"Incisive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her own, which seem to read, with mathematical certainty, one's innermost thoughts,—and the poor fellow blushed to the tips of his ears. —But he was no boy, this Maitland, and betrayed no other sign of the tempest that was raging within him. His utterance remained as usual, deliberate and incisive, and I thought this perplexed the young lady. Before leaving, both Maitland and I were invited to become parties to a six-handed game to be played the following week, after the grounds had been redressed ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... time there had been two superintendents at the academy. The first was Captain C.K. Stribling, a fine seaman of the old school, of rigid Presbyterian stock, stern, grim, and precise, with curt manners, sharp and incisive voice that seemed to know no softening, and whose methods of duty and conception of discipline smacked of the "true blue" ideal of the Covenanters of old in their enforcement of obedience and conservation of morals. The second was ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... and incisive voice speaking in French here struck in and prevented Graham's rejoinder: "Quel joli ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... heed the foreman's scoffing. Instead, he began in a low incisive voice the narration of his experiences of the previous night, beginning with the bear hunt and ending with his finding his way out of the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... page, and, facing it, the translation in very old French. The author, born A.D. 1058, described himself as "a poor student striving to discern the truth of things"—and his work was a serious, incisive, patiently exhaustive inquiry into the workings of nature, the capabilities of human intelligence, and the deceptive results of human reason. Reading it, Alwyn was astonished to find that nearly all the ethical ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... ran over Edith, shaking her from head to foot as that sharp, incisive sound from the silver bell ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... of sane principles of national life among all sorts and conditions of men and women who make up our population. But anything and everything that goes by the name of Americanization is not necessarily an effective move in that direction. There is slowly growing up a body of incisive criticism dealing with the current epidemic of Americanization work that is sweeping the country on the wings of clever catch-words and generous emotions. It may be of interest and value to attempt an analysis and statement of the main points ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... either, because then it would be unattainable by a man of high intellectual gifts; and the peace that I speak of ought to be consistent with any and every constitution—physical, moral, mental. It must be consistent with physical weakness, with liability to strong temptations, with an incisive and penetrating intellectual quality; its essence would be a sort of vital faith, a unity of the individual heart with the heart of the world. It would rise like a rock above the sea, like a lighthouse, where ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... That was Thursday evening; and Friday and Saturday were devoted to a discussion of construction plans, inspection of the works, analysis of costs and so on. Weir found the men what he expected: quick to comprehend facts, incisive of mind, and though of course not engineers yet able to measure results; while they on their part were appreciative of the exceptional progress made and of his thorough command of the project. They knew the first hour that the right manager was in ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... Jones House. A gentleman of large proportions, but of lively temperament, his frame knit in the North, I think, but ripened in Georgia, incisive, prompt, but good-humored, wearing his broad-brimmed, steeple-crowned felt hat with the least possible tilt on one side,—a sure sign of exuberant vitality in a mature and dignified person like him,—business-like in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... was sharp and incisive. His face was grey and anxious. She herself remained lifeless. All that there was of emotion between them seemed to have become vested ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... labors of a hundred masters; while Kielland has to produce his effects of style in a poorer and less pliable language, which often pants and groans in its efforts to render a subtle thought. To have polished this tongue and sharpened its capacity for refined and incisive utterance, is one—and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... was broken, and it was as if it had never been. She remembered he had once said he would relinquish her in that other country. She had simply been given to him in her sorrow, to care for a brief while. And how grandly he had done it. Rose was too just, perhaps with some of the incisive energy of youth, to cover up miladi's faults at once. If she had been grateful to him for his devotion she would have thought more tenderly of love. Yet she ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Van" was an affable, firm, and crafty politician. Although he was not a creative statesman, neither was he a mere schemer. He had definite ideas, if not convictions, of the proper lines of policy, and was able to state them with incisive and forcible argument when occasion demanded. To him, perhaps, more than to any other of the politicians, fell the task of organizing the campaign of Crawford, and afterwards of making the political combinations ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... marching to the Gare Montparnasse to entrain for the front, and in a few days would be in the battle-line. Their bayonets sloped backward, a waving thicket bent toward the morning sun. There was no music in their words, which were sharp and incisive. Each word was a threat, an imprecation, intense with ferocious meaning. Their intonation carried conviction that the men meant literally every impressive line they uttered. The words visualized for me the picture in their own ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... migration that had occurred. He attributed little importance to the imputation of "the unhealthiness of the place" and to the assertion that tobacco sales yielded little return in England after all fees were paid. In an incisive statement he concluded that ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... speed. The windows had been smashed by shrapnel, and bits of glass and things crunched under foot. The room was full of noises—the crackle of the telephones, the crooning of the woman, the croak of the wounded old man, the clear and incisive tones of the general and his brigade-major, the rattle of not too distant rifles, the booming of guns and occasionally the terrific, overwhelming crash of a shell bursting in ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... holds the reader's interest. The Novel, which demands sentiment, style, and imagery, is the greatest creation of modern days; it is the successor of stage comedy grown obsolete with its restrictions. Facts and ideas are all within the province of fiction. The intellect of an incisive moralist, like La Bruyere, the power of treating character as Moliere could treat it, the grand machinery of a Shakespeare, together with the portrayal of the most subtle shades of passion (the one treasury left untouched by our predecessors)—for all this ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... all-round cynic that he would seem to be. The palpable endeavour to make out the worst of every one—including himself—gives a certain flavour of unreality to his conversation; but, in spite of this peculiarity, he is an engaging talker. His language is racy and incisive, and he talks as neatly as he writes. His voice is pleasant, and his utterance deliberate and effective. He has a keen eye for absurdities and incongruities, a shrewd insight into affectation and bombast, and an admirable impatience of all the moral and intellectual qualities ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... anything, and was about to say so, when I thought I caught a faint sound, as of the creaking of a boom; and at the same instant the two look-out men on the forecastle, forgetting, in the imminence of the danger, their instructions to be silent, simultaneously shouted, in sharp incisive tones: ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... that it is not on the literary map, Will Levington Comfort's Apache (1931) remains for me the most moving and incisive piece of writing on Indians of the Southwest that ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... that structure was we shall see (once for all) in examining some of the later compositions, the only difference observable in the later works being, on the whole, an increased richness and greater breadth of scheme. They are nearly always brilliant, often incisive; there are most lovely melodies; and there are numerous specimens of Purcell's power of writing music, endless in its variety of outline and colour and changing sentiment, on a ground-bass—i.e., ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... to inspect a motor that lay dismounted on a wooden stand, as if there were nothing further to discuss. Indeed, though his speech was rapid and incisive, and his every movement full of an allure that spoke of splendidly poised muscles, he was in face and manner alike the most singularly immobile man I had ever met. He gave the impression of employing neither words nor actions except in case ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... step or two forward. Its attitude was as though it wished to make no mistake. The snuffing came short, quick and incisive. Then the great head was raised, and the snuffing continued upon the air. Now the nose turned in the direction of the hut, then it turned back to the opposite direction of the path. Hervey remained motionless where he stood, ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... squarely athwart the vague crescendo of the floor came the single incisive stroke of a great gong. Instantly a tumult was unchained. Arms were flung upward in strenuous gestures, and from above the crowding heads in the Wheat Pit a multitude of hands, eager, the fingers extended, leaped into the air. All articulate expression was lost in the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... the Spirit."[30] To the disciples scattered throughout the province of Galatia who had been much disturbed by false leaders he gives a rule to be followed, "Walk by the Spirit."[31] The other two of these incisive words of advice are found in the Ephesian letter—"Grieve not the Spirit of God,"[32] and "be ye filled with ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... he asked gently as the boy sat quietly down; and made irritably incisive by the tendency of near-by men and women to listen as well as watch, he emphasized his expensive order of foods and wines, repeated each item loudly to cheapen the listeners, and sent ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... splendid mission and he was singularly well equipped for it. He had the qualifications—scholarly training and the power of scientific observation, a background of broad theological and scriptural information, a familiarity with legal learning and practice, as well as a command of vigorous and incisive language—which were certain to make his ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... and to coin his heart's blood, drop by drop, in this virtuous but almost desperate cause. He felt that of a man to whom so much had been entrusted, much was to be asked. God had endowed him with an incisive and comprehensive genius, unfaltering fortitude, and with the rank and fortune which enable a man to employ his faculties, to the injury or the happiness of his fellows, on the widest scale. The Prince felt the responsibility, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had listened—well, as you and I, dear reader, would listen to a tale which had no very great interest for us. If the truth must be told, the worthy Inspector was rather disappointed; he had expected the great man to display a hawk-like acuteness and to ask a number of incisive questions; but Mr. Jacobs asked none; he said merely, when the recital ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... been justified of his reasonings had there existed no flaw in his premises. The San Reve was far from being gifted with that cold, incisive wisdom which he ascribed to her. Given a situation wherein the San Reve had no concern, and she would be sound enough; her speculations would defend themselves, her advice be worth a following. Endow the San Reve with a personal interest, the more ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... then, with quick deeds, incisive words, he separated the immediate combatants, and ordered the ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... incisive teeth closing level, or upper just fitting over under. Skull: wide at front of brow, narrowing between the ears, and tapering gradually towards the muzzle, with little falling in between or behind the eyes. Eyes: hazel, medium size, close set. Muzzle: always ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... rising to his feet. He paused, considered, and resumed his seat. Mr. Leslie had regained his normal color and his composure. He put his finger-tips together, and jerked out in his usual incisive tone: "I propose to liquidate this obligation to you without delay. Would you prefer ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... frequently are ridden with criminals or rioters. We set hundreds of policemen to restore order, but order is not restored. What is the average policeman as a criminal-taker? Cloddy and coarse of fiber, rarely with personal heredity of mental or bodily vigor, with no training at arms, with no sharp, incisive quality of nerve action, fat, unwieldy, unable to run a hundred yards and keep his breath, not skilled enough to kill his man even when he has him cornered, he is the archetype of all unseemliness as the agent of a law which to-day needs a sterner ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... daughter of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe, who held a valuable living in the diocese of Bath and Wells. Our family, a very large one, was noted for a sprightly and incisive wit, and came of a good old stock where beauty was an heirloom. In Christian grace of character we were unhappily deficient. From my earliest years I saw and deplored the defects of those relatives whose age and position should ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... case of her sudden return, you ask an agent?" said a keen, clear, and incisive voice, which had not yet been heard. "Gentlemen, shall we cast lots for the honor of watching the Countess St. Auban in case of ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... voices, those foreign accents, incisive or stammering, glancing at those varying types of countenance, some uncivilized, passionate, unrefined, others over-civilized, faded, of the type that haunts the boulevards, over-ripe as it were, and observing the same varieties in the corps of servants, where "flunkeys," taken the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... like the French," Dan chimed in. "We have no literature at all now. Look at their work compared to ours, how short, crisp, and incisive it is! How true to life! A Frenchman will give you more real life in a hundred pages than our men do in all ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... English Constitution (New York, 1897), Chaps. 1, 9; and S. Low, The Governance of England (London, 1904), Chap. 1. A suggestive characterization is in the Introduction of W. Bagehot, The English Constitution (new ed., Boston, 1873). A more extended and very incisive analysis is Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, especially the Introduction and ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man in all ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... turn, the graceful phrase, the simple word, the fervid movement, or the large clearness; a picturesque talent will express itself in concrete images; a genial nature will smile in pleasant firms and inuendos; a rapid, unhesitating, imperious mind will deliver its quick incisive phrases; a full deliberating mind will overflow in ample paragraphs laden with the weight of parentheses and qualifying suggestions. The style which is good in one case would be vicious in another. The broken rhythm which increases the energy of one style would ruin the LARGO of another. ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... own or any age. Unique in some capacities, versatile and varied in arts and accomplishments, at once vindictive and forgiving, impetuous and politic, shrewd and impulsive, heroic and mean, of long memory for wrongs committed, of decisive act and incisive speech, relentless and magnanimous, strong and weak. A man whose influence has never died out among men, and who is to-day a vital force in the world of religion, of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... tubes of extraordinary shapes, holding living organisms, and with instruments—some of them of a form unknown to my experience. I saw too that books, papers and rolls of parchment littered the bare wooden floor. Then Smith's voice rose above the confused sounds about me, incisive, commanding: ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... in the West—pleasure or business!" A bitter wave of homesickness welled into my throat as, conscious of the enveloping dust, the utter shams, the tawdriness, the alien unsympathetic onlookers, the suave but incisive manner of the clerk, the sense of having been "done" and through my own fault, I peeled a greenback from the folded packet in my purse and handed it over. Rather foolishly I intended that this display of funds should rebuke the finicky ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... think, was for Mary's sake, who had been all the morning in so terrible a state of agitation that it seemed as if she must have news for better or worse, or die of suspense. My father was not away longer than necessary. He returned as he had gone, wearing a cheerful, incisive look very characteristic of him, and ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... enthusiastic devotion. All complete churches have owed their origin each to a single founder; this is due to the fact that the insight and constructive genius of the founder have chosen out of the mass of the existing thought those broad principles that the times demanded and have presented them in incisive form and with freshness and enthusiasm.[2035] Buddha's followers quickly formed themselves into associations, the entrance into which was by free choice. As his doctrine of salvation was nontheistic, so his church was nontheistic, but ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Booker Washington presided was held at Tuskegee, January 20 and 21, 1915. A woman, the wife of a Negro farmer, was testifying when she said: "Our menfolks is foun' out dat they can't eat cotton." As the outburst of laughter which greeted this remark died down, Mr. Washington said in his incisive way: "What do you mean?" The woman replied: "I mean dat we womenfolks been tellin' our menfolks all de time dat they should raise ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... vegetable fibre. You understand me; I would have a person whose sole business should be to read day and night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I would have: a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive fellow; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in new costume; can give ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... scheme before the Committee of Ten, had seen the eagerness with which they grasped it—"In this way," she had said, in her scornful, incisive tones, "the onus of the boy is not on you, but on them. Even those who have no sympathy with your movement will burn at such a rumor. The better the citizen, the more a lover of home and order, the more outraged he will be. Every man in the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a little inclined to stoutness. By this time millionaires had lost their novelty for the girl. She had met some who were more distinguished in appearance than this man, but never one who seemed possessed of more nervous energy and virility. Jarvis Hammon had a bold, incisive manner that was compelling and stamped him as a big man in more ways than one. Playfully he pinched Lilas's cheek, then turned with ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... stories. In doing so he has given us a new creation in Ailie Noble. Not a line can be effectively added to that ideal narrative of a true history, not a word can be pushed from its place. The whole treatment is at once delicate, incisive, tender, reserved, and dramatic. And after reading it,—with or without tears, according to your capacity for dogged resistance to a distended lachrymal duct,—you will be conscious of bearing away a sweet and subduing impression, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... had been a pleasant one, and he greeted me with a cordiality that was reassuring. His general appearance was attractive. He was tall but not heavy, with the rather long head and countenance that is sometimes called Norman. His aquiline nose and bright eyes gave him an incisive expression, increased by rapid utterance in his speech, which was apt to grow hurried, almost to stammering, when he was excited. His impulsiveness was plain to all who approached him; his irritation quickly flashed out in words when he was crossed, and his social geniality would ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... This time, however, she seemed to mean business. I suppose we had made a good deal of a riot. When the fact became evident, I, of course, shouldered the whole responsibility. Thereupon she turned on me. Unexpectedly Talbot Ward spoke up from the obscurity of his corner. His clear voice was incisive, but so courteous with the cold finality of the high-bred aristocrat, that Mrs. Simpkins was cut short in the middle ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... on the hillside at Troezene, the seizure in Phormio's house, the coming of Democrates and his boasts over the captives, the voyage and the pursuing. The son of Neocles never hastened the recital, though once or twice he widened it by an incisive question. At the end ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... answered by sweet concordant harmonies. A calm song tells of the first streaks of light; woodwind and harp add their voices; a mellifluous hymn chants the stirring flowers, and leads into a rhythmically, more incisive, but still sustained, orchestral song, which bears upon its surface the choral proclamation of the sun: "I am! I am life! I am Beauty infinite!" The flux and reflux of the instrumental surge grows in intensity, the music begins to glow with color and ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... country. Colonel Joseph May, who had been for thirty years a warden of King's Chapel, and a man held in high esteem in Boston, referred to the work already accomplished by the zeal and effort of the few Unitarians who had worked together to promote liberal interests. The most incisive word spoken, however, came from John Pierpont, who was just coming into his fame as an orator and a leader in reforms. "We have," he declared, "and we must have, the name Unitarian. It is not for us to shrink from it. Organization is necessary ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... the truth," he said, speaking in a low, clear, and incisive tone. "You would yourself marry Barbara Lanison, and, having established a hold over her guardian, you have attempted to force her to such an alliance by threats. At every turn in the game you have ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... to face the rushing tide of steel, the regiment of Bougainville whirled on their flank and then Bougainville was almost at his side. He saw fire leap from the little man's eye. He saw him shout commands, rapid incisive, and correct and he saw clearly that if this were Napoleon's day that marshal's baton in the knapsack would indeed ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... are big, very full and very keen. As you enter he says curtly, "Take a seat." He waits, looking down, for you to state your business, then suddenly fixes you with a piercing glance, and goes to the heart of the subject by one incisive sentence, which leaves no more to be said. This description is a general type of several interviews with him. On this occasion the general inquired concerning the facts, looking keenly, searchingly, and meditatively at the detachment commander. The machine gun man was ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... rules for diet, etc., forgetting that these simple directions are based on deep knowledge of the human frame. Let them laugh. Many who have tried them know they have been different people in consequence. His incisive words—"My friend, you eat too much!" "My friend, you drink too much!" would not he appreciated by all; but Sir Andrew thought nearly all diseases were the outcome of the constant and apparently unimportant violation of ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... scrutiny and able, fearless criticism to contemporary literature, undoubtedly with good effect. His attacks on didacticism were especially valuable. His strength as a critic lay in his artistic temperament and in the incisive intellect that enabled him to analyze the effects produced in his own creations and in those of others. His weaknesses were extravagance; a mania for harping on plagiarism; lack of spiritual insight, broad sympathies, and ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... to those incisive proposals, another French officer breathed nothing but peace. Brouillan, governor of Acadia, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts to suggest that, with the consent of their masters, they should make a treaty of ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... being the daughter of a tenor, and appearing on the stage at the age of eight. She is described as "small and plump in figure, with beautiful, expressive gray eyes and fair wavy hair, and a peculiar liveliness in her movements." She was a woman of large and tender heart, electrified with a temper incisive and immediate. She was an actress of genuine skill, "her sense of grace and beauty in all things infallible." She did not appear at the theatre in Prague until the first day of January, 1814. She bore a curious resemblance to Therese Brunetti in a fresher edition, and was not long in giving that ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... description of any part of the Lord's works is as unnecessary and carries with it as little of what we mean as can be. Incidents are greater than description, as the telling to me how a tree looked when it was in full foliage is not near so incisive as that the tree fell with a great crash during a storm in the night. Therefore it would be using needless language, which a Friend's discipline enjoins him to beware of, for me to say how friend Hicks's daughter might ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... friend of the Bradstreet family was natural, for not only were they of the same social status, but sympathetic in many points, though Simon Bradstreets' moderation and tolerant spirit undoubtedly fretted the uncompromising Puritan whose opinions were as stiff and incisive as his way of putting them. An extensive traveller, a man of ripe culture, having been a successful lawyer before the ministry attracted him, he was the friend of Francis Bacon, of Archbishop Usher and the famous Heidelberg theologian, David Pareus. He ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... trial but as an occasion of delight. He wrote almost incessantly for all editors who were prepared to give adequate pay to a pen able to deal with scientific themes in a manner at once exact and popular, incisive and correct. During this period he was gradually passing from his first anatomical love, the structure of the Invertebrates, to Vertebrate work, and although he continued to take a deep interest in the course of the progress of research in that group of animals, the publication of his great ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... and to vanquish them in debate. His name was Abelard. Before long he himself became a teacher of Grammar and Logic at Paris, and later of Theology, and, so widely had he read, so clearly did he appeal to the reason of his hearers, and so incisive was his teaching, that he attracted large numbers of students to his lectures. To assist in his teaching of Theology he prepared a little textbook, Sic et Non (Yea and Nay), in which he raised for debate many questions as to church ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Letters are not to an Inconnue. They were written to his paper, the Tribune, and have redressed the balance between the Old World and the New by furnishing New York from week to week with brilliant, incisive, and faithful pictures of life in London. The initials, "G.W.S.," appended in their original form, are as familiar throughout the United States as are those of our own "G.A.S." in the still United Kingdom. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... her heart was almost suffocating, and in her ears the surging as of an ocean tide, drowned the accents of the magistrate. At first the words were as meaningless as some Sanskrit formula, but gradually her attention grasped and comprehended. In a strident incisive voice he read from a paper on the desk ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Englishmen who has not marked, learned, and inwardly digested it. Secondly, it must be read by every Englishman and Englishwoman who wishes to be worthy of that name. It is no hard or irksome task to which I call them The writing is throughout clear, vigorous, and incisive.... The book deserves and must attain a world-wide reputation.—Colonel Maurice of the British Army ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... incisive manner which I had heard him use in the lecture theatre, and it was evident enough that his design was to prepare Andrews for something which he contemplated. Facing the Scotsman where he sat hunched up in the big armchair, dully watching ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... you grant so much. It is well to be sure of something," said the incisive and peremptory speaker. "It would have been a painful thing for us at any time to place another person in Skelmersdale while Frank was unprovided for; but, of course," said Miss Leonora, sitting down ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... remarked, that, when any one subject especially occupies the public mind, those known to be interested in it are compelled to listen to many weary platitudes. Lady Byron's remarks, however, caught my ear and arrested my attention by their peculiar incisive quality, their originality, and the evidence they gave that she was as well informed on all our matters as the best American statesman could be. I had no wearisome course to go over with her as to the difference between the General ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and persistent source of irritation to her from the fact that he figured prominently and more or less successfully in the public life of the day. There was something peculiarly exasperating in reading a brilliant and incisive attack on the Government's rash handling of public expenditure delivered by a young man who encouraged her son in every imaginable extravagance. The actual extent of Youghal's influence over the boy ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... was uttered with such incisive bitterness that the duchess, enlightened by the tone and accent and look of her daughter, felt certain there ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Dawkins (The writer in "Macmillan's" tells me: "I cannot quite accept Mr. J.R. Green's sentences as your father's; though I didn't doubt that they convey the sense; but then I think that only a shorthand writer could reproduce Mr. Huxley's singularly beautiful style—so simple and so incisive. The sentence given ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... indifferent to his host's ancestral tree, had lifted an alert ear. His quick incisive brain was at work. "I should like to stretch my legs over a horse for a week at a time, and even to climb your highest mountains. You may imagine how much exercise a man may get on a vessel of two hundred ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... was positive in his opinion. The scene is clear to me now, after many years. We three stood in the outer room; The Duke and her father were with Gwen. So earnest was the discussion that none of us heard the door open just as young Fawcett was saying in incisive tones: ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... popular airs are those most calculated to strike the imagination, the best-modulated melodies are taken over by the people; clearness of thought, the intellectual simplicity of an idea attracts them; they like the incisive sayings that hold the greatest number of ideas. France is the one country in the world where a little phrase may bring about a great revolution. Whenever the masses have risen, it has been to bring men, affairs, and principles into agreement. No nation has a clearer conception of that ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... against John D. Curtis?" demanded Devar, and his clear, incisive voice was distinctly hostile in its ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... turned crimson with shame, and she moved two or three steps away; then she turned, and said in cold incisive tones: ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... circle as large as that of Paris, if too miscellaneous and extensive to become one multitudinous mutual-admiration-society, will, through cliques and coteries, betray some of its vices. In this voluminous series of papers the critical pen, when most earnestly eulogistic or most sharply incisive, is wielded with so much skill and art and fine temper, that personality is seldom transpicuous. The Parisian reader will no doubt often perceive, in this or that paragraph or paper, a heightening or a subduing of color not visible to the foreigner, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... the speaker with an air of surprise, which, after the first keen, incisive glance, gave place to ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... white-pillared, it stood a little coldly in the heat. Before the door were five saddle horses, with a groom or two. The staff came from the house, then the President in grey Confederate cloth and soft hat. He spoke to one of the officers in his clear, incisive voice, then mounted his grey Arab. A child waved to him from an upper window. He waved back, lifted his hat to the two girls as they passed, then, his staff behind him, rode rapidly off toward ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... raised: and one was made to realise how it stirs the blood of good men here. And not merely were there this evening a fire, a keenness, a power of stirring a multitude to the depth of their nature, which are rare indeed, but an incisive severity of denunciation which few had expected from that calm, cautious man. And if the preacher was at white-heat, so was the congregation long before he was done. Several times there would have been loud applause, had ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... the outcome of experiments has remained part of his character down to this day, just as his painstaking, minute, incisive methods are still unchanged. But to the careless, stupid, or lazy person he is a terror for the short time they remain around him. Honest mistakes may be tolerated, but not carelessness, incompetence, or lack of attention to business. In such cases Edison is apt ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... progresses in this manner, the more it results in a deeply incisive change in man's being. The power issuing from the pictures in the consciousness gradually becomes unable to extend over the whole human bodily frame, which divides into two parts, or two natures. Members are formed subject to the shaping influence of the picture-consciousness, and they become ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... awoke, and recognized, or partially recognized him, and burst out anew in violent denunciations, to which respect would never have allowed him to give utterance, except under the stimulus of delirium. The count writhed and shrank beneath the fierce stabbing of those incisive words, and, in his ungovernable grief, flung himself beside the son, whom he feared death would shortly snatch from his arms, pouring forth assurances Maurice would once have hailed as words of life, but which ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... seriously, i. e., neither as a fencing ground for propagandists nor for puling poets, this new Sudermann piece will please. It has triumphed in Berlin and Munich. Its people are portraits taken from fashionable West End Berlin, while the dialogue, witty, incisive, and also characteristic, is one of the consolations of a play that does not for a moment produce any illusion. There are plenty of striking episodes, but logic is lacking, not only the logic of life, but the logic of the theatre. No living playwright ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... those who know no other English. Out in a village, where English is never spoken, it sounds curious suddenly to hear from the cricket field, "How's that?" pronounced sharply and clearly; and then the prompt and equally incisive reply, "Not out." Wonderful to say, the decisions of the umpires are accepted with tolerable readiness, except when they are flagrantly contrary to fact, as they sometimes are. A few of the politically disaffected students have tried to boycott the game as a foreign importation, but they have not ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... warning expression, as evident as a wink, and the expression was evanescent as a breath. I caught on, and made my face agreeable and subservient. Immediately her own reassumed a harsh, proud set, her voice became even more incisive ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... Fitch on many diverse occasions. Through incisive comment on people, contemporary manners, and plays, which was let drop in conversation, I was able to estimate the natural tendency of Fitch's mind. His interest was never concerned solely with dominant characters; ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... keen gray eyes on Paul's face as he spoke. His speech was rather incisive, considering how little he had seen of Paul. Perhaps he intended that it should be, for he watched the effect ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... the black side of the supernatural his pencil grows more daring and incisive. He has many true inventions in the perilous and diabolic; he has many startling nightmares realised. It is not easy to select the best; some may like one and some another; the nude, depilated devil bounding and casting darts against the Wicket ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cold, incisive, not to be disobeyed. He had prayed in vain. The procession halted; Lizzie checked her babble and stood staring, with ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his long beautiful groundstrokes, forehand, or backhand, his incisive crisp volleys and fine, generalship based on young experience, is a notable figure in the ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... It is found in every city in the country in which there is much diversity of condition among the inhabitants. Nor did Morrissey mean simply to protest against training as a qualification for the work of administration, as the Tribune assumed in a sharp and incisive lecture which it read him the other day. We doubt if any pugilist in his secret heart despises training. He knows how much depends on it, and as he is not apt to possess much discriminating power, he ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... in his keen, incisive way:—"No, Medoline, I cannot say that I have—not since boyhood, at least, when my mother, who loved the God whom Israel served so indifferently, endeavored to train my rebellious will ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... earth disappeared, and we were "pinnacled in mid-heaven" in unutterable isolation, blank forgotten units, in a white, wonderful, illuminated world, without permanence or solidity. Our voices sounded thin in the upper air. The keen, incisive wind that swept the summit, had no kinship with the soft breezes which were rustling the tasselled cane in the green fields of earth which had lately gleamed through the drift. It was a new world and without sympathy, a solitude which could be felt. Was it nearer God, I wonder, because so ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... descriptions of life in the various colonies interested home-staying folk, for she had the keenest observing faculties. There was an old cousin of Uncle Handyside's who always turned the conversation on to Russia, where he had visited successful brothers; but his talk was not incisive. My cousin Agnes asked me when I supposed this visit was paid, and I said a few years ago, probably, when she laughed and said—"Nicol Handyside spent six weeks in Russia 30 years ago, and he has been talking about it ever since." ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... would be at his service till death. To put me at my ease he began to question me about the state of public feeling in England concerning the enterprise. What information I had was put at his disposal, and I observed that his grasp of the situation appeared to be clear and incisive. He introduced me to the noblemen and chiefs about him, and I was wise enough to know that if they made much of me it was rather for the class I was supposed to represent than for my own poor merits. Presently I fell back to make way for another gentleman about to be presented. Captain ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... teeth have a well defined body and neck, and a slender fang, and on their front surface grooves or furrows, which disappear from the middle nippers at the end of one year, from the next pair in two years, and from the incisive ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... shows how Leslie earned popular applause and the V.C. by remaining with a wounded comrade whom he was actually too frightened to leave. That was a good beginning, and I said to myself that Mr. GARDINER was of the right stuff; he had a vigorous, incisive style that suited well the matter of pain and anguish that he had in hand. But, alas! in its hours of case the story became much more uncertain. All the characters, including the involuntary hero and the man he rescued (now a lord), turn up at an hotel on the Lake of Como. There is some mild ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... wrist tightly with her left hand, as if she still felt the strain of that wrestle with the reins, but there was no flinching in voice or manner as she stood over the men, issuing instructions in brisk, incisive tones. The nearer of the two was impressed to the extent of ceasing work to touch his cap; the second darted one contemptuous glance in her direction, and placidly continued to disobey. Cornelia promptly knelt on the grass by his side, with intent to demonstrate her own greater efficiency, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in arousing among the German Liberals the hope of similar liberty, while in France itself they helped to make known to French culture the deeper currents of German thought and literature. In particular their brilliant wit and incisive sarcasm set the tone for the feuilleton literature of all Mid-Europe. By their very isolation they were enabled to regard men and affairs with a certain detachment, and both wrote with an iridescent insolence which can only be described by ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... haughty and opulent beauty, a forest of hair, flashing blue eyes, a complexion of splendid carnation and dazzling whiteness, one of those alluring and radiant countenances which shed brightness around them wherever they appear, an incisive, caustic wit, an unquenchable thirst for riches and pleasure, luxury and power, the manners of a goddess audaciously usurping the place of Juno on Olympus, passion without love, pride without true dignity, splendor without harmony—that was Mme. de Montespan." ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... violent, rapid, incisive flash of lightning pierced the gloom, and the rent it made had not closed ere a frightful clap of thunder shook ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... of retranslating his Greek Testament, Jose often read to Carmen portions from the various books of the Bible, or told her the old sacred stories that children so love to hear. But Carmen's incisive thought cut deep into them, and Jose generally found himself hanging upon the naive interpretations of this young girl. When, after reading aloud the two opposing accounts of the Creation, as given in the first and second chapters ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... in his valuable book on evolution and adaptation. He has subjected all the proposed theories to a severe criticism both on the ground of facts and on that of their innate possibility and logical value. He decides in favor of the mutation theory. His arguments are incisive and complete and wholly adapted to the comprehension of all intelligent readers, so that his book relieves me entirely of the necessity of discussing these general questions, as it could not be done in a better ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... that rate. Not a comma in a column of it. A humming-top on the subject would have been precisely as instructive and convincing. Some twenty Members sat there fascinated by the performance. It was not delivered in a monotone, in which case one could have slept. NOLAN was evidently arguing in incisive manner, shirking no obstacle, avoiding no point in the Bill, or any hit made by previous speaker. His voice rose and fell with convincing modulation. He seemed to be always dropping into an aside, which led him into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... set out deliberately to ensnare my poor Euty," said the mother, with an incisive drawing in of her expressively thin lips. "I knew it the very first evening ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... much firmer ground when we come to close quarters with the French claims to rights of lobster fishing. The claim was first clearly advanced in 1888, that none but Frenchmen were entitled to catch lobsters and erect preserving factories upon the French shore. This at once elicited an incisive English remonstrance, in deference to which French diplomacy had recourse to the evasion that the factories were merely temporary. They were not, however, removed, and finally in 1889 further remonstrances by Lord Salisbury were met with ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... came sharp and incisive. A rattle of tin dishes followed. Pails and pans were raised to the rail as five figures stood up suddenly. "Stand by to repel boarders!" was the second command. Five pans and pails of water were tilted, sending a flood of water down on the heads of the surprised "pirates." From a tub of water ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... me, speaking in that incisive impetuous way of his, his dark face close to mine, and his eyes gleaming like steel, I had been at one with him in his feverish mood, but now, when I stood alone in that staid and respectable by-way, holding a loaded pistol in my hand, the whole thing ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... that his colleagues in the Senate, especially the younger members, are somewhat in fear of the incisive tongue, for he wields it frequently and contemptuously. When after his election, Mr. Harding went South with Senator Frelinghuysen, Senator Davis Elkins, and Senator Hale, the older Senators, not, perhaps, without a tinge of disappointment at having ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... reached it the voice of the President stopped them, and in sharp, incisive tones ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... handicap to the student's energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensuous mouth, was a fair index of the compromise between strength and weakness ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with nature and with ordinary life, and its unaffected devotional accent. But Cowper is now appreciated more for his incomparably delightful epistles to his friends than for his poetry. Few letters in our language can compare with these for incisive but kindly and gentle irony; innocent but genuine fun; keen and striking acumen, and tender melancholy. Cowper died ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the audience took it very quietly, awaiting with some curiosity the interference of Henry Beauclerc. And it was at this point that the services of Mr. JOHN HARE in this character were invaluable. Never had his crisp incisive style produced more marked effect. It is a pity that in the Third Act, which being the weak point of the play requires all the strength of the actor to be seriously employed, Mr. HARE should have given a very light comedy, nay, even a farcical touch to his treatment of the "business" of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... riders, and, casting aside to Monsieur de Lucan an expressive glance, she urged her horse slightly forward. He overtook her almost immediately. She cast upon him again an oblique glance, and abruptly, with her bitterest and most incisive accent: ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... touch about General Buller's arrival is surely one of the most strangely appealing incidents in the recent history of human confidence and human expectation! Another friend, Mr George Lynch, whose name occurred in one of his letters in a passage curiously characteristic of Steevens's drily incisive humour, writes about the days that must immediately have preceded his illness: "He was as fit and well as possible when I left Ladysmith last month." (The letter is dated from Durban, January 11.) "We were drawing rations like the ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... very near. And so he would go down to the slope below, among the weird, stunted trees, and look once more upon the broken tables, and ponder upon the strange signs written by time thereon. The insistent fall of the rain, the incisive blasts of the wind, coming again and again, though the centuries went, were registered here in mystic runes. The surface had weathered to a whitish-gray, but still in tiny depressions its pristine dark color showed in rugose characters. A ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a better place than he found it is just as keen in the wit and humourist of thirty-nine; a desire, moreover, undulled by twenty years of vivacious living. Surely not the least amazing feature of Fielding's genius is this dual capacity for exuberant enjoyment, and incisive judgement. "His wit," said Thackeray, "is wonderfully wise and detective; it flashes upon a rogue and brightens up a rascal like a ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Pisa (Pisanus, d. 1401 ), in which the Franciscan order is held up to ridicule. Of higher literary value is the didactic and satirical Buch von der Tugend und Weisheit (1550), a collection of forty-nine fables in which Alberus embodies his views on the relations of Church and State. His satire is incisive, but in a scholarly and humanistic way; it does not appeal to popular passions with the fierce directness which enabled the master of Catholic satire, Thomas Murner, to inflict such telling blows. Several of Alberus's hymns, all of which show the influence of his master Luther, have been retained ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the Holy Family, which recall Murillo. The thirty-four folk-songs are brilliant, restless, whimsical, and wonderfully varied in form. Each represents a different subject, a personality drawn with incisive strokes, and the whole collection overflows with life. It is said that the Spanisches-Liederbuch is to Wolf's work what ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... incisive comment on politics to-day is indifference. When men and women begin to feel that elections and legislatures do not matter very much, that politics is a rather distant and unimportant exercise, the reformer might as well put to himself a few searching doubts. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... watched her closely, and both he and Black Hoof were uneasy and relieved when she departed. Toward me their manner was incisive, and they demanded certain information. As I knew conditions had changed vastly since I was captured I talked freely and improvised considerably. There was no military value whatever to the ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... traversed a naked, red, loamy plain, over which the wind from the heights of Usagara, now rising a bluish-black jumble of mountains in our front, howled most fearfully. With clear, keen, incisive force, the terrible blasts seemed to penetrate through an through our bodies, as though we were but filmy gauze. Manfully battling against this mighty "peppo "— storm—we passed through Mukamwa's, and crossing a broad sandy bed of a stream, we entered the territory of ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... understood. His face was not as red as it had been and there was a different look in his eye. Jed's rough handling had not frightened him, but the Major's cold, incisive tones and the threat of a term in prison had their effect. Nevertheless ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... [Greek: adela] and [Greek: akatalepta] would be a peculiarly congenial task. Thus the commendation bestowed by Lucullus on the way in which the probabile had been handled appertains to Catulus. The exposition of the sceptical criticism would naturally be reserved for the most brilliant and incisive orator of the party—Cicero himself. These conjectures have the advantage of establishing an intimate connection between the prooemium, the speech of Catulus, and the succeeding one of Hortensius. In the prooemium the innovations ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... from a superintendent of city schools? Note this other delightful touch: "My teachers soon learned that I regard the teacher who works exactly like another teacher as pretty poor stuff." Before the axe of such incisive radicalism, how the antiquated structure of the old school machinery came crashing to the ground, to be replaced by a system which recognized each teacher as an individual builder of manhood and womanhood, working to meet the needs of individual children. It is not an idle boast which the ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... of the North American Indian, and a little of the reserve of the savage. His silence was always eloquent, and in it was neither stupidity nor vacuity. With friends he was witty, affable, generous, lovable. In business negotiation he was rapid, direct, incisive; or smooth, plausible and convincing—all depending upon the man with whom he was dealing. He often did to others what they were trying to do to him, and he did it first. He had the splendid ability to say "No" when he should, a thing many good men can not do. At such ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... his words decided the matter. The cold and haughty manner which he knew so well how to assume, his few but incisive words, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... proceeds, a breathless silence falls on the crowd sitting, or hanging around him, their dresses in curious contrast to his severe garment of camel's hair, their nervous dread in as great contrast to his incisive and searching eloquence. Here were the people clothed in soft raiment, and accustomed to sumptuous fare, bending as reeds before the gusts of wind sweeping ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... disposed to imagine, as Mr Abney would have said, that my manner in addressing him was brisker and more incisive than Mr Abney's own. I was ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... close-cropped sandy beard and moustache, and every motion and expression indicated eagerness and energy. His head was apt to be bent a little forward as if in earnest outlook or aggressive advance, and his rapid incisive utterance hit off the topics of discussion in a sharp and telling way. His opinions usually took a strong and very pronounced form, full of the feeling that was for the moment uppermost, not hesitating at even a little humorous extravagance if it added point to his statement; but ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... apparent surprise at the languid, lounging figure of the man who had been, no doubt, depicted to him as the most incisive reasoner and most energetic agent in Europe. Holmes slowly reopened his eyes and looked impatiently at ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... senseless exaggerations which dabblers in sexology, either through ignorance or design, are offering to the public, and which are responsible for so much physical misery and mental agony. In Dr. Robinson's best vein: clear, concise and incisive. With each sledge-hammer blow of his logic a lie is demolished, with each turn of the rays of reason a dark place is illumined, with each dialectic pull a ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... Hadrian. And there were Palmaesque faces, with a sensual expression, heavy chins solidly modeled with the neck, and not without a certain bestial beauty. Some of them had thick curly hair, and bold, fiery eyes: they seemed to be subtle, incisive, ready for everything, more virile than other women. And also more feminine. Here and there a more spiritual profile would stand out. Those pure features came from beyond Rome, from the East, the country of Laban: there ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... few created more enthusiasm than did Hauser. He was born in Pressburg, Hungary, in 1822, and became a pupil of Boehm and of Mayseder at Vienna, also of Kreutzer and Sechter. He is said to have acquired more of Mayseder's elegant style and incisive tone than of the characteristics of his other teachers, but his talent was devoted to the acquisition of virtuoso effects, which appeal to the majority rather than ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... essential king," but his kingship rests upon his carrying out the kingliest of mottoes—"Ich dien." Browning all his life had a hearty contempt for the foppery of "Art for Art," and he never conveyed it with more incisive brilliance than in the sketch of Bordello's ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... is nothing if not incisive in the drawing of his moral, and lays on his colours with no sparing hand, represents the heartless Patron and his family as hearing the sad tidings ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Ball's Bluff into the Potomac, and was carried thence into the great sea of our conscience, tumultuous with pride, anger, and resolve. The drops feed the country's future, wherever they are caught first by our free convictions ere they sink into the beloved soil. Let us be instant, be incisive with our resolution, that peace may not be the mother of another war, and our own victory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... out, and Polglaze looked after him with a puzzled look, then summed up his opinion in one word, sharp, incisive, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... conduct and of his own, to the commander of the escort, Captain Muffet remained at department head-quarters long enough to impress the officials thereat on duty with his version of the riot at Bluff Siding,—its inciting cause and its incisive cure. Then he went back to the cavalry depot and presumably improved on his initial effort. The story of Muffet's wild ride with the raw recruits and Muffet's method of quelling a mob was often told that summer ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... asked Jabel Blake, in his hard, incisive, positive, business voice, "what do you mean to do after you ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... intellectual distinction. "AEschines, in his dialogue entitled 'Aspasia,'" writes Gomperz, the historian of Greek philosophy (Greek Thinkers, vol. iii, pp. 124 and 343), "puts in the mouth of that distinguished woman an incisive criticism of the mode of life traditional for her sex. It would be exceedingly strange," Gomperz adds, in arguing that an inference may thus be drawn concerning the historical Aspasia, "if three authors—Plato, Xenophon and AEschines—had agreed in fictitiously enduing the companion of Pericles ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... acted at a given moment in his life. In the case of Luther there is a more than ordinary necessity for adopting this equitable method; for Luther has declared hundreds of times that his stirring utterances and incisive deeds were not the result of long premeditation, or the sudden outbursts of uncontrolled passion,—though neither he nor we would have any interest in denying that he could be angry and did become angry,—but the answer to crying needs of the times. ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... the phrase crystallised in his brain with such suddenness that he said it aloud. Now he knew what it was that was troubling him. He had not consciously recalled the words, nor had they even made a very incisive impression on him at the time; but they had evidently lain dormant, now to return and to strike him, as if no others had been said. He explained to himself what they meant. It was this: outside, in the crisp, stinging air, people lived and ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... thenceforth Fabre never ceased to multiply his pin-pricks in "the vast and luminous balloon of transformism (evolution), in order to empty it and expose it in all its inanity." (9/12.) By no means the least original feature of his work is this passionate and incisive argument, in which, with a remarkable power of dialectic, and at times in a tone of lively banter, he endeavoured to remove "this comfortable pillow from those who have not the courage to inquire into its fundamental ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... said as the train drew into Ninety-sixth Street. "You could easy steal somebody else from another concern." Kleiman glared at Morris and was about to utter a particularly incisive retort when the ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... Sir James Stephen's Commission as "a scathing exposure of mismanagement," and to that of the Hartington Commission as "an unqualified and alarming denunciation of our military system." Arnold-Forster also supported the resolution, in favour of which Dilke made a short and incisive speech. Campbell-Bannerman declined to take the discussion seriously. "The first observation," he said, "that must occur to anyone reading the motion is, What in the world has the report of Lord Wantage's Committee to do with the present system of military administration? It is as if the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn |
