"Keener" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... solemn freshness of early morning. One's nerves seem peculiarly strung for exquisite impressions in the first dewy hours of the day, there is a virginal sensitiveness and purity about all our senses, and the mere delight of the eye in the printed page is keener than at any other time. "The Muses love the morning, and that is a fit time for study," said Erasmus to his friend Christianus of Lubeck; and, certainly, if early rising agrees with one, there is no better time for getting the very best out of a book. Moreover, morning reading has a way of casting ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... years can fully appreciate. In addition to the fact that living under one's own vine and fig-tree is in itself a very pleasant ideal to look forward to, there is no branch of agronomy that calls for a keener appreciation of the laws of Nature, that brings man into closer touch with Nature, that makes a greater demand on a man's patience, skill, and energy, or in which science and practice are more closely related, than in that of fruit-growing. To all those who are considering the advantages ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... Archbishop, when he saw Count Rolland swoon, Felt keener grief than e'er he felt before; Stretched forth his hand, and took the olifant.— Ronceval there is a running stream; Thence will he water bring to Count Rolland. Staggering, with feeble steps, thither he goes, But loss of blood has made ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... grandmother, with whom they were staying the summer, and their young governess—"Misfortune," as they called her, her real name being Miss Williams—Fortune Williams. The nickname was a little too near the truth, as a keener observer than mischievous boys would have read in her quiet, sometimes sad, face; and it had been stopped rather severely by the tutor of the elder boys, a young man whom the grandmother had been forced to get, to "keep them in order!" He was a Mr. Robert Roy, ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... as Frederic Chopin should seek in music a surcease from his world-sorrow is very natural. A stricken people turns to music; it forms a necessary part of all religious observance, and the dirge of mourners, the wail of the "keener," and the songs of the banshee evolve naturally into being wherever the heart is sore oppressed. It was the slave-songs that made slavery bearable; and in the long ago, exiles in Babylon found a solemn joy by singing the songs of Zion. Chopin drank ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... future by the present. The little pleasure which you have lavished upon her bears witness against you; for she is not excited as much by the pleasures which she has received, as by those which she is yet to enjoy; does not imagination show her that her happiness will be keener with this lover, whom the laws deny her, than with you? And then, she finds enjoyment even in her terror and terror in her enjoyment. Then she falls in love with this imminent danger, this sword of Damocles hung over her head by you yourself, thus preferring the delirious agonies of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... autobiography as faithful as those of St. Augustine or of Rousseau, though transcendently purer and greater. It is a vision, like the "Pilgrim's Progress" of John Bunyan, but written with incomparably wider knowledge and keener insight. It is a soul's history, like Goethe's "Faust," but attaining to a far loftier level of faith and thoughtfulness and moral elevation. It is a divine poem, like Milton's "Paradise Lost," dealing, as Milton does, with God and Satan, and heaven and hell, but of wider range and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... something set and hard, which his mother knew well, and noticed immediately on coming into the room. What is the matter? She watched him, trying to read the meaning in his light eyes, which, however, harder and keener ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Yanyilla Steeplechase, was being fed. I rode right up to the tent in order to be quite sure, and saw on the grass where the bucket had stood, a few white grains as of oatmeal, and Ben, whose eyes were keener for that sort of thing, saw them too. But what could we do? It was quite the thing for the horses that were going to run in the grass-fed steeplechase to be carefully fed by their owners or backers on some place where the grass seemed fresher, greener, ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... have you?' he asked curtly. He still lay on his elbow, his cloak covering him, the little Marot in which he had been reading close to his hand. But his quick black eyes, which looked the keener for the pallor and thinness of his face, roved ceaselessly over me, probed the darkness behind me, took note ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... had grown tired and feverish. To be sure, little more than a day had gone by since he had sallied forth like a knight, but it seemed a year, an age, and every hour brought a new and keener distress. He found it possible now, for the first time, to relax a bit physically, so he closed his eyes and lay back in an easy chair while the twilight stole in upon him. Sooner or later his mind, too, would cease its torment, for pain ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... that I was very sorry if I had misjudged her husband in any way, and that no one had a keener appreciation of some of his qualities than ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... thoughts from our own separate personal life, and look for a moment at our duty as members of a society, how this picture of Christ embracing the little child, and blessing those who receive or help one such, should stir us to new and keener interest in social duty! Does it not carry in it, this example and teaching of the Lord, does it not carry in it the condemnation of a great many of our traditional notions about our duty to the young? We see the Lord's tenderness and love and care for the little child; we ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... keener in that way than Lord Geoffrey Cleveland, sir; he can see all the roguery that is going on in the whole fleet, at any rate, and ought to ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... people, for reasons already discussed in the chapter on Habit. The old and the accustomed are comfortable and facile; change means inconvenience and frustration of habitual desires. This is in part the explanation of the increasing conservatism of men as they grow older. Not only do they have a keener sense of the difficulty of introducing changes, but their own fixed habits of mind and emotion make part of the difficulty. They like the old ways and persist in them just as they like and keep old books, old friends, and ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... otherwise we should not have amongst us men like Mr. J. C. Tinne, whose name is now a household word in the Fox-terrier world, as it has been any time for the past thirty years. Close proximity, in those days, to Mr. Gibson at Brockenhurst made him all the keener, and one of his first terriers was a bitch of that blood by Bitters. With daughters of Old Foiler he did very well—to wit, Pungent, sister to Dorcas, while through Terror we get Banquet, the granddam of Despoiler. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... 'All the speakers claimed some connection with the Truemans or Yorkshire, but he had not a drop of English blood in his veins, using English in its narrower sense. None, however, had a keener appreciation of the Yorkshire element than himself. Charles Allison, the founder of the Institutions, the one who had done more than any other to make the name of Allison to be remembered, chose for his partner in life a member of the Trueman ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... not been manly. How would it be with him if he made up his mind never to speak again to her, and certainly not to him, and to take care that that should be the only sign left of his suffering? He would hunt, and be keener than ever;—he would work upon the land with increased diligence; he would give himself not a moment to think of anything. She should see and hear what he could do;—but he would never speak to her again. The hounds ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... dull and useless knife, and I am greatly sharpened up. After all, I think we both agree that it is rather difficult to keep anything bright very long unless you rub it against something still brighter and keener. Thank you again, Father," and with a pat of his fingers on Kitty's shoulder as he passed, and a good night to John, he left the room on his way to ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Charlie had felt in beholding celebrated places, the scenes of great events in past ages; a delight that an American can never know in his own country, and which, on that very account, he enjoys with a far keener zest than a European. Miss Patsey seemed to enter a little into this pleasure; but, upon the whole, it was quite evident that all the imagination of the family had fallen to Charlie's share. The young ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Mr Melmotte. This was, of course, an assistance;—and not the less so because it was asserted in other papers that the country would be absolutely disgraced by his presence in Parliament. The hotter the opposition the keener will be the support. Honest good men, men who really loved their country, fine gentlemen, who had received unsullied names from great ancestors, shed their money right and left, and grew hot in personally energetic struggles to have this man returned ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... its development has meant much for Man. It is the one sense in which Man surpasses the animals in the matter of degree and acuteness. The animal may have a keener smell, taste, hearing and sight, but its sense of Touch is far beneath that of Man. Anaxagoras is quoted as saying that "if the animals had hands and fingers, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... night came voices and laughter, and the sound of wheels and galloping horses. It was not the soft, rollicking laughter of black men, but the keener, more metallic sound of white men's cries, and Bles Alwyn paused at the edge of the wood, looked back and hesitated, but decided after a moment to ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... is for them to try to understand each other. One class sees that the other has lighter or at least different labor, opportunities of travel, a more liberal supply of the luxuries of life, a higher enjoyment and a keener relish of the beautiful, the immaterial. Looking only at external conditions, it concludes that all it needs to come into this better place is wealth, and so it organizes war upon the rich, and it makes demands of freedom from toil and of compensation ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... led to the doctor's living-room and here received with great friendliness by his wife and with still keener sympathy by the lady from Geneva, who had so lived in the history of poor Toni and his mother that she could hardly think of anything else but how to help these two. She had had only the one child and could so well understand the mother's trouble. She had even asked the doctor to allow ...
— Toni, the Little Woodcarver • Johanna Spyri
... her skirt and shrank behind the tree, not from any fear, but just to catch the fellow; for one of the laborers on the farm, who had run at his master with a pitchfork once, was shrewdly suspected of poaching with a gun. But keener eyes than those of any poacher were upon her, and the lightest of light ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... cruel destiny which had brought out those sweet blossoms only that the winds and storms might have a greater work of desolation, which had nursed her like a pet fawn into tenderness and fond expectation, only that she might feel a keener terror in the clutch of the panther. Her mother had sometimes said that troubles were sent to make us better and draw us nearer to God. What mockery that seemed to Janet! Her troubles had been sinking her lower from year to year, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... brother in appearance, but his face was sterner and his eyes keener. He had been made a bold, determined man by the pressure of harsher circumstances. He shook his brother by the hand in ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... limits of excess, they excited themselves to self-torture. In the poor creature's paroxysms of excitement, her brain, her nerves, the imagination of her maddened body, no longer sought pleasure in pleasure, but something sharper, keener, and more violent: pain in pleasure. And the words "to die" constantly escaped from her compressed lips, as if she were invoking death in an undertone and seeking to embrace it in the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... the ability they show in parliament may be sooner or later rewarded by a seat on the treasury benches, and that they will then have a determining voice in the government of the country, be it dominion or province, they must be stimulated by a keener interest in public life, a closer watchfulness over legislation and administration, a greater readiness for discussing all public questions, and a more studied appreciation of public opinion outside ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... he had been a child, he wrapped him warmly, and put the boy in behind him, to kneel and see that his father did not fall out. Then he turned the horse around, and started toward Number Nine. The horse knew the road, and was furnished with keener vision than the man who drove him. Jim was aware of this, and letting the reins lie loose upon his back, the animal struck into a long, swinging trot, in prospect of home and ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... plentifully given that it seemed to be more in me than my very self. The sensibility thereof was so powerful, so penetrating, it seemed to me irresistible. Love took from me all liberty of my own. At other times I was so dry, I felt nothing but the pain of absence, which was the keener to me, as the divine presence had before been so sensible. In these alternatives I forgot all my troubles and pains. It appeared to me as if I had never experienced any. In its absence, it seemed as if it would never return again. I still thought it was through some ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... lamentable case Is little short of happiness. 10 In yonder hut that stands alone Attend to Famine's feeble moan; Or view the couch where Sickness lies, Mark his pale cheek, and languid eyes; His frame by strong convulsion torn, His struggling sighs, and looks forlorn. Or see, transfixt with keener pangs, Where o'er his hoard the miser hangs; Whistles the wind; he starts, he stares, Nor Slumber's balmy blessing shares; 20 Despair, Remorse, and Terror roll Their tempests on his harass'd soul. But here perhaps it may avail To enforce our reasoning with a tale. Mild was the morn, the sky serene, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... reconstruction days a Negro by the name of Mifflin Wistar Gibbs located in Little Rock, Ark. He showed the community that he was keener than a whole lot of its leading citizens, who had kept the offices in their families for generations. Under the new order of things he was appointed Attorney of Pulaski County. His ability and the considerate manner in which he ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... chatted on, and took little note of coming and going tourists, who glanced with curiosity from them to the old dark picture above, and then back to the fresh, eager, beautiful faces,—the greater part ever finding in the latter the keener attraction. ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... this external opposition to the biography, Marshall found a source of even keener disappointment in the literary defects due to the haste with which he had done his work. The first three volumes had appeared in 1804, the fourth in 1805, and the fifth, which is much the best, in 1807. Republican critics dwelt with no light hand upon the deficiencies of these volumes, ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... be less to him and the world of men must be more, as from the distance she saw the gondola touch the landing and watched him until he passed out of sight, after pausing with his father for a moment before the great columns of San Marco and San Teodoro, looking up perhaps with a keener sense of the dread scenes they had witnessed than had ever before possessed him, though the sunshine streamed brilliantly over the water and life seemed full of promise for this only son of the Ca' ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... very lips. Through all her triumph, she felt a twinge, far keener than she expected, of ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... always painting in those other days before I met Himself, one might think my eyes would have been even keener to see beauty than now, when my brushes are more seldom used; but it is not so. There is something, deep hidden in my consciousness, that makes all loveliness lovelier, that helps me to interpret it in a different and in a larger sense. I have a feeling ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... came from Nort. "You know a horse, and almost any other animal, has a keener sense of smell than most humans. The horses might have smelled ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... so old and infirm, poor dear!" said Molly, interrupting. In reality she cared little what they did at San Leon, so long as they were all together and having a good time. But she saw on Dorothy's expressive face a keener disappointment than the affair seemed to warrant and loyally placed herself ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... His face seemed to take on a much keener expression. He took the letter from Mary and read it through. Then he crossed the room to a wall cupboard which he unlocked with a key on a chain, produced a small tray on which stood a number of small bottles, some paint-brushes ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... confuse, or spoil the story. Nothing is added which does not justly exalt the tale, and what is added is chiefly a greater fulness and breadth of humanity, a more lovely and supreme Nature, arranged at every point to enhance into keener life the human feelings of Arthur and his knight, to lift the ultimate hour of sorrow and of death into nobility. Arthur is borne to a ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... intellectually? He had thought he was; now he hesitated long before answering that question. Certainly he had had an education which they had missed. Certainly his intellect had been trained, in a fashion, by great men, by learned university professors. But was it any keener than Brayley's and Toothy's; was it any stronger; was it, after all, any more highly trained? In a crisis now was his intellect any better than theirs? In his present environment was it any better? And finally he ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... had hardly heard at the time, came back to me with singular vividness and a fuller meaning. I hadn't any longer the cold consolation of believing in my own perspicacity: I saw that her insight had been deeper and keener than mine. ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... erudition, and gave occasion to laughter from his odd peculiarities. On the latter occasions he used abruptly to withdraw from the ridicule he had provoked; for notwithstanding the general mildness of his character, his solitary habits had engendered a testy impatience of contradiction, and a keener sense of pain arising from the satire of others, than was natural to his unassuming disposition. As for his parishioners, they enjoyed, as may reasonably be supposed, many a hearty laugh at their pastor's expense, and were sometimes, as Mrs. Dods hinted, more astonished than ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... on in his thirteenth year, Wilfrid Laurier returned to the normal path prescribed for the keener boys of the province. He entered the college {7} or secondary school of L'Assomption, maintained by secular priests, and the chief seat of education in the country north of Montreal. The course was a thorough one, extending through seven closely filled years. It ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... to the lad would never have suspected that he was not a Southron. He prolonged the a's and o's, as the Southern trick is, and imitated to such perfection the pleasant localisms of Virginian pronunciation, that keener critics of speech and accent than these galliard troops would have been deceived. But suddenly his voice breaks, he falls into the clear, distinct enunciation of New York—the only speech in the Union that betrays no sign of locality. He is reading the lines ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... scent from a good distance the approach of any person who has done them good or harm. This has been proved many times, and can only proceed from the diversity of organs in those animals, some of which have the scent much keener than others, and upon which the spirits which exhale from other bodies act more quickly and at a greater distance than in others. Certain persons have such an acute sense of hearing that they can hear what is whispered even in another chamber, of which the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Peppajee's information that Miss Georgie thought he was "bueno," and he was wondering if it were true. Not that he wanted it to be true! But he was man enough to look at her with a keener interest than he had felt before. And Miss Georgie, if one might judge by her manner, was woman enough to detect that interest and to draw back her skirts, mentally, ready for ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... years—six drops of time! Yet suns shall rise, and many moons shall wane, And old men die, and young men pass their prime, And languid pleasure fade and flower again, And the dull Gods behold, ere these are flown, Revels more deep, joy keener than their own. ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... a thousand others, who never knew what it was to have a soul during the latter part of their lives; yet, sir, these men adorned society. Why possession of his faculties, mental and corporeal? Who writes a keener epigram? Who reasons more wittily? Who—but stay! I have his agreement ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... friend had said, there was no other way. His pain had grown no less, but only more as the months passed by, for it was not the common pain of a man like others. As he was taller, stronger, and had more brain and heart than most, he had greater and keener pangs to do battle with, and in the world he must at intervals be thrown across her path and she across his, and as he had been haunted by talk and rumours of her in the years before he was haunted now. 'Twas but natural all should praise to him his kinsman's wife, sure that ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... moment—the exhaustion of the carbons of the electric lamps—gave to his exit a still keener dramatic intensity. The footlights alone remained burning: flooding with a golden splendour the stage and the great yellow wall, and from the wall reflected upward and outward upon the auditorium; ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... world; but Maria saw them not, for the tears welled to her eyes and blinded her. She stood there motionless, with arms hanging piteously by her side, a stricken figure of grief; then a sudden anguish yet keener and more unbearable seized upon her; blindly she opened the door and went out ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... bound. For many nights the three voyageurs camped, slept, and dreamed, with only the laughing loons, the calling herons, the plaintive owls, and distant fox bark to sweep across their slumbers. But as the days went on, the Indian boy grew more wary; his glance seemed keener, his ears forever on the alert; he appeared like a lithe, silent watchdog, holding itself ready to spring, and snap, and bury its fine white teeth in the throat of an enemy to its household. His paddle dipped ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... farm became so absorbing that the wild flowers were forgotten. The oftener they took the wrong road and had to start over, the keener they ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... of men marching, that measured tread of countless feet, the beat of hoofs, the rumbling of cannon wheels over roads now frozen hard, and the music of many bands still playing. The thrill was all the keener when the great army became invisible in the fog, although the mighty hum and murmur of varied sounds proved that it was ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... crew. For, granting he was much of a miser and maybe but a shrewd old man, to be corrupting folks with his theories, though I'm not so sure about that, not knowing what he really thought; yet, he was a bold man, and a kind man, and I never saw one that was keener in judgment. You might say he had made that crew to suit him, having picked out the material one by one, and they were most of all like children of his bringing up. I judge he had a theory about ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... involved in the determination and judgment of crime. It is the aim of this book to present such a psychology. "If we were gods,'' writes Plato in the Symposium, "there would be no philosophy''—and if our senses were truer and our sense keener, we should need no psychology. As it is we must strive hard to determine certainly how we see and think; we must understand these processes according to valid laws organized into a system— otherwise ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... have been a healthy, active child, very impressionable, and with more interests and a keener enjoyment of things than most farm boys have. I was fond of the girls back as early as I can remember, and had my sweethearts at a very ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Caesar or a Pompey is at the top of all things? Or if it does matter—as indeed that question of his governance does matter to every man who has a soul within him to be turned this way or that—which way he is turned, though there may be inner regrets that Caesar should become the tyrant, perhaps keener regrets, if the truth were all seen, that Pompey's hands should be untrammelled, who sees them? I can walk down to my club with my brow unclouded, or, unless I be stirred to foolish wrath by the pride ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... of the Dauphin was so evident that his comrades who had brought him the present felt a keener affection even than before for their little Colonel, and the Queen who had been present during the whole scene spoke in friendly words of thanks to the boys, who then withdrew, escorted by the king ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... bound, he was beaten with rods. It is unnecessary to follow the fortunes of Valla further. He was engaged in a long controversy with the learned men of his time, especially with the facetious Poggio, whose wit was keener though his language was not so forcible. Erasmus in his Second Epistle defends Valla in his attacks upon the clergy, and asks, "Did he speak falsely, because he spoke the truth too severely?" Valla died at Naples in 1465. The following epigram testifies to the correctness ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... that of these blazing days could not have kept one of the sages from attending the conclave now. For the battle was on in Canaan: and here, upon the National House corner, under the shadow of the west wall, it waxed even keener. Perhaps we may find full justification for calling what was happening a battle in so far as we restrict the figure to apply to this one spot; else where, in the Canaan of the Tocsin, the conflict was too one-sided. The Tocsin had ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... so excellent a tool as Druce to its best advantage. Boland was waiting calmly for that time. If Druce suffered in the interim John Boland was unable to see how that was any of his concern. In fact, Boland figured, the more Druce suffered, the keener a tool he would be for ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... perpetual subservience to the whims of her captor which had dominated everything. But now the whole aspect was changed. She loved the endless, undulating expanse stretching out before her, and as the grey topped each rise her interest grew keener. What might not be behind the next one? For an hour or more the ground rose and fell in monotonous succession, and then the desert grew level again and quite suddenly she could see for miles. About two ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... dispassionate courage, a strength of mind that can surmount the sense of danger, without a flow of animal spirits by which it is extinguished, seems to be the prerogative of those who have projects of more lasting importance, and a keener sense of honour and disgrace, than can be formed or felt by men who have few pains or pleasures besides those of mere animal life, and scarcely any purpose but to provide for the day that is passing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... keener than his own, and so after the sorrowful words, "and I failed, too," he bent himself to comfort the poor child, who, leaning her throbbing head against his shoulder, sobbed bitterly, as in the soft spring twilight they drove back to the low red cottage where grandma ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... charm'd mine ear, Then seem'd to me so much of heav'n to blaze With the sun's flame, that rain or flood ne'er made A lake so broad. The newness of the sound, And that great light, inflam'd me with desire, Keener than e'er was ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... and fierce snarls of the hungry wolves, battening upon their horrid meal, were added the flapping wings and croaking cries of innumerable night birds flocking to the carnage; and these were blended still with the sharp outcries, and faint murmurs, that told how keener than the mortal sword were the beak and talon, the fang and claw, of the wild ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... proof of truth as truth itself is ashamed of. The most singular and strongest part of human authority is properly in the wisest and the most virtuous, and these, I trow, are not the most universal." William Chillingworth, a man of larger if not keener mind, had been taught by an early conversion to Catholicism, and by a speedy return, the insecurity of any basis for belief but that of private judgement. In his "Religion of Protestants" he set aside ecclesiastical tradition ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... repercussion of delight,— Bringer of life, witching each sense to soul, That sometimes almost gives me to believe 160 I might have been a poet, gives at least A brain dasaxonized, an ear that makes Music where none is, and a keener pang Of exquisite surmise outleaping thought,— Her will I pamper in her luxury: No crumpled rose-leaf of too careless choice Shall bring a northern nightmare to her dreams, Vexing with sense of exile; hers shall be The invitiate firstlings of experience, Vibrations felt but once ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... experiences, she felt a keener sense of injustice than before, and she found it hard to restrain her tears from trickling down ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... behind a dark horizon; In the north a cloud is rising, And a longer cloud at north-west." Wainamoinen thus made answer: Art thou speaking truth or fiction? I am fearful that the war-ships Of Pohyola are pursuing; Look again with keener vision." Thereupon wild Lemminkainen Looked again and spake as follows: "In the distance seems a forest, In the south appears an island, Aspen-groves with falcons laden, Alders laden with the wood-grouse." Spake ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... Dolor in great excitement. "This is as good as riding a horse," and tossed his head back to meet the fresh breeze, and pulled his coat-collar up and his hat down, as he felt the wind grow keener and colder, colder than anything he had ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... force,—and seemed, like myself, to find speech difficult. If two deeply attached friends, parted for many years, were all unexpectedly to meet in some solitary place where neither had thought to see a living soul, their emotion could hardly be keener than ours,—and yet—there was an invisible barrier between us—a barrier erected either by him or by myself,—something that held us apart. The sudden and overpowering demand made upon our strength by the swift and subtle attraction which drew us together was ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... therefore, we must study if we would penetrate to the open secret of the artist, if we would seize the vital spirit of his utterance and make it our own. Lamb's sense of poetic form, his instinct for subtle shades of difference, was far keener than Hazlitt's. And for that very reason he may be said to have seen yet more clearly than Hazlitt saw, how inseparable is the tie that binds poetry to life. It is not only in its deeper undertones, Lamb seems to remind us, but in its finest ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... in one of those periods of mental excitement when one understands everything with more pleasure, when the vision is clearer and more comprehensive, when one feels a keener joy in seeing and feeling, as if an all-powerful hand had brightened all the colors of earth, reanimated all living creatures, and had wound up in us, as in a watch that has ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... consequence, and tended much to reconcile the nation to Charles, it was evident that they would not be decisive, and that keener weapons must determine the controversy. To the ordinance of the parliament concerning the militia, the king opposed his commissions of array. The counties obeyed the one or the other, according as they stood affected. And in many counties, where the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... said nothing. She bent herself to her patching, the one uppermost desire being to finish it and get out of the room. The cold water had refreshed and strengthened her, much as she disliked and hated it; at the same time the sense of hunger, from the same cause, grew keener than ever. Matilda tried her very best to lay the patch straight, and get it basted so. And so keen the endeavour was, so earnest the attention, that though laying a linen patch by the thread is a nice piece of ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... for Hugh was still an undeveloped quantity, though the certainty of his love for her had quickened it to keener life. She was not even yet absolutely certain that he could have satisfied her. It was true that he had been deeply stirred for the moment, but how deeply and how lastingly she had no means of gauging. Knowing the indolence of his nature, ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... papers, and "swiping" fruit often appears much smarter than a boy of the same age who is going to school all the time and does not see so much of the world. A boy of twelve who has lived by his wits is often keener than a boy of the same age who has been well brought up at home and at school, but such a boy knows about as much and is about as much of a man at twelve as he will ever be, while the boy that gets an education becomes more and more of a man ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... achieved, under Mahmud, autonomy, but not independence, nothing remaining to the sultan as before except the fortress of Belgrade with five other strongholds. The second, who began with no higher hopes than the Serbs, were encouraged, by the better acquaintance and keener sympathy of Europe, to fight their way out to complete freedom. The Morea and central Greece passed out of the empire, the first provinces so to pass since the Osmanli loss of Hungary. Yet it was in the middle of that fatal ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... afterwards of the fun they had enjoyed. Both societies produced manuscript magazines, which were read in strict privacy at their meetings, and contained pointed allusions to their enemies' failings. No old-fashioned Whigs and Tories could have preserved a keener feud, the division between them waxing so serious that sometimes they could hardly sit peaceably side by side ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... boobies, gannets, and other tropical birds, which hovered over them, and secured many of them before our eyes. Notwithstanding this, I do not suppose that flying-fish are more unhappy or more persecuted than their less agile brethren; and while they live they probably have a keener enjoyment of existence. I believe that, in the minutest details of creation, the all-beneficent God metes out to all living beings the advantages and disadvantages of existence for some great end, which it is not His will to disclose ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in church, and a workingman should enter the door at the other end, would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch-dog. The fact is, if you had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing of the common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of Christendom sick at their stomach. If you are going to kill the church thus with bad smells I will have nothing to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Professor Masson's monumental and authoritative biography, without perpetual reference to which no satisfactory memoir can henceforth be composed. One recent biography has enjoyed this advantage. Its author, the late Mark Pattison, wanted neither this nor any other qualification except a keener sense of the importance of the religious and political controversies of Milton's time. His indifference to matters so momentous in Milton's own estimation has, in our opinion, vitiated his conception of his hero, who is represented as persistently yielding ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... approach these woods, without experiencing keener sense of her danger. Their deep silence, except when the wind swept among their branches, and impenetrable glooms shewn partially by the sudden flash, and then, by the red glare of the torch, which served only to make 'darkness ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... believed from the community of origin and speech it ought to be better informed, and partly because he looked upon it as responsible for many of the absurd and erroneous impressions that prevailed in the rest of Europe. His feelings were rendered still keener by the direct contact with English prejudice which he had personally during his residence abroad. The attitude of the Continent towards America was that of supreme ignorance and indifference. But there was at the time something ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... by trees. It was rural scenery—scenery in which one could wish to build a cottage and dwell therein, or in which a pastoral drama might be laid. There was nothing to suggest Europe, for the rocks and, still more, the trees were thoroughly African in character, and the air even drier and keener than that of Sicily. But the landscape was one which any lover of Theocritus might have come to love; and some day, when there are large towns in Matabililand, and plenty of Englishmen living in them, the charm ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... the comparative method, and largely to have widened its scope. In this sense, comparison is criticism; and to compare with increased intelligence, with a clearer consciousness of the end in view, is to reform criticism itself, to make it a keener weapon and more effective ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... tranquil mien of a man of experience and infinite tact, he was undergoing the most extraordinary and delightful sensations, keener even than those which had thrilled him in Rachel's kitchen on the previous evening. The social snob in him had somehow suddenly expired, and he felt intensely the strange charm of going shopping ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... with a start, and stared blankly in the direction indicated. Apparently he could perceive nothing clearly, for he reached back into the wagon-box, and drew forth a battered field-glass, quickly adjusting it to his eyes. Stella's keener vision made out a black, indistinct figure moving against the yellow background of a far away sand-ridge, and she stood up, clinging to Moore's seat, to gain a better view. Sikes got the ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... bank was never disturbed, and the following year another litter was raised there. With characteristic cunning—a cunning which grows keener and keener in the neighborhood of civilization—the mother-otter filled up the land entrance among the roots with earth and driftweed, using only the doorway under water until it was time for the cubs to come out into ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... infinitely greater than that which disease could inflict. Men have been known to brave any physical torture rather than endure the insupportable anguish of a sin-laden conscience. The worm that never dies is more intolerable than cancer; the fire that is never quenched keener than that of fever. To save a soul from these is, therefore, a ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... desires and new possibilities. It lays the axe at the root of the tree of knowledge, to cut down all that bringeth not forth good fruit; "and blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." It touches mind to more spiritual issues, sys- [15] tematizes action, gives a keener sense of Truth and a ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... existence, and because 'it is impossible but that out of the crowd of artisans practising them, there should arise from time to time one of those men of genius who are found mingled with other men, as gold is found mingled with the earth of a mine.' Surely in the same way holy men arose, with keener feeling for the spiritual necessities of the time, and finer knowledge to train and fit the capacities of human nature to meet these needs, and make their satisfaction the basis for yet loftier standards and holier aspirations and nobler and more careful ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... than once whether, in a hand to hand fight with the other, the struggle being fair on each side, he could vanquish him. The Pawnee was tall, well-formed, athletic, and the knife thrust in the skin-sheath at his girdle looked as if it was longer and keener than the one Hay-uta carried, without sheath at all. The Pawnee was certain to be a formidable antagonist in such a contest, but the Sauk would not have hesitated to assail him, except through fear that others would be brought ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the charm of the evening—it had been so wonderful to him! But now his vision seemed to have grown keener, to be piercing deeper. His memory of each moment was marvellously clear. How vivid still was the picture of Mrs. Medhurst bending down into the light, when he had noticed how the gold was fading out of the still beautiful hair. In the haunting memory of her sweet face he seemed to see ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... anguish of the announcement keener than the man who made it, but he looked calmly into the angry faces ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... one took me for a foreigner or offered me a boat. At that hour, I was in myself so improbable, that if they saw me at all, I must have appeared to them as a dream. My sense of security was sweet, but it was false, for on going into the church of St. Mark, the keener eye of the sacristan detected me. He instantly offered to show me the Zeno Chapel; but I declined, preferring the church, where I found the space before the high altar filled with market-people come to hear the early mass. As I passed out of the church, I witnessed the partial awaking of a ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... closely written papyri, and things which the orator studied more intently,—a number of hard bits of clay bearing the impressions of seals. As Democrates fingered these, his face might have betrayed a mingling of keen fear and keener satisfaction. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... taught; in speech Right gentle, yet so wise; princely of mien, Yet softly mannered; modest, deferent, And tender-hearted, though of fearless blood: No bolder horseman in the youthful band E'er rode in gay chase of the shy gazelles; No keener driver of the chariot In mimic contest scoured the palace courts: Yet in mid-play the boy would oft-times pause, Letting the deer pass free; would oft-times yield His half-won race because the laboring steeds Fetched painful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... one had a keener sense of the workings of the Holy Spirit in regions beyond the precincts of all organized religion; and yet, in his own personal heart and life, Wilberforce belonged essentially to the Church of England. It is difficult to imagine him happy and content in any communion except our own. Nowhere ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... But the servant's keener sight, trained by long stormy nights of watching, was following in its dwindling, mysterious course that misty vision in which he ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... power multiplied many times, his intellect sharpened, and a keener edge put on all of his faculties, when coming into contact with a strong personality which has called forth hidden powers which he never before dreamed he possessed, so that he could say things and do things impossible to him when alone? The power of the orator, which he flings ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... knee as he uttered this meditative monosyllable, and continued to regard his niece with keener scrutiny, if that were possible, than before. 'It is John's temper—a very firebrand. My dear, you are very young, and you should not be above taking advice. Let me advise you to control that fiery passion. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... they should ride together awoke in her a keener sense of pleasure than she had known since the tragedy of Wara had darkened her young life, and for the rest of the day she looked forward eagerly to the resumption of ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... from ceiling unto floor, pressing in like water dripping into a cistern with ever-deepening note as its volume increased. The trembling of air in a big belfry where bells have been a-ringing represents best the effect, only it was a trifle sharper in quality—keener, more alive. ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... necessity had taken him by his slim young shoulders and pushed him into the street, to earn that night's supper. He had not earned it but he had earned the next night's, and afterwards, whenever he had had none, it was because he had gone without it to use the money for something else, a keener pleasure or a finer profit. He had turned his hand, with his brain in it, to many things; he had been enterprising, in an eminent sense of the term; he had been adventurous and even reckless, and he had known bitter failure as well as brilliant success; but he was a born experimentalist, and he ...
— The American • Henry James
... the boys for the clubs that we are interested in. This is a serious mistake. It is this sort of thing that causes the failure of so many well-meaning attempts to redeem the children of the "slums" or of the street. We must let the groups form spontaneously; the boys' instincts are keener in detecting the sneak and the coward and the traitor than yours are, and if the club has the right start, the undesirable citizen will either adopt the morals of the club or be squeezed out. And the right start is chiefly a good meeting place. It is here that the church and the ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... in the northern west, it does not vanish, but travels on, a withered pilgrim, all the night, at the long last to rise the aureole of the eternal Aurora. And now new paths entice him—or old paths opening fresh horizons. With stronger thews and keener nerves he turns again to the visible around him. The changelessness amid change, the law amid seeming disorder, the unity amid units, draws him again. He begins to descry the indwelling poetry of science. The untiring forces ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... most human beings it does not last long—the sun is soon too hot for the head, or too bright for the eyes, or there is a draught, or the flies disturb one. Man is not capable of as much physical enjoyment as the other animals, though perhaps his enjoyment is keener during the first moments. Then comes thought, restlessness, discontent, change, effort, and progress, and the history of man's superiority is ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... Lincoln had hated slavery. The fact that Kentucky was a slave state had its influence in his father's removal to Indiana. His personal observations upon his journeys down the Mississippi River had given him a keener feeling on the subject. The persistent and ever- increasing outrages of the slave power had intensified his hatred. The time had come when he, and such as he, felt that other party questions were of minor importance, and that everything else should for the time be subordinated to ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... you keener," said Brother Bonaday with a small sigh. "Now I see that you will probably laugh at what I am going to confess. . . . Last night, as I sat a while before going to bed, I found myself hearkening for the sound of her breathing in the next room. After a bit, when a minute or so went ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... manner led the conversation to the subject of portrait-painting. There was his text before him—the famous "Red Duchess"—and he talked well. I found myself listening with absorbed attention, and even the shy Mr. Blake became oblivious of the keener agonies of self-consciousness. So we went on until the ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... he expected to come upon moose at any time. He placed a patch of cotton about the ball before ramming it in, and made sure that the powder showed in the nipple before putting on the percussion cap. And as he took his fire-steel and whetted a keener edge upon his knife, a smile of hunter's contentment overspread his face, because he well knew how soon he was to use the blade. That morning he did not light his pipe as usual because, as he explained, he wanted to have his wits about him; furthermore, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... "love's a quick, subtle thing. It can make even such a man as I am less stupid than Nature built him. It fires dull brains; it adds sight to dim eyes; it shows the bookworm how to find out secrets hidden from keener spirits; it lifts a veil from the loved one and lets the lover see more than anybody else can. Be patient with me. I spoke because I love you still with all my heart and soul, Chris; I spoke, because ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the manner, the tact, to show themselves in their true colours. An ungracious refusal—ay! or an ungraciously accorded favour! may raise a foe who will be a bar to a man's popularity for years:—whilst how many a free and independent spirit is there, who criticises with a keener eye than is his wont, the sayings and doings of his commanding officer, solely because he is such. How apt is such an one to misrepresent a word, or create a wrong motive for an action! how slow in ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... weeks of winter passed like a dream. Sometimes she contrasted them with the dark, anxious weeks of the previous winter, when the nightmare trouble about her father had first descended upon her. She was a keener business woman now than then, readier at buying and selling, quicker to see what was the right thing to do under the circumstances of the moment; but her chief aim this winter was to stand back and push Miles forward so that other people might understand who was to be business chief ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... tired of his wife because she has not kept pace with him; because, instead of growing broader and keener as the years pass, she has become narrow. It never occurs to him that the fault may be wholly his own. In the early years of their married life he perhaps laughed at her "dreams," as he called her longings for self-improvement. He discouraged, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and proved to be the husband whom Heaven had destined for my charming friend. What a happy thought it was for me that I had been the means of rescuing her from the gulf of shame, misery, and despair, and placing her on the high road to happiness. I own that I have always felt a keener pleasure in doing good than in anything else, though, perhaps, I may not always have done good ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... fortitude beyond belief, and that Magendie gave him comforting assurances. Of Nancy no word was spoken between us, for the hurt he had received from her conduct put an edge upon his suffering keener than he could bring himself to name, and there came upon me, at the sight of this pain, the impulse to tell him my own suspicions in the matter, but caution for ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Seas' is the most remarkable book of verse that Mr. Kipling has given us. Here the human sympathy is broader and deeper, the patriotism heartier and fuller, the intellectual and spiritual insight keener, the command of the literary vehicle more complete and sure, than in any previous verse work by the author. The volume pulses with power—power often rough and reckless in expression, but invariably conveying the effect ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... theatre of the Society, he could not help feeling proud of his own presence there—and yet at the same time he was scorning, in his Five Towns way, the preciosity and the simperings of those his fellow-creatures. Seated in the auditorium, at the end of a row, he was aware of an even keener satisfaction, as people bowed and smiled to him; for the theatre was so tiny and the reunion so choice that it was obviously an honour and a distinction to have been invited to such an exclusive affair. To the evening first fixed for the ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... depends on habit. Thus at first The infant takes not kindly to the breast, But before long, its eager thirst Is fain to slake with hearty zest: Thus at the breasts of wisdom day by day With keener relish ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... So came He to her pleasance yet again. A flame Leaped high above a brazier that he bore, Its sweet, white, scented wood quick lapping o'er. With darkened face Eblis above her hung. "This hath, than my poor pipe, a keener tongue," Smileless and stern, he said. "Oh, dame, List how the wild, crisp, crackling ruby flame Eats through the tender boughs. A trusty knave It is, that serves me well, and loud doth rave As tiger caged. When I do set it free, With angry fangs leaps on its prey. But see, It now sleeps harmlessly, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... I come back, it is yours.' This little incident," he continues, "has often occurred to my mind; and I know it is my disposition, that difficulties and dangers do but increase my desire of attempting them." An action of this sort, in its results unimportant, gives keener satisfaction in the remembrance than do greater deeds, because more purely individual,—entirely one's own. It is upon such as this, rather than upon his victories, that Nelson in his narrative dwells caressingly. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... exterminate the weeds at once. And beware of remaining longer in sin. The deeper you sink, the more bitter will be your restoration. Why continue to sear you conscience, and sow the seeds of keener remorse? No matter how painful it may be, break with sin at once. Severe operations are often necessary, for the skilful surgeon knows that the disease cannot be cured by surface applications. The farmer takes his hoe and his spade and his axe, and he cuts away the obnoxious ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... and red lips and bare throats, sat alone at tables or tete-a-tete with men too old or too young, and ate; but drank with keener appetite. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... each tear that springs In those dear eyes of thine, To me a keener suffering brings Than if ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... Her trouble was acute, her self-consciousness far keener than it had ever been before. She thought: "But it's impossible that this awful and exquisite thing should happen in this fashion!" George Cannon moved a step towards her. She could not see his face, but she knew that he was looking at her with his expression at once tyrannic ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... shore of the middle lake, the boys saw that the keener eyes of the old voyageurs had noted what they had missed—a series of ripples made by feeding fish not far from the point ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... cries, the pistol's sharp report,—the free, Wild days in Texas by the Rio Grande. And some men say when dusky night shuts down, Dark, cloudy nights without a kindly star, One sees dim horsemen skimming o'er the plain Hard by Mackenzie's trail; and keener ears Have heard from deep within the bordering hills The tramp of ghostly hoofs, faint cattle lows, The rumble of a moving wagon train, Sometimes far echoes of a frontier song; Then sounds grow fainter, shadows troop away,— On westward, westward, as they in olden time Went rangeing o'er ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... MS. follow two and a half lines, spoken by Vandort, and a speech of Barnavelt's, twenty-four lines long. These were cancelled on revision. I have succeeded in reading some of the lines; and perhaps after a keener scrutiny the whole passage might become legible. But I have no doubt that the lines were cancelled by the author himself (Massinger?) in ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... something happened that stopped him. Neewa, standing squarely over Miki, with Miki's four over-grown paws held aloft as if signalling an unqualified surrender, slowly drew his teeth from the pup's loose hide. Again he saw the man-beast. Instinct, keener than a clumsy reasoning, held him for a few moments without movement, his beady eyes on Challoner. In midair Miki wagged his paws; he whined softly; his hard tail thumped the ground as he pleaded for mercy, and he licked his chops and tried to wriggle, as if to tell Neewa that ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... man knows no keener joy in the world than that which I have to-night. Here I am in France at the head of two hundred and fifty men and horses and the guns and we're rolling up front to kick a dent in history. The poor unfortunate that ain't in this fight has almost got license to shoot himself. Life knows ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... the women, my tender little princess was leaning against a pillar, with drooping head, slowly pulling a convolvulus bud to pieces. None drew, though all were thinking of her, as I could tell in my fingertips. Keener and keener grew the suspense as name after name was told and each slim white damsel skipped to the place allotted her. And all the time I kept muttering to myself about that "golden pool," wondering and wondering until the urn had passed half ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... what was about to take place. The Marquise watched his coming, a cold glitter in her eye, for—keener of mental vision than Tressan—she already knew the hideous purpose that was ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... for a short time full management of all his six hundred acres, and that bit of responsibility made a man of me once and for all. I stepped out of boyhood instantly, and became an adult in feelings and bearing; but to this day I hope my sense of fun is only keener than it ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... "I'm very sick of all this, and I can't face the lonely homestead now Ellice's gone. I must have a change and something to brace me; something that has a keener bite than drink. Think I'll take a haulage job on the new railroad, where there ought to be rough and risky work, and I'll leave this place to-night. Come across with me to Morant's, and I'll see what I can ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... front and a snuff-coloured vest and a sword at his side. David was unspeakably delighted to see him— he actually looked brighter in the face and better looking, and his eyes looked different: merrier, keener, more shining; but he did his utmost to moderate his joy and not to show it in words: he was afraid of being too soft. The first night after Uncle Yegor's arrival, father and son shut themselves up in the room that had been assigned to my uncle and spent ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... answered, and the words and the grimness of his face, impressed Hamilton somehow with a new and keener sense of the seriousness ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... rests—now find in the reported decisions of the courts of last resort in all the other States a fertile source of supply when they are looking for a rule to fit a case for which the ancient law made no direct provision. Keen intellects from the bench, aided perhaps by keener ones from the bar in forty-five different jurisdictions, are discussing the problems of the day as they appear mirrored in litigated causes. What is a new question in one State was set at rest ten years or ten days ago by a judicial decision in ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... which I must leave him to. He gave me a hearty handshake, and in his oracular way said, "Hmph—(nod) if you come to England again—hmph (nod)—hmph (nod)," and another hand-shake with more cordiality and a nod for good-by. I never saw a keener eye than his, and the way that he held himself up, so straight that he seemed almost to lean backwards, with his forehead thrown forward, and the piercing eyes looking out from under their heavy brows, and his diminutive stature coupled with the imposing bearing, combined to make a very ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... You will see expressive fingers, much jewelled, flying in unison with the rich Yiddish tongue. You will see beards and silk hats which are surely those which decorated the Hebrew in Eugene Sue's romance. And you will find a spirit of brotherhood keener than any other race in the world can show. It is something akin to the force that inspired that splendid fraternity that once existed in London, and is now no more: I mean the Costers. If a Jew is in trouble or in any kind of distress, a most beautiful thing ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... labours doubtless ease the ache Which doubly hurts her in the helpless dark; With news from me a keener joy to wake, Stand by her window in the night, and mark My sleepless darling on her ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa |
