"Keen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and they far outvie the pallid specimens of Circassia! Their morals too are exemplary; and they often perform this labour to support aged parents, or to keep their own children from the workhouse! In keen suffering, they endure all that the imagination of a poet could desire; they live hard, they sleep on straw in hovels and barns, and they often burst an artery, or drop down dead from the effect ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... number; nine was therefore the majority. Each man put his ball into the wicker basket with a narrow throat, used to hold the numbered balls when card-players draw for their places at pool. We were all roused to a more or less keen curiosity; for this balloting to clarify morality was certainly original. Inspection of the ballot-box showed the presence of nine white balls! The result did not surprise me; but it came into my heard to count ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... chaperonne. As soon as these tidings were spread abroad, every one else was indifferent as to whether they went or not; but of those girls who, day after day, never put their foot outside the doorstep, which of them was not keen upon going, the moment they heard the permission conceded to them? Even if any of their respective mistresses were too lazy to move, they employed every expedient to induce them to go. Hence it was that Li Kung-ts'ai and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a brave man's heart Grow sad and sick that day. To watch the keen, malignant eyes Bent down on that array. There stood the Whig west-country lords In balcony and bow; There sat their gaunt and withered dames, And their daughters all a-row. And every open window Was full as full might ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... vegetation. The instant its foot touched the sandy soil its head went down until its nose touched the ground. Then followed a loud snuff. The dog's great mane bristled ominously, and a low growl sounded significantly upon the still air. Now Hervey's gaze instantly became one of keen intelligence. His thoughts no longer wandered, but were of the present. He watched the movements of the hound with ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... sympathy with the French cause the attitude of the nation changed. The consolidated factions of the Anti-Federalists, however, increased their ardor for the French republic, and took from 1792 the name Democratic-Republican. They carried their keen sympathy even to expressing their French sentiments by their dress and manners. The change in the national attitude was reflected in Connecticut by the whole-hearted antipathy of large numbers of her people to what they considered ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... de Stael. That overestimated woman had gained the halo of martyrdom by the so-called persecution of the Emperor. But the persecution was, in the opinion of keen observers, more on her part than his. The Committee of Public Safety had found her an intriguer, and had called upon her husband to remove her from Paris; the Directory kept her under watch at Coppet, and ordered her arrest should she return to France. Her aspirations ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... gets the better of discretion in ladies of her years:—she knows herself handsome, and cannot have a good opinion of the man who prefers any charms to her own.—I imagine this to be the cause why she looks on me with such disdain, and, whenever you are not witness of her words, is so keen in satyrical reflections.—On our first acquaintance she looked and spoke with greater softness, and I can impute it to no other motive than the pride of beauty, that ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... early days in Philadelphia, called "The Shades," but some cowboy humourist, particular about the external fitness of things, had scraped out the letter "S," and so the sign over the door had been allowed to remain. Mike did not grumble. He had taken a keen interest in politics in Philadelphia, but an unexpected spasm of civic virtue having overtaken the city some years before, Davlin had been made a victim, and he was forced to leave suddenly for the West, where there was no politics, and where a man handy at mixing drinks ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... man who was standing, shaking himself, with his hands enveloped in the rags of his pockets. He had on no coat, and the keen north wind seemed to be blowing through his bones; cold, however, as he was, he would do nothing towards warming himself, unless that occasional shake can be considered as a doing of something. ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... did not lead to anything rash. He began to wish that he had half a dozen or so of his most trusted men with him. Meanwhile his hands were tied and he could do no more than wait developments. He had naturally a keen desire to know what was going on behind the closed door of the dining-room, but on that score he would have to possess his soul in patience for the time. He had the comfortable assurance that he could bag his birds, ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... it matter what Oliver thought of him? Who was Oliver? His cousin—accident of birth—the black sheep of the family; now a major in a different regiment and a different division. What was Oliver to him or he to Oliver? He had "made good" in the eyes of one whose judgment had been forged keen and absolute by heroic sorrows. What did anyone else matter? But to Doggie the supreme joy of the evening was the knowledge that he had made good in the eyes of Oliver. Oliver wore on his tunic the white mauve and white ribbon of the Military Cross. Honour where honour ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... abnormally keen delight in being remembered, that it is obligatory upon the rest of his family and his friends not to forget him. Kindly messages should be frequent. Trifling gifts frequently are better than large gifts occasionally, unless the large ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... Why am I thus pursu'd from place to place, Kept in the view, and cross'd at ev'ry turn? In vain I fly, and, like a hunted deer, Scud o'er the lawns, and hasten to the covert; E'er I can reach my safety, you o'ertake me With the swift malice of some keen reproach, And drive the winged shaft deep ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... of exceptions. Koan is snow, ais a shell, mong a loon, kaug a porcupine, &c. The number of dissyllables is numerous, and of trisyllables still more so. The Chippewa has no auxiliary verbs. The Chippewa primitive pronouns are, Neen, Keen, and Ween (I, Thou, He or She). They are rendered plural in wind and wau. They are also declined for tense, and thus, in the conjugation of verbs, take the place ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the flags, keeping close under the loopholes, trying to make himself part of the blackness of the long walls. He advanced slowly, dragging himself along on his breast, forcing back the cry of pain when some raw wound sent a keen ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... relations with France when Vergennes was pursuing his selfish policy to prevent the United States from becoming too strong, and when he became indignant that the treaty had been concluded with England irrespective of France. Jay, with keen sagacity, fathomed the schemes of the French minister, and persistently refused to sign a treaty of peace unless it was satisfactory and promised to be permanent and mutually advantageous. Adams was especially acquainted with the fisheries question and its great importance ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... quietly. We don't want to make a mess of them if we can help it. I saw you were attracted by him and it seemed to me very natural. The only thing that really hurts me is that he should have encouraged you. He knew how awfully keen I was on you. I think it's rather shabby of him to have written that letter to you five minutes after he told me he ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... in the deep clear west A sweet strong wind blows, glad of life: and I, Under the soft keen stardawn whence the sky Takes life renewed, and all night's godlike breast Palpitates, gradually revealed at rest By growth and change of ardours felt on high, Make onward, till the last flame fall and die And all the world by night's broad hand ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... massive construction. The exteriors of west fronts, transepts, and towers show great skill and care in their composition, the openings being always well grouped, and contrasted with plain wall-spaces; and a keen sense of proportion is perceptible. The Norman architects had at command a rich, if perhaps a rather rude, ornamentation, which they generally confined to individual features, especially doorways; on these they lavished mouldings and sculpture, the elaboration of which was set ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... to a high temperature. The captain made his bed on a sofa, but I preferred the tarantass where the air was cool and pure. I arranged my furs, fastened the boot and hood of the carriage, and slept comfortably in a keen wind. At daylight the yemshicks attached horses and called the captain from the house. He complained that he slept little owing to the heat. Boika was in bad humor and opened the day by tearing the coat of one man and being ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... of Esaias Tegnr the vigor and idealism of the Swedish people find their completest and most brilliant incarnation. A deep love of the grandeurs of nature, keen delight in adventure and daring deeds, a charming juvenility of spirit that at least in the prime of his life caused him to battle bravely and hopefully for great ideas, a clearness of perception and integrity of purpose that abhor shams and narrow prejudices and with reckless ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... Miss Rutherford. "I feel snubbed, of course, but I wasn't really keen on having him for a husband, ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... of divine right, attended by guards of nobles and counselled by Jesuit confessors, there was now a citizen-king, who walked about the streets of Paris with an umbrella under his arm and sent his sons to the public schools, but who had at heart as keen a devotion to dynastic interests as either of his predecessors, and a much greater capacity for personal rule. The bonds which kept the entire local administration of France in dependence upon the central authority were not loosened; officialism remained as strong as ever; the franchise ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the real underlying causes of the Revolution. A few suggestions and advanced questions of this sort will stimulate a critical analysis of the statements in the text, and send the student to class keen for an intelligent discussion. ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... Her unnecessarily frank laughter showed her gums as well as her teeth, and made one wish that her sense of humour were not quite so keen. ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... the alleged cause being a practical joke played by him on one of his fellow-choristers. He was, as Sir G. Grove relates in his article "Haydn" in the Dictionary of Music and Musicians, thrown upon the world "with an empty purse, a keen appetite, and no friends." Haydn took up his abode in an attic in the old Michaelerhaus. But it chanced that Metastasio lived in the same building, and the famous poet took an interest in the penniless composer, and, among other things, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... giving it as the sole specimen of his verse; when it was really written by the ardent Arminian, Charles Wesley, with whom Toplady was on anything but friendly terms. If Whittier could make a blunder of this magnitude we may be pardoned if possibly a keen-eyed critic spies something in our book almost as grossly incorrect. In some cases we have been obliged to change the titles of poems so as to avoid reduplication in our index, or to adapt them the better ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... ended all those mental perplexities and periods of despondency from which he had suffered more or less during his several love affairs, extending over nearly a decade. Out of the keen anguish he had endured, he finally gained that perfect mastery over his own spirit which Scripture declares to denote a greatness superior to that of him who takes a city. Few men have ever attained that complete domination of the will over the emotions, of reason over passion, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... afflicted him grievously; but that sorrow, though it had incapacitated him for the management of his own affairs, had not rendered him unfit for the ministrations of his parish. Such were the arguments now used in his favour by the women around him; and the men were not keen to contradict them. The wish that he should be acquitted and allowed to remain in ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... his time at Leeds, his knowledge of his subject, both on its literary and linguistic side, was constantly deepening and his efficiency, as teacher of it, constantly increasing. With so keen a mind as his, this was only to be expected. It was equally natural that, as his knowledge expanded and his advice came to be more and more sought by those engaged in the study of such matters, he should make the results of his researches known to ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... an age when orthodoxy flourished, and he and his associates of the Transcendentalist cult, were regarded as non-religious, if not actually heretical. Therefore, it is that Emerson's keen intellect was brought to bear upon everything he encountered, not only in his own intimate experience but also in all that he read and heard, lest he be trapped into committing the error which he saw all about him, namely, of mistaking an accepted viewpoint as ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... not desist from pressing his suit. You, well knowing my determination, and carried away by your evil temper, have magnified into a threat what he never intended as such. Pray let me hear no more about these fancied insults." The old man smiled grimly at his keen perception. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... director of certain companies in London, at which he used to attend, receiving his guinea for doing so, and he had some small capital,—some remnant of his father's trade wealth, which he nursed with extreme care, buying shares here and there and changing his money about as his keen outlook into City affairs directed him. I do not suppose that he had much talent for the business, or he would have grown rich; but a certain careful zeal carried him on without direct loss, and gave him perhaps five per cent for his ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... evidence, appears to have been published with the assistance or supervision of the author. Many of the descriptions are, however, so brief and indefinite in both their German and French forms that they necessarily remain so in the present translation. The princely explorer, with the keen discrimination shown in all his work, doubtless observed what has escaped many recent reporters of Indian signs, that the latter depend much more upon motion than mere position, and are generally large and free, seldom minute. His object ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... dispatched her letter, she walked briskly back to the Castle. She saw Nora wandering about in the avenue. Nora, hatless and gloveless, was playing with the dogs. She seemed to have forgotten all about her keen disappointment of the morning. When she saw her mother coming up the avenue she ran ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... obliged to put on a most angry countenance and demeanour." This painful obligation has been hereditary in my race. I have myself, on a perfectly amateur and unauthorised inspection of Turnberry Point, bent my brows upon the keeper on the question of storm-panes; and felt a keen pang of self-reproach, when we went downstairs again and I found he was making a coffin for his infant child; and then regained my equanimity with the thought that I had done the man a service, and when the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the President had sunk into his chair, and the keen discrimination of a king of affairs was struggling ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... Ultimately the sailor, unable to rid himself of his persecutor in any other way, resorted to the use of his fists. The Eskimos, while good wrestlers, are far from adepts at the "manly art of self-defense," and the result was that Harrigan emerged from the forecastle with a well-blackened eye and a keen sense of having been ill used. He complained bitterly of his treatment, but I gave him a new shirt and told him to keep away from the forecastle where the sailors were, and in a few hours he had forgotten it like a school boy, so that the affair passed off without ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... the shadow of turning. There are no inadequate responses, no changes that we need fear. On that love the scythe of death, which mows down all other products of the human heart, hath no power; and its stem stands untouched by the keen edge that levels all the rest of the herbage. Love God, and thou lovest eternity; and therefore the joy of the love is eternal as its object. So he who loves God is building upon a rock, and whosoever has this for his treasure carries his wealth with him whithersoever ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thrown over her by the skilful retiaria. She stood stock-still in mute surprise, with averted eye and deeply blushing cheek, fighting desperately with the confusion she feared to let Angelique detect. But that keen-sighted girl saw too clearly—she had caught her fast as a bird is caught by ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... often talk of Herdegen, and of how to come upon some trace of him, and whereas the old man had in former days left such matters to other folks, he now showed a right wise and keen experience in counselling the right ways and means. Hitherto he had trusted to Ursula's good words and commended us to the same confidence; now, however, he remembered on a sudden how ill-disposed she had ever been to my lost brother, and whereas it was the season of the year ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... there seems to be a sort of swampy patch, with water and bogs. Listen to the frogs croaking, will you? And I can see more than a few whoppers, too. Chances are this is a frog farm that supplies the big hotels in Brussels and Antwerp. You know the French are keen on frogs' legs, and pay fancy prices for ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... on, "ye just find yourself back at that. Ye can't educate a woman as ye can a man; she's not got the same faculties to take in the information that ye offer her. Why," he cried, "ye can't give her any sense of abstract right or wrong. In order to protect her young she has inherited certain keen faculties and instincts which we poor male creatures are without; but from the minute she becomes a wife or mother she ceases in some degree to have a conscience. No," he finished, "when a woman's emotions are stirred you can't believe a ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... floor, and, rushing to the side of the little river, he turned himself into a salmon, swam down to the deepest, stillest pool at the bottom, and hid himself between two stones. The gods entered the house, and looked all round in vain for Loki, till Kvasir, one of Odin's sons, famous for his keen sight, spied out the remains of the fishing-net in the fire; then Odin knew at once that there was a river near, and that it was there where Loki had hidden himself. He ordered his sons to make a new net, and to cast it into the water, and drag out whatever living thing they could find there. It ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... tempting; for Phylax pricked up his ears, raised his nose, snuffing eagerly to inhale the scent, and rose from the ground. He glanced again round the yard, and then advanced a few steps toward the window yonder on the side of the house. This window was open, and the keen nose of the dog told him that the appetizing scent had come from it. All at once, however, Phylax stood still, as if remembering his master's orders, and looked again ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... depended, it is true, on the doubtful point whether all the fifty heroes might not be snapped up as so many mouthfuls by the dragon. But as Jason was hastening down the palace steps, the Princess Medea called after him and beckoned him to return. Her black eyes shone upon him with such a keen intelligence that he felt as if there were a serpent peeping out of them, and although she had done him so much service only the night before, he was by no means very certain that she would not do him an equally great mischief before sunset. These enchantresses, you ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... real call he had ever heard issue from that furred throat, a plaintive whistle which had a crooning, summoning note in it, akin to the mind touch in an odd fashion, yet audible. They sat in silence for a long moment, the human's ears as keen for any sound out of the night as those of his companion. Why did Sssuri not use the customary noiseless greeting of his race? When he beamed that inquiry, he met once again that strange, solid wall of non-acceptance which ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... off his glasses and fixed Sandy with his keen glance. For a few moments he could not speak; he had been carried far and beyond his normal depth. When he got command of himself, ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... far from a large rough deer- hound, both close friends who could be trusted at large. There was a mournful dispirited look about the hound, evidently an aged animal, for the once black muzzle was touched with grey, and there was a film over one of the keen beautiful eyes, which opened eagerly as he pricked his ears and lifted his head at the rattle of the door latch. Then, as two boys came out, he rose, and with a slowly waving tail, and a wistful appealing air, came and laid his head against one of the pair who had appeared ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... French friends were remonstrating with him about an incidental allusion in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, his old friend, Lord Kames—still at eighty-three as keen for metaphysical controversy as he had been with Bishop Butler sixty years before—was preparing an elaborate attack upon the theory of the book itself, which he proposed to incorporate in a new edition of his own Principles of Morality and Religion. Before publishing ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... back, carrying an axe of curious make. It was a large, keen one, however, and later it developed that it was one the French miller had used to chop his firewood. Throwing off his coat, and revealing beneath it a dark blue shirt, the officer began fiercely to chop ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... been in the stable at the chateau received sudden orders to advance. The rest of the company, scattered about in the vicinity, assembled here and they marched out of the court, a hundred strong. Poor, old, nice things, these Bavarians; they did not look very military nor very keen about ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... suspicion of the dandy in his dress, though it was obvious at the merest glance that he was a gentleman. His short, sleek hair gave to his head a certain suggestion of strength. The eyes which gleamed behind his gold-rimmed glasses were keen and steady. Most men about town were acquainted with the name of Jim Gurdon, as a generation before had been acquainted with his prowess in the athletic field. Now he was a successful barrister, though his ample private means rendered ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... known that the Arab's information, though partly true, was a ruse; that Jackson had indeed been observed by the keen-eyed Oriental, who had thereupon sat down purposely within earshot, and after a whispered hint to his companion, gave forth such information as would be likely to lead the British cruiser into his snares—speaking in bad English, under the natural impression ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... thy honoured name, Be as a bye-word through the world? Rouse! for, as if to blast thy fame, This keen reproach is at thee hurled; The banner that above the waves, Is floating ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... themselves was only history, and to pass from the traditional assertion of the Lord's divinity to its deliberate enunciation in clear consciousness of the difficulties which gathered round it when the gospel came under the keen scrutiny of thoughtful heathens. Whatever vice might be in heathenism, there was no want of interest in religion. If the doubts of some were real, the scoffs of many were only surface-deep. If the old legends of Olympus were outworn, philosophy ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... and besides are not nearly so hardy. The white face is therefore king of the range. And bulls with red rings round the eyes by preference, as they can stand the bright glare of these hot, dry countries better. It used to be my keen delight to attend the annual cattle shows and auction sales of pure-bred bulls, and I would feel their hides and criticize their points till I almost began to imagine myself as competent ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... the triumph of production. (Till Eulenspiegel again forms a class by himself, as the personified quiz, mostly pointless enough, of particular classes and professions.) The court-fool of the Este retaliated more than once by his keen satire and refined ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... surrounded by officers, and by the chief inhabitants, anxious to pay their court; a tall man in the pompous garb of a military noble of that gorgeous reign, well advanced in middle life, but whose high keen features, full of intellect and fire, bespoke his prompt undaunted nature,—Louis de Buade, Count of Palluau and Frontenac. He belonged to the high nobility, had held important commands, and, if the song-writers of his time speak true, had anticipated ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... rooms, three bedrooms and a dressing-room, were again to let, and Mr. Bridmain's sudden departure, together with the Countess Czerlaski's installation as a visitor at Shepperton Vicarage, became a topic of general conversation in the neighbourhood. The keen-sighted virtue of Milby and Shepperton saw in all this a confirmation of its worst suspicions, and pitied the Rev. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... practical politicians talk, I always listen with keen interest; for the details in which they seem to me too much absorbed, are a corrective to my generalizing tendency ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... bodies; I will make good use of my intellect so that my children will inherit an added capacity for acquiring knowledge; I will obey all laws of morality so that my children will by inheritance tend toward virtue;" and supposing that you to-day, with healthful bodies, keen intellects and upward tending moral natures, were reaping the reward of their forethought, would you not ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... anything but fair, which made him the readier to enter into the witches' bargain. Here I must first inform my reader that these women are exceedingly cunning, and can not only scan the mind of the person they deal with, but can also, from keen observation, calculate on the wind and weather for the next twenty-four hours, and, as what they prognosticate generally proves true, they frequently meet with ready customers. Next morning the captain came on board, and shortly afterwards was followed by the hoary ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... war finally reached the plantation, the slaves followed the progress with keen interest and when battles were fought near Columbus, and firing of guns was heard, they cried joyfully—"It ain't gonna be long now." Two of their master's sons fought in the Confederate Army, but both returned home before ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... dare. If that thy heart to hers were truly dear, Were I thine own—thou wert not lonely here: An outlaw's spouse—and leave her Lord to roam! 1470 What hath such gentle dame to do with home? But speak not now—o'er thine and o'er my head Hangs the keen sabre by a single thread;[ib] If thou hast courage still, and would'st be free, Receive this ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... began; for the can slipped, and some of the oil was spilled on the floor. This terrified Mell, for that kitchen-floor was the idol of Mrs. Davis's heart. It was scrubbed every day, and kept as white as snow. Mell knew that her step-mother's eyes would be keen as Blue Beard's to detect a spot; and, with all the energy of despair, she rubbed and scoured with soap and hot water. It was all in vain. The spot would not ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... more firmly fixt, Than strongest weeds that grow those stones betwixt; My spud these nettles from the stones can part; No knife so keen to weed ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... but listen to me. I would not that you should ever be able to reproach me for the madness that you meditate. God forbid that you should hate me, but, bound to me by this flight that you propose, you would carry with you forever a keen and unavailing regret that I ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... I did, I found myself behind the blacks, and, without waiting to even calculate their numbers or the foolhardiness of my venture, I charged swiftly across the chamber and fell upon them from the rear with my keen long-sword. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... buffalo, deer, and bear that had gone there to lick salt. Boone and his men threw up rough shelters for themselves. Soon the kettles were boiling, the salt was made. They were in the midst of preparations to pack up their belongings and load the salt into bags when Daniel's keen ears caught the sound of moccasined feet in the underbrush nearby. Suddenly as if they had popped up out of the ground a band of Indians pounced upon the white men. All but three of Boone's party were captured. They escaped and after hiding ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... waters of finance which Roger vaguely pictured as a giant whirlpool. Though honest enough in his own affairs, Bruce showed a genial relish for all the tricks of the savage world which was as the breath to his nostrils. And at times he appeared so wise and keen he made Roger feel like a child. But again it was Bruce who seemed the child. He seemed to be so naive at times, and Edith had him so under her thumb. Roger liked to hear Bruce's stories of business, when Edith would let her husband ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... put his hand to his belt, in which a stout keen hunting or bowie-knife was stuck, and drew out ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... on the doorsteps of the meeting-house, as Dorcas went demurely behind her parents in at the open door. He looked at her with a quick, inquiring glance from his keen Yankee eyes, which she answered with an almost imperceptible nod of her graceful head. She dropped her eyes, and passed on. This young man was Henry Mowers, and he owned the Mowers farm. He was a very good, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... scientists. It was a grand success. Actual visualisation by physical demonstration of the results of his novel researches at once convinced those who were present. He next proposed to give a discourse on Plant Response before the University of Cambridge. The interest in this lecture became so very keen that the Botanical Department of Cambridge went to the length of importing soil from India to give the plants the most favourable conditions for exhibiting their specific reactions. At the lecture, the large Botanical Theatre became ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... to feel a keen, persistent, painful sympathy for the apparition itself as for some one whose confidence had been abused; and this feeling was none the less, but all the more, poignant because it was he himself who was guilty towards it. He pitied it in a sort as if it had ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... keen interest by critical audience. Austen's speech pleasantly differed from some familiar of late from same quarter. Luminous, lucid, temperate yet firm, it did much to uplift debate with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... the nature of the human passions? What bill could prevent fraud and violence in Africa, while the Slave-trade existed there? What bill could prevent the miserable victims of the trade from rising, when on board the ships, if they saw an opportunity, and felt a keen sense of their oppression? Those of the second I stated to admit of a remedy, and, after making accurate calculations on the subject of each, I showed that those merchants, who were to do them away effectually, would be ruined by their voyages. The ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... investment where usury is not kept down by old-fashioned legislation. Richard Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, saw a somewhat similar state of things among the unproductive and ale-tippling scholars with whom he lived at Oxford, but he was keen enough to feel an envy of the livelier marts of commerce. "How many goodly cities could I reckon up," says Burton, "that thrive wholly by trade, where thousands of inhabitants live singular well by their fingers' ends! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... say; we shall soon know." Thus saying, Leif descended to the beach as the vessels approached and ran their keels straight on the sandy shores of the bay. There was great bustle on board, and there were many men, besides some women, who could be seen looking over the bulwarks with keen interest, while Leif's men brought planks with which to make a gangway from the ship ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... living-room; talking gravely about winning to hearth and saddle of her own, or juvenilely rattling on about romance and adventure, bright-eyed, her face flushed and eager with enthusiasm. Joan Lackland! He mused over the cryptic wonder of it till the secrets of love were made clear and he felt a keen sympathy for lovers who carved their names on trees or wrote them on ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... continued to celebrate her rites alone. It was a double solitude; for she had always thought a great deal more of the people who came to see the House than of the people who came to see her. She fancied that the neighbors kept a keen eye on the path to the House; and there were days when the figure of a stranger strolling past the gate seemed to focus upon her the scorching sympathies of the village. For a time she thought of travelling; of going ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... was a mere ivory web between the metacarpal bones, and her eyes had gone back to that indeterminate hue which is seen in the eyes of a new-born baby; but she sat up straight in the open carriage and directed on the two strangers a keen belittling gaze that without doubt extracted everything essential in their appearance. He liked this harsh country, these harsh, infrangible people ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... side of the stream, the companies who had been thrown over the night before as pickets having been fired on by a detachment of the 'Berkeley Border Guard,' and returning the fire promptly. But this served only to stimulate the already keen energies of the Federal forces, who waded knee-deep through the clear Potomac, and trudged along over the 'sacred soil' with a willingness unchecked by the cold nor'wester that raged on that July morning. That portion of Berkeley County, Virginia, which lies opposite to Willlamsport, is called 'the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... myself thinking that the twentieth century was not the fittest period in which to lay such a plot as this. But I am content to believe that Mr. MALORY knows his business better than I do, and as—like a good huntsman—he has left me with a keen desire to go a-hunting with him again, I beg to thank him ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... by the table edge or not, the fallen pirate struggled as though possessed of forty devils, and in a moment or two Mainwaring saw the shine of a long, keen knife that he had drawn from somewhere about his person. The lieutenant caught him by the wrist, but the other's muscles were as though made of steel. They both fought in despairing silence, the one to carry out his frustrated purposes to kill, the other to save his life. Again and ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... went like a flash from Billy's face, from Honey's, from Pete's. The look of the hunter took its place, keen, alert, ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... then unknown illimitable West as to his power to tell an absorbing story. When "The Choir Invisible" appeared, this perhaps most fascinating period of early American history had not been used as a background of his story by any great master of fiction, and it requires no very keen literary insight to discover the sources of the popularity which has been accorded to the four or five recent novels, each of which has for its setting a period in our history whose glamour has touched our ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... club-foot, with more intimate and intelligently curious observation than ever a 'longshore jack or coast-wise skipper had achieved in the years when I wore rings. Never before had I suffered a stare more keen and unabashed: 'twas an assurance stripped of insolence by some tragical need and right. He sat beyond a broad, littered table, leaning forward upon it, his back to the riley light, his drawn face nestled within the lean, white hands of him; and 'twas now a brooding inspection I ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... smiled back. But at Charm's first sentence the keen Norman eyes had fixed their twinkling glitter on the girl's face. They seemed to be reading to the very bottom of her thought and being. The scrutiny was ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... employed him in his most private affairs. It was a hobby of his thus to make the fortunes of men born in the lowest stations, hoping that, since they would owe everything to him, they would never depend on any but him. It is scarcely credible that so keen and contemptuous a judge of human nature could have reckoned on dependence as a pledge of fidelity. And in this case Louis was, at any rate, mistaken; Balue was a traitor to him, and in 1468, at the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Walter A. Wood, whose keen business ability made him a wealthy man, and sent him to congress as a representative from the great state of New York, is reported to have said, "I would give fifty thousand dollars for a college education." When he came to measure his ability ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... by universal prescription commanded three of the Pequod's boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which Captain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales, these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being armed with their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers; even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins. And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic Knight of old, is always ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the time we reached it once more. The fire lit up the men sitting about it, and the two inverted V's of the tent entrances; very faintly behind could be seen the outline of the line of little tented waggons. We had collected an additional member, Miss Brindley of the "Stobarts." She was very keen to get home, as her parents were anxious, and both her brothers at the front. Jo gave one look at her and said "Certainly." She had rushed immediately into the town and had laid in a stock of beans and lentils, as her contribution to the common stock. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it, looked straight into his son's face with keen eyes which seemed to see through him, and again laughed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... a drizzling rain fell at noon; but at four o'clock I saddled the blue roan and went to ride with Fogg. We retraced the road to Colonel T——s, and crossing a boggy brook, turned up the hills and passed toward the Potomac. Fogg had been a schoolmaster, and many of his narrations indicated keen perception and clever comprehension. He so amused me on this particular occasion that I quite forgot my engagement for dinner, and unwittingly ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... which did not conceal a mouth cut thin and straight. He had student hands, long and well kept. It was not his dress, though that was careful as a girl's, which set him apart from farmers listening on the benches around him, but the keen light of his blue eyes, ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... to God that you belong to a Church which has also a keen sense to detect and expose those moral shams, those pious frauds, those socialistic schemes which are so often undertaken in this country ostensibly in the name of religion and morality, but which, in reality, ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... son of Sweyn, the first-born of Godwin's house—a rank which might have authorised some pretensions on his own part, gave him all field for the exercise of an intellect singularly keen and profound. Accustomed to an atmosphere of practical state-craft in the Norman court, with faculties sharpened from boyhood by vigilance and meditation, he exercised an extraordinary influence over the simple understandings of the homely clergy and the uncultured thegns. Impressed ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and angry; You were cold and efficient and keen. Your thrust was as thorough and deadly As the stroke of a ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... omission cannot have been the effect of mere inadvertence. His own treatise was before him. From that treatise he deliberately expunged whatever was favourable to the study of pure mathematics, and inserted several keen reflections on the ardent votaries of that study. This fact, in our opinion, admits of only one explanation. Bacon's love of those pursuits which directly tend to improve the condition of mankind, and his jealousy of all pursuits merely curious, had grown upon him, and had, it may be, become ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Northern Light, alias the Prophet, so-called because he is spirit brother to the Prophet of Doom, took a keen relish in my discomfiture, or I fancied he did. He it was who put the question in the doctor's Bible class, "Is it religious to wear overalls to church?" The house officer had carefully saved a pair of clean khaki trousers to honour the Sunday services, but in the local judgment ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... flashed an angry look at Branders, though a keen reader of faces would have known that this experienced recruiting officer was trying hard to conceal a smile. The lieutenant had dealt with ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... the long wet line of working raft drew ahead while the sloop crawled on, close-hauled toward the south. Late that night, however, the mist melted away, and a keen rushing breeze that came out of the north crisped the water. The vessel sprang forward when the ripples reached her; the flapping canvas went to sleep; and while each slack rope tightened a musical tinkle broke out at the bows. It grew steadily ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... alone were qualified to observe in their turn, and to describe, the metropolis of the East. The ambassador of the great Otho, a bishop of Cremona, has painted the state of Constantinople about the middle of the tenth century: his style is glowing, his narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the prejudices and passions of Liutprand are stamped with an original character of freedom and genius. [11] From this scanty fund of foreign and domestic materials, I shall investigate the form and substance of the Byzantine empire; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... how much his education has been neglected, how vitiated the Revolution made him, and that but lately his principal associates were, like himself, from among the vilest and most vulgar of the rabble. It is not necessary to be a keen observer to remark in Napoleon the upstart soldier, and in Joseph the former low member of the law; but I defy the most refined courtier to see in Lucien anything indicating a ci-devant sans-culotte. He has, besides, other qualities (and those more estimable) which ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... said Bertie; meaning, of course, that she did care very much. "We girls haven't got so much money and we can't have real things. I like my chain and locket just as well (which she didn't, for she was quite keen enough to understand the difference), but I won't go there again till I get my silk dress made;" and she glanced disgustedly at the light-blue cashmere which, as it was her best dress, she chose to wear on all occasions, and which looked already much the worse for its week ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... broke very bright and fair, with a keen, windless frost that made the snow crisp and pleasant to ride over, hindering one in no way. And there was the sun shining over all in a way that made the cold seem nought to me, so that I had known nothing more pleasant than ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... tree, and cast his keen glances around. Nothing could he see; nothing but what ought to be there. The wide lawn, the sweet flowers closed to the night, the remoter parts where the trees were thick, all stood cold ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... much as he treated the rest of the world; and she noted with keen relish that her treatment irritated him. She already knew the man well enough to be sure that he would come again the sooner, and more frequently, to force her by the very dominance of his virile personality to see him as he saw himself, in a word ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... of the court for three days, during which time Abercrombie made some of the most brilliant speeches that had ever fallen from his lips. He managed his case, too, with a tact, spirit, and sagacity, unusual even for him, as keen a lawyer as he was. To all this, Harvey opposed a steady, clear, and rational mode of presenting the claims of the individual he represented, so that conviction attended him at every step. It was in vain that ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... wistful, winsome, vivacious and intelligent, with a brain as keen as that of Becky Sharp, yet as honest as Amelia—getting her husband transferred from the army ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... knew, were unselfishnesses of the spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living. I knew all this because I read 'Seaside Library'* novels, in which, with the exception of the villains and adventuresses, all men and women thought beautiful thoughts, spoke a beautiful tongue, and performed glorious ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... and listened to him talk, she could not help being a little attracted. He was a heavy-built man, would have made two of Corthell, and his hands were large and broad, the hands of a man of affairs, who knew how to grip, and, above all, how to hang on. Those broad, strong hands, and keen, calm eyes would enfold and envelop a Purpose with tremendous strength, and they would persist and persist and persist, unswerving, unwavering, untiring, till the Purpose was driven home. And the two long, lean, fibrous arms of him; what a reach ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... enemy repeated, with vigor and conviction. "But suppose we shift our conversation to matters a shade more pleasant. Take you, for instance. You see—" He stopped abruptly, turning his head and listening with keen ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... at me rather sulkily, but began to smile directly, as he drew his keen-edged knife across the trunk of the great tree upon which he was going to operate before. Then, making a parallel incision close to the first, he produced a white streak where he ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... possible exception of Chatham, no statesman has exercised a greater influence on the destinies of the British race. On two occasions he sternly set his face against the cession of Gibraltar; he took keen interest in the settlement of New South Wales; his arrangements for the government of Canada deserve far higher praise than they have usually secured; and his firmness in repelling the archaic claims of Spain to the shores of the Northern Pacific gained for his people the future ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... pious child, who seldom goes out except to church, and,' added Jeanne, with a keen look in her master's countenance, 'the very image of the Madame de la Tour we ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... one acquainted only with the external and generally understood features of the character of the new proprietor of the Chateau de Senanges. But a few people knew Prosper Alix thoroughly, and the Marquis was one of the number; he was keen enough to know in theory that, in the case of a man with only one weakness, that is likely to be a very weak weakness indeed, and to apply the theory to the avocat. The beautiful, pious, and aristocratic mother of Paul de Senanges—a ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... discarded. The species P. diderma is not P. lividum, but stands as originally delimited, and will, doubtless, some day yet again appear in its own behalf upon the witness-stand of time; when, as before, a Frenchman in DeBary's old-time haunts may rise to give it welcome, brought back by some keen-eyed Polish student eager now in the arts of ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... brandy that ye drank and ne'er thought of paying for it (not that I minded it muckle in thae days, though I have felt a lack of it sin syne), why I will waste an hour on ye at ony time.—and where is Captain Redgimlet now? he was a wild chap, like yoursell, though they arena sae keen after you poor bodies for these some years bygane; the heading and hanging is weel ower now—awful job—awful job—will ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... certainly took small delight in her company; but no hint of the kind dropped from Miss Fortune's lips, and Ellen's longing look for this as well as for a word from her mother was daily doomed to be ungratified and to grow more keen by delay. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... in such a mood that it must have been a bold person who would have intruded upon her with reproof or counsel. "This is one of her days," old Sophy would say quietly to her father, and he would, as far as possible, leave her to herself. These days were more frequent, as old Sophy's keen, concentrated watchfulness had taught her, at certain periods of the year. It was in the heats of summer that they were most common and most strongly characterized. In winter, on the other hand, she was less ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
