"Straightness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they were profitable inconveniences; forasmuch as, first, ill scholars are to be admonished with the rod, when reason will not do, as a crooked piece of wood is by fire and straining reduced to straightness. I have a great while preached to myself to stick close to my own concerns, and separate myself from the affairs of others; yet I am still turning my eyes aside. A bow, a favourable word, a kind look from a ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... earnestly. The trees were bare—there was no doubt of that, for the dwindling ranks, diminished by the distance, stood out against the snow-streaked rock like rows of thick needles set upright; their straightness and the way they glistened ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... and miner who seems to have a strange sense of direction practically unknown to many other animals. How he manages to form tunnels and burrows in lines of such unusual straightness is unknown; he always works in darkness, unless it is that he can see in the dark. His little hills are not deliberate structures; they are only shaft ends through which this miner throws out the earth that he has scooped from subterranean depths, and ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... unfamiliar to me, though it was, as to the lie of the land, an ordinary English low-country, swelling into rising ground here and there. The road was narrow, and I was convinced that it was a piece of Roman road from its straightness. Copses were scattered over the country, and there were signs of two or three villages and hamlets in sight besides the one near me, between which and me there was some orchard-land, where the early apples ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... a prayer for fleetness. Keeper of the deer's way, Reared among the eagles, Clear my feet of slothness. Keeper of the paths of men, Hear a prayer for straightness. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... are very much more like one another than ever peas are like peas, or young ladies like young ladies. They are newish, three-storied buildings of dingy grey brick with slate roofs, and they are perfectly flat, without a bow-window or even a projecting cornice or window-sill to break the straightness of the line from one end of the street ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... direction of the winds and the rise or fall of the sea upon our coast: therefore tidal rise and fall, "instead of having any connection" with the influence of the moon, are "completely controlled" by the direction and force of the wind! There is "a definite relation" between the straightness or want of straightness in a railroad and the speed of the train: ergo, the speed of the train, "instead of having any connection" with the locomotive and the force of steam, is "completely controlled" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and tall and straight. Oh, the relief of the tallness and straightness and whiteness! She had thought of something dwarfed and clumsy—dark, misshapen, slouching beast-like on two shapeless feet. Why were people ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Corona went downstairs at last, she found Charlotta sobbing in the kitchen porch. The small handmaiden was doubled up on the floor, with her face muffled in her gingham apron and her long braids of red hair hanging with limp straightness down her back. When Charlotta was in good spirits, they always hung perkily over each shoulder, tied up with enormous ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for the coming races. Another boy called Mason was consumed with longing for this stag beetle; and Bell had said he would give it to him in exchange for Mason's catapult, which was famous in the school for the unique straightness of its two prongs. Mason went to the boy who gave good advice and asked him for his opinion. "Don't swap it for your catty," said the boy who gave good advice, "because Bell's stag beetle may not win after all; and ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... Finally, we set off; I remember being dressed in a white frock, with a broad sash, and experiencing a consciousness of looking remarkably well, in spite of my hair—which, having obstinately repulsed all Jane's advances with tongs and curl-papers, was suffered to remain in all its native straightness. ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... his own: So much the restless eagerness to shine And love of singularity prevail. Yet this, offensive as it is, provokes Heav'n's anger less, than when the book of God Is forc'd to yield to man's authority, Or from its straightness warp'd: no reck'ning made What blood the sowing of it in the world Has cost; what favour for himself he wins, Who meekly clings to it. The aim of all Is how to shine: e'en they, whose office is To preach the Gospel, let the gospel sleep, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... part; that the nose, in escaping the aquiline bend (always hard and cruel in a woman, no matter how abstractedly perfect it may be), has erred a little in the other extreme, and has missed the ideal straightness of line; and that the sweet, sensitive lips are subject to a slight nervous contraction, when she smiles, which draws them upward a little at one corner, towards the cheek. It might be possible to note these blemishes in another woman's ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... through the town, they were struck with the narrowness and straightness of the streets, and at the generally European look of everything; and Mr. Thompson told them that nearly half the population of Buenos Ayres are European. The number of people upon horseback also surprised our young travellers; but horses ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... disconnected garments, doubtful boots and striking stockings, her figure would rapidly give way before the insidiousness of Schweinebraten, but her hair would always be beautifully done, each plait smooth and in its proper place, each little curl exactly where it ought to be, the parting a model of straightness, and the whole well deserving to be dignified by the name Frisur. English girls have hair, but they do ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... dimpled. Altogether, a face difficult to take one's eyes off. But Nedda was far from vain, and her face seemed to her too short and broad, her eyes too dark and indeterminate, neither gray nor brown. The straightness of her nose was certainly comforting, but it, too, was short. Being creamy in the throat and browning easily, she would have liked to be marble-white, with blue dreamy eyes and fair hair, or else like a Madonna. And was she tall enough? Only five foot five. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of his wig his appearance was not so perfect. There was then a hard, long straightness about his head and face, giving to his countenance the form of a parallelogram, to which there belonged a certain meanness of expression. He wanted the roundness of forehead, the short lines, and ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... "Well, that is a walled city, and no mistake!" he said, as he lowered the glass from his eyes. "Take a look, Professor. These people may be easy to fool when it comes to prophecies, but when it comes to engineering and architecture they're sound all the way through. Just look at the straightness of that wall running up the hill, and how exact the alignment is of the two parts above and below that ledge of rocks. They had to get that alignment, you know, by taking fore-sights and back-sights from the top of the ledge; and I must say that for ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... half. The hypothetical inhabitants of this majestic planet must therefore have perpetual summer at the equator, eternal winter at the poles, and in the temperate regions everlasting spring. On account of the straightness of the axis, however, even the polar inhabitants—if there are any—are not oppressed by a six months' night, for all except those at the VERY pole have a sunrise and a sunset every ten hours—the exact day being nine hours, fifty five minutes, and twenty-eight ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... a simple young man, and he had a simple code of ethics. Above all things he prized and admired and demanded from his friends the quality of straightness. It was his one demand. He had never actually had a criminal friend, but he was quite capable of intimacy with even a criminal, provided only that there was something spacious about his brand of crime and that it did not involve anything mean or underhand. It was the fact that Mr Breitstein ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... Sandy stretched himself and yawned—after the fashion of any one who has been sleeping a long time in a cramped position; and without being in the least conscious of it, he sidled up to the arm of the throne and rubbed his back up and down—to test the perfect straightness of it. ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... complexion. A gaping public-house, calling itself newly Hotel, fell backward a step. Villas with the titles of royalty and bloody battles claimed five feet of garden, and swelled in bowwindows beside other villas which drew up firmly, commending to the attention a decent straightness and unintrusive decorum in preference. On an elevated meadow to the right was the Crouch. The Hall of Elba nestled among weather-beaten dwarf woods further toward the cliff. Shavenness, featurelessness, emptiness, clamminess scurfiness, formed the outward ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... large flat-bottomed Chesapeake Bay skiff are shown in figure 4. While it is possible that the narrow beam of this skiff, the straightness of both ends of its bottom camber, and its rig show some New Haven sharpie influence, these characteristics are so similar to those of the flatiron skiff that it is doubtful that many of the Bay sharpies had any real relation to the New Haven boats. As indicated ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... on to the floor. His mouth moved over her face, over her hair, pressing hard into their softness; his arms clasped her shoulders; they slipped to her waist; he strained her slender body fast to him, straight against his own straightness, till the passion and the youth she had ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... at Inverlochy—though I hear the Lowlanders and not you were the poltroons—but blood is thicker than water, and have we not the same hills beside our doors at home, and I have run many miles to warn you that MacDonald is on his way." She told her story with sense and straightness, her frenzy subdued by the day's rigour. Our flight from her cries, she said, had left her a feeling of lonely helplessness; she found, as she sped, her heart truer to the tartan of her name than her ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... regretting every step that took him from her. But as he reached the next corner his shoulders snapped back into defiant straightness, he thrust his hands into the side pockets of his top-coat, and strode away, feeling that he had shaken off a burden of "niceness." He had, willy-nilly, recovered his freedom. He could go anywhere, now; mingle ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... case there is no expectation of recovering the straightness of the end of the bone; but these patients are liable to another misfortune, that is, to acquire afterwards a distortion of the spine; for as one leg is shorter than the other, they sink on that side, and in consequence bend the upper part of their bodies, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... brought to the Sovereigns. Just then the sailor boys called out that they had found large pines. The Admiral looked up the hill, and saw that they were so wonderfully large that he could not exaggerate their height and straightness, like stout yet fine spindles. He perceived that here there was material for great store of planks and masts for the largest ships in Spain. He saw oaks and arbutus trees,[155-1] with a good river, and the means of making water-power.[155-2] The climate was temperate, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... and looked across the wide stretch of meadow-land and woodland on which the chateau, set on the very crown of the ridge, looked down. The road, running with the irritating straightness of so many of the roads of France, was visible for a full three ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... find not only how constant, but how graceful the curvature is. Graceful curvature is distinguished from ungraceful by two characters; first in its moderation, that is to say, its close approach to straightness in some part of its course;[58] and, secondly, by its variation, that is to say, its never remaining equal in degree at different ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... until I saw the house that doubts began to trouble me as to the fitness of my intention. It was a much larger house than any I had ever been in, and there was a straightness and primness about it which somehow did not suggest any very warm welcome to a young sailorman, whose pride in his first appointment and in the spreading of his wings for his ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... which ye are to expect with God? He whom God hath cursed, and with whom he hath been angry, having changed some of them into apes and swine, and who worship Taghut, they are in the worse condition, and err more widely from the straightness of the path. When they came unto you, they said, We believe: yet they entered into your company with infidelity, and went forth from you with the same; but God well knew what they concealed. Thou shalt see many of them hastening unto iniquity and malice, and to eat things forbidden; and ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... became a huge flag pole, fifty feet from base to tip, with a beautiful banner proudly waving from its ball crowned summit. These pillars, both large and small, were bark-coated below the roof. Each one had been carefully selected for its symmetrical straightness, as a representative tree from the different forests of the world. Altogether, they formed a most interesting collection, to which might well be devoted, many hours of admiring inspection, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... straightness, rectilinearity[obs3], directness; inflexibility &c. (stiffness) 323; straight line, right line, direct line; short cut. V. be straight &c. adj.; have no turning; not incline to either side, not bend to either side, not turn to either side, not deviate to either side; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... goodliness of its greenery pleased me and the fragrance of its flowers and the carolling of its birds; so I entered, thinking to gaze on it awhile and wend my way." Said she, "With love and gladness!"; and Masrur was amazed at the sweetness of her speech and the coquetry of her glances and the straightness of her shape, and transported by her beauty and seemlihead and the pleasantness of the garden and the birds. So in the disorder of his spirits ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... retriever after a wounded hare, or a terrier after a rat. Once the animal was cut out of the herd, the manager would uncoil his lasso, one end of which was made fast to the cinch-ring of his girths, and out flew the looped coil of rope with unerring straightness, catching the bullock round the horns. The intelligent horse, having played the game many times before, steadied himself for the shock which experience had taught him to expect when he would feel the whole weight of the galloping bullock suddenly ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... line a warrior raised in his right hand a dry gourd which contained beads and pebbles, and began to rattle it in a not unmusical way. To the sound of the rattle he started a grave and solemn chant, in which all joined. Then the two lines, still keeping their straightness and evenness, danced toward each other slowly and rhythmically. All the time the song went on, the usual monotonous Indian beat, merely a rising and falling of the note with ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... seemingly unconscious of the half slighting, half pitying admiration elicited by its pathetic beauty. The other, who showed no more than the tip of her nose, held her head bravely erect, while, even through her wrappings, the straightness of her back ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the Beech is beautifully smooth. The extreme straightness of the trunk and limbs is very striking, and may be compared to the crooked limbs of the Horsechestnut, where the branch is continually interrupted by the flower-cluster. In the ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... was transfigured. Brightness leaped into his look, and the greyness of his moody eye became as blue as the sea. The professional straightness of his figure relaxed into the elastic grace of an athlete. He was a pipe to be played on: an actor with the ambitious brain of a diplomatist; as weak as water, and as strong as steel; soft-hearted to foolishness or ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... by this circumstance. He felt like a monarch witnessing the murder of one of his liege subjects, and demanded, with some asperity, the meaning of the outrage. It turned out to be an affair of Master Simon's, who had selected the tree, from its height and straightness, for a May-pole, the old one which stood on the village green being unfit for farther service. If any thing could have soothed the ire of my worthy host, it would have been the reflection that his tree had fallen for so good a cause; and I saw ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the Vote, soon to be theirs, and how it should be exercised. From that—by some instinct—Honoria passed on to a talk about Vivien Warren ... a selective talk. She said nothing about David Williams, but enlarged on Vivie's absolute "straightness," especially towards other women; her business capacities, her restoration of her mother to the ranks of the respectable; till at last it seemed as though the burning down of racing stables was a meritorious act ... "ridding England of an evil that good might come." And ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... exhausted; my feet so sore and blistered, indeed, that long before I reached a gharrie I was obliged to take off my boots and wrap them in handkerchiefs. The dust was deep and made heavy walking, and the level straightness of a great part of the road is wearisome. Overtaking even at my slow rate of progress a string of creaking buffalo carts, I got upon the hindmost, but after a little rest found the noise, dust, and slow progress intolerable, and plodded on as before, taking two and a half hours to walk three miles. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the spear is a sumpit or blow-pipe. This is a small wooden tube about eight feet long. The smoothness and straightness of the bore is remarkable. The hole is drilled with an iron rod, one end of which is chisel-pointed, through a log of hard wood, which is afterwards pared down and rounded till it is about an inch ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... likewise led by a comparison of ver. 16: "And I will lead the blind by a way that they knew not, I will lead them in paths that they have not known, I will change the darkness before them into light, the crooked things into straightness." The blind in this verse are those who do not know what to do, and how to help themselves, those who cannot find the way of salvation, the miserable; they are to be led by the Lord on the ways of salvation, which are unknown to them. In a similar sense and connection, the blind are, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... and prowess. A fresh and healthy portrait the looking- glass presented of the Reverend Septimus, feinting and dodging with the utmost artfulness, and hitting out from the shoulder with the utmost straightness, while his radiant features teemed with innocence, and soft-hearted benevolence ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... should, usually, be run as nearly in the lowest part of the principal valley as is consistent with tolerable straightness. It is better to cut across the point of a hill, to the extent of increasing the depth for a few rods, than to go a long distance out of the direct course to keep in the valley, both because of the cost of the large tile used in the main, and of the loss of fall occasioned by the lengthening ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... the 'beauty shops,' then, as the newspapers call them, he got the idea of changing his nose by cutting and folding back the skin, surgically eliminating the hump, and rearranging the skin over the altered bridge so as to produce perfect straightness when healed. From the same source came the hint of cutting permanent dimples in his cheeks,—a detail that fell in admirably with his design of an agreeable countenance. The dimples would be, in fact, but skilfully made scars, cut so as to last. What ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... many things seemingly favourable to a democracy destroy a democracy, and many things seemingly favourable to an oligarchy destroy an oligarchy. Those who think this the only virtue extend it to excess, not considering that as a nose which varies a little from perfect straightness, either towards a hook nose or a flat one, may yet be beautiful and agreeable to look at; but if this particularity is extended beyond measure, first of all the properties of the part is lost, but at ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... was bounding upon its leather bands, jolting cruelly against the axle. Susannah cried out that she should be thrown from her seat. The swift-falling darkness encompassed their path. Their hope lay in the straightness of the road, and their chief fear was that by some greater roughness of the way the chaise, which was now swaying fearfully, might ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... infinitely more full of temptation, bloomful with radiant health, the blush of youth and conscious loveliness upon her lips and looking out under the crisp entanglement of her hair, all simple purity and straightness of soul in the fearless innocency of her eyes; the Lady Ysolinde, deeper taught in the mysteries of existence, more conscious of power, not so beautiful, but oftentimes giving the impression of beauty more ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... front of us in a perfectly straight line, with neat stone borders on either side, and one got so tired of seeing that line in front of one's nose that one welcomed the smallest change—even a slight ascent or a curve—in its endless, monotonous straightness. We came by and by to a little ascent—quite steep enough for camels. We could have easily avoided it by leaving the road and making a detour at the foot of the hill close to the Afghan ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... then that the destined time had arrived for my planting. That afternoon I marked out my corn-field, driving the mare to my home-made wooden marker, carefully observant of the straightness of the rows; for a crooked corn-row is a sort of immorality. I brought down my seed corn from the attic, where it had hung waiting all winter, each ear suspended separately by the white, up-turned husks. They were the selected ears of last year's crop, even of size throughout, ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... an elemental economy about his body—as was there about all our bodies. The chest was deep, it is true, cavernously deep; but there were no full-swelling muscles, no wide-spreading shoulders, no clean-limbed straightness, no generous symmetry of outline. It represented strength, that body of my father's, strength without beauty; ferocious, primordial strength, made to clutch and gripe ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... more complete than his other novels; it achieves more perfectly what it attempts, and it has about it that charm, very hard to express, which we find in an artist's work the first time he has touched his highest mark—a sort of straightness and naturalness of execution, an unconsciousness of his public, and freshness of interest in his theme. It was a great success, and he immediately found himself famous. The writer of these lines, who was a child at the time, remembers ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... busy man, and time passed swiftly with him. He and his right-hand man, Sam Vickers, had brought the stud to a pitch of perfection that had earned for his animals a high place in the opinion of the racing community. He had, moreover, a reputation for straightness so unimpeachable that it had become almost a proverb up and down the country. Men said of Jake Bolton that his honour was such that it could stand by itself. Certainly no ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... small park. It stood on much higher ground than the Abbey House, and was altogether different from that good old relic of a bygone civilisation. Briarwood was distinctly modern. Its decorations savoured of the Regency: its furniture was old-fashioned, without being antique. The classic stiffness and straightness of the First French Empire distinguished the gilded chairs and tables in the drawing-room. There were statues by Chantrey and Canova in the spacious lofty hall; portraits by Lawrence and Romney in the dining-room; a historical picture ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... persistent nature, whatever effort, under special excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. Employment is the half, and the primal half, of education—it is the warp of it; and the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern depends wholly on its straightness and strength. And, whatever difficulty there may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, namely, of the character of nations ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... of the age of artificiality!" said Ella; "and what an apt commentary upon the subject we were talking about, Phyllis! We were discussing the merits of directness in speech and straightness in every way. We were ridiculing the timid maid—all sandals and simper—of forty years ago. Why should men and women have ever taken the trouble to be affected? Let us go in to lunch and eat with ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... in fact, carrying herself with an extreme straightness both of body and soul. She was conscious to the full of her own beauty in her new suit, and of the loveliness of her little sister in her white fur nest of a sledge. She was inordinately proud. She had asked Ida if she might take the child for a ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... struggling up, breaking out, asserting itself as it can. We can be on the side, you see, of his straightness. We can help him. But he has made out," said Miss Gostrey, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... a wholly unexpected sound pursued Bud and halted him in the trail; the high, insistent howl of a child that has been denied its dearest desire of the moment. Bud looked back inquiringly. The squaw was hurrying on, and but for the straightness of the trail just there, her fat old canvas-wrapped legs would have carried her speedily out of sight. Of course, papooses did yell once in awhile, Bud supposed, though he did not remember ever hearing one howl like that on the ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... charming old-fashioned country gardens was there, depicted among its graceful foliage, but not in the wild disorder in which I have enumerated them. At the bottom of the panel lay a holly-branch, whose stiff straightness was ornamented by a twining drapery of English ivy and mistletoe and winter aconite; while down either side hung pendant garlands of spring and autumn flowers; and, crowning all, came gorgeous summer with the sweet musk-roses, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Ferrier's reasons for a course of action so wholly unlike any he had ever yet taken in the case of Lucy Marsham's son, Oliver's thoughts found themselves engaged in a sore and perpetual wrangle. Ferrier, he supposed, suspected him of a lack of "straightness"; and did not care to maintain an intimate relation, which had been already, and might be again, used against him. Marsham, on his side, recalled with discomfort various small incidents in the House of Commons which ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the arts, within the last thirty years, it is much less from the grandeur and beauty of the monuments, than from the breadth and straightness of the streets; and much less from its edifices, than from its uniform regularity, its extent and position, that the capital of New Spain attracts the admiration of Europeans. M. De Humboldt had successively visited, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... natural tendency to become greasy of aspect, and whether, among the many miracles vouchsafed to the amiable and really great Wesley, he received for his disciples of all time to come the gift of a miraculous straightness and lankiness of hair, I know not; but I do know that every Methodist parson I have had the honour to know has been of one pattern, and that Mr. Goodge is no exception ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... was a feature in which Mammy took a pride, it was in the straightness of the children's limbs and the flatness of their backs, above all the limbs and backs in the other branches of the family; so, firing up at once, she replied that she would like to see a flatter back than "this here one," laying her hand ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... unconscious man. Gerald rose slowly to his feet and stood by her side. The face of Mr. John P. Dunster, even in unconsciousness, had something in it of strength and purpose. The shape of his head, the squareness of his jaws, the straightness of his thick lips, all seemed to speak of a hard and inflexible disposition. His hair was coal black, coarse, and without the slightest sprinkling of grey. He had the neck and throat of a fighter. But for that single, livid, blue mark across ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... disposed towards embonpoint; her eye was of the deepest and most liquid blue, and rendered apparently darker, by long lashes of the blackest jet—for such was the colour of her hair; her nose slightly, but slightly, deviated from the straightness of the Greek, and her upper lip was faultless, as were her mouth and chin; the whole lower part of the face, from the perfect "chiselling," and from the character of her head, had certainly a great air of hauteur, but the extreme melting softness of her eyes took from this, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... older part of the city was laid out with mathematical regularity, each street crossing the other at right angles. But in the new portions there was not this adherence to straightness. ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... this in itself seemed to belong to her life. It partook rather of the faithfulness of the seasons than of human tragedy or strenuous overthrow. Even so early she felt great delight in natural things; and when her heart turned to Jethro Moore, she had no doubt whatever of the straightness of its path. She trusted all the primal instincts without knowing she trusted them. She was thirsty; here was water, and she drank. Jethro was a little older than she, the son of a minister in a neighboring ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... I thought from your features and the straightness of your coal-black hair, that you were." Riel's blood was nigh unto boiling in his veins, but he had craft enough to preserve ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... she said, looking a little dazed, but standing with her old straightness. "Who is here? It's Helen! It's—Helen! Oh, Helen—you!" Her face hardened, and her voice was the one of Helen's childhood. "I am afraid I must ask for an ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... hornbeam, or some other like tough and elastic wood, thrust into a sort of pocket or sheath in her dress, which came up almost to the chin and came down below the waist. This was intended to preserve the straightness and grace of her figure. When the small boy misbehaved, the schoolma'am would unsheath this weapon, and for some time thereafter the culprit found sitting down ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... hours of painful walking, two things alone had impressed themselves upon his consciousness: the dark illimitable forest and the double line of rails, which with the absolute straightness of exact science had stretched behind and in front till the tree-tops in the far distance seemed to touch, and the rails themselves to vanish into the black heart of the close-growing pines. For miles ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with a pale, oblong little face, that looked younger under its softening "bang" of fair curls across the forehead. She was a buff-and-gray-colored creature, with a narrow square chin and narrow square shoulders, and a flatness and straightness about her everywhere that gave her rather the effect of a wedge, to which the big black straw hat she wore tilted a little on one side somehow conduced. Miss Kimpsey might have figured anywhere as a representative ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... very hour undergoing a subtle change that I could not define as yet, mile after mile of road seemed to lift itself up in the far away distance, as if you might drive on for ever through fairyland. The very fact of its straightness, flanked as it was by the rows of frosted trees, seemed like a call. And a feeling that is very familiar to me—that of an eternity in the perpetuation of whatever may be the state I happen to be in, came ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... their work and keep clean the furnace, and making their "craft their prayer" (an impossibility in these days of the high division of labor) but rough, noisy, grimy, braggart creators, caring not for the straightness of the furrow unless it produces more, the beauty of the goad unless it promotes speed, the cleanliness of the furnace unless it increases the output, or the craft itself; but only of the product, the thing led forth, and its value to the world. If so ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... the job with a will. The line was about a hundred feet long and the method of procedure was this: Frank tested the straightness of the line, as accurately as possible with his eye, while Ben and Harry carried it stretched between them. The end of each hundred feet was signalized by a stone, and Harry, who was at the end of the line, carried his ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and altogether legitimate. Clear, well-digested perception and rational choices follow upon those primary creative impulses, and carry out their purpose systematically. At every stage in this development new and appropriate materials are offered for aesthetic contemplation. Straightness, for instance, symmetry, and rhythm are at first sensuously defined; they are characters arrested by aesthetic instinct; but they are the materials of mathematics. And long after these initial forms ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... them, it is known that they differ in nowise from the other natives in complexion, strength, or health. Instances of great age occur amongst them; and they are subject to no more nor less infirmities than others. Beauty or ugliness, weakness or strength, deformity or straightness, are common to the Cagots as to the rest of the human race. This, however, is certain, that in some villages the richest persons are of the proscribed order; but they, nevertheless, are held in a certain degree of odium, and their alliance is avoided: the state of misery ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... places, as being of antiquarian or historic interest, is in the seventeenth century. Excavations during recent years have done little or nothing to clear up the mystery of Silbury. The fact that the Roman road (which leaves the Bath road just west of Silbury) here deviates slightly from its usual straightness is significant and proves that the mound was in existence when the road was made. The villagers around used to ascend the hill on Palm Sunday to eat "fig cakes" and drink sugar and water. It has been suggested that this ceremony had some ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... according to Montano, from that of the Manbo only in one particular, namely, in the straightness of the middle part of the antero-posterior curve of the cranium. In other respects his cranium is similar to that of the Manbo. The face is oval rather than lozenge-shaped and has a pleasant, sympathetic look, due no doubt to the greater width ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... by its inertia of straightness, or centrifugal (or centre-flying) force, tends more away from the centre of motion towards the bottom of the vessel, than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... in thought—artlessly posed in lance-like straightness, and on the smooth whiteness of her neck a breath of breeze stirred wisps of bronzed and crisply curling hair. The swing of her shoulders was gallant and the man thanked God for that. She would want ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... with a long rubber slicker tight-buttoned from collar to hem. Below that Brent saw rubber boots. She stood with a lance-like straightness, very tall, very pliant, and as he stared with a fixity which would have amounted to impertinence had it not been disarmed by amazement she looked past him and through him as if he were ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... and a most comforting one; for what a constant anxiety it must have been to believe that the straightness of a child's legs, and the shape of its nose, ears, and head were the direct results of our care! What a responsibility, to which every one must have felt unequal! And what a relief to say: "Nature will think of that. I will leave my baby free, and watch him grow in beauty; I will ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... side of the house. Staggering after Magdalen, with the basket of keys in one hand and the candle in the other, old Mazey sorrowfully compared her figure with the straightness of the poplar, and her disposition with the crookedness of Sin, all the way across "Freeze-your-Bones," and all the way upstairs to her own door. Arrived at that destination, he peremptorily refused to give her the candle until he had first seen her safely inside the room. The conditions being ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... named from his propensity for 'larking' and practical joking, is not only a favourite at school on account of his sunny disposition, but a real influence for good because of the uniform 'straightness' of his conduct. His adventures include a fire at the school, in which he nearly perishes, and being kidnapped and carried off to France, having stumbled on evidence tending to identify the authors of a burglary. Altogether the book ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... by the river side. The Cam is a stream much slighted by the lover of wild and romantic scenery; and its chief merit, in the eyes of our boys, is that it approaches more nearly to a canal in its straightness and the deliberation of its slow lapse than many more famous floods—and is therefore more adapted for the maneuvres of eight-oared boats! But it is a beautiful place, I am sure; and my ghost will certainly ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the direction shown in Figure 21, practice is necessary to enable the drawing of straight lines if they be long ones, because any variation in the angle of the instrument to the paper obviously vitiates the straightness of the line. If, on the other hand, the square be too close to the line, and the pen therefore requires to be sloped as in Figure 22, the ink flowing from the pen-point is apt to adhere to the ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... much resemblance to natural forms it is not necessary to make things ugly; a conventional flower implies no unmeaning straightness or impossible curve, it may keep all its interesting characteristics, but it has to obey other requirements specially necessary in the particular design. Another point to be noted is that, since there is freedom of choice of flowers and ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... are in these days suffering from a "debauchery of long driving." The general sense of Mr. Travis's remark is excellent, meaning that there is a tendency to regard a very long drive as almost everything in the playing of a hole, and to be utterly careless of straightness and the short game so long as the ball has been hit from the tee to the full extent of the golfer's power. A long drive is not by any means everything, and the young golfer should resist any inclination to ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... infantine bones, they were such as needed not to fail of straightness in the limbs, compactness in the body, smallness in hands and feet, and exceeding symmetry and comeliness throughout. Possibly between the two sides of the occipital profile there may have been an Incaean ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... was also reported to be most dangerous by reason of the continuall violent and vnresistable current that was reported to haue continuall passage into the straightes, so that once entring therein there was no more hope remayning of returne, besides the perill of shelues, straightness of the passage and vncertayne wyndinges of the same, all which bread dread in the highest degree, the distance and dangers considered. So that before his revealing of the same the matter was in question, whether there were such a passage or ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... took them nearly every day, at the most fashionable hour of five. Bolt, in cloth exquisite, had always his seat at her side, where his special office seemed that of nursing her favorite poodle and smoothing the Earl, who on the front seat sat with icy straightness, all over with cheap compliments. This was all very fine as far as it went! Being proud of Bolt, as I have before related, we generously overlooked in him those errors which are rather the result of vanity than the natural offspring of an imperfect ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... parallel lines drawn across it. The only purpose subserved by the mirror was that of rendering the operation of holding the barrel less tiresome, it being easier to keep the end of the musket presented to the line pointing downwards than upwards. Formerly, this means of detecting the faults, or want of straightness in the barrel, was, like the working of the rolling-mill, the secret of one man, and he would impart it to no one for love or money. He was watched with the most intense interest, but no clue could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... reefs of the barrier class; and in some outlying reefs we have an approach to the structure of atolls. The source of my doubts about the classification of these reefs, arises from having observed in the Dhalac and Farsan groups the narrowness and straightness of several spits of sand and rock: one of these spits in the Dhalac group is nearly fifteen miles long, only two broad, and it is bordered on each side with deep water; so that, if worn down by the surf, and coated with living corals, it would form a reef nearly similar ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... somewhat altered. The old school of breeders had evidently determined upon great speed and the ability to stay, through the medium of deep ribs, heart room, wide loins, length of quarter, quality of bone, straightness of fore-leg, and round strong feet; the slack loined, loosely built, and splayfooted hound of former generations had been left behind. To such perfection, indeed, had the Foxhound attained, that long before the close of the eighteenth century sportsmen were clamouring ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... surface, not rain-washed for months, is as full of colour as ever. The palm-trees rise without a branch, tall, slender, and graceful, from the warmly generous earth, and spread at last, as if tired of their straightness, into beautiful crowns of fans, which sway toward each other with every breath of air. Innumerable butterflies and humming-birds, in the hot, dazzling sunshine of noonday, will be hovering over the ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... completed the furniture of her cell. There was no bed: she allowed herself but two hours' sleep; and this refreshment, such as it was, was taken on the floor, with her head leaning on the stool,—when she lay down in this way, the straightness of the closet preventing her from taking any position that was not ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... readers. It is the loving record of a life that, from first to last, never challenged the world's attention—that was connected with no great movement or event, political, theological or social; but a life, all the same, that was lived with a truth, an earnestness and a straightness that won the affection and respect of all who came within its influence, and will, or we are much mistaken, glow warmly in the hearts and memories of just all whose eyes now light upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... set of his great neck, and in the poise of his handsome head, and in the upright carriage of his breadth of shoulder. Even his walk was a thing to mark him out from his fellows. It was bold, perhaps even there was a suggestion of arrogance in it. But it was only the result of the military straightness of ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... it were possible to know with accuracy what his idea of straightness is," said Mr Crawley to his wife. "It may be that things are straight to him when they are buried as it were out of sight, and put away without trouble. I hope it be not so with the bishop." When he went into his school and remembered,—as he did remember through every minute ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... N. straightness, rectilinearity^, directness; inflexibility &c (stiffness) 323; straight line, right line, direct line; short cut. V. be straight &c adj.; have no turning; not incline to either side, not bend to either side, not turn to either side, not deviate to either side; go straight; steer for &c (directions) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... each step, she rose slightly on the front part of her foot, as if her heels were on springs. As before, she was indifferently dressed; a small, close hat came down over her face and hid her forehead; her skirt seemed shrunken, and hung limp about her ankles, accentuating the straightness of her figure. But below the brim of the hat her eyes were as bright as ever, and took note of all that happened. On seeing Maurice, she professed to remember him "perfectly," beginning to speak before she had ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... halted at noon he pointed out a hillside of pine, black beneath the rain, close-clustered and of mastlike straightness. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... line of marvellous straightness, Younkins guided the leading yoke of cattle directly toward the creek on the other side of which Charlie yet stood, a tall, but animated landmark. When, after descending the gradual slope on which the land lay, the trees that bordered the stream ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... now it is too late, that I may reach the Church of Santa Maggiore by keeping straight on through the long, long straightness of the Via Sistina. I reached that church by quite another way after many postponements; for I thought I remembered all about it from my visit in 1864. But really nothing had remained to me save a sense ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... hard scrubbing I had given them, they were all aflame, and their color was heightened by the pallor my recent illness had given to brow and temples. My hair, from its wetting, was curling in ringlets all around my head. I seized a brush and tried desperately to reduce them to straightness, but the brushing served only to bring out in stronger relief the glint of gold that I despised, and certainly my eyes had never looked more blue ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... obtaining light without undue warmth. He placed glowing embers upon ledges in the walls, upon stone slabs, or even upon suspended devices of non-inflammable material. Later he split long splinters of wood from pieces selected for their straightness of grain. These burning splinters emitting a smoking, feeble light were crude but they were refinements of considerable merit. A testimonial of their satisfactoriness is their use throughout many centuries. Until very recent times the burning splinter has ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... Chamouni, largely viewed, and irrespectively of minor ravines and irregularities, is nothing more than a deep trench, dug between two ranges of nearly continuous mountains,—dug with a straightness and evenness which render its scenery, in some respects, more monotonous than that of any other Alpine valley. On each side it is bordered by banks of turf, darkened with pine forest, rising at an even slope to a height of about 3000 feet, so that it may best be imagined as a kind of dry moat, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... while she went about her usual Boston business with her usual Boston probity she was really all the while holding herself. She wore her "handsome" felt hat, so Tyrolese, yet some how, though feathered from the eagle's wing, so truly domestic, with the same straightness and security; she attached her fur boa with the same honest precautions; she preserved her balance on the ice-slopes with the same practised skill; she opened, each evening, her "Transcript" with the same interfusion of suspense and resignation; ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... Richard; a crusader name, Yet it was Darrell had the lion-heart. No love and little liking served this pair, In look and word unpaired as white and black— Of once rich bough the last unlucky fruit. The one, for straightness like a Norland pine Set on some precipice's perilous edge, Intrepid, handsome, little past blown youth, Of all pure thought and brave deed amorous, Moulded the court's high atmosphere to breathe, Yet liking well the camp's more liberal air— Poet, soldier, ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and working away, with a great needle shaped like a scimitar, till the perspiration ran down her face. It was also she who, standing on the kitchen-table, put up the only two pictures they possessed, Ned and Jerry giving opinions on the straightness of her eye, from below: a fancy picture of the Battle of Waterloo in the parlour; a print of "Harvey Discovering the Circulation of the Blood" ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... moral rectitude and devotion to duty from which he never swerved, the country life of Lithuania, with its freedom and its strange charm, the life that he loved above all others, has probably a good deal to say to the simplicity of nature and the straightness of outlook that are such strongly marked characteristics in this ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... expressed in poor Milly. Since it was false that he wasn't loved, so his right was quite quenched to figure on that ground as important; and if he didn't look out he should find himself appreciating in a way quite at odds with straightness the good faith of Milly's benevolence. There was the place for scruples; there the need absolutely to mind what he was about. If it wasn't proper for him to enjoy consideration on a perfectly false footing, where was the guarantee ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... straightness. "Rose campion," she said, parting the stems with her long, thin fingers. "Look, Hatty, how beautiful they are. Run away and put ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair |
