"Penetrative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you to read, in the same volume, the close of the chapter 'Of Imagination Penetrative,' pp. 120 to 130, of which the gist, which I must give as the first principle from which we start in our to-day's inquiry, is that "Imagination, rightly so called, has no food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... penetrated by profound religious convictions, the faith and charity of the latter being especially vivid and pervading. The one has a preponderance of the beautiful gift of a rich fancy, while to the other was given in greater degree the power of the penetrative and sympathetic imagination. The one, as we read, recalls to us a glittering heap of precious, shining jewels; the other, the first cluster of spring violets, wreaths of virginal lilies and midsummer roses, growths ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the self-raised spontaneous products of some miraculous soil, from which prodigies and portents spring. Many of his ideas were in the air, and did not belong to him peculiarly; but so strangely rapid and perfect was his assimilation of them, so vigorous and minutely penetrative was the quality of his understanding, so firm and independent his initiative, that even these were instantly stamped with the express image of his personality. In a word, Voltaire's work from first to last was alert with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... burst, I lashed the gun in the fork of a tree, tied a piece of string a hundred feet long to the trigger, and then—taking shelter behind a friendly stump—pulled off. To my great satisfaction the barrel stood the test perfectly. More than that, on trying the penetrative effect of my bullets, I found that they would smash through a steel plate an eighth of an inch thick at thirty yards' range. This was quite good enough for my purpose, and gave me great confidence in the weapon. All the same, I had a very narrow escape one day while manufacturing ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... and the breach of the seal of the seventy-seventh phial of Dr. Stirbacks), in gratitude for that miraculous escape, he did his very best to please everybody. To Dr. Upround he was an agreeable and penetrative companion; to Mrs. Upround, a gallant guest, with a story for every slice of bread and butter; to Janetta, a deity combining the perfections of Jupiter, Phoebus, Mars, and Neptune (because of his yacht), without any of their ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... had forgotten the other man. But now I noticed that the pseudo-bandits wore a watchful and not unhopeful air. And suddenly one of them whistled—a thin, shrill note that had, as Tish later remarked, great penetrative power without being noisy. ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in large measure with the qualities of an historian of the highest order. A clear and comprehensive vision, a wide knowledge and careful study of human nature, free and generous sympathies are united in him with a penetrative imagination which vivifies the life of past times, with a reverence for truth which excludes prejudice and prepossession, and with a profoundly religious spirit. The tone of his thought is manly and vigorous, and his style, with the beauty of which the readers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... I very absurdly, though unconsciously, tried to imitate it. His character I do not think was a very well disciplined one at that time; he was, I believe, "a good hater," a dangerous opponent, yet withal he had immense self-command. On the whole, he was generally regarded chiefly as a man of penetrative intellect and sarcastic wit; but under all this I discerned a spirit so true, so delicate and tender, so touched [30] with a profound and exquisite, though concealed, sensibility, that he won my admiration, respect, and affection in an equal degree. He removed ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Shakspere are nothing but notes, made here and there, from a course of lectures delivered before the Royal Institute, and never fully written out. Though only hints and suggestions, they are, perhaps, the most penetrative and helpful Shaksperian criticism in English. He was always forming projects and abandoning them. He projected a great work on Christian philosophy, which was to have been his magnum opus, but he never wrote it. He projected ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... whom he happened to be addressing himself at the moment. I felt that no effect upon my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transitory, in myself, escaped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative and delicate; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... as he stood to be inaugurated under the war-cloud in 1861. But there is another Lincoln as dear to the common people—the Lincoln of happy quotations, the speaker of household words. Instead of the erect, impressive, penetrative platform orator we see a long, gaunt figure, divided between two chairs for comfort, the head bent forward, smiling broadly, the lips curved in laughter, the deep eyes irradiating their caves of wisdom; the story-telling Lincoln, enjoying the enjoyment ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... clear-sighted, discriminating, penetrative, shrewd, crafty, keen, perspicacious, subtile, cunning, knowing, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... wording of her son's speech. Apparently, no amount of woollen wraps, no double thickness of green veil to keep the glare out, no smoked glasses with flanges to make it harmless if it gets in, can obscure the Goody's penetrative powers when invoked for the discomfiture of her kind. "But does not my dear boy know," she continues gushily, "that I am always content to be alone as long as I can be sure that he is happily employed ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... system, developed as it is found in Bellini or Perugino, will attain the most profound and serene color, while it will never betray into looseness or audacity. But if in the mind of the painter invention prevail over veneration,—if his eye be creative rather than penetrative, and his hand more powerful than patient—let him not be confined to a system where light, once lost, is as irrecoverable as time, and where all success depends on husbandry of resource. Do not measure out to him his sunshine in inches of gesso; let ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the imaginary vision we find first the species kept in the memory; secondly, the vision itself, which is caused by the penetrative power of the soul, that is, the faculty of imagination, informed by the species; and thirdly, we find the intention of the will joining both together. But each of these trinities falls short of the Divine image. For ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... morning Doris wondered what had happened. There was a loneliness in the very air, as there had been when Uncle Leverett died. The sky was overcast, not exactly promising a storm, but soft and penetrative, as if ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... middle of the century the air was full of ideas upon these social subjects. The temptation was irresistible to turn from the confusion of squalor, oppression, license, distorted organisation, penetrative disorder, to ideal states comprising a little range of simple circumstances, and a small number of types of virtuous and unsophisticated character. Much came of the relief thus sought and found. It was the beginning of the subversive process, for it ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... fertilising influence over the minds of others his intellect was bound to be of the dispersive order; it was essential that he should "take all knowledge to be his province," and that that eager, subtle, and penetrative mind should range as freely as it did over subject after subject of human interest;—illuminating each of them in turn with those rays of true critical insight which, amid many bewildering cross-lights and some few downright ignes ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Word speak but one language, teach but one set of truths. How was it possible that the writers of the earlier Scriptures described physical phenomena with wonderful sublimity, and with such penetrative truth? They gazed upon the same heaven that those men saw who ages afterward led the world in knowledge. These latter were near-sighted, and absorbed [Page 245] in the pictures on the first veil of matter; the former were far-sighted, and penetrated a hundred ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... nothing in her presence which would materially reveal their real situation, for which they intended very gradually to prepare her, the scrutinising powers with which nature had prodigally invested their daughter were not easily baffled. She asked no questions, but nothing seemed to escape the penetrative glance of that large dark blue eye, calm amid all the mystery, and tolerating rather than sharing the frequent embrace of her parents. After a while her brother came home from Eton, to which he was never to return. A few days before this event she became ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... became acquainted with her, I saw at once that her heart was of the very finest, richest quality, and her wisdom and insight are, as ever must be in such a case, exactly correspondent' (ibid. p. 397). Such words from one so penetrative, so indeceivable, so great in the fullest sense as was the daughter of the COLERIDGE, makes every one long to have the same service done for Miss FENWICK as has been done for SARA COLERIDGE and Miss HARE, and within these weeks for Mrs. FLETCHER. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... spring—looks rather above the heads of his fellow-passengers—but with a quick, easy turn of his own, which is lightly set on his shoulders; his mouth is a little open—his eye is bright, rather restless, but penetrative—his port has something of defiance—his form is erect, but without stiffness. Such was the appearance of the Baron's companion. And as Randal turned round at Levy's voice, the Baron said to his companion, "A young man in the first circles—you should book ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Quincey's essays in general it may be said that they bear witness alike to the diversity of his knowledge and the penetrative power of his intellect. The wide range of his subjects, however, deprives his papers when taken together of the weight which might attach to a series of related discussions. And, remarkable as is De Quincey's aptitude for analysis and speculation, more than once we have to regret the lack of ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... of course, only mere surmises, but Liszt, although often wrong as to incidents, is, thanks to his penetrative genius, generally right as to essences. Indeed, if George Sand's surroundings and Chopin's character and tastes are kept in view nothing seems to be more probable than that his over-delicate susceptibilities may have occasionally been shocked by unrestrained vivacity, loud ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... stones Looked warm. The brown ploughed earth seemed swelling up, Filled like a sponge with sunbeams, which lay still, Nestling unseen, and broodingly, and warm, In every little nest, corner, or crack, Wherein might hide a blind and sleepy seed, Waiting the touch of penetrative life To wake, and grow, and beautify the earth. The mossy stems and boughs, where yet no life Exuberant overflowed in buds and leaves, Were clothed in golden splendours, interwoven With many shadows from the branches bare. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... Prynne. It was carelessly at first, like a man chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom external matters are of little value and import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind. Very soon, however, his look became keen and penetrative. A writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. His face darkened with some powerful emotion, which, nevertheless, he so instantaneously controlled ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... another kind of rays are set free, which differ greatly from those described by Lenard as cathode rays The most marked difference between the two is the fact that Roentgen rays are not deflected by a magnet, indicating a very essential difference, while their range and penetrative power are incomparably greater. In fact, all those qualities which have lent a sensational character to the discovery of Roentgen's rays were mainly absent from these of Lenard, to the end that, although Roentgen has not ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... which for them he is really the creator—this is the way of his criticism; cast off in a stray letter often, or passing note, or lightest essay or conversation. It is in such a letter, for instance, that we come upon a singularly penetrative estimate of the genius and writings ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... no penetrative mind To know these fellows: when You meet them, you, unless you're blind, At ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... hard nickel envelope for the leaden bullet in order to prevent its "stripping,'' or being forced through the barrel without rotation. The general result is that, while the enveloped bullet has a much higher penetrative power than one of lead only, it does not usually inflict so severe a wound, nor has it such a stunning effect as the old lead bullet. It cuts a small clean hole, but does not deform. This fact is of some military importance, as, for example, in warfare with savages, in which the chief danger ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sometimes disconcerting. Zilla was an active, strident, full-blown, high-bosomed blonde. When she condescended to be good-humored she was nervously amusing. Her comments on people were saltily satiric and penetrative of accepted hypocrisies. "That's so!" you said, and looked sheepish. She danced wildly, and called on the world to be merry, but in the midst of it she would turn indignant. She was always becoming indignant. Life was a plot against her and she ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... intelligence. One of Mr. Middleheath's favourite tricks for disabusing a jury of the belief that they possessed any common sense was, before addressing them, to stare each juryman in the face for half a minute or so in turn with his piercing penetrative eyes, accompanying the look with a pitying contemptuous smile, the gaze and the smile implying that counsel for the opposite side may have flattered them into believing that their intelligences were fit to try such an intricate case, ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... are the young gentleman Mr. Roger Morton recommends?" Here Mr. Plaskwith took out a huge pocketbook, slowly unclasped it, staring hard at Philip, with what he designed for a piercing and penetrative survey. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... year, as they opened on the day. He was not admitted to the practical initiation till not one earthly wish chained that sublimest faculty which you call the IMAGINATION, one carnal desire clouded the penetrative essence that you call the INTELLECT. And even then, and at the best, how few attained to the last mystery! Happier inasmuch as they attained the earlier to the holy glories for which Death is ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... not only from sacke in sweetness and pleasantness of taste, but also in colour and consistence, for it is not so white in colour as sack, nor so thin in substance; wherefore it is more nutritive than sack, and less penetrative." Via recta ad Vitam longum. 4to. 1622. In Howell's time, Canary wine was much adulterated. "I think," says he, in one of his Letters, "there is more Canary brought into England than to all the world besides; I think also, there is a hundred times more drunk ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... adjunct, sweete; but yet very improperly, for it differeth not only from sacke in sweetness and pleasantness of taste, but also in colour and consistence, for it is not so white in colour as sack, nor so thin in substance; wherefore it is more nutritive than sack, and less penetrative."—Via recta ad Vitam longam, 4to, 1622. In Howell's time, Canary wine was much adulterated. "I think," says he, in one of his Letters, "there is more Canary brought into England than to all the world besides; I think also, there is a hundred ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... and aesthetic delight. But the palace of art, made the palace of the soul, becomes its dungeon-house, self-generating and filling fast with all loathsome and deathly shapes; and the heaven of intellectual joy becomes at last a more penetrative and intenser hell. The "Idylls of the King" are but exquisite variations on the one note—that the only true and high life of humanity is the life of full and free obedience; and that such life on earth becomes of necessity ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... one's indefeasible right to liberty of heart, he saw himself, somewhat [72] wearily, very far gone from the choice, the consecration, of his boyhood. If he could but be rid of that altogether! Or if that would but speak with irresistible decision and effect! Was there perhaps somewhere, in some penetrative mind in this age of novelties, some scheme of truth, some science about men and things, which might harmonise for him his earlier and later preference, "the sacred and the profane loves," or, failing that, establish, to his pacification, the ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... humble children of the furrow to the true aristocracy of passionate souls. In this respect, Wordsworth's work resembles most that of George Sand, in those of her novels which depict country life. With a penetrative pathos, which puts him in the same rank with the masters of the sentiment of pity in literature, with Meinhold and Victor Hugo, he collects all the traces of vivid excitement which were to be found in that pastoral world—the girl who rung her father's knell; the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... dull, on the look-out for the man who must hear him; and in most cases he had volumes which it was difficult to get printed, or if printed to get read. This Mordecai happened to have a more pathetic aspect, a more passionate, penetrative speech than was usual with such monomaniacs; he was more poetical than a social reformer with colored views of the new moral world in parallelograms, or than an enthusiast in sewage; still he came under the same ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... this in common: they were poets and moralists. They reproduced the conditions of life in the light of penetrative observation and ideal contemplation; they illustrated its duties in their breach and in their observance, by precepts and well-chosen portraits of character. The particular form in which they wrote makes little difference when we come upon the utterance ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... forty-five years of age, perhaps less; for the abundant mass of dark chestnut hair reveals not one silvery thread. One glance is sufficient. Never was character more cleverly delineated than upon this woman's face. There, in bold relief, is the deep penetrative mind—one that has power to read the masses as they pass before her mental vision. Her's is the heart that opens wide to the one crushed and broken by the uncharitable sect called "the world." Her's is the hand ready to help ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... question as to the point at which the contest between shot and armour will be brought to a standstill. That it cannot proceed indefinitely may be confidently taken for granted. The plate-makers thicken their armour while the gun-makers enlarge the size and increase the penetrative power of their weapons, until the weight that has to be carried on a battle-ship renders the attainment ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... sounds nearer and more earthly. His quickened senses perceive a busy patter of sandalled feet outside his cell, and a whispering of consultation,—and then the silvery, snaky tones of Father Johannes, which had that oily, penetrative quality which passes through all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... from Mr. Edwardes I stood in the front quadrangle and whistled. My whistle is unmusical and penetrative, useful only when a dog has been lost, and some man, whom I did not know, put his head out of his window and said abruptly, "For heaven's sake shut up that vile noise;" another man chucked a penny into the quad and told ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... middle height, and, especially latterly, somewhat stout; his forehead was of splendid proportions, recalling instantaneously the Stratford bust of Shakespeare; and his gray-blue eyes were clear and piercing, and characterized by that rapid, penetrative gaze so noticeable ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... taken they died from insupportable dolour. As soon as any man, invaded these bulls, they rushed with such, terrible press upon him that they struck him to the earth, taking no fear of hounds, sharp lances, or other most penetrative weapons."—Boetius, Chron. Scot. Vol. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... account, and from the description before given of Mobile Bay, that the advantages of the Tennessee were her great protective strength, a draught which enabled her to choose her own position relatively to the heaviest of the enemy's ships, and the superior range and penetrative power of her guns, being rifles; for while there were cannon of this type in the United States fleet, the great majority of them were smooth bores. The ironclads opposed to her had only smooth-bore guns, incapable of penetrating ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... Forster's mind had not the penetrative, illuminating quality of genius, he was not without some very definite qualifications for his task. The sturdy temper of his intellect fits him for a subject which is beset with pitfalls for the sentimentalizer. A finer sense might recoil before investigations ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the ages. The valuable content of his message, so far as he succeeds in delivering one, the ideas with which his words are freighted, bear the marks of the slow accumulations of spiritual experience, and they reveal the rich and penetrative influence of the social group in which the mystic's inner life formed and ripened. They have a ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... that many readers may be surprised at my calling Scott the great representative of the mind of the age of literature. Those who can perceive the intense penetrative depth of Wordsworth, and the exquisite finish and melodious power of Tennyson, may be offended at my placing in higher rank that poetry of careless glance and reckless rhyme in which Scott poured out the fancies of ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... has thrown up the game, barring some fortunate accident. The aggregate weight of metal discharged by each ironclad from all its guns was nearly the same,[12] but the Arkansas had a decided advantage in penetrative power by her four 6.4-inch rifles. Her sides, and probably her bow, were decidedly stronger than those of her opponent; but whatever the relative advantages or disadvantages under other circumstances, the Carondelet had now to ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... German education, but her penetrative power extends into every branch of industry and economics. In November 1916, a Munich expert was put in charge of the College of Forestry, and an economic society was started in Constantinople on German lines with ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... Tallien menacing Robespierre with a dagger, Billaud roaring out proposals to arrest this person and that Robespierre gesticulating, threatening, yelling, shrieking. His enemies knew that if he were once allowed to get a hearing, his authority might even yet overawe the waverers. A penetrative word or a heroic gesture might lose them the day. The majority of the chamber still hesitated. They called for Barere, in whose adroit faculty for discovering the winning side they had the confidence of long experience. Robespierre, recovering some of his calm, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... whose penetrative wisdom found The South-Sea rocks and shelves, where thousands drown'd, When credit sunk, and commerce gasping lay, Thou stood'st; nor sent one bill unpaid away. When not a guinea chink'd on Martin's boards, And Atwill's self was ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... of whether or not it is practical to take up the work depends upon the nature of the output. If the sole product of the hardening department consists of a 1.10 carbon case or harder, requiring a strong highly energized material of deep penetrative power such as that used in the carburizing of ball races, hub-bearings and the like, it would be best to dispose of the used material to some concern whose product requires a case with from 0.70 to 0.90 carbon, but where there is a large variety of work the compound ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... meantime the blood previously shed had spread far and wide, and instead of a solitary gormandising shark a full half-dozen rollicked and revelled in the stained area, all alike in size and alike, too, in absolute indifference to the boat. Owing to the featherweight heft the harpoon failed in penetrative force, and with ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... to excite the admiration than the censure of Mr. Hamilton. Playfully he combated the prejudice of his wife, who as sportively owned that Miss Grahame's conduct in society was different to that she had anticipated; but her penetrative mind felt not the more at ease when she thought on the friendship that subsisted between Annie and ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... employer. As he stood before me, I surveyed him; a well-formed gentleman, above the ordinary height, with pale complexion, set off by dark, penetrative eyes; a shapely head covered with long, heavy masses of straight dark hair. The impression his appearance conveyed to me was that of a person benevolent but apathetic; unhappy without the will or power to ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... of Buffon and Lamarck—must be counted an exception to the general rule, but in England and Germany there are few men of scientific reputation who do not accept Mr. Darwin as the founder of what is commonly called "Darwinism," and regard him as perhaps the most penetrative and ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... by this mud of the country, and remembers how many years they have stood, one gets a passing idea of the nature of this mud about which the soldiers have written home so often. It is more like Portland cement than anything else, and it is most penetrative and hard to get rid of; it gets in the hair, down the neck, into the shoes and it sticks. If the soldier wears hip-boots in the trenches he must take them off every little while and empty the mud out of them which somehow manages to get into even hip-boots. It is ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... cultivation to the finer issues, admire the supreme genius which takes some poor Italian tale, with its coarse plot and gross personages, and shooting it through with threads of variegated meditation, produces a masterpiece of penetrative reflection and high pensive suggestion as to the deepest things and most secret parts of the life of men. But to the general these finer threads are indiscernible. What touches them in the Shakesperean poetry, and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... subordinate. With none of these conditions could Lois be satisfied. Then, there were the women who always spoke as if a man were an animal and a woman were not a woman, but a spirit; but Lois was very much a woman! She settled at last, after penetrative thought, on one husband and wife, the latter a plain little person no longer young. Every man liked to go to her charming, comfortable house; every man admired her; and that her husband, a very handsome man himself, admired her most of all was unobtrusively evident. Every look, every gesture, betrayed ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... become master of the learning of every nation, of all tongues, dead or living, and of every literature, western and oriental; who has pursued all the speculations of science to their last term; who has lived in all orders of society, and observed man in every phase of civilisation; who has a penetrative intellect which enables him to follow as by intuition the most profound of all questions, and a power of communicating with precision the most abstruse ideas; whose wealth would make Monte Cristo seem a pauper; who is so far above his race that woman ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... insists on extreme accuracy in following the original, but he bases his demand on a truth largely ignored by translators up to this time, the essential relationship between thought and style. He makes the following surprisingly penetrative comment on the nature and significance of Calvin's Latin style: "I considered how the author thereof had of long time purposely labored to write the same most exactly, and to pack great plenty of matter ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... convey questioning, counsel, encouragement, or reproach without the spoken word; to send the message by the law of suggestion from mind to mind. The mental intimation will reach the one to whom it is sent if the conditions for telepathy are observed, for thought is far more penetrative than the Roentgen ray, and the atmosphere is magnetic, and carries it as the wire does the electric current. All these finer conditions are beginning to make themselves felt as practicable forces. Humanity is becoming "plastic to the spirit ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... this people, it was thick. In their rare physical beauty, the color of their eyes and hair, and in their fascinating dress, they had struck me as being utterly unlike any people ever seen by me. But it was perhaps in their clear, sweet, penetrative voice, which sometimes reminded me of a tender-toned wind instrument, that they ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... through the stony shroud, as if, by very force of penetrative sight, I would clear every lineament of the lovely face. And now I thought the hand that had lain under the cheek, had slipped a little downward. But then I could not be sure that I had at first observed its position accurately. So I sang again; for the longing had grown ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... Corps, the flower of the Prussian Army, were sent like a catapult at the gap in the French line, immediately in front of Rheims. Five times they charged, and with such heroic daring and such penetrative energy that General Foch did not dare break from his position. As they came up for the fifth assault, a wild cheer of admiration broke out along the French line. But the rifles spoke steadily, none the less for that. After the fifth assault, barely a hundred men were left, nearly all ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... words are required. The notion that the existence of these comprehensive words in an Indian language, or any other, is an evidence of deficiency in analytic power, is a fallacy which was long ago exposed by the clear and penetrative reasoning of Duponceau, the true father of American philology. [Footnote: See the admirable Preface to his translation of Zeisberger's Delaware Grammar, p. 94.] As he has well explained, analysis must precede synthesis. In fact, the power of what may be termed analytic synthesis,—the ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... woods had had the ordering of it; his whole make-up was in a minor and subdued key, like the moss and the lichens, or like the protective coloring of the game,—everything but his quick sense and penetrative glance. He was as gentle and modest as a girl; his sensibilities were like plants that grow in the shade. The woods and the solitudes had touched him with their own softening and refining influence; had ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... in Napoleon III., as a man of State, two personalities, two mental existences, which blended but ill with one another. There was the contemplator of great human forces, the intelligent, if not deeply penetrative, reader of the signs of the times, the brooder through long years of imprisonment and exile, the child of Europe, to whom Germany, Italy, and England had all in turn been nearer than his own country; and there was the crowned adventurer, bound by his name and position to gain for France something ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Erebus, is strong enough to go the other way. This strength of optimism, indeed the strength we find always underlying his tolerance, his radicalism, his searches, prophecies, and revelations, is heightened and made efficient by "imagination-penetrative," a thing concerned not with the combining but the apprehending of things. A possession, akin to the power, Ruskin says, all great pictures have, which "depends on the penetration of the imagination into the true nature of the thing represented, and on the scorn of the imagination for all shackles ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Sulphur, and of quick silver, which doe open, and disopilate; neither doth it so, untill it be helped by Art, as it is ground, stirred, and made fine, in the preparing of it; the Sulphurous parts, and those of quick-silver, being thinne, active, and penetrative, they mingle, at the last with those parts, which are Earthy and astringent: Insomuch, that they being mingled after this manner one with another, we cannot now say, that the steele is astringent, but rather, that it is penetrative, attenuating and opening. Let us prove ...
— Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke • Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma
... acquaintance. To me he then seemed an inhuman, icy-blooded "sleuth," a being of great national importance, but repulsive and dangerous as an associate. Yet by a turn of Fortune's wheel I came not only to know William Dawson, but to work with him, and almost to like him. His penetrative efficiency compelled one's admiration, and his unconcealed vanity showed that he did not stand wholly outside the human family. Yet I never felt safe with Dawson. In his presence, and when I knew that somewhere round the corner he was carrying on his mysterious ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... in this penetrative suggestion of life that the secret of that sweetness of his is to be found. He gives us indeed no lovely natural objects like Leonardo or Titian, but only the coldest, most elementary shadowing of rock or tree; no lovely draperies and comely gestures of ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... Karshish and Waring, as Balaustion and Fifine, as St. John and Bishop Blougram. The range and the contrasts of his subjects are equally great. And he did this work with a searching analysis, a humorous keenness, a joyous boldness, and an opulent imagination at once penetrative and passionate. When, then, we realise this as we realise it now, we are the more astonished that appreciation of him lingered so long. Why did it not come at first, and why did it come in ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... art, Had plumbed ('twas said) the human heart, Whom for the penetrative ken Wherewith he probed the souls of men The Public and the Public's wife Declared synonymous with Life,— Sat idle, being much perplexed What Attitude to study next, Because he would not wholly tell Which Pose ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... parts bring very great, his understanding quick and penetrative, his judgment clear and profound, his fancy rich, his memory strong, and expressions masculine, they did with such a grace take with them who were not acquainted with his accents or idioms, and to all ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... a venerable figure with hair as white as snow, and a face strikingly characterized by benevolence. It bore marks of thought, however, and penetrative insight; although the keen glances of the eyes were now somewhat bedimmed with tears, which the aged shed, or almost shed, on lighter stress of emotion than would elicit ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is demoralising; its penetrative power strikes deeper than physical malaise. With the average man or woman it damps the spirits, unstrings the will, and slackens the mental and moral fibre until resistance of any kind becomes an effort. M. Selpdorf was in the habit of saying that the ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... carving. Plenty of accommodation for penitents here. Amid such surroundings to be a miserable sinner must be indeed a pleasure. The spire is two hundred and fifty feet high. I mounted and saw the great bell, over three tons in weight. I also saw the bishop's robes of wondrous richness and penetrative virtue, the consecrated slippers which the acolytes wear, with their scarlet robes, remindful of Egyptian flamens and African flamingoes; the blessed candle-box and the seven-times blessed candles, which at once drop tallow on the holder's clothes and benison on his sin-struck ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... very ingenious and highly original tale called the 'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' the earliest of all detective-stories, Poe displayed his remarkable gift of invention; but he revealed his share of penetrative imagination far more richly in the simpler story of the 'Fall of the House of Usher.' Wilkie Collins had more invention than Dickens, as Dickens had more than Thackeray. Indeed, Thackeray, indolent as he was by temperament, was not infrequently "sluggish in his avoidance of needless invention." ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... chastises trespassers, fights its enemies, and defends its home. It manifests a degree of intelligence, but its sagacity is instinctive. Reason, though not so acute as instinct, becomes, by education, discerning and keenly penetrative, and reveals the very secrets of profound thought. We recall the aptness of Prof. Agassiz's remark: "There is even a certain antagonism between instinct and intelligence, so that instinct loses its force and peculiar characteristics, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... may infer that the atoms whence the radiation emanates oscillate in ultra-red periods. Let us apply this test to the radiation from a flame of hydrogen. This flame consists mainly of incandescent aqueous vapour, the temperature of which, as calculated by Bunsen, is 3259 deg.C, so that, if the penetrative power of radiant heat, as generally supposed, augment with the temperature of its source, we may expect the radiation from this flame to be copiously transmitted by water. While, however, a layer of the bisulphide ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... mighty vise. Thus charged, no material thing could penetrate them. The greatest meteor would be crushed to drifting dust without so much as scarring that wall of mighty force ... meteors traveling with a speed and penetrative power that no gun-hurled projectile could ever hope ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... Uncensored Celebrities is far too modest when he calls his new work a "sketch." It is a genuine biography with that special accent due to the biographer's personality and his power of what I may call penetrative synthesis. By that I mean the insight into character which coordinates and builds—the sort of biography that makes a legend ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... and life, and the play of individual qualities, displayed itself. There were two intellectual sides to his mind—one which made him a poet, quickness and delicacy of observation and sympathetic interpretation, the realising and anticipating power of deep feeling and penetrative imagination; the other, at first sight, little related to poetry, a hard-headed, ingenious, prosaic shrewdness and directness of common sense, dealing practically with things as they are and on the whole, very little curious about scientific questions ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... is in goodness a penetrative power that nothing can withstand. Cunning and malice melt away before its mild, open, steady glance. Not alone on the fields where chivalry charges for laurels, with helmet and breastplate and lance in rest, can ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... volume will give the reader a more correct idea of the character discussed than he would probably get from reading their biographies. The lecture is analytical, penetrative, terse, incisive, and candid. The book is worth its price, and will ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... not fanaticism, that has forced this matter of Anti-slavery upon the American people; it is the spirit of Christianity, which appeals from prejudices and predilections to the moral consciousness of the individual man; that spirit elastic as air, penetrative as heat, invulnerable as sunshine, against which creed after creed and institution after institution have measured their strength and been confounded; that restless spirit which refuses to crystallize in any sect or form, but persists, a Divinely-commissioned radical and reconstructor, in trying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... resemblances there is a tendency not only to overlook points of difference, but to exaggerate points of likeness,—to be fanciful. It may be so considered to point out that as the sailing-ship had guns of long range, with comparatively great penetrative power, and carronades, which were of shorter range but great smashing effect, so the modern steamer has its batteries of long-range guns and of torpedoes, the latter being effective only within a limited distance and then injuring ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan |
