"Keen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attempted with any chance of success. A "dash for the pole" can be successful only if there have been many preliminary years of painstaking, patient toil. Great physical hardihood and endurance, an iron will and unflinching courage, the power of command, the thirst for adventure, and a keen and farsighted intelligence—all these must go to the make-up of the successful arctic explorer; and these, and more than these, have gone to the make-up of the chief of successful arctic explorers, ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... 'Catriona.' Though unacquainted with the documents which we shall cite, Mr. Stevenson divined James Mohr with the assured certainty of genius. From first to last James was a valiant, plausible, conscienceless, heartless liar, with a keen feeling for the point of honour, and a truly Celtic passion of affection for his ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... over this celestial golf. On earth I have all of the essentials of a first-class golf maniac, except the ability to play the game. But this so far surpassed anything I had ever seen or imagined before that I was growing too keen over it for comfort. I was in real need of having my spirits curbed, so I ventured to inquire after a phase of the game that has always dampened my ardor in the past—the caddie service. I did not expect that ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... don't you believe that sort of stuff!" Phil declared, even though it did look very significant to see those twin stakes being driven into the ground, with a crowd of ragged and barefooted youngsters showing savage delight, as keen as though a ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... follow our advice." [Footnote: Journal de la Campagne de Rigaud de Vaudreuil en 1746...presente a Monseigneur le Comte de Maurepas, Ministre et Secretaire d'Etat (written by Rigaud).] One Cadenaret, an Abenaki chief, had been killed near Fort Massachusetts in the last spring, and his tribesmen were keen to revenge him. Seeing his Indians pleased with the proposal to march for the Hoosac, Rigaud gladly accepted it; on which whoops, yelps, and war-songs filled the air. Hardly, however, was the party on its way when the Indians changed their minds again, and ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... this frame of mind, just at sunset of a keen October day, the cry of "la brigade! la brigade!" reached her ears as she sat alone in her room in the cottage, and rushing to the river bank she joined the Indians who swarmed to the water's edge to welcome the huge freight canoe that had rounded the point below the clearing. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the rocks were at intervals green with moss, and showed here and there heavy ocherous water stain. The luxuriant ferns and pendant vines in the densely umbrageous tangle of verdure served to heighten by contrast the keen whiteness of the flower and the isolation ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... his own taste led him to like beautiful bindings. It was marvellous what tall copies, and gilding, and marbling, and blind-tooling, the booksellers and binders put upon Pen's bookshelves. He had a very fair taste in matters of art, and a keen relish for prints of a high school—none of your French Opera Dancers, or tawdry Racing Prints, such as had delighted the simple eyes of Mr. Spicer, his predecessor—but your Stranges, and Rembrandt etchings, and Wilkies before the letter, with which his apartments ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from the first; that she had been mortally wounded by Cupid's shaft she only now discovered. She had passed through a divorce, two "affairs" and a legitimate widowhood, without feeling any of the keen emotions which now drove sleep from her eyes. A long time ago, longer than she cared to remember, she had experienced such emotions, but she had supposed such folly only possible in the high tide of early youth. It was absurd, nay more, it was ridiculous ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Cooley made it rather clear that he accused Helene and me of signalin'. Well, I didn't. Perhaps that's the reason you didn't lose as much as he did; I can't say. And one thing more: all this isn't goin' to do you any harm. I'm not very keen about philosophy and religion and that, but I believe if you're let in for a lot of trouble, and it only half kills you, you can get some ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... are few in number, and I had ample volunteer force at my back to protect the jail and support my authority, but, as I have already explained to you, I could exercise but little control over my friends, who were keen for what would have ended in a free fight, with the certain death of the sheriff and ringleaders on both sides, and led to endless animosities. It required more resolution on my part to follow the course I did, than to have resisted the rioters. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... intensity. A voice accosted him. He was astounded, as if suddenly awakened out of heavy sleep, to see to where he had come. He was in the narrow old ways of Tidborough Old Town, approaching The Precincts, by the ancient Corn Exchange. A keen-looking young man, particularly well set up and wearing nice tweeds, was accosting him. Sabre recognised Otway, captain and adjutant of the depot, up at the barracks, of the county regiment, one of the crack regiments, famous as ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... have gone visiting so Mrs. McKittrick can look after her packing unmolested," suggested Gloriana, letting her keen gray eyes sweep the steep, rocky incline for some sign of the youthful McKittricks, ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... masked; and booksellers who always made St. Paul's a favorite haunt, and even to this day patronize its precincts, and flourish in the regions of Paternoster Row and Ave Maria Lane; court pages in rich liveries, pert and flippant; serving-men out of place, and pickpockets with a keen eye to business; all clashed and jostled together, raising a din to which the Plain of Shinar, with its confusion of tongues and ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... to the conflict, they were met with a volley that stunned them and strewed the ground with dead. The angel leader of the whites then gave the command to charge, and, with their pistols and keen swords, they flew at the enemy before they had time to recover, and they were thrown into confusion and fled in dismay. After the departure of the Indians, nothing was heard or seen of the white angel deliverer. It has since been ascertained ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... Constantine fell on his knees beside him, crying: 'Who stabbed him?' And Vlacho smiled grimly, and the others looked at one another. And I, who had run out from the doorway whence I had seen it all, knelt by my lord and stanched the blood. Then Vlacho said, fixing his eyes straight and keen on the Lord Constantine, 'It was not I, my lord,' 'Nor I, by heaven!' cried the Lord Constantine; and he rose to his feet, demanding: 'Who struck the blow?' But none answered, and he went on: 'Nay, if it were in error, if it were because he would not yield, speak! ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... felt such a keen interest in the place the lad did not know. Perhaps it was that the miners had thrown such an air of mystery about it in speaking of the red rock. Aside from its color there was nothing about the pile of stone to distinguish it from almost any other rocky formation in the Ozark range, ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... The keen competition existing between the militia units was maintained between the new oversea formations, and battalions were raised in a few weeks. For months enlistments all over Canada averaged more than 1000 men daily, and with recruits coming forward at this ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... even to a storm, upon the common where I had dealt so severely with her who had this very night gone into that region into which, as into a waveless sea, all the rivers of life rush and are silent. Is it the sea of death? No. The sea of life—a life too keen, too refined, for our senses to know it, and therefore we call it death—because we cannot lay ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... Roy's country, to his majority, and yet again in the five or six between his call to the Bar and his marriage, visited many, if not all, parts of Scotland; knew high and low, rich and poor, with the amiable interest of his temperament and the keen observation of his genius; took part in business and amusement and conviviality (he accuses himself later of having been not quite free from the prevalent peccadillo of rather deep drinking); and still and always read. He joined the 'Speculative Society' in January ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... Mrs. Lord's keen eye had read a certain newly written page in her son's heart,—his first chapter of that romance, begun in Paradise, whose interest never flags, whose beauty never fades, whose end can never come till Love lies dead. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... flung at Him. For example, when He would heal the paralytic, and, before He dealt with bodily disease, attended to spiritual weakness, and said, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee,' ere He said, 'Take up thy bed and walk,' there was a group of keen-eyed hunters after heresy sitting eagerly on the watch, who snatched at the words in a moment, and said, 'Who is this that forgiveth sins? No man forgiveth sins, but God only! This man speaketh blasphemies!' And they were right. He did claim a divine prerogative; and either ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... best shown by the statues of Lysippus, the only artist whom he allowed to represent him; in whose works we can clearly trace that slight droop of his head towards the left, and that keen glance of his eyes which formed his chief characteristics, and which were afterwards imitated ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... between the two glasses had been quite dried up, and that I could see very clearly through it, and after a little practice I could use it as well as anybody else. Still I seldom did use it, as my eyesight was particularly keen, and I did not require it, and as for any vessel coming off the island, I had gradually given up all thoughts of it. It was one evening when the weather was very rough and the sea much agitated, that I thought I saw something unusual on the water, about four miles ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... kind offer with gratitude, gracious Princess," the little man said, in a soft voice, and they could all see that tear-drops were standing in his keen old eyes. It meant a good deal to him to secure a home ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... is the matter, mother? It is, indeed, true that I have not done right, inasmuch as I have not made you my confidante. But you would pardon me if you knew how much I have suffered from it, and how keen my remorse has been. Since at first I did not speak, later on I did not dare to break the ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... the frankness of her manner, seemed to please him, for there was no affectation about either. He gave her a keen, kind glance out of the "fine gray eyes," a little bow, and a grateful smile, saying quietly,—"Then my Adam is not a failure in spite ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... coward's weapon, Arjun, speak with arrows keen, Till I lay thee, witness Drona, low upon ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... even longer. This, to a certain extent, is no doubt true; still it may be strongly doubted whether farmyard manure is, after all, an economical manure, as compared with artificial manures. The desirability of manuring the soil and not the crop is, in this age of keen competition, no longer believed in; and the Rothamsted experiments have shown that it is highly doubtful whether even the soil benefits to anything like a commensurate extent by the application of large quantities of farmyard manure. ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... The night was keen and frosty, the cold, slaty sky was thickly studded with sparkling stars, the snow was crusted over—it was a fine, fresh, clear, wintry night; at another time it would have invigorated and inspired him; now the air seemed stifling, the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... said Nebar, "but, for Mercy's sake, Tell no man in what way you choose to take, Lest others, seeing what has happened me, Omit to do some needed charity." Pierced by these words, the robber's keen remorse Thwarted his plan, and he returned the horse, Shame-faced and sorrowful; then slunk away As if he feared ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... and led them in battle against a Turkish force; but though he fought like a lion, the clan were defeated, and he was forced to fly. For many years Sokol lived in the Albanian mountains, half robber and wholly patriot; but the pursuit became too keen, and he came to Podgorica, where he entered the service of Prince Nicolas. His new Prince he serves loyally, and is highly esteemed in Montenegro, where he ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Ralph was sitting in the kitchen, telling his mother of the stirring event of the day, to which the fond parent listened with keen interest. ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... could he do, for he was very much in their power, and unable to afford to fly in their faces? Abdullah often spoke thus, according to Neufeld, and, as the latter also said, frequently that leader of the fanatical dervishes exhibited keen interest in acquiring information about Europe and its people. He hoped to make peace some day with the outside world, and be allowed thereafter to rule the Soudan. All this, I submit, is rather puzzling, in view of the filthy ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... chasms spanned with aquatic creepers, and then dwindling into ever-gurgling streams, that glided through ravines curtained with verdant drapery—such were some of the details of the picture; but how vain the endeavour to describe this redundant beauty! A friend, who enjoyed it with a zest as keen as our own, once remarked: 'It is like nothing in this world but one of Salvator Rosa's pictures framed in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... was needed. If Cary were five or six years older! Foster Leverett's death was a great shock to Winthrop Adams. Sometimes it seemed as if a shadowy form hovered over his shoulder, warning him that middle life was passing. He had a keen disappointment, too, in his son. He had hoped to find in him an intellectual companion as the years went on, but he could plainly see that his heart was not in his profession. The young fellow's ardor had been aroused on other lines that brought him in direct opposition to the elder's views. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Mr Wentworth himself is involved; but what can you expect when there is no true Christian principle?" asked Miss Hemmings, triumphantly. It was a dreadful moment for the bystanders; for Miss Leonora turned round upon this new intelligence with keen eyes and attention; and Miss Dora interposed, weeping; and Miss Wodehouse grew so pale, that Mr Elsworthy rushed for cold water, and thought she was going to faint. "Tell me all about this," said Miss Leonora, with peremptory and commanding tones. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... sooner thought than done,— The field was in a moment won! "Make way for liberty!" he cried, Then ran, with arms extended wide, As if his dearest friend to clasp; Ten spears he swept within his grasp: "Make way for liberty!" he cried— Their keen points met from side to side; He bowed amongst them like a tree, And thus made way ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Captain Scraggs briskly. "McGuffey, your argument does you a heap of credit. It's—it's—dog my cats, McGuffey, it's masterly. It shows a keen appreciation of an old skipper's feelin's, and if the move is agreeable to Gib, I'm willin' to hail him as commodore and fight to maintain his office. I—I dunno, Gib, what I'd do if I didn't have a mate to ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... assembled at will like seagulls out of the blue inane, would come about her in after years. That madly exhilarating rush to Westgate, for instance, on a keen March morning; and that sudden question of hers to Urquhart, "What made you think of asking me?" And his laconic answer, given without a turn of the head, "Because I knew you would like it. You did before, you know. And that was January." There was one. Another, connected with it, was her going alone ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... which the man was enduring, or how unlikely it was that he should laugh in his sleeve at any one. We are too apt to forget when we think of the sins and faults of men how keen may be their conscience in spite of their sins. While they were thus talking of Cousin Henry, he was vainly endeavouring to console himself with the reflection that he had not committed any great crime, that there was still a road open to him for ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... of sympathy with the higher classes. The man above them appeals to their hearts, and merits their true service, when he is unsteady on his legs. Joseph nobly confined his evidence to what he had observed some hours previously: he mentioned the parcel. Mrs. Gallilee's keen perception, quickened by her own experience at the window, arrived at the truth. Those two bulky packages must have contained clothes—left, in anticipation of the journey, under the care of an accomplice. It was impossible that Mr. Gallilee could have got at ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... representative of divine right, attended by guards of nobles and counselled by Jesuit confessors, there was now a citizen-king, who walked about the streets of Paris with an umbrella under his arm and sent his sons to the public schools, but who had at heart as keen a devotion to dynastic interests as either of his predecessors, and a much greater capacity for personal rule. The bonds which kept the entire local administration of France in dependence upon the central authority were not loosened; officialism remained as strong as ever; the franchise was ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... snow had fallen, and lay gleaming in the sunlight. The air was keen, and he drank deep draughts of it, and went striding away over the hills for an hour or so. There was a gale blowing, and as he came over the summits it would strike him, and he would see the river white with foam. And then down in the valleys again ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... had risen as he spoke, and this last sentence slipped out before he had time to stop it. No sooner was it uttered than he regretted it; but the bolt had been shot, and it went straight to its mark. While Frank had been speaking, Damase was too keen of sight and sense not to notice that the manly speech and fine self-control of the boy were causing a quick revulsion of feeling in his hearers, and that unless diverted they would soon be altogether on his side, and the taunt he had just flung out awoke a deep murmur of applause which was all ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... was young. Three or four hardy-looking fellows, policemen, were gliding about in their blue coats and leather hats, holding their thin walking-sticks behind them; conspicuous amongst whom was the leader, a tall lathy North Briton with a keen eye and hard features. Now if I add there was much gabbling of Welsh round about, and here and there some slight sawing of English—that in the street leading from the north there were some stalls of gingerbread and a table at which ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... embassy at forty, he believed that he could fairly propose to marry Hermione. But to do this he must abide by his career, a conclusion which effectually prevented his flying from danger and giving the inquiry entirely into my hands. With a keen sense of honor and a very strong determination on the one side, and all the force of his love for Hermione on the other, Paul's position was not an easy one, and he ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... the world ever saw. These are the patriots, who scruple not to brand with the epithet of Tory, the men (looking toward the seat of Col. Stewart) by whose blood your liberties have been cemented. These are they, who hold in such keen remembrance the outrages of the British armies, from which many of them are deserters. Ask these self-styled patriots where they were during the American war (for they are, for the most part, old enough to ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... for he saw that he must not pursue the subject at present: the boy was quite hypochondriacal. His face was keen, with that clear definition of feature which suggests superior intellect. He was, though very small for his age, well proportioned, except that his head and face were too large. His forehead indicated thought; and Hugh ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... interest, and even fascinate those who listened to it; still she was not beloved. Weaknesses and foibles met with unmerciful severity; and well-meaning intentions and kind actions did not always escape without the keen sarcasm, which it is so difficult for the best regulated mind to bear unmoved. The mild and gentle seemed to shrink from her, and thus she, who might have been the bright and beloved ornament of ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... chair; and so all manner of things—reels, rings, boxes, tins, that is to say a variety of surfaces—is offered to him, to his great delight and advantage. And lest he should not get the full benefit of such privilege he carries everything to his mouth, where the sense of touch is very keen."[17] ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... afraid." Polly scanned the other with keen eyes. "But never mind, we'll go ahead with the plans. I ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... Vladimir D. Simkhovitch. What I have, here and elsewhere, merely pointed out in rough and ready fashion from actual observation of the facts of life around me, Professor Simkhovitch in his book has discussed with keen practical insight, with profundity of learning, and with a wealth of applied philosophy. Crude thinkers in the United States, and moreover honest and intelligent men who are not crude thinkers, but who are oppressed by the sight of the misery around ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... democracy—its love of simplicity not excepted—did pay large sums now and then for showy fixtures and grand failures. The short-comings of the New Hampshire law-shop were extinct—elegance everywhere met the eye. While enjoying my meditations one flunkey approached another, telling him to keep a keen eye on that fellow—meaning me. Then a slim figure done up in dignity and tight clothes approached me with a polite bow: 'Please remember this is the President's mansion,' said he, viewing my perpendicular as if he questioned whether my length was all real growth. Seeing that the establishment ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... slightly. Then she looked frankly round at him. She had very keen, lively eyes, and a bright red-brown colour on thin cheeks. The village applied to her the epithet which John's thoughts had applied to Muster Hill's widow. They said she was "caselty," which means flighty, haphazard, excitable; but she ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Convention who wished to put an end to this hideous traffic proposed that it should be prohibited, and that the enforcement of the prohibition should be assigned to the General Government. Pinckney, however, keen to defend his privileged institution and the special interests of his State, bluntly informed the Convention that if they voted to abolish the slave trade, South Carolina would regard it as a polite ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... tried, like so many other architects before and since, to make a steel-framed structure look as though it were nothing but a masonry wall perforated with openings—openings too many and too great not to endanger its stability. The keen blade of Mr. Sullivan's mind cut through this contradiction, and in the Prudential building he carried out the idea of a protective casing so successfully that Montgomery Schuyler said of it, "I know of no steel framed building in which the metallic construction ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... coming from the natives are just their attempts to imitate white-man stories, and not original ideas of their own. The conditions or life in Australia for the aboriginal were so harsh, the struggle for existence was so keen, that he had not much time to cultivate ideas. Life to him was centred around the camp-fire, the baked 'possum, and a few ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... I carried, and with one chop took off the dangerous reptile's head. Then picking it up I opened the jaws and showed him the two keen, hollow, poisonous fangs which rose erect ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... as keen as a dog's. How she loved the scent of flowers! She named many of the blossoms in the gardens about just by the odor wafted to her upon the air. And she was really a pretty sight, sitting upon the shady porch of her father's store, sorting and making into ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... The keen instincts of Bathsheba had perceived that the farmer's staunch devotion to herself was still undiminished, and she sympathized deeply. The sight had quite depressed her this evening; had reminded her of her folly; she wished anew, as she had wished many months ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... a good investment?" The old gentleman's keen blue eyes looked searchingly from under the ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... mentally. He knew hardly any books, but he had traveled far, had seen much of the world. And had remembered all that he had learned. In person he was a thick-set, burly man with a shock of grizzled hair, a brown, weather-beaten face, and blue eyes which were keen to the verge of fierceness. Yet he had a reputation for kindness and charity on the country-side, and was noted for the leniency of ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Sandho on, the shrinking beast cautiously picked his way past the dead group, and we soon got up to a narrow rift full of bushes, the path among the rocks running right up to the highest point, towards which the baboons began to retire now, chattering away, but keeping a keen watch ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... woman suddenly forced her way through the crowd to the sobbing man and took him by the arm. Her sun-bonnet was so tied before her face that they could see little of it but two eyes, which gleamed black and keen like the eyes of a hawk. She raised the man gently to his feet, and then turned round fiercely upon the ring of women ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... generations of whom manned the fishing-trawler, were decent folk, with a keen eye to the main-chance, or what some people consider to be such—namely, making as much money as possible. The sky had clouded over somewhat, and it was darkish as the 'Aurora'—known locally as the 'Roarer'—the chief of the Northbourne fishing-boats, ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... cannot be made to run, it does not destroy the justice of my complaint to ask whether I could build a better one or not. The important thing is that the car is not what it should be, and judging by the product the builder is not what he is represented to be either. Dr. Martineau was far too keen a controversialist to adopt Canon Green's foolish retort, but he does seek to parry the force of the atheist criticism by saying that God "if once he commits his will to any determinate method, and for the realisation of his ends selects and ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... what you are driving at, Hal," he cried. "Where do you get such keen wit? I never saw your equal in ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield
... beside him, stiffen. Miss Pipkin leaned forward in her eagerness to catch every word, and as the minister proceeded her expression changed from perplexity and doubt to one of deep respect. There were others who followed the thought of the sermon with keen interest. Elder Fox was present, for the first time in weeks. Occasionally, he would write something on a pad, and then lean back to pull at his ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... to his side of the University, were, as a rule, keen and anxious to learn; he could ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... yourself. The poor little darling! it is not his fault. No, I suffer from something which is peculiar to myself, which can come only from me, and which I cannot confess to you. It is a sorrow deep in my heart, so keen, when I felt it spring to birth under the words of my brother and your uncle, that, should I ever experience it again when living with you as your wife, I should never be ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... Hungary and the Slav provinces of Austria was fomented by a keen sympathy with the misfortunes of Poland groaning under the yoke of Russia. Notwithstanding Austria's official conference with Russia, Polish refugees were received with open arms in ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... and his daughter you have heard Of monstrous lust the due and just reward: In Pericles, his queen and daughter, seen, Although assail'd with fortune fierce and keen, Virtue preserved from fell destruction's blast, Led on by heaven, and crown'd with joy at last: In Helicanus may you well descry A figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty: In reverend Cerimon there well appears The worth that learned charity ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... north, to ascertain whether the Indians, as he supposed was the case, had really gone in that direction. It was truly hunting under difficulties. Should any Indians be near, the sound of our shots would reach them, and it would be no easy matter to conceal ourselves from their keen eyes, which would discover the trail we could not avoid making. However, we had not waited long, when a fine stag, followed by two does, came walking leisurely along, little suspecting the fate awaiting ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... which Archie had prepared for the smoothing of the bank-notes. Near to the place now assigned to him there was no table whatever, and he felt that he would in that position be so completely raked by the fire of her keen eyes, that he would not be able to carry on his battle upon good terms. In spite, therefore, of the lady's very plain instructions, he made an attempt to take possession of the chair which he had himself placed; but it was an ineffectual attempt, for the spy was ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... face of a woman instinctively good and pure in heart can be. Any man who can put her between the covers of a book may put anything else he pleases in it and snap his fingers at the world. If I am going to live in the same town with her, I ought to jot her down on paper before I lose the keen ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Patty's future, though troubled as to her sorry plight at the moment, she was conscious chiefly of her new-born freedom. She revelled in the keen air that tingled against her cheek, and drew in fresh hope with every breath. As she trod the shining pathway she was full of expectancy, her eyes dancing, her heart as buoyant as her step. Not a vestige of confusion or uncertainty vexed her mind. She knew Ivory for her true mate, and if ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... jury, is there any sacrifice so tremendous, any anguish so keen, any shame so dreadful, any fate so overwhelmingly terrible as to transcend the endurance, or crush the power of a woman's love? Under this invincible inspiration, when danger threatens her idol, she knows no self; disgrace, death affright her not; she extends her arms to arrest every approach, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... by the austerity and virtue of those who rebelled against him and denounced his cynical abuse of all his powers, whether natural or official. He liked to think he had enemies worth beating. Such a ruler is a sore temptation to a keen intellect. "Everything great is formative," and this Pope was colossal—a colossal bully and robber if you like—but the good he did by his patronage was real good, was practical. Michael Angelo and Raphael could work as splendidly as they desired. Erasmus was helped and encouraged. ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... unfortunately been a little red-haired. I had likewise among my scholars a little French lady, whose name I have forgotten, but who merits a place in my list of preferences. She had adopted the slow drawling tone of the nuns, in which voice she would utter some very keen things, which did not in the least appear to correspond with her manner; but she was indolent, and could not generally take pains to show her wit, that being a favor she did not grant to every one. After a month or two of negligent attendance, this was an expedient she devised to make me more ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... gigantic old man laughing wildly, but having no one with him to share and aggrandise his emotion. Not that he is alone; but the young man beside him laughs only in politeness and is inwardly puzzled, even shocked. Boswell has a keen, an exquisitely keen, scent for comedy, for the fun that is latent in fine shades of character; but imaginative burlesque, anything that borders on lovely nonsense, he was not formed to savour. All the more does one revel in ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... him to make his mind easy, adding that Mr Jones had no intention of doing the boy any further harm. Whereupon Queeker submitted with a sigh. The two friends then issued from the cave, shook hands, and bade each other goodbye with a laugh—the man with the keen grey eyes following the path that led to Broadstairs, while the lawyer's clerk returned to Ramsgate by ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... learning had fallen away so utterly in England that there were very few of the clergy, on the south side of the Humber, who could understand the Latin of their Mass-books, and he thinks not many beyond the Humber. This state of things was very different from that of old times when the clergy were "so keen about both teaching and learning and all the services they owed to God": very different from St Bede's time, and the days when Northumbria was a centre of learning and culture. Alfred was to create a new centre, not in the North but in Wessex. Later on, the centre of learning ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... in his resolves, but still open to conviction. Brought up as the heir to the property, he felt, more than Humphrey could be expected to do, the mortification of being left a pauper, after such high prospects in his early days: his vindictive feelings against the opposite party were therefore more keen, and his spirit mounted more under the conviction which he laboured. His disposition was naturally warlike, and this disposition had been fostered by his father when he was a child—still a kinder heart or a more generous lad ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... those we commonly hear to-day: "We see how much will has been expended to extinguish the Jew, in vain.... The sufferance which is the badge of the Jew has made him in these days the ruler of the rulers of the earth." Those keen observations were made certainly more than forty years ago, and probably ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... chattered with the cold. He felt himself oppressed, and almost pushed out of the house, by the moral atmosphere created by the repellent thoughts of some who apparently felt the place defiled by his presence. Mrs. Arnot, with her keen intuition, felt this atmosphere also, and detected on the part of one or two of the officers of the Church an unchristian spirit. Although the sermon was an excellent one that morning, she ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... of accurate and keen observation was to be tested soon by a very different class of objects: there were to be no crumbling saints and canvases of Bed-Chamber Grooms for him to study in the forests of America; no reminders of the greatness ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... keen to perceive, to feel, to know the things hidden to the mass. I look forward to years of torture with the accursed things. The only thing that relieves, and of course it does not cure, is osteopathy, stimulating the nerve where it enters the spine. But never let them touch the sore place. That ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... agreed Ellis, struck by the keen sense of this view. "If they could lay a killing at his door, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... evolution, savages whom we know nothing of by experience, savages far behind Australians and Bushmen (who possess Gods), we must admit that he credits them with great ingenuity, and strong powers of abstract reasoning. He may be right in his opinion. In the same way, just as primitive men were keen reasoners, so early bees, more clever than modern bees, may have evolved the system of hexagonal cells, and only an early fish of genius could first have hit on the plan, now hereditary of killing a fly by blowing ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Lord Greystoke, stood deaf and unseeing, suffering the pangs of keen regret for the opportunity that he had wasted because he had been so gullible as to place credence in a single statement of the first lieutenant ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... be master in the editorial chair, at the bar, in the universities, in the counting-house and in the banking office; while the proudest of monarchs will undertake no enterprise requiring large expenditure until he is assured of the support of the keen-eyed, swarthy-visaged men who control the sinews of war. Generations of exclusion from agriculture and the mechanical arts and of devotion to commerce, have developed and inbred in the Jew ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... these conditions so resented the depredations of marauders that he bought in England two splendid stag-hounds, keen of scent, intelligent, faithful to their task, strong enough to throttle their quarry, be it deer or man. By the aid of these creatures, many criminals were captured. Their owner, by the intrepidity of his pursuit, was given a nickname, "Cyclone" ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... more of in his wanderings. Here the country became so wild and rugged that they had to abandon their horses and clamber over the high and rocky mountains on foot. In his boyhood in Italy the Prince had been a keen sportsman, and had purposely inured himself to fatigue and privations. These habits stood him now in good stead; he could rival even the light-footed Highlanders on long marches over rough ground; the coarsest and scantiest ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... Chirino, Morga and Colin, take pleasure in describing them as well-featured, with good aptitudes for any thing they take up, keen and susceptible and of resolute will, very clean and neat in their persons and clothing, and of good mien and bearing. (Morga). Others delight in minute accounts of their intelligence and pleasant manners, of their aptitude for music, ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... driven in upon his own resources. The three American writers whose personal endowment was perhaps the finest—Poe, Hawthorne, and Emerson—had all a certain starved and abstract quality. They could not retail the genteel tradition; they were too keen, too perceptive, and too independent for that. But life offered them little digestible material, nor were they naturally voracious. They were fastidious, and under the circumstances they were starved. Emerson, to be sure, fed ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... the discipline such training affords in organized endeavor; the stimulus it offers to all the virtues of a drudgery which, though it repel an unusually ardent and sensitive temperament, yet wears a precious jewel in its head; and an exceptionally keen sense of responsibility, since on occasion large amounts of money and the esteem of the school at large and the lives of a student's fellows depend upon his circumspection and skill. Such ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... pleased to hear. After having told them in great detail of the magnificence and secret things of the great kingdom of China, for whose conversion the fathers had so great a desire; and after he had asked many careful and keen questions about the Christian faith, he begged them urgently, at the end of several days, to baptize him, as he wished to become a Christian. Inasmuch as he had instruction in the tenets of our Catholic faith, they granted ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... these stories, which may take a high rank in our native fiction that depicts the various phases of the national life. Their humor is equally genuine and keen, and their pathos is delicate ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... room at the Gibson House yesterday, while the balmy May breeze blew through the open windows, fluttered the lace curtains and tossed the great Infidel's snowy hair to and fro. The Colonel had come in from New York during the morning and the keen white sunlight of a lovely May day filled his heart with gladness. After breakfast, the man who preaches the doctrine of the Golden Rule and the Gospel of Humanity and the while chaffs the gentlemen of the clerical profession, was ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... I rounded up in an angle against the building and gathered in this screaming thing which had inspired in me so keen a terror. ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... sat his horse, keen-eyed, vigilant and imperturbable in the storm of ruin. His early efforts counted for little in the blind confusion and turmoil of his crushed army. Lew Wallace had been ordered to the field in post haste. The bridge across Owl Creek, held by Sherman in the morning, was now in ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... state funeral from the papers much better than I can tell you them. I went to the Cathedral [St Paul's] and had the good fortune to get a capital seat—in front, close to the great door by which every one entered. It was bitter cold, a keen November wind blowing right in, and as I was there from eight till three, I expected nothing less than rheumatic fever the next day; however I didn't get it. It was pitiful to see the poor old Marquis of Anglesey—a year older than the Duke—standing ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... crowned him with the crown of perfection: his eyes were more ensorcelling than Harout and Marout[FN19] and the play of his glances more misleading than Taghout.[FN20] His cheeks shone with redness and his eyelashes outvied the keen-edged sword: the whiteness of his forehead resembled the shining moon and the blackness of his hair was as the murky night. His waist was more slender than the gossamer and his buttocks heavier than two hills of sand, troubling the heart with their softness; ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... occurs to me which I am unable to favor you with because of late we are not much together. Appreciating the keen delight with which you have been kind enough to receive my philosophy, I take the liberty of sending herewith a number of ideas which may please and benefit you, and which I have divided into ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... arrived at home was particularly affectionate, both to the Dowager and her children, of whom little Richard was now eight years old, while Isabel had just reached four. The keen eyes of the old lady—much sharper mentally than physically—soon discerned the presence of some new element in her daughter-in-law's mind. She closely questioned Maude as to what had happened, or was about to happen; and after a minute's hesitation, Maude told her ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... large shawl around her, and took her seat by the window. How still it was, how solemn, how peaceful! The full moon sailed through the deep blue sky, silver-white, crystal-clear. Numberless stars shone sharp and keen. The snowy ground glittered dazzlingly bright and cold; the trees stood like grim, motionless sentinels, guarding Danton Hall. The village lay hushed in midnight repose; the tall cross of the Catholic and the lofty spire of the Episcopal church flashed in the moon's rays. Rapid ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... With a keen eye, a very sharp tongue, a firm belief, doubtless, in the high church doctrines, and a decent reputation from the authorship of half-a-dozen novels, or other light works, Mrs. Trollope determined on no less an undertaking than ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... An examination of the heart by a physician is very desirable, before this type of game is played. Girls frequently overdo rope-skipping. No girl should jump more than fifty times in succession. Excessively keen competition under trying conditions frequently has a bad effect upon girls of a nervous temperament. Of course, girls should rest and not take part in active games when they are physically incapacitated. There are, however, a wide variety of games and sports in which girls may find ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... had known that the Arab's information, though partly true, was a ruse; that Jackson had indeed been observed by the keen-eyed Oriental, who had thereupon sat down purposely within earshot, and after a whispered hint to his companion, gave forth such information as would be likely to lead the British cruiser into his snares—speaking in bad English, under ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... The road was well beaten and the horses were keen to go, so that before many minutes were over they were half through the bush. Ranald's spirits rose and he began to take some interest in his companion's observations upon the beauty of the lights and shadows ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... sentence gives a pathetic close to these pages, so full of touches of humour, keen observation and racy anecdote. It would seem as if the hand which wielded so descriptive and ready a pen had wearied of its task; as if, at last, the sunny nature was overcast and the merry heart saddened. ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... so, sir," acknowledged Zora in a tone that brought a sudden keen glance from Taylor; but her face was a mask. "I ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of greeting from his principal, and, responding heartily to it and the inquiries accompanying it, he took a seat. With hat and cane in hand he sat on his little chair, showing his handsome teeth, twirling his light mustache, and looking at the proprietor with his keen gray eyes, his whole attitude and physiognomy expressing the words as plainly as if he had spoken them: "I'm your man; now, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... church, and whose charm probably lay in their being much bigger than he. He was, however, capable of a self-conscious shyness in the presence of even a little girl; and his sense of certain proprieties was extraordinarily keen. He told a friend that on one occasion, when the merest child, he had edged his way by the wall from one point of his bedroom to another, because he was not fully clothed, and his reflection in the glass could otherwise have been ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... have resorted to had they been so disposed, and why they used the softer material I will leave to some archaeologist to determine. The tools themselves are made after no pattern, but selected for their cutting qualities, as they all have a more or less keen edge which could be used for cutting purposes, and were no doubt highly prized, as they were found all in a pile in one corner of the vault and on top of which was found a stone pipe. The pipe is made bowl and stem together, and it is curious that people of such crude ideas of tools and weapons ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... all listened with keen delight as Larry imitated a host of feathered songsters, each one so true to life that the audience applauded again and again. At last Larry exhausted his repertoire, and for the first time appeared in the open, emerging from behind the trunk of a tree. He was heartily applauded, ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... this praise many deductions must be made. His jokes are broad and coarse; he is altogether a mannerist, and never knows where to stop. The [Greek: Paedenagan] seems quite unknown to him. His pleasantry does not proceed from keen and well-supported irony; just, but unexpected comparisons; but depends, for effect, chiefly upon strange polysyllabic epithets, and the endless enumeration of minute circumstances. In this he, no doubt, displays considerable ingenuity, and a strong ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... harm than good in the case supposed. Perhaps even you yourself will find it most prudent to act without remonstrating, or appearing to be aware of this little anecdote. Julia is very like a certain friend of mine; she has a quick and lively imagination, and keen feelings, which are apt to exaggerate both the good and evil they find in life. She is a charming girl, however, as generous and spirited as she is lovely. I paid her the kiss you sent her with all my heart, and she rapped my fingers for my reward with all hers. Pray return as soon as you can. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... no sign to help him, and, as a keen sense of disappointment assailed him that he should have got so near liberty and have to give up, he decided that the way to freedom ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... fastened, two feet long, and at the beginning about one and a half inches thick: this gradually became thinner, till it ended in a point. The thong was steeped in milk and then dried in the sun, and on account of this method of preparation its edge became as keen and cutting as a knife; further, the thong was generally changed at every sixth stroke, because contact with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and that's exactly why I was originally so keen for moving you. Hadn't you shown us enough how beautifully you could ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... her eyes before that searching and flashing glance. Her fanaticism had for the moment got the better of her, and much as she was wont at other times to hide her thoughts and feelings, it had, at that moment, carried her away and betrayed her to the keen eye ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... any beast that burrows, not for any bird that flies, Would I lose his large sound council, miss his keen amending eyes. He is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, engineer, And if flagrantly a poacher—'tain't for ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... man was Mr. Lispenard, very erect, very straight of eyebrow, keen of glance, precise of speech. His extraordinary black eyes peered out from beneath his level brows in a disquietingly observant manner. One felt immediately that one's hands and feet were peculiarly large and awkward, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... crept over the moors; the whitening sky showed rifts of blue; it was a beautiful morning. Mrs. Talcott, keeping a keen eye on the surrounding country, became aware presently that Mercedes had turned her gaze upon ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... had been a Farmer of the Excise and Customs before the Restoration. The messenger described in Hudibras, Part III. Canto II. 1407, as disturbing the Cabal with the account of the mobs burning Rumps, is said to have keen intended for Sir Martin Noell.] is this day dead of the plague ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... remembrance kindled in the night of ignorance, these living eternally in the presence of the mystery! They pine upon shores, looking over the unbridgeable abyss, yearning their souls towards that ultimate horizon, with limbs vainly strong, eyes vainly keen, hearts ready for an adventure they may not undertake. At their feet wails the sea with never-ending sadness. In their minds are haunting tunes, the echoes of the wailing of the waves. They cry, and no one hears; they sing, and no one responds; they are like those who have ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... civil war had been narrowly averted at least half a dozen times, had proved this beyond all cavil. With almost any other people than the Americans civil war would have come already. With all the vast future interests that were involved in these quarrels looming up before their keen, sagacious minds, it was a wonder that they had been kept from coming to blows. Such self-restraint had been greatly to their credit. It was the blessed fruit of more than a century of government by free discussion, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... forward. He was a very dark man, dark as a mulatto, with keen small eyes, and a hooked nose. I never beheld a more deformed and ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... doom, until one midwinter a frost more keen than any known before froze the sea into a floor of solid black ice. By night the swans crouched together on the rocky isle for warmth, but each morning they were frozen to the ground and could free themselves only with sore pain, for they left ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... it," said Sir Lionel. A keen judge of character, however, scrutinizing the colonel's face closely, would not then have read much ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... gave scant illumination: Jerry made out a small electric generator, and that was all. He felt a keen disappointment. Somehow this thin-faced man had communicated to him something of his own belief, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... move on and let a man do his work!" said the middle-aged street-sweep, smacking his lips over the fine flavour of his chewing tobacco and taking a deep breath of the keen autumn air. ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... oblige, had left his bed at too early an hour, and was exposing himself to fatigues unsuited to his age. He laughed at the idea, and assured me that he was an early riser, and accustomed to all kinds of exercise on horse and foot, being a keen sportsman, and frequently passing days together among the mountains on shooting expeditions, taking with him servants, horses, and provisions, and living in a tent. He appeared, in fact, to be ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... singer only sang the Joy of Life, For all too well, alas! the singer knew, How hard the daily toil, how keen the strife, How salt the falling tear, the joys ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... encircled by woods!" thy tranquil, cloistered town peeps forth from among thy moss-covered trees; the keen bright eyes of youth gaze from the academy, over the lake, to the busy highway, where the locomotive's dragon snorts, while it is flying through the wood. Soroe, thou poet's pearl, that hast in thy custody the honoured dust of ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... Touchstone of Sidney Greenstreet. We are accustomed to more physically attractive Touchstones, fools with finer bodies, and yet this keen-minded, stout person spoke his lines with such pertness and spontaneity that they rarely failed of their proper effect. As for Orlando, it seemed to me that Pedro de Cordoba was a little too rhetorical at times to fit in with the spirit of the performance, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... man who is educated all over; whose nerves are brought to their acutest sensibility; whose brain is cultured, keen, incisive, broad; whose hands are deft; whose eyes are alert, sensitive, microscopic; whose heart ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... visitor at Nauvoo, in 1843, describes him as "a jolly fellow, and one of the last persons whom he would have supposed God would have raised up as a Prophet."* Josiah Quincy said that Smith seemed to him to have a keen sense of the humorous aspects of his position. "It seems to me, General," Quincy said to him, "that you have too much power to be safely trusted in one man." "In your hands or that of any other person," was his reply, "so much power would no doubt be dangerous. I am the only man in the world ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... keen chase, both flyer and pursuer urging their steeds to the utmost; and under ordinary circumstances the Saracen would have escaped; but, hampered with his burden, and unable to exert his equestrian skill, he soon found that his ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... simile and metaphor. Take, for example, the transience of human life, a subject on which at times we most of us have keen vague thoughts that, we imagine, would be so profound could our tongues ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... Franks alone were qualified to observe in their turn, and to describe, the metropolis of the East. The ambassador of the great Otho, a bishop of Cremona, has painted the state of Constantinople about the middle of the tenth century: his style is glowing, his narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the prejudices and passions of Liutprand are stamped with an original character of freedom and genius. [11] From this scanty fund of foreign and domestic materials, I shall investigate the form and substance of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... it is to go into! Who wants to refrain from smart, spiteful sayings when he happens to think of them, to abjure laughing at friends and ridiculing enemies, to renounce the tart rebuff, the keen riposte? Amazing that any succeed! and many do. There are some gentlemen who are entirely agreeable—"gentlemen all through," like Robert Moore in Shirley. They have order, neatness, delicacy of movement, reticence, incuriosity: their unaffected English has almost the charm of a musical composition. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... without regret for what she had done, without the least doubt of her duty, without any pricing or enhancing of her self-devotion. But when this possibility presented itself to the erring and repentant brother, as it sometimes did, it smote upon his heart with such a keen, reproachful touch as he could hardly bear. No idea of retort upon his cruel brother came into his mind. New accusation of himself, fresh inward lamentings over his own unworthiness, and the ruin in which it was at once his consolation and his self-reproach that ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of copper. With iron and steel, they were entirely unacquainted. As when fighting at a distance, the bullet of the Spaniard was immeasurably superior to the arrow of the native, so in a hand to hand fight, the keen and glittering sabre of steel, especially in the hands of steel-clad cavaliers left the poorly armed Peruvians almost entirely ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... encephalic organization. Figs. 72 and 79 fairly indicate the effects of undue mental activity, the intellect causing vital expenditure resulting in the devitalization of the blood. While the intellect displays keen penetration, subtle discrimination, and profound discernment, the emotions exhibit intense sensitiveness, acute susceptibility, and inspirational impressibility. The encephalic temperament is characterized ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... superstitious? Here again we must beware of adopting current exaggerations. To begin with the peasantry, who are by far the most numerous class, we must admit that they are very far from being well educated, but they are keen to learn and they gladly send their children to the village schools, which have been greatly increased and improved in recent years. Another source of education is the army. Since the introduction of universal military service ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... keen satirical hit at the venality of Chinese judges in our next story. A husbandman, who wished to rear a particular kind of vegetable, found that the plants always died. He consulted an experienced ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... O bliss, thy living form I spied, Then a mere speck upon a distant sky, Yet my keen glance discerned its noble pride, And the full answer of that sun-filled eye; I knew it was the wing that must upbear My earthlier form into the ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... get to it first. Under the foliage of sarsaparilla our companion was kneeling down and catching in his hands a little streamlet of limpid water, which was trickling from between two rocks. With keen enjoyment, he was sprinkling it over his face and arms, an example each of us soon imitated. At last I hurried our party away, for the horrible roaring of the hurricane still seemed to din in my ears, and as yet we had no shelter within our reach. After having filled our gourds, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... canvass was earnestly, openly, and skilfully promoted it was also adroitly opposed. The keen and crafty politicians of New York were neither demonstrative nor frank in indicating their course, but they were watchful, sinuous, and efficient. Their plot was carefully concealed. They were ready to have a New-York candidate thrust upon them by other sections. If called upon to look ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... should be settled before Philip left England, and he must have faced parliament too, and, if possible, have been crowned. If he went now, he would never come back; let him court the people advised the keen Renard; let him play off the people against the lords; there was ill blood between the rich and poor, let ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... the same day, on one of the little inner islands, Marcel Lefort stood leaning upon his long boat paddle, awaiting orders; his pirogue was drawn up among the reeds hard by. He lifted his head, but hardly had his keen eye caught the shadowy outlines of a boat on the bay before ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... peoples, but also the Seneca branch of the Iroquois confederacy and a number of tribes on the lower Mississippi, pledged themselves with all solemnity to fulfill their prophet's injunction "to drive the dogs which wear red clothing into the sea." While keen-eyed warriors sought to keep up appearances by lounging about the forts and begging in their customary manner for tobacco, whiskey, and gunpowder, every wigwam and forest hamlet from Niagara to the Mississippi was astir. Dusky maidens chanted the ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg |
