"Retentive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... herself to reach the school ideal, thus force herself to drive hard nails of fact into her vagrant thoughts. And with success. For she had, it turned out, a retentive memory, and to her joy learning by heart came easy to her—as easy as to the most brilliant scholars in the form. From now on she gave this talent full play, memorising even pages of the history book in her zeal; and before many weeks had passed, in ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... to Fulton. I'm going along like an old man I used to know who used to start to tell a story about his grandfather. He had an awfully retentive memory, and he never finished the story, because he switched off into something else. He used to tell about how his grandfather one day went into a pasture, where there was a ram. The old man dropped a silver dime in the grass, and stooped over to pick it up. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... capacious barns had been filled to overflowing with their treasures of fragrant hay and golden grain. The corn-house was filled with its yellow harvest, and the potatoes were heaped high in the cellar. Each different sort had its separate bin, and my memory is not sufficiently retentive to mention the numerous kinds of potatoes by their proper name which I that autumn assisted in stowing away in the old cellar; and potatoes were not the only good things to be found there when the harvest was completed. The apples were of almost as many different sorts as the ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... little opportunity for doing so, for after the first term his attendance at lectures almost entirely ceased. Though never a student, he must have been at all times a considerable reader; he had a retentive memory and quick understanding; he read what interested him; absorbed, understood, and retained it. He left the university with his mind disciplined indeed but not drilled; he had a considerable knowledge of languages, law, literature, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... War in 1901. If he had not been a great soldier, Colonel Laurie would have been a great historian. His knowledge of history, more especially of military history, was profound, and his memory was singularly retentive. He had, moreover, a very sound judgment in the marshalling of facts. He had written with a pen of light the history of his regiment, which he loved, and which loved him, and on which in life and in death he had ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... extemporaneous, and allusive to events passing around them. But what was passing around them? The grand events of a spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to impress themselves, as the mystical legends of former times had done, upon their memory; besides which, a retentive memory was deemed a virtue of the first water, and was cultivated accordingly in those ancient times. Ballads at first, and down to the beginning of the war with Troy, were merely recitations, with an intonation. Then followed ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... burning desire for the formal education he had never had. In camp he had listened, dragging out routine jobs in order to overhear reports and the small talk of specialists keen on their own particular hobbies. But so much of the information Shann had thus picked up to store in a retentive memory he had not understood and could not fit together. It had been as if he were trying to solve some highly important puzzle with at least a quarter of the necessary pieces missing, or with unrelated bits from others intermixed. How much control did a trained animal scout ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... there was no necessity, his requirements being always reasonable and only such as she was fully capable of meeting. She had a good mind, quick discernment and retentive memory, and she was quite resolved to be industrious and to keep her promise to her father to be a good girl in every way. Also her ambition was aroused to attempt to overtake ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... of the world could have used to great advantage. I had independent means, enough to enable me, as a bachelor, to live like a gentleman; I belonged to one of the oldest and best-descended families in the English untitled aristocracy, had a retentive memory, a strong voice, and could speak in public without embarrassment. A man of the world, in my position, would have found his upward course straight before him. He would simply have made use of the Church as an instrument ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... that I never have met with the verb perceyuer except in Hawes, loc. cit.; and I gave the latest use that I could call to mind of the noun in my paper on that word. Unhappily I never make notes, but rely entirely on a somewhat retentive memory; therefore the instances that occur on the spur of the moment are not always the most apposite that might be selected for the purpose of illustration. If, however, he will take the trouble to refer to a little book, consisting of no more than 448 pages, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... relieved. As each knew much which the other was desirous of learning, we exchanged our notions with great delight. I perceived that I had, every day, more of his confidence, and always found new cause of admiration in the profundity of his mind. His comprehension is vast, his memory capacious and retentive, his discourse is methodical, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... year, but the work did not suit his strenuous nature, and he returned home and soon afterward received an appointment in this detective service. Job was known in the force as quiet, self-contained, observant, patient, and was possessed of an extraordinarily retentive memory. Rarely was it necessary for him to ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... mathematics in the university, and expected in due time to become professor of Greek. As professor of the mellifluous and most plastic of all the ancient tongues, he would undoubtedly have been proficient, as his college classics still remain fresh in his warm and retentive memory, and his literary taste is so severe and chaste as to make some of his scientific papers read like a psalm. But nature designed him for another, and some think a better, field, and endowed him with powers as a naturalist that have won for him recognition ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... or clayey soil it is well to put at the bottom of the stone coating a layer of large stones, set on their broadest edges and lengthwise across the road in the form of a pavement. This is called a Telford road, and has advantages over the McAdam road in a soil retentive of moisture, as the layer of large stones operates as an under drain to ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... written because there was no writing, and when all truth was conveyed in symbolical forms. That means toward a time of narrow experience, and of knowledge far more limited than the present. Memory, in those days, was enormously and abnormally capacious and retentive, but there was no appreciation of humanity. Few lessons from the experiences of others were possible, because the mind was filled with merely tribal legends. What was called early civilization was only relatively splendid. There was unsurpassed poetry but no science, ample brawn ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... may ever break an engagement, whether it be one of business or pleasure, with a lady, or with another gentleman. If not blessed with a retentive memory, he must carry a note-book and record therein all his appointments, guarding, by frequent reference, against making two for the same day and hour. To break an engagement with a lady is almost certain to give lasting offence, and with ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... the boy, and then held out his hand in quite an American fashion. His face expressed not only understanding but gratitude as well. Henry, of the acute eye and retentive mind, took a second look. Then ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... their beginning, progression, order, relations, and law of development. Although daring in aim, the attempt was not to be wholly deprecated. While religious freedom had been secured, philosophy had become timid, official, and timeserving; retentive as FONTENELLE of the truths within its grasp, and fearful to give utterance to aught that might disturb the stillness of the temple, the lecture-room, or fashionable auditory. Modern teachers had been used so long to the ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... beautiful music. His stature as a conductor grew with the years and so did the repertoire of scores he conducted from memory. This feat involved heartbreaking work, for his memory, while good, is not unusually retentive. In the middle years of his career, he devoted from ten to twelve hours ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... exemplars during the twenty-five years I lived near them. In fact, I had meant to do this from the time I came among them; but I let the days in which I almost constantly saw them go by without record save such as I carried in a memory retentive, indeed, beyond the common, but not so full as I could have wished when I began to invoke it for my work. Still, upon insistent appeal, it responded in sufficient abundance; and, though I now wish I could have remembered more instances, I think my impressions were accurate enough. I am sure of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to one thing for a period of time; (2) Simultaneous Attention or observing, which consists in giving attention to a number of things at once; and (3) Disparate Attention, or giving attention to two or more things over a period of time. Memory may be (1) Automatic, (2) Voluntary, or (3) Retentive. The function of the tests is to determine just which one of these processes are weak or strong and discover a method of education which is suited to the individual. Other mental processes, such as sensation, perception, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... must be observed; while in other forms of lessons the attention may be diverted for a moment to return to the consideration of exactly what was being observed before. It goes without saying that in one case quick and accurate observation, a retentive memory, and the association of causes and effects follow, and that in the other they ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... of service, he dismissed the extraneous personalities from his mind almost as completely as if they had had no existence. Few men were less embarrassed with acquaintances than he; yet he had an observant eye and a retentive memory. When he wanted a man he rarely failed to find the right one. In the selection and use of men he appeared to act like an intelligent and silent force, rather than as a man full of human interests and sympathies. He rarely spoke of himself, even in the most casual way. Most of ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... this time of excitement Dan had been doing his own share of thinking. He heard the rumours of the parish, listened to the stories told at the store or blacksmith shop, tucked them away in his retentive mind, and brooded over them by day and night. The purpose which had taken possession of him as he sat by the parson's side during his lonely watch in Stephen's camp grew stronger as the days passed by. He told ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... circumstance to which you allude was beyond my control, and Mr.—a—Word's share in it without my consent; his service was, I believe, well repaid by my father; and the trouble with me is not that my memory is defective, but rather that it is too retentive. I ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Yet Carlyle manfully accomplished his task, and I am inclined to think that the second writing was better than the first; that he probably left out what was unessential, and made a more condensed narrative,—a more complete picture, for his memory was singularly retentive. I do not believe that any man can do his best at the first heat. See how the great poets revise and rewrite. Brougham rewrote his celebrated peroration on the trial of Queen Caroline seventeen times. Carlyle ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Trenton and its neighborhood, and, going about in every direction after cows and oxen, he learned the roads so well that he could make a very good map of them. Everything that could be of service to the American cause was jotted down in Honeyman's retentive memory; and when he had found out everything that he could find out, he thought it was fully time that he should acquaint Washington with the state of affairs ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... an immense amount of positive knowledge to be acquired between the ages of ten and eighteen—rules of grammar, strings of vocables, dates, names of towns, rivers, and mountains, mathematical formulas, etc. All depends here on the receptive and retentive powers of the mind. The memory has to be strengthened, without being overtaxed, till it acts almost mechanically. Learning by heart, I believe, cannot be too assiduously practised during the years spent at school. There may have been too much of it when, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... great, that her parents found no little difficulty in furnishing her with a sufficient supply. She not only read with eagerness every book which met her eye, but pursued this uninterrupted miscellaneous reading to singular advantage, treasuring up all important facts in her retentive memory. So entirely absorbed was she in her books, that the only successful mode of withdrawing her from them was by offering her flowers, of which she was passionately fond. Books and flowers continued, through all the vicissitudes ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... conversation of those from whom any information was to be obtained, but by no means solicitous to improve those opportunities that were sometimes offered of raising his fortune; and he was remarkably retentive of his ideas, which, when once he was in possession of them, rarely forsook him; a quality which could never be communicated to ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... Chancellor Kent of New York, and Governor John Cotton Smith of Connecticut, as a committee to decide upon the rival claims. He is described as possessing a sharp, vigorous intellect, a lively imagination, a very retentive memory, and was universally esteemed as an able and faithful minister ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... have retentive memories. A parrot that belonged to a lady recognised a black servant after three years' absence. Another bird was so fierce that no one in the house liked to touch it, but it would allow a lady visitor to handle it with impunity. It was ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... benefit of their discoveries. Practically, does all this help one much? It is possible that some who have passed for the deepest observers of human nature, owed their renown more to an acute observation of the phenomena of feeling, an intuitive knowledge of what people like and dislike, a retentive memory, and a happy knack of making all these available at the right moment, than to any profound reasoning on abstract principles. Like some untaught arithmeticians, their calculations came ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... good girl. She has been to school all this summer, and has learned to read very fluently. She has committed to memory twenty-seven hymns and two long chapters in the Bible. She has a remarkably retentive memory and will make a ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... men have been born with the material for self-sufficient contentment more completely within himself than Edward Gibbon. He had every gift which a great scholar should have, an insatiable thirst for learning in every form, immense industry, a retentive memory, and that broadly philosophic temperament which enables a man to rise above the partisan and to become the impartial critic of human affairs. It is true that at the time he was looked upon as bitterly prejudiced ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... He transmitted an oath to De Valence that he would die or win his hire. And immediately dispatching spies to the camp at Roslyn, as soon as he was informed of Wallace's disappearance, he judged, from the knowledge of that chief's retentive affections, that whithersoever he intended finally to go, he would first visit Ellerslie, and the tomb of his wife. According to this opinion, he planted his emissaries in favorable situations on the road, and then proceeded himself ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... mind (a slow but, perhaps retentive mind), all the bearings of the place, and all its opportunities, and even the curve of the stream along it, and the bushes near the door, I was much inclined to go farther up, and understand all the village. But a bar of red light across the river, some forty yards on above me, and crossing ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... fancy in thine eye, and passions in thy heart? What, hast thou wrapt love in thy looks, and set all thy thoughts on fire by affection? I tell thee, it is a flame as hard to be quenched as that of Aetna. But nature must have her course: women's eyes have faculty attractive like the jet, and retentive like the diamond: they dally in the delight of fair objects, till gazing on the panther's beautiful skin, repenting experience tell them ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... his scores are not more faithful than his memory. After this exploit (enough for one man), Thomas Westwood seems to have subsided into a less hazardous occupation; and in the twenty-fifth year of his age we find him a haberdasher in Bow Lane: yet still retentive of his early riding (though leaving it to rawer stomachs), and Christmasly at night sithence to this last, and shall to his latest Christmas, hath he, doth he, and shall he, tell after supper the story of the insane steed ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the mental phenomena, viz., the three great divisions of Cognitive faculties, Pleasure and Pain, and Desire and Will, Sir William Hamilton subdivides the first (viz., the Cognitive faculties), into the acquisitive faculty, the retentive faculty, the reproductive faculty, the representative faculty, and reason or judgment by which concepts are compared together. Dharana corresponds with the exercise of the Representative faculty or the power by which the mind is held to or kept employed upon ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... And, therefore, the mighty son of Abhimanyu came to be called Parikshit (born in an extinct line). Well-versed in the interpretation of treatises on the duties of kings, he was gifted with every virtue. With passions under complete control, intelligent, possessing a retentive memory, the practiser of all virtues, the conqueror of his six passions of powerful mind, surpassing all, and fully acquainted with the science of morality and political science, the father had ruled over these subjects for sixty years. And he then died, mourned by all his subjects. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... almost unrivalled, and he is exceedingly gentle, and also the most courageous of men; there is a union of qualities in him such as I have never seen in any other, and should scarcely have thought possible; for those who, like him, have quick and ready and retentive wits, have generally also quick tempers; they are ships without ballast, and go darting about, and are mad rather than courageous; and the steadier sort, when they have to face study, prove stupid and cannot remember. Whereas he moves ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... with which he was not more or less acquainted. For, notwithstanding his close business habits, he found much time for his favorite occupation of reading; by which means he kept up with the religious, political, and literary news of the day. He was a good historian, and possessed a retentive memory. I never thought of referring to an encyclopedia, or to a dictionary, when he was present; for I found it so much easier, and more pleasant, to obtain needed information from him. As regards the intellectual character of his mind, however, I do not think it was of the ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... of an Irish volunteer, who was arrested for participating in the Irish rebellion of '98, and is by turns spirited and pathetic. Harry had rehearsed it to himself only the night before, and he had confidence in a strong and retentive memory. At the President's invitation he rose to his feet, and said, "Mr. President, I will do as well as I can, but I hope the members of the Society will make allowance for me, as I have had no time for ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... retained his office only a few days, and the next governor was the Duke of Montague, with Hurd, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, and the Rev. Mr. Arnold, as preceptor and sub-preceptor. During his education, common report spoke highly of the prince's quickness of apprehension, retentive memory, and general aptitude for acquiring the elegances ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... at the same times with full springing tides of the invigorating influences of music and magnets both real and artificial, gives such elastic vigour to the nerves, on the one hand, of the male, and on the other, such retentive firmness to the female; and, moreover, all the faculties of the soul being so fully expanded, and so highly illuminated, that it is impossible, in the nature of things, but that strong, beautiful, brilliant, nay, double-distilled ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... and the less manure it will require. That the best soils are those which, when diffused and well stirred in water and allowed to stand for three minutes, from 20 to 30, say 25, per cent. is carried off with the water of decantation. When 30 per cent. and upwards is decanted off, the soil becomes retentive of water and consequently wet. When less than 20 per cent., say only 16 per cent. and under, is carried off, it becomes too porous; water passes through it too rapidly; its soluble matter is washed off into the substratum, and it has a strong ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... at the very next hotel they called at—an old-fashioned house in close proximity to the harbour. There was a communicative landlord there who evidently possessed and was proud of a retentive memory, and he no sooner heard the reason of Gilling's call upon him than he bustled into activity, and produced the ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... distinguished from sand. Because of these properties, clay is of great value in holding together the larger soil grains in relatively large aggregates which give soils the desired degree of filth. Moreover, clay is very retentive of water, gases, and soluble plant-foods, which are important factors in successful agriculture. Soils, in fact, are classified according to the amount of clay that they contain. Hilgard ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... Don Quixote, as he seemed to have a retentive memory, to describe and portray to her the beauty and features of the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, for, judging by what fame trumpeted abroad of her beauty, she felt sure she must be the fairest creature in the world, nay, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... differences of working power among men are due chiefly to differences in the power of concentration. A retentive and accurate memory is conditioned upon close attention. If one gives entire attention to what is passing before him, he is not likely to forget it or to confuse persons or incidents. The book which one reads with eyes which are continually lifted from ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... seeds of foreign growth,—still these Lernaean necks sprout again, claiming with many mouths to explain, amuse, suggest, and controvert, to publish invention, and proscribe error. Truly it were enviable to be less apprehensive, less retentive,—to be fitted with a colander-mind, like that penal cask which forty-nine Danaides might not keep from leaking; to be, sometimes at least, suffered for a holiday to ramble brainless in the paradise of fools. Memory, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... singularly precocious, William Riddell, so early as the age of seven, composed in correct and interesting prose, and produced in his eighth year some vigorous poetry. With a highly retentive memory he retained the results of an extended course of reading, begun almost in childhood. Conversant with general history, he was familiar with the various systems of philosophy. To an accurate knowledge of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... atmosphere of the book, and Sir William breathes in it very pleasantly. Endowed by Nature with a retentive memory and a literary taste, active if singular, he may be discovered in his own pages moving up and down, in and out of society, supplying and correcting quotations, and gratifying the vanity of distinguished authors by remembering their own writings better than they ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... and generalisations concerning evolution must presuppose an organism endowed with the quality of progressive absorption of energy, and retentive of it. The continuity of organic activity in a world where supplies are intermittent is evidently only possible upon the latter condition. Thus it appears that the dynamic attitude of the organism, considered in these pages, occupies a ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... by Castiglione, may be said to have set the model of good breeding to all Europe, began life under the happiest auspices. From his tutor Odasio of Padua we hear that even in boyhood he cared only for study and for manly sports. His memory was so retentive that he could repeat whole treatises by heart after the lapse of ten or fifteen years, nor did he ever forget what he had resolved to retain. In the Latin and Greek languages he became an accomplished scholar,[1] and while he appreciated ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... primary decomposers are thoroughly inoculated with microorganisms that can consume cellulose and lignin. Even though it looks like humus, it has not yet fully decomposed. It does have a water-retentive, granular structure that facilitates the presence of air and moisture throughout the mass creating perfect conditions for microbial digestion to ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... worst my mouth, which was somewhat weak. I do not think, however, that any one would have guessed by looking at me as I then appeared at the age of seven and twenty, that I was an exceedingly hard-working man with extraordinary powers of observation and a really retentive memory. ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... I wish to express my thanks to Mr. S.A. Goddard for his assistance. His great age, his acute powers of perception, and his marvellously retentive and accurate memory, combine to make him, probably, the only living competent witness of some of the circumstances I have been able to detail; while the ready manner in which he responded to my request for information merits my ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... to with a mixture of contempt for my want of taste, and astonishment at my presumption. But before the reply had time to burst out from lips, at no time too retentive, I was told, that at the end of one week more I should be suffered to take my way; that week being devoted to a round of especial entertainments in honour of my brother's election; the whole to be wound up by that most preposterous of all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... lessons of the Professor every evening when he had leisure, and studied half the night the branches she was to teach the next day, thus keeping ahead of her classes. Her intense earnestness and mental grasp, the readiness with which she turned from one subject to another, and her retentive memory of every rule and fact he gave her, was a constant surprise ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of movement between the ends of a fractured bone favours their union by promoting the formation of callus, and advocated the treatment of fractures by massage and movement, discarding almost entirely the use of splints and other retentive appliances. We were early convinced by the teaching of Lucas-Championniere, and have adopted ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... manipulated it he is said by his own countrymen to have outdone the government of the Third Empire. His alter ego, Georges Mandel, is endowed with qualities which supplement and correct those of his venerable chief. His grasp of detail is comprehensive and firm, his memory retentive, and his judgment bold and deliberate. A striking illustration of the audacity of his resolve was given in the early part of 1918. Marshal Joffre sent a telegram to President Wilson in Washington, and because he had omitted ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... can never be wholly rectified, for life never yields up what is given it. The look, the word, the invisible atmosphere of the home and church, the sights and sounds of all the busy days enter the super-sensitive and retentive soul of the child and are woven into life tissue. Character has no other from which to fashion itself. Therefore its final beauty and worth will be determined in large measure by the quality of the material which ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... the later guest, it was impossible to prove that Ramsdell was lying flagrantly. One could only smile, and hand in a card, with the agreeable surety that it would be referred to the upstairs potentate and pigeonholed in Ramsdell's retentive memory as ticket for admission later on, or else a permanent rejection label, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... inquired. "The two most peaceful years of my social life were the years immediately following the day I advised Mrs. Stanley not to attempt Juliet in public. Lately, I have wished that her memory were just a bit more retentive. Tell me, has anybody seen ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... he leaves a permanent disgust not to be got rid of. Who does not remember odious images that can never be washed out from the consciousness which they have stained? A man's vocabulary is terribly retentive of evil words, and the images they present cling to his memory and will not loose their hold. One who has had the mischance to soil his mind by reading certain poems of Swift will never cleanse it to its original whiteness. Expressions ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... hand at once, for in a few months' time she will not open it to you; the old, bad relations will re-commence, the rancor will be born and grow, and another memory will be stored away in Ireland's capacious and retentive brain. ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... really bore a different name—one that is still remembered by scores of people in Toronto. He has paid the penalty of his misdeeds, and I see nothing to be gained by perpetuating them in connection with his own proper name. In all other particulars the foregoing narrative is as true as a tolerably retentive memory has enabled me ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... educational reformers to entertain the ill-judged proposal of discarding these languages altogether from general education. If I had been by nature extremely quick of apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive memory, or were of a remarkably active and energetic character, the trial would not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts I am rather below than above par; what I could do, could assuredly be done by any ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... invention of printing and try to imagine a man who had read all the rolls destroyed in the Library of Alexandria by successive burnings. (Some reckon the number of these MSS at 700,000.) Suppose, further, this man to be gifted with a memory retentive as Lord Macaulay's. Suppose lastly that we go to such a man and beg him to repeat to us some chosen one of the fifty or seventy lost, or partially lost, plays of Euripides. It is incredible that he ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... scribbled sermon in the school pulpit, or keeping up an enthusiasm for beautiful language in a badly-prepared lesson on Virgil, or expressing unreal indignation and unjustifiably exalted sentiments to evil doers, and one realizes his disadvantage against the quiet youngster whose retentive memory was storing up all these impressions for an ultimate judgment, and one understands, too, a certain relief that mingled with his undeniable emotion when at last the time came for young Benham, "the one living ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... size, purity, and hardness of the wax. Fichte says, "The spirit does not conserve its products,— the single ideas, volitions, and feelings are conserved by the mind and constitute the ground of its inexhaustibly retentive memory. . . . The possibility of recalling what has once been independently done, this remains in the spirit.'' James Sully compares the receptivity of memory with the infusion of dampness into an old MS. Draper also brings a physical example: If you put a flat object upon ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... given Uncle Philip's narrative in his own language as I took it down in my note-book at the time of my interviews with him. His was indeed a green old age; his mind remarkably clear, and his memory retentive. From time to time, as I read a chapter or a psalm, he often referred to certain passages that he had dwelt upon since I had left him. In relating his history be often shed tears; at one time with his elbows resting upon his knees, and face buried in the calico 'kerchief ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... open and green- grassed, there spotted with islets of close and shady trees. Mangrove, that horror of the African voyager, shines by its absence; and the soil is not mud, but humus based on gravels or on ruddy clays, stiff and retentive. The formation, in fact, is everywhere that of Eyo or Yoruba, the goodly region lying west of the lower Niger, and its fertility must result from the abundant water supply of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... his commercial life, Mr. Shodd had found time to 'self-educate' himself—he meant self-instruct—and having a retentive memory, and a not always strict regard for truth, was looked up to by the humble-ignorant as a very columbiad in argument, the only fault to be found with which gun was, that when it was drawn from its quiescent state into action, its effective force was comparatively nothing, one half the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... dealing with a book are recommended to those only whose natural memories are not yet made powerfully retentive by the System as a Memory-TRAINER. If, however, a Pupil possesses a good natural memory and a mastery of the System as a Device for memorising, and he has also greatly added to the power of his Concentration as well as his ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... once of every ill! How I wonder if thou bearest Mivins in remembrance still! If that Friday night is banished Yet from that retentive mind, When the others somehow vanished, And ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... conversation has a little resemblance to a common-place book; his habitual deportment to a piece of clock-work. He is not remarkable either as a reasoner or an observer: but he is quick, unaffected, replete with anecdote, various and retentive in his reading, and exceedingly happy in his play upon words, as most scholars are who give their minds this sportive turn. We have chiefly seen Mr. Southey in company where few people appear to advantage, we mean in that of Mr. Coleridge. He has not ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... with her dreary rattling of the box in demonstration of its retentive capacities. The mere force of the show stopped him from retorting; but when, to excuse Master Gammon for his tardiness, she related that he also had a money-box, and was in search of it, the farmer threw up his head with the vigour of a young man, and thundered for Master Gammon, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... myself again. "It is a very uncommon name, and should be easy to recollect." I had often prided myself on possessing a singularly retentive memory, more especially for names and faces, but, upon the present occasion, the more I pondered the matter, the more hazy I became. So I walked on through the sweet, wet grass, racking my brain for a solution of the problem, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... knew better than he how little regard John M. Hurd really felt for this mercurial youth. Yet Mr. Hurd had resisted with entire success all other means of approach. After all, family connections counted for something, even with the retentive old trolley magnate. So when at last he spoke, it was with the determination to show a part of his hand, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... space which has a temperature of 200 deg. below zero; but we live, as it were, in a conservatory, in the midst of perpetual winter. We are roofed over by the air that treasures the heat, floored under by strata both absorptive and retentive of heat, [Page 95] and between the earth and air violets grow and grains ripen. The sun has a strange chemical power. It kisses the cold earth, and it blushes with flowers and matures the fruit and grain. We are feeble creatures, and the sun gives us force. By it ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... about the suggestion. Tilden was able, rich, and known to everybody as the foe of the Tweed ring. Besides he was capable, notwithstanding his infirmity, of making a forceful speech, full of fire, logic and facts, his quick, retentive memory enabling him to enter easily into political controversy. As a powerful reasoner it was admitted that he had few equals at the bar. Indeed, the press, crediting him with courage, perseverance, and indomitable industry, had pictured him as a successful leader and an ideal reformer. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... agitations of the past. Despair was unnumbered among the emotions that grew round that child-like heart; shame, fear, and grief, however they might overshadow it for a time, left no taint of their presence on its bright, fine surface. Tender, perilously alive to sensation, strangely retentive of kindness as she was by nature, the very solitude to which she had been condemned had gifted her, young as she was, with a martyr's endurance of ill, and with a stoic's patience ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... drew up most exhaustive, but, read in the light of subsequent events, it shows how well-informed he was, and what an impartial mind he brought to bear on the subjects before him. He read very quickly, he could at a glance grasp the salient points of any question, and, having a wonderfully retentive memory, no important detail was lost sight of. He wrote both quickly and clearly, and had the faculty of presenting his points in a lucid manner. Like many military men, who are, when young, taken from their studies, he did not always write ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... warm in my heart, I became very active in the parish Sunday School. My inability to read relegated me to the children's class; but I had a retentive memory, and before I was able to read, I memorized about three ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... must acknowledge, to carelessness and inattention. In fact, during the first four years I was at school, I learnt very little of anything, with the exception of reciting verses, which I seemed to learn without any mental effort. My memory became very retentive. I found that by attentively reading half a page of print, or more, from any of the school-books, I could repeat the whole of it without missing a word. I can scarcely explain how I did it; but I think it was by paying strict attention ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... fairly well even on stiff clays, and in some instances on gumbo soils. But these soils must not be so retentive as to collect and hold water for any considerable time within a few feet of the surface. Such lands have usually much staying power; hence, alfalfa grown on them frequently improves for years after it has been ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... children. Daniel used very frequently to sit in the school listening to the lessons, and, though he was never able to read himself, he had his children taught, and made them read the Scriptures to him day by day for many years. He was blessed with a very retentive memory and with good common sense, so that he had a very fair acquaintance with the history, the biography, and the doctrinal teaching of both the Old and the New Testament. And now, to this knowledge, there was added that special working ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... bit of labor he performed, and he had not kept his son in ignorance of them. As they worked together the father had explained to the son what he did, and why he did it, The results of their work spoke for themselves, and Hiram had a retentive memory. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... Angelo had a most retentive memory, so that although he has painted so many thousand figures, as may be seen, he has never made one like to another, or in the same pose; indeed, I have heard him say that if ever he draws a line which he remembers to have drawn before, he rubs it out if it is to come before ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... and plays full seven thousand pieces. In short, he plays every piece that he has ever heard. How almost godlike (it cannot be brought to human comparison) is this retentive, this perfect memory, as relating to all that is musical, or ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... now to be traced on the signboards of wayside public-houses. Many of the old roads still exist in Yorkshire and Lancashire; but all that remains of the former traffic is the pack-horse still painted on village sign-boards — things as retentive of odd bygone facts as the picture-writing ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... power over those which are not given, and for which no obvious or precise rule can be laid down. Or capacity is power of any sort; genius is power of a different sort from what has yet been shown. A retentive memory, a clear understanding, is capacity, but it is not genius. The admirable Crichton was a person of prodigious capacity; but there is no proof (that I know) that he had an atom of genius. His verses ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... feeling very scratchy and uncomfortable about the beard which he had not dared to remove owing to Nur-el-Din's presence in the house. Before he left the bedroom, he paused a moment at the desk, the documents of the Bellward case in his hands. He had a singularly retentive memory, and he was loth to have these compromising papers in the house whilst Nur-el-Din was there. He took a quick decision and pitched the whole lot into the fire, retaining only the annotated list of Mr. Bellward's friends. This he placed in his pocket-book ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... epigrammatic and compressed that it may be pungent and striking. Hence, no species of writing is more allied to or more likely to pass into household words, and to become proverbs among a people of quick retentive powers, such as the Greeks were, to whom we are perhaps indebted for this. I send you the extract from Alciatus; Emblemata, No. 162. Antverpiae, 18mo. 1584. ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... resolutions which she herself had made. Now, as he often told himself, they were as completely separated as though each had determined never again to communicate with the other. Months had gone by since a word had passed between them. He was a man, patient, retentive, and by nature capable of enduring such a trouble without loud complaint; but he did remember from day to day how near they were to each other, and he did not fail to remind himself that he could ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... prevent Mr. Herne from being an incorrigible joker, and a wonderfully funny story-teller. All dialects come instantly and surely to his tongue. The sources of his power as a dramatist are evident in his keen observation and retentive memory. Mrs. Herne's poet is Sidney Lanier, and she knows his principal poems by heart. "Sunrise" is her especial delight. But to see her radiant with intellectual enthusiasm, one has but to start ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... His memory was remarkably retentive and well-stored,—a quality, I should infer from all I have observed, common to most Sovereigns. By the multiplicity of persons they are in the habit of seeing, and the vast variety of objects continually passing through their minds, this faculty is ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... Jackson carried between his narrow hollow temples, and under his soft thatch of silver hair, a register of most of the scandals and mysteries that had smouldered under the unruffled surface of New York society within the last fifty years. So far indeed did his information extend, and so acutely retentive was his memory, that he was supposed to be the only man who could have told you who Julius Beaufort, the banker, really was, and what had become of handsome Bob Spicer, old Mrs. Manson Mingott's father, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... could read he could repeat long portions from the various speeches his father particularly admired; he learned by heart easily and had a retentive memory, and his father had only to say over a sentence two or three times when the child was word perfect. It gave Abel Gallup the most exquisite delight to stand his little son between his knees and hear the stirring, sonorous sentences rolled out in the high, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... own apotheosis among their kindred. They have had a strong natural yearning, not so much for applause as sympathy, which the cold fortune of their lifetime did but scantily supply; so that this unsatisfied appetite may make itself felt upon sensibilities at once so delicate and retentive, even a step or two beyond the grave. Leigh Hunt, for example, would be pleased, even now, if he could learn that his bust had been reposited in the midst of the old poets whom he admired and loved; though there is hardly a man among the authors of to-day ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... brought my violin and we played. Cecilia's musical memory is prodigious. Mine is also retentive and precise. But she had too much inventive genius for precision, unless the notes were before her, and sometimes I corrected her. Next, this delicious interlude over, I begged that the ladies would do me the honour to dine ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... and persuasive extempore speaker. He possest in high degree faculties essential to great oratory—a capacious mind, retentive memory, logical acumen, vivid imagination, deep concentration, and wealth of language. He had an extraordinary personal fascination, largely due to his broad ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... Ekashrutadhara. This word exhibits the opinion entertained by the Hindoos as to the close connection existing between a powerful intellect and a retentive memory. Such a quality indicates the highest kind of pundit: and it should be recollected that Saraswati is the divinity of wisdom, the pundit ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... 1810. Mrs. Smart survived her husband many years, and was one of the remarkable women of her age. She was long known and highly esteemed in Mecklenburg and surrounding country for her general intelligence, ardent piety, and retentive memories of Revolutionary events. At the great gathering of delegates and people in Charlotte, on the 20th of May, 1775, she was present (then thirteen years old), and still retained a distinct recollection of some of the thrilling scenes of that memorable occasion, not the least of which was "the ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... man of the world, keenly interested in the movements of men and in the page of history that unrolled itself before him day by day. To the discussion of things new, as readily as of things old, aided by a capacious, retentive and ready memory, which dispensed with reference to printed pages, he brought also the exquisite keenness and subtlety of his highly analytic and imaginative intellect, the illustrative stores of his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... nation determined to manufacture goods for the civilized world, and especially for the United States. Parliament had enacted a law prohibiting the carrying of machinist's tools out of Great Britain. The young mechanic was compelled to leave his tools behind. He had a retentive memory and active mind; he settled in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and set himself to work to construct a machine for the carding of wool, which at that time was done wholly by hand. The Pittsfield Sun of November 2, 1801, contained an advertisement of the first carding machine constructed in the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... a far easier thing to get into a house in Ireland than to get out of it again; for there is an attractive and retentive witchery about the hospitality of the natives of that country, which has no match, as far as I have seen, in the wide world. In other places the people are hospitable or kind to a stranger; but in Ireland the affair is reduced to a sort of science, and a web of attentions ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... centenarian passed away at Whithall, Galway, in the person of Mrs. Catherine Hynes, who had attained the remarkable age of 102. The old lady had a remarkably retentive memory, recalling with ease incidents which occurred three generations ago. Her recollection of Cromwell's campaign ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... of its particles and their relation to each other. The following terms are used in describing soil textures: Coarse, fine, open, close, loose, hard, stiff, compact, soft, mellow, porous, leachy, retentive, cloddy, lumpy, light, heavy. Which of these terms will apply to the texture of sand, which to clay, which to humus, which to the garden soil, which to a soil that plant roots can easily penetrate? We find then that texture of the ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... a vein of the extremest circumstantiality. With deliberate malice I loaded a prolix narrative with every triviality that a fairly retentive memory could rake out of the half-forgotten past. I cudgelled my brains for irrelevant incidents. I described with the minutest accuracy things that had not the faintest significance. I drew a vivid picture of the carriage inside and out; I painted a lifelike portrait of the horse, even ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... another Greek writer to you, because it is much to my purpose; he is describing the character of a genius truly inclined to philosophy. "It includes," he says, "qualifications rarely united in one single mind, quickness of apprehension and a retentive memory, vivacity and application, gentleness and magnanimity"; to these he adds an invincible love of truth, and consequently of probity and justice. "Such a soul," continues he, "will be little inclined to sensual ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... Pagan philosophy, sometimes went so far as to attribute exceptional beauty, or talent, to evil powers; and we are apt to trace them to a merely human source. But keen perception, sound judgment, a retentive memory, a vigorous imagination, and, not least, good common-sense, are among the talents entrusted to us by God Himself, who will by-and-bye take account of ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... being turned out made him for the nonce refrain from that vengeance of abuse which his education as a Dublin Jackeen well qualified him to inflict. But he put down the man's face in his retentive memory, and made up his mind to ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... (pronounced N[a]'feez, the [a] as in fate) was born in the city of Philadelphia, March 5th, 1842. His parents died while he was still at a tender age, and he was placed with some relatives who resided in the city. From early years he was characterized by quick perceptions and a retentive memory. In the Philadelphia High School, from which he received the academic degree of Master of Arts, he was considered the best scholar in his class, a marked distinction in view of the large numbers which attend that institution. ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... in a corner of his mind for the moment; the answer would come to him later on. He had a wonderfully retentive mind. Everything which he saw or heard seemed to make its corresponding impression somewhere in his brain; often without his being conscious of it; and these photographic impressions were always there ready for him when he ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... almost her whole life out of doors, in heat and cold, storm and rain, she had come to be intimately acquainted with all the signs of foreboding change of weather, and was looked upon by her acquaintances as a perfect oracle. She had also a most retentive memory, and being of a joyous nature, with a bodily frame that never knew illness, had learnt every verse or melody that was sung within her hearing, until her mind became a very storehouse of songs. To John, old Granny Bains soon took a great liking, he being a devout listener, ready ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... by keeping the mind in a healthy condition; it enables a man to come off clear from a judicial inquiry; it qualifies him both to learn and to teach the law; it makes him eagerly listened to, to have a retentive memory, etc. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... light soils, need more manure than loamy or heavy lands? We answer—because, in the first place the rains which quickly descend through the open soil, wash down out of the reach of vegetation the soluble fertilizing matters, especially the nitrates, for which the soil has no retentive power; and in the second place, from the porosity of the soil, the air has too great access, so that the vegetable and animal matters of manures decay too rapidly, their volatile portions, ammonia and carbonic acid, escape into the atmosphere, and are in measure ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... discovery made by Lady Harman at this period of reconstruction that her husband's business side was not to be explained completely as a highly energetic and elaborate avarice. He was no doubt acquisitive and retentive and mean-spirited, but these were merely the ugly aspects of a disposition that involved many other factors. He was also incurably a schemer. He liked to fit things together, to dove-tail arrangements, to devise economies, to spread ingeniously into new fields, he had a love of organization ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... this speech as an indication to our government of what was likely to be the course of the Emperor, I determined to retain it in my mind; and, although my verbal memory has never been retentive, I was able, on returning to our legation, to write the whole of it, word for word. In the form thus given, it was transmitted to our State Department, where, a few years since, when looking over sundry papers, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... library contained a choice but heterogeneous collection of books—old French "ana," and the learning of mediaeval doctors—books intentionally and books unintentionally comic, the former of which Sterne read with an only too retentive a memory for their jests, and the latter with an acutely humorous appreciation of their solemn trifling. Later on it will be time to note the extent to which he utilized these results of his widely discursive reading, and to examine the legitimacy of the mode in which he used them: ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... Yuranigh, our own native, was at length made intelligible to our Barwan guide, and he shaped his course accordingly. He took us through scrubs, having in the centre those holes where water usually lodges for some time after rain, where some substratum of clay happens to be retentive enough to impede the common absorption. But the water in these holes had been recently drunk, and the mud trampled into hard clay by the hoofs of cattle. Thus it is, that the aborigines first become sensible of the ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... plainly see its terrible fangs and poison glands. Then, holding its head close up to his lips, he injected the dark saliva into its throat, and once more flung it to the ground. Up to this time he had used no violence—nothing that would have killed a creature so retentive of life as a snake; and I still expected to see the reptile make its escape. Not so, however. It made no effort to move from the spot, but lay stretched out in loose irregular folds, without any perceptible motion beyond a slight quivering of the body. In less than two minutes ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... coat to fit any credulous fool that will wear it. You shall never observe him make any reply in places of public concourse; he ingenuously acknowledges himself to be more bounden to the happiness of a retentive memory, than either ability of tongue or pregnancy of conceit. He carries his table-book still about with him, but dares not pull it out publicly. Yet no sooner is the table drawn than he turns notary, by which means he recovers the charge of his ordinary. Paul's is ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Massachusetts, October 18th, 1829, and received his education at the public school. He was one of the brightest scholars in his class, learned easily, was fond of books, never wearied of study, and never forgot what he acquired. At the start he was blest with a most marvelous and retentive memory, and a keen sense of the practical side of life. "It was thus," as one of his friends has remarked, "that his school days were profitable to him to a degree not common, and it was thus that his rapidly-growing literary attainments became ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... self-respect reacts unfavourably on the moral sense. Ingratitude is a vice attributed to Bengalis by people who have done little or nothing to elicit the corresponding virtue. As a matter of fact their memory is extremely retentive of favours. They will overlook any shortcomings in a ruler who has the divine gift of sympathy, and serve him with devotion. Macaulay has branded them with cowardice. If the charge were true, it was surely illogical and unmanly to reproach a community numbering 50,000,000 ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... been introduced, as a chief, is named Mora. We had an interview also with the former king, named Riemko; he is a chief of high rank, and a very intelligent man: he spoke the English language with much correctness. Being naturally of an inquisitive disposition, and possessing an exceedingly retentive memory, he had acquired much information; this he displayed by detailing to us many facts connected with the history of Napoleon Buonaparte, Wellington, &c., which had been related to him by various European visiters, and which he appeared to retain to the most minute particulars. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... the books at his command served to develop his mental powers rapidly, giving him a retentive memory, correct forms of speech and a keen power of analysis. This faculty grew largely out of his special fondness for the study of mathematics, by which he acquired unusual facility in solving difficult problems. He early won the reputation of being the smartest ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... she read everything, and remembered what she read; that is say, she had a logical mind, for a retentive memory implies an orderly brain. She was consequently NUMBER ONE in everything which she took up. This, coupled with the fact that she lived among those who regarded her somewhat as a speculation, and ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... possess truth except by the slow process of digestion and assimilation, my brain was more a machine-shop than a wareroom; hence capacity of retail dealing was of the smallest. I was not in the least conscious at this time that a large wareroom amply stored by virtue of a retentive memory was not the most needed as an equipment for all the practical affairs of life. I have ever found it necessary to dodge some memories, when there was lack of time to endure a hailstorm ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... Lincoln had little early culture, but his vigorous native intellect sought information wherever it could be obtained with limited means and opportunities, and overcame almost insuperable obstacles. His quick perception and powers of observation and reflection, and his retentive memory were remarkable; his judgment was good, his mental grasp and comprehension equal to any emergency, his intentions were always honest, and his skill and tact, with a determination to always maintain the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... endowed with excellent practical abilities, possessed a most retentive memory, and a thorough knowledge of the most intricate windings of the human heart. Nothing escaped his observation. It would have been a difficult matter to have made a tool of one, whose suspicions were always wide awake; who never acted from impulse, or ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... was of the middle height, and of a slender form. She had a fair complexion, her eyes were of light blue, and her countenance wore the expression of intelligence. She excelled in conversation; and a retentive memory enabled her to render available the fruits of extensive reading. In old age, she retained much of the buoyant vivacity of youth, and her whole life was adorned ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... perhaps as meaningless a remark as was ever made; but as Bacon made it, I suppose it is better than any that I could make. Does it not seem as if things were fluid? They are displaced and altered in ten years so that one has difficulty, even with a memory so very vivid and retentive for that sort of thing as mine, in identifying places where one lived a long while in the past, and which one has kept piously in mind during all the interval. Nevertheless, the hills, I am glad ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his academical exercises. And this was the more wonderful, that having turned his thoughts towards the ministry, he carried on his theological studies at the same time, and made vast improvements therein, to which he was enabled, by his deep penetration, and a memory so retentive, that he scarcely forgot any thing he had read or heard. It was easy and ordinary for him to transcribe any sermon, after he returned to his chamber, at such a full length, as that the intelligent and judicious reader who heard ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... would, after long intervals, recognize persons whom he had never seen but once or twice. When employed in dictation, he would resume the thread of his discourse without being prompted, after the most vexatious interruptions. His judgment was as sound as his memory was retentive; it was almost infallible,—no one was ever known to have been misled by it. He had a remarkable analytical power, and also the power of generalization. He was a very learned man, and his Commentaries are among the most useful and valued of his writings, showing both learning ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... The cardinal's intellect, these envoys tell us, was wonderfully acute. He understood the point at which those who conversed with him were aiming when they had scarcely opened their mouth. His memory was more than usually retentive. He was well educated, and learned not only in Greek, Latin, and Italian, but in the sciences, and especially in theology. He had a rare gift of talking. In the fulfilment of his promises he was less famous. According to one ambassador, he had the reputation of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the seventeenth century, whilst his clothes were generally of velvet or velveteen, with riding-boots of a fashion beyond all recollection, and his wide shirt-collars were turned back over his waistcoat in imitation of the Walloon style. There never was a man prouder of his high degree, nor more retentive of the privileges enjoyed by those of his rank in times gone by. People grumbled at his eccentricities, and many turned them to ridicule, for Lancia is a place not wanting in a sense of humour. But, as usual, unbending pride had ended ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds |
