"Closeness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... below. But in the upper-air currents, it would have been dangerous to drive at a pace slow enough to keep level with the automobile, and so the aeroplane soon dashed on ahead. From time to time, however, it made circles and swoops, which brought it sometimes in seemingly dangerous closeness to the tree-tops. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... very clearly that the number of microbes in the air corresponds with tolerable closeness to the density of population. From the Alpine solitudes of the Bernese Oberland to the crowded ward of a Parisian hospital, we have a constantly ascending ratio of microbes in the air, from zero to 28,000 per cubic meter. Their complete absence on the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... certainly acquainted with the yet unpublished Amyntas. This he may perhaps have seen when it was performed at Whitehall, and he imitated several passages of it in his own Westminster play. The most important point of connexion is the madness of Aphron, which is modelled with some closeness on that of Amyntas. Actual verbal reminiscences are not common, but there can, I think, be little doubt that the schoolboy has been imitating the half-grotesque, half-poetic fantasies of the university wit, though he has wholly failed to achieve his pathos. Again, the speech of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... amateurs perhaps, but unmistakable. Latin, for girls, is a source of delight, a beautiful enrichment of their mental life, most precious in itself and in its influence, but it is not a living power, nor a familiar instrument, nor a great discipline; it is deficient in hardness and closeness of grain, so that it cannot take polish; it is apt to betray by unexpected transgressions the want of that long, detailed, severe training which alone can make classical scholarship. It is usually a little tremulous, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... scarcely be possible to cover the distance and return in less than ten days, at the very least, during which time it was only too probable that the musician would fall ill from lack of food and from the possible dampness and closeness of his prison. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... her voice and the closeness of connection between her words and the thought in his own mind that he certainly must be able to do what Irons asked, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... The ever increasing closeness of business relations the world over—their virtual solidarity, in fact—was being illustrated again with us. A chief example was trouble in the copper groups following a slackened world demand for ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... is not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength; while the novelty and struggling crowd of images, acting in conjunction with the difficulties of the style, demands always a greater closeness of attention, than poetry,—at all events, than descriptive poetry—has a right to claim. It not seldom therefore justified the complaint of obscurity. In the following extract I have sometimes fancied, that I saw an emblem of the poem itself, and of the author's genius as ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... its densest form is to distil the "funny column" of a weekly newspaper. To arrive at the desired result in the speediest way, let the operation be performed in what is known among bucolic journalists as a "humorous retort." Density and closeness should not be spoken of as equivalent terms. The former is a common quality of the human skull, rendering it impervious; whereas a man may be very close and yet capable of being stuck,—with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... of the dress are preserved, and may be seen in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy. Portions of the seams still remain, and are creditable specimens of early needlework. The material employed in sewing was fine gut of three strands, and the regularity and closeness of the stitching cannot fail to excite admiration. It is another of the many proofs that, even in the earliest ages, the Celt was gifted with more than ordinary skill in the execution of whatever works he took in hand. After all, the skin of animals is one of the most costly and appreciated ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship's cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... loudly asserted that a black conspiracy was hatching against the liberties of the people, and that the worst days of the tyranny were about to be revived. For in those days religion and politics were associated with a closeness of intimacy unknown in modern Europe, and sacrilege might well be regarded as a prelude to treason. Active measures were at once taken to bring the offenders to justice, and great rewards were offered to anyone, whether citizen, slave, or resident foreigner, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... the three slept that night, though Diane dozed off for a few minutes once or twice, for their apprehension of what the dawn might hold made it impossible, to say nothing of the closeness of the air in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... into the full blaze of the moon, and showed themselves to be a herd of full-grown elephants, with a number of calves. There could not have been fewer than one hundred on the margin of the pond; but from the closeness of their ranks and their incessant movements I found it impossible to count their numbers accurately. This magnificent army began to drink and throw water about, waving their trunks and trumpeting shrilly at the same time with the utmost delight. The young ones especially seemed enjoy ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... here again between two different tendencies, habits of mind, or ways of regarding things. In all art the mind must work through the eye, whether its force appears in closeness of observation or in vivid imaginings. The very vividness of realization even of the most faithful portraiture is a testimony ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... resist, Mrs. Burgoyne had put up her deft hands, and in a moment, with a pull here, and the alteration of a hairpin there, she had loosened the girl's black and silky hair, till it showed the beautiful waves above the ear in which it did indeed resemble the marble head with a curious closeness. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... impossible to believe that we have the text as Malory intended it to stand. After Caxton's edition Malory's manuscript must have disappeared, and subsequent editions are differentiated only by the degree of closeness with which they follow the first. Editions appeared printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1498 and 1529, by William Copland in 1559, by Thomas East about 1585, and by Thomas Stansby in 1634, each printer apparently taking the text of his immediate predecessor and reproducing ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... he was transferred from the Parliament of Dublin to the Parliament of Westminster. Kitchener was sixty-four when he turned his face westward to the problem of his own country. There clung to him already all the traditional attributes of the oak—its toughness, its angularity, its closeness of grain and ruggedness of outline—when he was uprooted from the Arabian sands and replanted in the remote western island. Yet the oak not only grew green again and put forth new leaves; it was almost as if, as in a legend, it could put forth a new kind of leaves. ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... games worse even than the squalls of the class-room and hall, for he was still feeble, not filling out and attaining his full strength till a much later age than most boys. This was perhaps due to the closeness with which his father had kept him to his books in childhood, but I think in part also to a tendency towards lateness in attaining maturity, hereditary in the Pontifex family, which was one also of unusual ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... hair up some time, I suppose," she said resentfully. There was something in the abruptness of her father's question, no less than in the new closeness and sharpness of eye with which he was examining ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... kind of gesture, a method of dancing on paper." Sculpture, drawing, all the arts save music are imitative; so was the dance from which they sprang. But imitation is not all, or even first. "The dance may be mimetic; but the beauty and verve of the performance, not closeness of the imitation impresses; and tame additions of truth will encumber and not convince. The dance must control the pantomime." Art, that is, gradually ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... to our vaulting human egotism, we should think often upon the closeness of mental contact between the highest animals and the lowest men. In drawing a parallel between those two groups, there are no single factors more valuable than the home, and the family food supply. These ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... among the commonest fruits of the savage imagination. As those legends have been produced to meet the same want by persons in a very similar mental condition, it inevitably follows that they all resemble each other with considerable closeness. We need not conclude that all the myths we are about to examine came from a single original source, or were handed about—with flint arrow-heads, seeds, shells, beads, and weapons—in the course of savage commerce. Borrowing of this sort may—or, rather, must—explain ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... the three properties of lightness, strength, and closeness of texture, in a greater degree ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... old gentleman who appeared to be ill. Taking him by the arm, she made a way for him through the dense throng of people, and got him safely into a quiet street. There he explained to her that he had a weak heart, and that he had foolishly ventured out sight-seeing, but the excitement and the closeness had made him faint. He thanked the girl warmly for her help, and asked for her name and address, which she ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... English dramatic prose has known. The Bible is the book of books in Ulster, and there is no page of Mr. Mayne's Ulster plays but shows him acquainted with its great rhythms. Mr. Boyle, skillful artificer of situation, and truthful depicter of character that he is, and Mr. Colum, too, for all his closeness to the earth, are now and then betrayed, Mr. Boyle more often than now and then, into the English of the newspaper or of the public speaker; but the English of Mr. Mayne is all but always an unworn English, an English used freshly, or if with reminiscences in it, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... resistance to association will come from the conditions of physical nature, and as these greatly vary with locality, corresponding differences in social progress must show themselves. The net rapidity of increase, and the closeness with which men, as they increase, can keep together, will, in the rude state of knowledge in which reliance for subsistence must be principally upon the spontaneous offerings of nature, very largely depend upon climate, soil, and physical conformation. Where ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... candle end, which they put out when they noticed the sergeant, were awake, and an old man who sat naked under the lamp in the passage picking the vermin off his shirt. The foul air in the political prisoners' rooms seemed pure compared to the stinking closeness here. The smoking lamp shone dimly as through a mist, and it was difficult to breathe. Stepping along the passage, one had to look carefully for an empty space, and having put down one foot had to find place for the other. Three persons, who had evidently ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... of my grandmother I did not turn away again from Richard Dawson, much as I detested his closeness and his breath upon my cheek. I thought the dinner would never be over. As it went on I could not but feel that he was making himself and me conspicuous. He drank a good deal of wine, and the more he drank the more he leant to me and tried to look into my eyes, so that I ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... the morning greatly refreshed for all the closeness of the air, and, the memory of the night's events returning, was much concerned as to the future. I could not be fighting with Muckle John all the time, and I made no doubt that once his limbs were freed he would try to kill ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... refusal to investigate and dissect, to take sides, to wrestle. The evil was there, and it was making an ostrich or a vegetable of one's self to go on being calm in the face of it. With the blindness of wives, who are prevented from seeing clearly by the very closeness of the object—the same remark exactly applies to husbands—she did not see that the vicar was the candle shining in a naughty world, that he was the leaven that leaveneth the whole lump. And just as leaven ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... beautiful that the eye can see; perhaps the more beautiful for being shut in with a forest-like closeness. We have no prospect in this labyrinth of lanes, cross-roads, mere cart-ways, leading to the innumerable little farms into which this part of the parish is divided. Up-hill or down, these quiet woody lanes scarcely give us a peep at ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... for the cautionary towns should be squeezed out of this general contingent. The States, on the contrary, were determined to screw these garrisons out of her grip, as an additional subsidy. Each party complained with reason of the other's closeness. No doubt the states were shrewd bargainers, but it would have been difficult for the sharpest Hollander that ever sent a cargo of herrings to Cadiz, to force open Elizabeth's beautiful hand when ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lights had been put out. From one of the town's two saloons that lay in their way arose a clatter of voices. The old boyhood dream of finding a place and a people among whom he could, by sitting still and inhaling the air breathed by others, come into a warm closeness with life, came back to Hugh. He stopped before the saloon to listen to the voices within, but the railroad man plucked at his coat sleeve and protested. "Now, now, you're going to cut it out, eh?" he asked ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... summer, blowing strong in the day-time, laid the produce at our feet; so that by merely stretching out our hands, we picked up the fruit in abundance; for although the sun was powerful, we preferred the open air under the deep foliage to the closeness of a tent. During the early part of the night an alarm was raised throughout our small camp, and as we knew the vicinity of Cabul to be infested with the most persevering thieves, we naturally enough attributed the disturbance ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... neighbours. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw the door—even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate of his defences. But in truth ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the modern system of business management brings to bear on the common man will also fall short of the last straw—perhaps even of the next-to-the-last. Again it turns out to be a question not of the failure of the general proposition as formulated, but rather as to the closeness of approximation to its theoretically perfect work. It may be remarked by the way that vigilant and impartial surveillance of this system of business enterprise by an external authority interested only in aggregate results, rather than in the differential gains of the interested individuals, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... began, lovers have been pronounced selfishly forgetful of the rest of mankind. We have our doubts, however, whether their being wholly wrapped up in each other deserves so harsh a name as selfishness, since that very closeness of union renders souls richer and larger, and gives to each additional power to receive and communicate happiness, while thoroughly selfish people lack the capacity to impart good gifts, and are ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... 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 Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... faces. Very soon she had begun to haunt them in her eager way, to try and penetrate their peasant lives, which were so full of enigma and attraction to her, mainly because of their very defectiveness, their closeness to an animal simplicity, never to be reached by any one of her sort. She soon discovered or imagined that Hurd had more education than his neighbours. At any rate, he would sit listening to her—and smoking, as she made him do—while she talked ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the intense heat during the greater part of the year makes out-door occupation trying even to the native, and well-nigh unendurable for Europeans—a heat uncompensated by the coolness of the night, for in the North-West, at least, the stifling closeness of the night is more trying than the heat of the day. If this heat lasted for only a few days, as in Southern Australia, it might be borne, though a hindrance to work; but in India it lasts for months, and it is ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... close to them. They had come to the open door for fresh air, after the charnel-like chill and closeness ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... had then been perfected for fifteen years, but still the larger portion of the world used these lamps. All this first scene will go, in my mind at least, to that olfactory accompaniment. That was the evening smell of the room. By day it had a more subtle aroma, a closeness, a peculiar sort of faint pungency that I associate—I know ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... united to carbon in an elastic state together with a small portion of oxygen; whereas crude or pig iron consists of iron combined with carbon in a material state.[3] Chief merits of cast-steel consist in its possessing great cohesion and closeness of grain, with an astonishing degree of tenacity and flexibility,—qualities which render it of the highest value in all kinds of tools and instruments where durability, polish, and fineness of edge are essential requisites. It is to this material that we are mainly indebted for the exquisite ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Guard will depend upon the energy, strength, and closeness of the pursuit, the condition of the Main Body (and whether it is withdrawing voluntarily or upon compulsion after an unsuccessful engagement) and upon the nature of the country, but it will generally amount to not less than {120} one-fifth or more than one-third ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... tones to the false semblance of good- will, there in the closeness of the corridor. Fan, deceived, ceased to wag her tail and then trotted away. The baby's cry, behind the door, rose to a mysterious despairing howl, which had such an effect on Constance's heart that she could have walked through fire to reach the baby. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... jump!" he shouted, but she did not obey. Instead she ran toward the combatants and seized Maruffi's free arm, in a measure checking his effort to break the other man's hold. Her closeness to danger agonized Blake, the more as he felt his own strength ebbing, under that stabbing pain in his side. He centered his force in the grip of his left hand, clinging doggedly while the Sicilian flung his two assailants here and there as a dog ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... deals with [48] easy themes has no excuse if he is not pellucid to a glance, one who employs his intellect and imagination on high and hard questions has a right to demand a corresponding closeness of attention, and a right to say with Bishop Butler, in answer to a similar complaint: 'It must be acknowledged that some of the following discourses are very abstruse and difficult, or, if you please, obscure; but I must take leave to add that those alone are judges whether ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... the crape ring, the bright rings must have a considerable closeness of texture; for the shadow of the planet may be seen projected upon them, and their shadows in turn projected upon the surface of the planet (see Plate ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... of the closeness of the tie which united him and Alice, the consecrated fervor of their affection from childhood upwards, their sense of lonely sufficiency to each other, because they only of their race had escaped death, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seemed to raise him with her fingers, and her eyes held his and drew them; he stood up, and, still holding her hand, his face was near to hers. Closer and closer yet, as by a spell, each gazing searchingly into the other's glance, till their eyes could see no more for closeness, and their lips met in life's first virgin kiss,—in the glory and strength of a ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... to the beach and clambered about over the rocky backbone, again hunting for me with lighted matches. The closeness of the shore impelled me to further flight. Not daring to wade upright, on account of the noise made by floundering and by the suck of the mud, I remained lying down in the mud and propelled myself over its surface by means of my hands. Still keeping the trail made by ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... of course," said March, with renewed interest. "That is certainly a fine piece of description, about their being only conscious of the closeness of the elephant when the colossal head blocked out ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... a posterior pterygoid is more difficult to assess, because of the closeness of the glenoid cavity and the raised ridge of the prearticular, and the occupancy of at least part of this region by the anterior pterygoid. In some specimens of Dimetrodon the internal process of the articular is double (see Romer and Price, 1940:87, Fig. 16) ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox
... knowledge that it should be deficient in "exactness," in precision of statement, and closeness of logical concatenation. We must not look for a mathematics of conduct. The subject-matter of Human Conduct is not governed by necessary and uniform laws. But this does not mean that it is subject to no laws. There are general principles at work in it, and ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... compliment Francis on the change in her style of dressing, when she complained of the closeness of the room, and skipped off into the garden. Left thus to my own resources, I lit a cigar and walked out in front of the house, where I soon espied my lady; and when I joined her she proposed to walk as far as the ruin to see the sun set. Instead of taking the regular path, ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... a journey that seemed timeless. I have no idea how fast or slow I went, but I remember that I deliberately examined articles on each side of me, peering with particular closeness into the recesses of wall and window. I passed the first baize doors, and the passage beyond them widened out to hold shelves of books; there were sofas and small reading-tables against ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... beginning much in the way of superfluous preliminary has to be gone through. Had these been leaves of trees they would have duly dropped off. Unfortunately, leaves of books continue to stick fast even when they are no longer wanted. The feature of these poems was the closeness of attention devoted even to trifling things. Pictures and Songs seized every opportunity of giving value to these by colouring them with feelings straight from ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... a view to training the observative powers: The child's training in closeness of observation and scientific precision may be the next consideration. His enthusiasm will now prompt him to lend his interest for greater detail. We can teach him to recognize a few of the common trees by their general characters—an American elm by its fan-shaped form, a gray birch ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... their indigo to market about the end of the year, and frequently earlier. The merchant judges of its quality by breaking it, and observing the closeness of its grain, and its brilliant copper, or violet blue colour. The weight in some measure proves its quality, for heavy indigo of every colour is always bad. Good indigo almost entirely consumes ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... though none of these emissaries reached us until my uncle was dead, one felt the forewash of that storm of energy. The thing got into the popular French press. People became curious in their manner towards us, and a number of fresh faces appeared about the weak little struggle that went on in the closeness behind the curtains of the bed. The young doctor insisted on consultations, and a motor-car came up from Biarritz, and suddenly odd people with questioning eyes began to poke in with inquiries and help. Though nothing was said, I could feel that we were no longer regarded as simple middle-class ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... dwelt on her love of him with a whimper of the voice of love. That was previous to her perjury by little, by a day-eighteen hours. How lurid a satire was flung on events by the proximity of the dates! But the closeness of the time between this love-crooning and the denying of him pointed to a tyrannous intervention. One could detect it. Full surely the poor craven was being tyrannized and tutored to deny him! though she was a puss of the fields too, as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... unnecessary to say that the play is done with a master's hand. Its closeness and movement are quite surprising. Its construction is admirable. I have the strongest belief in its making a great success. But I must add this proviso: I never saw a play so dangerously depending in critical places ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... was calm and very still. The hatch covers were thrown back, the tired men thrust their heads into the cool, sweet air, so refreshing after the closeness of their badly ventilated vessel, and wetted their fevered, exhausted bodies with the stimulating water of the bay. The artillery officer took advantage of the opportunity to make a careful reexamination of the torpedo, and Lacy was greatly relieved when he reported that ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... skull was disproportionally large, both behind and before; and a physiognomist would have drawn conclusions more favourable to the power than the tenderness of the Provencal's character from the compact closeness of the lips and the breadth and massiveness of the iron jaw. But the son's sketch exaggerated every feature, and gave to the expression a malignant and terrible irony not now, at least, apparent in the quiet and meditative aspect. Gabriel himself, as he ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hurled to the rocky floor, as much by the closeness of the exploding shells as by the weight of the bodies that came upon him. He fell free of the first leaping things that went to fragments in mid-air as his pistol checked them. And he made no effort to arise, but lay prostrate, while he swung that slender tube of death ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... This closeness of touch between Parliament and People has evident advantages, but it also has at least one serious drawback. In times of great public excitement it might lead to hasty legislation, unless the House of Lords should be able to interpose and procure the further consideration of questions of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... which had made it difficult for others to take their due share in the nursing. Thus the slow weeks of dependence on one side, and unwearied service on the other, together with the underlying bond between them, had wrought a closeness of friendship to which the Boy had long aspired; and which promised to add depth and stability to the warmth and uprightness of heart that were already his. Harry Denvil's present need was for a tacit wiping out of the past, an unquestioning trust in regard to the future; and his Captain, after ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... yet I should be disingenuous if I did not own this was a case apart; in ordinary circumstances, some one might have stumbled or been intimidated into an admission; and what bound us together with a closeness beyond that of mere comrades was a secret to which we were all committed and a design in which all were equally engaged. No need to inquire as to its nature: there is only one desire, and only one kind of design, that blooms in prisons. And the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... even unfolded the Colonel's letter yet. The close black lines showed through the thin paper. Their closeness repelled him. He did not want to know how his brother had died; at least not yet. He was afraid of the Colonel's letter. He felt that by simply not reading it he could put off the unbearable ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... thee, mark me. I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated To closeness and the bettering of my mind With that, which, but by being so retir'd, O'er-priz'd all popular rate, in my false brother Awak'd an evil nature; and my trust, Like a good parent, did beget of him A falsehood, in its contrary as great As ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... coarse. Close and prolonged grazing by swine will tend to shorten the period of the life of the alfalfa. The extent to which this result will follow will depend upon soil and climatic conditions and the closeness of the grazing. To avoid such a result and also to secure the utilization of the food to the utmost, some growers advocate cutting the alfalfa and feeding it to swine as soiling. The advisability of handling ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... her mind crept a step forward, and she dared to look towards a time when Mildred Caniper would be dead and she at Halkett's Farm. The larch-lined hollow would half suffocate her, she believed, but she would grow accustomed to its closeness as she would grow used to George and George to her. Soon he would completely trust her. He would learn to ask her counsel, and, at night, she would sit and sew and listen to his talk of crops and cattle, and the doings and misdoings of his ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... little. He encouraged her to talk on; he listened to the phrases of memory or expectation which revealed her history—her solitary bringing-up—her reserved and scholarly father—the singular closeness, and yet as it seemed strangeness of her relation to him. It appeared, for instance, that it was only an accident, some years before, which had revealed to Diana the very existence of these cousins. Her father had never spoken of ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... indulged in by our grandmothers, who looked upon their husbands as a kind of visible embodiment of the Lord's Will, and respected them accordingly. They would never have dreamed of finding irksome what Mrs Lynn Linton called the 'chair-a-chair closeness of the ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... ailment or infirmity are far more liable to become criminals than are healthy members of the community. The intimate connection between disease and crime is a matter which must never be forgotten. In the present instance, however, the closeness of this connection is not sufficient to account for the growth of crime in summer. According to the Registrar General's report for 1889 the death rate in the twenty-eight large towns is less in the six months from June to November than in ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... minutes were minutes that Brigit never forgot. The Italian servant, chattering and weeping, the young doctor helping her to loosen Lady Kingsmead's tight clothes; his hurried explanations and questions; the very closeness of the air, with the smell of ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... that some knowledge of man's position in the animate world is an indispensable preliminary to the proper understanding of his relations to the universe—and this again resolves itself, in the long run, into an inquiry into the nature and the closeness of the ties which connect him with those singular creatures whose history [1] has been ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... ignited the charge. The regulars carried bayonets on the ends of their muskets, but the militia and rangers had little use for these weapons. They depended on their marksmanship, which was deadly. The regulars fired breast high in the direction of their enemy, trusting to the steadiness and closeness of their fire; but the colonials did not waste their precious bullets and powder in this way. They had learned from the Indians, whom they could beat at their own game, to fight from behind trees, rocks, or hillocks, to load and fire lying down, and to surprise their enemies by stealing ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... English by Mrs. Centlivre and others. This little piece, to which he gave the title of the Mock-Doctor; or, The Dumb Lady cur'd, was well received. The French original was rendered with tolerable closeness; but here and there Fielding has introduced little touches of his own, as, for instance, where Gregory (Sganarelle) tells his wife Dorcas (Martino), whom he has just been beating, that as they are but one, whenever he beats her he beats half of himself. To this she replies by requesting that for ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... it does push so much else to one side! Love, spiritual gropings, the arts, our old closeness to nature, the independent outlook and disinterested friendships of men—all these must be checked and diminished, lest they interfere. Yet those things are life; and big business is just a great game. Why play any game so intently we forget ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... no better example of the closeness of the connection between society and its literature than is supplied by the novel. Every change in the public taste has been followed by a corresponding variety of fiction, until it is difficult to enumerate all the schools into ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... rate Daisy submitted peaceably to the necessity; put her arm over the doctor's shoulder to support herself, and laid her head down; though not to sleep. She watched everything that was going on now. What a roomful of weary and impatient people they were! packed like cattle in a pen, for closeness; and how the rain poured and beat outside the house! The shelter was something to be thankful for, and yet how unthankful everybody looked. Some of the gentlemen showed calm fortitude under their trials; but the poor ladies' chagrined faces said ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... find that I could see nothing of the hippo; but I soon realised that I was looking too far ahead, for on lowering my eyes there he was, not twenty-five yards away, lying down in the shallow water, only half covered and practically facing us. His closeness to us made me rather anxious for our safety, more especially as just then he rose to his feet and gave forth the peculiar challenge or call which we had already heard so often during the night. All the same, as he raised his head, I fired at it. He whirled round, made a plunge forward, ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... endeavoured to relate the conversation as minutely and accurately as possible, but still the duke sought further particulars. He inquired the style of countenance, dress, manner, and tone of voice possessed by the . One might have supposed, by the closeness of his questions, that he already fancied he had identified this mysterious personage: he then examined the box, which stood on the table, and remarked, "This is a very serious affair, nor can ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... him for an instant with a closeness that was passionate. But, "It's nothing, Jack," she whispered back. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... ambitious. He would end by making a sufficient fortune, and by being a town councillor and a J.P. But beyond Woodhouse he did not exist. Why then should Alvina be attracted by him? Perhaps because of his "closeness," ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... at home; he painted out of doors. He despised the conventional light of the studio, the closeness of its atmosphere. He wandered through the suburbs of Madrid and the neighboring provinces in search of rough, simple types, whose faces seemed to bear the stamp of the ancient Spanish soul. He climbed the Guadarrama in the midst of winter, standing alone in the snowy ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... hair was done very untidily, and they smelt aggressively of starched linen. They considered the feminine graces unbecoming and looked the same whether they were old or young. They bore their religion arrogantly. The closeness of their connection with the church made them adopt a slightly dictatorial attitude to the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... upon them; to tell the prosaic truth we were both sea-sick. Not a fair knock down exactly, for while on deck I was all right. What started the malady was the sleeping cabin—such an abomination of closeness, stuffiness, and all the odours under the sun I never smelt—it was literally enough to knock one down. Not that the cabins themselves are badly ventilated, but they vent into the gangways outside, which in bad weather are themselves very ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... which wafted his Britannic Majesty's ship slowly along the verdant shore, was scarcely strong enough to ruffle the surface of the sea. Huge banks of dark clouds were gathering in the sky, and a hot, unnatural closeness seemed to pervade the atmosphere, as if a storm were about to burst upon the scene. Everything, above and below, seemed to presage war—alike elemental and human; and the various leaders of the several expeditions felt that the approaching night ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... miles. Now our figuring was all right. We went over it several times. What was wrong was the observations we had taken. To take a correct observation requires practice and skill, and especially so on a small craft like the Snark. The violently moving boat and the closeness of the observer's eye to the surface of the water are to blame. A big wave that lifts up a mile off is liable to steal the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... she ought to do; but she never seemed to suppose that I, any more than she, would like to do, or could care about anything except what must be done. Her love overflowed upon me—not in caresses, but in a closeness of recognition which I can compare to nothing but the devotion ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... large animals, and the best fitted to survive. It neither bawls nor bugles to attract its enemies, it can not be called to a sportsman, like the moose, and it sticks to its timber with rare and commendable closeness. When it sees a strange living thing walking erect, it does not stop to stare and catch soft-nosed bullets, but dashes away ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... wished a situation which would not urge him into any. He found behind Lucienne a deep narrow valley, completely shut in, inaccessible from its swamps, and with a wretched village called Marly upon the slope of one of its hills. This closeness, without drain or the means of having any, was the sole merit of the valley. The King was overjoyed at his discovery. It was a great work, that of draining this sewer of all the environs, which threw there their ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the other expedients usually adopted on such occasions, it is with the utmost difficulty that you can contrive to keep your blood in a moderate degree of temperature. In the town itself, therefore, few of the higher classes reside, the closeness produced by a proximity of houses being in this climate peculiarly insupportable. These inhabit for the most part little villas, called Pens, about three or four miles in the country, the master of each family generally, retaining a suite of apartments, or, perhaps an entire mansion, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... whole, stand better far than those by Reynolds. "Landscape with Cattle," a picture belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne, is lovely for colour and freshness; it has been lined and repaired, but evidently had parted widely in the lights. Could any closeness of individual imitation give the truth, beauty of colour, and luminous sunlight of this picture? It somewhat reminds one of Zuccarelli, but how completely has Gainsborough sucked the honey and left the ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... kept any secret all these years from the folks he's lived amongst. It isn't likely. He must leave it all to his wife, except a hundred or so, perhaps, to mother Tadman; and it was nothing but his natural closeness that made him want me out of ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... ever these could so much as begin the fight, insomuch that without a wound or bloodshed, so many thousands were overthrown. The greatest slaughter was made in the flight, or rather in the endeavoring to fly away, which they could not well do by reason of the depth and closeness of their own ranks, which hindered them. Tigranes at first fled with a few, but seeing his son in the same misfortune, he took the diadem from his head, and with tears gave it him, bidding him save himself by some other road if he could. But the young man, not daring to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... that he had never been younger in the sense of being merely alive; after the tonic of the cold his nerves were strung like steel, his blood was in a full tide. Lee was aware of a marked sense of pleasure at the closeness to him of Anette; settling back, she willingly, voluntarily, leaned her firm elastic body against him; her legs, as evident in woolen stockings as his own, were thrust ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... be pronounced the greatest master in it. While Duerer's art exhibits a close affinity with the religious ideas of the Middle Ages, Holbein appears to have been imbued with more modern and more material sentiments, and accordingly we find him excelling Duerer in closeness and delicacy of observation in the delineation of nature. A proof of this is afforded by the evidence of Erasmus, who said that as regards the portraits painted of him by both these artists, that ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... time, I think I shall be coming home about the end of next week or the beginning of the week after. I have been pretty well in London, only somewhat troubled with headaches, owing, I suppose, to the closeness and oppression of the air. The weather has not been so favourable as when I was last here, and in wet and dark days this great Babylon is not so cheerful. All the other sights seem to give way to the great Exhibition, into ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... beautiful, inward grace had suffered, which is felt only upon the too near approach of the ab-human, and is more dreadful, in a strange way, than any physical pain that can be suffered. I knew by this more of the extent and closeness of the danger; and for a long time I was simply cowed by the butt-headed brutality of that Force upon my spirit. I can ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... line to fill the intervals in the first, and the Romans advanced with equal steadiness to the conflict; but the much greater closeness of the Carthaginian formation served them in good stead. They moved like a solid wall, their shields locked closely together, and pressed steadily forward in spite of the desperate efforts of the Roman centre in its more open order to ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... seigniorial domains, the misery is the same. At Clermont-Ferrand,[5143] "there are many streets that can for blackness, dirt and scents only be represented by narrow channels cut in a dunghill." In the inns of the largest bourgs, "closeness, misery, dirtiness and darkness." That of Pradelles is "one of the worst in France." That of Aubenas, says Young, "would be a purgatory for one of my pigs." The senses, in short, are paralyzed. The primitive man is content so long as he can ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is twofold. Firstly, he finds that in their speculations there is a large element of primitive intuition, embodied in concepts fashioned by the spontaneous play of reflective thought and free imagination. Closeness to nature is thus secured. And secondly, he rejoices in the fact that these speculations, crude and premature as they inevitably were, contained germs of thought and flashes of insight which anticipate the most advanced speculative science and philosophy of the present day. He maintains ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... artist can his audience gain the greatest kind of utility and inspiration, which might be quite invisible at first? Emerson realizes the value of "the many,"—that the law of averages has a divine source. He recognizes the various life-values in reality—not by reason of their closeness or remoteness, but because he sympathizes with men who live them, and the majority do. "The private store of reason is not great—would that there were a public store for man," cries Pascal, but there is, says Emerson, it is the universal mind, an institution congenital with ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... out of the city; whereby the man that fell became an impediment to him that was next to him, as did the danger of going farther make them less zealous in their attempts; and for those that had run under the darts some of them were terrified by the good order and closeness of the enemies' ranks before they came to a close fight, and others were pricked with their spears and turned back again. At length they reproached one another for their cowardice, and retired without doing anything. This attack was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... love as the accidents of time and life do. Even the fondest grow apart if parted; they cannot come together again, not in any closeness or for any long time. Can death do ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... them by name. She would sit by the one window that faced the Basin and watch the trail beaten in the deep snow by the passing of many feet, and brood over the days when she might have won Jack and by the very closeness of their love have saved him from this. Had she done her part, Jack would not have lied to her about that trip to Venice; he would not have dreamed of such a thing. It hurt terribly to think how close she had been to happiness with Jack and how unthinkingly ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... your determination," said he, with a meaning I did not even then fathom, and exchanging a quick glance with the silent figure at his right, he leaned towards me and—what happened? For a moment I could not tell, but soon, only too soon, I recognized by my stunned and bleeding body, by the closeness of the air I suddenly breathed, and by the circle of darkness that shut about me, and the still more distinct circle of light that glimmered above, that I had been pushed into the pit whose yawning mouth had but a few short moments before ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... arrival at the prison, found the wife of Mazin in great distress from the cruelty of her sisters. Her children were playing about her, but very pallid, from the closeness of their confinement. On the entrance of the nurse she stood up, made her obeisance, and began to weep, saying, "My dear nurse, I have been long in this dungeon, and know not what in the end may be my fate." The old woman kissed her cheeks, and said, "My dear daughter, God will bring thee ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... regardless of her own interests, which I had jeopardised and was now endeavouring to recover, I redoubled my own coldness in the manner of a lesson to the girl. The more she came forward, the further I drew back; the more she betrayed the closeness of our intimacy, the more pointedly civil I became, until even her father (if he had not been so engrossed with eating) might have observed the opposition. In the midst of which, of a sudden, she became wholly changed, and I told myself, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... portion of my dinner, the Boots, perceiving me at the blank bow window, slaps his leg as he comes across the road, pretending it is something else. The Dodo excludes the outer air. When I mount up to my bedroom, a smell of closeness and flue gets lazily up my nose like sleepy snuff. The loose little bits of carpet writhe under my tread, and take wormy shapes. I don't know the ridiculous man in the looking-glass, beyond having met him once or twice in a dish-cover ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... evidently very nervous when he rose, for the colour quite deserted his cheek. His manner was cold, dry, and formal, and sufficiently uninteresting, and uninviting. We were all, however, soon struck by the book-like precision of his language, the clearness and closeness of his reasoning, and the extent of his legal knowledge. He spoke for about ten minutes; and, having risen amidst a half-suppressed titter, sate down amidst earnest cries of "Hear, hear, hear!" He afterwards spoke pretty regularly, especially upon legal questions; and those who, in due course, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... moment that Tom stood appalled. He knew that, at any instant, by the tightening of its folds the great boa could crush every bone of Ned's body; while the very closeness of its embrace rendered it impossible for him to strike at it, for fear of injuring its captor. There was not an instant to be lost. Already the coils were tightening, and a hoarse ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... instance, are the toys which represent objects of natural history or of different trades and arts; the pictures which teach through the quick eye of the child what no dry descriptions could ever convey; and the games which develope closeness of observation and habits of order. A genial French physician has happily said, 'Every time I see a toy based on the reproduction of a scientific fact or of an industrial process, and which pleases while it enlightens, I feel a sentiment of real gratitude to ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... Hindostan, Java and China, and is exhibited here from Java. It has a pair of rollers about the size of broomsticks, close together and turning in different directions, which pinch and draw the fibre through, while the seeds are prevented from passing by the closeness of the rollers. Whitney's invention of the saw-gin in 1794 revolutionized the business and changed the whole domestic aspect of our Southern States. In it the fibre is picked from the seed by means of saw-teeth projecting through slits ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Rack and Manger, the dry and wither'd Stable Commons, which they must eat or starve, however qualified; being restrained from their Natural and Spontaneous Choice, which Nature and Instinct directs them to: To these add the Closeness of the Air, standing in an almost continu'd Posture; besides the fulsome Drenches, unseasonable Watrings, and other Practices of ignorant Horse-Quacks and surly Grooms: The Tyranny and cruel Usage of their Masters in tiring Journeys, hard, labouring and unmerciful Treatment, Heats, Colds, &c. ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... with the smoke, the sound, and the fire, of their musketry and cannon. Their small arms discharged at the same time either five, or even ten, balls of lead, of the size of a walnut; and, according to the closeness of the ranks and the force of the powder, several breastplates and bodies were transpierced by the same shot. But the Turkish approaches were soon sunk in trenches, or covered with ruins. Each day added to the science of the Christians; but their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... a good deal from the heat and closeness of the rooms, for Mary was like a modern Englishwoman in her craving for free air, and these were the dog-days. They had contrived by the help of a diamond that the Queen carried about with her, after the fashion of the time, to extract a pane or two from the lattices so ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about him. In the darkness he could feel the deadly loveliness of her face almost touching his own. He was yielding, inch by inch. The warmth of her breath ... the perfume of her body.... Her closeness ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... the closeness or rarity of the texture of these bodies, by examining their gravity, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... parts are ratiocination and description. To reason in verse is allowed to be difficult; but Blackmore not only reasons in verse, but very often reasons poetically; and finds the art of uniting ornament with strength and ease with closeness. This is a skill which Pope might have condescended to learn from him, when he needed it so much in ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... unworthy cunning, featured the coldness of his feet till she had exhausted her vocabulary of chiropodal sympathy, after which he kept her interested in the state of his ears, his hands, and the tip of his nose. She patted him consolingly, and they toiled on together, forgetting in the closeness of their comradeship the strangeness of being on an unknown road, homeless, as a chilly sunset spread bands of cold lemon and gray across the enormous sky, and all decent folk thought ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... upon that bleak hillside, dotted over with white tombstones, the looming city in the distance off at the right, Courtland recognized the group of spreading buildings that belonged to-his university. He marveled at the closeness of life and death in this world. Out there the busy city, everybody tired and hustling to get, to learn, to enjoy; out here everybody lying quiet, like the corn of wheat in the ground, waiting for the resurrection time, the call of God to come ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... has been a distinct diminution in the number of wars between the most civilized nations. International relations have become closer and the development of The Hague tribunal is not only a symptom of this growing closeness of relationship, but is a means by which the growth can be furthered. Our aim should be from time to time to take such steps as may be possible toward creating something like an organization of the civilized nations, because as the world becomes more highly organized the need for navies and armies ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... lustre in her eyes that told of unnatural excitement. It gave a strange brilliancy to her beauty, and might have deceived an unpractised observer. The old man looked at her long and curiously, his imperfect sight excusing the closeness of ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... light. The slight breeze, which wafted his Britannic Majesty's ship slowly along the verdant shore, was scarcely strong enough to ruffle the surface of the sea. Huge banks of dark clouds were gathering in the sky, and a hot unnatural closeness seemed to pervade the atmosphere, as if a storm were about to burst upon the scene. Everything, above and below, seemed to presage war—alike elemental and human—and the various leaders of the several expeditions felt that the approaching night would ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... in a powerful telescope, and the most brilliant and obvious cluster. He admitted, however, an immense range of possible variety in the size and mode of aggregation of the stellar constituents of various nebulae. Some might appear nebulous from the closeness of their parts; some from their smallness. Others, he suggested, might be formed of "discrete luminous bodies floating in a non-luminous medium;"[121] while the annular kind probably consisted of "hollow shells of stars."[122] That a physical, and not merely an optical, connection unites nebulae ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... exhausted by the continual buffeting and the closeness of the cabin, and her voice was so weak, that Arthur grieved over the impossibility of giving her any air. Julienne tried to make her swallow some eau de vie; but the effort of steadying her hand seemed too much for her, and after a terrible lurch of the ship, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... five feet eight inches high at the shoulder, and, although so bulky and heavily built, it is extremely active, as our long and fruitless hunt had shown us. The skin is about half the thickness of that of the hippopotamus, but of extreme toughness and closeness of texture. When dried and polished it resembles horn. Unlike the Indian species of rhinoceros, the black variety of Africa is free from folds, and the hide fits smoothly on the body like that of the ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... lack of restraint, its idealism, its impracticality, its mysticism, its material simplicities, to be so readily grasped that the surprise that finally remains is the more dumbfounding. Perhaps after all it is the very closeness of our resemblance the one to the other that confuses us. It is, perhaps, that in the Russians' soul the East can never be reconciled to the West. It is perhaps that the Russian never reveals his secret ideal even to himself; far distant ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... therein his mother and her servant, dwarfed to his sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and himself going unsteadily from the one to the other. He admits this may be fancy, though he believes the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy, and thinks that the recollection of most of us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose. But what he adds is certainly not fancy. "If it should appear from anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close observation, or ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... infantry had begun the battle, so that so many tens of thousands were defeated before a wound was felt or blood was drawn. Now the great slaughter began when the army turned to flight, or rather attempted to fly, for they could not really fly, owing to the closeness and depth of their ranks, which made them in the way of one another. Tigranes, riding off at the front, fled with a few attendants, and, seeing that his son was a partner in his misfortune, he took off the diadem from his head, and, with tears, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... acquaintance very deliberately coiled up the tube of his hookah, and produced from behind a curtain a very long befrogged topcoat with Astrakhan collar and cuffs. This he buttoned tightly up, in spite of the extreme closeness of the night, and finished his attire by putting on a rabbit-skin cap with hanging lappets which covered the ears, so that no part of him was visible save his mobile and peaky face. "My health is somewhat fragile," he remarked, as he led the way down the passage. "I ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... down to the crop of little golden curls, which was Leo's most uncommon beauty. It even seemed to me, as I looked, that the expression on the dead man's face resembled that which I had sometimes seen upon Leo's when he was plunged into profound sleep. I can only sum up the closeness of the resemblance by saying that I never saw twins so exactly similar as that dead ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard |
