"Sharper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Though still distant—at least, a quarter of a mile—both father and daughter can perceive that they are Indians; mounted, as a matter of course, for they could not and did not, expect so see such afoot in the Chaco. But Francesca's eyes are sharper sighted than those of her father, and at the first glance she makes out more—not only that it is a party of Indians, but these of the Tovas tribe. The feathered manta of the young chief, with its bright gaudy ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... shammed dead, and kept a knife ready, with the hopes of releasing his companions while we were off our guard, and retaking the vessel. For this we could not blame him, so we treated him with the same care as the other prisoners—only, perhaps, we kept rather a sharper watch over him, lest he might attempt to play us some ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... honour, wherein its noblest and at the same time its most terrible elements unite to a second religion. Extremes of selfish desire and of sacrifice both seek to be satisfied. The nature of the "world" could not possibly find sharper, more dazzling, more dominating, and at the same time more destructive, more terrible expression. The poet in his most vigorous presentations has taken for his subject the conflict of this honour with the deep human feeling ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... that it cradled a little naked child. And at the sight there came a thorn in her breast that pricked her. The child stirred in its sleep, and crawled to the place of the angel's breast, and it fondled it with searching lips and hands. Then it wailed, and as she heard its cry the thorn pressed sharper into Anne's breast; and the angel's eyes turned to her with an immortal anguish, and pity, and despair. She looked, and saw that its breast was as the breast of the little child. And she was moved to compassion ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... enough latitude of speech on the part of the acting personages to prevent monotony and to render intellectual scintillations of the compiler comparatively unnecessary. Occasionally, for the sake of sharper focus on the portrait of some leader, Dio will introduce this or that trivial incident and may perhaps feel called upon immediately, under the strictness of his self-imposed regime, to apologize ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... weeks following the night journey to Angora, a journey on which he once more fought the hard battle to a still sharper conclusion, Evan Blount scarcely saw his office in Temple Court for more than a brief hour or two at a time. One speaking appointment followed another in such rapid succession that he was constantly going or returning; ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... you wild animals doing?" demanded Helen, who was much sharper with the evil doers among the under classes than was Ruth. "So she's a 'fire-bug?' Oh, girls! what better are you than poor little Gregg, I'd like to know? Every soul of you has done worse things than she has done—only your acts did not have ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... strange about the difference between England and Ireland. Artificial land-frontiers often denote much sharper cleavages of sentiment, character, physique, language, history. A sea-frontier sometimes makes a less, sometimes a more, effective line of delimitation. Denmark and Sweden, France and England, are examples. Nor, on the other hand, did the profound differences between Ireland ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... to want companionship? It thought about that for a moment. And then the alien beast thoughts grew sharper, clearer. It knew suddenly that it did not want man's compassion. It knew that there was only one driving thought in it. Hate. Hate that would inspire fear. Fear that would freeze its victim into terror. And terror that would ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... Parlour sign which brought to her memory at once the sleek pale girl with the emerald earrings. Something made her curious to see the girl again, and she went in, to find her still there, the emeralds still in her beautiful close ears, but sharper set, a ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... service, it was of his own invention. If he was an advertising quack, he was one who believed in his own wares. The sense of something tiny and flying was accentuated as they swept up long white curves of road in the dead but open daylight of evening. Soon the white curves came sharper and dizzier; they were upon ascending spirals, as they say in the modern religions. For, indeed, they were cresting a corner of London which is almost as precipitous as Edinburgh, if not quite so picturesque. Terrace rose above terrace, and the special tower of flats they sought, rose above them ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... the air bit ever sharper, and while Peggy went about her cooking, assisted by her husband and the outlaw, Alice pulled Ward down to her ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... loneliness of strangers in a strange land, the scoundrels will accost them in their own language. Glad to hear the mother-tongue once more, the emigrant readily enters into conversation with the fellow, and reveals to him his destination, his plans, and the amount of money he has with him. The sharper, after some pleasantries meant to lull the suspicions of his victim, offers to show him where he can purchase his railroad tickets at a lower rate than at the office in the Landing Depot, and, if the emigrant is willing, conducts ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... face to face with the old, solemn thought that character makes capacity for heaven. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place?' asked the Psalmist; and a prophet put the question in a still sharper form, and by the very form of the question suggested a negative answer—'Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire; who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?' Who can pass into ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... they thought, made it neutral, and we all, North and South, recognize in it the boldest anti-slavery document extant. Why else do Northern demagogues ridicule it, and Southern demagogues revile it? Yet Jefferson made it far stronger and sharper against negro slavery than it is now. Look closely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... easy, in the daytime, for the squirrels to keep out of Fatty's way, when he wandered through the tree-tops, for the squirrels were much sprier than Fatty. But at night—ah! that was a very different matter. For Fatty Coon's eyes were even sharper in the dark than they were in the daylight; but the poor squirrels were just as blind as you are when you are safely tucked in bed and ...
— Sleepy-Time Tales: The Tale of Fatty Coon • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Hank, briefly. The Colonel was plainly getting excited. His razor-like back curved sharper than ever as he peered into the intricacies of the board to spy the trap which the fat Judge had set for him. At this point the squeal of boots on the icy walk outside paused, and a moment later Amos Ridings entered, with whiskers covered ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... in the misery of her indecision, Janet's words grew fewer and sharper as the days wore on. With strange inconsistency she blamed the minister for his determination to go away, but suffered no one else to blame him, or indeed to hint that he could do otherwise than what was wisest and best for all. It was a sore subject, this anticipated ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... representation of one of the newest and largest of the British tanks. In appearance these are not unlike great tanks, though they are neither round nor square, being shaped, in fact, like two wedges with the broad ends put together, and the sharper ends sticking out, though there is no sharpness to a tank, the "noses" ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... that are borrowed from literary sources like Gildas, Jerome, Prosper, betray great ignorance on the part of the borrower.[1] On the other hand, the native Celtic instinct is more definitely alive and comes into sharper contrast with the idea of Rome. Throughout, no detail occurs which enlarges our knowledge of Roman or of early post-Roman Britain. The same features recur in later writers who might be or have been supposed to have had access ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... of the quarter-staff make is that they try very long sweeping hits, which are easily guarded, instead of shorter and sharper taps, which run up points ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... across the world heavy as a sea of lead, and as lifeless; deeply unconscious, like an exhausted sleeper. The sky bent above, the stars paling. Far away the mountains seemed to wait. And then, imperceptibly, those in the east became blacker and sharper, while those in the west became faintly lucent and lost the distinctness of their outline. The change was nothing, yet everything. And suddenly a desert bird sprang into the air and ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... rest one day in the week. Yes, I must find something," he said, "on which to write." And finally he found it. He chose two trees standing near each other and then sought for a small sharp stone, which he could make still sharper by striking it on another. When he had got this pen ready he cut into the bark of ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... intermarriages occurred more and more frequently, party spirit has run higher and higher and bitter feelings been engendered. But never have the factional differences been more pronounced and the lines of separation drawn with a sharper ploughshare in this mountain-ramparted New England town, than during the five years subsequent to the opening of the Flamsted Quarries which brought in its train the railroad and the immigrants. This event was looked upon by the inhabitants as the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... mind was in some business deal with my father once, and they became very well acquainted. I met him several times, and liked him immensely. He is well along in years, but I think sharper than many younger men. But there is ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... then convinced with me that there was something amiss, and called the maids to our help, for, as she said, I was only a boy (though a dear one), and ill schooled in such matters. But it turned out that their eyes were no sharper than mine. They pronounced her hooked and buttoned and pinned to ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... see very distinctly the beautiful white face of the mistress pressed against the blue damask cushion, and clear in outline as she had once observed it on the background of ocean; and she noticed that the features were sharper and that the figure was thinner. From the silvery lamp-light the gray hair seemed to have caught a metallic lustre on the ripples that ebbed back from the blue-veined temples, and the woman looked like a marble snow-crowned ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... "the Prairie Giant of Peonia, the Favourite Son of Illinois; the man who came within three votes of getting the party nomination for the Presidency last spring, and was only defeated because ten small intriguers are sharper than one big one. The Honourable Silas P. Ratcliffe, Senator from Illinois; he will be run for the ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... to," I retorted, "though I must say you are a wonderful cook." At this she merely scowled at me and I did not venture another remark until the sharper pangs of hunger were appeased, then, sighing, I spoke again. "Yes, I repeat you are a wonderful cook! But then everything seems so wonderful to me—this place, for instance—so ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... to the ground, massive of hand and jaw, was a second. After that their choice had fallen on "Judge" Lodge. The judge wore spectacles and a judicial air. He had a keen eye for cows and was rather a sharper in horse trades. He gave his costume a semiofficial air by wearing a necktie instead of a bandanna, even at a roundup. The glasses, the necktie, and his little solemn pauses before he delivered an opinion, ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... little shelves of rock to meet the waves. Usually it is shallow, but now it was swollen to an average depth of a foot or more, and there were deeper pockets. Dickson made the passage slowly and miserably, sometimes crying out with pain as his toes struck a sharper flint, once or twice sitting down on a boulder to blow like a whale, once slipping on his knees and wetting the strange excrescence about his middle, which was his tucked-up waterproof. But the crossing was at length achieved, and on a patch ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... I think he's some kind of a confidence man who has adopted the respectable clothes of a minister to fool people. He may be a card sharper himself. Well, we won't have anything more to do with him. It won't be long before we arrive at Buenos Ayres, and then we won't be bothered with card sharpers or anybody ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... said, referring, he gathered, to the occasion he had missed. "That is, the Rodmans and the Luces did, and I sat around. People are too selfish for anything!" Her voice grew sharper. "They stayed until after twelve, just because Borden was nineteen dollars back at one time. And they drank all that was left of your special Mount Vernon. It was last night that you were at the ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... her good brother, his occasional discourses which had been subject of a public mention that she never forgot, were objects of a more than sisterly fondness. If her sins were ever to meet with a punishment in the flesh, they would know no sharper one than in a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... is Mab, the mistress fairy, That doth nightly rob the dairy, And can hunt or help the churning As she please without discerning. . . . . . . She that pinches country wenches If they rub not clean their benches, And with sharper nails remembers When they rake not up their embers; But if so they chance to feast her, In a shoe she drops a tester. . . . . . . This is she that empties cradles, Takes out children, puts in ladles; Trains forth midwives ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... been arrested and may still be arrested by erroneous conceptions of national progress and of the ends to which public energy and public funds[295] may be wisely devoted is a matter for patriotic reflection.[296] No impression I have gained in Japan is sharper than an impression of ardent patriotism. For good or ill, patriotism is the outstanding Japanese virtue. What some patriots here and elsewhere do not seem to realise, however, is what a quiet, homely, everyday thing true patriotism is. The Japanese, with so many talents, so many ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... beautiful little girl, the heiress to a big estate, who had been carried off by strolling gipsies, and never been seen again by her sorrowing relatives; while the waitress hinted darkly that the time might come when it would be a comfort to know force had been employed, for sharper than a serpent's tooth was an ungrateful child, and she always had said that there was something uncanny about that ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... sharper—"I am aware that it is a mesalliance, a stain, a finish to our fine race, and if I could take you on the journey I am going I would not suggest this alternative to you; but one must have common-sense and be practical; and as you are young ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... endless weeks dragged on, there were interesting, even exciting moments—when you hardly felt the ache. But other times—evenings and Sundays—it came back sharper than ever. And in the course of those weeks he had learnt a number of things not included in the school curriculum. He had learnt that it was better to clench your teeth and not cry out when your ears were tweaked ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... little sharper than you were before, and you will manage to carry off both the Golden Blackbird and the Porcelain Maiden. Take the golden cage in one hand, and leave the bird in the old cage where he is, ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... young. So much the worse for me you'll say. I say the same. William Butcher is twenty year younger than me. He knows a hundred year more. If William Butcher had wanted to Patent an invention, he might have been sharper than myself when hustled backwards and forwards among all those offices, though I doubt if so patient. Note. William being sometimes cranky, and consider porters, messengers, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... fades, as these cultures become more and more shaped and conscious, as the new literatures grow in substance and power, as differences develop from speculative matter of opinion to definite intentions, as contrasts and affinities grow sharper and clearer, there must follow some very extensive modifications in the collective public life. But one series of tints, one colour must needs have a heightening value amidst this iridescent display. While the forces at work in the wealthy and ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Jones joined the M.G.C.H.B., in other words the Tank Corps. His joy at this transfer was unbounded. Nothing could be in sharper contrast than the letters he wrote after joining the Tank Corps and those penned during the preceding three months, when the enforced inactivity of the cavalry and the nature of his own routine work preyed on his spirits and made ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... did not intend this desperate method for a good object. Listen to me: great Lords don't feel it in their scalp, when their subjects are torn by the hair; one has to grip their own locks, as the only way to give them pain." (These last words the King said in a sharper tone; he again made his apology for the resolution he had formed; and renewed his Order. With the modesty usual to him, but also with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... I do not ask if they should find reason to be so, but if they really are so. To see them live, it seems to me that a majority of them are discontented with their lot, and, above all, absorbed in material needs and beset with cares for the morrow. Never has the question of food and shelter been sharper or more absorbing than since we are better nourished, better clothed, and better housed than ever. He errs greatly who thinks that the query, "What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" presents itself to the poor alone, exposed as they are to the anguish ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... vast estates?" he said with an ironical laugh. "Nay! Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse, the bait is passing clumsy. An you wish me to hold my tongue about you and your affairs, you'll have to be vastly sharper than that." ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... and folly bred, To sense of honour as to virtue dead, Whom ties, nor human, nor divine can bind, 300 Alien from God, and foe to all mankind; Who spares no character; whose every word, Bitter as gall, and sharper than the sword, Cuts to the quick; whose thoughts with rancour swell; Whose tongue, on earth, performs the work of hell? If there be such a monster, the Reviews Shall find him holding forth against abuse: Attack profession!—'tis ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... when a sovereign has reason or mind to get rid of his wife. Perhaps too much difficulty of untying the Gordian not of matrimony thrown in the way of an absolute prince would be no kindness to the ladies, but might prompt him to use a sharper weapon, like that butchering husband, our Henry VIII. Sovereigns, who narrow or let out the law of God according to their prejudices and passions, mould their own laws no doubt to the standard of their convenience. Genealogic purity of blood is the predominant ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... night was piercing cold; and, in time, the question arose whether the stench and closeness of a riverside eating-house would not be more endurable than the cutting wind, the sleet, and the sharper pangs ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... sucked the soil out sharply at two neighbouring points, for this valley has two heads, and between them stands a grass-grown bluff. The western vale-head is quite round but very steep. It faces due south and has been found grateful by thorns, elders, bracken and even heather. But the eastern head is sharper, begins almost in a point. From that it sweeps out in a huge demi-lune of cliff, the outer cord being the east, the inner hugging the bluff. Facing north from the valley, facing these two heads, you see the eastern of them like ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... enigmatical world, especially when one was married to a nagging woman? As Ieremia slackened in his labours, the mission board threatened louder and louder to send him back to the atolls, while his wife's tongue grew correspondingly sharper. Tui Tulifau was a sympathetic monarch, whose queen, on occasions when he was particularly drunk, was known to beat him. For political reasons—the queen belonging to as royal stock as himself and her brother commanding the army—Tui Tulifau could not divorce her, but he could and did divorce ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... before him had done. He tried to move, but Lucia put her cool hand upon his forehead. That quieted him, but he still listened intently to the sound of battle, distinguishing with a trained ear the deep note of the cannon and the sharper crash of the rifle. All waited anxiously for the return of the Secretary, confident that he would come and confident that he would bring true news of the battle's fortunes. It required but a short acquaintance with Mr. Sefton to produce upon every one the impression ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... away the first waters to correct their bitterness) and cut into narrow slices (as in the gelly of Pippins) and some Ambergreece, with a fourth part of Musk, and break the Apples with the back of your preserving spoon, whiles it cooleth. If you like them sharper, you may put in a little juyce of Limon, a little before you take the pan from the fire. When it is cold, put it into pots. This will keep a year ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... do I care?' and shouldered his way on through the crowd. It served him right for mixing with such people here. He left the fair, but the further he went, the more he nursed his rage, the more heinous seemed her offence, the sharper grew his jealousy. "A beggarly baron!" was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ranks next to St. Andrew's in point of age; there are fragments of Norman work in the building, and it is known to have been standing in 1297. To-day the venerable pile, with its age worn stones, stands out in sharper contrast to its environment than does any other building in the town, surrounded as it is by modern shops and offices. The memories it evokes, and the past for which it stands, are such as the citizens of Newcastle will not willingly let die; and when, a few years ago, a proposal was made for its ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... to by Mr. Wedderburne, whose naturally sharp tongue was on this occasion rendered still sharper by his friendship for Mr. Whately who was lying between life and death. After reviewing the arguments of the opposite counsel, Wedderburne directed himself to an inculpation of the assembly and people ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... groaned Cedric; "and there was a professional sharper there—Wright has just told me so—and he will not let me off. If they found out things at headquarters I should be rusticated, and I am only in my first term. The Proctor has vowed to make an example ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... dear Lord, Is another, sharper sword. Who my healing would insure Will seek out a ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... of flesh? but you shall not! Although Kior Ali has lost one eye, yet his other is a sharp one, and knows what it is about. I would give you to the baker Hassan there, if his rogue of a son, who is now looking this way, was not even sharper than this self-same eye; but now I think of it, I will take you where you can do no harm. The Giaour Yanaki, the Greek kabobchi [80] (roast meat man), shall have you, and shall cut you up into ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... From infancy he had been distinguished for this faculty, variable with the state of the atmosphere. As a rule, the act of shaking hands was generally attended by a quivering sensation like that produced by an electric current, and contact with his tongue gave a still sharper shock. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... length this stony grief gave place to a sharper anguish, a low cry burst from her lips, and hot scalding tears fell upon ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... twiggy branches, being from 3 inches to 3 inches in length and 1 inches to 1 inches in width, while those on vigorous shoots attain a length of 5 inches, with a width of about half the length. They are slightly hairy on both surfaces. The long acuminate points, the sharper serratures, the more numerous nerves (nine to fourteen in number), and the more papery texture distinguish Z. acuminata easily from its Caucasian relative, Z. crenata. The foliage, too, seems to be retained on the trees in autumn longer than that of the species ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... grasp the two spheres of mind and character, the sane and the insane, and hold them perfectly reconciled by their gentle yet unsparing insight. A case like Poe's, where actual mental decay exists in so advanced a stage and gives to his productions a sharper and more dazzling effect than would have been theirs without it, is probably more unique, but it is certainly less admirable, less original in the true sense, than an instance of healthier endowment like Hawthorne. On the side of art, it is impossible to bring Poe into any competition with Hawthorne: ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... "You are sharper than a monkey!" Dowager lady Chia laughingly exclaimed in reply to her proposal. "You make use of public money ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the wind of her destiny. Her voice grew sharper. Little white stripes, like the lashes from a whip, showed themselves on her cheeks. She seemed to be speaking from a dream, which left her no will save ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... It is now become an avow'd System of Fraud and Ruin. The virtuous and Honourable, who Scorn Advantage, are a constant Prey to the vicious and dishonourable, who never Play without one. nor does the Vice Stop here: For the Sharper having Stript his Bubble of his Estate, he next Corrupts his Mind, by making him a Decoy-Duck, in Order to retrieve his Fortune as he lost It. And, from an indegent Virtuous Bubble, the Noble Youth becomes an Affluent ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... power was greatly increased. This enabled the printing of larger forms and the use of a thinner and harder "packing," or "tympan," between the platen and the sheet of paper to be printed, resulting in a sharper and clearer impression. Much less exertion was required to work the lever, and at first, on this account, a printer, who was accustomed to use all his physical force on the old screw press, found it difficult to work ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... side, and Mr. Midwinter on the other, the worst of all risks to run is the risk of losing time. Young Armadale has hinted already, as well as such a lout can hint, at a private interview! Miss Milroy's eyes are sharp, and the nurse's eyes are sharper; and I shall lose my place if either of them find me out. No matter! I must take my chance, and give him the interview. Only let me get him alone, only let me escape the prying eyes of the women, and—if his friend doesn't come between us—I ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... are numbered,' by the hairs meaning the smallest and slightest phantasy or thought. And in harmony herewith is the teaching of blessed Paul, 'For the word of God,' saith he, 'is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... out of Industry, leaves most of her economic value behind. And the greater that value was, the sharper is the shock of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... one, even the Bartons had given them a very cold shoulder. Mrs. Gould, in an old black velvet dress, wondered why all the nice girls did not get married, and from time to time she plaintively questioned the passers-by if they had seen May. Violet's sharp face had grown sharper. She knew she could do something if she only got a chance. But would she get a chance? The Ladies Cullen, their plank-like shoulders bound in grey frise velvet and steel, were talking to her. Suddenly ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... soon have, a sharper spur to exertion, which I lacked at an earlier period; for I see little prospect but that I shall have to scribble for a living. But this troubles me much less than you would suppose. I can turn my pen to all sorts of drudgery, such as children's books, etc., and by and by I shall get some editorship ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... vexed and amused by the words she had just heard. "Really," she observed, "every remark this girl Lin utters is sharper than a razor! ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the unfortunate Moses was undeceived. He now saw that he had indeed been imposed upon by a prowling sharper, who, observing his figure, had marked him for an easy prey. I therefore asked the circumstances of his deception. He sold the horse, it seems, and walked the fair in search of another. A reverend looking man brought him to a tent, under pretence of having one to sell. ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... London that in going to hear Arthur Meadows on the most admired—or the most detested—personalities of the day, they at least ran no risk of wishy-washy panegyric, or a dull caution. Meadows had proved himself daring both in compliment and attack; nothing could be sharper than his thrusts, or more Olympian than his homage. There were those indeed who talked of "airs" and "mannerisms," but their faint voices were lost in ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... gold. He said the two strings of his heart were rooted, the one in his daughter, the other in his books; and that if either were severed he must die. Now in an evil hour, hoping to win a marriage portion for his child, this simple old man had entrusted his small savings to a sharper to be ventured in a glittering speculation. But that was not the worst of it: he signed a paper—without reading it. That is the way with poets and scholars; they always sign without reading. This cunning paper made him responsible for heaps of things. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... situation rapidly, and at length approved the proposal of Pierre. It was obvious that Pierre, ardent and impetuous, would be more effective than Antoine in such a venture; and it occurred to Le Loutre that in taking the boy he was inflicting a sharper punishment ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... attain my age," replied Tony, "you will have arrived at the conclusion that the whole world is sharper than one took it to be. It does not do to think that the world is blind. It is better not to care ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... turn his eyes toward Mackenzie as he argued thus with himself, nor bring his face about to give his companion a full look into it. He sat staring across the mighty temptation that lay spread, league on league before him, his sharp countenance sharper for the wasting it had borne since Mackenzie saw him last, his chin up, his neck stretched as if he leaped the barriers of his ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... child. Now canst sit on old Nibelung's croup? His back- bone is somewhat sharper than if he had battened in a citizen's stall; but, if thine aunt can find thee some sort of pillion, I'll promise thee the best ride thou hast had since we came from Innspruck, ere thou ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the sharp reports of the small guns on board the junks, the sharper crackle of matchlocks and muskets had begun; but so far I had not seen a puff of smoke from ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... women, who are intensely pleased with themselves, if they have some good looks into the bargain, believe themselves capable of marrying any one. Mrs. Ralph has fine eyes and rolls them. Walderhurst won't be ogled. The Brooke girl is sharper than Ralph. She was very sharp this afternoon. ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... traveling north, but two routes the Indians used started from the head of the lake. He found the marks of the sledge-runners, and then noted with a thrill of excitement that there was something curious about one of the men's tracks. The steps were uneven; one impression was sharper than the other. ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... don't tell where you got the money, how are you to know whether everything is all right or not?" demanded Captain Patterdale, in sharper tones ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... use to cry over spilt milk, we all know, but it's easier said than done, that. Women kind, and especially single folks, will take on dreadful at the fadin' of their roses, and their frettin' only seems to make the thorns look sharper. Our minister used to say to sister Sall (and when she was young she was a real witch, a'most an everlastin' sweet girl), 'Sally,' he used to say, 'now's the time to larn when you are young; store your mind well, dear, and the fragrance will remain long arter the rose has shed its leaves. The otter ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... regarded by him as a little less limp than usual. This wasn't because, before getting to his feet again, there was a step he had seen his way to; it was simply because the acceptance of his position took sharper effect from his sense of what he had just had to deal with. When half an hour before, at the palace, he had turned about to Milly on the question of the impossibility so inwardly felt, turned about on the spot and under her eyes, he had acted, by the sudden ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... muffled sounds of a street or factory that filled our ears. I could make nothing of it, my mind pursued first one rhythm and then another, and questioned it in vain. But after a long time I became aware of a new and sharper element, not mingling with the rest but standing out, as it were, against that cloudy background of sound. It was a series of relatively very little definite sounds, tappings and rubbings, like a loose spray of ivy against a window or a bird moving about upon a box. We listened and peered about ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Madge," he said. "This is a case of diamond cut diamond, only for the moment my diamond is a little harder and sharper than your own. Take my advice, and ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... head; her cheeks showed slightly hollow, but were so fresh, so modest, so cool in their unpainted paleness, and on the smallest provocation acquired the purest sea-shell pink which it would have been a sin and a shame to eclipse with staring paint; the contour, a little sharper than it had once been, was only rendered more delicate by the defect, and so sweet yet—so very sweet; her beautiful arms were bare to the elbow, but shaded with falls of cobweb lace; and in one hand, poised daintily between ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Reveal, disclose, divulge, manifest, show, betray. Reverence, veneration, awe, adoration, worship. Ridicule, deride, mock, taunt, flout, twit, tease. Ripe, mature, mellow. Rise, arise, mount, ascend. Rogue, knave, rascal, miscreant, scamp, sharper, villain. Round, circular, rotund, spherical, globular, orbicular. Rub, polish, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... and voice had undergone a singular alteration; his complexion, generally so cadaverous, had become flushed, but unequally, and in patches; then, strange phenomenon! his eyes grew both more brilliant and more sunken, and his voice sharper and louder. The change in the countenance of Rodin, of which he did not appear to be conscious, was so remarkable, that the other actors in this scene looked at him with a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... opening the book, asked half a dozen questions at random. Bartley answered without changing his indifferent countenance, or the careless posture he had fallen into. A sharper and longer examination followed; the very language seemed to have been unbrokenly transferred to his mind, and he often gave the author's words ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... mazurka, so she got on even better than before—only she would have liked it more if her shoes had had sharper toes; they looked so stumpy when she tried to point them. All the same, it was very good fun, and she was not too well pleased when she suddenly felt the little sharp tap of the cuckoo on her head, and ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... than it became plain that his ecclesiastical training would carry the day against the influence of Henry. As rapidly as he had "thrown off the deacon" to become the chancellor, so he now went through the sharper change of throwing off the chancellor to become the archbishop. With keen political sagacity he at once sought the moral support of the religious party who had so vehemently condemned his appointment. The gorgeous ostentation of his old ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... sharper. Still the Collins Line maintained its record sailings, and continued to beat the English. Then it was sharply checked by a grave disaster. On the twenty-fourth of September, 1854, the Arctic, when forty miles off Cape Race, rushing through a fog, was ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... Red Sea within the circuit of his expedition, especially as he saw how difficult it was to hunt after Mithridates with an army, and that he would prove a worse enemy flying than fighting. But yet he declared, that he would leave a sharper enemy behind him than himself, namely, famine; and therefore he appointed a guard of ships to lie in wait for the merchants that sailed to Bosporus, death being the penalty for any who should ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... signs to Yva, who in obedience to them approached the porthole or search-light to which she did something that I could not distinguish. The effect was to make the beam of light much stronger and sharper, also to shift it on to the point or foot of the spinning mountain and, by an aiming of the lens from time to ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... decorator in dealing with a customer should discover at the outstart the character of that nerve sense. Some natures respond to the normal colors, barbaric colors. Some respond to the softer tints and are disturbed by the sharper tones. A dulled sense requires sharp contrasts; a quickened sense is satisfied with the soft gray tones. Apart from any question of propriety or environment the individual taste for color must be determined before the individual taste ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... thicker grew the swarm, And sharper shot the rain, And the horses reared amid the press, But ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... hand writes, not I, from habit, as chickens run about a little, when their heads are off. O for a vigorous fit of gout, colic, toothache,—an earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs; pain is life—the sharper, the more evidence of life; but this apathy, this death! Did you ever have an obstinate cold,—a six or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and every thing? Yet do I try all ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... reached home that afternoon she found Bruce awaiting her. Since morning, mixed with her palpitating love and her desire to see him, there had been dread of this meeting. In the back of her mind the question had all day tormented her, should she, for his own interests, send him away? But sharper than this, sharper a hundredfold, was the fear lest the difference between their ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... like those of a battle," but a practised ear could not have failed to note the difference. First there would come an explosion louder and unlike the report of one or several guns, and this would be followed by numerous smaller, sharper, and perfectly distinct reports, quite unlike that of musketry, which could not be mistaken for anything but the explosion of shells. There could be no room for doubt that these lights and sounds meant the destruction in Atlanta of magazines or carloads of fixed ammunition, ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... childhood." And the maids: "Happy whose careless childhood 'scaped the wound:" Then she that seemed the saddest added thus: "Stranger! this forest is no roof of joy, Nor we the only mourners; neither fall Bitterer the widow's nor the orphan's tears Now than of old; nor sharper than long since That loss which maketh maiden widowhood. In childhood first our sorrow came. One eve Within our foster-parents' low-roofed house The winter sunset from our bed had waned: I slept, and sleeping dreamed. Beside the bed There stood a lovely Lady crowned with ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... France, not only abhorrence for the enemy of your country, I saw a purely personal and deadly hate of an individual man—the unknown and mysterious Englishman who proved too clever for you last year. And because I believe that hatred will prove sharper and more far-seeing than selfless patriotism, therefore I urged the Committee of Public Safety to allow you to work out your own revenge, and thereby to serve your country more effectually than any other—perhaps more ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the grand vibrations of the pahu filled the air with their solemn tremor, the lighter and sharper tones of the pu-niu gave a piquancy to the effect, adding a feature which may be likened to the sparkling ripples which the breeze ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... woful slaughter black and loathsome made That house, sometime the sacred house of God, O heavenly justice, if thou be delayed, On wretched sinners sharper falls thy rod! In them this place profaned which invade Thou kindled ire, and mercy all forbode, Until with their hearts' blood the Pagans vile This temple washed which they ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... legislation from motives of the meanest kind. And they are not even sensitive enough to the national honor to pass a social law among themselves which makes it as disgraceful in a gentleman to buy a seat by bribery as to cheat at cards. I declare I think the card-sharper the least degraded person of the two. He doesn't encourage his inferiors to be false to a public trust. In short, my dear sir, everything wears out in this world—and why should the House of Commons be ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... sound deep inside Jimmy's head, like the drowsy murmur of bees in a dew-drenched clover patch. Then the voice droned on. "The Earth people are frightened by our ships now, for their cruel wars have put a great fear of death in their hearts. They watch the skies with sharper eyes, and their minds have groped closer ...
— The Mississippi Saucer • Frank Belknap Long
... after Gretry had gone Jadwin heard the ticker on the other side of the room begin to chatter furiously; and at the same time he could fancy that the distant thunder of the Pit grew suddenly more violent, taking on a sharper, shriller note. He looked at the tape. The ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... considered," said Nofuhl; "their commercial honor was a jest. They were sharper than the Turks. Prosperity was their god, with cunning and invention for his prophets. Their restless activity no Persian can comprehend. This vast country was alive with noisy industries, the nervous Mehrikans darting with inconceivable ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... once," said Mr Meldrum, "and keep a sharper look-out than ever. If the vessel runs against the ice woe betide ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... of the freedom of speech and press, and the right of petition, the people of the free States of this Union are responsible, and the people of Pennsylvania most of all. Of this responsibility, I say it with a pang, sharper than language can express, the city of Philadelphia must take herself the ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... marry HER? Marry HER, that IS a good one. My son and heir marry a beggar's girl out of a gutter. D—— him, if he does, let him buy a broom and sweep a crossing. She was always dangling and ogling after him, I recollect now; and I've no doubt she was put on by her old sharper of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... will not do the like again. Moreover, I cannot, at the very beginning of the campaign, when all should be thoroughly united! It produces a most unfortunate effect!" Here the Emperor kept silence a moment; then he resumed, although in a somewhat sharper tone: "Yes! you have a head of Vesuvius. See what a fine condition of affairs I arrive and find blood in my palace!" After another pause, and in a somewhat calmer tone: "See what you have done! Joseph needs good officers; and here you have ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... reply, is sulkily beating off the daisies with his feet, as she drags him on; sometimes hanging back, with impotent, yet concealed struggle, which she—not deigning to notice—overcomes with even sharper step, and plies him the more closely with the dire results of badness,—has not finished her talk, indeed, when they reach the door-step and enter. There he, fuming now with that long struggle, fuming the more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... much sharper," answered Grandma, "and the pain lasts much longer. There is a hive full of these bees, and they are always very busy. But it is bedtime now. Wait till tomorrow night, and perhaps I shall tell ...
— A Hive of Busy Bees • Effie M. Williams
... do live as contentedly, (now he finds himself secured from fear of want,) and, take one time with another, as void of fear or cares, or more, than they that (as his own termes were) have quicker pleasures and sharper agonies ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... withdrawn to rest for a few hours; the women who attended on the dying Francesca had fallen asleep. She was lying motionless on her couch of pain. Her sufferings had been sharp; they were sharper than ever that night. She endured them in the strength of the Cross, from which neither her eyes nor her thoughts wandered. The whole house, and apparently the city also, was wrapt in slumber; for not a sound marred the stillness of ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... she stood erect and stamped one bare foot on the floor. Again the memory of the brown eyes smote suddenly into her consciousness. Her chin took a sharper angle and her red lips shut tightly as she threw back her head ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... The descent became sharper. At times he slid down long grades of limestone. Now and then he came to sharp drops where little waterfalls had once been. But there was usually sand below and he was able to leap down without much harm, other than a ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... sensibility of the finger tips had reached an extraordinary degree of development, equal to that of one born blind. And those fingers were skillful, adroit, alert, their every movement carried out with that smooth, indefinable grace which is almost always possessed by the really high-class card sharper. His fingers were adorned with numerous rings, in which sparkled diamonds and other precious stones. And it was not for nothing that Sergei Kovroff took pride in them! This glitter of diamonds, scattering rainbow rays, dazzled the eyes of his fellow players. ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... advantage. It is true that neither schoolmistresses nor governesses could often pass a Cambridge examination, nor have they any very great desire for intellectual improvement. But the colonial girl is sharper at picking up what her mistress does know than the English one, and she has more of the boy's emulation. Whatever her station in life, she is bound to strum the piano; but in no country is a good pianoforte player more rare, ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... us with a rather sharper eye, when we came sneaking in the back way after such exercises. For a busy man, father had a habit, that was positively maddening, of happening upon a boy at the wrong time. We used to think we had no ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... thought. "He imagined we were only tame cats and would submit to anything. He was wrong. We'll show him we know how to punish tyrants. Haven't we always done so, we Romans? He has a sharp tongue for the people, but I have a sharper one here ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... replied Moro, who brought down a huge fruit, all covered with sharp spurs and spikes, sharper and harder ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... change with the times, man himself is quite as strangely modified. If, according to education, and the manner of life, such or such a sense may develop an acuteness which confounds common experience—hearing in the musician, touch with the blind, etc.—we may estimate by this how much sharper certain senses may have been then than now. Several centuries ago visual delusion was with adults what it is now with children in remotest country parts. A quivering leaf, a nothing, a breath, an unexplained sound ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... without extinguishing them; and, overpassing the widest limits of excess, they excited themselves to self-torture. In the poor creature's paroxysms of excitement, her brain, her nerves, the imagination of her maddened body, no longer sought pleasure in pleasure, but something sharper, keener, and more violent: pain in pleasure. And the words "to die" constantly escaped from her compressed lips, as if she were invoking death in an undertone and seeking to embrace it ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... I've stood, clad in thin silken vest, Drawn sword in hand, with steady pulse, Waiting the charge of a raging bull, And the thrust of his horn, sharper-pointed ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... suppose Mephistopheles to be what Satan has become after six thousand years.... Goethe's Mephistopheles is this same being after the toils and vicissitudes of six thousand years in his new vocation: smaller, meaner, ignobler, but a million times sharper and cleverer.... For six thousand years he has been pursuing the walk he struck out at the beginning, plying his self-selected function, dabbling devilishly in human nature, and abjuring all interest in the grander physics; and the consequence is, as he himself anticipated, that his nature, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... the voice of a hound dog—not so awful loud, but clear and mellow and tuneful, and carried to us on the wind. And then in a minute it come agin, sharper and quicker. They yells like that when ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... Epigrammatick Wit; and there was not a Parlour or Tavern Window where he visited or dined ... which did not receive some Sketches or Memorials of it. It was his Misfortune at last to lose his Genius and his Ring to a Sharper at Play; and he has not attempted to make a ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... lunch whose dishes filed past him untouched, he returned to the garden in search of her. Beholding her in the distance with the blind man leaning on her arm, a feeling of faintness came over him. She looked to him taller, thinner, her face sharper, with two dark hollows in her cheeks and her eyes bright with fever, the lids drawn with weariness. He suspected that she, too, had passed an anguished night of tenacious, self-centred thought, of grievous ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and its surface as smooth and polished as a river; but instead of reflecting little Gluck's head, as he looked in, he saw meeting his glance from beneath the gold the red nose and sharp eyes of his old friend of the mug, a thousand times redder and sharper than ever he had seen them ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... crowned head will only last a few days," the jailer replied: "I grieve to say that the Queen's orders are to the contrary; anger not the Queen by any bravado, else you will be placed in the irons, and if these fail we can have recourse to sharper means." To the excessive self-love, intemperance, conceitedness, and want of foresight which had characterized all his actions, the unhappy Albert had to ascribe ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... got tellin' of you some o' his great narratives," she answered, looking at me shrewdly. "Funerals always sets him goin'. Some o' them tales hangs together toler'ble well," she added, with a sharper look than before. "An' he's been a great reader all his seafarin' days. Some thinks he overdid, and affected his head, but for a man o' his years he's amazin' now when he's at his best. Oh, he used to ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... his meal, cleared away the remains, set the table for breakfast, and was in the act of filling his pipe, when the Sealyham growled. Anthony, whose ears were becoming sharper every day, listened intently. The next moment came a sharp tapping upon the door. In an instant Patch was across ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... cloud that hung over the family Lord Littimer did not seem to have changed. He was just a little more caustic than ever, his tongue a little sharper. The servants could have told a different story, a story of dark moods and days when the bitterness of the shadow of death lay on the face of their master. Few men could carry their grief better, and because Littimer carried ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... exercised in the breeding of these dogs. They were curiously distinguished by the names of "deep-flewed," or "shallow-flewed," in proportion as they had the depending upper lip of the southern, or the sharper muzzle and more contracted lip of the northern dogs. The shallow-flewed were the swiftest, and the deep-flewed the stoutest and the surest, and their music the most pleasant. The wire-haired beagle was considered as the stouter ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... my heart warmed to him by reason of his good Kentish tongue—the like of which I had not heard these many weary years; but at sight of that white-clouted bundle my mouth watered and hunger gnawed with sharper tooth. "What have ye here?" I questioned, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... close together, like the sides of a tent, to leave only a narrow pale lucent strip of sky. The trail was quite invisible, and even the sense of its existence was lost when we traversed groves of trees. One of us had to run ahead of the horses, determining its general direction, locating the sharper turns. The rest depended on the instinct of the horses and ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... could not fill. To be away from anything she much loved was a sorrow Faith hardly knew by experience. But a two years' separation was a very, very heavy and sharp pain to think of; and Faith had an inward assurance that the reality would be heavier and sharper than her thoughts beforehand could make it. Perhaps it was too great a pain to be struggled with; for Faith did not struggle—or not long. She sat down and looked at it,—what she had not dared to do the night before;—measured it and weighed it; and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... of him to whom this cold hand, in whose veins no pulse answers my own, had been given, if thy House had consulted its daughter, wouldst thou have me crouch like a lashed dog at the feet of my foe! Oh Shame! shame! shame! Oh worst perfidy of all! Oh sharp—sharper than Saxon sword ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Book is fuller in scope and greater in detail than the other governmental publications, and while largely cumulative in its character, it serves to bring into a sharper light certain phases ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... army of five million men and boys go out to hunt wild creatures every year. The animals are so defenseless against man's weapons that it is not a fair fight, in which the quicker or sharper escape, but a slaughter. ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... she waited by that camp-fire, but there was never a sign of the builder of it, though she centered all her will in making her eyes and ears sharper to pierce through the darkness and to gather from the thousand obscure whispers of the forest any sounds of human origin. So she grew bold at length to take off the pack and the saddles; the camp was hers, built for her coming by the invisible power which surrounded her, ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... a yellowish light upon her face impearled with the sweat of her last struggle and death agony. Her gray hair, scattered in a disheveled mass upon the pillow, formed a sort of background upon which appeared in sharper relief her withered head, shaking with the unconscious and frightful convulsions of death. She breathed heavily and slowly and gasped with effort, catching the air with her pale lips. At moments her face would writhe and her mouth twitch with ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... this sentence quoted, it is a matter of truth in the generalizations of fact that the figure of the "sword of the spirit, which is the word of God," used by Paul, and also the figure of the "word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of the soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart," of the writer to the Hebrews, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... judging the Jews. But this covenant was abolished at the destruction of Jerusalem. Paul says, "he taketh away the first that he may establish the second." The word of God, in this covenant, is spiritual and sharper than any two-edged sword—it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, while that of Moses was outward, and took cognizance of the conduct only. The objections of our opposers are therefore unsound. ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... us by the Boers crawling up and surprising us; they may still be hanging about in numbers. Peters, you take Harris, Bryan, and Capper, and the two Zulus, and post them round the house. The natives' ears are much sharper than yours are, and if either of them thinks he hears anything let them crawl out in that direction and reconnoitre. When I whistle, do you come in to me, leaving the others on guard, then I will tell you what we ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... iron, but always, says Arsenius Asceticus, acceptably if the penitent spared himself no pain nor harmless disfigurement. Scarification, with other crude penances, has now been superseded by benefaction. The founding of a library or endowment of a university is said to yield to the penitent a sharper and more lasting pain than is conferred by the knife or iron, and is therefore a surer means of grace. There are, however, two grave objections to it as a penitential method: the good that it does and the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the course of his troubles he had known no sharper moment than that. He looked around the group. Several of the stable-hands had gathered, Sim Miles, with a broadly smiling face, being ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... and the portrait of Aliss Grammont had disappeared. Miss Leeds walked straight across to the coffin and stood looking down on the waxen inexpressive dignity of the dead. Sir Richmond's brows and nose had become sharper and more clear-cut than they had ever been in life and his lips had set into a faint inane smile. She stood quite still for a long time. ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Simplon, in a very fair and well-warmed inn, close to a mountain stream, which is one of the great ornaments of this side of the road. We have here passed into a region of granite, from that of limestone, and what is called gneiss. The valleys are sharper and closer,—like cracks in a hard and solid mass;—and there is much more of the startling contrast of light and shade, as well as more angular boldness of outline; to all which the more abundant waters ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... casts of coins the face should be dusted with French chalk, as also a smooth bed of plasticine; the coin can then be pressed in safely without any possible risk, and afterward plaster cast in the mould. Sealing-wax is said to be sharper, but there is a risk of its sticking to the coin. If it is used, breathe hard on the coin, or wet it, before impressing; and when first set lift it slightly to detach it, and then replace till cold. Or tin-foil may be used, as in making positives; but, instead of floating ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... purple in the face over this pleasantry, and declared that his lordship's wit grew sharper with every day of his existence. Meanwhile Tom o' the Gleam moved a step ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Pan as dead. But here he is in the guise of Bacchus, of Priapus, eager with long-delayed desire, threatening, scorching, teeming. No, no! Be this cup far from me! Trouble only should I drink from it,—who knows? A despair yet sharper than my past despairs." ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... was carrying on a still sharper battle in his attempt to bring the Church courts—which William I had separated from the ordinary courts—under control of the same system of justice. In these Church courts any person claiming to belong to the ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... formed to feel Grief sharper than the tyrant's steel, And bosom big with swelling thought From ancient ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... still sharper jerk, and the cable split. The balloon seemed to leap upwards, swerved like a frightened bird, and then, caught by the wind, sailed upward and seaward, swooping on with a paradoxically ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... singer be flogged," cried he, with a voice louder and sharper than before—"no, not alone shall the singer be flogged, but greater punishment have they deserved who urge on to such deeds. If the Austrian woman comes here again to turn the heads of sympathizing souls with her martyr looks, if she ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... sharp, by those circumstances that attend it in every act; for there is not a sin at any time committed by man, but there is some circumstance or other attends it that makes it, when charged home by God's law, bigger and sharper and more venomous and poisonous to the soul, than if it could be committed without them; and this is the sting of the hornet, the great sting. I sinned without a cause, to please a base lust, to gratify the devil: here ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... furnished the student of faces by Inspector Val. Glanced at carelessly, one would have called him not more than twenty-five; a second and a sharper survey showed him fifteen years older. Also, there came now and then a look, quiet at once and quick, which was calculated to arrest the trained attention. What one thought following that second sharp canvass was ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... should be if habitually there shone before us that great, solemn issue to which we are all tending. Variations in the atmosphere there will always be, and sometimes the distant outlines will be clearer and sharper than at others, and the colours will shine out more distinctly. But surely it should not be that our vision of the Eternal should be like the vision that dwellers amongst the mountains have of the summits. They say that some of the great peaks of the world are swathed in mist all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... vital part, for on he went, growling furiously, till he was lost to sight in the depths of the forest, and I must say that I heartily hoped I might never see his ugly face again. I suspect that I considerably damped his appetite for breakfast. As mine was sharper than ever, and I could not make it off bear, I descended from my perch that I might try and catch some fish. I quickly cut a fishing-rod, and a piece of light bark to serve as a float, and my movements being hastened ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... was the opposite of a business sharper. He was a moderate, patient toiler, but traded no more than he was obliged to, and always with frank, honest words, and very few words. He hated extortion, avoided debt, and threw nothing away in interest or in lawsuits, and was both careful and skillful in maintaining a good ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... penalties could such a desirable state of things be brought about, and the heavier and sharper the punishments inflicted at any one time, the easier was it for Verhaeren to work ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole |
