"Observer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pitches of the voice, styles of address, forms of salutations, and special ways of performing certain kinds of work, tell their tale with an emphasis that makes itself understood even to the unscientific observer. The expression of the face and the very ring of the laugh often impressed me with the truth that it was that of a cousin's brother or sister. I often expressed my surprise at these things to those around me, and by a free indulgence in the peculiarities ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... lofty mass of hard granite, of about twenty miles long, by from six to fourteen in breadth. The soil upon it is shallow and barren; though the brush wood, dwarf gum trees, and some smaller vegetation, which mostly cover the rocks, give it a deceitful appearance to the eye of a distant observer. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... other side of the entrance, was this statement: "We do not use force until good laws are defied." Which ought to read: "We do not use force until laws are defied." Such ideas as these are corrupting courts, and biasing the public mind, and the injury is more than apparent to the observer. If law is not a standard, what standard can we have? We must have one. We repeat again: "Law commands that which is right and prohibits that which is wrong." Any statute that does this is lawful. Any that does not, ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... man played with his knife and fork, smilingly. An acute observer might have imagined that the passionate plaint was directed at him. If so it passed harmlessly over his broad shoulders. In his immaculate evening dress he looked strangely out of place there. Enid had escaped the prevailing dilapidation, but her gown of grey homespun ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... A civilised observer who witnessed such a scene of boisterous lamentation, but did not know the natives well, might naturally set down all these frantic outbursts to genuine sorrow, and might enlarge accordingly on the affectionate nature of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... accustomed to observe the stars—the catoptron, the dioptron, the eisoptron and the enoptron." He supposes the catoptron to have been the same with the astrolabe. "The dioptron seems to have been so named from a tube through which the observer looked. Were the other two instruments named from objects being reflected in a mirror placed within them? Aristotle says that the Greeks employed mirrors when they surveyed the celestial appearances. May we not conclude from ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... owing to the receipt of incorrect orders, did not arrive in time to assume the command. Up to this point, and for some time previously, matters had been conducted in a manner so careless by the War Department, that the mere casual observer might reasonably presume some parties connected with it courted failure. Arms and ammunition had been despatched to the frontier without due precaution, and to parties to whom they ought not have been ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... aeroplane coming up from the east. It was flying high, but as I looked it dropped several hundred feet and began to circle round the knot of hill in narrowing circles, just as a hawk wheels before it pounces. Now it was flying very low, and now the observer on board caught sight of me. I could see one of the two occupants ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... should be made as exact as possible.Thus in dealing with the triads of colour said to be most frequently employed in the best period of Italian painting the observer should note and record as far as this is possible not only the precise tints, but also the precise degrees of their several luminosities. With regard to elements of form in art, the judicious use of photography and careful measurement would probably help us to understand the practices ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... habitation frequently watching me with more than ordinary attention. He was handsome in person, and his countenance was overcast by a sort of languor, the effect of sickness, which rendered it peculiarly interesting. Frequently, when I approached the window of our drawing-room, this young observer would bow or turn away with evident emotion. I related the circumstance to my mother, and from that time the lower shutters of our windows were perpetually closed. The young lawyer often excited my mirth, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... the modesty of Tazewell confined to the bar. It pervaded his whole life; and when his fame was coextensive with the Union, and when his presence inspired awe in companies of able men, a close observer could detect in his tones or in his manner that he was not wholly at ease. It was only when the ice of a gathering party was fairly broken, that he was thoroughly self-possessed. Like Judge Marshall, he had a profound sense of respect for the female sex; ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... an observer, so energetic a leader, and so determined a fighter, could not long be left in retirement, and in February, 1862, General Sherman was ordered to assume command of the forces at Paducah, Ky. Desperate fighting soon followed. The ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... three dramas in which Mr. Fechter especially shines as a lover, but notably in the first—this remarkable power of surrounding the beloved creature, in the eyes of the audience, with the fascination that she has for him, is strikingly displayed. That observer must be cold indeed who does not feel, when Ruy Blas stands in the presence of the young unwedded Queen of Spain, that the air is enchanted; or, when she bends over him, laying her tender touch upon his bloody breast, that it is better so to die than to live apart from her, and that she is ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... to hear what thoughtful men had to say with regard to his race, Ensal leaned back in his chair, determined to give earnest attention to this observer of American life, whose very hostility assured the acuteness ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Australian Company, and married a fellow passenger, Charlotte Hudson Beare, and died two years after, and then Edward, manager of the South Australian Bank, and later, John Stephens who founded The Weekly Observer, and afterwards bought The Register. These all ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... communications, and invites consideration of the fragments, as suggestive of much that concerns the welfare of mankind, the question as to their source being provisionally left open. The man of science, the poet, the metaphysician, the philanthropist, the musician, the observer of manners, even the general reader who merely seeks to be amused, will, it is hoped, find something interesting in the following pages. Let all, therefore, taste the fruit and judge of its flavour, though they do not behold the tree; profit by the diamonds, though they know not how they were extracted ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... revealed its secrets to observant men? Dr. Donne sauntered about among graves, and saw a sexton turn up a skull. He examined it, found a nail in it, identified the skull, and had the murderess hung. She was safe from the sexton and the rest of the parish, but not from a stray observer. Well, the day you were blown up, I observed something, and arrived at ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... to pass eight days at Versailles, in the palace of that king and queen whose throne she was one day to sap. Lodged in the attics with one of the female domestics of the Chateau, she was a close observer of this royal luxury, which she believed was paid for by the misery of the people, and that grandeur of things founded on the servility of courtiers. The lavishly spread tables, the walks, the play, presentations—all ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... To the casual observer in a town of this character there was nothing specially noticeable in three horsemen driving a pack-horse, but to those whose eyes were keen the true relationship of the ranger to his captives was instantly apparent, and ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... Square or Kensington Gardens. Not seldom even you may see one of them making her way alone, book in hand, towards one of the picturesque rocks—No. 363, for example, or No. 364, if you like it better—which seems to be making signs to her with its white ticket, in a manner which, to the uninitiated observer, might seem even ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... to home-keeping folk who have never broken their ignorance of London that one can venture to speak with confidence from the cumulative misgiving which seems to sum the impressions of many sojourns of differing lengths and dates. One could have used the authority of a profound observer after the first few days in 1861 and 1865, but the experience of weeks stretching to months in 1882 and 1883, clouded rather than cleared the air through which one earliest saw one's London; and the successive pauses ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... to a fiercer heat. No sooner was the coast clear than the street-door opened, and my stranger was joined by a mantled form, that glided into Poll's emporium. The new-comer doffed a swart sombrero, and disclosed historic features that were not unknown to the concealed observer—meaning me. Yes, David, that aquiline beak, that long and waxed moustache, that impassible mask of a face, I had seen them, Sir, conspicuous (though their owner be of alien and even hostile birth) among England's special chivalry. The foremost he had charged on the Ides of April (I mean against ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... see that we did many silly things, very well calculated to awaken suspicion. We were,{215} at times, remarkably buoyant, singing hymns and making joyous exclamations, almost as triumphant in their tone as if we reached a land of freedom and safety. A keen observer might have detected ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... But that is because He offers the most intelligible approach to that very "otherness" in the person of the godhead. His healing and reconciling influence over the heart of man—the way the human spirit expands and blossoms in His presence—is moving beyond expression to any observer, religious or irreligious. Each new crusade in the long strife for human betterment looks in sublime confidence to Him as its forerunner and defense. To what planes of common service, faith, magnanimous solicitude could He not lift the embittered, worldlyized men and women of this ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... one end blown away, but the two sloping thatched sides remained. I cut a hole in one of these with my pocket-knife, and thus obtained a view of the German trenches without committing the error of looking out through the blown-out end, which would have clearly shown an observer that the house was occupied. Looking out through the slit I had made I obtained a panoramic view, more or less, of the German trenches and our own. The view, in short, was this: One saw the backs of our own trenches, then the "No man's land" space ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... dignified serenity, which savored only delicately of a snub. "I do not myself approve of the way in which Mrs. Jennings dresses her daughter," said she, "and I do not consider that the child presents to a practical observer as good an ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... only can determine whether the fire fight is being properly conducted. If the enemy's fire is losing in accuracy and effect, the observer realizes that his side is gaining superiority. If the enemy's fire remains or becomes effective and persistent, he realizes that corrective measures are necessary to increase either ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... bone-crushing slams and gut-wrenching twists that less skillful skippers were giving their ships as they flicked back and forth between threespace and Cth. Our scouting line must have been a peculiar sight to a threespace observer with the thousand or so scouts flickering in and out of sight across a ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... of the storm easily drowned any sounds the observer might make, and he moved with considerable freedom, now that the woman could not see him. Plainly, the air-holes had been made by other hands than hers, for they were higher than her head; in fact Donald himself would have to stretch to look ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... formidable organism was shown to me by M. Pasteur in Paris last July. His recent investigations regarding the part it plays pathologically certainly rank amongst the most remarkable labours of that remarkable man. Observer after observer had strayed and fallen in this land of pitfalls, a multitude of opposing conclusions and mutually destructive theories being the result. In association with a younger physiological colleague, M. Joubert, Pasteur struck in amidst the chaos, and soon reduced ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... by the currents of the winter rains; and here and there the gullies draw heavy lines and wrinkles. And when the wind is fresh and the clouds scud before it, in the motion of their shadows the face will seem to mow at the observer, until the belief comes very readily that it is the exact counterpart of ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the disadvantage of all concerned—but take the opportunity to give the continent a general survey, both to keep in view the utilization of the weed, whether or not it could be conquered; and whatever possibilities a lay observer might see as to the Grass ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... consequently provincial to the last degree. The types of character which developed under such conditions were not wanting in amiable or admirable traits. The well-to-do provincial was often a scholar, a connoisseur in art and literature, a polished letter-writer and conversationalist, a shrewd observer of his little world, an exemplary husband and father, courteous to inferiors, warm-hearted to his friends. Sometimes he found in religion or philosophy an antidote to the pettiness of daily life, and was roused into rebellion against the materialism ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... 16th.—I received the 'Edinburgh Review' yesterday, and read your article at once. It is excellent—the language of a profound observer, and of a true friend of France. There are pages I should like all my countrymen at all able to understand them to learn by heart, among others from these words (p. 22): 'The life of man is so short,' to these: 'the collective strength of a nation may ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... brotherhood appeared to pass their time on street corners arrayed like the lilies of the conservatory and busy with nail files and penknives. Thus displayed as a guarantee of good faith, they carried on an innocuous conversation in a 200-word vocabulary, to the casual observer as innocent and immaterial as that heard in clubs seven blocks to ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... recall the case of Brother Huber, the celebrated observer of the bee, who, having out of simple curiosity undertaken to verify certain experiments of Raumur's, was so completely and immediately fascinated by the subject that it became the object of the rest ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... friend, and the sound of their voices might easily have been heard in his dwelling, if one had been listening intently there. And one was listening with every sense strung to the acutest perception. Just as Wilkinson moved away, an observer would have seen the door of his house open, and a slender female form bend forth, and look earnestly into the darkness. A moment or two, she stood thus, and then stepped forth quickly, and leaning upon the iron railing of the door steps, fixed eagerly her eyes upon ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... the fact was there—plain, distinct, and incontrovertible, and she knew that no chance of impunity or acquittal remained for any one of his creed guilty of such a violation of the laws—we say, she knew all this—but it was not of the fate of Reilly she thought. The girl was an acute observer, and both a close and clear thinker. She had remarked in the Cooleen Bawn, on several occasions, small gushes, as it were, of unsettled thought, and of temporary wildness, almost approaching to insanity. She knew, besides, that insanity was in the family ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... new environment, so strange, so ruthless, swallowed them; and, in the welter of their toil, the black men became so intermingled that all tribal distinctions soon vanished. Here and there, however, a careful observer may still find among them a man of superior mien or a woman of haughty demeanor denoting perhaps an ancestral prince or princess who once exercised authority ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... Starmidge met his companion of the night before at nine-thirty next morning, it was to find him in conversation with the other man, and to see dissatisfaction on the countenances of both. And Starmidge, a naturally keen observer, knew what had happened. He frowned as ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... ye do, Ned? God bless ye!" said Battersleigh a moment later, after things had become more tranquil, the horse now falling to cropping at the grass with a meekness of demeanour which suggested innocence or penitence, whichever the observer chose. "I'm glad to see ye; glad as ivver I was in all me life to see a livin' soul! Why didn't ye tell ye was coming and not come ridin' like a murderin' Cintaur—but ay, boy, ye're a rider—worthy the ould Forty-siventh—yis, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... friend—in time, stuck our legs under the mahogany, and gazed upon the open prospect for a supper superb enough in all its details to tempt a jolly old friar from his devotions. We got along very nicely. An old chap who sat above us some seats, and whose rotund developments gave any ordinary observer reason to suppose his appetite as unquenchable as the Maelstrom, kept reaching about, and when tempting vessels were too remote, he'd ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... circle in which he practised, which was rather fond of boasting that it possessed the "brightest" doctor in the country, he daily justified his claim to the talents attributed to him by the popular voice. He was an observer, even a philosopher, and to be bright was so natural to him, and (as the popular voice said) came so easily, that he never aimed at mere effect, and had none of the little tricks and pretensions of second-rate reputations. ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... of the pitiable miser, finding that they could not entirely harmonize, the merchant cited another case, that of the negro cripple. But his companion suggested whether the alleged hardships of that alleged unfortunate might not exist more in the pity of the observer than the experience of the observed. He knew nothing about the cripple, nor had seen him, but ventured to surmise that, could one but get at the real state of his heart, he would be found about as happy as most men, if not, in fact, full as happy as the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... is a skilled observer, and has confidence in the observations he has made, the land in sight should be the island of Coiba; or an island that covers it, called Hicaron. Both are off the coast of Veragua, westward from Panama Bay, and about a hundred miles from its mouth; into which ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... quiet, resolute manner, he professed the fullest confidence. Cavagnari was a remarkable man. Italian and Irish blood commingled in his veins. Both strains carry the attributes of vivacity and restlessness, but Cavagnari to the superficial observer appeared as phlegmatic as he was habitually taciturn. This sententious imperturbability was only on the surface; whether it was a natural characteristic or an acquired manner is not easy to decide. Below the surface of measured reticent composure there lay ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the day was to be. When two hours had passed and the wagons carrying three hundred men had started for the Valley, Conniston had the two hundred and fifty men at Deep Creek working with a swiftness, an effectiveness which would have told a chance observer that they had been familiar many days with the work. He was to leave them before noon, to hurry on horseback to overtake the wagons that he might personally oversee the arrangements to be made upon their coming ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... not remember whether Lord Pembroke explained what these difficulties were. Certainly the English offer more peculiarities to the attentive observer ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... suspicious materials of ecclesiastical history seldom enable us to dispel the dark cloud that hangs over the first age of the church. The great law of impartiality too often obliges us to reveal the imperfections of the uninspired teachers and believers of the gospel; and, to a careless observer, their faults may seem to cast a shade on the faith which they professed. But the scandal of the pious Christian, and the fallacious triumph of the Infidel, should cease as soon as they recollect not ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... frontier when the Baluchistan parties were formed. His chief work in connection with Baluchistan has been carrying a first-class series of triangles from the Indus, at Dehra Grhazi Khan to Quetta, which occupied him to the close of his career. His ability as an observer, his readiness of resource under unusual difficulties, and his power of attaching the frontier people to him personally, have been just as conspicuous throughout this duty as were his energy and success as a geographical topographer. Apart from his departmental career, he has won a lasting ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... also that of simple common sense. You will remember, therefore, that this is no mere theory or hypothesis, but a pretty fair and simple conclusion from palpable facts; that the probability lies with the belief that the glen is some hundreds of thousands of years old; that it is not the observer's business to prove it further, but other persons' to disprove it, if ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... remarked the observer of events and things, "when a reputable physician has to pay money for a certificate to practice, and a fourteen-year-old girl with a ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... precincts of the Tuileries, where Constitutional Royalty, let Lafayette water it as he will, languishes too like a cut branch; and august Senators are perhaps at bottom only perfecting their 'theory of defective verbs,'—how does the young Reality, young Sansculottism thrive? The attentive observer can answer: It thrives bravely; putting forth new buds; expanding the old buds into leaves, into boughs. Is not French Existence, as before, most prurient, all loosened, most nutrient for it? Sansculottism has the property of growing by what other things die of: ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... stoicism. I say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe that true stoicism can ever become the characteristic of a whole nation, and also because some of our national manners and customs may seem to a foreign observer hard-hearted. Yet we are really as susceptible to tender emotion as any ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... lithe, and active, the brown ruddy face had none of the blank stare of vacant idiocy, but was full of twinkling merriment, the black eyes laughed gaily, and perhaps only so clear-sighted and shrewd an observer as Tibble would have detected a weakness of purpose about ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... elation on the day of the big offensive on the Somme when the British first used "tanks." I shall never forget the thrill I had when we read a telegram received at one of the headquarters repeating a wireless message from an aeroplane observer to the effect that he could see a tank wobbling into a village followed by cheering troops. It was the first time that engines of warfare had led the way to an attacking force and the picture of the enemy fleeing before these new engines of terror spouting fire ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... beauty, undimmed in the poor remnants of a wardrobe that has gone, with her trinkets, to the pawnbroker; we see a hundred examples of her courage and tenderness and generosity. There is nothing in Fielding's life that is more to his honour than the brief words in which so competent an observer as Lady Bute summed up his marriage with Charlotte Cradock, "he loved her passionately and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... all ground of confidence in the result. For a mind not previously versed in the meaning and right use of the various kinds of words, to attempt the study of methods of philosophizing, would be as if some one should attempt to become an astronomical observer, having never learned to adjust the focal distance of his optical instruments so as to ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Clark, constructed upon philosophical consideration of the sun and moon, in their several positions respecting the earth, and confirmed by experience of many years actual observation, furnishes the observer without further trouble, with the knowledge of what kind of weather may be expected to succeed, and that so near the truth, that in a very few instances will it be found ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... station for scientific investigations, it offered a wider field than the casual observer would have imagined. So it came about that the Main Base was finally settled ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... called Rose her pupil, and was attentive to assist her in her studies, and to fashion both her taste and understanding. It might have been remarked by a very close observer, that in the presence of Waverley she was much more desirous to exhibit her friend's excellences than her own. But I must request of the reader to suppose, that this kind and disinterested purpose was concealed by the most cautious delicacy, studiously shunning the most distant approach to affectation. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... long ago at Southampton, England; but no portrait gives the expression of the man. His smile and his light-blue eyes can not be painted by the sun. The rather small physique, and mild and gentle look, would not lead the ordinary observer to recognize in General Gordon a ruler and leader of men; but a slight acquaintance shows him to be a man of unusual power and great ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... subdued, familiar conversations, which otherwise so naturally arise when young ladies, acquaintances, or "friends," visit each other, and from the house slip out alone into garden or wood. An attentive observer meanwhile, by scrutinizing the physiognomy of both, would, perhaps, have come to the conclusion, that even if these two had been together on the most unobstructed road, no confidence would have arisen between them, and would have suspected ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... not often that nature takes the trouble to stir the heart of man into any emotion stronger than a quiet admiration or a peaceful wonder. Here and there on the face of the earth, however, the astonishing work of God gives pause to the most casual observer, the most thoughtless traveler. ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... Ellery Channing or Henry Thoreau—some poet, as once Whittier, journeying to the Merrimac, or an old Brook-Farmer who remembered Miles Coverdale with Arcadian sympathy—went down the avenue and disappeared in the house. Sometimes a close observer, had he been ambushed among the long grasses of the orchard, might have seen the host and one of his guests emerging at the back door and, sauntering to the river-side, step into the boat, and float off until they faded in the shadow. The spectacle ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... shutter was closed, not for any penal reasons, but because only the opposite window had the luxury of glass in it: the weather was not warm, and a round hole four inches in diameter served all the purposes of observation. The hole was, unfortunately, a little too high, and obliged the small observer to stand on a low stool of a rickety character; but Tessa would have stood a long while in a much more inconvenient position for the sake of seeing a little variety in her life. She had been drawn to the opening at the first loud tones of the strange voice speaking ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... an Englishman settled at Bruges, was an observer in many subjects, but especially in meteorology. He communicated to the Astronomical Society, in 1848, the information that, in the registers kept by his grandfather, his father, and himself, beginning in 1767, new moon on Saturday ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... connotations, depending on how one defines a genius. Leaving aside the Greek, Roman and Arabic definitions, a careful observer will find that there are two general classes of genius: the "partial" genius, and the "general" genius. Actually, such a narrow definition doesn't do either kind justice, but defining a human being is an almost impossible job, anyway, so we'll have to do the best we can with ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... reasons, obvious reasons, for his presence in Paloma, so, as he would have expressed it, he let it go at that and left the observer to draw any conclusions he pleased as to his almost constant presence at the Gallito home, and yet, after all, his visits were only a little more frequent than those of a number of others, and no more so at all than those of ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... tablet of undrest hide which the Arabs are in the habit of tying beneath the feet of their camels. This primitive form, after all the modifications and improvements it has received, still betrays itself to an attentive observer, in the very-latest fashions of the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the devil of mob ignorance and corruption, and the deep sea of genteel listlessness and superficiality? After all, Sir Henry Maine is only repeating in more sober tones the querulous remonstrances with which we are so familiar on the lips of Ultramontanes and Legitimists. A less timid observer of contemporary events, certainly in the land that all of us know best and love best, would judge that, when it comes to a pinch, Liberals are still passably prudent, and ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Scrupulously shaved, he presented a very short chin, large and good natured lips, and a nose disagreeably elevated, like the broad end of one of Sax's horns. His eyes of a dull gray, were small and red at the lids, and absolutely void of expression; yet they fatigued the observer by their insupportable restlessness. A few straight hairs shaded his forehead, which receded like that of a greyhound, and through their scantiness barely concealed his long ugly ears. He was very comfortably dressed, clean as a new franc piece, displaying ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... beautiful imbibed, which are essential to an accomplished and really useful writer of travels? Sulphuric acid and Optics, Anatomy and Mechanics, will do many things; but they will never make an observer of Nature, a friend of Man, a fit commentator on the world ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... and lower surface of the belly; fetid diarrhoea, dullness, debility, emaciation, rough coat, and the presence of worms in the feces. The worms when first passed are bright red in color but after being exposed to the air they turn dark and may easily escape the notice of the casual observer. ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... ends had a romantic upward flourish, gave its wearer a foreign, traditionary look and suggested that he was a gentleman who studied style. His conscious, curious eyes, however, eyes at once vague and penetrating, intelligent and hard, expressive of the observer as well as of the dreamer, would have assured you that he studied it only within well-chosen limits, and that in so far as he sought it he found it. You would have been much at a loss to determine his original clime and country; he had none ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... as were needed[18]. In the same State, a procession of several hundred colored men marching through the streets attracted attention. They marched under the command of Confederate officers and carried shovels, axes, and blankets. The observer adds, "they were brimful of patriotism, shouting for Jeff Davis and singing war songs."[19] A paper in Lynchburg, Virginia, commenting on the enlistment of 70 free Negroes to fight for the defense of the State, concluded with "three cheers ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... years in her grandson's dining-room, and is well known to all his friends. It represents a stately woman with an unmistakably fair skin; and if the face or hair betrays any indication of possible dark blood, it is imperceptible to the general observer, and must be of too slight and fugitive a nature to enter into the discussion. A long curl touches one shoulder. One hand rests upon a copy of Thomson's 'Seasons', which was held to be the proper study and recreation of cultivated ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... soldier, however, fixed his lurking glances on the chancellor. He saw that a sudden shock made the whole frame of the chancellor tremble, and a triumphant smile overspread the countenance of the secret observer. ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... that passed between them were now so strange that both their voices sank into solemnity, and had an acute observer listened to them he would have noticed that these two mellow voices had similar beauties, and were pitched exactly in the same key, though there was, of course, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... mingled fervor and humility. To any ordinary observer he would have seemed to be laboring under home strange hallucination,—but ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... alone in her own apartment; and having broke the ice, was now grown bold enough to declare his passion, with all the embellishments necessary to render it successful: mademoiselle Charlotta knew very well what became the decorum of her sex, and was too nice an observer of it not to behave with all the reserve imaginable on this occasion. All the freedom she had been accustomed to treat him with, while ignorant of his or her own inclination, was now banished from ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... seen to wend his way to the same cliffs, and, from no reason whatever with which we happened to be acquainted, sought out the same nook! We say "he was seen," advisedly, for the maid with the golden hair saw him. Any ordinary observer would have said that she had scarcely raised her eyes from the ground since sitting down on a niece of flower-studded turf near the edge of the cliff, and that she certainly had not turned her ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... this instant another door opened, and Lady Jane appeared. Luckily for me, the increased mirth of the party, as Lord Callonby informed them of my blunder, prevented their paying any attention to me, for as I half sprung forward toward her, my agitation would have revealed to any observer, the whole state of my feelings. I took her hand which she extended to me, without speaking, and bowing deeply over it, raised my head and looked into her eyes, as if to read at one glance, my fate, and when I let fall her hand, I would not have ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... transmitter and television receiver. The lens throws a distant image on the exploring disc of the transmitter, through which it acts on a photo-electric cell sensitive to invisible infra-red rays. The receiver amplifies it for the observer. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... aside from some angularities, considerable gauntness, and much sunburn, Seth told himself that he was not different from other men. It was not palpable to the casual observer that as men went he was a failure, but Seth realized the truth ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... was a tall, fine-looking man of about five-and-thirty. He wore a light-colored tweed shooting suit, which contrasted well with his dark hair and bronzed complexion. A remarkably handsome man was The McAllister of Dunmorton, but to a close observer there was something lacking in his face—the old weakness about the mouth and chin, which time, instead of eradicating, had only served to develop. The hard school of adversity would have been a wholesome ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... line-up? Seems to me nearly every face here is familiar; and I reckon their entire baseball squad has qualified for the gridiron," remarked another observer. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... Rocky Mountain locusts in Nebraska, a scientific observer watched a long-billed marsh wren carry thirty locusts to her young in an hour and the same number was kept up regularly. At this rate, for seven hours a day, a nest-ful of young wrens would eat two hundred and ten locusts a day. From ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... of seven stages of life by a remarkably good observer. It is very presumptuous to attempt to add to it, yet I have been struck with the fact that life admits of a natural analysis into no less than fifteen distinct periods. Taking the five primary divisions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... remains all his life a herding animal. As one keen observer has written, "So great is man's horror of being alone that he will seek the society of those he neither likes nor respects sooner than be left to his own." The laws and conventions that govern men's intercourse have, ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... began, and the reaction was led off by the London "Times." Instantly, as by a preconcerted signal, all papers of a certain class began to abuse; and some who had at first issued articles entirely commendatory, now issued others equally depreciatory. Religious papers, notably the "New York Observer," came out and denounced the book as anti- Christian, anti-evangelical, resorting even to personal slander on the author as a means of diverting ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Barrier. Slowly it rose up out of the sea until we were face to face with it in all its imposing majesty. It is difficult with the help of the pen to give any idea of the impression this mighty wall of ice makes on the observer who is confronted with it for the first time. It is altogether a thing which can hardly be described; but one can understand very well that this wall of 100 feet in height was regarded for a generation as an insuperable obstacle to further ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... To the superficial observer the answer seems simple. The very name points to English sources. The Bill of Rights of 1689, the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, the Petition of Right of 1628, and finally the Magna Charta libertatum appear to be unquestionably the predecessors of the Virginia ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... much-enduring man rose, and turned his back upon the sight he loved so dearly. He went out at the open door intending to close it and bid her good-night. But he did not do so, just then; for his attention as an observer of nature was arrested by the unusual conduct of certain animals. Gannets and other sea-birds were running about the opposite wood and craning their necks in a strange way. He had never seen one enter ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... he learned, from common rumour, that a Dutchman had presented to prince Maurice of Nassau an optical instrument, which possessed the singular property of causing distant objects to appear nearer the observer. This Dutchman was Hans or John Lippershey, who, as has been clearly proved by the late Professor Moll of Utrecht,[8] was in the possession of a telescope made by himself so early as 2d October 1608. A few days afterwards, the truth of this report ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... possible to the very heart's blood. Yet the old gold, the elaborate execution of the quaint classical device, and the fanciful arrangement of the braided hair interwoven with twisted gold letters, all told no tales to the observer, whose unwakened ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... warmth, the stir of the whole, the human kindness and benevolence of it replaced the want of clearness, depth, thoroughness, extent, perseverance, and steadiness. In this way each separate branch of education was in such a condition as to powerfully interest, but never wholly to content the observer, since it prepared only further division and separation and did not ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... have proved the falsity of this doctrine and led to a divorce between art and popular feeling which a sensitive observer cannot fail to remark. It is glaringly apparent in the hitherto most vital of all Russian arts, the theatre. The artists have continued to perform the old classics in tragedy or comedy, and the old-style operette. ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... it has occurred to an observer of these events—as a person who in other lands has seen and learned something of the ravages of smallpox among the unvaccinated—to try to forecast their natural and, in the view of many, their almost certain end. Hence these pages from the life history of the pitiable, but unfortunate ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... we can appreciate the beauty of its design, or the boldness of the group it forms with the cathedral dome and tower and the square masses of numerous out-buildings. Yet this peculiar position of the palace, though baffling to a close observer of its details, is one of singular advantage to the inhabitants. Set on the verge of Urbino's towering eminence, it fronts a wave-tossed sea of vales and mountain summits toward the rising and the setting sun. There is nothing but illimitable air between the terraces ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... bookshelf and pulled down a copy of The World Almanac. "Sunrise and sunset times are listed in here. You can figure out quickly enough where the sun was in relation to the observer. It will take another sheet of paper ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... seat in Parliament in 1905; and Nationalists, though with some constitutional justification, secured his removal from office in 1907. At this moment there is friction and suspicion in this particular matter which seems to the impartial observer to be artificial, and which would not exist, or would be transmuted into something perfectly harmless, and probably highly beneficial, were there any normal political life in Ireland and a central organ of public opinion. As long ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... pretended to establish a new religion. His claims, indeed, were limited to purging the "School of Nazareth" of the dross of ages and of the manifold abuses with which long use had infected its early constitution: hence to the unprejudiced observer his reformation seems to have brought it nearer the primitive and original doctrine than any subsequent attempts, especially the Judaizing tendencies of the so-called "Protestant" churches. The Meccan Apostle ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... tough and resistant. In a small group of them—the species of Synapta—the calcareous bodies occur in the form of delicate anchors of microscopic size. Up till 1897 these anchors, like many other delicate microscopic structures, were regarded as curiosities, as natural marvels. But a Swedish observer, Oestergren, has recently shown that they have a biological significance: they serve the footless Synapta as auxiliary organs of locomotion, since, when the body swells up in the act of creeping, they press firmly with their tips, which ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... built the armed subterranean observer's dome three days' travel away from it. The plasmoid was installed in its new quarters. It then requested the use of the Vishni ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... lean angles, so that the daughters were willowy without being lathy, round-muscled without being chubby. In every feature of every face were haunting reminiscences of Asia, all manipulated over and disguised by Old England, New England, and South of Europe. No observer, without information, would have guessed, the heavy Chinese strain in their veins; nor could any observer, after being informed, fail to note immediately ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... genera of vipers in America, two of them are so closely related, and present characteristics that are so similar that the ordinary observer would regard them as being identical, and inasmuch as the character of their poison seems in every way similar, for practical purposes it would seem desirable to include them under one head; in both genera, the species have rattles on the tips of their tails, ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... and Rastignac instantly became an observer, could read the whole history, the character and customs of caste, in the phrase, in the tones of her voice, in her glance and bearing. He caught a glimpse of the iron hand beneath the velvet glove—the ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... sure to bring wind a-plenty. But still there was hope. So long as it did not bring outright snow, my wife would not worry so much. Here where she was, the snow would not drift—there was altogether too much bush. She—not having been much of an observer of the skies before—dreaded the snowstorm more than the blizzard. I knew the latter was ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... flung in the loam, poured in the water, reset the shrub, and when the last stamp and pat were given performed a little dance of triumph about it, at the close of which he pulled off his hat and began to fan his heated face. The action caused the observer to start and look again, thinking, as he recognized the energetic worker with a smile, "What a changeful thing it is! haunting one's premises unseen, and stealing one's books unsuspected; dreaming one half the day and masquerading the other half. What will happen next? Let us ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... the Lord must specially have sent him to catch things with. He caught many things with it—willie-wagtails, laughing-jackasses, fowls, and mostly the dog. Joe was a born naturalist—a perfect McCooey in his way, and a close observer of the habits and customs of animals and living things. He observed that whenever Jacob Lipp came to our place he always, when going home, ran along the fence and touched the top of every post with ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... "You will remain where you are: act as observer: hold this line open and keep me informed. Captain Blake will leave immediately for observation. A squadron will follow. Let me know promptly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various |
