"Retentive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mrs. Parry, a hatchet-faced dame with a venomous tongue and a retentive memory, "Morley's fond of children, although he has none ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... of God, amen: I, Davy Dickey, of the County of ——, and State of Alabama, being of sound mind and retentive memory, but knowing the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death, do hereby make and ordain ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... 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 ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... 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.
... very little from droughts at Aldington, the land was naturally so retentive of moisture, but 1893 was a dry year, not easily forgotten; no rain fell from early in March to July 13; the hay crop was the lightest in remembrance, and straw was so short and scarce that the hay-ricks of the following ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... be,—the organizing head, the vigilant guardian, the seeker's index, the scholar's counsellor? His work is not merely that of administration, manifold and laborious as its duties are. He must have a quick intelligence and a retentive memory. He is a public carrier of knowledge in its germs. His office is like that which naturalists attribute to the bumble-bee,—he lays up little honey for himself, but he conveys the fertilizing pollen from flower ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and several towns competed for the honor, Dr. Payson was associated with 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... required amount may be it must be very considerable, for in addition to the above-mentioned losses of manure, we require a considerable amount for the demands of the coffee trees, and that, further, it must vary with the amount of the rainfall, and the retentive or non-retentive character of the soil. The crop, it is true, takes comparatively little from the soil, and Mr. John Hughes, Agricultural Chemist, 79, Mark Lane,—points out in his "Reports on Ceylon Soils and Coffee Manures," that 5 cwt. of parchment ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... 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 remember the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... either of the two professions; I had worked for a banker for six months and my services were so unsatisfactory that I was obliged to resign to avoid being discharged. My studies had been varied but superficial; my memory was active but not retentive. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... for a moment; then she sat down by Lambert, and began to talk to him. Unfortunately, my memory, though retentive, is far from being so trustworthy as my friend's, and I have forgotten the whole of the ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... is evident that if he were alive to-day he could easily obtain one of the Cecil Rhodes Oxford fellowships, for we are told that he cared only for study and for manly sports, and that he was of an upright character. His memory was so retentive that he could repeat whole books, word for word, after many years, and in more ways than one he had displayed a wonderful precocity. Elizabetta, too, had been given a most liberal and careful education, and her ready intelligence was equalled only by her ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... when history could not be 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. ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... astonishing the amount of information they displayed concerning women, what retentive memories they had, and how very familiar they were with the subject of woman, her ways, and her sex nature. Their mental horizon was bounded on the north by the affairs of the ranch, on the east by ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... been faithfully handed down by St. John without any extraordinary gift. He was bound to our LORD by more than ordinary affection. He was ever nearest to Him. Is it not conceivable, (we are asked,) that these two causes, aided by a retentive memory, would at least enable him to give us the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... very extensively, and this grain is growing in favor with us. White people generally prefer wheat, which is an excellent grain that has been used by man for thousands of years. It has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, and it is so retentive of life that it has started to grow after lying dormant for several thousand years. Truly it is a worthy food ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... (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, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... bad, I should for ever loath myself To be the messenger to so good a lord. I do exceed my instructions to acquaint Your lordship with thus much; but 'tis my venture On your retentive wisdom: and because I would no jealous scruple should molest Or rack your peace of thought. For I assure My noble lord, no senator yet knows The business meant: though all by several letters Are warned to be there, and give their voices, Only to add unto the state and ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... closes the piece, the whole opera is a series of exquisite conceptions, hardly one of which does not contain some theme or passage calculated to catch the dullest and slowest ear and fix itself on the least retentive memory; and though the huntsman's and bridesmaid's choruses, of course, first attained and longest retained a street-organ popularity, there is not a single air, duet, concerted piece, or chorus, from which extracts were not seized on ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... so useful, is pre-eminently so to the business man. It must be both retentive and quick. By proper training this faculty may be so cultivated that names, dates and events to a surprising number may be readily recalled. The ability to greet a customer by calling him by name is considered very valuable ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... in a soil 65 I. Physical properties of a soil 66 Kinds of soils 67 Absorptive power for water of soils 67 Absorptive power for water of sand, clay, and humus 68 Fineness of particles of a soil 69 Limit of fineness of soil-particles 69 Importance of retentive power 70 Power of plants for absorbing water from a soil experiments by Sachs 73 How to increase absorptive power of soils 74 Amount of water in a soil most favourable for plant growth 75 Hygroscopic power of soils 75 Capacity of soils for absorbing and retaining heat 76 Explanation ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... 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, who had disappeared so mysteriously (with a large sum of trust money) less than ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... with a remarkably retentive memory,—a thing which many of us spoil by trashy reading, or allowing our time and attention to be distracted by the trifles of every-day life,—Harriet had learned twenty-seven hymns and two long chapters of the Bible. She was exceedingly fond of reading, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... family of the great iron manufacturer Myhrman at Rmen in Vrmland and thither Esaias accompanied him. Here he could drink deep from the fountain of knowledge for at Rmen he found a fine library of French, Latin and Greek classics. He worked prodigiously and this, coupled with a remarkably retentive memory, enabled him to make remarkably rapid progress in his studies. He would have remained in the library all the time poring over his dear classic authors but for the fortunate intervention of the young members of the Myhrman family, ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... harassing anxiety or distraction of mind, though separated from home and kindred, can make him complain. He thinks all will come out right at last, he has such faith in the goodness of Providence. Another thing which especially attracted my attention was his wonderfully retentive memory. His religion is not of the theoretical kind, but it is constant, earnest, sincere, practical; it is neither demonstrative nor loud, but manifests itself in a quiet, practical way, and is always at work. In him ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... moment when they are wanted. It is not sufficient, therefore, in education, to store up knowledge; it is essential to arrange facts so that they shall be ready for use, as materials for the imagination, or the judgment, to select and combine. The power of retentive memory is exercised too much, the faculty of recollective memory is exercised too little, by the common modes of education. Whilst children are reading the history of kings, and battles, and victories; ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... known him, for example, to go unprepared to a recitation, depending upon his luck not to be called upon to recite, when, with his ready wit and retentive memory, he would gather up what it required hard study for the rest of us to put into our craniums. But it sometimes happened that Dame Fortune, wicked jade! forsook him, and Willing had to march up, as we thought, to certain disgrace. But whatever forsook ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... acquaintances, rarely repaying the same. He had a tendency to forget that he had borrowed half-a-crown here to pay a cab and ten shillings there to settle up for a dinner; and his memory was not much more retentive of larger sums. This made his friends somewhat wary. The consequence was that the great treasure-hunt was a failure from start to finish. He got friendly smiles. He got honeyed apologies. He got earnest assurances of good-will. But he got no money, except from ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... would 'go in' for military drill, as they now go in for foot-ball, cricket, or gymnastics—at that period when they have a good deal of leisure time, when they would regard the thing more as play than work—when their memories are strong and powerfully retentive, and when the principles and practice of military drill would be as thoroughly implanted in them as the power to swim or skate, so that, once acquired, they'd never quite lose it. I speak from experience, for I learned to skate and swim when a boy, and I feel ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... loam or a light clay loam, is excellent. Heavy soils give the Spy a greasy skin. Light soils cause the tree to grow upright and to bear fruit of poor flavor. The King likes a soil slightly lighter than the best Greening soils, but retentive of moisture. Hubbardson will utilize the sandiest soil of any northern variety, preferring rich, ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... most suitable for the full development of I. glandulosa is a strong, clayey, retentive loam; it does not thrive well in the light shallow soils in the neighborhood of London, except in shady positions. I. Hookeri is a free-flowering perennial, with pointed lanceolate leaves, of a delicate texture, bright ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... Hawke was very busy. He made no written notes. He relied solely upon his marvellous retentive memory, and it was not long before he was in full possession of the facts ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... was listened 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 delights, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... injected into the brain of his neophytes dates by the dozen and proper names—geographical ones in particular—by the score, impressing them on stubborn memories through the aid of some easily-learnt rhyme, or comic association, that made even the dullest comprehension retentive ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Most retentive to her, as it had passed, of Huggo's share in all that episode had been that she from her expostulation with Huggo had not come away with the same satisfaction as seemingly had Harry. She put before the boy how terribly his father had felt the shame of it, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... 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 among the highest living authorities ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... at Pentonville in the articles of pipes and shirts) may be found knocking the dust out of his official door-key on the bunk or locker before mentioned; and so exceedingly subject to dust is his key, and so very retentive of that superfluity, that in exceptional summer weather when a ray of sunlight has fallen on the locker in my presence, I have noticed its inexpressive countenance to be deeply marked by a kind of Bramah erysipelas ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... after they had learned a certain thing, in speaking to them she used English for that thing. The Folk, keen-witted and retentive of memory as barbarians often are, made astonishing strides in ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Fractures.—Lucas-Championniere, in 1886, first pointed out that a certain amount 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 his ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... his friend. Occasionally the corners of his large humorous mouth twitched as Carroll touched on one or two of the lighter phases of his investigation—and once Leverage even twitted him about becoming "one of these here butterfly investigators"—but Carroll knew that no word of his escaped the retentive brain of the chief of the city's police force, and that each was being carefully catalogued with truer knowledge of its proper importance than Carroll had yet ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... to keep a journal of what passes in private society, so that no one need expect from the sequel of this narrative any detailed record of Scott's familiar talk. What fragments of it have happened to adhere to a tolerably retentive memory, and may be put into black and white without wounding any feelings which my friend, were he alive, would have wished to spare, I shall introduce as the occasion suggests or serves. But I disclaim on the threshold ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to his turn to speak, he said: 'My tale is but short, although story-telling is my profession. I am the son of a schoolmaster, who, perceiving that I was endowed with a very retentive memory, made me read and repeat to him most of the histories with which our language abounds; and when he found that he had furnished my mind with a sufficient assortment, he turned me out into the world under the garb of dervish, to relate them in public ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the weak spot was the native village, nevertheless. And the business of the man from Diamond Town was to lounge about its neighbourhood, using those sharp light eyes of his to excellent purpose, and storing his retentive memory—for it would not do for a stranger to be caught putting pencil to paper in a town under Martial Law, and bristling with suspicion—with the information indispensable for the putting in effect of young Schenk Eybel's ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... "exhalation," and says, "If this exhalation is thick and sticky, it blazes into a comet." And again he returns to the same view, saying that "one form of exhalation is dense, hence easily inflammable and long retentive of fire, from which sort are especially generated comets." But it is in his third lecture that he takes up comets specially, and his discussion of them is extended through the fourth, fifth, and sixth ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... an insatiable thirst for knowledge, all the advantages of the village school were given him. His progress here was phenomenal. His eagerness to know truth; his power of mind to perceive, comprehend and analyze; his retentive memory, soon gave him first place among his fellows in the school in the village. A few years passed; he in the meantime having prepared himself, the master-mantle of the village school falls upon ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • 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 Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... 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. ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... riches; for he was naturally inquisitive, and desirous of the 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 ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... talking of the curious fact that all three of them seemed able to continue thinking in a straight line, hold their minds to a subject, while all the rest grew more vague, less retentive, more content to live from moment to moment, without concern for past ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... but also of other American cities. He found a large-scale map of the metropolis and spread it out on the table, true to the indicated compass points. Clustered about this outspread map, the other members of the patrol followed with eager eyes and retentive minds their ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... small choice. She had looked into almost every device for increasing the sum of human knowledge and hastening the millennium, and she thought them all more or less valuable. Her memory, mercifully, was not a retentive one, therefore she remembered little of the beliefs she had outgrown; they never left even a deposit in the stretch of wet sand in which ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 in the matter of religious thought, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... She could rise on the morning after the night of the bonfires with a clear head and an appetite undiminished by punch; and probably she was the only one at Morristown of whom this could be said. The morning light did not break for her on aching eyelids and a brain at once too retentive of the boasts of the small hours and too sensitive to the perils of the day to come. Colonel John had scarcely passed away under guard, old Darby had scarcely made his first round—with many an ominous shake of the head—the slatternly serving-boys ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... the children by asking questions, some of which none of them could answer. Then his eyes sparkled with delight as he gave the required information. His retentive memory never seemed to be at fault. What he once heard he remembered. The sturdy pioneers, who had turned their backs on towns and cities to make their homes in the wilderness, did not wish their children to grow up in ignorance. The little settlement soon became a village, and the ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... retentive memory, and considerable powers of imagination, I was able at times to bring almost all the things of importance which I had met with in my reading, before my mind, and compare them both with each other, and with all that was already in my memory. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... 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 to ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... was well done with. Her rapidly beating heart had now opportunity to lessen its pulsations, and as she soon realized that she was practically unnoticed, her natural calmness began to return to her. She remembered why she was there, and her discerning eye enabled her to stamp on a retentive memory the various particulars of so unaccustomed a spectacle whose very unfamiliarity made the greater impression upon the girl's mind. She moved away from the group, determined to saunter through the numerous rooms thrown open for the occasion, and thus, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... of the time—perhaps eighteen months—that he remained at school, he occupied the hours during meals in reading. Thus his whole time was engrossed. He had a tolerably retentive memory, and the quantity that he read was surprising. He must in those last months have exhausted the school—library, which consisted principally of abridgments of all the voyages and travels of any note; Mayor's Collection; also his Universal History; Robertson's Histories ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... which was absolutely necessary for the accumulation of authorities, and which alone may account for Johnson's retentive mind being enriched with a very large and various store of knowledge and imagery, must have occupied several years. The Preface furnishes an eminent instance of a double talent, of which Johnson was fully conscious. Sir Joshua Reynolds heard him say, 'There are two things ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... recitation, so as to store up in the memory what was thus communicated. The art, if any, would attach equally to the reciter and to the listener; the duty of the one would be to accommodate his lessons in time, quantity, and mode of delivery to the retentive capacity of the other; who, in his turn, would be required to con and recapitulate what he had been told, until he made it his own, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... affecting and amiable light. I scarcely ever felt more charmed with his excellencies, more grateful for his condescension, or more abased at my own unworthiness; but I lament that my heart is so little retentive of those pleasing ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... fixed form in matter of detail relieves the stretch of invention; in fact, they show exactly the same phenomena of fixing and reshaping, that all story-telling whose object is to please exhibits in transference from mouth to mouth. Nevertheless, they are jealously retentive of incident. The story-teller, generally to be found among the old people of any locality, who can relate the legends as they were handed down to him from the past is known and respected in the community. We find the same story[8] ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... acquiring it. Capacity is power over given ideas combinations of ideas; genius is the 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 that remain are dull and sterile. He could learn all that was known of any subject; he ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... revivigo—igxo. Retail, to sell by detale vendi. Retail, by pomalgrande, detale. Retail (trade) detala. Retailer revendisto. Retain gardi, teni. Retainer vasalo. Retaliate revengxi. Retaliation revengxo. Retard prokrasti, malhelpi. Retardation prokrasto, malhelpo. Retentive persista, premorebla. Retina retino. Retinue sekvantaro. Retire reeniri. Retirement kvieteco. Retort respondi, reparoli. Retort (chem. vessel) retorto. Retouch (revise) korekti. Retrace reveni, repasxi. Retract malkonfesi. Retreat (place) rifugxejo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Salem, 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 ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... was always popular with those who knew of his services in the Revolutionary War. Governor Gilmer says that he was one of the best Chroniclers of the stirring events of that period. His memory was retentive, his understanding good, and he had a gift of description possessed by few. He moved to the land the State had given him, taking with him the family of the man who had nursed him. He continued to serve them while he lived, faithful to the end, and when he ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... and boots, grasped his stick, and began to climb upward through the thickly growing trees towards the house of the sirens. His instinct had told him upon the terrace that the padrone was there. Uneducated people have often marvellously retentive memories for the things of every-day life. Gaspare remembered the padrone's question about the little light beside the sea, his answer to it, the way in which the padrone had looked towards the trees when, in ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... conception (for the most part) is let and hindered in cold Northerne Countries, as England, and the like. For by the helpe of it these distempers are changed and altered, the superfluous humidities and mucosities are taken away, the part is corroborated, and the retentive ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... prize these fleeting opportunities, not listening to the preacher's voice, as of one that can make a pleasant sound from the harp or organ—not seeking merely the delight of the ear or intellect; but taking heed to hear for eternity, receiving in meek and retentive hearts the precious grain as it falls from the sower's hand, and giving diligence that the best possible ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... the wealthiest citizens of the village, and the garden is converted into front yard, building spot and back yard, containing all the usual necessary appendages to a dwelling place, so that here all traces of former days have passed from the spot, and only live inscribed upon the retentive tablet of Memory. On the east end was another small enclosure where we used to spend our leisure hours in the cultivation of flowers and medicinal plants. Here the tall lilac waved its graceful head beneath our bed-room window, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... monkey, etc., show the emotions of anger, hate, fear, love, and grief so plainly that "he who runs may read." That these animals possess these emotions is a fact which hardly needs demonstration. They likewise have very retentive memories, sometimes treasuring up an injury for days, months, and years, until an opportunity arrives for them to "get even," thus showing that they ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... 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 in the ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... 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 without a motive, and who had a shrewd ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... had a most retentive memory; he could repeat 500 strange, unconnected words, after twice hearing them; and a sermon verbatim, after reading it once. He undertook, after passing from Temple Bar to the farthest part of Cheapside and back again, to mention all the signs over ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... constitution and genial humors carried him abroad into sunshine and enjoyment, Johnson's physical infirmities and mental gloom drove him upon himself; to the resources of reading and meditation; threw a deeper though darker enthusiasm into his mind, and stored a retentive memory with all ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... 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
... 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 ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... and slate, known in Jamaica as rotten rock, mixed with vegetable mould, is one of the most favorable soils. The subsoil should be also carefully examined by a boring augur, for a stiff moist clay, or marly bottom retentive of moisture, is particularly injurious to the plant. A dark, rusty-colored sand, or a ferruginous marl on a substratum of limestone, kills the tree in a few years. In virgin lands, after the wood has been felled and cleared, the land is ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... light within the mind, and a secret incentive to the best action. Though silent and apart, it is the witness of what is great, and our life is always seeking to rise within its sphere; while, by a secret transference—for souls are not retentive of their own goodness—our standards of living and thinking are maintained at their highest level, like water fed by a distant spring. All this and infinitely more than this was the Queen his mother to Hamlet. It is impossible, therefore, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... minute description to be able to stir the memory of one or other of the dozens of uniformed hall-porters whom I interviewed. The majority of such men have a remarkably retentive memory for a face, due to long cultivation, just as that possessed by one's club hall-porter, who can at once address any of the thousand or so ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... either note-book or journal, and as my memory is not a retentive one I have allowed much to escape which I should now vainly attempt to recall. Some things must, however, have made a vivid and durable impression on my mind, as fragments remain, after the lapse of years, far ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... order of things has been fully established, and free, intelligent labor has taken the place of the drudging, dull toil of the slave. It is particularly fond of warm, southern exposures, with light limestone soil, and it would be useless to plant it on soil retentive of moisture. Bunch long, large shouldered and compact; berry medium, black, with blue bloom—"bags of wine," as Downing fitly calls them; skin thin, sweet flesh, without pulp, juicy and high flavored, never clogs the ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... 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 ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... 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 ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... journalists he had ever met had been connected with financial papers, and his negotiations with them had taught him the subtleties of scientific blackmail. Being a man of little imagination, though of retentive memory, he judged the whole profession by the two or three members of it, or rather pseudo-members, he had been unfortunate enough ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... 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 ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... "Her memory was remarkably retentive, not only of the contents of books, but of all that great outlying fund of anecdote and story which the quaint and earnest New England life always supplied. There were pictures of peculiar characters, legends of true events stranger than romance, all stored ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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 of her life, even till the hour of her death, to afford her the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... large Universal Geography or Gazetteer, the Carton or Vivien de St. Martin if those days—hence his glib references to the manners and customs of Laplanders, Caffres, Kamskatchans, and other recondite types of breeding. His imaginative faculty was under the control of an exceptionally strong and retentive memory. One may venture to say, indeed, without danger of exaggeration that his testimonials as regards habitual accuracy of statement have seldom been exceeded. Despite the doctor's unflattering portraits ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... 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. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... 44.), I crave leave to say 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, published in 1576, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... 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
... is giddier than becomes a head of my age; and my stomach has not recovered its retentive faculty. Leaning forward, particularly to write, does not ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... was a man of wide reading with a retentive, memory. The name brought back instantly to him the remembrance of the sinister reputation of its owner—a notorious buck of the thirties—who had gambled and duelled and steeped himself in drink and debauchery, ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of Mecca: the frankness of his manner concealed the artifice of his views; and the habits of courtesy were imputed to personal friendship or universal benevolence. His memory was capacious and retentive; his wit easy and social; his imagination sublime; his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive. He possessed the courage both of thought and action; and, although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the first idea which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an original ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the red shale of this region which has become hardened by the heat of the intruding trap. Where this rock occurs covering large surfaces, nearly level, "the soil is a dark brown colored clay, very retentive of moisture and better adapted to grass than grain.... A deficiency of lime probably occurs here, and there may be some obnoxious ingredient present. Minute grains of iron sand are generally interspersed through this rock, and as it is not acted upon by atmospheric ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... description in literature, he had not reached the modern deliberateness in the seeking out of nature's beauties for worship or imitation, so that the phases of natural beauty which we find in his poetry are merely those which had unconsciously become fixed in a memory naturally retentive of ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... a few months before, he described the country minutely, its topography, its flora and fauna, its geological presentations, and expatiated upon its promising future. Sedgwick was very greatly interested, and with his retentive memory the facts were fixed upon ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... 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 ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... retentive mind had seized, long ago, on Rowlatt's recommendation at the Little Bear Inn, and he had developed, perhaps half consciously, a half sense of humour. A whole sense, however, is not congruous with the fervid beliefs and soaring ambitions of eighteen. Your ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... definite speech; his vocabulary expanded with astonishing rapidity, and, contrary to his previous habit, he made incessant use of it. He was now as remarkable for loquacity as formerly for the opposite characteristic; and his keenness of observation and retentive memory were a theme of general admiration. In a word, he used his five senses to ten times better effect than had ever been expected of him in the old days; and no one who had not seen him for a year from the time of his fit would have recognized him as the same child. He was not ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... subject, 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
... Daddy Glass-Eyes, was it not?' was the ready response, for somehow this young man had a strangely retentive memory, and seldom forgot anything that ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the son of a physician. He is endowed with an excellent understanding, quick power of conception, and retentive memory. At his birth, both eyes were found to be turned inward to such an extent that a portion of the cornea was hidden by the inner canthus, and in both pupils there was a yellowish-white discoloration. That the strabismus and cataract of ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... brush-like surface, like a whale's in miniature: it is said to eat small fish. A bony spine rises on its back (I suppose for defence), which is 2-1/2 inches long, and as thick as a quill. They are very retentive ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... sights and festivities, on his own account. True, also, that he tumbled into the river, and nearly ended his career at a very early age. Still he survived his river catastrophe; and, though he gained little book learning, possessed such a good and retentive memory, and was so observant, that his mind became stored with vivid impressions of the scenes and surroundings of his youth, which he related with great effect ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... fifteen. He has printed many of his own letters, and in these letters he is always ranting or twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally considered as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... was corrupted with that of the hated race. He appeared to be about forty years of age, and his knowledge of the affairs of the locality could hardly have been better if he had been a white man, with a quick perception, a reasoning intellect, and a retentive memory. It was the rule with Union officers, soldiers, and sailors to trust the negroes, making proper allowance for their general ignorance and stupidity, and for particular circumstances. But some of them, even many ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... take notes. Opposite to Von Moltke sat De Wimpffen alone; while in rear, 'almost in the shade,' were General Faure, Count Castelnau, and other Frenchmen, among whom was a cuirassier, Captain d'Orcet, who had observant eyes and a retentive memory. Then there ensued a brief silence, for Von Moltke looked straight before him and said nothing, while De Wimpffen, oppressed by the number present, hesitated to engage in a debate 'with the two men admitted ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... some degree of curliness or waviness to the hair when it is naturally straight, and to render it more retentive of the curl imparted to it by papers or by other modes of dressing it, various methods are often adopted and different cosmetics employed. The first object appears to be promoted by keeping the hair for a time in a state intermediate between perfect dryness and humidity, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... mother, partly on an elbow and a knee, but mostly on his stomach. Arrived at his goal he would pull her skirt, indicate as well as he could a little box lying by his neglected picture-book, and grunt with much expression. A monkey lived inside the box, and Tony, whose memory was retentive, persevered in expecting to hear that monkey summoned by wild tattoos and subterranean growls until it jumped up with a bang—a splendidly terrible thing of white bristles, and scarlet snout—to dance the fandango to a lively if unmusical tune. Then Tony, be sure, would laugh until ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... perhaps some rudiments of algebra and geometry. Afterward comes in due order the acquisition of languages, particularly the dead languages; a most fortunate occupation for those years of man, in which the memory is most retentive, and the reasoning powers have yet acquired neither solidity nor enlargement. Such are the occupations of the schoolboy in ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... no single instrument of youthful education has such mighty power, both as regards domestic economy and politics, and in the arts, as the study of arithmetic. Above all, arithmetic stirs up him who is by nature sleepy and dull, and makes him quick to learn, retentive, shrewd, and aided by art divine he makes progress quite beyond his natural powers (compare Republic). All such things, if only the legislator, by other laws and institutions, can banish meanness and covetousness ...
— Laws • Plato
... observed, with a significant nod, 'You see, you did not hear one-half of that honest seaman's story this morning.' It was such slender hints, which in the common intercourse of life must have hourly dropped on the soil of his retentive memory, that fed the exuberance of Sir Walter's invention, and supplied the seemingly inexhaustible stream of fancy, from which he drew forth at pleasure the ground-work ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... 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 certainly the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... it protects from malignant demons; it makes wise the simple 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
... Later scholars speak lightly of this multifarious knowledge, and nothing can be more probable, than that attainment of many languages, with any approach to their fluent use, is beyond the power of man. But his diligence was exemplary, his memory retentive, and his understanding accomplished by classical knowledge; with those qualities, much might be done in any pursuit; and though modern orientalists protest against the superficiality of his acquirements, their variety has been admitted, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Sylvanus Cobb to Euclid's Elements, both of which I found (to my almost equal wonder) he had managed to peruse: he was taking stock by the way, of the people, the products, and the country, with an eye unusually observant and a memory unusually retentive; and he was collecting for himself a body of magnanimous and semi-intellectual nonsense, which he supposed to be the natural thoughts and to contain the whole duty of the born American. To be pure-minded, to be patriotic, to get culture and money with both hands and with the same irrational fervour—these ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne |
