"Observant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was slowly climbing a steep side-street which led to the Avenue. Looking forth with observant eyes, Candace noted how the houses, which at first were of the last-century build, with hipped roofs and dormer windows like those to which she was accustomed in the old hill village that had been her ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... without a slip for which he could be held responsible. It was a wire from the chief office of the Transcontinental in New York, a telegram inspired by sundry leakages from Pacific Southwestern sources, that gave him a silent and observant follower in all of his dodgings. Of this, however, he was in blissful ignorance. Twice, indeed, he sat in the same Pullman section with his "shadow," quite without suspecting it; and once he was saved from disaster—also ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... observant in the matter of health, but they had grown sensitive about Dr. MacLure, and remarked in the kirkyard all summer ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... am not ashamed—only comfortably dulled and a little tired—dully interested and observant, and hopeful for the sunlight presently. We low persons get too great a contempt for things to feel much ashamed at any time; and this very contempt keeps many of us from "reforming." We hear too many ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... "for sale, cheap, all the magnificent possibilities of a brilliant life, a competence, for one chance in a thousand at the gambling table;" "for exchange, bright prospects, a brilliant outlook, a cultivated intelligence, a college education, a skilled hand, an observant eye, valuable experience, great tact, all exchanged for rum, for a muddled brain, a bewildered intellect, a shattered nervous system, poisoned blood, a diseased body, for fatty degeneration of the heart, for Bright's ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... "The Saint's Everlasting Rest" deserve their wide popularity. Among the semi-theological writers of the time are Fuller, Cudworth, and Henry More, Fuller (1608-1661) is most widely known through his "Worthies of England," a book of lively and observant gossip. Cudworth and More, his contemporaries, deviated in their philosophical writings from the tendencies of Bacon and the sensualistlc doctrines of Hobbes, and regarded existence rather from the spiritual point of view ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the crops, and the stock; and thence to slide into discussions on the various kinds of fodder and their feeding qualities. Hodge and Giles, after comparing notes over their respective pig-styes, show by their remarks that they have been observant of their masters' beasts and sheep; and of the effects produced on them by this or that kind of treatment. Nor is it only among the rural population that the regulations of the kennel, the stable, the cow-shed, and the sheep-pen, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... used, in all parts of the east, from Morocco to China. In Europe it is found to act very differently on different constitutions. Some it elevates in the extreme; others it renders torpid, and scarcely observant of any evil that may befal them. In Barbary it is always taken, if it can be procured, by criminals condemned to suffer amputation, and it is said, to enable those miserables to bear the rough operations of an unfeeling executioner, more than we Europeans ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the cars. On arriving at the city station, he took a coach and drove to one of the great hotels. Thither drove also a sagacious-looking, middle-aged man, who entered his name as "W. Thompson" in the book at the office immediately after that of "R. Venner." Mr, "Thompson" kept a carelessly observant eye upon Mr. Venner during his stay at the hotel, and followed him to the cars when he left, looking over his shoulder when he bought his ticket at the station, and seeing him fairly off without obtruding himself in any offensive way ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Pall Mall, through the park, out at Buckingham House, and on to Chelsea, a little beyond the church (5,748 steps), he says, in less than an hour, which was leisurely walking even for the contemplative and observant dean. Smollet laid a scene of his "Humphrey Clinker" in Chelsea, where he ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... excuse, and pressed him no further. One or two of the more observant members of the company looked at him, with comprehension in their eyes. Seldom, indeed, had Kenkenes refused to sing, and his reluctance corroborated their suspicions that all was not well ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... imagination what he prophesied in this connection, and which I have lived to see even more than realized. Nor was his conversation confined to his invention. A distinguished artist, an educated gentleman, an observant traveler, it was delightful to hear him talk, and at this late day I recall few more pleasant evenings than the only one ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... knew then that the destined time had arrived for my planting. That afternoon I marked out my corn-field, driving the mare to my home-made wooden marker, carefully observant of the straightness of the rows; for a crooked corn-row is a sort of immorality. I brought down my seed corn from the attic, where it had hung waiting all winter, each ear suspended separately by the white, up-turned husks. They were the selected ears of last year's ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... changing his style; for, while under the influence of Signorelli, as in the Petrucci Palace frescoes (Nos. 375 and 376 in the Gallery of Siena), his work bears so much resemblance to that of the master, that so observant a critic as Morelli declared the composition of both to be most certainly by Luca himself.[84] Genga seems to have caught, not the superficial forms only, but also the spirit of Signorelli in these frescoes, for in one—"The Flight of AEneas from Troy"—there ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... was smooth, there was much beneath to disquiet an observant governor. It was not only that the Ministry was so weak, and so conscious of its weakness, as to be incapable even of proposing any measures of importance. This evil might be remedied by a change of administration. But there was ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... King Louis, observant to catch the vein of his dangerous cousin, "since the ass has put on the boar's hide, I would set the dogs on him to bait ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Mrs. Weir; she wept and prayed over the infant backslider until my lord was due from Court, and she must resume that air of tremulous composure with which she always greeted him. The judge was that day in an observant mood, and remarked ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sylvester, "tears, idle tears. Why, you silly children, the man is a man of the world, a philosopher, quiet, observant, unassuming." ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... 'But,' the observant reader may possibly exclaim, 'there is nothing new about this. Woman has ever been man's favourite grumble-vent, from the day when the first man got out of his first scrape by blaming the only available woman!' True enough, age cannot stale the infinite ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... dangerous. But we soon forget the cold. And the dangers only string us up to meet them, so that we are in a peculiarly alert, observant mood. And we have a secret joy in watching Nature in her most threatening aspects and in measuring ourselves ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... they have always been. Even educated Indians are reluctant to admit that things have changed and that their community has had to submit to education and improvement—that suttee, for example, was ever an honoured institution in the province now most advanced. But to the observant student of the Indian people, the evolution of India is almost as noteworthy as the more apparent rigidity. There is a flowering plant common in Northern India, and chiefly notable for the marvel of bearing flowers of different ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... arm around Aphrodite she descended the great stairway, where, on the lower landing, immensely interested, sat Chlorippe, Philodice and Dione, observant, ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... mirror, but with a degree more of clearness and a greater distinction of outline than is attained by ordinary people. It is from him that humanity may look for most instruction; for the deepest insight into the most important matters is to be acquired, not by an observant attention to detail, but by a close study of things as a whole. And if his mind reaches maturity, the instruction he gives will be conveyed now in one form, now in another. Thus genius may be defined as an eminently ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... five savage ladies over, but they had all been pretty fruitful, for they had all children, more or less: I think the cook's mate's wife was big of her sixth child; and the mothers were all a good sort of well-governed, quiet, laborious women, modest and decent, helpful to one another, mighty observant and subject to their masters, I cannot call them husbands; and wanted nothing but to be well instructed in the Christian religion, and to be legally married; both which were happily brought about afterwards by my means, or at least ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... sat like a black, draped statue at the head of the pew, but her eyes behind her black veil were sharply observant. She missed not one detail. She saw everything; she counted the wreaths and bouquets on the casket, and stored in her mind, as vividly as she might have done some old mourning-piece, the picture of the near relatives advancing up ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... were thereafter stopped up, and no one was allowed outside before reveille. Officers and men of Gatacre's division had as usual to sleep in their places lying down in the ranks fully dressed, with their arms beside them, ready to spring to attention. Sentinels and patrols, watchful and observant, moved noiselessly about throughout the whole night. True, there were outside a few of Slatin's most trusted native friends, chiefly Jaalin, set to listen and raise an outcry if the Khalifa's dervishes came down upon us under ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... doctor, who had been very observant, "I suppose that touch meant 'Thank you and good-bye.' But he might have paid me the same compliment. However, he evidently considers you to ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... prone to earth he fell. The warlike Menelaus aim'd his spear Where Thoas' breast, unguarded by his shield, Was left expos'd; and slack'd his limbs in death. Phyleus' brave son, as rush'd Amphiclus on, Stood firm, with eye observant; then th' attack Preventing, through his thigh, high up, where lie The strongest muscles, smote; the weapon's point Sever'd the tendons; darkness clos'd his eyes. Of Nestor's sons, Antilochus, the first, Atymnius wounded, driving through his flank He brazen spear; prone on his ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... conquest, only the more genial side of your nature was observable, but now you are off guard, and the faults are all known the one to the other. You are aware of your imperfections, unless you are one of those self-conceited people who are quickly observant of faults in others, but oblivious to faults in yourself; and now having found out all ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... before your boots, and sits down with admiration on your hat. He protects his mamma when he goes out with her, and scolds the dog, although he is very much afraid of him; all to be like papa. Have you caught him at meals with his large observant eyes fixed on you, studying your face with open mouth and spoon in hand, and imitating his model with an expression of astonishment and respect. Listen to his long gossips, wandering as his little brain; ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... agreed. "I'm glad you're observant, Scotty. Frankly, I hadn't even bothered looking at the weather. I suppose I thought it would just ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... possible," he replied. "But—I can say it to you—I have a certain gift of—shall I call it divination?—where men and women are concerned. It is not merely that I am observant of what is, but that I can often instinctively feel that which must be inevitably produced by what is. Very few people can read the future in the present. I often can, almost as clearly as I can read the present. Even pessimism, accentuated ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... represent the 'new-born strength of the world,'" she said, looking at him with observant, curious eyes, but without irony, "or is your ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... wind that blows but bears with it Some rainbow promise:—Not a moment flies But puts its sickle in the fields of life, And mows its thousands, with their joys and cares. 'T is but as yesterday since on yon stars, Which now I view, the Chaldee shepherd[3] gazed In his mid watch observant, and disposed The twinkling hosts as fancy gave them shape. Yet in the interim what mighty shocks Have buffeted mankind—whole nations razed— Cities made desolate—the polish'd sunk To barbarism, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... left the ranch with clothes and books enough to give the bag a pretty weight, and this he had unconcernedly increased by the insertion into the straining receptacle of many a "specimen" picked up by the way. For the eyes were keen and observant that looked out from under the strongly marked brows, and bits of fluorite and "fool's gold," and of rarer minerals as well, which had lain for years beside the road, noted as little by cowboy and ranchman and ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... of such violent hatreds that the Home Government would feel compelled to recall him. Thus they would be rid of the presence of a personage possessed of a sufficient energy to oppose them, and they would no longer need to fear his observant eyes. Sir Alfred Milner saw himself surrounded by all sorts of difficulties, and every attempt he made to bring forward his own plans for the settlement of the South African question crumbled to the ground almost before he could begin to work ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... and happiness is drowned. Kleist is but a corpse, whom we must soon bury from our sight. The king has made separation and divorce easy; yes, easier than marriage. Is it not so, my brother? Ah, you blush; you find that your light-hearted brother has more observant eyes than you thought, and sees that which you intended to conceal. Yes, yes! I have indeed seen that you have been wounded by Cupid's arrow, and that your heart bleeds while our noble king refuses his consent ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... pens. Mr. FORTIER JONES, the writer, has much that is fresh to say, and a very fresh and vigorous way of saying it. His book and himself are both American of the best kind—which is to say, wonderfully resourceful, observant, sympathetic and alive. From a newspaper flung away by a stranger on the Broadway Express, Mr. JONES first became aware that men were wanted for relief work in Serbia, and "in an hour I had become part ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... golden circlet which fastened his ample garment about his head held an ostrich feather which hung down behind his shoulder; his teeth were displayed in a continual smile; his eyes seemed sharpened like arrows, and there was something observant and airy ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... 1655, in the collection which he named 'Silex Scintillans' (The Flaming Flint), a title explained by the frontispiece, which represents a flinty heart glowing under the lightning stroke of God's call. Vaughan's chief traits are a very fine and calm philosophic-religious spirit and a carefully observant love of external Nature, in which he sees mystic revelations of God. In both respects he is closely akin to the later and greater Wordsworth, and his 'Retreat' has the same theme as Wordsworth's famous 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality,' the idea namely ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... mothers their anxiety for the establishment of their daughters, and their respect for my acres; and in the cordiality of the sons who had horses to sell and rouge-et-noir debts to pay, I detected all that veneration for my money which implied such contempt for its possessor. By nature observant, and by misfortune sarcastic, I looked upon the various colourings of society with a searching and philosophic eye: I unravelled the intricacies which knit servility with arrogance and meanness with ostentation; and I traced to its sources that universal vulgarity of ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up my own eyes from a task I was poring at—writing some passages from a book, to improve myself in two ways at once by a sort of stratagem—and seeing Biddy observant of what I was about. I laid down my pen, and Biddy stopped in her ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... magical touch of beauty. As Kulwch's greyhounds bound from side to side of their master's steed, they "sport round him like two sea-swallows." His spear is "swifter than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth when the dew of June is at the heaviest." A subtle, observant love of nature and natural beauty takes fresh colour from the passionate human sentiment with which it is imbued. "I love the birds" sings Gwalchmai "and their sweet voices in the lulling songs of the wood"; he watches at night beside ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... one of the most observant of men in all matters affecting the rights of others; he was one of the least observant in all matters appertaining to himself. With a decided taste for dress, yet his actual knowledge of the kind of clothes worn by him from day to ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... a moment, of one's eventual and moral self, as if it were another person,—the observant faculty being separated, and looking intently at the qualities of the character. There is a surprise when this happens,—this getting out of one's self,—and then the observer sees how queer a ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the hunter sat down on a fallen tree trunk and inspected the others with a quiet but observant gaze. Each in his own way had the best of manners. Tayoga, as became a forest chief, was dignified, saying little, while Willet cut more slices from the deer meat and offered them to the guests. But it was the Onondaga and not St. Luc ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... meditating on this there came the usual knock at the door, and Steinmarc entered the room. She greeted him, as was her wont, with but a word or two, and he sat down and lighted his pipe. An observant man might have known, even from the sound of her breathing, that something had stirred Madame Staubach more than usual. But Peter was not an observant man, and, having something on his own mind, ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... known his mother well. And he had made his surrender. Well, only a very observant man can tell what his own moods may be; it is too much to ask anybody to prophesy another's; and the last thing a man appreciates is the family peculiarities—unless he happens not ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... during which, also, I endeavoured to convince an unknown, but agreeable lady on my left that I did not play polo, whereat, it seemed, her eight brothers were experts; and that Omar Khayyam was a contemporary not of the Prophet Isaiah, but of William the Conqueror. As for the setting—I am not an observant man—but I had an impression of much gold and silver and rare flora on the table, great gold frames enclosing (I doubt not) costly pictures on the walls, many desirable jewels on undesirable bosoms, strong though unsympathetic ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... one direction her wisdom proved scant. She presumed too much on her insignificance. She was a "study," the gossiping circle at Frowenfeld's used to say; and any observant hearer of her odd aphorisms could see that she herself had made a life-study of herself and her conditions; but she little thought that others—some with wits and some with none—young hare-brained Grandissimes, Mandarins and the like—were silently, and for her most ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... these things in his quiet, observant way, and from them drew certain conclusions of his own. But he shrank from making inquiries, nor did the Colonel offer any confidences. After all, why should he, who had never meddled with his father's business, choose this moment to explore it, especially as he knew from previous experience that ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... and varied scenery of those groups of islands called the Friendly Islands, the Feejees, and the Navigators, species of fox-bat form one of the characteristics of the place to the observant eye; while, if the traveller should happen to be blind, their presence among the otherwise fragrant forests would be readily perceived from the strong odour which taints the atmosphere, and which, says the Naturalist of the United States Exploring Expedition, "will always be ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... was he? Well! He says that before he became a Christian he lived a pure, virtuous, respectable life. He was a man 'as touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.' Observant of all relative duties, sober, temperate, chaste; no man could say a word against him; he knew nothing against himself. His conscience acquitted him of wrong: 'I thought I ought to do many things,' as I did them. And yet, looking ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... meanwhile, Agatha and Hawtrey had found it almost impossible to sustain a conversation. It was a relief to the girl to be able to sit silent and observant beside the man whom she had promised to marry. The string-patched trace still held, and the wagon pole was a new one. The white grass was tussocky and long, and the trail here and there had been churned into quagmire. Hawtrey had ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... were peculiarly observant of the defective modes of conveyance then in use. Thus, one Don Manoel Gonzales, a Portuguese merchant, who travelled through Great Britain, in 1740, speaking of Yarmouth, says, "They have a comical way of carrying people all over ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... has kindly attended to this discourse, without desiring to be a failure, he has only to turn the advice outside in. He has only to be studious of the very best literature, observant, careful, original, he has only to be himself and not an imitator, to aim at excellence, and not be content with falling a little lower than mediocrity. He needs but bestow the same attention on this art as others give to the other arts and other professions. With these efforts, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... observant and the loyal Green Valley is dear at all times. But what most touches and wakens a Green Valley heart ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... he has visited and people he has met, the infinite variety of things his observant eyes have seen, give him his ceaseless flow of illustrations, and his memory and his skill make admirable use of them. It is seldom that he uses an illustration from what he has read; everything is, characteristically, his own. Henry M. Stanley, who knew ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... rather pleasing hatchet-face, framed in the curls of a golden periwig, a sensitive mouth and pale blue eyes that lent his countenance a dreamy expression, a rather melancholy pensiveness. But they were alert, observant eyes notwithstanding, although they failed on this occasion to observe the slight change of colour which his question had brought to Miss Bishop's cheeks or the suspiciously excessive composure of ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... of the constabulary is ruled out of the functions of the local bodies, and is still maintained under the central executive. The plethora of police in the country is one of the most striking features that meet the eye of anyone visiting it for the first time. The observant foreigner who, after travelling in England, crosses to Ireland and there sees on every wayside station at least two policemen varying the ennui of their unoccupied days by watching the few trains that pass through, feels homely pleasure at the thought that the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... of 1870 no tenant could be turned out without being paid a sum averaging a fourth of the fee-simple in addition to being paid for his improvements, and there the most observant of us thought ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... still and silent under the observant sun. The village street stretched in one direction down the hill to the two-miles-off railway station, and in the other to the large white house with pillared portico, from which there was a fine view of the sunset, and beyond which it still continued, purposeful but ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... and gray and slightly narrowed, like all eyes that are accustomed to gaze across wide spaces, turned from side to side with quick, observant glances. Negroes, "worming" tobacco in a field, bent to their work as she passed with a sudden access ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... of classification," Dennis explained. "In any case his overcoat was made in the States; the cut of the lapels is quite unmistakable. I knew an American who tried everywhere to get a coat cut like that over here, and failed. As to his being observant, you seem to have overlooked one important fact. There the man stands, apparently half asleep. Occasionally he displays a certain amount of life—tucks his papers more tightly under his arms, and so on. Now, the man who has been dreaming ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... passed out on the street, and no ordinarily observant person would have suspected them of being anything more ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... out of your lap, and go away shaking your head, and looking so!—" and here the observant little creature attempted a childish imitation of the sad action and the strange, moody gestures with which he had put her down when he was retiring from the room—gestures and looks which the less quick eyes of her mother had ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... muttered Ross, "what command that fellow has over himself!" for, scrupulously observant of military etiquette, Mr. Hayne on being addressed by his superior officer had instantly dismounted, and now stood silently facing him. Even at the distance, there were some who thought they could see his features twitching; but his blue eyes were calm and steady,—far clearer than they ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... more or less appropriate and powerful, to the tract already alluded to.[A] In all the external relations and visible arrangements of life, the Jews, during our Savior's ministry among them, seem to have been scrupulously observant of the institutions and usages of the "Old Dispensation." They stood far aloof from whatever was characteristic of Samaritans and Gentiles. From idolatry and slaveholding—those twin-vices which had always so greatly prevailed among the heathen—they seem ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... The town remains in shadow, while the sky is lit up with floods of glory. An effect such as this must have been very carefully studied from nature. Hubert was evidently one who looked at the world with observant eyes and found it beautiful. When he had flowers to paint, he painted the whole plant accurately, not the blossoms individually, like the painter of Richard II. He liked fine stuffs, embroideries, jewels, and glittering armour. He ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... there for several years; but as it had been a long time since they had ceased to visit regularly Northwest River Post, we thought we had reason to believe that the poles marked what had been a permanent trail rather than the course of a hunting expedition. Hubbard was particularly observant of these old Indian signs. He was anxious to find them, and delighted when he did find them. "Here are the signs," he would say, "we are on the right trail." But we were not on the right trail. The right trail—the Nascaupee route—was miles ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... is turning hot and sultry, and, arriving at Hoag about five o'clock, I feel that I have done sufficient hillclimbing for one day. I have been wheeling through Austrian territory since 10.30 this morning, and, with observant eyes the whole distance, I have yet to see the first native, male or female, possessing in the least degree either a graceful figure or a prepossessing face. There has been a great horse-fair at Hoag to-day; the business ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... stumbled across the shingle towards the open shed which marks the landing-place of the only ferry across the Ebro that Saragossa possesses. The ferry-boat was moored to the landing-stage. It is a high-prowed, high-sterned vessel, built on Viking lines, from a picture the observant must conclude, by a landsman carpenter. It swings across the river on a wire rope, with a running tackle, by the force of the stream and the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... available remedy for "domestic" vexation and provincial egotism. "Every individual spirit," says Schiller, "waxes in the great stream of multitudes." Stand awhile calmly by the rushing stream, and note its representative significance, or stroll slowly along, with observant eye, to mark the commodities and nationalities by the way. The scene is an epitome of the world. Here crouches a Chinese mendicant, there glides an Italian image-vender; a Swedish sailor is hard pressed by a smoking Cuban, and a Hungarian officer is flanked by a French loiterer; here leers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the marvels which a piece of coal possesses within itself, and which in obedience to processes of man's invention it is always willing to exhibit to an observant enquirer, is not so widespread, perhaps, as it should be, and the aim of this little book, this record of one page of geological history, has been to bring together the principal facts and wonders connected ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... 14th of May 1552, and became the wife of Henry of Navarre on the 18th of August 1572, when she was in the full bloom of youth and loveliness; nor can there be any doubt that she was one of the most extraordinary women of her time; for while her grace and wit dazzled the less observant by their brilliancy, the depth of her erudition, her love of literature and the arts, and the solidity of her judgment, no less astonished those who were capable of appreciating the more valuable gifts which had been lavished upon her by ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... awakened at the same time in the Netherlands that distrust which always accompanies inferiority. Never were they so alive to their constitutional rights, never so jealous of the royal prerogative, or more observant in their proceedings. Under, his reign we see the most violent outbreaks of republican spirit, and the pretensions of the people carried to an excess which nothing but the increasing encroachments of the royal power could in the least justify. A Sovereign ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... to one and all versions with fierce attention, he repaired to his dinner and consumed it in a silence which his observant wife knew betokened affairs of unusual weight. But it was not until he finished his dessert and pushed back from table that he ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... not discovered it in the ordinary course of trade, observant officers in the provinces would have conveyed the news to them. Even in the early years of the eighteenth century the royal governor of New York wrote of the industrious Americans to his home government: "The consequence will be that if they can clothe themselves once, not only comfortably, but ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the French call "une tete montee." Root had ceased to flog me. I could discover that he even began to fear me—and just in proportion as he seemed to avoid all occasion to punish me, I became towards him mild, observant, and respectful. The consequence was, that, as I was no longer frightened out of my wits at church, from very weariness, and for the sake of variety, I began to attend to the sermons. What a lesson ought not this to be to instructors! One Sunday I returned from church in a state of almost ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... some distance along the coast northwards from Pembrokeshire there are still families, and even whole hamlets, descended from them, exhibiting traits of character and peculiarities of manner easily discernible to an observant eye. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Congregational Church. He accepted the office with some reluctance, being distrustful of himself, but his counsel and service were of great value to the brotherhood. Intent on improving himself in all the qualities of Christian manhood, he was observant of the great movements of society, and deeply interested in the new and enlarged applications of Chistianity. He followed the operations of the American Board, as new fields opened to the missionaries of the Cross; keeping informed ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... between the countryman's face and that of the townsman. The former in its best type (and it is often very noble) composed, silent, self-contained, often stately, often listless; the latter mobile, eager, observant, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... graves, as the seeds of these plants were supposed to nourish the dead. Mourners, too, wore flowers at the funeral rites, and Homer relates how the Thessalians used crowns of amaranth at the burial of Achilles. The Romans were equally observant, and Ovid, when writing from the land of exile, prayed his wife—"But do you perform the funeral rites for me when dead, and offer chaplets wet with your tears. Although the fire shall have changed my body into ashes, yet the sad dust will be sensible of your ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... the road since the inquest. There lacked only the helpless dead man and the contrasting figure of the alert young woman to restore the picture. The body was gone, it was true, but as he turned he beheld Miss Porter, at a few paces distant, sitting her horse as energetic and observant as on the first morning they had met. A superstitious thrill passed over him and awoke ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... to Marcia's pretty, childlike warmth, and was politely cordial to Frank and Kitty. Her manner was at once quietly assured and quietly unassuming, although on her entrance her eyes had seemed furtively observant, as one who found herself among ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... the observant Dartie his two guests did not appear to be making much running, standing there close together, without a word. Bosinney was a hungry-looking creature—not much go ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... assigned to another disciple and follower of the school perfected by Piccini, Dominic Cimarosa, born in Naples in 1754. His life down to his latter years was an uninterrupted flow of prosperity. His mother, an humble washerwomen, could do little for her fatherless child, but an observant priest saw the promise of the lad, and taught him till he was old enough to enter the Conservatory of St. Maria di Loretto. His early works showed brilliant invention and imagination, and the young Cimarosa, before he left the Conservatory, had made himself a ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... influence of good recitations, strict observance of rules, lady-like behavior in all places and at all times, than a prayer-meeting in your room every night in the week. Now it is late; go back, and if you do not wish to tell me what is wrong with Susan, I must be all the more observant of ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... there with a deal of midnight company. If one of these presences was the mystery he had himself mixed the manner of our young men showed a due expectation of the others. Mitchy, on hearing how little Vanderbank "cared," only kept up a while longer that observant revolution in which he had spent much of his day, to which any fresh sense of any exhibition always promptly committed him, and which, had it not been controlled by infinite tact, might have affected the nerves of those in whom enjoyment was ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the telegram. He nodded his head and smiled, which the observant Dave took to mean that he was friendly towards Mr. Timmins, but knew of some of his ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... down the aisle Mr. Hopkins, who is very observant, notices that all of the girls—most of the clerks are girls—are dressed in a pleasant gray. This gives an agreeable uniform tone to a large establishment which would break up into jarring patches of color if each clerk were allowed to wear whatever color happened ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... kangaroos at Blenheim had just died in childbirth. I told her it was a mercy, considering that any of them would hug us to death if they got a chance. Are you a sentimentalist, Lady Constance?" Mrs. Mulholland turned gaily to the girl beside her, but still with the same touch of something coolly observant in her manner. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shown considerable judgment in the selection of their battle-grounds, and in the general employment of their strength. This judgment they probably owed in great part to their present adversaries. Quick in their instinct, and surprisingly observant, they had soon learned the use of European weapons. The various lessons of European tactics, the modes of attack and defence, were, in their united struggles with the French, equally open to their study and acquisition. They had not suffered ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... calm and mild, but not brilliant. The leaves of the trees had taken on an additional tinge of autumnal yellow and red since Brian last looked at them with an observant eye. For the past week he had thought of nothing but of the intolerable grief and pain that had come upon him. But now the peace and quiet of the day stole upon him unawares; there was a restfulness in the sight of the ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Cleotos, He had been gazing, for the past minute, out at the same window with AEnone; and while attracted by the humble figure of that old man, he had noticed that she had been equally observant. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... iii. p. 423, de Magnitud. Romana, l. iii. c. 3) and Isaac Vossius (Observant. Var. p. 26-34) have indulged strange dreams, of four, or eight, or fourteen, millions in Rome. Mr. Hume, (Essays, vol. i. p. 450-457,) with admirable good sense and scepticism betrays some secret disposition to extenuate the populousness ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... What blind creatures ministers are! man looketh at the outward appearance." One morning he was visited by one of his flock, proposing "a concert for prayer on the following Monday, in behalf of those who had fallen back, that God's Spirit might re-awaken them,"—so observant were the believers as well as their pastor of declensions. Among those who were awakened, but never truly converted, he mentions one case. "Jan. 9, 1840.—Met with the case of one who had been ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... finish and fulness which God has appointed to be the perpetual source of fresh pleasure to the cultivated and observant eye,—a finish which no distance can render invisible, and no nearness comprehensible; which in every stone, every bough, every cloud, and every wave is multiplied around us, forever presented, and forever exhaustless. And hence in art, every space or touch in which we can see everything, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... opposite Findlater's church. He was in a black sweater and had a hurley stick. Asked me was it true I was going away and why. Told him the shortest way to Tara was VIA Holyhead. Just then my father came up. Introduction. Father polite and observant. Asked Davin if he might offer him some refreshment. Davin could not, was going to a meeting. When we came away father told me he had a good honest eye. Asked me why I did not join a rowing club. I pretended to think it over. Told me then how he broke Pennyfeather's heart. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... observant, as he leaped from the carriage, 'there are no platforms. Everything in Switzerland seems on one level, even the people—everything, that is, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... enough and to spare, Auntie," said Nan, who was an observant girl for her age. "Nobody ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... her, of course, and so did her uncle once or twice, but they did not tell her much of what she wanted to know. Bessie's letters were, it is true, full of allusions to what Captain Niel was doing, but she did not go beyond that. Her reticence, however, told her observant sister more than her words. Why was she so reticent? No doubt because things still hung in the balance. Then Jess would think of what it all meant for her, and now and again give way to an outburst of passionate jealousy which ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... MAYORALTY OF DETROIT.—A shrewd and observant correspondent writes: "John R. Williams has been elected mayor, after a close election, disputed by Chapin. The enemy practised a good thing on him. During one of the delegate elections, when his ambition seemed to tower higher than ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... imaginations had it not been for the burning passions which she formed, at a very early age, for living people. For some years now her life had centred round her brother Jeremy. Had the Coles been an observant family they might, perhaps, have found some pathos in the way in which Mary, with her pale sallow complexion, her pear-shaped face with its dull, grey eyes, her enormous glasses, her lanky colourless hair, and her thin, bony figure, gazed at her ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... She would gaze about and say, "There might be a piazza here"; and then she would look across the fields and add, "There'd be a good view if it weren't for those woods"—and wave the woods away with the gesture of a duchess. So, of course, the observant farmer would add a thousand dollars to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... spoken, and raising my head quickly (encountering Budge's bullet head EN ROUTE to the serious disarrangement of my hat), I looked into the other carriage. There, erect, fresh, neat, composed, bright-eyed, fair-faced, smiling and observant,—she would have been all this, even if the angel of the resurrection had just sounded his dreadful trump,—sat Miss Alice Mayton, a lady who, for about a year, I ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... Presently she quietly returned, and shyly pausing behind William's chair, rested her hand on the back of it. There was a timid apology in the gesture. She was thinking only of her own shortcomings. Had she been critical of him or even observant, she would have seen that there was something peculiarly characteristic in the very way that he handled his knife and fork; a curious, satisfied self-consciousness in the very lift of his wrists which seemed to say that this, and no other, was the correct manner of eating, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... still sleeping when James re-entered the room, but awoke promptly at the sound of his voice. In a few moments he had rearranged his scarcely disordered toilette, and stepped out refreshed and observant into the hall. The guests were still absent from that part of the building, and he walked leisurely past the carelessly opened doors of the rooms they had left. Everywhere he met the same glaring ornamentation and color, the same garishness of ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... not know how long it was before the circling observant consciousness, the flow of slow images, the vibration of particular thoughts, ceased and stilled as a pool rocks quietly to peace after the dropped stone has long lain still. But it came at last—that superb tranquillity, possible only when the senses ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... keenly observant of those about him, and he could not but note how soon the tragedy of the preceding night seemed forgotten. Some bemoaned the loss of money or valuables; a few, more fortunate, related how they had outwitted the robbers and escaped ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... pavement of Madison avenue, between the streets numbered 38 and 39, and gazing with an observant eye upon the pedestrians passing southward, you would be likely to see, about 8:40 o'clock of the morning, a gentleman of remarkable presence approaching with no bird-like tread. This creature, clad in a suit of subfuse respectable weave, bearing in his hand a cane of stout timber ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... an humble opinion of that unknown Texan, who did not observe the form of address customary among gentlemen. The Doctor himself always followed his own rule; he was as courteous in manner, and civil in speech, as "observant of the amenities" in the thick of a fight, ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame |
