"Single-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The next day, he was gone from the settlement. There could be nothing more annoying; if the labour took to running away, the fishery was wrecked. There are sixty miles of this island, you see, all in length like the Queen's Highway; the idea of pursuit in such a place was a piece of single-minded childishness, which one did not entertain. Two days later, I made a discovery; it came in upon me with a flash that Sullens had been unjustly punished from beginning to end, and the real culprit throughout had been Obsequiousness. The native who talks, like the woman who ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the traveller will do well to free his mind from Ruskin's partial and prejudiced depreciation of these two supreme masters, in order to effect an equally partial appreciation of Turner.[216] The story of Poussin's single-minded and stubborn application to his art cannot here be told. After a life of poverty at Paris and two unsuccessful attempts to work his way to Rome, he at length reached that Mecca of French artists, where a commission ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... far-famed and mysterious Niger. Captain Tucker had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the coast, as well as with the modes of proceeding of the slave-dealers and of the slavers, and he was thus enabled to capture a very large number of vessels, though, with single-minded purpose, as his object was to stop the slave trade, he endeavoured to take them before they got their slaves on board. Soon after the brig had brought up, about four miles from the shore, Captain Tucker ordered the boats to be hoisted out, and to be fitted for service during an absence of ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Lancelot, tell him that I will make peace with him and that I will receive back my queen. And do thou, good Geraint, fare south again. I thank thee from my heart for what thou hast done. Would to Heaven that all my knights were as clean-souled and as single-minded in devotion unto me as thou art. Do thou go and fulfil thy great office. Watch thou the coasts as hitherto thou hast watched them; and soon I will follow to aid thee, should the foul and savage pagans strive again ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... long became notorious as pestholes. From the day he arrived at Tampa, he found enough to tax all his energies in trying to save the lives of raw troops dumped in the most unsanitary spots a paternal government could select. In the melee created by incompetent officers and ignorant physicians, one single-minded man could find all the duties he craved. Toward the close of the war, on the formation of a new typhoid hospital, Sommers was put in charge. There one day in the heat of the fight with disease and corruption ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... in his preface, and, further, that the Government ought to have had the courage to alter the law allowing absolute exemption rather than stretch it beyond the breaking point. But I emphatically dispute his assumption that the matter was a simple one. It was not the saintly, single-minded and sweet-natured C.O.'s of Christopher Sterling's type that made the chief difficulty. There were few of this literal interpretation and heroic texture. The real difficulty was created by men of a very different character and in much greater numbers, sincere in varying degrees, but deliberately, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... of much patience and fidelity. He had an idea that no woman, pure and true as he believed this woman to be, could shut her heart against an honest man's love, if he were only patient and faithful, single-minded and unselfish in ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... objectionable facts that he had just revealed, hope had begun to steal upon the wishes of the young man, as he listened to the consoling words of the single-minded and affectionate Adelheid. It would scarcely have been possible for a youth so endowed by nature, and one so inevitably conscious of his own value, though so modest in its exhibition, not to feel encouraged by her ingenuous and ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... in these early days of the crisis of August, 1914, was conditioned by several major causes easily discernible. For almost a generation, Germany has been sedulously cultivating Turkish friendship. With that single-minded purposefulness so conspicuous in her diplomacy, Germany found it easy, especially under the regime of the former Sultan Abdul Hamid II to outmaneuver the easy-going diplomacy of France, Russia, and England. Indeed, she found a real rival only in England, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... before his death, shows that at the last, when he knew his danger and was fast losing hope, his mind was equally divided between thoughts of his family and of his work. The following lines, almost the last intelligible ones he wrote, are deeply touching in their simple, single-minded earnestness:—"Not so well. If Doctor present, I should recover, but he has not come, very doubtful case; if fatal farewell to ... My work has been entirely for the science I study.... There is a large field of study in my collection. I intended ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... physical surroundings, and squeaky feminine voices. Public opinion justified making all the money one could, provided it was not spent in rendering life ornate or beautiful. So lived our fathers and mothers, our up-right, vigorous, single-minded, ascetic predecessors; and in our day their precepts were still held in reverence. Yet even then there were indications of a change. The newly created species took it into her head to look around her, especially in summer, first ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... of a sinner in their midst, at the very board now covered with the home-made dainties cooked and sent in by the ladies of Hawthorne. In itself perhaps the prayer, though trite and redundant (Ringfield was not in his best vein, no longer single-minded), was eloquent and pointed, and the reference to the snows and rivers of the country extremely poetic and suggestive, yet it was not in accordance with the best taste, although prompted by the best feeling. The ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... single-minded, too single-willed, at once to understand this, till Miss Charlecote whispered a reference to St. Paul's words of deep experience, 'To ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the meek, pious, and single-minded Ghita; though one was e'en a Roman Catholic, and the other a Protestant, and that, too, of the Puritan school. Our heroine had little of this world left to live for. She continued, however, to reside with her uncle, until his days were numbered; and then she retired ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... last; and the history of Massachusetts Bay in the seventeenth century is the story of the vain and pathetic effort of single-minded men to identify the temporal and the spiritual commonwealths. The compromise presently made was the first step in the final surrender. The one hundred and nine petitioners were admitted; but it was ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... that no one seems particularly to want the Deliverer—the great and single-minded leader who might free and uplift the country. Persia does not crave the ideal ruler; he might make it very unpleasant for those who are content and rich in their own way. It is this thing, amongst many others, which ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... the streets of Nuremberg came drifting a feathery snow that heaped itself in fantastic patterns on the projecting windows and fretted stone balconies of the quaint and crowded houses. It was not an honest and single-minded snow-storm, such as would seek to shroud the whole city in its delicate white mantle, but rather a tricksy and capricious sprite, that neglected one spot to hurl itself with wanton violence on another. Borne on the breath of a keen ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... speeches in his professional capacity and in the political arena. In an eloquent tribute to his memory in the House of Lords, Lord Chief Justice Coleridge expressed the high opinion of the legal profession upon his merits and upon the severe integrity and single-minded desire to do his duty, which animated him in his selections for the bench. His piety was reflected by that of his great opponent, rival and friend, Lord Selborne. Like Lord Selborne and Lord Hatherley, Cairns found leisure at his busiest for teaching in the Sunday-school, but it is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Bridgenorth summoned them to unite with him in prayer; and on a slight change of arrangements amongst the company, which took place as they were about to kneel down, Julian found his place next to the single-minded and beautiful object of his affection, as she knelt, in her loveliness, to adore her Creator. A short time was permitted for mental devotion; during which Peveril could hear her half-breathed petition for the promised blessings of peace on earth, and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... days of peace with a show of patriotism no less brilliant than that which lit up the dark years of war. The task that is demanded is a simple one, and no heavy price is exacted; all that is required is a single-minded concentration upon the one essential ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... have toiled unceasingly, facing disease of a peculiarly sinister and fatal type, with patient and uncomplaining fortitude, to teach her how to use aright her new freedom. Never in history has any alien country been thus administered, with such high integrity of purpose, such wise judgment, and such single-minded devotion to the country's interests. Now, I ask that the Cubans be given all possible chance to use to the best advantage the freedom of which Americans have such right to be proud, and for which so many ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... its single-minded love of perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its attitude towards all this machinery, even while it insists that it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the mischief men do themselves by their blind ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... wisdom merely by reason of their connection with Washington. It is just as important for a government school as for a mission school to be in harmony with its environment, to adapt itself to the needs of the people it designs to serve; and that harmony and adaptation may only be secured by a single-minded study of the situation and of the habits and character, the occupations and resources of ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... he was in love with her and single-minded in his desire to aid her, to defend her, but the door had hardly closed behind him when his questionings, his suspicions began to file back, stealthily, silently, along the underways of his brain. Her distress began to seem ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... owned a better and larger. I found, on accompanying him to the Basse-Ville— the poor and crowded quarter of the city—that his errands there were as much those of the philanthropist as the physician. I understood presently that cheerfully, habitually, and in single-minded unconsciousness of any special merit distinguishing his deeds—he was achieving, amongst a very wretched population, a world of active good. The lower orders liked him well; his poor, patients in the hospitals welcomed him with a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... indifference to fame and single-minded concentration on the business of flying on the part of the Wrights was in fact of the utmost value to aviation as an art and a science. They were pioneers and successful ones. Their example was heeded ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... temperament, while laying out roads and measuring wood-lots, he came to be what he was. Many people thought his peculiar ways were an affectation, but I believe that he was one of the plainest and simplest of men; as plain and single-minded as President Lincoln himself. It was his theory of the way men should live. He was a Diogenes without ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... two waggon-loads of burghers, their rations, ammunition, and Mausers—a most satisfying haul. He placed before the leader of the British Force intercepted telegrams which threw invaluable light on Dutch moves. No more single-minded, ingenuous, and patriotic British South African ever drew breath than Mr. Van Busch, of Johannesburg. And verily he reaped his reward, in an officially countersigned railway pass, which would enable the patriot to render ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... serve as ways and means to warlike enterprise under competent management, even if it is not habitually prone to a bellicose temper. Rightly managed, ordinary patriotic sentiment may readily be mobilised for warlike adventure by any reasonably adroit and single-minded body of statesmen,—of which there is abundant illustration. All the peoples of Christendom are possessed of a sufficiently alert sense of nationality, and by tradition and current usage all the national governments of Christendom are warlike ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... unobtrusive sorrow, for I fear it sometimes reached that intensity of feeling, my excellent and indefatigable ancestor appeared to have no suspicion. He pursued his ordinary occupations with his ordinary single-minded devotion, and the last thing that would have crossed his brain was the suspicion that he had not punctiliously done his duty by his ward. Had he acted otherwise, none surely would have suffered more by his delinquency ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... [Perfectly single-minded and entirely taken in.] But I would have come even if ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... unaffected, naive; sincere, frank; open, open as day; candid, ingenuous, guileless; unsuspicious, honest &c 939; innocent &c 946; Arcadian^; undesigning, straightforward, unreserved, aboveboard; simple-minded, single-minded; frank-hearted, open-hearted, single-hearted, simple-hearted. free-spoken, plain-spoken, outspoken; blunt, downright, direct, matter of fact, unpoetical^; unflattering. Adv. in plain words, in plain English; without mincing ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ranks of the agitators with whom Captain Anthony is identified contain no one more indiscreet, more reckless or more honest. We have no sort of sympathy with the object to which the fair captain is now devoting her life; but we know no person before the country more single-minded, sincere and unselfish and, for these reasons, more honestly entitled to the regard of a public which will always appreciate upright intentions and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... in all this world, like one who lives on a great mountain-peak, with none to bear him company. Who have I for a friend? Whom can I rely upon? Some are for the Church; some are for their families; most are for themselves. But who of them all is single-minded? You are my better self, Francoise; you are my guardian angel. What the good father says is true, and the nearer I am to you the further am I from all that is evil. Tell me, Francoise, do ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all to bar out such weather," said Mordacks, who read the farmer's thoughts like print, "Don't relax your rules, sir, until the weather changes. Ah, that was a very sad thing about the captain. As gallant an officer, and as single-minded, as ever killed a Frenchman in the best days of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... him by his character. He was not a good pilot, and was almost famous for his crashes. He was not a popular officer. He was not what would be called a clever man. But he was single-minded, and utterly brave and determined, careless alike of danger and of ridicule. There is often granted to singleness of purpose a kind of second sight which is denied to mere intelligence. Major Burke (to give him his ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... have resorted to covert probing and excuse in extracting information. But then it is doubtful if, under such circumstances, his purpose would have been so strong, so absolutely invincible as Scipio's. As it was, with single-minded simplicity, Scipio saw no reason for subterfuge, he saw no reason for disguising the tragedy which had befallen him. And so he shed his story broadcast amongst the settlers of the district until, by means of that wonderful prairie ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... shrug, convinced that Possy was getting all excited over nothing, "I admit it seems strange—and highly single-minded for so young a boy. But don't you imagine it's some word ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveller Burton says of it—"Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded. . . . In the desert, spirituous liquors excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal existence." They who have been travelling long on the steppes of Tartary say: "On reentering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... great-great-grandfathers—expected didacticism. It was part of the game.... In the present collection there is, I think, no example either of condescension or showing-off—the two principal faults of books for children. All the authors seem to me to be simple and single-minded: they wished ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... the book reveals an extraordinary intellectual ideal. It holds up a standard for the student which is profoundly impressive; and I know no other book which displays in a more single-minded and sincere way the passionate desire of the savant for wide, deep, and perfect knowledge, which is to be untainted by any admixture of personal ambition. Indeed, Pattison speaks of literary ambition ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... man's struggles. Internal warfare between opposing purposes and desires may proceed to a disruption of the personality, to failure and unhappiness, or else to a solidified personality, efficient, single-minded and successful. Freud's work has directed our attention to the thousand and one aberrant desires that we will hardly acknowledge to ourselves, and he has forced the professional worker in abnormal and normal mental life to disregard his own prejudices, to strip away ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... remembered certain threats of disinheritance uttered a year or two previously by the uncle (who had no living relative except the nephew), and they had, therefore, always looked upon this disinheritance as a matter that was settled—so single-minded a race of beings were the Rattleburghers; but the remark of "Old Charley" brought them at once to a consideration of this point, and thus gave them to see the possibility of the threats having been nothing more than a threat. And straightway hereupon, arose the natural question ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... lady's inclinations, it appears. Well, I've warned you. I've done it with the best intentions. I suppose even you won't deny that I'm single-minded? I'm not on the side of your solicitor." That ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... always been distasteful to him. The custom of espionage has made him suspect that others are as watchful as himself. He has been described erroneously as a master of complicated villainy. He is, for evil or for good, the most single-minded man alive. He looks for a profit in all things. Even his devotion to the Sunday-school is of a piece with the test. "Put something in," says he, speaking of the work, "and according as you put something in, the greater will be ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... the rigid censor is generally associated in our minds with the contempt of letters. In his stern but narrow patriotism, he looked with jealous eyes on all that might turn the citizens from a single-minded devotion to the State. Culture was connected in his mind with Greece, and her deleterious influence. The embassy of Diogenes, Critolaus, and Carneades, 155 B.C. had shown him to what uses culture might be turned. The eloquent harangue pronounced in favour of justice, and the equally eloquent ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... he devoted himself to Drew day and night. He became one of the family at the bungalow and a jocose familiarity was as much a part of Jock's liking for a person, as were his tireless patience and capacity for single-minded service. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... may be, go on for ever, despite the scribblers, and one finds the best in his imagination returning by some back-lane to contemplative thought. But as a casual traveler, may I say that the first experience I had of the gorges made me modest, patient, single-minded, conscious of man's significant insignificance, conscious of the unspeakable, wondrous grandeur of this unvisited corner of the world—a spot in which blustering, selfish, self-conceited persons will not fare well? Humility and patience are ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... characteristics of advocates, conservative and radical, is their conscienceless treatment of facts. Rarely do they allow full value to that which qualifies or contradicts their theories. The ardent and single-minded reformer is not infrequently the worst sinner in this respect. To stir indignation against conditions, he paints them without a background and with utter ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... comfortable; he asked only, with that delicious tremor of self-distrust which belongs to naive youth, whether he dare offer himself to one so pure and good and beautiful. And his hesitation was justified; for our sordid England has not brought forth many such serene and single-minded ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... Charles. Consequently when Elizabeth and Whitgift, her Archbishop of Canterbury, set about putting their house in order in earnest, they were met with a mixture of humble loyalty and immovable resistance which would have perplexed any potentates less single-minded. But Elizabeth and Whitgift were not of the sort that sets its hand to the plow and then turns back; they went earnestly on with their banishments and executions, paying particular attention to the Separatists, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... his head. "Madam," said he, "mine is a profound and difficult art, which aims at certainties. Very early in my career I found that to master that art I must be single-minded, and not allow my ear to influence my eye. By purposely avoiding all reasoning from external circumstances, I have distanced my competitors in expertise; but I sometimes think I have rather weakened my powers of conjecture through disuse. Now, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... I the type of heroism, of magnanimity? Well, compelling me, the heroic, the magnanimous, now to stand here upon my hind-legs, and now to crouch quietly down, like a pet kitten over-fed with new milk,—any state roguery is passed off as the greatest piece of single-minded honesty upon the mere strength of my character—if I may so say it, upon my legendary reputation. Now, as for you, though you are a lie, you are nevertheless not a bad-looking lie. You have a nice head, clean legs, and—though I think ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various |
