"Penetration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Poor child! After all your efforts, it's rather hard upon you. But if you expect me to be surprised, you do your only brother's penetration something less than justice. It has been an evident case of spoons—apparent to the dullest intellect from the first. I have long outlived the tender passion myself, but in others I always regard it with a fatherly—nay—let me say, even grandfatherly interest. And ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... of Governments has not delivered them over to the fatal malaria, the Italians are, mentally, the most richly endowed people in Europe. M. de Rayneval, who is not the man to flatter them, admits that they have "intelligence, penetration, and aptitude for everything." The cultivation of the arts is no less natural to them than is the study of the sciences; their first steps in every path open to human intellect are singularly rapid, and if but too many of them ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... those of the Intelligence Director. They were noted for their icy penetration, but upon this night they were like steel knives. It was as though he surveyed Hillerman from behind the bulwark of some new and hostile information. Even as he stared, Cargill was ...
— The Clean and Wholesome Land • Ralph Sholto
... temperament which, in all his evil days and deeds and moments of shy nobility, could find its way into the souls of men with whom the world had had an awkward hour. He was a man of little speech, but he had that rare persuasive penetration which unlocked the doors of trouble, despair, and tragedy. Men who would never have confessed to a priest confessed to him. In his every fibre was the granite of the Indian nature, which looked upon ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... she said, standing in the middle of the room, "but tell me, Smithers, why is Arthur so unpopular? You, I understand, are his only close friend." She stood in a dazzle of sun, and out of it her eyes regarded me with such leaden penetration beneath their thick lids that I doubt if my face concealed the least thought from her. "But there, there," she added very suavely, stooping her head a little, "don't trouble to answer me. I never extort an answer. Boys are queer fish. Brains might perhaps have suggested his ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... more and more keen and terrible. Therefore, during the rare moments when Diard and Juana met she would cast upon his hollow face, wan from nights of gambling and furrowed by emotions, a piercing look, the penetration of which made Diard shudder. At such times the assumed gaiety of her husband alarmed Juana more than his gloomiest expressions of anxiety when, by chance, he forgot that assumption of joy. Diard feared ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... is usually borne down speedily. On the other hand, it is a wasteful exhibition of human power to attempt the creation of a new party by the force of combined will and resolutions formulated in public meetings. Abraham Lincoln's great experience or keener penetration, or both, guided him at the outset of the realignments on political issues, and at the opening of the Congressional campaign of 1858, I followed him firmly and without mental reservation into the ranks ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... my kids?" asked O'Flarety, marvelling how any man with so little penetration as the officer, managed to hold down a "good ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... separated, proceeded—confiding in splendid oratorical talents and ardent feelings rashly wedded to novel expectations, when common sense, uninquisitive experience, and a modest reliance on old habits of judgement, when either these, or a philosophic penetration, were the only qualities that could ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the rifle, for the sake of obtaining force of penetration, nothing yet compares with the Accelerating Rifle, invented some years since by a New York mechanic. In this the ball was started by an ordinary charge, and at a certain distance down the barrel received a new ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... first, Madame Roland had distrusted Danton. It was not long before her intuitions proved correct, for Danton soon showed his jealousy and dislike of the minister, whom he found too honest to tamper with. He feared, too, the penetration, frankness, and genius of Roland's wife. Men who saw the insidious, selfish qualities of Danton, began to cultivate and conciliate him out of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... wrote to Koerner that he was reading Watson and that 'weighty reforms were threatening his own Philip and Alva.' The Rev. Robert Watson's history by no means idealizes Philip, but it credits him with sincerity, vigilance, penetration, self-control, administrative capacity and a 'considerable share of sagacity' in the choice of ministers and generals,—not an altogether mean list of kingly qualities. On the other hand, in Mercier's book[72] Philip ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... parapet than in any other architectural feature, and for most services, the Flamboyant parapets seem to me preferable to all others; especially when the leaden roofs set off by points of darkness the lace-like intricacy of penetration. These, however, as well as the forms usually given to Renaissance balustrades (of which, by the bye, the best piece of criticism I know is the sketch in "David Copperfield" of the personal appearance of the man who stole Jip), and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the dark?" Thorpe questioned. "Or...." He visioned dimly some denizen of the vast depths, living beyond the limits of the sun's penetration, far in the abysmal darkness where its only light must be self-made. But his mind failed in the attempt to picture what manner of horror ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... less true that in many of these cities there was some small but active centre of opposition, the salon of some gifted woman who was working might and main for the final triumph of the principle of Italian control in Italy. Napoleon had penetration enough to take such opposition at its just valuation. Women had already given him many a mauvais quart d'heure in Paris; Madame de Stael and, later, the beautiful Madame Recamier were forced to go into exile because he feared their ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... require much penetration," said Mary, "to discover the Doctor's master-passion; love of ease and self-indulgence seem to be the pre-dominant features of his mind; and he looks as if, when he sat in an arm-chair, with his toes on the fender and his hands ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... cinema theatres in the vicinity of his poor home. His appreciation of the crude mysteries of the filmed detective drama amused the famous expert in the finer art of actual crime detection, until he discovered that the boy possessed natural gifts of intuition and observation, combined with penetration. Crewe grew interested in developing the boy's talent for detective work. When the lad's mother died Crewe decided to take him into his Holborn offices as messenger-boy. Crewe soon discovered that Joe had a useful ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... scabbard-mouth before him and keeping it in constant motion. But it often happens that the woman, unless she have a loathing for her violator, becomes infected with the amorous storge, relaxes her defense, feels pleasure in the outer contact of the parts and almost insensibly allows penetration and emission. Even conception is possible in such cases as is proved in that curious work, "The Curiosities of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... You see through all things with your penetration. Now I am calm. How fares it with Maria? My heart doth ache ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Goethe. It is astounding how commonly the function and the brain power of the great poet are misconceived and underrated. The supreme poets are no dainty or fragile sentimentalists; in reality they are the very flower of human penetration. Not because they write in splendid verse. That, indeed, is the appropriate vehicle of their power; the harmonies and melodies of verse represent and reproduce the tone and colour vibrations of their singularly rich natures; but verse ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... a man of no inconsiderable penetration. He understood the thoughts which, upon this occasion, passed in the mind of his wife, and in order to ensure her kind treatment of the boy, instead of reproaching her for the cold manner in which she had at first received him, he praised her tender and sympathetic heart ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... other intelligences can't do the same? From two bottle-like pods the clusters of darts—or long, sharp thorns—were shot. Only a few of them struck their targets. Fewer, still, found puncturable areas and struck through silicone rubber and fine steelwire cloth into flesh. Penetration was not ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... but an organ of life? Are not all things therein organically formed to produce the things which the love wills and the understanding thinks? Are not the organs of the body from nature, and love and thought from life? And are not those things entirely distinct from each other? Raise the penetration of your ingenuity a little, and you will see that it is the property of life to be affected and to think, and that to be affected is from love, and to think is from wisdom, and each is from life; for, as we have said, love and wisdom are life: if you elevate your faculty of understanding ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Is there to be no laughter left in literature free from the preoccupation of a sham real-life? So it would seem. Even what the great master has not shown us in his work, that your critic convinced of pathos is resolved to see in it. By the penetration of his intrusive sympathy he will come at it. It is of little use now to explain Snug the joiner to the audience: why, it is precisely Snug who stirs their emotions so painfully. Not the lion; they can see through that: but the Snug within, the human Snug. And Master Shallow has the Weltschmerz ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... aghast at his penetration. After a pause he said carelessly, as if dismissing the subject: "Besides, I hear the rain ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... scholar, extolled him altogether on the account of the first of these titles; but others, who knew him better, could not forbear doing him justice as a prodigy in both kinds. He had signalized himself, in the schools, as a philosopher and polemick of extensive knowledge and deep penetration; and went through all the courses with a wise regard to the dignity and importance of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... with a steel ball, against the French plate, the English being hors de combat. The penetration was the same; the ball was not broken, but was flattened at the point like the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... synchronism, so that the vibrations are thrown upon the escaping air or steam; and the result is an instrument with a capacity of magnifying the sounds two hundred times, and of hurling them to great distances intelligibly, like a huge fog-siren, but with immense clearness and penetration. All this study of sound transmission over long distances without wires led up to the consideration and invention of pioneer apparatus for wireless telegraphy—but ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... next morning was crowded as usual, and it needed very little penetration on Pledge's part to see that the triple alliance between our three heroes was ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... He also enters con amore into the details of raising a Napoleonic army, and of establishing the system of the Landwehr in France. A very remarkable passage in this manifesto is that on the Press; by which, he says, the Government is terrorised. With extraordinary penetration, he advises that the strength of journalism shall be broken by the sacrifice of the three or four millions gained by the "timbre," and the liberation of the newspapers, which are stronger than the seven ministers—for they upset the Government, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... lair. Twice had Palmer crossed over in the darkness of night, and, Winchester in hand, carefully sought for traces of Jinaban's hiding-place, but without success. The interior of the island was a dense thicket of scrub which seemed to defy penetration. On the last occasion Palmer had hidden among a mass of broken and vine-covered coral boulders which covered the eastern shore. Here for a whole night and the following day he remained, keeping a keen watch ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... have bespoke a better; with other the like gross stuff, such as would itself have started suspicions in any but such an unpractised simpleton, who was perfectly new to life, and who took every word she said in the very sense she laid out for me to take it; but she readily saw what a penetration she had to deal with, and measured me very rightly in her manner of whistling to me, so as to make me pleased with my cage, and ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... mind. How little the President knew about women! How he underestimated their intelligence and penetration of things political,! Was it possible that he really thought these earnest champions of liberty would merely carry resolutions of sorrow and ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... him. I have seen several pictures of Garrick, none resembling another, and I have heard Hannah More speak of the extraordinary variety of countenance by which he was distinguished, and of the unequalled radiance and penetration of his eye. The voice and delivery of Jeffrey resemble his face. He possesses considerable power of mimicry, and rarely tells a story without imitating several different accents. His familiar tone, his ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the slightly foreign accent which lent an added charm to her words, "I cannot help thinking it rather droll that a man of your mind and rare penetration should have thought you had ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... was too much stunned by this evidence of Ridgeway's apparently superhuman penetration to reply. After enjoying his host's confusion for a moment with his eyes, Ridgeway's mouth ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... exceptions, however, to this rule, for we hear of prudes that have been made chaste, bullies that have been brave, and saints that have been religious. Confide only where your own observation shall direct you; observe not only what is said, but how it is said, and if you have penetration, you may find out the truth better by your eyes than your ears; in short, never take a character upon common report, but enquire into it yourself; for common report, though it is right in general, may be wrong ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... to do so," she said, smiling; "though I scarcely thought, Eustace, that you had less penetration than your dog! But do you remember what I once told you;—twice deceived, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... maramots and springbok antelope. Several of the latter were shot and added greatly to the comfort of the mess. Every few days they met the up or down carts, going or coming from the diamond regions. These would sometimes stop and give the news of above or below. It did not take much penetration to know the successful from the disappointed, coming from the mines as they got out of the train to stretch themselves. Forty days after leaving the Cape, they outspanned on the banks of the Orange river, into ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... which I felt when my anguish at having to go up to my room invaded my consciousness in a manner infinitely more rapid, instantaneous almost, a manner at once insidious and brutal as I breathed in—a far more poisonous thing than any moral penetration—the peculiar smell of the varnish ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the League might for one reason or another wish to resist the claim of the United States for redress. Names of States which might possibly so combine could be given, but it is better to refrain. It is not inconceivable that German penetration and intrigue at some future time might promote a combination of the kind. All sorts of influences might be brought to bear on certain of the States and on their representatives. Dynastic ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... ladies of the Parisian saloons. She always was a charming, artless, graceful young woman, but she lacked the striking advantages of a real drawing-room lady; she lacked that perfect self-possession, that pliancy of refinement, that sparkling wit, and that penetration, which then characterized the ladies of the higher Parisian society, and which the young viscount had but lately so fondly and passionately admired in the beautiful and ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... Slumper was doing battle. How much it cost the poor sinner to pick up the letter, emerge from his closet, and make his way upstairs to Mr. Blithe's ante-chamber will never be known. That it reduced his overdraft in Heaven goes without saying. Curiously enough, the penetration of the barrier erected upon the obnoxious personality of a managing clerk proved a less formidable business than Mr. Slumper had expected. The very truculence of the fellow stung the derelict to a sudden defiance. This was but a flash in the pan—yet enough for a bully.... After a moment's ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... and who possess neither the courage to reprehend vice, nor the generous warmth to defend virtue. The friendship of such persons is without attachment, and their love without affection or even preference. They imagine that every one who has any penetration is ill-natured, and look coldly on a discriminating judgment. It should be remembered, however, that this discernment does not always proceed from an uncharitable temper, but that those who possess a long experience and thorough knowledge ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the Far Eastern populations was acknowledged on all sides. But the very success of American enterprise in this beneficent direction had created in the minds of the Japanese a doubt as to the wisdom of allowing free play to American penetration. ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... affairs? Were all her efforts futile to hide her love? In spite of her habit of reserve and repression she had a passionate heart, and this fact had been forced upon her by vain and continuous struggles. Had he the penetration to learn the truth? She could not tell, and this uncertainty touched her pride to the very quick. After hours of wavering purpose, impulses to ignore him and his request, moments of tenderness in which will, pride, and every consideration ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Plutonic Rocks. Granite and its Varieties. Decomposing into Spherical Masses. Rude columnar Structure. Graphic Granite. Mutual Penetration of Crystals of Quartz and Feldspar. Glass Cavities in Quartz of Granite. Porphyritic, talcose, and syenitic Granite. Schorlrock and Eurite. Syenite. Connection of the Granites and Syenites with the Volcanic Rocks. Analogy in Composition of Trachyte and Granite. ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... behind its neighbors in upgrading telecommunications infrastructure; state-owned Beltelcom, is the sole provider of fixed line local and long distance service; modernization of the network to digital switching progressing slowly domestic: fixed line penetration is improving although rural areas continue to be underserved; four GSM wireless networks are experiencing rapid growth; strict government controls on telecommunications technologies international: country ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... them all," is not alone the penetration and universality of his comprehension, but likewise and especially "the force, flexibility, and constancy of his attention. He can work eighteen hours at a stretch, on one or on several subjects. I never ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... said he, to find what I propos'd meet with any Objection from one whose Penetration makes me fear some Obstacle considerable, which has escaped my Scrutiny. However, if I have the Mortification to have my Views baffled, yet shall I reap the Advantage of being instructed in what I am ignorant of. His Excellency has commanded me to lay before you what my Reasons are, for supposing ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... seem to care much about it, mother. I don't think she is quite happy," Frances remarked with an air of great penetration. ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... German shouts rolled forth the Russians ran. A neighboring division consisting of young men who had enlisted in the course of the war, in a brilliant charge took a bastion at Klosnowo. The effect of this first penetration of the Russian main position made itself felt in the course of the afternoon and night along the whole front. Further German forces were thrown into the breach and strove to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... a fine people—a people of remarkable cuteness and penetration; but it seems to me that they are taking things easy as far as fighting is concerned. They don't send their soldiers to ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... roots like potatoes, turnips, etc., and with other starchy foods such as rice and grains. Here the cooking serves to break up and separate the hard starch granules and to make them more pervious to penetration by the ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... with which he held her. Her lips were slightly parted with a half-wicked smile that showed her fine white teeth; the same expression of ungovernable malice burned in her dark eyes, which she riveted for some seconds on those of Camors with persistent penetration—then suddenly veiled them under the fringe of her dark lashes. This glance sent a thrill like lightning to his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of this effect—most of it, in fact—lay in the role of Lillian they had not penetration enough to distinguish; they began to doubt whether she had ever been the very great success and the powerful woman they had ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... River Anthology", published first in 'Reedy's Mirror' and in book form in 1915. This volume, written in free verse and containing about two hundred brief sketches, or posthumous confessions, shows Mr. Masters to be a psychologist of the keenest penetration, a satirist and humorist, laying bare unsparingly the springs of human weakness, but seeing with an equal insight humanity's finer side. "Spoon River Anthology", which had perhaps a wider recognition than that of any volume of verse of the period, was followed ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... laugh at, Dupont?" asked his wife, a very good creature, but not famous for intelligence or penetration. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... I pretend to know a little of the sex? Surely, Lady Beauchamp, a man of common penetration may see to the bottom of a woman's heart. A cunning woman cannot hide it. A good woman will not. You are not, madam, such mysteries, as some of us think you. Whenever you know your own minds, we need not be long doubtful: that is all the difficulty: and I will vindicate you, ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... occasion to say of Dr. Johnson's Preface to Shakspeare what he himself said of a similar production of the poet Rowe, 'that it does not discover much profundity or penetration,' we ought in common fairness always to add that nobody else has ever written about Shakspeare one-half so entertainingly. If this statement be questioned, let the doubter, before reviling me, re-read the preface, and if, after he has done so, he still demurs, we shall be content ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... literature, not only of her own nation, but of the Latin, Spanish, Italian, and English languages, which she spoke with fluency and correctness, a rare accomplishment for a French woman. During the Empire and the Restoration she was intimate with Madame Recamier and Madame de Stael, and for penetration and readiness of mind and charm of manners was not unworthy to be ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... picture-books and the custards and the domestic situation had, though disfigured and overscored, not quite received its death-stroke; I disengaged, by a mere identification of obscured window and profaned portico, a whole chapter of history; which fact should indeed be a warning to penetration, a practical plea here for the superficial—by its exhibition of the rate at which the relations of any gage of experience multiply and ramify from the moment the mind begins to handle it. I pursued a swarm of such relations, on the occasion I speak ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... ad infinitum is deemed absurd, the notion that relations come 'between' their terms must be given up. No mere external go-between can logically connect. What occurs must be more intimate. The hooking must be a penetration, a possession. The relation must involve the terms, each term must involve it, and merging thus their being in it, they must somehow merge their being in each other, tho, as they seem still phenomenally so separate, we can never conceive exactly how ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... burrow, with their heads pressed as far as practicable under the skin, causing a sensation of smarting, as if particles of red hot sand had been scattered over the flesh. If torn from their hold, the suckers remain behind and form an ulcer. The only safe expedient is to tolerate the agony of their penetration till a drop of coco-nut oil or the juice of a lime can be applied, when these little furies drop off without further ill consequences. One very large species, dappled with grey, attaches ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Deep in his heart—for he had a heart, though contracted from want of use—lay a hungry desire to be loved, really loved for himself; and the very keenness of the longing, and the anxiety not to be deceived, lessened his powers of penetration, and blinded ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... a man of great cunning and penetration, divined what had happened (perhaps indeed he had been informed of it by the messenger who brought him his summons), and suspecting that the Gallic troops were likely to break the existing concord, he pretended that a token which ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... was, in May, 1839, that Colonel Napier met him. Nobody knew who, or of what nationality, he was—this "mysterious Unknown," the white-haired young man, with dark eyes of almost supernatural penetration and lustre, who gave himself out to be thirty instead of thirty-five, who spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Romaic to those who best understood these languages. Borrow and Napier rode out together to the ruins ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the facts collected by Klaproth are very curious, and throw an unexpected light on the migration of ancient races. The penetration and sagacity of the traveller were marvellous, and his memory was extraordinary. The scholar of Berlin rendered signal services to the science of philology. It is to be regretted that his qualities as a man, his principles, and his temper, were not on a level ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... to use all the penetration I was capable of, to find out one thing, whether you were purely and unreservedly sincere in it. I wondered whether you really wished to live your life alone, but could not find the courage to tell me so. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... fancy." "Old poetry," Ritson says to Warton, "is the same thing to you, sense or nonsense." He dwells on Warton's marked attraction to whatever is prodigious and impossible. The manner in which these accusations are made is insolent and detestable; but Ritson had penetration, and without knowing what he reached, in some of these diatribes he pierced to the heart of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... nothing but the wild plums of the prairies. At evening one of my Indians, an experienced warrior, started alone to spy into their camp, which he was successful enough to penetrate, and learn the plan of their expedition, by certain tokens which could not deceive his cunning and penetration. The boat-house contained a large sailing boat, besides seven or eight skiffs. There also we had in store our stock of dried fish and fishing apparatus, such as nets, etcetera. As we had been at peace for several years, the house, or post, had no garrison, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... variety, belongs to the voice! Sometimes it is a flute, sometimes a trip-hammer; what a range of force! In moments of clearer thought or deeper sympathy, the voice will attain a music and penetration which surprise the speaker as much ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... rule they submit, because of love which masters and controls them. The heart cries out for a person—not for things. Spirit desires spirit; soul yearns for soul. It is the genius of woman to be electrical in movement, intuitive in penetration, and spiritual in tendency. She excels not so easily in classification or recreation as in an instinctive seizure of causes, and a simple breathing out of what she receives, that has the singleness of life, rather ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... things. But, if you really understand them, I would say to you: "Give me L20,000 and I will save the situation entirely." That would be doing something worthy of your great powers; that would give you a reputation for penetration in discerning the real state of affairs; because by so doing you would safeguard the welfare of more than a thousand people, and ensure a prosperous ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... to favour his scheme, he being a young man of no experience in the world, and having no great correspondence with the French: he was the more easily gained over, as all the Suns were agreed, that the Sun of the Apple was a man of solidity and penetration; who having repaired to the Sovereign of nation, apprised him of the necessity of taking that step, as in time himself would be forced to quit his own village; also of the wisdom of the measures concerted, ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... forensic powers when deputed by the students to make a representation to the benchers of the Inner Temple at one of the 'moots' respecting the poor quality of the commons served in the hall. He argued with so much quickness of penetration and solidity of judgment that he gave entire satisfaction to the students and was much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... utterly disintegrating; his poetic genius fell back to the lowest level, perhaps, to which it is possible for poetic genius to fall. He reduced his imagination to a passive sensorium for the registering of impressions. No element of construction remained in it, and therefore no element of penetration. But his scope was wide; and his lazy, desultory apprehension was poetical. His work, for the very reason that it is so rudimentary, contains a beginning, or rather many beginnings, that might possibly grow into a noble moral imagination, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... be at a loss to enter upon this perplexed and intricate subject, if I did not know, that History has already familiarized to your Lordship the principal objects which occur in this research, and that it is the effect of extensive knowledge and superior penetration to invigorate the effort of Diffidence, and to repress the surmises ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... deviations and disappearances, its distribution in the various choirs of wood-wind, brass, and strings, its interweaving with other themes, its resilient, surprising, and apposite emergences, its pervasive penetration of the total scheme. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... title of "The Conqueror of Peru." With the sovereign as his prisoner, and elated by his great victory, he felt that there was no resistance that he had to fear. It seems that Attahuallapa had penetration enough to discern that De Soto was a very different man in character from the Pizarros. He soon became quite cordial and unreserved in his intercourse with him. And there is no evidence that De Soto ever, ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... Delvile, "your affairs will not much miss him! Since I have heard of the excess of his extravagance, I have extremely rejoiced in the uncommon prudence and sagacity of his fair ward, who, in such dangerous hands, with less penetration and sound sense, might have been drawn into a thousand difficulties, and perhaps defrauded of ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... is tall, elegant and graceful. His manners are singularly polite, and uniformly unembarassed. His voice is melodious, and he is eminently endowed by nature with the gift of eloquence. A person of your penetration will therefore readily imagine, that his society is courted by the fair. His propensity to the tender passion appears to have been very great, and he of consequence lays himself out in a gallantry that I can by no ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... toilet, which makes people feel and look so awkward. But she put the best face upon the matter, and entering, made a very respectful courtesy to Mrs. Melwyn, who met her, holding out her hand; and with her face and appearance Lettice felt charmed in a moment. Mrs. Melwyn, who did not want penetration, saw that in Lettice, spite of present disadvantages, which she was sure she should like very much. Not so the general. He was a perfect fool of the eye, as military men are too apt to be. Whatever was awkward or ill-dressed, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... natural object or event is presented, it is impossible for us, by any sagacity or penetration, to discover, or even conjecture, without experience, what event will result from it, or to carry our foresight beyond that object, which is immediately present to the memory and senses. Even after ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... began to scrimmage; the broken-spirited Christie exhibiting both alacrity and penetration in searching obscure corners. In the dining-room, behind the dresser, three or four books were discovered: an odd volume of Thackeray, another of Dickens, a memorandum-book or diary. "This seems to be Latin," said Jessie, fishing out a smaller book. ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... appear, his haggard face, his strange, absent air, and the unmistakable evidences of the profound depression that possessed him, were the objects of general remark. Some of the more charitable expressed a confident opinion that the curate had committed a crime; others decided, with more penetration, that he was going mad. From Miss Cope he kept carefully aloof. It had been arranged at that fatal interview that their engagement should be kept secret until the return of the Vicar, whose sanction ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... at first inclined to the protestant doctrines, and then again persecuted them with extreme energy. He sacrificed, as formerly Empson and Dudley, so Wolsey and now Cromwell to the public opinion roused against them. He recognised with quick penetration successive political necessities and followed their guidance. The most characteristic thing is that he always seemed to belong body and soul to these tendencies, however much they differed from each other: he let them be established by laws contradictory to each other, and insisted ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... thought her charming when she cared to charm; to be confirmed in one's opinions by such pretty, vivacious eyes and lips few men would find distasteful. To Lawrence she had nothing to say. She knew that he knew that she had nothing worth saying. She resented his penetration; she resented his pity; and pity was the only light in which he found the thought of her tolerable. He had thought to show her through his eyes widening vistas of beauty and grandeur; and instead he caught glimpses through hers ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... aware of the presence of another person, though we may have heard and seen nothing, Blanche became conscious that she was no longer alone. She looked up quickly, into the face of a stranger; but no great penetration was needed to guess that the young man before her was ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... W. Peckham, in presenting the report on contested seats, briefly stated that the committee, by a unanimous vote, found "the gentlemen now occupying seats entitled to them by virtue of their regularity."[1773] Kelly's conceit did not blind his penetration to the fact that for the present, at least, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... he was watching her with all the powers of penetration he possessed. Madame d'Argeles's laugh had an unnatural ring that awakened his suspicions. All Coralth's recommendations buzzed confusedly in his ears, and he judged that the moment had come "to do the sentimental," as he would have ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... contemplative side. Joseph Goodman recognized this phase of his character, and, while he perhaps did not regard it as a future literary asset, he delighted in it, and in their hours of quiet association together encouraged its exhibition. It is rather curious that with all his literary penetration Goodman did not dream of a future celebrity for Clemens. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the answer increased Darrow's interest in Miss Painter. She had not hitherto struck him as being a person of much penetration, but he now felt sure that her gimlet gaze might bore to the heart ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... of wit, a great deal of penetration, much beyond your years, and, as I thought, your opportunities. You are possessed of an open, frank, and generous mind; and a person so lovely, that you excel all your sex, in my eyes. All these accomplishments have ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... known as Taounyawatha, and he presided over the fisheries and the waterways. Whenever there was dissension among the various nations of the Iroquois, it was his word which settled the dispute. Grey-haired he was, penetration marked his eye, dark mystery pervaded his countenance. One day there was internal war and great slaughter followed. The wise men of the nations got together and summoned Hiawatha. They built great council fires ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... said a word. Surprised at first, he had soon smiled. He was gifted with more penetration than Dubuche, so he gave him a knowing nod, and they then began to chaff. They begged Claude's pardon; the moment he wanted to keep the young person for his personal use, they would not ask him to lend her. Ha! ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Sir John Eliot. Lord Eliot has furnished the portrait which is engraved for this work, together with some very interesting letters. The portrait is undoubtedly an original, and probably the only original now in existence. The intellectual forehead, the mild penetration of the eye, and the inflexible resolution expressed by the lines of the mouth, sufficiently guarantee the likeness. We shall probably make some extracts from the letters. They contain almost all the new information that Lord Nugent has been able to procure respecting the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Queen Victoria in January, 1901, called forth a spontaneous burst of loyal gratitude, devotion and appreciation from all parties and all sections of the country. Every leading statesman among her councillors dwelt on the extraordinary penetration of her mind, her wide political knowledge, her great practical sagacity, her grasp of principle, and they combined to acclaim her as the most trusted of all the constitutional monarchs whom the world had then ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... spot once more to provide you a grave, you had vanished. Again I met you. You plunged into a rapid stream, from a height from which it was impossible to fall and to live; yet, as if to set the limits of nature at defiance, to sport with human penetration, you rose upon the surface; you floated; you swam; thirty bullets were aimed at your head, by marksmen celebrated for the exactness of their sight. I myself was of the number, and I never missed what I desired ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... than he promised; and that, without the pomp of notes or boasts of criticism, many passages are happily restored. He prefixed a life of the author, such as tradition, then almost expiring, could supply, and a preface, which cannot be said to discover much profundity or penetration. He at least contributed to the popularity of his author. He was willing enough to improve his fortune by other arts than poetry. He was under-secretary for three years when the Duke of Queensberry was Secretary of State, and afterwards applied to the Earl of Oxford ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... him with a glance of entreaty: "I hear you have great talents; that you can ferret out the real criminal from a score of doubtful characters, and that nothing can escape the penetration of your eye. If this is so, have pity on two orphan girls, suddenly bereft of their guardian and protector, and use your acknowledged skill in finding out who has committed this crime. It would be folly in me to endeavor to hide from you that my cousin in her testimony has given cause for suspicion; ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... that something better should win the first place, I hold to be the most desirable of possible events. But perhaps our 'S.E.' is not yet so far committed to the process of decay as to be incapable of reform, and the machinery that we use for penetration may be used as well for organizing a reform and for enforcing it. There is as much fashion as inevitable law in our 'P.S.P.' or 'S.E.' talk, and if the fashion for a better, that is a more distinct and conservative, pronunciation should set in, then at the cost of ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges |
