"Keenness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had not a word to say. All was up now, of course; the Japs prosecuted the search with renewed keenness, and the nature of our ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... account of this voyage, given in the Biog. Brit. "If I knew the rascal's name," says he, "I would hang it up, as far as lies in my power, to everlasting infamy!" Undoubtedly it richly deserved such treatment, but there was no necessity for the doctor exhibiting such keenness ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... great measures, executive or administrative, on which he had set his mark, his various speeches and letters, more especially the full and frank communications which he addressed from time to time to the Secretary of State for India, Sir Charles Wood, show with what keenness of interest, as well as with what sagacity, he approached the study of Indian questions. A few extracts from his correspondence are here given to illustrate this; and as affording some indication of the unremitting industry with which he laboured at this period, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... seems to have passed—that heart-breaking era of the Great War. And now the Native Son has entered into and emerged from a new and terrible game. He has needed—and I doubt not displayed—all that he has of strength, natural and developed; of keenness and coolness; of bravery and fortitude; of capacity to endure and ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... paving. As for the outside, Nature, in the ample time that had been given her, had so mingled her filings and effacements with the marks of human wear and tear upon the house, that it was often hard to say in which of the two or if in both, any particular obliteration had its origin. The keenness was gone from the mouldings of the doorways, but whether worn out by the rubbing past of innumerable people's shoulders, and the moving of their heavy furniture, or by Time in a grander and more abstract form, did not appear. The iron stanchions inside the window-panes were eaten away to the size ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... running stream; where, turning their horses loose to graze till morning, they would build a cheerful fire of the dry brushwood close at hand, and prepare their evening meal, which they would eat with a keenness of appetite known only to the tired and hungry hunter. Each man was his own cook; their food consisting chiefly of venison and wild turkey their rifles procured them, and fish drawn from the neighboring brook, which they would broil on the glowing coals, fastened to a forked stick ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... work at the bar on Saturdays, in order to devote that day to hunting. He used to say that his great incentive to hard work at his profession in early days was his desire to keep hunters, and he retained his keenness as a sportsman as long as he was able to indulge it. Of his personal characteristics, it may be said that he was a spare man, with a Scottish, not an Irish, cast of countenance. He was scrupulously neat in his personal appearance, faultless in bands and necktie, and fond of wearing a flower in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... are not always synonymous, but was in full sympathy with the fresh, active, and, on the whole, joyous life around her. It was sufficient to her to be a part of the human tide, and to feel by contact the keenness and zest of the human endeavor. She was not troubled by the ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... beauty of the body, to train his mind to move graciously and harmoniously both in itself and in relation to those around him, finally, to make his whole life rhythmic—such an ideal is not only possible but almost inevitable to the pupil at Hellerau. The keenness which possesses the whole College, the delight of every one in their work, their comradeship, their lack of self-consciousness, their clean sense of the beauty of natural form, promises a new and more harmonious race, almost a realization ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... moon obscured, but the phosphorescence of water common in these latitudes at this season marked the prow and wake of the advancing ships with lines of smoky flame. It was this, perhaps, that saved us from disaster—this and the keenness of American eyes, and the straightness of American shooting. From the high-flung superstructure of a big ship one of the eager lookouts noted an unwonted line of shining foam on the port bow. In a second he realized ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... Most of the men sat with their arms crossed, and bodies half-turned, regarding the scene, while the two officers, the master and boat-steerer, if the latter could properly be thus designated, watched each evolution with a keenness of vigilance that let nothing like a sign or ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... that of suggesting the forms of proof together with the ways in which they may be used; that of helping the speaker to test the strength of his arguments; and that of enabling the speaker to attack his opponent's arguments with both keenness ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... down by memory from generation to generation, and a recitation of the whole "Odyssey" was not too much for a dinner-party,—the era of Periclean culture, when the Athenian populace was wont to pass whole days in the theatre, attending with unfaltering intellectual keenness and aesthetic delight to three or four long dramas, either of which would exhaust a modern audience,—the wild and vast systems of imaginary abstractions, which the Neo-Platonists, as also the German transcendentalists, so strangely devised and became enamored of,—the grotesque views of men and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... advance to Delhi, was unopposed. Whatever the sepoys may have been in British pay, in revolt they were energetic and persevering, and, as long as they entertained any hope of success, fought with keenness; as a loyal native in Delhi described them, "they were willing to take life, and willing to give their lives away." It had been arranged, before General Anson's death, that a brigade should advance from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... now reached the pitch of exquisite keenness that made it something spiritual. Solicitously they kept him alive, and far back in his mind Sime wondered why they bothered to do that. Couldn't they be satisfied with what ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... you've had, she puts all right." The man was right—the most delightful conversation that can be held is between a rational man and woman who love each other, who understand each other, and who have sufficient worldly keenness to keep clear of lowering cares. A man rightly mated feels it an absolute delight to confide the innermost secrets of life to his wife; and the woman would feel almost criminal if she kept the pettiest of petty secrets from her partner. They are ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... differences, the little characteristic meannesses or felicities that distinguished one from another, did not count for very much in his estimation. When a knowledge of such individual traits was essential to his plans, he mastered them with singular keenness and quickness of comprehension. When such knowledge was unnecessary, or as soon as it ceased to be of service, he dismissed the extraneous personalities from his mind almost as completely as if they had had no existence. Few men were less embarrassed with acquaintances than he; yet he had an ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... reckoned among the daughters of gluttony, which are the results of eating and drinking immoderately. These may be accounted for either on the part of the soul or on the part of the body. On the part of the soul these results are of four kinds. First, as regards the reason, whose keenness is dulled by immoderate meat and drink, and in this respect we reckon as a daughter of gluttony, "dullness of sense in the understanding," on account of the fumes of food disturbing the brain. Even so, on the other hand, abstinence conduces to the penetrating ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... down his glass with a jerk as though he had been struck. He looked around on the company that filled the front room of the Faisan d'Or, and on the faces of the men who had looked up to him for years as the hero of 1870 he now saw only the keenness to fight. He was old, forgotten, and no longer respected, and the blow was ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... second one upon the world. Against this there should be no objection on the score of patriotism. He naturally turned for his subject to the Revolution, with the details of which he was familiar by his acquaintance with the men who had shared prominently in its conduct, and had felt all the keenness of a personal triumph in its success. The very county, moreover, in which he had made his home was full of recollections. Westchester had been the neutral ground between the English forces stationed in New York and the American army encamped in the highlands ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... over the carcass of his kill: but with the falling of night came renewed hope for, in common with the great cats, Tarzan was, to a greater or lesser extent, a nocturnal beast. It is true he could not see by night as well as they, but that lack was largely recompensed for by the keenness of his scent and the highly developed sensitiveness of his other organs of perception. As the blind follow and interpret their Braille characters with deft fingers, so Tarzan reads the book of the ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... has it perfect by the beginning of June; that cry, long, repeated, loudening and sharpening in the intensity of rising passion, till it stops suddenly, exhausted at the point where pleasure, from very keenness, turns to pain; ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... began, and yet speaking retreated from mortal view, vanishing into thin air away out of their eyes. The Dardanian princes knew the god and the arms of deity, and heard the clash of his quiver as he went. So they restrain Ascanius' keenness for battle by the words of Phoebus' will; themselves they again close in conflict, and cast their lives into the perilous breach. Shouts run all along the battlemented walls; ringing bows are drawn and javelin thongs twisted: all the ground is strewn with ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... the sense in which after-dinner speaking is called 'good,' as good whist after dinner. It may seem otherwise, even to the spectators; but having themselves dined like the rest, they are not in a position to give an opinion. The keenness of observation is blunted by food and wine; the delicate perceptions are gone; and what is left of the intelligence is generally devoted to finding faults in your partner's play. The consciousness of mistakes on your own ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... that his master did not like to have them play. Then I learned the reason, and from that time I noticed a decided coolness on the part of Ratu Lala toward me. The fact, no doubt, is that Ratu Lala being exceptionally keen on sport, this very keenness made him impatient of defeat, or even of any question as to a possible want of success on his part, as I afterwards learnt ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... A keenness in the observation of facts, characteristic of the mind of the man, had led Harvey to doubt the truth of existing doctrines as to the phenomena of the circulation. Galen had taught that "the arteries are filled, like bellows, because they are expanded," but Harvey thought that ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... confidence is to believe that I shall preach well next time. However, there may be some advantages in hearing one who is not too far away from the difficulties with which you will soon be contending yourselves; and the keenness with which I have felt these difficulties may have made me reflect, more than others to whom the path of excellence has been easier, on ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... the destinies of mankind. To his friend's astonishment, Frederick did not display his old incisiveness in debate, whether in attack or defence. There was a cheerful placidity about him which took the keenness from any hope or fear of a universal character upon which they ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... across the narrow table; but Margaret innocently had begun a conversation with Bud about the school, and had to be addressed by name each time before Mr. West could get her attention. Bud, with a boy's keenness, noticed her aversion, and put aside his own backwardness, entering into the contest with remarkably voluble replies. The minister, if he would be in the talk at all, was forced to join in with ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... natural phenomena were written; opportunities were given for the naturalists to collect specimens, and for the artist to make drawings. The net was frequently drawn in the bays for examples of marine life. Everybody when ashore kept a look out for plants, birds, beasts, and insects. In short, a keenness for investigation, an assiduity in observation, animated the whole ship's company, stimulated by the example of the commander, who never spared himself in his work, and interested ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... ravenously. He said it was the best morsel he ever tasted! It was scant times when a Colonel of artillery was as famished as he was! I cut up the rest of the beef, and divided among several of us, and we cooked it on a stick, the only cooking utensil we had at hand, and ate it, with a keenness of enjoyment that terrapin, canvass back duck, and Lynnhaven oysters could not provoke me to now. My dear! but that hot meat was good, to palates accustomed, mostly, to nothing, and no salt on that, ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... Meredith, and it was evident that he was bringing to bear upon the matter in hand that intelligence and keenness of perception which had made him a person of some prominence in other scenes where Nature has ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... his curiosity. Probably his ride, and a natural desire to return to the ranch as quickly as possible, had dulled the keenness of his faculties of observation. Certain it is that, squalid as the place was, there was an air of recent habitation about it that he missed. He took it for a deserted shack merely, and gave it no ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... his left hand, as it hung carelessly beside him, here interrupted Huldbrand's relation, and drew his eye to the part affected. Undine had fastened her pearly teeth, and not without some keenness too, upon one of his fingers, appearing at the same time very gloomy and displeased. On a sudden, however, she looked up in his eyes with an expression of tender ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... born of their first meeting at court, becomes stronger and truer amid scenes of delicate comedy and merry laughter. Once in Arden, Orlando ceases to brood morosely over the wrongs done him; Rosalind's wit becomes sweeter while losing none of its keenness; and Touchstone feels himself no longer a plaything, but a man. So we are not surprised when Oliver, the wicked brother, lost in the forest and rescued from mortal danger by the lad he has always sought to injure, awakens to his better self; nor when ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... the front the fulfillment of what she has only seen as intention and promise during the other rehearsals. But I am afraid that beginners now are not so keen as they used to be. The first wicked thing I did in a theater sprang from excess of keenness. I borrowed a knife from a carpenter and made a slit in the canvas to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... further incensed by an incident which happened several weeks after the auction. Tom Fletcher was determined that he would question the parson some day, in the presence of others. He prided himself upon his keenness of observation and shrewdness in detecting a guilty manner in those whom he suspected of wrong-doing. The first opportunity he seized when he met the parson at the blacksmith shop, waiting for his ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... by the Roman Catholics that this statement of Lafayette's was ingeniously extracted from a sentence in a letter of his to a friend in which he assures this friend that such a fear is groundless. Morse followed the matter up with the patience and keenness of a detective, and proved that no such letter had ever been written by Lafayette, that it was a clumsy forgery, but that he really had made use of the sentiment quoted above, not only to Morse himself, but to others of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... according to the testimony of my old nurse, had belonged to several of my ancestors, had been in my case transformed in kind without losing its nature, transferring its abode from the sight to the hearing, whence resulted its keenness, and my ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... first notice me?" she demanded. "In bathing. That bathing suit cost more than any two of my dresses. It is absolutely right." August was confused by the keenness of her perception. It wasn't proper for a woman to understand such facts. He was at a loss for a reply. "Seven men spoke to me in it on one afternoon. It is no good for you to try to reassure me with platitudes; I know better. I ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... knowledge of mankind and their affairs great and multifarious"; but it did not state truly, that, "in all his essays, verse or prose, serious or comic, he never trespassed against decorum or sound morals," or that "the keenness of his wit was combined with such playfulness of fancy, good-humor, and kindness of natural sentiment, that his merits were ungrudgingly acknowledged even by those of politics most different from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the barb turned on a stout pivot of steel, but was kept in line with the shaft by a tiny wooden peg which passed through barb and shaft, being then cut off smoothly on both sides. The point of the harpoon had at one side a wedge-shaped edge, ground to razor keenness, the other side was flat. The shaft, about thirty inches long, was of the best malleable iron, so soft that it would tie into a knot and straighten out again without fracture. Three harpoons, or "irons" as they were always called, were placed in each boat, fitted one above the other ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... which followed, the man of the cheery voice seemed to the youth to possess a wand of a magic kind. He threaded the mazes of the tangled forest with a strange fortune. In encounters with guards and patrols he displayed the keenness of a detective and the valor of a gamin. Obstacles fell before him and became of assistance. The youth, with his chin still on his breast, stood woodenly by while his companion beat ways and means out ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... certainly was not my friend. I do not know that I deserved to find a friend in my new master, but I think that a man with better judgment would not have formed so low an opinion of me as he did. Years have gone by, and I can write now, and almost feel, without anger; but I can remember well the keenness of my anguish when I was treated as though I were unfit for any useful work. I did struggle—not to do the work, for there was nothing which was not easy without any struggling—but to show that I was willing ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... eighteenth there was a gradual progress toward religious liberalism. The population steadily increased, and New England's unremitting struggle with a not too friendly soil, her hardihood upon the seas, and her keenness in trade, became proverbial throughout the country. Her seaport towns were wealthy. The general standards of living remained frugal, but extreme poverty was rare. Her people still made, as in the earliest ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... of the excellence of all he had left behind him in the north. He incarnated that aristocratic temper which has in all times, since Duke William crossed the water, leavened the strong mass of the Anglo-Saxon character, balancing its rude democratic strength with the keenness of a higher physical organization and the nobility of a more disinterested daring, and again and again rousing the English-speaking races to life and conquest, when they were sunk deep in the sordid interests of trade and money- making. So when Arnold talked of laws and institutions ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... threatening to cut off the English settlers from expansion to the west. A glance at the map will reveal the immense strategic importance of Newfoundland to two Powers with the possessions and claims indicated above. No doubt a consciousness of deeper differences underlay the keenness of commercial rivalry. ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... seasons rarely granted to people of importance. Their debts to the worlds of business or society or literature held in abeyance, they were lightly devoting their days to fishing and hunting, sailing and riding, while the keenness of their intellectual interests—they belonged to a very different set from Quadratilla's—was restfully tempered and the sincerity of them ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... is this: it covets praise. It feeds and fattens on commendation. It constantly seeks to be highly esteemed, to have its worth properly appraised. It is immensely impressed with its own importance, its value to society, its keenness, wisdom or aptness, and wishes others to be so impressed also. It is fond of a mirror, especially one made to magnify. It seeks recognition. It presses forward, rudely or politely, according as its ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... the Esquimaux of Labrador, for they nearly resemble that people. They are short, and somewhat corpulent; and have broad faces, flat noses, thick lips, black hair, and a yellowish tawny complexion. The keenness of the wind and the glare of the snow, render them subject to painful disorders in the eyes: they are also afflicted with many diseases, which tend to render them short lived. They are a quiet, orderly, and good-humoured people; but of a cold, phlegmatic, and indolent disposition. They never wash ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... in tracking Lawrence, but Foster could not see what it was. Indeed, he was frankly puzzled. There was a mystery about Carmen's packet, he had been warned out of Edinburgh, and inquiries about him were afterwards made, while Daly's keenness was not quite explained. He wondered whether these things were somehow related, but at present they only offered him tangled clews that led nowhere. Well, he might be able to unravel them by and by, and getting up ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... wished to be held a stranger to falsehood; and accordingly he mingled craft and candour in such wise that, though his words did lack truth, yet there was nothing to betoken the truth and betray how far his keenness went. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... The rapid keenness of vision that accompanies cataclysms spared him no detail. He saw that he was almost certain to be unseated now that Mora would not be at hand to plead his cause; and the consequences of defeat, bankruptcy, poverty and something worse, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... may be printed here, all testifying to the multifarious interests of this remarkable man, who not only knew everyone worth knowing, but projected himself into their careers with so much sympathy and keenness. The first is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... and Carnaby—when I ask for it, with all that lies beneath me here," he said, and sat very still a space, with eyes that had lost their keenness fixed upon the bush. He did not see the big balsam in front of him nor the dusky firs, for it was once more the picture of a woman with red-gold hair standing in an English rose garden his fancy ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... footsteps creeping softly along the hall and a glimpse of an awed, tear-stained face peering at her from the doorway suddenly recalled to her mind the scene of yesterday, and the bitter truth rushed over her with agonizing keenness. She could never walk again! All her days must be spent in a wheel-chair, a helpless prisoner! The Lilac Lady was right,—she wanted to turn her face to the wall, to say good-bye to her friends and hide,—hide from the ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Comedy is beyond dispute the greatest book of personal and experimental religion the world has ever seen. The consuming intensity of its author's feelings about sin and holiness, the keenness and the bitterness of his remorse, and the rigour and the severity of his revenge, his superb intellect and his universal learning, all set ablaze by his splendid imagination—all that combines to make the Divine Comedy ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... research, and it requires much experience in selecting suitable men and in training them to the desirable degree of efficiency, after having determined the special qualities required. Important qualifications in industrial researchers are keenness, inspiration and confidence; these are often unconsidered by manufacturers, who in endeavoring to select, say, a research chemist, are likely to regard every chemist as a qualified ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... humor, Mr. Clarence Day, Jr., speculates with so much whimsicality upon the possible effects of surgical rejuvenation of men that one might overlook the keenness of his observation in a hurried perusal of his article. For the sake of preserving it for more leisurely study, and because the points raised are really worthy of attention, the article is reproduced here in full, with acknowledgments to The Literary Review, in which it first appeared, of date ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... is faithful to right order as far as he understands it. But one who sees right and wills wrong is in no sense good, but altogether bad. Allowing that for the solution of some delicate moral problems a certain height of tone and keenness of insight inseparable from habitual conscientiousness is necessary, yet mere intellectual acumen, in the absence of any notably biassing influence, suffices to give us as great a teacher as Aristotle, who, if exonerated from graver charges, offers no ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... shrinking, was possessed by a sense of anti-climax. Life had a brassy ring. She had come home with at least something of her mother's military keenness for the "campaign" of vindication, but within a day or two she was thinking, rather cynically and cheaply, that the game was not worth the candle. What difference did it all make, in her actual life? People might whisper and nudge ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the young painter's fears; he colored as he looked at Adelaide's mother, but he saw nothing in her countenance but the expression of the frankest good-nature; no double meaning marred its charm; its keenness was not perifidious, its humor seemed kindly, and no trace ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... quietude, and had even begged Mrs. Winthrop and Aaron, who had naturally lingered behind every one else, to leave him alone with his child. The excitement had not passed away: it had only reached that stage when the keenness of the susceptibility makes external stimulus intolerable—when there is no sense of weariness, but rather an intensity of inward life, under which sleep is an impossibility. Any one who has watched such moments in other men remembers the brightness ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... tones while her father listened with a deep interest. The well tried soldier, the gallant commander at Badajos, at Corunna, the hero of many fierce conflicts, and the firm friend and favourite of the Duke of Wellington, listened to the conversation of his daughter with as much keenness as a question involving the ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... It is rather keenness that is akin to beauty, as the thorn to the flower. So sarcasm is not unbecoming in woman, though coming from her it hurts. But ridicule which savours of bulkiness woman had better leave to our sublime sex. The masculine Falstaff makes our sides ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... Germantown and Monmouth,—the reduction of the forts at Verplanck's Ferry, and the forays led against New Bedford and the Vineyard,—all these familiarized him with the bloody fruits of civil strife. But they never blunted for one moment the keenness of his humanity, or warped those sentiments of refinement and liberality that always distinguished him. Within the limited range of his narrow sphere, he was constantly found the friend and reliever of the wounded or captive Americans, and the protector and benefactor of the followers of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... banishment from London without remonstrance. He was not astonished at the result of the talk against him. That his one great enemy should have poisoned the wells so easily was not very surprising. He could not help knowing that the very keenness and ardour of his friends had produced prejudice against him. There was, among the religious circles in London, a perhaps healthy suspicion of hero worship for popular preachers, and of any indiscreet zeal. The great Religious Orders knew how to deal with life, and it was safer to have an enthusiasm ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... rapture higher, and she was always new. These are the wondrous pains, and wondrous pleasures that love by turns inspires, till it grows wise by time and repetition, and then the god assumes a serious gravity, enjoyment takes off the uneasy keenness of the passion, the little jealous quarrels rise no more; quarrels, the very feathers of love's darts, that send them with more swiftness to the heart; and when they cease, your transports lessen ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... wayward and impulsive Emilia the good lady was far more merciful. With all Aunt Jane's formidable keenness, she was a little apt to be disarmed by youth and beauty, and had no very stern retributions except for those past middle age. Emilia especially charmed her while she repelled. There was no getting beyond a certain point with this strange girl, any more than with Philip; but her depths ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... had proceeded many rods, the Indians stopped, and appeared to gaze at some signs on the earth with more than their usual keenness. Both father and son spoke quick and loud, now looking at the object of their mutual admiration, and now regarding each other with the most ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... turned his face to Gardiner with an expression of inquiry. In his exasperated mood against the queen, the crafty priest's ambiguous remark struck him with double keenness. ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... might be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely: but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an austere ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... during this brief rest—in a deep peat-hag, down which trickled a little stream of rain-water—that Lionel discovered two things: first, that he was wet to the skin, and, second, that the wind in these altitudes was of an Arctic keenness. So long as he had been kept going, he had not paid much attention; but now this bitter blast seemed to pierce him to the very marrow; and he began to think that these were very pleasant conditions for a professional singer to be in—for ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... always a warmish game. The rivalry between the various Houses was great, and the football cup especially was fought for with immense keenness. Also, the match was the last fixture of the season, and there was a certain feeling in the teams that if they did happen to disable a man or two, it would not matter much. The injured sportsman would not be needed for School-match purposes for another ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... both causes. His temper was reserved and proud; he had few friends—no bosom-companion; he lived by himself, and among his books and maps. M. Bourienne, whose friendship for him commenced thus early, says—"Buonaparte was noticeable at Brienne for his Italian complexion, the keenness of his look, and the tone of his conversation both with masters and comrades. There was almost always a dash of bitterness in what he said. He had very little of the disposition that leads to attachments; ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... St. Germain d'Auxerre, who at a certain period was the patron of sportsmen, made hunting his habitual relaxation. He devoted himself to it with great keenness in his youth, before he became bishop, that is, when he was Duke of Auxerre and general of the troops of the provinces. Subsequently, when against his will he was raised to the episcopal dignity, not only did he give up all pleasures, but he ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... forgotten his keenness of sight. His face flashed suddenly into a grim smile. The tail of his eye resting upon us, and seeming to forbid us to move, he gave some orders. The colour fled from my face. To escape indeed was impossible, for we were hemmed in by the press and could scarcely stir ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... effort. Captivated by its grace of motion, and jealous of its freedom, I would for hours watch it. And this eagle I knew, from the height and distance from which it would swoop down on its prey, to be possessed of eyesight of unrivalled keenness in addition to ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... endeavour of the wrestler and the runner and the player of games—all will compete, not for sordid coin and base material reward, but for the joy that shall be theirs in the development and vigour of flesh and in the development and keenness of spirit. All will be joy-smiths, and their task shall be to beat out laughter from the ringing anvil ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... and keenness of perception. We did not take off our clothes nor unsaddle our horses, tired as we were. I put my Mauser inside my coat and began to look about and scrutinize the people. The first thing I discovered was the butt end of a ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... had no favourites and let no unjust acts be imputed to him. He was stern towards the great and careful for the common people; at his first word men could tell what they had to expect from him. The French were frightened at the keenness of his expression, but they reverenced his high spirit, his bravery and truthfulness. 'He transacts all his affairs himself; he considers them well before he undertakes them; he never does anything fruitlessly. He is free from ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... does not matter, for he is able to point out that an Australian Legislature had at one time passed a resolution, and agreed on a petition to the Imperial Parliament, in reference to the Corn Laws. Just fancy the keenness, the omnivorousness, the promptitude of that marvellous Old Man, who had read one of the most recently published works, and had promptly seized on a point bearing reference to a detail ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... soon as it establishes a connection with the history of kingdoms, and the ambitions, passions, or fortunes of mankind; so that men may pore over a map with more eagerness than the greatest of romances can excite, or scan a countryside with a keenness that the beauty of no picture could evoke. To Captain Dieppe, a soldier, even so much apology was not necessary for the careful scrutiny of topographical features which was his first act on reaching the Cross on the hillside. ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... along its wooded course; the range greenly aflame with new foliage rose into radiant space; flickers hammered on resonant, dead wood. Gordon banished the somber memory of the priest. He was conscious of a sudden excitement, a keenness of response to living like a renewal of youth. He wished that Meta Beggs would appear; his direction to her had been vague; she might easily go astray and miss him. But he saw her, after what seemed an interminable period, leaving the road and crossing the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... have fallen into a fireside, dilettante culture of ideas as an intellectual pleasure. Amos and Isaiah do not deal in ideas. Their strength lies in love and hatred, in the keenness and depth of their division between right and wrong. They repeat the work of God the Creator: chaotic sameness becomes diverse; the heavenly firmament mounts on high; there is Light and ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... joint fabrication of his friends Wilson and Lockhart.[39] This singular production produced a sensation in the capital unequalled in the history of any other literary performance; and though, from the evident personalities and the keenness of the satire, it had to be cancelled, so that a copy in the pages of the magazine is now a rarity, it sufficiently attained the purpose of directing public attention to the newly-established periodical. The "Chaldee Manuscript" appeared ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... it, for he was treasurer. "We'll have a hefty brew. You'd pretty average cool cheek, Turkey, to jaw about our keenness an' punctuality." ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... next day, perhaps. At present I have a very difficult task before me. Good-bye for the present." And hailing a hansom he jumped in and drove away, being careful not to give the address to the driver while within my hearing. Ambler Jevons had been born with the instincts of a detective. The keenness of his ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... with common sense. There was benevolence in the expansive brow and kindliness and humor as well as character, about the lines of the nose and the wide, full-lipped mouth, and the eyes diffused a light which was not only bright but genial, and which robbed them of keenness as they rested upon the pathetic and at the same time distinguished figure before him. What the kindly eyes took in a glance was that the pale and haggard young stranger with the big brow and eyes and the clear-cut features, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... a century. There was, he said, the individuality of an age, but not of a country. Morritt, a zealous worshipper of the old bard, was incensed at a system which would turn him into a polytheist, gave battle with keenness, and was joined by Sotheby, our host. Mr. Coleridge behaved with the utmost complaisance and temper, but relaxed not from his exertions. "Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words." Morritt's impatience; must have cost him an extra sixpence worth ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Adolphe, she rather avoided than encouraged him. Her woman's keenness of observation showed her that he sympathised with her and admired her—in fact, that he was deeply in love with her, though he strenuously endeavoured not to ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... wit, born in London, son of a theatrical magistrate; began life as a printer; composed "Black-eyed Susan"; contributed to Punch "Mrs. Caudle's Lectures" among other pieces, and edited magazines; the keenness of his satire was the reflex of a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... was therefore purely local. How narrow and provincial seems his experience of life! A little city, an isolated society, a country village! Yet through books, and through intercourse with intelligent persons, he was really "set in a large place." The proof of this largeness, and of the keenness of his mental and moral vision, is that, in regard to some of the chief concerns of mankind, he was a seer and a fore-seer. This prophetic quality of his I hope to demonstrate to-night in three great fields of ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... praiseworthy manner, and exhorted the people to be quiet; but my own impression is that they were already completely cowed by the sudden appearance of the military from two quarters at once. By no means wanting in keenness of perception, they knew that, if ordered to do so, the soldiers will fire "at" them, and not vaguely, after the manner of the police. So the whole affair passed off quietly, and after trebling the ordinary ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... which the swarming spies laid bare. The group, of whose scrutiny we had become aware, was made up of ouvriers and ouvrieres, the men in the invariable blouse, with dark matted hair and black eyes, sometimes with a ratlike keenness of glance as they surveyed us. The women were roughly dressed, sometimes in sabots, with heads bare or surmounted by conical caps. They belonged to the proletariat, the class out of which had come in the Reign of Terror the sans-culottes of evil memory and the tricoteuses ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... watchfulness, the year seems to have escaped us. We know that the birds sang, that the flowers bloomed, that the grass was green, but it seems to us that we did not take our joy of them with sufficient keenness; our sweetheart came, but we did not look deep enough into her eyes. If only we live to see the wild rose again! But meanwhile here ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... among women;—for to this silent ministry their nature calls them, endowed, as it is, with fineness of fibre, and a subtile keenness of perception outrunning slow-footed reason;—and she of whom we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... royal Winchester, held the balance between Maud and Stephen, and with the election of Henry II., the first Plantagenet, we come upon the establishment of the modern municipal constitution and the long battle for freedom. The Londoner set a pattern to other English burghers. His keenness in trade, his vivacity, his tenacity of liberty and, perhaps above all, the combination of duty and credit which brought him wealth, have made his city what it is—the central feature of ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... lucrative use can only be found for the excess. This excess, not being able to earn so much as when capital was less plentiful, competes for safe investments and forces down the interest rate on all capital. Mr. Charles A. Conant has well described the keenness of the scramble for safe investments, even at the prevailing low rates of interest. At the close of the war with Turkey, the Greek loan, guaranteed by Great Britain, France, and Russia, was floated with ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... that their part can be written below that of clarinets or hautboys, frequently transpose entire passages an octave higher. The conductor, if he does not carefully peruse his score, if he is not thoroughly acquainted with the work he is conducting, or if his ear lacks keenness, will not perceive the strange liberty thus taken. Nevertheless, multitudes of such instances occur, and care should be taken to banish ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... of miscellaneous flirtations, or more or less innocent dalliance, had ever weakened the witchery of woman's charms to him, or dulled the keenness of his sensibility to the heaven she can bestow. For an hour he wandered about the dark and silent village street, waiting for the tumult of his emotions to subside sufficiently to leave him in some ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... a look of such keenness that Prescott saw again the strength and penetration underlying her timid and doubtful manner. She seemed to be reassured ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... they caused a stirring of their whole being, a kind of riot of the senses to which they returned on other evenings as a drunkard to his cups. After such an evening they found themselves, on the next morning, confused and filled with vague longings. They had lost their keenness for fun, they heard without hearing the talk of the men about the station and in the stores, they went slinking through the streets in groups and people seeing them nodded their heads and said, "It is ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... time for revery. Roy was speaking again, asking another of those sharp questions that showed very well why he should have been chosen as a spy hunter, or for anything else that required keenness of mind. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... enough if I remember; and Horace and Martial cry "Carpe rosas" perpetually. Are the modern inhabitants still more refined than they in their researches after pleasure? and are the present race of ladies capable of increasing, beyond that of their ancestors, the keenness of any corporeal sense? I should think not. Here are however amusements enough at Rome without trying ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... period to save Burgoyne, and though the passes in the Highlands were acquired, they could not be retained. The British had reduced to ashes every village and almost every house within their power, but this wanton and useless destruction served to irritate without tending to subdue. A keenness was given to the resentment of the injured, which outlived the contest ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... English child, a Nature lesson in Utopia would come as a revelation. He would learn for the first time that, far from being innately stupid, the average English child has it in him to reach a very high level of keenness, acuteness, and intellectual activity. Whenever a lesson is given on a natural object, e.g. a flower or a leaf, every child has a specimen and a lens. The object is then closely and carefully observed, in the ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... phases of the emergency, there are some which directly affect the wage-earner. One is the failure of wages to keep pace with the higher cost of living; another is the increase in the number and proportion of wage-earning women and the resultant keenness of competition for places; another is the fact that women workers are for the most part unorganized and unprotected; another is the occasional effect of supplementary wages of vice in lowering the wages ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... want, and a brother-in-law he wanted less, with only a third of that which his greedy heart thirsted for. No, he would measure swords with Jean, and though his blade was less stout than that of the stolid giant he relied upon its superior keenness and ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... considerations. The first is purely philosophical, and stops the inquiry at once if it can be settled in the negative. The other calls in also the aid of history and criticism. Both questions have been followed out of late with great keenness and interest, but it is the first which at present assumes an importance which it never had before, with its tremendous negative answer, revolutionising not only the past, but the whole future of mankind; and it is to the first that Mr. Mozley's ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Melinoff of old, then a sprightly enough man for his years, was no more, and it was a decrepit, stoop-shouldered, dirty and grey-bearded figure that shuffled now around the old-clothes shop, apathetic of "bargains," where before it had been a man whose keenness was matched only by the sort of eager craft and low cunning with which he had conducted ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... which had been so keen and saddening at first, wore gradually away from the radiant face of the slave, though she thought no less earnestly and dearly of her friends and her home, far away in the Circassian hills; yet absence and time had robbed her grief of its keenness, while the easy and luxuriant mode of living that she enjoyed had again restored the roundness of her beautiful form, had once more imparted the rose to her check, and the elasticity of her childhood's day to her ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... cause to repudiate this opinion in a conviction which was less to the credit of the acumen of Tsiskwa than a full confession of his breach of etiquette in tormenting his young "grandfather" might have been. At the time Savanukah felt a certain, malicious pride in the old man's keenness and poise and capacity, and he said apart to the inquisitive bystanders that, as might have been expected, the big bird, Tsiskwa-yah, had pounced upon the little bird, Tscholen-tit—for the name of each signifies ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... required; and he was in Canada looking round and negotiating. He was already known to the Chief Justice and Mariette, and Elizabeth fell quickly in love with his white hair, his black eyes, his rapier-like slenderness and keenness, and that pleasant mingling in him—so common in the men of his race—of the dry shrewdness of the financier with a kind of ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... taken up the matter with the greatest keenness. She was evidently in dead earnest about it. Marjorie was agreeably surprised, and on the strength of this mutual confidence her old affection for her chum revived. Once more they went about the school arm in arm, sat next to each other at tea, and wrote each other private ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and the captain was near to suffocation when it was finished, but he watched her with anxious keenness as he waited for her to reply. The stern lines of her mouth relaxed slowly. A brilliant red geranium in the window glowed in the sunlight which had just reached it. The world was not all dark. The room seemed less lonely with the captain in it, as she glanced around it a second time. She scanned ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... meant as plainly as though he had spoken in so many words: "Stay where you are and I don't care in the least what you do, but don't try to cross this entrance if you fear the length of my teeth and the keenness thereof." And she did fear them, very much, for she remembered the gashes across the back and the terrible rips up the side, of the ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... almost unbroken accompaniment we managed also to do a bit of literary discussion, and, though Loken's reading of Bengali literature was less extensive than mine, he made up for that by the keenness of his intellect. Among the subjects we discussed ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... The keenness of my appetite being satisfied, I felt that I could wait till the rest was more properly cooked. I now bethought me that it would be wise, while the hare was roasting, to bring in the lynx, at all events; for though not dainty food, I had seen Indians eat the flesh of the animal, and it was very ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... glanced often at the man, who did not look in the least as she had fancied, except that he really did have a high nose and terribly keen eyes with something behind the keenness that baffled her. And his mouth was pleasant, especially when that smile hid just behind his lips; also, she liked his hair, which was thick and brown, with hints of red in it here and there, and a strong inclination to curl ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... which young people are thus induced to acquire knowledge, without study and labor, is not education. It occupies but does not enrich the mind. It imparts a stimulus for the time, and produces a sort of intellectual keenness and cleverness; but, without an implanted purpose and a higher object that mere pleasure, it will bring with it no solid advantage. In such cases knowledge produces but a passing impression; a sensation, gut no more; it is, in fact, the merest epicurism of intelligence—sensuous, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... formations, configurations, and processes yields each its own special phase of discipline and its own measure of information. The work takes on various chemical, mechanical, and biological aspects. As a means of discipline it calls for keenness and diligence in observation, circumspection in inference, a judicial balancing of factors in interpretation. An active use of the scientific imagination is called forth in following formations to inaccessible depths or ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Barrie's genius, as of all genius, eludes analysis; but some of its characteristics are not hard to define. His wonderful keenness of observation and tenacity of remembrance of the pettinesses of daily existence, which in its amazing minuteness reminds us of Dickens and Mark Twain, and his sensitiveness to the humorous aspects of their little misfits and hypocrisies and lack of proportion, might if ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... called forth by the war. When, therefore, the fourth Colonial Conference was summoned to meet in London in 1902 on the occasion of the coronation of Edward VII, Chamberlain urged with all his force and keenness a wide programme of centralized action. "Very great expectations," he declared in his opening address, "have been formed as to the results which may accrue from our meeting." The expectations, however, were doomed to disappointment. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... given a little teaching to do, and found it perfectly enchanting. Imagine children with everything greedy and sensual gone, with none of the crossness or spitefulness that comes of fatigue or pressure, but with all the interesting passions of humanity, admiration, keenness, curiosity, and even jealousy, emulation, and anger, all alive and active in them. They were not angelic children at all, neither meek nor mild. But they were generous and affectionate, and it was easy to ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... curiosity. I speak particularly of the young ladies. St. John's eyes, though clear enough in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom. He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people's thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... bitterly. "You do not know the Baggaras. They are keenness itself. It is real enough, but I am well ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... listening idly to the sound from below. She could hear John Coulson's low, deep voice, and Sarah Emily's loud lamentations. She wished she could act like Sarah Emily, it seemed so much more sympathetic. Her mind seemed to have become possessed of a keenness never felt before. She thought out every detail of the changed circumstances John's death must bring, forgetting nothing. It would mean that she could not leave home quite so soon, she reflected, and even wondered how Mrs. Jarvis would feel when she learned that ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... from the beginning, mentioned that they would decline working on Sundays. It may here be noticed that throughout the whole of the operations it was observable that the men wrought, if possible, with more keenness upon the Sundays than at other times, from an impression that they were engaged in a work of imperious necessity, which required every possible exertion. On returning to the floating light, after finishing the tide's work, the boats were received by the part of the ship's crew ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a studio before?" asked Mr. Debris, giving her a glance that was surely the quintessence of keenness. "No? Well, I'll explain exactly what's going to happen. We're going to take what we call a test in order to see how your features photograph and whether you've got natural stage presence and how ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... mendicants or thieves, feet and head uncovered through frost and heat, to steal their sustenance, under penalties if detected—"a survival," as anthropologists would doubtless prove, pointing out collateral illustrations of the same, from a world of purely animal courage and keenness. Whips and rods used in a kind of monitorial system by themselves had a great part in the education of these young aristocrats, and, as pain surely must do, pain not of bodily disease or wretched accidents, but as it were by dignified ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... back in his chair he tossed the violet letter over to Mr. Meyers without seeming to know that he did so. Then he plunged back into his absorption without seeing his henchman read rapidly through the missive, look at him once with a gem-like keenness, and again begin to read the ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... all the signs of a man who has lived clean and has been almost an ascetic. One to whom the joys of the flesh have had little meaning. A cold, controlled man whose one passion is for power. Distinctively a man of power. An eagle-like man, who, by keenness of brain and force of character, has carved out a fortune of hundreds of millions. In short, an industrial and financial magnate of the first water and of the finest type to be found in the United States. Essentially a moral man, his rigid New England morality has suffered ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... gaudily dressed boy who a year before had driven the pink car, in this serious young professional clad in the Mercury's racing gray and bearing the Mercury's silver insignia on his shoulder. The bend of his mouth was firmer, his dark-blue eyes had acquired the steady, all-embracing keenness of Gerard's—the gaze of all those men with whom the inopportune flicker of an eyelid may mean destruction. He was clothed with his virile youth as with a radiant garment, as ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... is to measure inborn traits, not achievement. Hence the results from actual measurement are very few and are confined to the sensory and sensorimotor traits. Woodworth, in summing up the results of these tests, says, "On the whole, the keenness of the senses seems to be about on a par in the various races of mankind.... If the results could be taken at their face value, they would indicate differences in intelligence between races, giving such groups as the Pygmy and Negrito a ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... one that should light his face. She did not know the word, but he looked, despite his smile, cynical, rather weary. Yes, she knew she should like him, for in some indefinite way he reminded her of her father. Was it the brown, rather nearsighted eyes? Surely they were keen, yet behind their keenness dwelt a softness; perhaps he, too, once ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... was still in Barrington's, and he felt her fingers tighten. To her the house was as still as death, the blackness of it empty; but to her companions whose ears were trained to keenness, there was movement in ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... untiring traveller, always eager to be going on, delighted with every place he visited, and yet anxious for constant change of scene and for new experience. To be amusingly and simply selfish is ever part of the charm of Montaigne. He adds to his reader's pleasure in life by the keenness with which he relished his own existence, and savoured every little incident as a man relishes the bouquet of wine. Without selfishness, how can this be managed? and without perfect simplicity and the good faith on which he prided ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... thraldom, because his skin has darkened under a hotter sun? Shall he be the perpetual servant of his fellow man, because deficiency of intellectual power, naturally resulting from a want of education and opportunity, have given him less keenness of perception, disqualified him to stand forth the vindicator of the oppressed, to assert his rights, and demand redress for his injuries? No! We trust that there is a redeeming virtue in our fellow citizens, which ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Says he to himself, "I shall certainly be on the sharp out-look for that ascent of the Dewdrop. I can at all events be a silent spectator, if my services cannot otherwise be of use." And, to be sure, he did not require to watch long; for, with that keenness of perception that belonged to all his ancestors, he found that he had soared right into the very midst of a golden mist. Some people say and believe (though I am not wise enough in bird-lore to know the truth of it), that the lark family have eyes almost like a microscope; things invisible to ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... their king, every one, even the priests, were full of his praises. The wisdom and circumspection of his plans and modes of government, his unwearied industry, the moderation he had always shown, the keenness of his wit, were, each and all, subjects of admiration. "How Egypt has prospered under Amasis' government!" said a Nomarch. "And what glory he gained for our arms, by the conquest of Cyprus and the war with the Libyans!" cried one of the generals. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... my unique position I witnessed the trial of them all. I saw tanks dragging rotary plows and others equipped with devices like electricfans but with blades of hardened steel sharpened to razor keenness. The only thing this latter gadget did was to scatter more potential nuclei to ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... could still hear and see and smell with all the keenness of a young animal or a savage. And that must have made his sense of being alive very much more vivid than is the case ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... sharp change. And what we need in change is surely keenness. For instance, if one wanted to go sailing in the old days, one left London, had a bleak drive in the country, got nearer and nearer the sea, felt the cold and wet and discomfort growing on one, and after half a day or a day's gradual introduction to the thing, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... his contribution to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his master. Surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department of human inquiry than Plato. He may not have had the originality or keenness of Socrates, but he was more profound. He was pre-eminently a great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his "Dialogues" are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... in its interests doing much for the men. And in his principle of action he is not an exception, but a common type of the Anglican padre as I have met them in many lands. They are trained and encouraged to 'push their own show.' But this keenness on one's 'own show' rather than on men, is the very essence of the sin of schism, and the very root of Pharisaism. Now, as a rule, all the sects stand for their 'own show' first, and men know it. I am ashamed to be a parson today. Men were not made for any ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... no means ended. Felgate, to all appearance docile and penitent, nursed his wrath within him, and kept his eye open, with all the keenness of a sportsman, to the slightest opening for a revenge. In a quiet way he continued to do a great deal in the house to thwart the spirit of enterprise which was at present knitting all factions together. He sneered in a superior way at the enthusiasm all round him, and succeeded in making ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... correctness of his personality. Clothes, slight figure, clear-cut, thin, sun-tanned face, pose, all this was so good that it was saved from the danger of banality only by the mobile black eyes of a keenness that one doesn't meet every day in the south of France and still less in Italy. Another thing was that, viewed as an officer in mufti, he did not look sufficiently professional. That imperfection was ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... quite a different key from his key of business, turned also low and gentle, and soothed and secretly won the hearer by its deep, rich and pleasant modulation and variety; and his eye turned deeper in color, and, losing its keenness and restlessness, dwelt calmly and pensively for minutes at a time upon some little household object close to Susan; seldom, unless quite ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... dreamland of the new reason that More touches the great problems which were fast opening before the modern world, problems of labour, of crime, of conscience, of government. Merely to have seen and to have examined questions such as these would prove the keenness of his intellect, but its far-reaching originality is shown in the solutions which he proposes. Amidst much that is the pure play of an exuberant fancy, much that is mere recollection of the dreams of ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... my grandfather and that proud day for Clump, the keenness with which he had felt our rudeness, and the excitement of recital were, all together, too much for our good old castellan. The erectness of his figure gave way as he concluded, the enthusiasm in his features faded into dejection, and, as he turned from ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... the back iron which is fixed on the saw will ensure the saw feeding into the work quite fast enough. If the saw is newly sharpened it will, in fact, be an advantage to slightly ease the weight of the saw from off the wood, owing to the keenness of its edge. If the halving is a very wide one, additional cuts may be sawn between the outside marks, and these will greatly facilitate the removal of the waste wood when paring it away. For sawing the joint reference may be made to the chapter ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... route to the east, as he saw the high elevation in that direction, and George laughed, as he said, slyly: "John is still after the caves," and Harry laughed, as he recalled the keenness with which John had arranged ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Cotabanama bent his gigantic bow, and was on the point of launching one of his three-pronged arrows, but Lopez rushed upon him and wounded him with his sword. The other Indians, struck with panic, had already fled. Cotabanama, dismayed at the keenness of the sword, cried out that he was Juan de Esquibel, claiming respect as having exchanged names with the Spanish commander. Lopez seized him with one hand by the hair, and with the other aimed a thrust at his body; but the cacique struck down the sword with his hand, and, grappling with his antagonist, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the fire I will strive to follow With all the strength and endurance of my body, The power of my will, The keenness of my mind, The warmth of my heart, And ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... has often more weight than many words spoken; and Ruth, who read the good doctor's face with the keenness of a child's perception, was the first to see an expression of hope shining upon it. When the day came for the bandages to be removed, Eva's father and mother were so dreadfully agitated, that they had to leave the room. Trembling, they stood outside in the hall, waiting for the happy ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... movement. All about him had become alive. Vitality, like the vitality of youth upon mountain tops, pulsed and whirled about them, pouring into them the currents of a rushing glorious life, undiluted, straight from the source. In his little person he felt both the keenness of sharp steel and the vast momentum of a whole ocean. Thus he describes it. And the more clearly he uttered in his thoughts the sound given to him by his leader, the greater seemed the influx of strength ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... from the hand of a horseman a long, curved blade of razor-keenness and with a heavy back. The Master glanced significantly at Brodeur, who knelt by the switchboard with one steady hand on a brass lever, the other on the control ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... attained by the myriad lessons in nicety of balance and of aim that only practice can give. The danger of the inverse procedure, judging of self by what one observes in others, if it is carried on with much impartiality and keenness of discernment, is that it has a laming effect, enfeebling the energies of indignation and scorn, which are the proper scourges of wrong-doing and meanness, and which should continually feed the wholesome restraining power of public opinion. I respect the horsewhip when applied ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the set policy of his band was to take refuge in flight whenever, in the daytime, a man was descried, no matter at what distance. Lobo's habit of permitting the pack to eat only that which they themselves had killed, was in numerous cases their salvation, and the keenness of his scent to detect the taint of human hands or the poison itself, ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... of her mind seemed read by Mrs Delvile, who examined her with eyes of such penetrating keenness, that they rather made discoveries than enquiries. She was silent some time, and looked irresolute how to proceed; but at length, she arose, and taking Cecilia by the hand, who almost drew it back from her dread of what would follow, she said "I ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... action is such as would be ordered by the commander, were the latter present and in possession of the facts, has enough encouragement to go ahead confidently. He must possess the loyalty to carry out the plans of his superior and the keenness to recognize and to seize opportunities to further ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... expectancy in it. Byrne was conscious of being warm, too warm. It was close in the room, and he was weighted down. It was as if another presence had stepped into the room and stood invisible. He felt it with unspeakable keenness, as when one knows certainly the thoughts which pass in the mind of another. And, more than that, he knew that the others in the room felt what he felt. In the waiting silence he saw that the old man ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... her face with a keenness that somewhat belied his professed incapacity to be in earnest, and remarked ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page |
