"Sureness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... awful disappointment of knowing Father couldn't come, and being so miserable myself (not one line yet from that person named William Spencer Sloane, who is probably married to an elderly woman by this time), and because of my sureness that no human being could be depended on in time of temptation, especially vigorous, aggressive temptations that come out of the West, that I gave help where help seemed to be needed, and now again I am in everybody's ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... its blades, though they are such as for immemorial times have spired from the sod; the boughs publish their annual book of many a verdant scroll without apprehension of having become commonplace at last; the bobolink pours his warble in cheery sureness of acceptance, unmindful that it is the same warble with which the throats of other bobolinks were throbbing before there was a man to listen and smile; and night after night forever the stars, and age after age the eyes of women and men, shine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... little effort and a little division of labour the entire corpus of French lyric from the tenth to the fourteenth century might have been easily set before the public. But the two volumes above mentioned will enable the reader to judge its general characteristics with pretty absolute sureness; and if he desires to supplement them with the work of a single author, that of Thibaut of Champagne or Navarre,[128] which is easily accessible, will form an ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... chiefly intends is not book-learning or critical lore, but knowledge how to make, by which man becomes a creator in imitation of God; for this is of necessity the most perfect knowledge, rivalling the sureness of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... you know that, Mr. Cazalette?" I asked, feeling a bit restive under the old fellow's cock-sureness. "Isn't ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... brown, shapely peasant's hand grasp the loaf or the wine-bottle sent a Hash of hate or of anger through the elder man's blood. It was not that the youth was clumsy: it was rather the blind, instinctive sureness of movement of an unhampered young animal that irritated the ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... deeds of the 'Sweepers of the Sea' is a breathless one. The romance is heightened by the realism of the technique of naval warfare, by the sureness and ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... asked himself, complacently, that gave her such a delicate distinction? Her grey dress, and soft grey hat, were, he supposed, perfect of their kind. But Oxford in the summer term was full of pretty dresses. No, it must be her ease, her sureness of herself that banished any awkward self-consciousness both in herself and her companions, and allowed a man to do ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... generally cannot hope. Very many of the things that are said here are finally said; they exhaust their subject. Of one thing we are certain—that there is no work in English devoted to the interpretation of poetic experience which can claim the delicacy and sureness of ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... criticism means. In no case have I been able to obtain any clear conception of its connotation in the mouths or minds of those who use the phrase. The new heaven and the new earth which they promise are no doubt to be very different from our own old earth and heaven; of that they are sure, and their sureness does not fail to make itself plain. But what the flora and fauna, the biology and geology of the new heaven and earth are to be, I have never succeeded in ascertaining. The country would appear to be like that Land of Ignorance which, as Lord Brooke says, "none can describe until he be past it." ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... that I can tell you any truth which you have not more deeply felt than I; but glad in the thought that my less experience, and way of life sheltered from the trials, and free from the responsibilities of yours, may have left me with something of a child's power of help to you; a sureness of hope, which may perhaps be the one thing that can be helpful to men who have done too much not to have often failed in doing all that they desired. And indeed, even the most hopeful of us, cannot but now be in many things apprehensive. For this at least we all ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... this—that his line must never go behind the caster; well done, the cast is like the dart from a howitzer's mouth of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low trajectory, and lightness of the fall of the line, shot out by a dexterous swish of the lifting and propelling power of the strong yet supple rod, illustrate a phase at once beautiful and practical of the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... man on the force next to Inspector Kedsty, the most dreaded of catechists when questioning criminals, the man who had won the reputation of facing quietly and with deadly sureness the most menacing of dangers, had been beaten—horribly beaten—by a girl! And yet, in defeat, an irrepressible and at times distorted sense of humor made him give credit to the victor. The shame of the thing was his acknowledgment that a ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... freedom and space, in radiant purity of light or depth and variety of colour, in penetrating and subtle sweetness of music, in supple mastery of the instrument, in vivid spontaneity of imagination, in clean-cut sureness of touch—Wordsworth is not surpassed by men who were below him in weight and greatness? Even in his own field of the simple and the pastoral has he touched so sweet and spontaneous a note as Burns's Daisy, or the Mouse? When men seek immersion or absorption ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... very stiffly, though no longer with his old time cock-sureness, for the last time out of the National Union Club, and spent the afternoon in the rear room of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... perfect establishment of a believer's peace, that it should be a matter of believing, and believing only. It is also an imperative necessity that the comfort and confidence should spring from the proper object of belief, which is the sureness of God's own testimony, and not from the consciousness of love or gratitude, or ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... the law holds with equal sureness for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good man has absolute good, which like fire turns everything to its own nature, so that you cannot do him ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Capetown on February 6th, 1901. Among all the notable documents which he furnished to his official chief, none affords more convincing evidence of cool judgment, mastery of South African conditions, and sureness of statecraft than this. It is a letter, and not a despatch, and as such it contains some personal details which would not have found a place in ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... has been entirely won over: "M. Coue goes straight to his aim, attains it with sureness, and, in setting free his patient, carries generosity and knowledge to its highest point, since he leaves to the patient himself the merit of his liberation and the ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... under his hand into genuine tragedy. The three chief characters—the mean and cruel king, the noblehearted and desperately wronged Constance, and the soldierly humourist, Faulconbridge—are in all essentials of his own invention, and are portrayed with the same sureness of touch that marked in Shylock his rapidly maturing strength. The scene, in which the gentle boy Arthur learns from Hubert that the king has ordered his eyes to be put out, is as affecting as any passage in ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... however, had made a great stride towards common sense, for instead of dreaming of liberating popes, he was now imagining a renovating statesman, and he had inscribed Cavour's name under his new portrait. In a book published in Paris, Gioberti drew the Cavour of the future with a penetration and a sureness of touch which would make a reader, who did not know the date, suppose that the words were written ten years later. Men of great talent, he said, rarely threw aside the chance of becoming famous; rather did they snatch it with avidity; and what fame more splendid could ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... wanted Marise and the children a damn sight more. And not only Marise and the children. He hadn't let himself lay it all on their backs, and play the martyr's role of the forcibly domesticated wild male. No, he wanted the life he had, outside the family, his own line of work; he wanted the sureness of it, the coherence of it, the permanence of it, the clear conscience he had about what he was doing in the world, the knowledge that he was creating something, helping men to use the natural resources of the world without exploiting either the natural resources or the ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... and proposes that, as death is certain, they shall all go and have a hot bath. In the little confusion that follows, the narrator and his friend slip quietly away. This scene of exquisite fooling is quite unique in Greek or Latin literature: the breadth and sureness of touch are almost Shakespearian. Another fragment relates the famous story of the Matron of Ephesus, one of the popular tales which can be traced back to India, but which appears here for the ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... The conquest was by no means bloodless. Towns were sacked and men were slain; here was an explosion, there an outbreak of lawlessness; but for the most part the change was wrought with deadly slowness and a sureness which ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... criticism in our language—"classical" in its tone (i.e., with a preference for conformity) but with its respect for order and tradition always tempered by good sense and wit, and informed and guided throughout by a taste whose catholicity and sureness was unmatched in the England of his time. The preface to his Fables contains some excellent notes on Chaucer. They may be read as a sample of the breadth and perspicuity of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... You will bring him the quiet strength and sureness he needs. A temperamental man, a finely organized, highly gifted, sensitive, and intellectual man needs just such affection as yours, as unshakable as the sun, as faithful as the fixed stars. That you should love him almost makes me believe in the direct ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... woolen, cotton, linen, and silk, to carpet our floors, cover our tables, cushion our chairs, and clothe our bodies; machines of which Vulcan never dreamed, to point a needle, bore a rifle, cut a watch wheel, or rule a series of lines, measuring forty thousand to an inch, with sureness which the unaided hand can never equal. Machinery is a triumph of handicraft as truly as sculpture and architecture. The fingers which can plan and build a steamship or a suspension bridge, which can make the Quinebaug and the Blackstone turn spindles by the hundred thousand, which can turn ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... him; he classifies them as he classifies the mental faculties, the parts of logical speech, the parts of sophistry, the parts of rhetoric, the parts of animals, the parts of the soul, the parts of the state; he defines, distinguishes, combines, classifies, with the same sureness and minuteness of method in them all. He can start from a general conception, expand it into its parts, separate these again by distinguishing details till he brings the matter down to its lowest possible terms, or infimae species. Or he can ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... his hands something weightless, sensible, alive, a deadly part of his arm and eye and brain. There was no question, no thought of adjusting or handling or haste in his fire, but only an incredible swiftness and sureness that sent across the thin-aired chasm a stream of deadly messengers to seek a human life. She could only hope and pray, without even forming the words, that none of her blood were behind the other rifle, for she felt that, whoever was, could ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... boulder to boulder across the top of the fall which steams into the Dead Man's Pool, while I stood and admired her agile sureness of foot as one admires the graceful movements of a beautiful young roe. Sholto was pawing about in a tiny backwater, and trying to swallow the bubbles he made, until he saw his beloved mistress was intent on the serious business of fishing, and ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... whole world has recognized it. With the Allies there has been no boasting, even now when they realize that the top is reached and this war is on the down grade. There is determination, but there is no cock-sureness, no goose-step. There is ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... sweetness, Tober Mhuire. O thy sureness and completeness, Tober Mhuire. O this life I would be leaving, With the greyness of its grieving, And the deeps of its deceiving, ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... just cried over both of them—howled. But I knew there was only one man in the world I could ever marry. I had made up my own mind for once and it was real easy, too. It's very delightful to feel so sure, and know it's your own sureness and ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... expanse, which many would have called a waste, there were strings of them, chasing each other in their wavy flight, twittering on the downward stretch, darting in among the bushes, turning with incredible swiftness and sureness of wing the shortest of curves about a branch, and undulating away again ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... I come to the cloak—you are quite right—and I give up that fancy. Will you, then, take one more precaution when all proper safe-guards have been adopted; and, when everything is sure, contrive some one sureness besides, against cold or wind or sea-air; and say 'this—for the cloak which is not here, and to help the heart's wish which is,'—so I shall be there palpably. Will you do this? Tell me you will, to-morrow—and tell me all ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... our nature is for reality, and that our personality cannot be happy with a fantastic universe of its own creation, then it is clearly best for it that our will can only deal with things by following their law, and cannot do with them just as it pleases. This unyielding sureness of reality sometimes crosses our will, and very often leads us to disaster, just as the firmness of the earth invariably hurts the falling child who is learning to walk. Nevertheless it is the same firmness that hurts him which makes ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... vivacity and charm. Everything about her was vivid: the gloss of her brown hair, the sparkle of her eyes, her color, her smile, her immaculate clothes—all were dazzling. She carried her splendor with an air of complete sureness as if she was accustomed to the supremacy it won for her and expected it. Yet the audacity of her pose had in it a certain fitness and was piquant ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... digital dexterity: measuring out the tobacco, folding wax paper cartons, filling them, and slipping them into the narrow tins, all at a rate of speed so great as to defy the sight, giving a sense of fingers flickering above the bench with a strange, almost supernatural sureness, like the fingers of a magician who makes things disappear before your eyes; or like the pictures in which post-impressionist and cubist painters attempt to ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... marriage—and the starlit mysteries of Aruna and the intriguing complexities of Roy, a breath of Lance would be tonic as a breeze from the Hills. He was so clear and sure; not in flashes and spurts, but continuously, like sunshine; because the clearness and sureness had his whole personality behind them. And he could be counted on to deal faithfully with Roy; perhaps lure him back to the Punjab. It would be sad losing him; but in the distracting circumstances, a clean cut seemed the only solution. She would just put ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... master had absolutely refused, saying, "You beat them once, Hughie, and you can do it again." And as the days and weeks went on, Hughie fully justified the team's choice of him as captain. He developed a genius for organization, a sureness of judgment, and a tact in management, as well as a skill and speed in play, that won the confidence of every member of his team. He set himself resolutely to banish any remaining relics of the ancient style of play. In the old game every one ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... recovered from all that, Augustin speaks to us of the Divine love, he will know fully the infinite value of it from having gone through all the painful entrancements of the other. And he will say to us, with the sureness of experience: "The pleasure of the human heart in the light of truth and the abundance of wisdom—yea, the pleasure of the human heart, of the faithful heart, and of the heart which is holy, stands alone. You will find nothing in any voluptuousness fit to be compared to it. I say not that this ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... the history, antiquities, manners, traditions, and superstitions of the Borderers. Forty-three of the ballads in the "Minstrelsy" had never been printed before; and of the remainder the editor gave superior versions, choosing with sureness of taste the best among variant readings, and with a more intimate knowledge of local ways and language than any previous ballad-fancier had commanded. He handled his texts more faithfully than Percy, rarely ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... critic. The most remarkable thing about his violent political prejudices is the success with which he dissociated his literary estimates from them. Such a serious limitation in a critic as deficiency of reading in his case only raises our astonishment at the sureness of instinct which enabled him to pronounce unerringly on the scantest information. Never was there a critic of nearly equal pretensions who had as little of the scholar's equipment. If, as he tells us, he applied himself too closely to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the cut direct. Without trying to maintain his machine within his adversary's dead angles, he fell on him as a stone falls. He shot as near to the enemy as he could, at the risk of being shot first himself, and even of interlocking their machines, though in that respect the sureness of his maneuvering sufficed to disengage him. If he failed to take the enemy by surprise, he did not quit the combat as prudence exacted; but returned to the charge, refusing to unhook his clutch from the enemy airplane, and held him, and wanted ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... marked the 2nd of October. On that day five years ago he had entered on his duties at Drane's Court. He laughed softly. Five years ago he was a homeless wanderer. Now princesses were begging him to rescue them from Egyptologists. With glorious sureness all his dreams were ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... and she gave her eyes to his. They were pure eyes, the eyes of an enthusiast, the eyes of a martyr. He could not misread them, even in his passion he could not doubt them.... The elevation of her soul shone through them. Constancy, steadfastness, courage, determination, sureness, and loftiness of purpose were written there.... He turned away, his head sinking upon his breast, and when he spoke the passion, the rancor, the bitterness, were gone from his voice. It ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... Cebidae, are more interesting, and at the same time they are much more familiar to every one, as they are the commonest anthropoids of the menagerie and circus. Their wonderful agility and sureness in climbing about is partly due to the perfect grasping power of the lower limb. To all intents and purposes the foot is a hand; the first toe is shorter than the others, and its free motion is unrestricted as in the thumb of the hand. These animals usually possess a long tail which they ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... foundation[434] employed in prophecy to point out Christ, and the sureness and continuance of the Covenant, is also used by two apostles for the same purpose. Their references to it illustrate the doctrine, that, in the New Testament, types, though realized in Christ, and also ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... phenomena which are brought to light by the application of principles to facts, and in which nothing is absolute or permanent, in which, on the contrary, everything is relative and successive, acquire that sureness of touch and correctness of vision which are among the most ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... with what ingenuity and sureness dragon-flies distinguish, follow, and catch the smallest insects on the wing. Of all insects, they have the best sight. Their enormous convex eyes have the greatest number of facets. Their number has been ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... distinctly marked, so that after a half hour they were perhaps a mile ahead. The agility of Mr. Plade during this episode was the marvel of his companion. He scaled the rocks like a goatherd, and his foot-tracks in the snow were long, like the route of a giant. The ice could not betray the sureness of his stride; the rare, thin atmosphere was no match for his broad, deep chest. He shouted as he went, and tossed great boulders down the mountain, and urged on his flagging comrade by cheer and taunt and invective. No madman set loose from captivity could be guilty of ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... Cambrai, with English troops on their right, who shared their success. General Currie, who became the Canadian Corps Commander, did not spare his men. He led them forward whatever the cost, but there was something great and terrible in his simplicity and sureness of judgment, and this real—estate agent (as he was before he took to soldiering) was undoubtedly a man of strong ability, free from those trammels of red tape and tradition which swathed round so many of our ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... acquires a permanent tendency to fumble, to gaze about aimlessly, to look for some clew of action beside that which the subject matter supplies. Dependence upon extraneous suggestions and directions, a state of foggy confusion, take the place of that sureness with which children (and grown-up people who have not been sophisticated by "education") confront the ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... not quite understand. His protective manner, and his sureness, and his intimacy, puzzled her. What did he mean? If he was her equal, why did he behave so ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... night an unseen hand had begun to run these dark lines, to turn and twist them about her life, to plait and weave a web. Jane Withersteen knew it now, and in the realization further coolness and sureness came to her, and the fighting courage of ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... finished, he had me read it over a second time, and a third. We fell into discussion—philosophy, science, evolution, religion. He betrayed the inaccuracies of the self-read man, and, it must be granted, the sureness and directness of the primitive mind. The very simplicity of his reasoning was its strength, and his materialism was far more compelling than the subtly complex materialism of Charley Furuseth. Not that I—a confirmed and, as Furuseth phrased ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... test under full load! Well, what of it? they demanded one of another; wouldn't another day do as well as this one? And they worked as they growled, worked with swift sureness and skill, and the final instruments took their place in the ship that she might roll from the hangar complete under ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... a groan as everybody heard that unmistakable whack that resounds whenever the bat and the ball meet face to face. But the very sureness of the hit was its ruination, for it went soaring like a carrier-pigeon straight home to the hands of Sleepy, who, without moving from his place, reached up ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... Morris spent at architecture, he considered as nearly a waste of time, but it was not so in fact. As a draftsman he had developed a marvelous skill, and the grace and sureness of his lines were a delight to Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown and others of the little artistic circle in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... fame that he thirsted for. He had not even the consolation which a proud confidence in themselves gives to the unappreciated young, for in his heart of hearts he knew that he had as yet done nothing which deserved the highest praise. But his imagination was expanding with a steady sureness, and the long years of his apprenticeship were drawing ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... rain comes down than in any other place in the world. The way led upward across countless lava flows, without regard for trails, and never have I seen horses with such perfect footing as that of the thirteen that composed our outfit. They climbed or dropped down perpendicular places with the sureness and coolness of mountain goats, and never a horse fell ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... girl like that, with generous impulses and quick sympathy, would do for any one in dire need. She would leave behind her an inescapable longing, an emptiness, a memory of sweetly disturbing visions. MacRae seemed to see with remarkable clarity and sureness that he would be penalized for yielding to that bewitching fancy. By what magic had she so suddenly made herself a shining figure in a golden dream? Some necromancy of the spirit, invisible but wonderfully potent? Or was it ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in modern Danish prose, no author who unreservedly appealed to me; in German Heinrich Kleist, and in French Merimee, were the stylists whom I esteemed most. The latter, in fact, it seemed to me was a stylist who, in unerring sureness, terseness and plasticism, excelled all others. He had certainly not much warmth or colour, but he had a sureness of line equal to that of the greatest draughtsmen of Italian art. His aridity was certainly ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... sign of having heard him, unless it was that her hands stopped for an instant in the deft rapidity of their task. Within a few seconds they had resumed their work, though, it seemed to him, with less sureness in the supple movement of the fingers. Beyond the upturned collar of her coat he saw the stealing of a ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... think it his duty to run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with his setting-pole where the main current was, and keep steadily to that. He is still in wild water, but we have faith that his skill and sureness of eye will bring ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... last few years of the Ancient Egyptian papyri and other remains, shows that they either did not know or they willfully misrepresented, Egyptian abstract thought; about the only works, outside of the papyri and the monuments, from which we can gather as to it with any sureness, meagre details; are the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistos; the Osiris and Isis, of Plutarch; the work ascribed to Horapollon, and the book of Iamblichus, entitled: A Treatise on the Mysteries. The Greek writers upon Ancient Egypt, ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... of St.-Germain l'Auxerrois. Then all was still again. The man came from behind the curtain, his naked sword flashing evilly in the flickering light. He took up the candle and walked coolly down the wide corridor. The sureness of his step could have originated only in the perfect knowledge of the topography of the hotel. He paused before a door, his ear to ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... great quality more perceptible than another in Mr. Browning's intellect, it is his decisive and incisive faculty of thought, his sureness and intensity of perception, his rapid and trenchant resolution of aim. To charge him with obscurity is about as accurate as to call Lynceus purblind, or complain of the sluggish action of the telegraphic wire. He is something too much the reverse of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... stupid servants, for everywhere that we went I became the public's Benjamin. I made the people laugh, and they asked for nothing better. All were surprised that, young and inexperienced as I was, I should have so much cleverness of manner and such sureness of delivery. My father was more surprised than anybody, for he had expected far less of my immaturity and total lack of practice. It is certain that from that time I began to feel that I was somebody. I had become useful, or at least I thought I had, and, as a consequence, in my manner and bearing ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... Messianic aspect of Christ's mission, on the mystery and poetry of that long national expectation, on the pathos of Jewish disillusion, on the sureness and beauty of Christian insight as faith gradually transferred trait after trait of the Messiah of prophecy to the Christ of Nazareth. At first there was a certain amount of hesitation, a slight wavering hither and thither—a ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... behind her. She turned east along the arroyo, followed it a mile, seeking a crossing, then doubled straight north toward the Cimarron. Captain Jack hung to her trail like a hound. In the blackness that preceded the storm she could not lose him. With almost uncanny sureness he picked her out—following, following, never giving the maverick a moment's rest. Yet it seemed that the distance she kept ahead was measured, so alert and watchful was she always. Both were dripping with sweat. Try as he would, it seemed impossible for Captain Jack to win those ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... have said that it is carelessly written, but that is part of the author's superb self-confidence, and when he is fortunately inspired, he obtains here an ease of style, a mastery which he had never found before. The sureness of his touch is seen in the epigrams which strew the pages of Lothair, and have become part of our habitual speech—the phrase about eating "a little fruit on a green bank with music"; that which describes the hansom cab, "'Tis the gondola of London." This may ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... had no time to practise. After an apologetic little preamble, he would sit down and play these rococo bits of trailing sound with fingers dipped in lightning, fingers that flashed over the keys in perfect evenness and with perfect sureness. ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... experimenting to corroborate their texts. He took pleasure in playing the role of a psychologist for his personal satisfaction, in taking apart and re-assembling the machinery of a work, in separating the pieces forming the structure of a compound exhalation, and his sense of smell had thereby attained a sureness that was ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... with the finesse of a meticulous fencing-master but like a Viking, with a broad Berserker blade. He hews, he hacks, he gashes. There is blood in his veins, and he does not spare the ink. But examine closely these little prints—some of them miracles of printing—and you may discern their delicate sureness, subtlety, and economy of gesture. Fitzroy Carrington quotes the Parisian critic Henri Marcel, who among other things wrote of the Zorn etchings: "Let us only say that these etchings—paradoxical in their coarseness of ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... had allies against the Romans from every one of the tribes that then existed; but Hannibal was worth nearly all of them. He could comprehend matters very quickly and plan the details of every project that he laid to heart, notwithstanding the fact that generally sureness is the product of slowness and only rash decisions result from hastiness of disposition. He was most [lacuna] when given the smallest margin of time, and most enduring with a very great degree of reliability. He managed in a safe way the affair of the moment and showed ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... covers nearly one third of our lives. It is not that our inherited tendencies and aptitudes are not still the main thing. It is only that we have at last acquired great power to modify them by training, so that progress may go on with ever-increasing sureness ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... (As the sleet stings) Upon the lightheart-hope which only clear sight knows. And slowly drifts, Lingering among the snows Nor, though the snow lifts, Ever goes The wistful heartache as the fresh Spring flows With slipping sureness to the time of the rose, and the withered rose. Down here the hawthorn.... And heaping blossom stirred By a joy-swift bird. White mists are blinding me, White mist of hedgerow, white mist of wings. The bird's flight flings Deep carpetings Over the wrack Of my life's track. Down ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... that with such sureness?" she cried. "No, no, Major Carew; in your heart you know otherwise. But you just let her go away without a word, without a hope, and one or two of us know what this hasty engagement means. Diana calls it martyrdom. She wrote me to send Meryl an in memoriam card instead of congratulations, ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... Kripa. And they also, with many sharp-pointed shafts, that mighty car-warrior smote in great wrath, seeming to dance (the while). And beholding his lightness of hand, the very gods were gratified. And in consequence of Abhimanyu's sureness of aim, all the car-warriors headed by Bhishma regarded him to be possessed of the capacity of Dhananjaya himself.[335] And his bow, emitting a twang like that of Gandiva, while stretched and re-stretched, seemed to revolve like a circle of fire.[336] Bhishma then, that slayer of hostile ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli |
