"Keenness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... steamer Speedwell made her appearance round the promontory by Knollsea Bay, to take in passengers for the transit to Cherbourg. Breezes the freshest that could blow without verging on keenness flew over the quivering deeps and shallows; and the sunbeams pierced every detail of barrow, path and rabbit-run upon the lofty convexity of down and waste which shut in Knollsea from ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Moore as wireless operator was swift of the swiftest; he despatched with a lightning lilt, and the keenness of his ears, for which he was famous on more than one ocean, made it possible for him to receive signals with rarely the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... precisely those in whom it is most difficult to arouse wants, those in whom it is hardest to inspire the desire to rise out of their condition; so that man must already have gained a certain degree of comfort by his labor, before he can feel with any keenness that need of improving his condition, of perfecting his existence, which I call the love ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... angels came down to her in glittering armour, she struck her as the only person she had yet encountered who had exactly the same tenderness, the same pity, for women that she herself had. Miss Birdseye had something of it, but Miss Birdseye wanted passion, wanted keenness, was capable of the weakest concessions. Mrs. Farrinder was not weak, of course, and she brought a great intellect to the matter; but she was not personal enough—she was too abstract. Verena was not abstract; she seemed to have lived in imagination through all the ages. Verena said she did ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... pleasure. A suggestion, from some unrecalled source, that their disappearance had been connected with the deaths of the two aged suitors was revitalized in her memory by the words of the elderly detective. Familiar with the strange life of this jeweled half-world Shirley's keenness brought forth nothing to convince him that the girl had been more culpable than in the following of her class, known to the initiate as the "gentle art of ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... sent it rolling into the middle of the cellar. The gipsy, although motionless, and to all appearance inattentive to what passed, lost not one of the muleteer's movements. His head stirred not but his sunken beadlike eyes shifted their glances with extraordinary keenness and rapidity. At the moment when, surprised by the sudden removal of the cask, he screwed his head round to see what was going on behind him, a rope was passed swiftly over his face, and the next instant he felt his neck encircled by a halter. A number of strong hooks ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... seemed to be subdued there. The people who inhabited the border land, mostly of the Lower Saxon strain, with a slight tinge of Slavic blood, were a tough, sturdy race, not specially graceful in social manners, but with unusual keenness of understanding and clearness of judgment. Those who lived in the capital had been glib of tongue and ready to scoff from time immemorial: all were capable of great exertions; industrious, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... through the months that followed he went about his business with a clear conscience and a heart slightly relieved by the removal of Anna Hethbridge from his path to prosperity. He served his country and the Company with a keenness of foresight and a soldierly exposure of the lives of others which did not fail, in the course of time, to bring him in a harvest of honours and rewards. Neither did he put his candle under a bushel, but set it in the very ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... It was run on classical lines, Greek and Latin being considered the only two subjects worth a gentleman's attention. Botany and entomology were the unofficial subjects that had won the school its name, but Ishmael soon found that to show any keenness for these two pursuits was to class yourself a prig. The robuster natures preferred rod and line, or line only, in the waters of Bolowen Pool to any dalliance with stink-pots and specimen cases. Like far ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... surpassing the two afore-mentioned. This law, as I may so say, it is the chief and most pure resemblance of the justice and holiness of the heavenly majesty, and doth hold forth to all men the sharpness and keenness of his wrath above the other two that I have before mentioned. I say, both because it hath been delivered more plain and open, both as to the duty enjoined, and the sin prohibited; and therefore must of necessity, fall with the more violence upon the head of all that shall be found ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... see the publishers and magazine editors, to pass upon the contracts, to follow up the negotiations already under way, and to conclude them; in short, she represented her son in all respects in his badly involved business relations. From a distance he supervised operations, with a mathematical keenness of vision, and his mother assumed the responsibility of carrying out his wishes, bringing to the contest all her qualities of vigour, clear perception and crafty dealings. Honore de Balzac did not spare her. ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... his turn. He felt the keenness of the retort, but he was not dexterous enough to parry it, and he took refuge ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... believe that I shall preach well next time. However, there may be some advantages in hearing one who is not too far away from the difficulties with which you will soon be contending yourselves; and the keenness with which I have felt these difficulties may have made me reflect, more than others to whom the path of excellence has been easier, on the ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... were seated in the private office of Eugene Evans, Head of the Legal Department of the newly re-incorporated Galaxian Society of Sol, Inc. Evans was a tall man, slightly thin, slightly stooped, whose thick tri-focals did nothing whatever to hide the keenness of his steel-gray eyes. ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... Greek language lived long and died slowly, and the Christian hymn-writers wrote in its decadence. It was then an instrument that has lost its fineness, and keenness, and polish—worn out and ineffective,—not the language of the men whose thoughts still charm the world, and who by its deft use gained for themselves and for their work immortality. It has little of the subtilty of expression, the variety of ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... light and stood gazing towards them absent-mindedly, as if thinking of something. Walters noticed his white hair and thin face, the keenness of his blue eyes, the firmness of his mouth, and the erectness of ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... place. Taylor said, a small bull-dog was as good as a large one. JOHNSON, 'No, Sir; for, in proportion to his size, he has strength: and your argument would prove, that a good bull-dog may be as small as a mouse.' It was amazing how he entered with perspicuity and keenness upon every thing that occurred in conversation. Most men, whom I know, would no more think of discussing a question about a bull-dog, than of attacking ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... plain confession of truth, as it should seem, that this imitation of masters—indeed, almost all imitation which implies a more regular and progressive method of attaining the ends of painting—has ever been particularly inveighed against with great keenness, both by ancient ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... had frequently to take on herself some of the humble duties of a servant. This was especially painful to Louis XVI. when the anniversary of some State festival brought the contrast between past and present with unusual keenness before him. ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... wanted to hear the voice again. He rested for a brief space—not long enough to make the interval seem awkward—and glanced swiftly at the girl whom he had aided. His faculties did not rise readily into keenness after his recent hour of lethargy, but he saw in an indefinite way that she was tall, and the elastic pose of her figure as she prepared to pass by him gave him somehow an impression of power. After an instant ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... my boy, save that the keenness of the chase is gone." Hillard balanced his watch idly. "As for Kitty, she's a worldly little woman, and can take good care of herself. She is not likely to blunder into any serious conspiracy. Her ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... wicket which he found on arriving, this place was once christened by a well-known cricketer Bourton-on-the-Bog. Indeed, it is often a case of Bourton-under-the-Water; but, in spite of a soft pitch, there is great keenness and plenty of good-tempered rivalry about these matches. Bourton is a truly delightful village. The Windrush, like the Coln at Bibury, runs for some distance ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... exaggeration of these charges we must part company, for though you may have been culpable only of indiscretion, we cannot afford to be identified with doubtful transactions;" and the Opposition, eager not to lose its vantage, would scan with equal keenness the acts of its own members. With party government the electorate would not have appeared to condone those scandals. But as it was, when a deputy involved in them went down before his constituents, whose local interest he had well ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... thought and practice of assassination must have been required to perfect that most awful weapon in Nature, the paw of a tiger, or, indeed, of any cat, for they are all of one pattern. The sharpened flint of the savage has become the scimitar of Saladin, keeping the keenness of its edge in a velvet sheath and flashing out only on the field of battle. Compare that paw with the foot of a dog, and you will, perhaps, see with me that the servility and pliancy of the slave of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the razor-edge of the bright weapon, and said, "This seems, indeed, a fair fire-edge. Let us make a trial of its keenness." ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... permanency of his power, and the perfection of his schemes, thought it necessary to render the Nabob an absolute stranger to the state of his affairs. He assured his Highness that full justice was not done to the strength of his sentiments and the keenness of his attacks, in the translations that were made by the Company's servants from the original Persian of his letters. He therefore proposed to him that they should for the future be transmitted in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of six brothers, she had learned a freemasonry of living, and had not the sensitiveness and introspection that troubles so many young girls. Her mother was dead, yet she and her father had been such intimate friends that she had not felt the keenness of her loss as she must ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... married John Nunley, Mister Ab, he married Miss Ann Darnell, Mister Jack he married Miss Milly Holt, and Mister Calvin he married Miss Lacky Foster. Yes'm they lived all 'round 'bout us. Some at Rhea's Hill and some at Cane Hill," and to prove the keenness of this old slave's mind, as well as her accuracy, one need only to go to the county deed records where in 1849, Rebecca Rich deeded several 40 acres tracts of land to her sons, James, Calvin, William Jackson and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... have been incapable of conceiving. This is a drawback perhaps common to every struggle so important and fundamental as was the strife which began to rage in Scotland. Had we a history compiled by the spectators to whom we have referred it would probably, unless nature gave them an exceptional keenness of vision, be wanting in those qualities of animation and force which he who is confident of having every good influence on his side, and nothing but the powers of evil against him, is likely to possess. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Yotsuya. Ito[u] Kwaiba was a man of sixty-four years, retaining much of the vigour of his youth. For the past ten years he had added go to his twin passions for wine and women, neither of which seemed to have made any impression on a keenness of sight which could read the finest print by the scanty light of an andon, teeth which could chew the hard and tough dried mochi (rice paste) as if bean confection, and an activity of movement never to be suspected from his ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... of Ulster lag an inch behind the men either in organisation or in zeal for the Unionist cause, and their keenness at every town visited in this September tour was exuberantly displayed. Women had not yet been enfranchised, of course, and the Ulster women had shown but little interest in the suffragette agitation which was raging at this time ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... her confidence! I had compounded the medicine which had done her good—I had warned her of her danger from Sir Percival. Perhaps I trusted too implicitly to these titles—perhaps I underrated the keenness of the lower instincts in persons of weak intellect—it is certain that I neglected to prepare her sufficiently for a disappointment on entering my house. When I took her into the drawing-room—when she saw no one present but Madame Fosco, who was a stranger ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... but he looked at her strangely; and she watched him with sudden keenness, leaning forward in her chair, her gaze alert but quiet, fixed on the dilating pupils of his eyes. He seemed to become dizzy, and the choleric scarlet which had overspread his broad face and ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... this that I dashed up to my room and began shortening the new dress. I had mentioned it vaguely to Di, but it was the one part of my story in which she took no interest. I saw how the keenness died out of her beautiful sea-blue eyes, and how her soul retired comfortably behind them, to think of something else, just as you see people walk away from windows through which they've been looking out, leaving them emptily blank. As she ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... happens to the Devil, when he is foaming with his Wrath, in Mar. 12.43. The unclean Spirit seeks rest, and finds none. But we give rest unto the Devil, by wrath one against another. If we would lay aside all fierceness, and keenness, in the disputes which the Devil has raised among us; and if we would use to one another none but the soft Answers, which turn away wrath: I should hope that we might light upon such Counsels, as would quickly Extricate us ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... Then, O king, Kritavarman, that warrior equipped with the highest weapons, shooting many shafts, cut off the bow of Satyaki with arrows fixed thereon. And excited with rage, he then, in that battle, O king, pierced Satyaki of unbaffled prowess in the centre of the chest with ten shafts of great keenness. Upon his bow being broken, the foremost of mighty men, viz., Satyaki, hurled a dart at the right arm of Kritavarman. And taking up and drawing a tougher bow, Yuyudhana quickly shot at his foe, shafts by hundreds and thousands and entirely ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... recognizing our utter dependence upon Another, and living it. And this controls our touch with our fellows. In this lies the secret of all strength,—mental keenness and vigour, sympathetic touch with others, and power of action in life and in service. All this touches the weakest spot in these ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... the dialogue itself. Upon the other hand Cathleen's verses by the fire, and those of the pupils in "The Hour-Glass," and those of the beggars in "The Unicorn," are sung as the country people understand song. Modern singing would spoil them for dramatic purposes by taking the keenness and the salt out of the words. The songs in "Deirdre," in Miss Fair's and in Miss Allgood's setting, need fine speakers of verse more than good singers: and in these, and still more in the song of the Three Women in "Baile's Strand," the singers must remember the natural speed ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... determination to revolt; and how powerfully it must have assisted the efforts of all the Tartar chieftains in preparing the minds of their people to feel the necessity of this difficult enterprise, by arming their pride and their suspicions against the Russian Government, through the keenness of their sympathy with the wrongs of their insulted prince, may be readily imagined. It is a fact, and it has been confessed by candid Russians themselves, when treating of this great dismemberment, that the conduct of the Russian Cabinet throughout the period of suspense, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... arising out of a penniless and dependent condition, with the consequent absolute right of the husband to the custody and control of the children of the union. And in all nations and classes where this state of affairs still continues, the women have as yet no clear intellectual perception of the keenness and unfairness of their suffering. They still try to console themselves with believing and allowing others to suppose that after all, things are not so bad; they might be worse. These poor women actually hypnotize themselves into such ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... was going to govern his life, to make a plaything of him, until the not-distant end. If indeed, at this period, it often happened that, though without admitting it even to himself, he longed for death, it was in order to escape not so much from the keenness of his sufferings as from ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the method of teaching deaf and dumb persons to read and write; upon the perception of demons, genii, or familiar spirits; upon the second sight; upon magic in all its branches; and upon the laws against false diviners and soothsayers. Beside showing the keenness of his interest in the supernatural, the author deliberately avoided any occasion for talking gossip or for indulging "persons of airy tempers" with sentimental love-tales. "Instead of making them a bill of fare out of patchwork romances and polluting scandal," reads the preface signed ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... irrelevant as they may seem in a spiritual history, need to be given because they added an intimate keenness to Scrope's readiness for this private chapel enterprise that he was discussing with Lady Sunderbund. Along that line and along that line alone, he saw the way of escape from the great sea of London dinginess that threatened to submerge his family. And ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... before the huntsman and the hounds, nor the hounds themselves catching scent of the game, can be compared with him for the rapidity of his dart when he spies a "commission," for the agility with which he trips up a rival and gets ahead of him, for the keenness of his scent as he noses a customer and discovers the sport where he can get off ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... is something to have roamed over it as a small boy—a small English boy (that is, a small boy unattended by his mother or his nurse), curious, inquisitive, and indefatigable; full of imagination; all his senses keen with the keenness that belongs to the morning of life: the sight of a hawk, the hearing of a bat, almost the scent ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... in his hand," said "Peachy," when the moment for prayer arrived. "Peachy" was not unfamiliar with religious services, and had, with unusual keenness of observation, noted that when a man undertook to pray he must, if he be true, reveal the ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... the malign revel of some demoniac orgy. He thought he read in every face the exultation over the sale of England. Every light laugh in the proverbial ease of the social Normans rang on his ear like the joy of a ghastly Sabbat. All his senses preternaturally sharpened to that magnetic keenness in which we less hear and see than conceive and divine, the lowest murmur William breathed in the ear of Odo boomed clear to his own; the slightest interchange of glance between some dark-browed priest and large-breasted warrior, flashed upon his vision. The irritation of his recent and neglected ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the carcass of a bullock (says Captain Skinner,) we had a proof of the keenness of the vulture's scent. An hour before not one was seen; nor was the place, being so wild and far removed from all habitations, likely to be haunted by them: yet now they thronged every tree in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... angry to speak; but Miss Crawford, looking for a moment with astonished eyes at Mrs. Norris, and then at Fanny, whose tears were beginning to shew themselves, immediately said, with some keenness, "I do not like my situation: this place is too hot for me," and moved away her chair to the opposite side of the table, close to Fanny, saying to her, in a kind, low whisper, as she placed herself, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... sight of the Spaniard, Cotabanama bent his gigantic bow, and was on the point of launching one of his three-pronged arrows, but Lopez rushed upon him and wounded him with his sword. The other Indians, struck with panic, had already fled. Cotabanama, dismayed at the keenness of the sword, cried out that he was Juan de Esquibel, claiming respect as having exchanged names with the Spanish commander. Lopez seized him with one hand by the hair, and with the other aimed a thrust at his body; but the cacique struck down the sword ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... unfamiliar words have you heard or seen recently? How many do you easily use now in your own remarks? You might find it a good plan to take a linguistic inventory every night. A little practice in this will produce amazingly interesting and profitable results in both use and understanding. A keenness for words will be rapidly developed. Word-lists of all kinds will take on entirely new meanings. A spontaneous receptivity will develop into permanent retention ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel. Nor yet does mere knowledge create beauty. Nature sings her most exquisite songs to those who love her. She does not unfold her secrets to those who come only to gratify ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... hesitating whether to light their lamps, and drawing nearer and nearer to the dead-line of the outer cold for the latest glimmer of the day, the passage of this ill-timed vehicle was a vexation little short of grievous. Every movement on the street was precious to them, and, with all the keenness of their starved curiosity, these captives of the winter could not make out the people in the cutter. Afterward it was a mortification to them that they should not have thought at once of Bartley Hubbard and ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... added, "it does surprise me with what keenness you remember and recount the times when I incurred the hatred of some one; but some other occasions when I eased the burden of winter and storm for any of you, or beat off an enemy, or helped to minister to you in sickness and want, not ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... had set and the stars appeared in the clear winter sky with the keenness of points of ice, Febrer ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... watch the show. He found many new points of interest and much that was instructive, as he studied each act attentively and with the keenness of one who had been in the show ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... profoundly influences behaviour and often renders it more vigourous and more effective. The utility of the emotions in the struggle for existence can, therefore, scarcely be over-estimated. Just as keenness of perception has survival-value; just as it is obviously subject to variation; just as it must be enhanced under natural selection, whether individually acquired increments are inherited or not; and just as its value lies not only in this or that special perceptive act but in its ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... dish of bread pudding, passed directly behind the chair of the stranger. The whole table watched with a sudden keenness, and they saw Bard turn, ever so slightly, just as Calamity ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer's ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... 25th of February that the yacht left the little creek in which she had taken refuge, and setting off at full steam eastwards, she continued her way along the northern shore. A brisk breeze tended to increase the keenness of the temperature, the thermometer being, on an average, about two degrees below zero. Salt water freezes only at a lower temperature than fresh; the course of the Dobryna was therefore unimpeded by ice, but it could not be concealed that there was ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... relevant things, he did the citizen of Geneva a wrong. The ulterior motive is there, and the faint taste of a thesis in the most modern manner. But the method is saved by the perception which, though it sometimes lacks the perfect keenness of complete understanding, is exquisite enough to suggest the answer to the questions it does not satisfy. Though the environment is lavish the man ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... side is a crude wooden comb with which she strikes a few stitches into place. When she wishes to wedge the yarn for a complete row—from side to side—she uses a flat broad stick, one edge of which is sharpened almost to knife-like keenness. This is called the "batten." With the design in her brain her busy and skilful fingers produce the pattern as she desires it, there being no sketch from which she may copy. In weaving a blanket of ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... always a warmish game. The rivalry between the various Houses was great, and the football cup especially was fought for with immense keenness. Also, the match was the last fixture of the season, and there was a certain feeling in the teams that if they did happen to disable a man or two, it would not matter much. The injured sportsman would not be needed for School-match purposes for another six months. As a result ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... answer an appeal before the English courts save by advice of his Council. But real as the resentment of his barons may have been, it was not Scotland which really spurred Balliol to this defiance. His wounded pride had made him the tool of a power beyond the sea. The keenness with which France had watched every step of Edward's success in the north sprang not merely from a natural jealousy of his greatness but from its bearing on a great object of French ambition. One fragment of Eleanor's inheritance still remained to her descendants, ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... that had bloomed so fully and freshly in her hand, a scepter and a fairy wand of beneficence, had withered to a thorny scourge for her own shoulders. She looked about her, before her. She realized with a new, a cutting keenness, that Jack was very rich and she very poor. The chill of poverty had hardly reached her as yet, the warm certainty of its cessation had wrapped her round too closely; but it reached her now, and the thought of that poverty, unrelieved, perhaps, for all her life, the thought of the comparative ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... by the keenness of the living ray which I endured, I should have been dazzled if my eyes had been averted from it. And it comes to my mind that for this reason I was the more hardy to sustain so much, that I joined my look ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... I have heard some of the cleverest counsel of our time, but I never heard one to be compared with him in grasp, subtlety and agility. He could examine and cross-examine with consummate dexterity. In arguing points of law he had the tenacity of a bull-dog and the keenness of a sleuth-hound. He always fortified himself with a plethora of "cases." The table in front of him groaned with a weight of law. Here as elsewhere he was "thorough." An eminent jurisprudist once remarked to me, "there is little gleaning to ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... candidates is to make the examinations crushingly severe. Children are early made to realise that all hope of succeeding in life rests upon the passing of these examinations. Thus the despair which often leads to suicide on the one hand and knowledge without keenness ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... muscular creature with four legs, the whole previous existence of which had depended upon its agility, or the subtle, slow, snake, which moves under ordinary circumstances not very much faster than a clammy worm? As I watched with all possible keenness a grey blur followed by bewildering wrigglings and contortions indicated a new manoeuvre. Then instead of two reptiles at right angles, there appeared to be but one, and with a tail at each end. The head of the lizard was in the jaws of the death-adder. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... At first he began to loosen the prejudices of the vulgar, and proceeded by slow advances; with the metaphysical disquisitions of the age, he mingled opinions in divinity apparently novel. The usurpations of the court of Rome was a favourite topic. On these he expatiated with all the keenness of argument, joined to logical reasoning. This soon procured him the clamour of the clergy, who, with the archbishop of Canterbury, deprived him ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... time for revery. Roy was speaking again, asking another of those sharp questions that showed very well why he should have been chosen as a spy hunter, or for anything else that required keenness of mind. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... anyone who impressed me so much with a sense of GREATNESS as Professor Sebastian. And this was not due to his scientific eminence alone: the man's strength and keenness struck me quite as forcibly as his vast attainments. When he first came to St. Nathaniel's Hospital, an eager, fiery-eyed physiologist, well past the prime of life, and began to preach with all the electric force of his vivid personality that the one thing on earth worth a young man's doing was ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the prophetic power manifest in the gift of second sight, which, according to the testimony of my old nurse, had belonged to several of my ancestors, had been in my case transformed in kind without losing its nature, transferring its abode from the sight to the hearing, whence resulted its keenness, and my ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... level stretch over the field to the grove. Cora led the way and the others followed. Lunch baskets and boxes were quickly gathered up from the machines, and, with the keenness of appetite common to young and healthy, and "painful" to our fair motorists (for Cecilia declared her appetite "hurt"), the party scampered off to an appropriate spot where the lunch might ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... writers express the opinion that Paul Jones would, if he had lived, have done great things. Mr. Gilkes, late headmaster of Dulwich, in a touching letter, spoke of the nobility of his character and his high gifts; Mr. Smith, the present headmaster, testified to his intellectual power, energy and keenness; Mr. Joerg, master of the Modern Sixth, to his sense of justice, loyalty and truth; Mr. Hope, master of the Classical Sixth, to his high conception of duty, "his sterling qualities and great ability." From the young man who was captain of the school when Paul was head of the Modern Side came this ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... avail against the obduracy of the country squires, he assailed them in the impassioned language of poetry, and produced the following "Invitation to the Assembly," which, as Goldsmith remarks, was highly relished by the nobility at Bath on account of its keenness, severity, and ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... favour of Zeno, to be reaching complete subjection of the eastern patriarchates to the see of Constantinople. Incensed at what he considered the slight offered to him by John Talaia, he took up, with the utmost keenness against him, the cause of a rival, Peter the Stammerer, who had been elected by the Eutychean party. He worked upon the emperor's mind in favour of the Monophysite pretender. Peter the Stammerer ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... spring breathed warmer and warmer, Nettie revived; so much that her mother at times felt encouraged about her. Mr. Mathieson was never deceived. Whether his former neglect of his child had given him particular keenness of vision in all that concerned her now, or for whatever reason, he saw well enough and saw constantly that Nettie was going to leave him. There was never a wish of hers uncared for now; there ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... indeed, to reconcile liberty and necessity were a task for which he seemed providentially set apart. But beneath these arguments, which rise Alp on Alp, there lurked a quiet perception of humor, and the reductio ad absurdum, which he occasionally drives home, showed the keenness of Puritan wit. How he must have smiled, nay even laughed, in the midst of his abstractions at that[E] metaphysical animal which illustrates the absurdity of his opponents. When 'The Freedom of the Will' was finished, and the author had sent it forth to do battle, he felt that the work ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... normal. In the same way Nietzsche, in his writings, shows a marked sensibility, and especially antipathy, as regards odors, which has by some been regarded as an index to a real physical sensibility of abnormal keenness; according to Moebius, however, there was no reason for supposing this to be the case.[46] Huysmans, who throughout his books reveals a very intense preoccupation with the exact shades of many kinds of sensory impressions, and an apparently abnormally keen sensibility ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... hill; like, however, all the other winter stations, the new quarter, with its handsome streets and villas, has far outgrown the original limits. Aplain, 2m. wide, is between the town and the sea. The beautifully-wooded Maure mountains surround it on the land side, mitigating the keenness of the north, north-east, and east winds, but affording indifferent protection from the mistral or north-west wind. The Toulon road, extending east and west, forms the principal thoroughfare. On it, and in its proximity, are the best shops and the best hotels. From it ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... dining-room from where Jack Everson stood was the door leading to the rear of the house. This was open for three or four inches, and while searching the apartment with all the keenness of his powerful vision, he distinctly saw it move. The distance was no more than an inch, but he was not mistaken, and knew it had been drawn that much nearer shut. Since no air was stirring the conclusion was inevitable that some ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... done. Dealing with the Commons, his policy was "to be content with the substance and not to stand on the form." Dealing with the King, he was forward to recognise all that James wanted recognised of his kingcraft and his absolute sovereignty. Bacon assailed with a force and keenness which showed what he could do as an opponent, the amazing and intolerable grievances arising out of the survival of such feudal customs as Wardship and Purveyance; customs which made over a man's eldest son and property, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... She seemed bent on some errand, but the revellers at the fire caught her attention, and she suddenly swerved towards them, and came into the dull glow, her great black eyes shining with bewildered brilliancy and vague keenness, her long fingers reaching out with a sort of chafing motion. She did not speak till she was among them. I drew into the shade of a broken wall, and watched. She looked all round the circle, and then, without a word, took an iron crucifix ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... then, ho for la belle France! Adele certainly lends a cheerful assent. He cannot doubt—with those repeated kisses on his cheek and brow—her earnest filial affection; and if her sentiment slips beyond his control, or parries all his keenness of vision, what else has a father, verging upon sixty, to expect in a daughter, tenderly affectionate as she may be? Maverick's philosophy taught him to "take the world as it is." Only one serious apprehension of disquietude ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... interests as himself; and in his anxiety to serve her he had not thought it strange that Mr. Bellingham should take it for granted he was ready to embark on the expedition. He thought of that later, and wondered at the boldness of the stranger's assumption, no less than at the keenness of his wit. Poor Claudius! anybody might see he was ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... the Italian authors of that period attentively, we are astounded at the keenness and accuracy with which outward features are seized, and at the completeness with which personal appearance in general is described. Even today the Italians, and especially the Romans, have the art of sketching a man's picture in a couple of words. This rapid apprehension of what is characteristic ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... may the Sun of righteousness, which, we trust, will, at some future period, arise on him, be bright in proportion to the darkness of those clouds which guilt has raised around him, and the balm which it bestows, healing and soothing in proportion to the keenness of that agony which the punishment of his vices has inflicted on him! May the hope that the sincerity of my own efforts for the attainment of holiness, and the approval of my own love to the great Author of religion, will render this prayer, and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Serbian, Belgian and Russian armies alike. This article also was a protest against the lower tone which has prevailed by no means only amongst the newspapers printed in German. The Serbians are spoken of as "an enemy who can hardly be surpassed in keenness and untiring energy." No one has any right, the article says, to abuse the Belgians who had a right to fight and who fought very well, notwithstanding the notoriously unmilitary character of their country. Of the Russians we are told, "We must ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... and master, which is utterly revolting to the lad, whose childish feet had pattered beside the tender Rachel along the embowered paths of Ashfield. The lack of congeniality affronts his whole nature. In the keenness of his martyrdom, (none the less real because fancied,) the leathern-faced, gaunt Brummem takes the shape of some Giant Despair with bloody maw and mace,—and he, the child of some Christiana, for whose guiding hand he gropes vainly: she has gone ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... attempt to make the pass. Instead he went at the right-hand slope of the valley and began to climb. The slope was steep and soft, yet the stallion climbed up and up. The dust flew in clouds; the gravel rolled down, and the sand followed in long streams. Wildfire showed his keenness by zigzagging ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... lingered and chatted with him she more and more felt that she was face to face with a resourceful and strong-willed opponent. She noticed, through all the outward Celtic gentleness, the grim and passionate mouth, the keenness of the shifty yet penetrating hazel-gray eyes, the touch of almost bull-dog tenaciousness about the loose-jointed, high-shouldered figure, and, above all, the audacity of the careless Irish-American smile. That smile, she felt, trailed like a ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... (p. 249), with the comment that it is the best known to him (1896) and that he sees nothing to add or to take away from it. Inasmuch as it forms merely an episodic illustration in course of a general argument, it certainly bears witness to the keenness of Spencer's intellect. Yet I cannot agree with Ribot that it is a complete analysis of love. It aided me in conceiving the plan for my first book, but I soon found that it covered only a small part ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... When the gray evening twilight drew its deepening curtain over the cold glittering heavens and the icy waste, and when the famishing bodies had been covered from the frost that pinched them with but little less keenness than the unrelenting hunger, the solitude seemed to rend her very brain. Her own powers faltered. But she said her prayers over many times in the darkness as well as the light, and always with renewed trust in Him who had not yet forsaken her, and thus she sat out her weary watch. After the ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... arisen in so many countries and which seeks to expel all alien or heterogeneous elements, and to mould the whole national being into a single definite type. The movement has been still further strengthened by the greater keenness of trade competition. In the midst of many idle, drunken, and ignorant populations the shrewd, thrifty, and sober Jew stands conspicuous as the most successful trader. His rare power of judging, influencing, and managing men, his fertility of resource, his ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... which marked the keenness of his wit and the elevation of his sentiments, were quoted with pleasure in ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... very remarkably express the abundant mildness or good-nature which they possess; and are entirely free from that savage keenness which marks nations in a barbarous state. One would, indeed, be apt to fancy that they had been bred up under the severest restrictions, to acquire an aspect so settled, and such a command of their passions, as well as steadiness in conduct. But they are, at the same time, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... this reconciliation of the parties was for the moment only externaland that they were for the present much less agreed in adherence to the new state of things than in hatred against Caesar, did not mislead him; he knew well that antagonisms lose their keenness when brought into such outward union, and that only in this way can the statesman anticipate the work of time, which alone is able finally to heal such a strife by laying the old generation in the grave. Still less did he inquire ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the reader. The rays which the poet has dissociated into colorful beauty should recombine in the reader's brain into a new intensity of unified brilliance. The reflex of the poet's sight should sustain the original perception with a haunting keenness. The insubstantiality of the poet's spectres should touch with a tremulous vibrancy of ultimate fact the reader's ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... being by no means case-hardened. A similar instance, further removed from his immediate circle, might have called forth a strong, angry denunciation; but he felt too deeply anything affecting his own family or friends to be able in the first keenness of his grief ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... fundamental, world-wide and old, while the true ideas it seeks to substitute for them are fundamental and new. This great difficulty, felt at every stage of this writing, is, for a reason to be presently explained, greatly enhanced and felt with especial keenness in the present chapter. I therefore beg the reader to give me here very special cooperation—the cooperation of open-mindedness, candor and critical attention. It is essential to keep in mind the nature of our enterprise as a whole, ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... their part can be written below that of clarinets or hautboys, frequently transpose entire passages an octave higher. The conductor, if he does not carefully peruse his score, if he is not thoroughly acquainted with the work he is conducting, or if his ear lacks keenness, will not perceive the strange liberty thus taken. Nevertheless, multitudes of such instances occur, and care should be taken to ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... women are here to show their interest in a matter that's supposed to concern them so much?' Vida craned her head. 'Beside you, only one!' Borrodaile's mocking voice went on. 'Isn't this an instance of your sex's indifference to the whole thing? Isn't it equally an instance of man's keenness about public questions?' He couldn't forbear adding in a whisper, 'Even such a question, and ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... of Gaston, but with a professional keenness of eye began to point out minor points in which the baby "favoured" ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Lincoln's Inn Fields and Long Acre, towards Piccadilly and Hyde Park. It was by no means a typical November afternoon: the sky was a delicate blue and the air mild, with just enough of autumn keenness in it to remind one, not unpleasantly, of the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... the elder was what is termed a lucky man. In other words, he had that keenness of intellect which enables the possessor to seize opportunities and to ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... emerged in an articulate shape; and will see it to maturity, if the gods permit. With a keen solicitude Patriotism watches; getting ever keener, at every new difficulty, as Girondins and false brothers interpose delays; till it get a keenness as of fixed-idea, and will have this Trial and no earthly thing instead of it,—if Equality be not a name. Love of Equality; then scepticism of terror, rage of victory, sublime spectacle of the universe: all ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... man himself Brought Death into the world; and man himself Gave keenness to his darts, quickened his pace, And multiplied destruction on mankind. First Envy, eldest born of Hell, imbrued Her hands in blood, and taught the sons of men To make a death which nature never made, And God abhorred; with violence rude to break The thread of life, ere half ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head |
