"Sureness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in," and to ask permission to try again. But Miss Raymond had been up betimes, working over her new batch of papers, and she met Eleanor's apologies with amused approval of sophomores, who, contrary to the popular tradition about their cock- sureness, were inclined to underestimate their abilities, and imagine, like freshmen before midyears, that their work was below grade. So there was nothing for Eleanor to do but submit gracefully and leave the theme. It did not occur to her to caution Miss Raymond ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... persons who have committed an offense will be apprehended and always made to pay the penalty for their crimes. Toward the achievement of this ideal we have as yet done very little. We are still woefully behind such a country as England, where justice is administered with relative rapidity and sureness. Second, the reform of criminal procedure aims to prevent the law from bearing with undue weight upon the poor and ignorant. Here we are making greater progress. Let us notice what is being done to guarantee justice ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... Dave's vague plans changed a dozen times as he found each idea unworkable. His emotional balance was also erratic—though that was natural, since the stars were completely berserk in what was left of the sky. He seemed to fluctuate between bitter sureness of doom and a stupidly optimistic belief that something could be done to avert that doom. But whatever his mood, he went on working and scheming furiously. Maybe it was the desperate need to keep ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... on the Messianic aspect of Christ's mission, on the mystery and poetry of that long national expectation, on the pathos of Jewish disillusion, on the sureness and beauty of Christian insight as faith gradually transferred trait after trait of the Messiah of prophecy to the Christ of Nazareth. At first there was a certain amount of hesitation, a slight wavering hither and thither—a difficult choice of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as death is certain, they shall all go and have a hot bath. In the little confusion that follows, the narrator and his friend slip quietly away. This scene of exquisite fooling is quite unique in Greek or Latin literature: the breadth and sureness of touch are almost Shakespearian. Another fragment relates the famous story of the Matron of Ephesus, one of the popular tales which can be traced back to India, but which appears here for the first time in the Western world. Others deal with literary ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... of October. On that day five years ago he had entered on his duties at Drane's Court. He laughed softly. Five years ago he was a homeless wanderer. Now princesses were begging him to rescue them from Egyptologists. With glorious sureness all his ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... seeking a crossing, then doubled straight north toward the Cimarron. Captain Jack hung to her trail like a hound. In the blackness that preceded the storm she could not lose him. With almost uncanny sureness he picked her out—following, following, never giving the maverick a moment's rest. Yet it seemed that the distance she kept ahead was measured, so alert and watchful was she always. Both were dripping with sweat. Try as he would, it seemed impossible for Captain Jack to win those few yards that ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... visitor seemed to realize, like himself, the glamour of the past and to steep the mind in it. This was a woman. Her age was perhaps twenty-five, in her bearing was that subtle, scarcely definable, sureness of self which marks off womanhood from girlhood. She climbed from tier to tier of the amphitheatre with firm confident step; stood gazing down on her dream pictures of the scene in the arena; moved on to a fresh vantage-point. She wore a short tailored ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... presented the act will be repeated, and this will be done with much less effort than was first employed; further repetitions of the act require less and less conscious effort until at length it will be performed almost with the same sureness and ease with which reflex or automatic movements take place. Any activity whatsoever when reduced to this automatic ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... has since remained, making long visits to Paris, Venice, and parts of Switzerland. Her later work is marked by the romantic influence of C. Ludwig, who was for a time her instructor, but she shows unusual breadth and sureness in dealing with difficult subjects, such as dusky forests with dark waters or bare ruins bordered with stiff, ghost-like trees. Though not without talent and boldness, she ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... of a psychologist for his personal satisfaction, in taking apart and re-assembling the machinery of a work, in separating the pieces forming the structure of a compound exhalation, and his sense of smell had thereby attained a sureness that was all ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... unit among many equals. But the possession of the magic bone gave him a confidence from outside himself. For the time being he slipped genuinely into the attitude of the white man; became a super-Simba, as it were. This dignity and sureness commenced to have its effect. Almost they began to believe that Simba's words might ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... scene had occurred so swiftly that Tresler simply stood aghast. The agility, the wonderful sureness and rapidity of movement on Marbolt's part were staggering. The whole thing seemed impossible, and yet he had seen it; and the meaning of the stories of this man he had listened to came home to him. He was, indeed, something to fear. The great bullying Jake was a child in his hands. Now like ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... their horses. This she knew was consonant to the practice of the Welsh marauders, who, although the small size and slightness of their nags made them totally unfit for service in battle, availed themselves of their activity and sureness of foot to transport them with the necessary celerity to and from the scenes of their rapine; ensuring thus a rapid and unperceived approach, and a secure and speedy retreat. These animals traversed without difficulty, and beneath ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... been implanted, and remained latent in the original pair." Such a view, the Examiner declares, "is nowhere stated in this book, and would be, we are sure, disclaimed by the author." We should like to be informed of the grounds of this sureness. The marked rejection of spontaneous generation,—the statement of a belief that all animals have descended from four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number, or, perhaps, if constrained to it by analogy, "from some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Sureness of foot saved her from stumbling. Strange to say, she had now lost all fear of the company of masked figures in whose midst she stood. It had begun to enforce itself upon her that she had been hoaxed into visiting an empty house by those who had taken ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... brisk, efficient young man. The old gang that had fitted out the gymnasium had drifted away, and the thought of going once more into regular training, with a pupil all his own, was breath to his nostrils. He assumed charge of the ceded hour with skilled sureness. Rain or shine, the Doctor was to take half an hour's hard walking in the air every day, over and above the walk to the office. Every afternoon at six—at which hour the managerial duties at Stark's terminated—he was to report in the gym ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... books showed his decline, and his "Encyclopedia," on which he was working at the time of his death, had many subjects in it beside furniture and cabinet-making. His sideboards, card-tables, sewing-tables, tables of every kind, chairs—in fact, everything he made during his best period—have a sureness and beauty of line that makes it doubly sad that through the stress of circumstances he should have deserted it for the style of the Empire that was then the fashion in France. One or two of his Empire designs have beauty, but most of them are too dreadful, but it was the beginning of ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... not admit it to herself, but she set about doing it. With the sureness of instinct that great affection brings, the awkward, ignorant girl contrived immediately to find the road by which she might reach her beloved's heart. She did not turn directly to him. But as soon as she ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... flying feet obeyed Mr. Bennet's guidance, as if he and she had danced together all of their lives. Mr. Bennet himself was a truly wonderful exponent of the art. He danced with a grace and ease that few men ever attain, and he had an arm of sureness at his partner's back that took her safely through that crowded room without a single bump or mishap. Had Arethusa but known it, there was no one at the Party who could so well have conducted her in her first real effort of this ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... it was the awful disappointment of knowing Father couldn't come, and being so miserable myself (not one line yet from that person named William Spencer Sloane, who is probably married to an elderly woman by this time), and because of my sureness that no human being could be depended on in time of temptation, especially vigorous, aggressive temptations that come out of the West, that I gave help where help seemed to be needed, and now again ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... Every gesture bespoke authority and arrogance of body. Even in this moment of geniality, "Obedience and no explanations" was written all over him. He was a man who believed his acceptable importance to be a verity established beyond the pale of challenge. Yet there was something lacking—a sureness of refinement, a last considerateness. With the first word he had spoken, Tabs had detected that ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... the painter's secret amazement—was a literal truth. The gray rock with the splash of sunshine that would not come right, ceased to trouble him, now. Stimulated by her presence, he worked with a freedom and a sureness that was ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... sort of good-natured but alert tolerance. He judged the young man to be a product of rearing and environment. He had known spoiled youths at the Cape and, in their surroundings, they behaved much as Malcolm did in his. The same disrespect to their elders, the same cock-sureness, and the same careless indifference concerning the effect which their actions might have upon other people—these were natural and nothing but years and the hard knocks of experience could bring about a change. Elkanah Chase, country swell and pampered ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "But, no doubt, the sureness has been a good servant in his business," returned the Judge. "Confidence in a weak world gets unearned profit often. But tell me about his wife—the Spanische. Tell me the how and why, and everything. I'd like to trace our little ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... what writing is of a very keen and exact knowledge of the subtle and refined secrets of language. With all that uncared-for play and simplicity, there was a fulness, a richness, a curious delicate music, quite instinctive and unsought for; above all, a precision and sureness of expression which people soon began to find were not within the power of most of those who tried to use language. Such English, graceful with the grace of nerve, flexibility, and power, must always have attracted attention; but it had also an ethical ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... it his duty to run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with his setting-pole where the main current was, and keep steadily to that. He is still in wild water, but we have faith that his skill and sureness of eye will bring him out ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... weather was dark and cloudy Edna could not work. She needed the sun to mellow and temper her mood to the sticking point. She had reached a stage when she seemed to be no longer feeling her way, working, when in the humor, with sureness and ease. And being devoid of ambition, and striving not toward accomplishment, she drew satisfaction ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... vast expanse, which many would have called a waste, there were strings of them, chasing each other in their wavy flight, twittering on the downward stretch, darting in among the bushes, turning with incredible swiftness and sureness of wing the shortest of curves about a branch, and undulating away again to ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... of her intelligence; the precision, the promptitude, the rapidity (though her manner was by no means rapid), the largeness of the field of knowledge, the compressed outcome of which she was at any moment ready to bring to bear on the topic in hand; the sureness and lucidity of her induction; the clearness of vision, to which muddle was as impossible and abhorrent as a vacuum is supposed to be to nature; and all this lighted up and gilded by an infinite sense of, and capacity for, humour,—this was what ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... in locating Hart Jones, for he was striding from lathe to workbench to boring mill, issuing his orders with the sureness and decision of a born leader of men. He welcomed me in his most brisk manner and immediately assigned me to a portion of the work in the chemical laboratory—something I was at least partly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... not one of the hills around—not the giant tree on the heights of Lugliano, nor the tempting strawberry-gardens on the mountain of Benabbio—could be attained without their help. A few veteran ponies, it is true, now claim equal sureness of foot, but the popular feeling still leans towards the long-eared auxiliaries, who always lead the way on such excursions, displaying an accuracy of judgment which would not discredit their far-famed relations in the frightful passes of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... observed with what ingenuity and sureness dragon-flies distinguish, follow, and catch the smallest insects on the wing. Of all insects, they have the best sight. Their enormous convex eyes have the greatest number of facets. Their number has been estimated at 12,000, and even at 17,000. Their aerial chases resemble those of the swallows. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... firm possession of his crown, and to take even, I think, a harmless pleasure in our sense of having from so far back been sure of it. I was sure of it, I must properly add, but as an effect of my brother's sureness; since I must, by what I remember, have been as sure of Paul Delaroche—for whom the pendulum was at last to be arrested at a very different point. I could see in a manner, for all the queerness, what W. J. meant by that beauty and, above all, that living interest in La Barque ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... to tie you to make you do more'n say it. I got to make sure you are it. Hell-fire won't take the sureness out of ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... forgiveness. It is of the greatest importance to the secure and perfect establishment of a believer's peace, that it should be a matter of believing, and believing only. It is also an imperative necessity that the comfort and confidence should spring from the proper object of belief, which is the sureness of God's own testimony, and not from the consciousness of love or gratitude, or any moral ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... understand. His protective manner, and his sureness, and his intimacy, puzzled her. What did he mean? If he was her equal, why did he behave so ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... were imperative, if the Cure was to be saved. He spent his nights over vast schemes only to find the fatal flaw in the cold light of the morning. This angered him. It seemed that the sureness of his vision had gone. Something strange, uncanny had happened within him, he knew not what. It had nothing to do with his intellectual force, his personal energy. It had nothing to do with his determination to win through and restore the Cure to its former position in the market. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... room with a certain sureness of touch, swift and relentless and quiet. She knew she could not cope with him. He would escape like a weasel out of her hands. Yet without him her life would trail on lifeless. Brooding, she ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... as Peace was the flower of his race, Rare was shade on his face, as dismay in his heart; The brawl and the scuffle he deem'd a disgrace, But the hand to the brand was as ready to start. Who could grapple with him in firmness of limb And sureness of sinew? and—for the stout blow— 'Twas the scythe to the swathe in the meadows of death, Where numbers were levell'd as fast ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... thoroughbreds, the winners and losers of the year before, made more distinct this young Virginia lady's own look of high-breeding, and emphasized her advantage of race. She was the newer and finer Norman among Saxons. She alone seemed to have that inheritance of swiftness of mind, of sureness of training. It was the highest type of English civilization refined still further by long growth in favoring soil. Tom Burton read her unconscious face as if it were a romance; he believed that one of the great Virginia houses must ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a few feet; his gaze fixed appraisingly on the window and measuring his distance with the sureness ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... the girl's eyes; her courage; the ring of independence in her voice, the sureness and confidence of her words, began to have their effect. The Genie of the Lamp was at work: the life-giving power of Gold was being pumped from her own into the poor old woman's ...
— Abijah's Bubble - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sign of having heard him, unless it was that her hands stopped for an instant in the deft rapidity of their task. Within a few seconds they had resumed their work, though, it seemed to him, with less sureness in the supple movement of the fingers. Beyond the upturned collar of her coat he saw the stealing of a ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... innocent of any musical training whatsoever. Monsigny (1729-1817) is a particularly striking instance of natural genius triumphing in spite of a defective education. Nothing can exceed the thinness and poverty of his scores, or their lack of all real musical interest; yet, by the sureness of his natural instinct for the stage, he succeeded in writing music which still moves us as much by its brilliant gaiety as by its tender pathos. 'Le Deserteur,' his most famous work, is a touching little story ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... of the two, by reason of the mutual checks established, a far higher degree of certainty is attained to, yet even in this, the utmost vouchsafed to the individual, there is not, as both Greeks and Indians ascertained, an absolute sureness. It was the knowledge of this which extorted from them so many melancholy complaints, which threw them into an intellectual despair, and made them, by applying the sad determination to which they had come to the course of their daily life, sink ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... An eminent annotator observes on this passage:—"The praise of Lord Braxfield's capacity and acquirement is perhaps rather too slight. He was a very good lawyer, and a man of extraordinary sagacity, and in quickness and sureness of apprehension resembled Lord Kenyon, as well as in his ready use of his profound knowledge ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... qualities and achievements of a man like Muir. He will realize to some degree—indistinctly to be sure, "seeing men as trees walking"—the infinity of nice and accurate observation, the discriminating choice of illustration, the infallible tact and unvarying sureness with which he holds our interest, and the dominant poetic insight into the nature of things, which are spread before the reader in lavish abundance, in Muir's two books, "The Mountains of California" and "Our National Parks." No other books, in this province, by living ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... saw while still far off, is a village typical of this country that I love, if indeed a place so completely itself is typical of anything: a little English village, but it outfaces the whole world in its sureness of itself, its quietness and air of immemorial antiquity. Many a city older by far looks parvenu beside Great Chart. Let us consider, with tears if you will, what they are making of Rome and be thankful that our ways are not their ways. For what wins ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... perhaps a mile ahead. The agility of Mr. Plade during this episode was the marvel of his companion. He scaled the rocks like a goatherd, and his foot-tracks in the snow were long, like the route of a giant. The ice could not betray the sureness of his stride; the rare, thin atmosphere was no match for his broad, deep chest. He shouted as he went, and tossed great boulders down the mountain, and urged on his flagging comrade by cheer and taunt and invective. No madman set loose from captivity ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... came to her the vision of Greatheart—Greatheart the valiant—her knight of the golden armour, going before her, strong to defend,—invincible, unafraid, sure by means of that sureness which is given only to those who draw upon a Higher Power than their own, given only to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... once got to work, displaying a quiet activity and sureness of himself that at once excited the young Englishman's amazement and admiration. Bidding the Indians to stand back a few paces, and taking the lighted lantern from them, the American deposited a mahogany case upon the ground, which, upon being opened, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... and understanding with human weaknesses and shortcomings, no one had less of the crowd spirit. As he said, he kept aloof—not from aloofness but from embarrassment and shyness. Later he overcame most of this and was able to face a crowd or an audience with composure and sureness. With this picture in mind another is recalled, one of him here at Riverby on summer days, scraping corn to make corn cakes. With an armful of green corn that he had picked, I can see him seated and with one of Mother's old aprons ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... know that with such sureness?" she cried. "No, no, Major Carew; in your heart you know otherwise. But you just let her go away without a word, without a hope, and one or two of us know what this hasty engagement means. Diana calls it martyrdom. She wrote me to send Meryl an ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... in Monterey to wait while Pepe worked, was sorrowful. As sometimes happens to us when we are confronted by the certainty of great happiness, she was possessed by a gloomy sadness that came of dark forebodings in her mind. The very greatness and sureness of this happiness awed her into doubt. She knew that to take her good fortune in this faint-hearted way was not wise in itself, and was not what Pepe would approve; and that she might please Pepe she berated herself roundly and tried to laugh away her fears—though ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... constantly delighted by the artist's skill, which leads ever deeper into human motives after it would seem that the heart and mind could disclose no further secrets. Such skill shows a mastery of language rarely surpassed in fiction. At his best, James has a fineness and sureness of touch, and a command of perfectly fitting words, as well as elegance and ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... always keep close to reality, without crowding his canvas with unnecessary particulars; he gave you the ruling motives, actions, and feelings of the age. The excellence of the work lay in simplicity and directness of treatment, in a sureness of line drawing, in a power of striking the right note, whether of praise or sorrow, of glory or grief. There is no staginess or far-fetched emotion, or artificial scene-painting: the style strikes the right chords of passion or pity, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... are no more. We may, by accounting to ourselves for the immense variety of phenomena which are brought to light by the application of principles to facts, and in which nothing is absolute or permanent, in which, on the contrary, everything is relative and successive, acquire that sureness of touch and correctness of vision which are among the most valuable ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... mayor's chair a stiff, conservative aristocrat who cares no more for the laboring classes of Roma than he does for its work-horses—(or its mules) or a young woman of good ancestry, but no actual knowledge of municipal affairs— only an inherited cock-sureness of opinion on any and every subject ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... rich, more entertaining, more intoxicating. We have said that it is carelessly written, but that is part of the author's superb self-confidence, and when he is fortunately inspired, he obtains here an ease of style, a mastery which he had never found before. The sureness of his touch is seen in the epigrams which strew the pages of Lothair, and have become part of our habitual speech—the phrase about eating "a little fruit on a green bank with music"; that which describes the hansom cab, "'Tis the gondola of London." This may lead us on to the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Fenimore Cooper nature was not the frame-work, it was an essential part of existence. He could hear its voice, he could understand its silence, and he could interpret both for us in his prose with all that felicity and sureness of effect that belong to a poetical conception alone. His fame, as wide but less brilliant than that of his contemporary, rests mostly on a novel which is not of the sea. But he loved the sea and ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... it was his own incomparable genius that raised thievery from the dangerous valley of experiment, and set it, secure and honoured, upon the mountain height of perfection. To a natural habit of depredation, which, being a man of letters, he was wont to justify, he added a sureness of hand, a fertility of resource, a recklessness of courage which drove his contemporaries to an amazed respect, and from which none but the Philistine will withhold his admiration. An accident discovered ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... political prejudices is the success with which he dissociated his literary estimates from them. Such a serious limitation in a critic as deficiency of reading in his case only raises our astonishment at the sureness of instinct which enabled him to pronounce unerringly on the scantest information. Never was there a critic of nearly equal pretensions who had as little of the scholar's equipment. If, as he tells us, he applied himself too closely to his studies at a certain period in his youth,[53] he ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... something weightless, sensible, alive, a deadly part of his arm and eye and brain. There was no question, no thought of adjusting or handling or haste in his fire, but only an incredible swiftness and sureness that sent across the thin-aired chasm a stream of deadly messengers to seek a human life. She could only hope and pray, without even forming the words, that none of her blood were behind the other rifle, for she felt that, whoever was, could ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... when, recovered from all that, Augustin speaks to us of the Divine love, he will know fully the infinite value of it from having gone through all the painful entrancements of the other. And he will say to us, with the sureness of experience: "The pleasure of the human heart in the light of truth and the abundance of wisdom—yea, the pleasure of the human heart, of the faithful heart, and of the heart which is holy, stands alone. You will find nothing in any voluptuousness fit ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... the statesmen whom he consulted stand highest in history. He was fallible, as other mortals are fallible. He, too, had his Varus, and the time was coming when he could echo the bitter cry of the great emperor for his lost legions. But the mistakes were the exceptions. He chose with the sureness of a strong and penetrating mind, and the most signal example of this capacity was his secretary of the treasury. He knew Hamilton well. He had known him as his staff officer, active, accomplished, and efficient. He had seen him leave ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... choosing them he manifested, no doubt, something of the same defiance of authority, and the same self-willed preference for his own not too well-educated opinion, which brought him to grief in his encounter with Wallis. But when he had once left his starting points, his sureness of reasoning, his extreme perspicacity, and the unerring clearness and certainty with which he kept before him, and expressed exactly what he meant, made him at once one of the greatest thinkers and one of the greatest writers of England. Hobbes never "pays himself with words," never evades ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... his throat, and as he thought of the sweetness and nobility of this dumb thing, his gentleness, faithfulness and devotion, the sureness of his life in filling the mission he came for, he wept tears so strange to his cheek that they scalded as they flowed, and he bowed his head and said: "Gladstone, Gladstone, good-bye—true to your breeding, you were what ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... lashes, feeling the warm strong beat of her heart against his, holding close as he did all her glowing and fragrant beauty, Warren Gregory felt it the most exquisite moment of his life. Her youth, her history, her wonderful poise and sureness so intoxicatingly linked with all a girl's unexpected shyness and adorable uncertainties, all these combined to enthrall the man who had admired her for many years and loved her ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... in this complete obscurity about their fate and that of their children and their nation, which was being sorted behind the closed doors of the Consulta. Every one seemed to go about his personal business with an apparent calm, a shrug of expressive shoulders at the most, signifying belief in the sureness of war—soon. There was little animation in the cafes, practically none on the streets. Arragno's, usually buzzing with political prophecy, had a depressing, provincial calm. Unoccupied deputies sat in gloomy silence over their thin consommations. ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... field beyond them, as vigorous as they, strode Adoniram Purdon behind his team, the reins tied together behind his muscular neck, his hands grasping the plow with the masterful sureness of the successful practitioner of an art. The hot, sweet spring sunshine shone down on 'Niram's head with its thick crest of brown hair, the ineffable odor of newly turned earth steamed up about him like incense, the mountain stream beyond ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... in the thought that my less experience, and way of life sheltered from the trials, and free from the responsibilities of yours, may have left me with something of a child's power of help to you; a sureness of hope, which may perhaps be the one thing that can be helpful to men who have done too much not to have often failed in doing all that they desired. And indeed, even the most hopeful of us, cannot but now be in many things apprehensive. For ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Kent, the coolest man on the force next to Inspector Kedsty, the most dreaded of catechists when questioning criminals, the man who had won the reputation of facing quietly and with deadly sureness the most menacing of dangers, had been beaten—horribly beaten—by a girl! And yet, in defeat, an irrepressible and at times distorted sense of humor made him give credit to the victor. The shame of the thing was his acknowledgment ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... operas himself, he had them performed for him by Saint-Saens, whom he apparently patronised. I thus learned to appreciate the skill and talent of this young musician, which was simply amazing. With an unparalleled sureness and rapidity of glance with regard to even the most complicated orchestral score, this young man combined a not less marvellous memory. He was not only able to play my scores, including Tristan, by heart, but could also reproduce their several parts, whether they were leading or minor themes. And ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... cut direct. Without trying to maintain his machine within his adversary's dead angles, he fell on him as a stone falls. He shot as near to the enemy as he could, at the risk of being shot first himself, and even of interlocking their machines, though in that respect the sureness of his maneuvering sufficed to disengage him. If he failed to take the enemy by surprise, he did not quit the combat as prudence exacted; but returned to the charge, refusing to unhook his clutch from the enemy airplane, and held him, and wanted ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... to gaze about aimlessly, to look for some clew of action beside that which the subject matter supplies. Dependence upon extraneous suggestions and directions, a state of foggy confusion, take the place of that sureness with which children (and grown-up people who have not been sophisticated by "education") ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... for with a little effort and a little division of labour the entire corpus of French lyric from the tenth to the fourteenth century might have been easily set before the public. But the two volumes above mentioned will enable the reader to judge its general characteristics with pretty absolute sureness; and if he desires to supplement them with the work of a single author, that of Thibaut of Champagne or Navarre,[128] which is easily accessible, will form an ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... conclusion, concerning some of the modern decorative draughtsmen. Of those who work in the sixteenth century manner, Mr. Howard Pyle is unquestionably the superior technician. His line, masterly in its sureness, is rich and charged with feeling. Mr. H. Ospovat, one of the younger group of English decorators, has also a charming technique, rather freer than that of Mr. Pyle, and yet reminding one of it. Mr. Louis Rhead is another of the same school, whose designs are deserving of ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... Him. There is no other way by which the externals can be made right than by setting a watch on the door of our hearts and minds, and this inward discipline must be put in force before there will be any continuity or sureness in the outward aim. We want, for that direction of the life of which I have been speaking, a clear perception and a concentrated purpose, and we shall not get either of these unless we fall back, by thought and meditation, upon the truths which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in by high hills, and here Caesar resolved to shut these brave men in and bring them to bay. He caused his men to begin that mighty system of earthworks by which the Romans carried on their attacks, compassing their victim round on every side with a deadly slowness and sureness, by those broad ditches and terraced ramparts that everywhere mark where their foot of iron was trod. Eleven miles round did this huge rampart extend, strengthened by three-and-twenty redoubts, or places of defense, where a watch was continually kept. Before ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Her sureness, undeniably, was founded on the inalterable strength of her convictions; against that sustaining power, it occurred to him, the correctness of her beliefs might be relatively unimportant. Could any more be required of a faith than its ability, like a life preserver on ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... very stiffly, though no longer with his old time cock-sureness, for the last time out of the National Union Club, and spent the afternoon in the rear room of a ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... instead of dreaming of liberating popes, he was now imagining a renovating statesman, and he had inscribed Cavour's name under his new portrait. In a book published in Paris, Gioberti drew the Cavour of the future with a penetration and a sureness of touch which would make a reader, who did not know the date, suppose that the words were written ten years later. Men of great talent, he said, rarely threw aside the chance of becoming famous; rather did they snatch it with avidity; and what fame more splendid could ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... folds of the mysterious curtain beneath whose shelter are laid the veritable foundations of the home, let us endeavour to form some conception of the sureness of vision, the accurate calculation and industry our little people of emigrants will be called to display in order to adapt this new dwelling to their requirements. In the void round about them they must lay the plans for their city, and logically ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... much additional power working into the final achievement. Nobody passes at once to the mastery, in any branch of science or of industry; and when he does become a master in his work it is evident, not only in the positive excellence of his performance, but in the sureness with which he avoids defects; and these defects he has learned by experimental failures. The hand that evokes such perfect music from the instrument has often failed in its touch, and bungled among the keys. And if ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... of Memory, whether she might be truly Mirdath. And I, utter weak and shaken strangely because of this splendour of fulfilment, could make no instant answer. And she asked again, but using mine old love-name, and with a sureness in her far voice. And still I was so strangely dumb, and the blood to thud peculiar in mine ears; and this to pass; and speech to ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... pistol, the extreme coolness that relied upon the swiftness of his wrist to draw it at a second's notice, staggered and scared him. He remembered the skill that had long been his admiration, and that he had at last learned to imitate, the sureness of aim and eye, the dexterity and quickness of that hand, and his tongue fairly cleaved to the roof of his dry mouth. He struggled to draw his revolver, but his arm refused to obey his will. Yet it was not wholly cowardice ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... was very significant when one heard it, for it was a hard and very mocking laugh, but I had always attributed that sort of reply to an artifice which the occasion required. It was intended, I thought, to accentuate the danger she incurred and the contempt that she felt for it, thanks to the sureness of the thrower's hands, and so I was very surprised when the mountebank ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... petals, petalled shells Falling with sudden poignancy (As the sleet stings) Upon the lightheart-hope which only clear sight knows. And slowly drifts, Lingering among the snows Nor, though the snow lifts, Ever goes The wistful heartache as the fresh Spring flows With slipping sureness to the time of the rose, and the withered rose. Down here the hawthorn.... And heaping blossom stirred By a joy-swift bird. White mists are blinding me, White mist of hedgerow, white mist of wings. The bird's flight flings Deep carpetings Over the wrack ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... all that a book could be in the days when it was written. It is a history of Lewis XVI. during the time when it was possible to bring the Revolution under control; and the author shows, with an absolute sureness of judgment, that the turning-point was the rejection of the first project of Constitution, in September 1789. For him, the Revolution is contained in the first four months. He meant to write a political treatise on the natural history of revolutions, and the art of so managing just demands that ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... trophies were one or two rough sketches of the mountain regions beyond Kashmir; desolate stretches of glacier and moraine, or groups of stately peaks, the colouring washed in with a singular sureness of touch. There were also maps, finely executed by hand, of Thibet and Central Asia. To these fresh names and markings were added, from time to time, with a thrill of satisfaction only to be gauged ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... you know that, Mr. Cazalette?" I asked, feeling a bit restive under the old fellow's cock-sureness. "Isn't ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... objective. Less and less he relied upon the initiative of his own brain and muscle, and more and more he put his faith in the power of machinery to relieve him of labour. The evil of our age is that its values are all false. It overrates speed, it underrates sureness; it overrates the new, it underrates the old; it overrates automatic efficiency, it underrates individual craftsmanship; it overrates rights, it underrates duties; it overrates political institutions, it underrates individual ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... was the Palaeontological Section, and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases had in some instances been bodily ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... what nobody could guess, for a long time to come. Gortz had great running about in his cloak of darkness, and showed abundant talent of the kind needed. A pushing, clear-eyed, stout-hearted man; much cleverness and sureness in what he did and forbore to do. His adventures were manifold; he had much travelling about: was at Regensburg, at Mannheim; saw many persons whom he had to judge of on the instant, and speak frankly to, or speak darkly, or speak nothing; and he made no mistake. One ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... taken off her cap. Now, mechanically, she began to pat and arrange the little curls upon her forehead, then to take out and replace a hairpin or two, so as to fasten the golden mass behind a little more securely. The white fingers moved with an exquisite sureness and daintiness, the lifted arms showed all the young ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mankind to overcome things which, at first sight, appear impossible. Indeed, what is there above man's exertions? Unwearied determination will enable him to run with the horse, to swim with the fish, and assuredly to compete with the chamois and the goat in agility and sureness of foot. To scale the rock was merely child's play for the Edinbro' callants. It was my own favourite diversion. I soon found that the rock contained all manner of strange crypts, crannies, and recesses, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... confidence and employing my services! Tonight—the most important night of my destiny—Fate has determined that I shall perform the greatest task of all you have ever allotted to me; and that with swiftness and sureness in the business I shall kill the King! He is my marked victim! I am his chosen assassin!" Here interrupting himself with a bright smile, he said: "Will someone restrain my two friends, Max Graub and Axel Regor from springing out of their seats? They are both extremely envious of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... one of the deep, earnest eyes and tender lips—had been toned and perfected and rechiseled by the magic hand of Time. She was taller by several inches; a lissome creature who moved with the sureness and grace of ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... crowning tribute of a sympathy which would have induced him to advise an intending editor or publisher of the dramatists of the Shakespearean age to begin by a reissue of the works of Heywood. The depth and width of his knowledge, the subtlety and the sureness of his intuition, place him so far ahead of any other critic or scholar who has ever done any stroke of work in any part of the same field that it may seem overbold for any such subordinate to express or to suggest a suspicion that this counsel would have been rather the expression of a personal ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... as those of stupid servants, for everywhere that we went I became the public's Benjamin. I made the people laugh, and they asked for nothing better. All were surprised that, young and inexperienced as I was, I should have so much cleverness of manner and such sureness of delivery. My father was more surprised than anybody, for he had expected far less of my immaturity and total lack of practice. It is certain that from that time I began to feel that I was somebody. I had become useful, or at least ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... having the shot before me. Long practice had given me such adroitness in the use of my weapon, that I could handle it with the quickness and skill of a juggler. Neither did I fear to miss my aim. I had perfect reliance on the sureness of my sight; and, with such a mark as the huge body of the squatter, it was impossible I could miss. In this respect, the advantage was mine; and, at so short a distance, I could have insured a fatal shot—had such been my intention. But it was not. The ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... beguiled with fairy-tales and fables, his mother and nurse reading or reciting these, their little listener being always busy with pen or pencil. Something much more than mere precocity is shown in these almost infantine sketches. Exorbitant fancy is here much less striking than sureness of touch, outlined figures drawn between the age of five and ten displaying remarkable precision and point, each line of the silhouette telling. At six he celebrated his first school prize with an illustrated letter, two portraits and a mannikin ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... share with the Gods, many decline towards this unhappy kinship with the dead, few rise to the blessed kinship with the Divine. Since then every one must deal with each thing according to the view which he forms about it, those few who hold that they are born for fidelity, modesty, and unerring sureness in dealing with the things of sense, never conceive aught base or ignoble of themselves: but the multitude the contrary. Why, what am I?—A wretched human creature; with this miserable flesh of mine. Miserable indeed! but you have something better ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... lawyers of such eminence that they took their pick of clients and charged all the fee that policy would allow. In debate, there was a wilful aggressiveness, a fiery sureness, a lofty certainty, that moved judges and juries to do their bidding. Henry Cabot Lodge says that so great was Hamilton's renown as a lawyer that clients flocked to him because the belief was abroad ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... about his business with grim industry and a sureness of judgment born of his thorough knowledge of range work. There was the winnowing process which left the bigger, stronger calves in charge of two men, at a line camp known locally as Ten Mile, and took the younger ones on to the home ranch, where hay and shelter were more ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... technique is not in accordance with the system of colour-spots; it observes the theory of complementary colours and of the division of tones without departing from a grand style, from a classic stateliness, from a superb sureness. Manet has not been the inventor of Impressionism which co-existed with his work since 1865, but he has rendered it immense services, by taking upon himself all the outbursts of anger addressed to the innovators, by making a breach in public opinion, through which his friends have passed ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... on rugs or on the bare, reflecting floors. On every hand could be heard artistic discussions, serious and informed and yet lightsome in tone. If it was not the real originality of jazz music that was being discussed, it was the sureness of the natural untaught taste of the denizens of the East End and South London, and if not that then the greatness of male revue artistes, and if not that then the need of a national theatre and of a minister of fine arts, and if not that then the sculptural quality of ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... experimenting on himself, either with outer things or regarding God. Let him obey the inner voice in some particular that may perhaps cut straight across some fixed habit, and then watch very quietly for the result. It will come with surprising sureness and quickness. And the reason why is simple. The man is simply moving back into his native air, and of course ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon |
