"Directness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two hands closely in his large hands, and gazing into her face with the kind, even affectionate directness that she loved in him: "do you know that to-day ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... meeting in the tropical jungles, but history will not give second place to the encounter of the advance guard of the Greely relief expedition with the men they sought. The story is told with dramatic directness in Commander (now Admiral) Schley's book, "The Rescue ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... is not in accord with later usage; and while in prose the language has become more flexible, its constructions more varied and complex, its rhythm more perfected, his prose style at its best still remains unsurpassed in vigor, in directness, and in simplicity. Changeful from generation to generation as language is, and as Dante recognized it to be, it has not so changed in six hundred years that his tongue has become strange. There is no ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... hearing tales of LADY SYBIL and the barbarian; and after having the grace to hesitate, she speaks with the directness for which she is ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... satirical poems—the "Masque of Anarchy", suggested by the news of the Peterloo massacre, being by far the most important. Shelley attempted the composition of short popular songs which should stir the English people to a sense of what he felt to be their degradation. But he lacked the directness which alone could make such verses forcible, and the passionate apostrophe to the Men of England in his "Masque of Anarchy" marks the highest point of his achievement in ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... to tell her that I had never been so happy in my life. I might have told her that and more, but in her fierce directness ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... know that I still have a good deal of a reputation"—she turned upon him with more directness and a little laughing pugnacity—"as though I were the same terrible child, up to the same riotous tricks as when ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... part come in?" she asked with a certain sweet directness which was sometimes hers. "Wouldn't I be a hireling too if—if I had anything to ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... found the Countess at leisure and alone. She followed the announcement almost immediately, and if she had shown cowardice before, she showed none now. She disregarded the chair Olga Loschek offered, and came to the point with a directness ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... London. Beauchamp had not vacated either Holdesbury or the town-house; he was defying his uncle Everard, and Cecilia thought with him that it was a wise temerity. She thought with him passively altogether. On this occasion she had not to wait for directness in his eyes; she had to parry it. They were at a dinner-party at Lady Elsea's, generally the last place for seeing Lord Palmet, but he was present, and arranged things neatly for them, telling Beauchamp that he acted under Mrs. Wardour-Devereux's orders. Never was an opportunity, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The directness of the question took James aback. After the fraction of a second's hesitation he spoke. "If I did I wouldn't be going to ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... so softly, with some womanly gentleness, yet with such lofty candor, that Alan couldn't help admiring her more than ever before for her translucent simplicity, and directness of purpose. Yet her suggestion frightened him. It was so much more novel to him than to her. Herminia had reasoned it all out with herself, as she truly said, for years, and knew exactly how she felt and thought about ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... them is felt the presence of a cool and dashing nature, a man gifted with the mens aequa in arduis, whom no reverse of fortune could cast down. The fairness and courtesy of the writer toward his opponents is an attractive characteristic of the work,[1] which is written with a simplicity and directness of style highly agreeable to readers ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... impossible for him to know how in her new sensitiveness this careless speech, which a day earlier would have passed unheeded, aroused all her instincts of defense. She was half-aware of the irony by which their talk about the nephews of Jack Holton had carried them with so fateful a directness to her mother. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... find your way out here?" she asked with girlish directness. "I'm not quite ready to go; I must finish ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... the people would be shy," answered Griffin, with a little hesitation of manner, and yet with the directness and simplicity of a truly brave man. "We must let them get over the last brush before they are depended on much for any new set-to of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... dining-room, on the ground-floor. Lesley looked after him helplessly, with a mingled feeling of offence and relief. She did not see him again, but was conveyed to her room by Miss Brooke, who spoke to her kindly indeed, but with a matter-of-fact directness which seemed hard and cold to the convent-bred girl, whose teachers and guardians had vied with one another in sugared sweetness and a tutored amiability ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... is conscious of such a thing as purity, delicacy, directness, or strength of style, he has been acted upon unconsciously, so that when the period of conscious choice comes, he is either attracted or repelled by what is good, according to his training. Children are fond of vivacity and ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the directness habitual to her, "why are you so anxious about it? This is the third time you have asked me about Mary Turner. What's it to ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... at the directness of the assertion, and an exclamation of something like anger rose to his lips. But he remembered the compact he had ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... tales which formed Mrs. Haywood's chief stock in trade when she first set up for a writer of fiction, inherited many of the characteristics of the long-winded French romances. Though some were told with as much directness as any of the intercalated narratives in "Clelie" or "Cleopatre," others permitted the inclusion of numerous "little histories" only loosely connected with the main plot. Letters burning with love or jealousy were inserted ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... birds do. Mamma, I don't believe there's anything meaner than a Laverack setter. Still, Tadjie would never have done such a thing, I know." Mrs. Gerald was silent, and Tattine, expecting her to confirm what she had said, grew a little suspicious. "Would Tadjie, Mamma?" with a directness that ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... a hearty, wholesome, human spirit, sometimes overflowing into downright fun, and a straightforward directness always. It is a pleasant book, sure to ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... indeed apt to echo in the ears of Scottish children, and to him, in view of his experience, must have found a special directness of address. But if he had no fine sense of poetry in letters, he felt with a deep joy the poetry of life. You should have heard him speak of what he loved; of the tent pitched beside the talking water; of the stars overhead at night; ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... indeed so persistently baffled—then, with the Cyrenaics of all ages, he would at least fill up the measure of that present with vivid sensations, and such intellectual apprehensions, as, in strength and directness and their immediately realised values at the bar of an actual experience, are most like sensations. So some have spoken in every age; for, like all theories which really express a strong natural tendency of the human mind or even one ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... times," he replied in his hard, even tone. "I picked you because I needed a man of character to give the charges weight. A minister, the president of our reform body—no one else would serve so well. And I picked you because—pardon me, if in my directness I seem brutal—I picked you because you were all ready to my hand; you were in a situation where you dared not refuse me. Also I picked you, instead of a man with no character to lose, because I knew that you, having a character to lose and not wanting to lose it, ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... and tone was all the passionate strenuousness of a great crisis. Lucille felt suddenly helpless before the directness of his gaze, his storm of questions. In all their former intercourse it had been she who by virtue of her sex and his blind love for her had kept the upper hand. And now the position was changed. ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... over which Miss Lady looked out one day as she sat in a big rocking-chair in the shade, in a favorite spot of the wide gallery, feeling dreamily, if not definitely, the spirit of the idle landscape which lay shimmering in the sun. Her gaze gained directness and ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... both by the King's visit and by the directness of his questioning. It was Nicholas who ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... the distance, he gave way to motions recommended by their not committing him to a positive approach. There was a fine English awkwardness in this—he felt that too as he sauntered vaguely and obliquely across the lawn, taking an independent line. Fortunately there was an equally fine English directness in the way one of the gentlemen presently rose and made as if to "stalk" him, though with an air of conciliation and reassurance. To this demonstration Paul Overt instantly responded, even if the gentleman were not his host. He was tall, straight and elderly and had, like the great house itself, ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... theological principles—which last diverted her husband very much. Eldress Hannah showed them the dairy, and the work-room, and all there was to see, with a patient hospitality that kept them at an infinite distance. She answered Lewis's questions about the community with a sad directness. ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... turn for extracting information concerning his uninvited guest. He extracted it from herself, however, and with refreshing directness. At the advanced age of seven years, one sees no especial use in conventional beatings about the bush. One goes straight to the point, or else one keeps still entirely; and, at that phase of his existence, keeping still was ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... take any notice of father," said Cicely, with the brusque directness of youth, and Aunt Ellen seemed to be somewhat bewildered at the statement, not liking to impute blame to her sovereign, but unable for the moment to find any ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... remarkable essay on poetry is so convincing and illuminating that it seems to demand quotation here: "Never before these songs were sung, and never since did the human soul, in the grip of a fiery passion, utter a cry like hers; and, from the executive point of view, in directness, in lucidity, in that high, imperious verbal economy which only nature can teach the artist, she has no equal, and none worthy to take the place ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... has enriched the Spanish literary language by returning to it many a popular term. His vocabulary abounds in racy words of the soil, and his writings gain from them an almost peasant-like pith and directness which suits his own Basque primitive nature. His expression occurs simultaneously with the thoughts and feelings to be expressed, the flow of which, but loosely controlled by the critical mind, often breaks through the ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... heart, for the neighbours' tongues wag as to Iemon and O'Hana. Malice can cause as much unhappiness as downright wickedness. Besides, Kwaiba is no man to trifle with." Iemon was a little put out and alarmed at the directness of Kondo[u]'s reference. "Be sure there is nothing in such talk. A slight service, rendered in earlier days, makes O'Hana San more cordial to one otherwise a stranger. The excess shown is perhaps to be discouraged. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... fact of it is," continued old Mr. King, still keeping to the main point with wonderful directness, "I think the time has come for us to act, which is much better than talking, in my opinion; and I want to do ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... to a part that was split in several places, so he took his knife and began to fill the cracks with putty. He was so nervous under Hunter's scrutiny that his hand trembled to such an extent that it took him about twice as long as it should have done, and Hunter told him so with brutal directness. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... upon her duties as hospital nurse at once. Untrammelled even by the knowledge of conventionalities, and with the directness and fearlessness of a brave child, she went from one to another, her diffidence quickly banished by her profound sympathy. The enlisted men on the piazzas received her chief attentions, nor was she long in discovering the Federal ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... ought there to be?" Betty inquired, with business-like directness. It was not only the dew on the grass she ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that evening under the foot-hills will never be forgotten by those of us who composed the happy number, and who listened with streaming eyes and aching sides to the narrative of our unfortunate guest. He told his story with a directness and simplicity of narrative, with a gravity of countenance and plaintiveness of voice, which heightened the humor of the substance. Never did the stars, which have seen so much of human happiness, ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... midinette, and so on. But Mr. JULES DELACRE, who played his own part, Pierrot, with a fine sincerity and a sense of the great tradition in this genre, got his effect across to us with an admirable directness. Miss PHYLLIS PINSON looking charming in a mid-Victorian Latin-Quarterly sort of way (which is a very nice way), danced seriously, fantastically, delightfully, and with quite astonishing command of her technique—the sort of thing that nine infallible managers out of ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... the story, we should notice an important question about its age and composition. That it is as old as the XIXth Dynasty in its present form is certain from the papyrus; but probably parts of it are older. The idyllic beauty of the opening of it, with the simplicity and directness of the ideas, and the absence of any impossible or marvellous feature, is in the strongest opposition to the latter part, where marvel is piled on marvel in pointless profusion. In the first few pages there is not a word superfluous or an idea out of place in drawing ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... to be seen across the Channel the extraordinary fact of an actual organization of good writers, the French Academy, whose influence all nations feel. Under their authority we see introduced into literary work an habitual grace and perfection, a clearness and directness, a light and pliable strength, and a fine shading of expression, such as no other tongue can even define. We see the same high standard in their criticism, in their works of research, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and, in short, throughout literature. What ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... carried her proclamation to the English from Blois—the one which she had dictated at Poitiers. Here is a copy of it. It is a remarkable document, for several reasons: for its matter-of-fact directness, for its high spirit and forcible diction, and for its naive confidence in her ability to achieve the prodigious task which she had laid upon herself, or which had been laid upon her—which you please. All through it you seem ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... poor nut," said Miss Winch, for though she might wrap up her meaning somewhat obscurely in her telegraphic communications, when it came to the spoken word she was directness itself, "stop picking straws in your hair and listen to ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... There was.—Here's explicitness! Here's directness! Here's explanatoryness! In my pap days I learned that without a verb there could not be a sentence, not even a judge's sentence. I know "was" ain't much of a word all alone by itself, but then chuck it in among a lot of other fellows, and how it does ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... if the pure rhetoricians, of the national school, who are castizo—the Mariano de Cavias, the Ricardo Leons—should happen to write something simply, logically and with modern directness, they would cast about immediately for a roundabout way of saying it, which might appear ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... her brows as she studied his face openly and with such a directness that he flushed in confusion, then turned her eyes ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... the dismissal of a rehearsal, to talk over a change in one of the numbers Rose had been working on. It refused to come out satisfactorily. Rose thought she saw a way of doing it that would work better and she had been telling him about it. Eagerly, at first, and with a limpid directness which, however, became clouded and troubled when she felt he wasn't paying attention. It was a difficulty with him she had encountered before. Some strong preoccupation she could neither guess the nature of nor lure ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... listening with a mind made abnormally acute by the champagne she had freely drunk. The coarse bluntness and directness of the man did not offend her. It made what he said the more effective, producing a rude arresting effect upon her nerves. It made the man himself seem more of a person. Susan was beginning to have a kind of respect for him, to change her first opinion that ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... on the strength of his thought in expression. It is said of his Cooper Union speech (his first speech before a large eastern urban audience, I think): "From the first line to the last, from his premises to his conclusion, he travels with a swift, unerring directness which no logician ever excelled, an argument complete and full, without the affectation of learning.... A single, easy, simple sentence ... contains a chapter of history that, in some instances, has taken days of labor to verify ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... can be. To Morton, once he was aware of the fly, and once he had combined the knowledge of it with what these two people most lacked, it was a simple thing. They lacked, as you have already guessed, courage and directness. On Morton's side was all the dunder-headism of an aristocracy, all its romanticism, all its gross materialism, all its confusion of ideals. But you mustn't think that he, Morton, was cold or objective in all this: far from it; he was desperately in love with the girl himself, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... In his ears still rang the acclamations that had greeted his brilliant speech in the Assembly that day. He was of the party of the Mountain—as was but natural in a protege of the Seagreen Robespierre—a party more famed for its directness of purpose than elegance of expression, and in its ranks there was room and to spare for such orators as he. The season was March of '93—a season marked by the deadly feud raging 'twixt the Girondins and the Mountain, and in that battle of tongues La Boulaye was covering ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... mediocre talents of the Minister of Finance had flamed into genius in this leonine creature who was as much her mother's inferior in looks as her father's superior in intelligence. Mingled with this masculinity of mind and appearance was an egotism, a coquetry, a directness of thought and action that combined to make a curious personality. It was amusing to note with what assiduity she showered her attentions on Mr. Morris, the man of the world, of whom she had heard much, and with what polite indifference she dismissed Calvert—though it is but doing her justice ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... contemporaries. Even his Latin works, too harshly described by Hallam as "bellowing in bad Latin," were well adapted to the spirit of the age. But nothing like his German writings had ever been seen before. In lucidity and copiousness of language, in directness and vigor, in satire and argument and invective, in humor and aptness of illustration and allusion, the numerous tracts, political and theological, which poured from his pen, surpassed all that had hitherto been written and went straight to the hearts of his countrymen. And ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... her natural directness. She laid her hand gently on his arm. And she had, at that instant, no thought of the long years he had neglected ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... devices - separation of the sexes on distinct plants. These are absolutely dependent, of course, on insect messengers - not visitors merely. Bees, which always show less inclination to dally from one species of flower to another than any other guests, and more intelligent directness of purpose when out for business are the groundsel-bush's truest benefactors. This is the only shrub among the multitudinous composite clan that most of us ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... free from artifice immediately coalesce, as metals that are perfectly pure can be readily cemented together. Mr. Palmer and Mr. Walsingham were intimate in half an hour. There was an air of openness and sincerity about Mr. Walsingham; a freedom and directness in his ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... likeness. His work is the enduring witness of persons, circumstances, customs, experiences utterly passed from the actual world, but recognizably true with every sincere reader. These tales of village life in England a hundred years ago are of an absolute directness and frankness. They blink nothing of the sordid, the mean, the vicious, the wicked in that life, from which they rarely rise in some glimpse of the state of the neighboring gentry, and yet they ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the directness of the words, I hesitated for a moment what to say. Then made up my mind to clear up ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Calculation, and Memory of various sorts are manifest. The signs of Language in the eye and mouth denote fluency, while the practical faculties, being dominant, would give clearness, perspicacity, and directness to his style of expression, either oral or written. Time, Order, Reason, and Intuition are well developed. The long-continued observation and experiments of this noble physician in his endeavor to protect humanity from the ravages of small-pox by his discovery of ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... thousand francs by them. This caress of fortune gave him renewed self-confidence. He said to himself that he wanted nobody's help, and that all his embarrassments were the result of his timidity and indecision. He ought to have begun his intrigue with the Marechale with brutal directness and refused Hussonnet the very first day. He should not have compromised himself with Pellerin. And, in order to show that he was not a bit embarrassed, he presented himself at one of Madame Dambreuse's ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... father's summons to draw the expert Westy to Miss Brent: he was already gravitating toward her, with the nonchalance bred of cosmopolitan successes, but with a directness of aim due also to his larger opportunities ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... not reached without the plain recognition of the working of the divine will. No doubt the principles which Samuel discerned written as with a sunbeam on the past of Israel were illustrated there with a certainty and directness which belonged to it alone; but we shall make a bad use of the history of Israel, if we say, 'It is all miraculous, and therefore inapplicable to modern national life.' It would be much nearer the mark to say, 'It is all miraculous, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Morrill, finding him at the "depot." In his capacity as chairman of the Little Missouri River Stockmen's Association, he was in a position to speak as Morrill's employer, and he spoke with his customary directness. Gregor Lang, who happened to be present, told Lincoln afterward that he had "never heard a man get such a scathing" as Roosevelt gave ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... country one summer, he had undertaken to tell the children some stories; they had also paid no attention to descriptions, personal expressions, personal sensations, they had also demanded nothing but facts and figures. Mariana was not a child, but she was like a child in the directness and simplicity ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... sudden wave of something, a directness and frankness born in some way in this new world apart from civilization, like a wind-blown flame, irresponsible and irresistible, swept over Molly Wingate's soul as swiftly, as unpremeditatedly as it had over his. She was ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... grave directness of the speech was very unlike the old, impetuous Tim of former days. It brought with it to Sara's mind a definite recognition of the fact that the man had ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... have died there, for at that moment there was no will to live. Unaware of this, his heart continued to beat and the regular motion of his lungs drew in the dreadful sweetness of the smoke-tainted air. With automatic directness his body ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... not interested in the peculiarities of the Irish mind. He went back to the main point with a directness which I admired. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... the still form. The pupils of the wide-open eyes were slightly dilated; they seemed to meet mine with a horrible, unseeing directness. There was no sign about his waxen face or still, cold mouth that life had lingered for a moment beyond the stated period. And yet something of the nurse's terror was slowly becoming communicated to me. I felt that I was in close company with ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... beginning of their friendship he had always writhed under the directness of her mental processes. He was ever for evasion, indirection; she for frank, open dealing in all ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... into account only a few marked characters of plants, without uniting them by more general natural affinities. At the present time it is considered only as a stepping-stone to the "natural" system; but at the time of its promulgation it was epoch-marking in its directness and simplicity, and therefore superiority, over any ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... and described by Dampier in the seventeenth century. His description of it has all the terse directness peculiar to the writing of the inquisitive buccaneer, with a touch of quaintness that makes the passage desirable to quote:* (* Dampier's Voyages edition ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... a swing of her skirt, prostrated a whole regiment of my brave tin soldiers, and never apologized nor even offered her aid toward revivifying the battle-line, I could not help feeling that in tactfulness and consideration for others she was still a little to seek. And I said as much, with some directness of language. ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... worthy tastes; and, in return, no lady could receive, from servants, more punctual or hearty attendance. She knew how to command and how to persuade, and her sympathy was perfect. They felt the power of her mind, her hardy directness, prompt judgment, decision and fertility of resource, and liked to aid one who knew so well her own wants. 'Around ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... junior Fellows were Fawcett and Leslie Stephen. Both were profound believers in hard tonic discipline of mind and body, inculcating their belief by doctrine and example; and both, with great diversity of gifts, had the rough strong directness of intellectual attack which Cambridge, then perhaps more than at any other time, set in contrast to the subtleties of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... can be drawn from a poet's earliest lispings there are instances enough to prove. Shakespeare's first poems, though brimful of vigor and youth and picturesqueness, give but a very faint promise of the directness, condensation and overflowing moral of his maturer works. Perhaps, however, Shakespeare is hardly a case in point, his "Venus and Adonis" having been published, we believe, in his twenty-sixth year. Milton's ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... ringing out, flashed backward a gleam of light upon the demeanour of our host and the suppressed agitation of his sister. In an instant the jealous gentleman revealed itself. For a moment I was so surprised and scandalised at the directness of his attack that I lacked words to reply. As soon as he had spoken indeed Mr. Searle appeared to feel he had been wanting in form. "Pardon me," he began afresh, "if I speak of this matter with heat. But I've been more disgusted than I can say to hear, as I heard this morning ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... pronunciation; in which two years of a child's school life are rescued from the needless and applied to the useful; in which the stenographer has to learn not two systems of spelling, but only two alphabets; in which the simplicity and directness of the English language, which fit it to become a world language, will not be defeated by a spelling that equals the difficulty of German grammar; in which the blundering of Dutch printers, like school, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... he came to analyze his feelings, which he did with the vigorous directness natural to him, he knew what was the source of his anxiety and disquietude. He actually feared the return of Rynders and his men! This feeling annoyed and troubled him. He felt that it was unworthy of him. He knew that he ought to long for the arrival of his mate, for in no other way could ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... that "J." was in love with Mrs. Cressler's protegee. The business man had none of Corthell's talent for significant reticence, none of his tact, and older than she, a man-of-the-world, accustomed to deal with situations with unswerving directness, he, unlike Landry Court, was not in the least afraid of her. From the very first she found herself upon the defensive. Jadwin was aggressive, assertive, and his addresses had all the persistence and vehemence of veritable attack. Landry she could manage with the lifting of ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... Printing House Square besieging my one barricadoed window, I recall the eagerness of your appeal to me as to one experienced in these matters: "Can you encourage me to give my life to literature?" Indeed, my brave votaress, there is something that disturbs me in the directness of that question, something ominous in those words, give my life. Literature is a despised goddess in these days to ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... my dear friend Miss Trevor with me because we are both very anxious to do a little missionary work for the benefit of a mutual acquaintance whom we are interested in," Miss Piper explained with winning directness. ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... pleasant to note the soundness of Mr. Mencken's judgment in regard to that very great philologer, the Dane, Doctor Jespersen, and he quotes, in favour of the clarity and directness of the English language, another great Dane, Doctor Thomson. Doctor Jespersen admits that our tongue has a certain masculine ungainliness. It has rare elements of strength in its simplicity. In English the subject almost invariably precedes the ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... was entirely unused to the amenities of society. I used no subterfuges, and made no attempt to disguise my interest in Cynthia, or to pretend to other interests. I dare say my directness was smiled upon, as part of the eccentricity of these literary people; one of Ernest's friends, quite a recluse, and so forth. I gathered as ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... It is true that the disjunctive proposition, more than any other form, except U, seems to convey two statements in one breath. Yet it ought not, any more than the E proposition, to be regarded as conveying both with equal directness. The proposition 'No A is B' is not considered to assert directly, but only implicitly, that 'No B is A.' In the same way the form 'Either A is B or C is D' ought to be interpreted as meaning directly no more than this, ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... was his wont; with deadly directness, as was his nature. The blacksmith shop was silent, closed—as grimly noncommittal as a vault. You might guess whatever you pleased about its inmate; it was like trying to imagine the emotions pictured upon the face behind a smooth, black mask. Slim stopped before ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... patterns, also touched with color. Borders are not broad; and circular forms, except in the arches, are seldom used. Romanesque was a barbaric art at the best, and has the usual virtue of the barbarian,—a directness of attack at the problem in hand and a simplicity in treating it which is invigorating ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... inlet as it would be safe to venture, and a little to windward of it. By making a calculation, and inspecting his buoys, which still remained where he had placed them, Captain Truck found that he could get a narrow channel of sufficient directness to permit the ship to be warped as far as this point in a straight line. Every thing but the boats was now got on board, the anchor by which they rode was hove up, and the warp was brought to the capstan, when the vessel slowly began to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... on her cheeks a warm red showed through the golden tan. Her slim straight figure was eloquent of suppleness and strength and her movements, quick, purposeful, showed decision and activity of mind. They were as characteristic as her directness of speech. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... good fellow by nature, a politician by circumstances, a boss by evolution, and a grafter by choice. He became grand sachem of Tammany and chairman of the general committee. This committee he ruled with blunt directness. When he wanted a question carried, he failed to ask for the negative votes; and soon he was called "the Boss," a title he never resented, and which usage has since fixed in our politics. So he ruled Tammany with a high ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... to mend roads with. We halted, and M. asked her how much she received for that labor. She answered, "Six-pence a car-load." "How long will it take you to break a car-load?" "About a fortnight." Further questions respecting her family, &c., were answered with equal directness and propriety, and with manifest truth. Here was a mere child, who should have been sent to school, delving from morning till night at an employment utterly unsuited to her sex and her strength, and which I should consider dangerous to her eyesight, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... which sounds subtle but isn't very helpful," decided Miss Beaver with unflattering directness. "I've told Mr. Wiley that I thought a dog might interest his son and Mr. Wiley replies that his wife won't let him get one. There is something more behind this and it's obvious you ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... "Mona Lisa's Picture," "The Duke's Commission" and "Woman's Art" are perhaps the best, and the last poem especially is very spirited and terse. Mrs. Preston's style has the rare merit in these days of uniting conciseness and directness to grace and beauty of expression. Her greatest failing is a lack of the sense of climax. There are several of these poems, like the two on the Venerable Bede and that called "Bacharach Wine," that rather ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... he lived among the peasants, he became familiar with their mode of thought and speech, and it entered into his being, and became his own natural mode of expression. There is in his daily conversation a certain grim directness, and a laconic weightiness, which give an air of importance and authority even to his simplest utterances. This tendency to compression frequently has the effect of obscurity, not because his thought is obscure, but ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... directness of his look her own eyes slowly sank. A very faint tinge of colour crept over her pallor, but she made ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... be aware of the painful lack of consideration sometimes evinced by turkeys in this apparently simple matter of allowing themselves to be housed. Some evenings, they march straight into their apartment with the directness and precision of soldiers filing into barracks; on others the very Prince of Darkness, backed by the three Fates and the three Furies, apparently takes possession of the perverse, shallow-pated birds. They wander backward ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... decided, mentally, while he actually colored at the directness of her gaze and her sweepingly contemptuous opinion ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... which is already familiar to the story. Then he got up from his chair as though to take leave. If this did not land the suspicion of the truth in her unreceptive mind, it could only be done by a sort of point-blank directness that he shrank from employing, and that he had made it difficult to adopt by his implied pretence of unconcern. He would sooner, if that was to be the way of it, come to her at the outset as the herald ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Kipling-Wells style of swift, shouldering, button-holing writing has accustomed readers and critics alike to a straight course and a rapid tempo. Moreover, it has accustomed them to a forthright certainty and directness of statement; they expect an author to account for his characters at once, and on grounds instantly comprehensible. This omniscience is a part of the prodigality of moral theory that I have been discussing. An author who knows ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... with the simple directness of those who have no self-consciousness—who are absorbed, but not in themselves, as are the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... done this very morning. But, considering the position of affairs, and her evident distrust of her betrothed, it was not impossible that similar situations might arise before long. If they did, Ruggiero would be ready, as he had now shown himself, to do her bidding with startling directness and energy. He was well aware of his physical superiority over every one else in Sorrento, and he was dimly conscious that a threat from him was something which would frighten most men, and which none could afford to overlook. He remembered poor Don Gennaro's face just now, when he had ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... but Sterry set about the work with a vigour, directness and intelligence that were felt over an extent of territory numbering hundreds of square miles, and made him a marked man by the rustlers, who are always quick to identify their friends and enemies. It seemed to make little difference, however, ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... said he, affably, "has sent us some magnificent men. In truth, it's amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does not suspect ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... grave wonder, and then said with her old directness: "But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I should have told you." She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color. "I mean," she said hesitatingly, "of course you have acted nobly, generously, kindly, wisely—but I hate ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... very thoroughly at home in regard to the technical subjects he has set himself to elucidate, from the mechanical rather than the artistic point of view, although the matter of correctness of taste is by no means ignored. Mr. Brown's style is directness itself, and there is no tyro in the painting trade, however mentally ungifted, who could fail to carry away a clearer grasp of the details of the subject after going ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... will save them from death; the splendid qualities of direct narration, constructive skill, dignity and poetical power will always make Homer a name to love. Those who know no Greek and therefore fear that they may lose some of the directness of the Homeric appeal might recall the famous sonnet written by Keats who had had no opportunity to learn the great language. His words are no doubt familiar enough; that they have become inseparable from Homer must be our apology ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... of Isabelle's talk was not to be stayed. She was excited and keyed up high. There was a simplicity and directness about this Judd woman that made her think of Mrs. Benjamin, so she told all about Hill Top and her life there, her love of it, her despair at Mrs. ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... describing. His action recalled me to the infinitely deeper misery of my present situation, and conscious of the conclusions which might be drawn from such impulsive utterances, I pulled myself together and proceeded to finish my story with greater directness. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... With the directness which marked her action when once her mind was made up, she waylaid Irechester as he came into the drawing-room; her resolute approach sufficed to detach Naylor from him; he found himself for the moment isolated ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... between Hayti and Puerto Rico. This route is held to be the best, I believe, for passing out into the open Atlantic from the labyrinthine groups of islands and innumerable islets that gem the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. It is a course, too, which by its directness and the northerly current and westerly wind there to be met, saves a lot of useless tacking about and beating to windward, as you, no doubt, captain, very ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... children." But for the fatal resemblance between the two daughters of one father, the conspiracy of which Anne had been the innocent instrument and Laura the innocent victim could never have been planned. With what unerring and terrible directness the long chain of circumstances led down from the thoughtless wrong committed by the father to the heartless ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins |
