hamilton's mind was a curious warp of obstinacy, born of implacability and developed far beyond the normal bounds of determination. When this almost perverted faculty was in possession of the brain, Hamilton would pursue his object, did every guardian in his genius, from foresight to acuteness, rise in warning. His present policy if a failure might be the death of the Federalist party, but the flashing presentiment of that historic disaster did not ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... astonished at this change of deportment, from the sensitive acuteness of agony which attended the beginning of his narrative, that he stepped back two paces, and gazing on the Constable with wonder, mixed with admiration, exclaimed, "We have heard of martyrs in. Palestine, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of Protestantism against Rome and Roman innovations. While a student at Oxford, he had been won over to the Roman Catholic Church by John Perse, a famous Jesuit; and he went at once to pursue his studies in the Jesuit college at Douay. He was so notable for his acuteness and industry, that every effort was made to bring him back. Archbishop Laud, his god-father, was able to convince him of his errors, and in two months he returned to England. A short time after this he left the Roman Catholics, and became tenfold ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... was, to them, an enormous sum; but the risk was great. It was not that they feared that any suspicion would fall upon them, on their return. They had often smuggled tobacco from Gibraltar, and had no high opinion of the acuteness of the authorities. What really alarmed them was the fear of being sunk, either by the Spanish or British guns. However, they saw that, for the present at any rate, they had no option but to obey the orders ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... principles of war have evolved from centuries of observation on how men react in the mass. It could not be otherwise than that any officer's growth in knowledge of when and how these principles apply to varying situations, strategical and tactical, come primarily of the acuteness of his powers of observation of individual men, and of men working together in groups, and responding to their leadership, under widely different conditions of ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... ways of settling these questions—adjudication and compromise. The difficulties of adjudication were great; I think insuperable. Whatever acuteness and diligence could do has been done. One person in particular, whose talents and industry peculiarly fitted him for such investigations, and of whom I can never think without regret, Mr Hyde Villiers, devoted himself to the examination with an ardour and a perseverance, which, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hireling of royalty in a curricle, to the passive spouse of all the town, on the pavement; from the splendour of affluence to the miseries of penury; even Mendicity itself has its shades of variety, its success being less frequently derived from the acuteness of distress than the caprice of Nature, in having gifted the mendicant with some peculiar eccentricity of person or character, to attract attention and sympathy. He who is without these endowments passes unnoticed; but the diminutive ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... undergone by them during the above process, would probably go a great way towards solving the problem. I know no one better qualified for this undertaking than Mr. Knight, if he should at any future time have leisure and opportunity to direct towards it the same acuteness of observation and accuracy of investigation which have enabled him to make such important discoveries in the economy of the vegetable kingdom, and if the explanation of this phenomenon should ever lead to results ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... softness, darkness and light, the shades of colors, all these are very easily distinguished when the difference is any way considerable, but not when it is minute, for want of some common measures, which perhaps may never come to be discovered. In these nice cases, supposing the acuteness of the sense equal, the greater attention and habit in such things will have the advantage. In the question about the tables, the marble-polisher will unquestionably determine the most accurately. But notwithstanding this want of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... acuteness of our sense of duty depends largely on the breadth and depth of our vision. This principle explains the importance of the Catholic Extension educational policy. Through its official organ, "The Catholic Register," by means of pamphlets, leaflets, and lectures and sermons, the Society is most ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... mentioned in the same breath. The former, who is the creator of the world-tragedy, is a mere shadow in comparison to the great genius of whom Mueller, the Swiss historian, says: "Quite impartially and truly, as before God, I must say that the variety of his knowledge, the acuteness of his observations, the solidity of his understanding (not dazzling wit), his grand and comprehensive views, filled me with astonishment, and his manner of speaking to me with love for him. By his genius and his disinterested goodness, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... There was at least one emotion which dispelled and dissipated my thoughts: it was fear. Let any one attempt to scale mountains alone all night long in ignorance of the way—where the eye, unnaturally strained, beholds distant shapes it cannot solve—where the ear, with morbid acuteness, hears sounds without knowing whence they come—where the foot suddenly stumbles, it may be over a root which forces its way through the rocks, or on a slippery path which the waterfall has drenched with its spray—and besides all this, a disconsolate waste in the heart, no memory ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... book,' adds a second, 'proceeds from a man of ability, a scholar and a reasoner.' 'His scholarship,' says this same reviewer again, 'is apparent throughout.' 'Along with a wide and minute scholarship,' he writes in yet another place, 'the unknown writer shows great acuteness.' Again a third reviewer, of whose general tone, as well as of his criticisms on the first part of the work, I should wish to speak with the highest respect, praises the writer's 'searching and scholarly criticism.' ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... by thirty properties, and the priesthood by twenty-four; but the law is acquired by forty-eight things, and these are they—with study, attention, eloquence; an understanding heart, an intelligent heart; with dread and meekness, fear and joy; with attendance on the Sages, the acuteness of companions, and disputations of the disciples; with sedateness, the study of the Bible, and the Mishna; in purity, in taking little sleep, in using little discourse, in being little engaged in traffic, in taking little sport, in enjoying little delight and little worldly ...
— Hebrew Literature
... contrast the lady behind must find in his gawkiness compared with the correct and composed deportment of the Capital she had come from! He must be the rustic indeed to her, handling lollipops yet like a child, and tumbling books in a child's confusion. As if to give more acuteness to his picture of himself he saw a foil in Young Islay so trim and manly in the uniform old custom demanded for the Sunday parade, a shrewd upward tilt of the chin and lowering of the brow, his hand now and then at his cheeks, not ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... with a pleased expression on his face, and pulling his tawny mustache reflectively, muttered to himself with true masculine acuteness, "She knew as much about my ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... the Elsmeres. Dropping his bantering tone, he delivered himself of a very delicate critical analysis of Catherine Elsmere's temperament and position, as in the course of several months his intimacy with her husband had revealed them to him. He did it well, with acuteness and philosophical relish. The situation presented itself to him as an extremely refined and yet tragic phase of the religious difficulty, and it gave him intellectual pleasure to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... desire to frequent their superiors, and these men must either suffer their raillery, or must not be suffered to continue in their society; if we converse with them who speak with more address than ourselves, then we repine equally at our own dulness, and envy the acuteness that accomplishes the speaker; or, if we converse with duller animals than ourselves, then we are weary to draw the yoke alone, and fret at our being in ill company; but if chance blows us in amongst our equals, then we are so at guard to catch all advantages, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... be easily determined by means of an "acoumeter." This little instrument measures the acuteness of the hearing very accurately by means of shot dropped from varying heights upon strips of glass, copper and cardboard. Tests with this device indicate whether the subject's hearing is above or ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... its pathos, its tragedy, and its gratification for Lane. He saw clearly, and felt with the acuteness of a woman. Helen had jilted him for such young men as these. So in the feeling of the moment it cost him nothing to thrill and fascinate these girls with the story of how he had been shot through the ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... utilize them; the young man, as a rule, that they are growing better, because he hopes to turn them to account. It is, however, always a purely empirical question; and in the solution of it, the observer's eye may acquire a singular acuteness by the comparative study of as many nations as possible, especially of those ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... had been given of the striking phenomenon of a lunar eclipse, in which the brilliant surface is plunged temporarily into darkness, and also of the still more imposing spectacle of a solar eclipse, in which the sun itself undergoes a partial or even a total obscuration. Then, too, the acuteness of the early astronomers had detected the five wandering stars or planets: they had traced the movements of Mercury and Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They had observed with awe the various configurations of these planets: and just ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... owing to the particular organization of the integuments, that in the Indians the sting is followed by less of swelling and inflammatory symptoms; it is on the nervous irritability of the epidermis that the acuteness and duration of the pain depend. This irritability is augmented by very warm clothing, by the use of alcoholic liquors, by the habit of scratching the wounds, and lastly, (and this physiological observation is the result of my own experience,) that of baths repeated at too short intervals. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... a careful scientific examination, and no organ similar to an eye can be discovered. It would indeed be a useless appendage to creatures that dwell for ever in Cimmerian darkness. But, as usual, the acuteness of one sense is increased by the absence of another. These fish are undisturbed by the most powerful glare of light, but they are alarmed at the slightest agitation of the water; and it is therefore exceedingly ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... hundreds of times in that work: to wit this; That whatsoever is first in the intention is last in execution, and e converso. Which is an error of that magnitude, that I cannot but wonder how a person of such acuteness and subtilty of wit could possibly be deceived with it. All logicians know there is no such universal maxim as he buildeth upon. The true maxim is but this: Finis qui primus est in intentione, est ultimus in executione. In the order of final causes, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... him over the same ground again the first thing in the morning. He felt sure that if he did not come to a bargain with the farmer, Bambridge would; for the stress of circumstances, Fred felt, was sharpening his acuteness and endowing him with all the constructive power of suspicion. Bambridge had run down Diamond in a way that he never would have done (the horse being a friend's) if he had not thought of buying it; every one who looked at the animal—even Horrock—was evidently impressed with its merit. To get all ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... weary. In themselves the letters cannot stand, as mere writing, beside the letters of Cowper, or of Lamb. They are just the common-sense epistles of a man who to his last day remained too modest to believe in the extent of his own genius. The letters in this collection which show most acuteness on literary matters are not Scott's, but Lady Louisa Stuart's, who appreciated the Novels on their appearance (their faults as well as their merits) with a judiciousness quite wonderful in a contemporary. Scott's literary observations (with the exception of one passage ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... must be the sole grounds of popular belief. The ancient paradox of Plutarch, that atheism is less pernicious than superstition, acquires a tenfold vigor, when it is adorned with the colours of his wit, and pointed with the acuteness of his logic. His critical dictionary is a vast repository of facts and opinions; and he balances the false religions in his sceptical scales, till the opposite quantities (if I may use the language of algebra) annihilate each other. The ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... acute keenness of any sense, by reason of age or experience should be conserved.[14] Such acuteness is often the result of some need, and, unless consciously preserved, ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... governor visible, John?" was his address to the 429 footman who answered the door, and who, apparently not being favoured by Nature with any superfluous acuteness of intellect or sweetness of disposition, merely stared ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Lactantius, and a host of other theological authorities were all put in evidence against the Genoese mariner: he was confronted by the "conservatism of lawyers united to the bigotry of priests." Las Casas displays his usual acuteness when he says that the great difficulty of Columbus was, not that of teaching, but that of unteaching: not of promulgating his own theory, but of eradicating the erroneous convictions of the judges before whom ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... possible and successful. It is believed that no slave was ever recaptured that followed his directions. Sometimes the abolitionists were much annoyed by impostors, who pretended to be runaways, in order to discover their plans, and betray them to the slave-holders. Daniel Gibbons was possessed of much acuteness in detecting these people, but having detected them, he never treated them ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Britain where the Roman arm could never have reached it. Matthew Arnold saw these things in his day, and argued for the Neo-druidism of the sixth century. He was a man accustomed to deal in ideas. You may easily train your mind to an acuteness and sagacity in dealing with grammatical roots, and forms, that will not help you in ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... and the great light kindled in me a desire concerning their cause, never before felt with such acuteness. Whereupon she, who saw me as I see myself, to quiet my perturbed mind opened her mouth, ere I mine to ask, and began, "Thou thyself makest thyself dull with false imagining, so that thou seest not what ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... History of Art, his work is unquestionably the most valuable which has yet appeared in England. His research has been unwearied; he has availed himself of the best results of German investigation—his own acuteness of discernment in cases of approximating or derivative style is considerable—and he has set before the English reader an outline of the relations of the primitive schools of Sacred art which we think so thoroughly verified in all its more important ramifications, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... give those speedy and unembarrassed judgments that have so injured him with the profession. If he followed his course, he would see him, soon after the opening of the House of Lords, addressing their Lordships on some intricate question of Law, with an acuteness that drew approbation even from his opponents, or, on some all-engrossing political topic, casting firebrands into the camp of the enemy, and awakening them from the complacent repose of conviction to the hot ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... explain human emotions by their primary causes, and, at the same time, to point out a way, by which the mind might attain to absolute dominion over them. However, in my opinion, he accomplishes nothing beyond a display of the acuteness of his own great intellect, as I will show in the proper place. For the present I wish to revert to those, who would rather abuse or deride human emotions than understand them. Such persons will, doubtless think it strange that I should attempt to treat of ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... a curious episode. A classmate of mine, never distinguished for logical acuteness, came out in a leading daily paper with a violent attack upon me and my lecture. He lamented the fact that one who, as he said, had, while in college, shown much devotion to the anti- slavery cause, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... quite as much with the grinding monotony of his rheumatic pains as with their actual acuteness, the new discomfort of straining his eyes under the feeble rays of his night-light seemed almost ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... error in political economy, namely, that it is spending and not saving that gives employment to the poor. If Mandeville's aim had been less critical, and had he been less delighted with his famous paradox, we may infer from the acuteness of his reasoning on the subject, that he would have anticipated the true doctrine of political economy, as he saw through the fallacy of the mercantile theory. (2) He employs the term, luxury, with ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... you think that you have such acuteness, then, and I—" Nellie Hayden paused, raised her eyebrows a little coldly, and let the cockatoo ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... self-consciousness—or a too acute consciousness of others—that was unnatural in her. She had never been sensitive like this in her former life, but the fierce African sun seemed now to have thawed the ice of her indifference. She felt everything with almost unpleasant acuteness. All her senses seemed to her sharpened. She saw, she heard, as she had never seen and heard till now. Suddenly she remembered her almost violent prayer—"Let me be alive! Let me feel!" and she was aware that such a prayer might have an answer ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... uniformly victorious. Nor were his victories won over inferior opponents. The reputation of the lawyer is under ordinary conditions limited necessarily to a small circle. Even in that, considering the amount of intellectual acuteness and power displayed, it is an exceedingly transitory reputation. But the men against whom Cooper was pitted stood in the very front rank of their profession. They were leaders of the bar in the greatest state in the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... his sacrifices. She was a plucky little woman, and in fact endowed with a more restless ambition than he. She was gifted with a rare insight into the motives that actuate mankind, and there is no doubt that much of Lincoln's success was in a measure attributable to her acuteness and the stimulus ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... proportion to what he knows, and one of the most striking and characteristic features of this great century is the advance of man through increase of knowledge out of childishness towards maturity. The insoluble problems which had been discussed with astonishing acuteness by the schoolmen of the preceding generation were giving place to a philosophy of more immediate application to the conduct and discipline of life. The 'Summa Theologica' of St. Thomas Aquinas not only treated with incomparable logic ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... seemed to have an almost supernatural acuteness of hearing, gave a violent start at this, and spoke up for the first time with real ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... nature. The tone of thought reminds us of Bishop Butler, whose writings, defaced by a style even more tiresome, though less pompous than Johnson's, have owed their enduring reputation to a philosophical acuteness in which Johnson was certainly very deficient. Both of these great men, however, impress us by their deep sense of the evils under which humanity suffers, and their rejection of the superficial optimism of the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Chapelain, asking if he could not discover the origin of the scourge and find remedies capable of stopping it. It was not only magnetism that interested him, but clairvoyance as well, fortune tellers and readers of cards, to whom he attributed an acuteness of ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... here looking up into heaven?" But this species of warfare was disapproved of even by the church; and Luigi Maraffi, the general of the Dominicans, not only apologised to Galileo, who had transmitted to him a formal complaint against Caccini, but expressed the acuteness of his own feelings on being implicated in the "brutal conduct of thirty ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... no necessity for these words. Perhaps any other man in the world, certainly most men of far less intelligence and less acuteness of feeling, would have known long ago just what she meant. He knew, indeed, that this girl loved him; but he did not believe that she or any other woman was capable of the sacrifice implied in ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... observer might have been inclined to think—which was, indeed, partly the truth—that he had relinquished his proper station in life for want of interest in it. Moreover, after looking at him one would have hazarded the guess that good-nature, and an acuteness as extreme as it could be without verging on craft, formed the frame-work ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... decay. Without there being anything tangible or very remarkable, I received the impression that there was not exactly the same vigour of mind which I have been used to admire in him, and what he said did not appear to me indicative of the strong sense and acuteness which characterise him. If he has no attack, I dare say he will be able to continue to act his part with efficacy for a long time to come. I asked him in what manner Government would prosecute the inquiry they had promised into the conduct of the Birmingham magistrates? ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... calamities that had afflicted Europe; and their practice was correspondent to the dogmatic positions they had laid down. The Empire and the Papacy it was their great object to destroy; and this, now openly avowed and steadfastly acted upon, might have been discerned with very little acuteness of sight, from the very first dawnings of the Revolution, to be the main drift of their policy: for they professed a resolution to destroy everything which can hold states together by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... stone, surrounded by a herd of swine, that he seemed employed in keeping, he was seen in front, with his elbow resting on his knee, and his chin in the palm of his hand. The pensive and reflective attitude of this young man, dressed as a beggar, the power expressed in his large forehead, the acuteness of his penetrating glance, and the firm lines of the mouth, seemed to reveal indomitable resolution, combined with superior intelligence and ready craft. Beneath this figure, the emblems of the papacy encircled a medallion, in the centre of which was the head of an old man, the lines ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the long turmoil of the night and day had slipped away from her and she sat with closed eyes, surrendering herself to the spell of warmth and silence. But presently this merciful apathy was succeeded by the sudden acuteness of vision with which sick people sometimes wake out of a heavy sleep. As she opened her eyes they rested on the picture that hung above the bed. It was a large engraving with a dazzling white margin enclosed in a wide frame of bird's-eye maple ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the country of Anga, called Vrikshaghata. In it there lived a rich sacrificing Brahman named Vishnusvamin. And he had a wife equal to himself in birth. And by her he had three sons born to him, who were distinguished for preternatural acuteness. In course of time they grew up to be young men. One day, when he had begun a sacrifice, he sent those three brothers to the sea to fetch a turtle. So off they went, and when they had found a turtle, the eldest said to his two brothers, "Let one of you take the turtle for our father's ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... of the sea are still cleverer in other ways. Their forefathers have lived on the sea for thousands of years, and their senses have been developed to the greatest acuteness and perfection. They know the regular winds, and can perceive from the colour of the water if a cold or warm sea current sweeps along below them. If now our friend the albatross, travelling westwards over the islands of Polynesia, wishes to be carried along by the wind, he ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... of John's character, its least amiable characteristic, which marred it amid many excellent qualities, was not wholly unknown to Melissa. She was by far the more clear-headed of the two, and she understood her lover with much greater acuteness than he was able to bring to the task of comprehending her. It was from intelligent perception and not merely from the feminine instinct for making excuses, that she said to herself that John was worn out with the strain ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... Adoniram Judson, a native of New England, the eldest son of the minister of Malden, in Massachusetts, born in 1788, and bred up first at a school near home, and afterwards at Brown University. His acuteness and cleverness from infancy were great, especially in arithmetic and mathematics. During his studies, he met with a clever and brilliant friend who had imbibed the deistical teaching of the French Revolution, and infected him with it, and he came home at seventeen ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... which he was particularly qualified to judge: "Let me add, that, in the list of philosophical reformers, the authors of Martinus Scriblerus ought not to be overlooked. Their happy ridicule of the scholastic logic and metaphysics is universally known; but few are aware of the acuteness and sagacity displayed in their allusions to some of the most vulnerable passages in Locke's Essay. In this part of the work it is commonly understood that Arbuthnot had the principal share."—See Preliminary Dissertation to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... penetration and simplicity; the one interests while the other charms. Not knowing these truths, Mr. Ashburner had mentally resolved to enter upon this field of philosophical research. The simplicity, the humor, the acuteness of observation, the intelligence, and perhaps the pretty face of his companion, tended to interest him in an unusual manner. And she, too, seemed attracted by the young Englishman, whose education and intelligence rendered him an agreeable companion to any educated and intelligent person. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... more trying was the conduct of the day boys, who, with an acuteness which did them credit, seemed to have discovered our delicate situation, and resolved to make ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... at Vienna. The Marquis Lucchesini, born at Lucca in 1752, early entered the service of Frederick the Great, to whom he acted as reader. He advanced rapidly under his successor. His commanding demeanour and vivacity of speech, added to great powers of work, and acuteness in detecting the foibles of others, made him a formidable opponent. Further, his marriage with the sister of Bischoffswerder, until lately the King's favourite adviser, added to his influence, which, as was natural with a foreigner, inclined towards the attractive and gainful ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... recollecting our origin, we ought not to despair, but elevate our intellectual aim as high as we may; that all knowledge is not attributable to our present senses; for, if that were the case, all men would be equally wise, their senses being equal in acuteness; but a very large portion, and by far the surest portion, is derived from reminiscence of our former states; that each individual soul is an idea; and that, of ideas generally, the lower are held together by the higher, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... irremediable, and without hope; on the contrary, we doubt not but the Better Spirit will in time resume its pre-eminence, and colonists will be respected for their elevated sentiments and high sense of honour, rather than for their acuteness in driving a bargain. This evil, which is the natural consequence of their present condition as isolated atoms, unconnected together by those bonds of mutual respect which confine men in older countries, will cease as society becomes re-organized, and men feel themselves occupying ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... into the stroke. But as the crew settled down into the well known long sweep, what we may call consciousness returned; and while every muscle in his body was straining, and his chest heaved, and his heart leapt, every nerve seemed to be gathering new life, and his senses to wake into unwonted acuteness. He caught the scent of the wild thyme in the air, and found room in his brain to wonder how it could have got there, as he had never seen the plant near the river, or smelt it before. Though his eye never wandered from the back of Diogenes, he seemed to see all things ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... back its origin to the malice of Ralph, and the vindictiveness and avarice of Squeers. That, suspicion and proof being two very different things, they had been advised by a lawyer, eminent for his sagacity and acuteness in such practice, to resist the proceedings taken on the other side for the recovery of the youth as slowly and artfully as possible, and meanwhile to beset Snawley (with whom it was clear the main falsehood must rest); to lead him, if possible, into contradictory and conflicting statements; to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... little chap he looked up and in a sharp, clear voice, he cried: "Good-bye! Come back soon!" These words cut into my soul. Was it possible that this little ragamuffin was the only one in that village who was sorry to see me depart and who desired my return? And the acuteness of this cut was not decreased by the remembrance that on several occasions when he had accompanied his mother to my lodging I ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... was obliged to embrace him closely with one paw, and run on three, and still in that manner he outran me. Keeping still his distance before me, he reached the Keys river, and there the last gleam of hope closed on me, for I could not swim while the ourang-outang, with much acuteness, threw the child across his shoulders, held him by the feet with one paw, and with the other three stemmed the river, though then in flood, with amazing rapidity. It was at this dreadful moment that my beloved babe ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... afterwards admitted that fourteen out of the seventy-three were wholly written by himself. John Pinkerton, whom Sir Walter Scott described as "a man of considerable learning, and some severity as well as acuteness of disposition," made clear conscience on the matter in 1786, when he published two volumes of genuine old Scottish Poems from the MS. collections of Sir Richard Maitland. He had added to his credit as an antiquary ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... as though they had not been seen before, and describes them with singular directness and vividness, not with morbid acuteness, with a large, wholesome joy of life. Nowhere is this more evident than in his insistent use of environment. I recall the passage in which he describes the street in which McTeague lives. He represents that street as it is ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... prominent positions in the body is so large that it may well be assumed as the rule of promotion. Mr. Raymond was nearly forty-six when he made his first speech in the House. While he still exhibited the intellectual acuteness and alertness which had always been his characteristics, there was apparent in his face the mental weariness which had come from the prolonged and exacting labor of his profession. His parliamentary failure was a keen disappointment to him, and was not improbably one among many causes ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... solicitations and intrigues of male and female favourites, the treachery of confidants, the petty jealousies and insignificant struggles of place-hunters, are the same, or nearly so, in every country; and it requires no great acuteness to detect, or courage to expose, their consequences—the name of Choiseul, or Uzeda, or Buckingham, or Bruhl, or Kaunitz, may be applied to such descriptions with equal probability and equal justice. But when the Tiers Etat are portrayed, when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... me, and whose age exempted them from sudden changes of inclination; I was considered as a man of parts, and therefore easily found admission to the table of Hilarius, the celebrated orator, renowned equally for the extent of his knowledge, the elegance of his diction, and the acuteness of his wit. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... Countess. She had consulted many learned lawyers about her unfortunate situation, and had finally come to Bamberg to have recourse to old Eichheimer; but he had directed her to young Engelbrecht, who, being less busy and equipped with excellent intellectual acuteness and great love for his profession, would perhaps be able to get a clue to the unfortunate will or furnish some other circumstantial proof of ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... will against a superior power; he was terrified at seeing those eyes always fixed, always directed toward an invisible object; he was terrified at seeing beat with the same movement that heart from which never a sigh arose to vary the melancholy state; sometimes the acuteness of pain creates the hope of the physician. Half a day passed away thus. The doctor formed his resolution like a brave man, like a man of firm mind; he issued suddenly from his place of retreat, and went ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... a hostage for the maintenance of the treaty made by the emperor Leo I. with his father, and had spent ten years, from his seventh to his seventeenth year, at Constantinople. Though he scorned to receive an education in Greek or Roman literature, he studied during these years, with unusual acuteness, the political and military circumstances of the empire. Of strong but slender figure, his beautiful features, blue eyes with dark brows, and abundant locks of long, fair hair, added to the nobility of his race, pointed him out for a ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... of this most useful class of men, that they commonly contribute, by their personal manners, no less than by the sale of their wares, to the refinement of the people among whom they travel. Their dealings form them to great quickness of wit and acuteness of judgment. Having constant occasion to recommend themselves and their goods, they acquire habits of the most obliging attention, and the most insinuating address. As in their peregrinations they have opportunity of contemplating the manners of various men and various cities, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... which William Dulan arose to take his leave, which he did in a choking, inaudible voice. As he turned to leave the room, his ghastly face and unsteady step attested, in language not to be misunderstood, the acuteness and intensity of his suffering. Alice did not misunderstand it. She uttered one word, in a ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... come that way, Mrs. Pindar. (With sudden acuteness.) It was on account of George, not Dr. Jonathan, that you wanted to get me out ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... shops at which she dealt, and getting into conversation with the masters or mistresses, quickly gleaned from them some of the desired information. Having, with much acuteness, made up her mind as to those most likely to respond to her appeal, she went forth the next morning, having deposited Margaret with Mrs Galbraith, to commence the series of visits ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... revealed by symptoms my hospital experience was invaluable. I have since found that my greatest service at the beds of the sick is as an interpreter of symptoms rather than a vender of drugs. The friends of the sick read indications for good or bad with wonderful acuteness, as a rule; and I have rarely found myself mistaken in my ability to read the condition of patients in the faces of the friends, even before I enter ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... invariably keep on high ranges, and from their acuteness of smell, are difficult to get at, and it is only to leeward that one can approach them. The bulls being the leaders of the herds are always singled out, and after a desperate and trying gallop over a rugged country, the huntsman finds himself going stride for stride alongside ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... ruins, creepers wreathing their fantastic garlands around the mouldering arches, gorgeous flowers flourishing in the midst of that decay! I almost forgot my search for the dear Phoebus, as I rambled with my friend Mr. Malone, the gardener, a man who would in any station be remarkable for acuteness and acquirement, amongst the august remains of the venerable abbey, with the history of which he was as conversant as with his own immediate profession. There was no speaking of smaller objects in the ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... of Abano[56] and Doctor ——. The latter, a Talmudic legend, is probably the poorest of Browning's poems: it is rather farce than humour. The former is a fine piece of genuine grotesque art, full of pungent humour, acuteness, worldly wisdom, and clever phrasing and rhyming. It is written in an elaborate comic metre of Browning's invention, indicated at the end by eight bars of music. The poem is one of the most characteristic examples of that "Teutonic grotesque, which lies in the expression of deep ideas through ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... all of this with a charming picturesqueness. Professor Johan Albrecht Bengal was a teacher in the seminary in Denkendorf, Germany, in the eighteenth century. "He united profound reverence for the Bible with an acuteness which let nothing escape him." The seminary students used to wonder at the great intellectuality, and great humility and Christliness which blended their beauty in him. One night, one of them, eager to learn the secret of his holy life, slipped up into his apartments while ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... of no funeral garments for the old man but one shroud [Greek: speiron] (Odyssey, II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a character of late Ionian, not of genuine old AEolic epic, she should have known better. It is manifest that if even the acuteness and vast erudition of Helbig can only find such invisible differences as these between the manners of the genuine old epic and the late Ionian innovations, there is really no difference, beyond such trifles as diversify ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... rational Christians, are making us very irrational philosophers.... We are agreed that our old religious system is false; but I cannot say with you that it is a patchwork of bunglers and half-philosophers. I know nothing in the world in which human acuteness has been more displayed or exercised than in that."[158] Lessing was always for freedom, never for looseness, of thought, still less for laxity of principle. But it must be a real freedom, and not that ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... eighteen: she had at that period made, with a distinguished Dutch family, a stay on the Lake of Geneva. Maisie had in the old days been regaled with anecdotes of these adventures, but they had with time become phantasmal, and the heroine's quite showy exemption from bewilderment at Boulogne, her acuteness on some of the very subjects on which Maisie had been acute to Mrs. Wix, were a high note of the majesty, of the variety of advantage, with which she had alighted. It was all a part of the wind in her sails and of the weight with which her daughter ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... administration, I do not know in the whole compass of my reading, whether from ancient or modern authors, so able a work.' The Edinburgh Review says: 'The 'Federalist' is a publication that exhibits an extent and precision of information, a profundity of research and an acuteness of understanding, which would have done honor to the most illustrious statesmen of ancient or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... if you must argue or discourse with me, I will endure your asperity for the sake of your acuteness; but it appears to me a more philosophical thing to avoid what is insulting and vexatious, than to ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Barnard, distinguished himself very early as a scholar, and for a logical acuteness, which does not often fall to the share of a boy. He was distinguished too both by land and by water; for while he was amongst the most informed of his time, in school hours, in the playing fields, on the water, with the celebrated boatman, my ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... garret in 1819 he was the same Balzac that we know in later life. Large-minded and far-seeing—except about his business concerns—he was from his youth a voyant, who discerned with extraordinary acuteness the trend of political events; and with an intense respect for authority, he was yet independent, and essentially ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... The acuteness and the significance of the Captain's eye as he cocked it in reply, no words short of those unutterable Chinese words before ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... another interview with Una, and, for that purpose, offered, as before, to ascertain, in the course of that evening, at what time and place she would see him. This suggestion, in itself so natural, was adopted, and as Connor felt, with a peculiar acuteness, the pain of the situation in which he was! placed, he manifested little tendency to conversation, and the evening consequently passed heavily and ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... he was not likely to displace himself; his journeys were over and he was taking the rest that precedes the great rest. He had a narrow, clean-shaven face, with features evenly distributed and an expression of placid acuteness. It was evidently a face in which the range of representation was not large, so that the air of contented shrewdness was all the more of a merit. It seemed to tell that he had been successful in life, yet it seemed to tell also that his success ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... into one of the vestry-chairs, muttering something, inaudible to all ears save those which seemed fatally gifted with preternatural acuteness—the young bridegroom's. Nathanael fancied—nay, was certain—that he heard his brother say, "Oh, my poor Agatha." He looked suddenly at his bride, whose weeping had changed into silent but violent trembling. He dropped her hand, then ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... wax-making; life of the drone; life of the queen; democratic government; description of queen and drone; swarming; wildness of; favorite hives; mortality of; acuteness of sight. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... knowledge. Religion to them consists in the above operations, and in giving a sum to the Auxiliary. I am speaking of the generality, There are many whom I cannot but feel to be Christians, but dimly. This can hardly be the result of low mental power alone. The Bechwanas show considerable acuteness when circumstances ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... first place, Segrais observes with much acuteness that they who blame AEneas for his insensibility of love when he left Carthage, contradict their former accusation of him for being always crying, compassionate, and effeminately sensible of those misfortunes which befell others. They give him ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... Deemster aside and told him (with expressions of shame, interlarded with praises of his own acuteness) a story of his brother. It was about a girl. Her name was Mona Crellin; she lived on the hill at Ballure House, half a mile south of Ramsey, and was daughter of a man called Billy Ballure, a retired sea-captain, and hail-fellow-well-met with all the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... laudable perseverance, of course discovering, like every penniless gambler, that, had he money to stake, he should infallibly make a fortune; predicting what colour would come out, and indulging, when he proved a true prophet, in a little subdued blasphemy because he was unable to profit by his acuteness. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various |
