"Aptness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this creature with its great flopping ears, and its stiff-legged jumping like a bucking mule, to realize the aptness of ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... flower. One she smelt and held her face long to it, as though its sweetness kept her senses willing prisoners; turning to the other, she smelt it for a short instant and then drew away, her face, that told every mood with unfailing aptness, twisted into disappointment or disgust. She leant out looking down on me; now behind her shoulder I saw the King's black face, half-hidden by the hangings of the window. She glanced at the first flower, then at the second, held up both her hands for a moment, turned for an instant ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... sternest of her captors. Dale himself undertook to direct her education. "I was moved," he exclaimed, "by her desire to be taught and instructed in the knowledge of God, her capableness of understanding, her aptness and willingness to receive any good impression.... I caused her to be carefully instructed in the Christian religion, who, after she had made some good progress therein, renounced publicly her Country's idolatry; openly confessed her Christian faith; and ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... and the grief he felt. His only relief was when, tossing aside for a moment the heavy load of responsibility, his face would light up with a humorsome smile, while he narrated some incident whose irresistible wit and aptness to the subject at hand, convulsed his hearers, and rendered "Lincoln's stories" household words ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... the curses hurled upon the head of him who should trespass on the lawful rights of the owner of the land.[348] It is to such demons embodied in living form that epithets such as the 'seizer,' the 'one that lurks,' and the like apply with peculiar aptness. In a tablet belonging to a long series of incantations,[349] we find references to various animals—the serpent, the scorpion, monsters—that are regarded as the embodiment ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... extraordinary love of words. They gather them up; they cherish them, but they don't hoard them in their breasts; on the contrary, they are always ready to pour them out by the hour or by the night with an enthusiasm, a sweeping abundance, with such an aptness of application sometimes that, as in the case of very accomplished parrots, one can't defend oneself from the suspicion that they really understand what they say. There is a generosity in their ardour of speech which removes it as far as possible from ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... impossible that any thing should be universally tasted and approved by a Multitude, tho' they are only the Rabble of a Nation, which hath not in it some peculiar Aptness to please and gratify the Mind of Man.... an ordinary Song or Ballad that is the Delight of the common People, cannot fail to please all such Readers as are not unqualified for the Entertainment by their ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... not rack me; For, though I would rather not Give the answer, still the answer Rises with such ready aptness To my lips from out my heart, That ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... voluntary. In all moral action purpose is implied. This is the meaning of the well-known dictum of Kant, 'There is nothing in the world . . . that can be called good without qualification except a good will. A good will is good, not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition.'[2] It is the inner aim, the good will which alone gives moral worth to any endeavour. It is not what I do but the reason why I do it which is chiefly ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... could not judge whether it was from any special unwillingness now to meet my eyes. What it was that dictated my next question, I cannot precisely say. Nevertheless, it rose so inevitably into my mouth, and, as it were, asked itself so involuntarily, that there must needs have been an aptness in it. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... presenting themselves in really dramatic moments, may impress the mind with extraordinary aptness. At this very moment Spinrobin's eyes noticed in the corner of wall and door a tiny spider's web, with the spider itself hanging in the center of its little net—shaking. And he has never forgotten it. It expressed pictorially exactly what he felt himself. He, too, felt that he was shaking in ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... latter end of his life, took such a pride in his company that he affected to furnish his chambers with their pictures." Amongst the benefits to be derived from such a club as that of which Mr. Pool was president, Roger North mentions "Aptness to speak;" adding: "for a man may be possessed of a book-case, and think he has it ad unguem throughout, and when he offers at it shall find himself at a loss, and his words will not be right and proper, or perhaps ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Turner was much troubled at what I do in the office, and do give ill words to Sir W. Pen and others of me, I am much troubled in my mind, and so went to bed; not that I fear him at all, but the natural aptness I have to be troubled at any thing ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Lenten feelings is singularly out of accord with the opinion expressed as to its character as being 'festivius' in the Gemma animae, given above, p. 90. Indeed it can hardly be disputed that its tone is joyful. But though its special aptness for a fasting-time is not easy to make out clearly, few unprejudiced people will dissent from the opinion of Freeman as to its scope when he writes, that "though wanting in the grand structure of the Te Deum, in point ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... tear a brother-author to pieces the moment that his back was turned. The artist has this advantage over the rest of the world, that his friends offer not only their appearance and their character to his satire, but also their work. I despaired of ever expressing myself with such aptness or with such fluency. In those days conversation was still cultivated as an art; a neat repartee was more highly valued than the crackling of thorns under a pot; and the epigram, not yet a mechanical appliance by which the dull may ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... well-read person; his range of allusive phrases was limited, but there was a peculiar aptness in circumstances which made him think of rats leaving a doomed ship. He very nearly said so. He had grown suspicious and embittered. Could it be that the old woman had such an excellent nose? But the unreasonableness of such a suspicion ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... wit, a quickness and aptness at selecting and applying quotations, and a countenance that is as solemn and as blank as the back side of a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating joke. One night a negro woman was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 1829, soon afterwards became the law-partner of Gen. Felix Huston, and almost at a bound stood in the front rank of his profession in the State. "Boundless good-nature," to use the language of Dr. Lossing; "keen logic; quickness and aptness at repartee; overflowing but kindly wit; an absolute earnestness and sincerity in all he undertook to do, made him a universal favorite in every circle." In 1832 Mr. Prentiss removed to Vicksburg. John M. Chilton, a leading member of the bar of that place, thus describes ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... you Americans need to be told, And it never'll refute them to swagger and scold; John Bull, looking o'er the Atlantic, in choler At your aptness for trade, says you worship the dollar; But to scorn such eye-dollar-try's what very few do, And John goes to that church as often as you do, No matter what John says, don't try to outcrow him, 'Tis enough to go quietly on and outgrow him; 1080 Like most fathers, Bull hates ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... into the country, Jonathan, and noticed an immense rock split and shattered by the roots of a tree, or perhaps by the might of an insignificant looking fungus? I have, many times, and I never see such a rock without thinking of its aptness as an illustration of this Socialist philosophy. A tiny acorn tossed by the wind finds lodgment in some small crevice of a rock which has stood for thousands of years, a rock so big and strong that men choose it as an emblem of the Everlasting. Soon the warm caresses of the sun and the ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... inclines rather to poetry or painting, or music, or scientific research, or industry, or military art, minds of the second order are dragged into the current—showing that a goodly part of their power is in the aptness, not ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... that telephone or special messenger would speedily have advised him if news of the Andromeda had arrived since he left the office on Saturday afternoon. But it is said that drowning men clutch at straws, and the metaphor might be applied to Verity with peculiar aptness. He was sinking in a sea of troubles, sinking because the old buoyancy was gone, sinking because many hands were stretched forth to push him under, and never one to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... degree—to be found in creatures of the same stock: they hardly need to look at each other to know each other's thoughts: they can guess them by the breathing, by a thousand imperceptible signs. This natural aptness, which is fortified by living together, was in Lionello sharpened and refined by his ever wakeful malevolence. He had the insight of the desire to hurt. He detested Christophe. Why? Why does a child take a dislike to a person who has never done him any harm? It is often a matter of chance. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... that what is sung in our churches, 'Through Adam's fall is all corrupt, nature and essence human,' is not true, but from natural birth it still has something good, small, little, and inconsiderable though it be, namely, capacity, skill, aptness, or ability to begin, to effect, or to help effect something in spiritual things." ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... The aptness of the simile is still more apparent when we confront the material constructions of a nation with the degree of the nation's development or decadence at the time ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... died a natural death, being especially fond of the pig, which, when it has thus been 'butchered by God,' is still regarded even by the most prosperous Gipsies in England as a delicacy. They flayed animals, carried corpses, and showed such aptness for these and similar detested callings that in several European countries they long monopolised them. They made and sold mats, baskets, and small articles of wood. They have shown great skill as dancers, musicians, singers, acrobats; and it is a rule almost without exception that ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... begin my own history by saying, I went to a North Country school, where I was noted for my aptness in learning; and my skill at 'prisoner's base,'—upon my word I purposed no pun! I was intended for the Church. Wishing, betimes, to instruct myself in its ceremonies, I persuaded my schoolmaster's maidservant to assist me towards promoting a christening. My father did not like this premature ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... March 9th, the Toronto Women's Literary and Social Progress Club had gathered in public for the first time in the City Council Chamber to consider the Suffrage question. Mrs. McEwan presided and a paper "treating pithily and with much aptness on the subject of the Franchise" was read by Miss E. Foulds, who moved a Resolution "that in the opinion of this Meeting the Parliamentary Franchise should be extended to women who possess the qualifications which entitle men to vote." This and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... slight laugh of desperation. The suddenness of this sinister conclusion had in it something comic and unbelievable. It loosened my grip on my mental processes. A Latin tag came into my head about the facile descent into the abyss. I marvelled at its aptness, and also that it should have come to me so pat. But I believe now that it was suggested simply by the actual declivity of the street of the Consuls which lies on a gentle slope. We had just turned the corner. All the houses were dark and in a perspective of complete solitude ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... deeply interesting to my hearer, more closely akin to her habitual train of thinking. She immediately threw off all the restraint belonging to an interview with a stranger; and when she had received a few more similar proofs of my aptness for the marvellous, she went so far as to say that she would adopt me as her élève ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... be called an over-aptness to Anger: for the passion is Anger, and the producing causes many and various. Now he who is angry at what and with whom he ought, and further, in right manner and time, and for proper length of time, is praised, so this ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... leading wit of the age, the late Honourable Henry Erskine, the Scotch Dean of Faculty, that 'Lord Seaforth's deafness was a merciful interposition to lower him to the ordinary rate of capacity in society,' insinuating that otherwise his perception and intelligence would have been oppressive. And the aptness of the remark was duly appreciated by all those who had the good fortune to be able to form an estimate from personal observation, while, as a man of the world, none was more capable of generalizing. Yet, as a countryman, he never affected ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... view as to going to the Front was put last Sunday with unconscious aptness. At breakfast we had read aloud to us a letter written with inspiring realism by a Watch Dog who is actually there and seeing life in all its detail in the trenches. Having listened to it with rapt attention, we then marched to church and (actually) ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... walking; he was able, therefore, to oppose the thumb to the other four fingers, to seize hold of objects and to fashion tools; and it is well known that the hands are great promoters of the intelligence. This same position gave to the lungs, trachea, larynx, and mouth an aptness for the production of articulate speech, and speech is intelligence. Moreover, this position, causing the head to weigh vertically upon the trunk, facilitated its development and increase of weight, and the head ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... is as apt to take wysdome As is an olde, and if it rotyd be It sawyth sede of holy lyfe to come Also in children we often tymes se Great aptness outwarde and syne of grauyte But fyll an erthen pot first with yll lycoure And euer after it ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... should not be so contemptibly spoken of as were fit and medicinable, in regard that hath been too much exalted and glorified, to the infinite detriment of man's estate. Of the nature of words and their facility and aptness to cover and grace the defects of Anticipations. That it is no marvel if these Anticipations have brought forth such diversity and repugnance in opinions, theories, or philosophies, as so many fables of several arguments. That had not the ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... composite emotions of both at once, not to mention the feelings probably inherent in the shepherd of the flock, since my wards might well be likened, I thought, to helpless young sheep. By this comparison I mean no disrespect; the simile is employed because of its aptness and for no other reason. It would ill become me, of all men, to refer slightingly to any of our student-body, we at Fernbridge making it our policy ever to receive only the daughters of families having undoubted social standing in their respective ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... They cycled assiduously and went for long walks at a trot, and raided and studied (and incidentally explained themselves to) any social "types" that lived in the neighbourhood. One invaded type, resentful under research, described them with a dreadful aptness as Donna Quixote and Sancho Panza—and himself as a harmless windmill, hurting no one and signifying nothing. She did rather tilt at things. This particular summer they were at a pleasant farmhouse in level country near Pangbourne, belonging to the Hon. Wilfrid Winchester, and they asked ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... invariably treated them as enemies, and to remain at the mercy of sovereigns whose sole object was to oppress, plunder, and subject them to all kinds of vexations? To understand this it is sufficient to remember that, in their peculiar aptness for earning and hoarding money, they found, or at least hoped to find, a means of compensation whereby they might be led to forget the servitude to which they ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... honors that seemed within my reach, for you know I was a ready speaker. If my friends could only have seen that I was peculiarly fitted for public life and advanced me sufficient means, I would have returned it tenfold. But no; I was forced into other things for which I had no great aptness or knowledge, and years of struggling poverty and repeated disappointment followed. At last your father died and gave us enough to buy a cheap farm out here. But why go over our experience in the West? My plan of making sugar from the sorghum, which promised so brilliantly, has ended ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... even be certain that he had really understood the feeling shown by Cora Tuttle when she heard the man, who had once lavished attentions on her, express in this public manner a preference for her sister. A woman has great aptness in concealing a mortal hurt, and, from what I had seen of this one, I thought it highly improbable that all was quiet in her passionate breast because she had turned an impassive ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... might seem, to an ear less true, redundant. This gives to his most carefully chiseled productions an air of spontaneous ease, and has made him eminent as a sonneteer. His sonnet on 'Sleep' is one of the finest in the language. The conciseness and concentrated aptness of his expression also—together with a faculty of bringing into conjunction subtly contrasted thoughts, images, or feelings—has issued happily in short, concentrated pieces like 'An Untimely Thought,' 'Destiny,' and 'Identity,' and in a number of pointed and effective quatrains. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... its accompaniments must wear an aspect of at least seeming to belong to the right order of detachment and fashionable ease, one was always in debt and forced to keep out of the way of duns, and obliged to pretend things and tell lies with aptness and outward gaiety. Sometimes one actually was so far driven to the wall that one could not keep most important engagements and the invention of plausible excuses demanded absolute genius. The slice of a house between the two big ones was a rash feature of the honeymoon ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Earlybird is a very good man,—so much so that many of us may well envy him,—he is not just the man fitted for this destination. A Knight of the Garter should be a man prone to show himself, a public man, one whose work in the country has brought him face to face with his fellows. There is an aptness, a propriety, a fitness in these things which one can understand perhaps better ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... vain for a simile, and then, having found one to his liking, emitted with great earnestness that the beggar, Blizzard, looked exactly like "the wrath of God." Whatever the boy's simile may convey to the reader, to Barbara, fresh from seeing the man himself, it had a wonderful aptness. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... merely bowed without speaking, and the other passed on. Either somebody overheard the remark, or the doctor repeated it elsewhere, for within a day or two it was all over town, and henceforth, by general consent, half in jest, half in recognition of the aptness of the title under the circumstances, Perez was dubbed Duke of Stockbridge, or more briefly referred to ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... aptness, for he had hardly uttered them when Roderick came out from the house, evidently in his darkest mood. He stood for a moment gazing hard at ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... resources—evolved a carefully detailed method of living upon nothing whatever, of keeping out of the way of duns, and telling lies with aptness and outward gaiety. But a year of giving smart little dinners and going to smart big dinners ended in a condition somewhat akin to the feat of balancing oneself on the ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Quest. An delur pulsus amatorius? or Of mind. Bad, as Fear, sorrow, suspicion, anxiety, &c. A hell, torment, fire, blindness, &c. Dotage, slavery, neglect of business. or Good, as Spruceness, neatness, courage, aptness to learn music, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... ecclesiastical. At the age of seventeen we find him writing letters to Arthur Hallam on politics and literature: and his old schoolfellows testify to his great influence among them for purity, humanity, and nobility of character, while he was noted for his aptness in letters and skill in debate. In 1827 the boy was intrusted to the care of Dr. Turner,—afterward bishop of Calcutta,—under whom he learned something besides Latin and Greek, perhaps indirectly, in the way of ethics and theology, and other things which go to the formation of character. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... There woke in me an aptness for the love of natural beauty, a possibility of being excited to enthusiasm by it, and of deriving a secret joy from it sufficiently strong to make me careless of the world and its pleasures. Another effect which Wordsworth had upon me, and has had on other people, ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... buy, just so they buy. They've got no sense of value left. Why, a man found an outcrop of a zinc lode under his chicken-coop yesterday—and to-day the price of chicken-coops has gone up." Madeira patted Steering's shoulder again and laughed again, pleased at his aptness in figuring the ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... fine feeling, pure sentiment, lively satire and apt wisdom. Sometimes the thought is labored; but there is a wealth of clear-cut conviction, strong thoughts and rich experience. There is force in the arguments, richness of ideas throughout, and a wonderful aptness of allusion and illustration. Her culture and learning are everywhere apparent in the fine perception of the most exact analogies and in the ease with which she brings science to the support of morals. Those of her admirers who come closest to her spirit, thoroughly appreciate her ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... a female, though not permitted to speak in the Church, had often this aptness for teaching. Such was the case with the excellent Priscilla, Acts xviii. 26. The aged women were required to be "teachers of good ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... beef, or labor. In a large majority of cases—especially in the dairy districts, at least, comprising the Eastern and Middle States—the farmer cares more for the milking qualities of his cows, especially for the quantity they give, than for their fitness for grazing, or aptness to fatten. These latter points become more important in the Western and some of the Southern States, where much greater attention is paid to breeding and to feeding, and where comparatively slight attention is given to the productions of the dairy. A stock ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... God alone knew what was behind the gate. Toil, with a certainty, but our lives had known it. Death, perchance. But Death had been near to all of us, and his presence did not frighten. As we climbed towards the Gap, I recalled with strange aptness a quaint saying of my father's that Kaintuckee was the Garden of Eden, and that men were being justly punished ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... blacksmiths, the child will be born with the muscles of the right arm more developed than those of the left, and the first plaything he demands is a hammer. So, where a family have been traders, will the offspring naturally discover an aptness for bargaining and commerce. This is illustrated in the instincts of the Jews, a people of extraordinary brain and wonderful tenacity of purpose. Five thousand years since, a small fragment of the Semitic race, residing ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... American aborigines, nor of European peasants, nor of individuals whose life of monotonous labor, whether for necessaries or luxuries, has no opportunity or no will for the finer mental culture; but, to give aptness to our illustration, should consist of persons whose being has been unfolded to the tissue of susceptibility to the wonders and beauties of nature, and whose intellect has been tilled sufficiently to receive and nourish any fresh seed of thought that may ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... would have refused a salary of fifteen hundred dollars in a bank against five hundred in a counting-room, and for the reason that a bank-clerk has little or no hope beyond his salary all his life, while a counting-house clerk, if he have any aptness for trade, stands a fair chance of getting into business sooner or later, and making his fortune as a merchant. But a debt of four hundred dollars hanging over his head was an argument in favour of a clerkship in the bank, at a salary of a thousand dollars a year, ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... during the last year of the preceding century. The boy, like many others of his profession, was designed for the ministry, and before the age of eleven the future Channing had attracted admiring listeners by the music of his voice and the aptness of his mimicry. His memory was remarkable, and he would recite whole passages of his preceptor's sermons. Perched upon a chair or stool, and crowned with the proud approval of family and friends, the young ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... continuous stream of connected events which constituted contemporaneous history,—perhaps because of that very separateness,—the "Chesapeake" affair marks conspicuously the turning-point in the relations of the two countries. In point of time, its aptness as a sign-post is notable; for it occurred just at the moment when the British ministry, under the general exigencies of the situation, and the particular menace of the Tilsit compacts between Napoleon and the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... replied the newcomer, "Jean Passepartout, a surname which has clung to me because I have a natural aptness for going out of one business into another. I believe I'm honest, monsieur, but, to be outspoken, I've had several trades. I've been an itinerant singer, a circus-rider, when I used to vault like Leotard, and dance ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... the great sinner before, let him take heed lest he presume; I say now to the little sinner, let him take heed that he do not dissemble: for there is as great an aptness in the little sinner to dissemble, as there is in the great one. "He that hideth his sins shall not prosper," be he a sinner little ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... comparatively few of the number that have been credited to him. He had a wonderful memory, and a fine power of making his hearers see the scene he wished to depict; but the final charm of his stories lay in their aptness, and in the kindly humor that left no sting ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... show the Low German race as pure barbarians, great at destruction, but incapable of constructive work. Professor Rolleston, who has opened several of these early heathen tombs of our Teutonic ancestors, finds in them everywhere abundant evidence of "their great aptness at destroying, and their great slowness in elaborating, material civilisation." Until the Anglo-Saxon received from the Continent the Christian religion and the Roman culture, he was a mere average Aryan barbarian, with a strong taste for war and plunder, but with ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... language development. But even in these cases we are not seriously misled, for the dull child of fortunate home surroundings shows his dullness in the quality of his definitions if not in their quantity; while the bright child of illiterate parents shows his intelligence in the aptness and ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... welcome to childhood, from its rhymes, its high colouring, and its aptness to memory. As we grow into boyhood, the violent passions, the vague hopes, the romantic sorrow of patriot ballads are in tune with our fitful and luxuriant feelings. In manhood we prize the condensed narrative, the grave firmness, the critical art, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... anew, and though his voice was rough and harsh from all the talk that he had talked before, and though he rather growled his words than gave them liberal utterance, yet what he said was what he wanted to say, and came from his black heart with a very damnable aptness. He was speaking in the praise of those Florentine youths that had first enrolled their names in the book of the Company of Death, and he was praising them ostentatiously for their valor and their patriotism, and yet while he praised, I, listening, thought that his praises were not ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... those who thought that history was not history unless it was bombastic. Emerson says somewhere, "Avoid adjectives; let your nouns do the work." There was hardly a sentence in Alison which did not traverse this rule. One of his admirers told me that the great merit of his style was his choiceness and aptness in his use of adjectives. It is a style which now provokes merriment, and even had Alison been learned and impartial, and had he possessed a good method, his style for the present taste would have killed his book. Gibbon ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... direction of activity found at home, that it is better for him, who undertakes it at all, to consecrate himself to it as the great mission of his life. It is also a fact that the longer he continues in it, the more ability and aptness he acquires for that ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... the country. That enthusiasm could have but one effect, that of deepening and enriching Canadian loyalty to the Crown, and giving a new sense of solidarity among the people of Canada. "Our Indian compatriots," he concluded, "with picturesque aptness have acclaimed the Prince as Chief Morning Star. That name is well and prophetically chosen. His visit will usher in for Canada a new day full of wide-flung ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... passion in him, even as defeating the hopes of the Vaufontaines was more than a religion with the Duke. By no trickery, but by a persistent good-nature, alertness of speech, avoidance of dangerous topics, and aptness in anecdote, he had hourly made his position stronger, himself more honoured at the Castle Bercy. He had also tactfully declined an offer of money from the Prince—none the less decidedly because he was nearly penniless. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... concluded the operations of the day by discharging his rifle at his candle after he had snugly ensconced himself in bed; and of the celebrated scene in which Henry Clay won an old hunter's vote in an election, by his aptness in turning into a political simile some points in the management of ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech. Nay, it is likened to a man; and as we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... people still differ from their English cousins (as they are fond of calling themselves when they are afraid we may do them a mischief) in a certain capacity for enthusiasm, a devotion to abstract principle, an openness to ideas, a greater aptness for intuitions than for the slow processes of the syllogism, and, as derivative from this, in minds of looser texture, a light-armed, skirmishing habit of thought, and a positive preference of the birds in the bush,—an excellent quality ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... dress, A cloak, was all bunched up. He leapt, and lighted Upon the boulder just beneath; there swayed, Re-poised, And perked his head like an inquisitive bird, As gravely happy; of all unconscious save His body's aptness for its then employment; His eyes intent on shells in some clear pool Or choosing where he next will plant his feet. Again he leaps, his curls against his hat Bounce up behind. The daintiest thing alive, He rocks awhile, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... great pleasure to me to see all this apparatus in manufacture and in use at one of the principal submarine signalling works in America and to hear some of the remarkable stories of its value in actual practice. I was struck by the aptness of the motto adopted by them—"De profundis clamavi"—in relation to the Titanic's end and the calls of our passengers from the sea when she sank. "Out of the deep have I called unto Thee" is indeed a suitable motto for those who are doing ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... learned words and the most colloquial, is responsive to all demands. His power of phrasing runs the whole gamut from the most pellucid simplicity to the most triumphant originality. His figures of speech, drawn from all realms, are penetrating in quality, of startling aptness. Equally characteristic is his versification, varying as it does from passages of melodic smoothness and grace to lines as strident, broken, and harsh as the thought they dramatically reflect. In narration, whether in the brilliant rapidity ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... when in his twenty-fifth year, he obtained a little Baptist chapel and the goodwill of a school at Moulton; but as a minister he only received 16l. per annum, and at the same time proved, as many have done before him, that aptness to learn does not imply aptness to teach. He could not keep order, and his boys first played tricks with him and then deserted, till he came nearly to starvation, and had to return to ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the bungalow had stood in sun and rain unoccupied, with a watchman and his wife, named Hope, who lived close by. The aptness of his name was that of the little Barbadian mule-tram which creeps through the coral-white streets, striving forever to divorce motion from progress and bearing the name Alert. Hope had done his duty and watched the bungalow. It was undoubtedly still there and nothing had been taken ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... expression of honest conviction, such as tells in any assembly—created some stir and considerable comment. Of plain homely mother-wit he had an uncommon share, and his mind was stored with quotations which came out in his talk with wonderful ease and aptness. A shrewd observer, his comments (always good-natured if critical) on his fellow men ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... fast Whimple thought, for by mid-afternoon he had told the boy a great deal about himself and his past and his prospects. And William had listened, asking a question occasionally, sometimes interjecting a remark, and always, so Whimple says now, with an aptness that surprised and delighted him. William evinced no surprise and no regret when informed that bright as were the prospects, two dollars a week, for the present, was the maximum salary ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... gentility, sir," said Pen, quoting the hackneyed ballad of the Devil's Walk: but his Uncle did not know that poem (though, perhaps, he might be leading Pen upon the very promenade in question), and went on with his philosophical remarks, very much pleased with the aptness of the pupil to whom he addressed them. Indeed Arthur Pendennis was a clever fellow, who took his colour very readily from his neighbour, and found the adaptation ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enter the Normal class of my College whom I have not fitted for it by the Primary course. They are taught their first lessons by my students; hence [15] the aptness to assimilate pure and abstract Science is ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... said he, 'you must be, with the aptness of my scholar. Julia has not studied dialectics in vain. Before I can feel myself able to contend with her, I must study the books she has commended so—from which, I must acknowledge, I have been repelled by a prejudice, I believe, rather than any thing else, or more worthy—and then, perhaps, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... tales of the ferocity of the convicts. John still anxious to find some particular cave. His chart. The unsolved mystery of the boat. The clothing of the natives. Bracelets. Glitter to attract natives. Weaving, the only industry. The aptness of native women to adopt fancy articles of dress and ornament. John's scheme, anticipating the wedding of Sutoto and Cinda. A "State affair." The mission to the Professor. Sending the Pioneer to Wonder Island. Stut captain of the ship. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... excellent in the aptness of his scriptural allusions, once said with regard to a leader who had announced that he would "set his face" against a certain policy and then gave way, "Yes, the deer 'set his face,' but he did not 'set it as ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... he had been, he might have turned round and served Boyne the same way. It's the kind of thing that happens every day in business. I guess it's what the scientists call the survival of the fittest," said Mr. Parvis, evidently pleased with the aptness ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... upon you, except now and then when he loses his temper a little on the debatable ground between religion and politics, repeats that quotation you are vainly trying to recall, or delights you by the beauty and aptness of a new one. He gives to a course of systematic sight-seeing the freedom and variety of a ramble with a cultivated and sympathetic companion. We would not be ungrateful to that inestimable impersonality, Murray, for all are his debtors, even Mr. Hare for the plan of his books; but, remembering ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... this youth to enjoy this world, so much the less chance was thereof his being fit for any other world. What could it do for him there,—this beautiful grace and elegance of feature,—where there was no form, nothing tangible nor visible? what good that readiness and aptness for associating with all created things, doing his part, acting, enjoying, when, under the changed conditions of another state of being, all this adaptedness would fail? Had he been gifted with permanence on earth, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you may say, almost within three points of the wind; and his own accidental allusion to Romeo had brought it about with an aptness and a celerity which were better for my purpose than anything I had privately developed from the text of Bottom and Titania; none the less, however, did I intend to press into my service that fond couple also as basis for a moral, in spite of the sharp turn which those ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... list is one who, though a poor man's daughter, will certainly bring property to Phelim. There is also an aptness in this selection, which does credit to the 'Patriarch.' Phelim is a great dancer, an accomplishment with which we do not read that the patriarchs themselves were possessed: although we certainly do read that a light heel was of ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... voice deep and resonant. His words were clearly spoken, and fell from his lips freely, as if he were loosening them into a channel worn by long thinking. His ideas were clearly envisioned. He had read books of which I had never heard. But apart from books his sallies of wit, the aptness of his stories and allusions quite ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... that does not presuppose love of some kind. The reason is that every other passion of the soul implies either movement towards something, or rest in something. Now every movement towards something, or rest in something, arises from some kinship or aptness to that thing; and in this does love consist. Therefore it is not possible for any other passion of the soul to be universally the cause of every love. But it may happen that some other passion is the cause ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... of Democracy, which introduces and breaks ground for further and vaster sections, few probably are the minds, even in these republican States, that fully comprehend the aptness of that phrase, "THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE," which we inherit from the lips of Abraham Lincoln; a formula whose verbal shape is homely wit, but whose scope includes both the totality and all minutiae ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... herself heard in the garden with recitations to the fat boy on the subject of Peris weeping before the gates of Paradise, or warbling elegies under the green sea in regard to Araby's daughter. There is a real aptness in the latter reference; for this boy's true place in nature is the deep seas of the polar regions, where animals are coated with thick tissues of blubber. If Sylvia ever harpoons him, as she seems seriously bent on doing, she will have to ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... somebody, which partly made amends for my coldness for letters. In fact, I have always thought that if I had been allowed to read history more constantly, instead of losing my time in studies for which I had no aptness, I might have made some figure in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... beauty, or Nausicaa offering protection to the shipwrecked Ulysses. It is a striking feature of the easy unconstrained character of life among the Greeks, of its gladsome joyousness of disposition, which knew nothing of a starched and stately dignity, but artist-like admired aptness and gracefulness, even in the most insignificant trifles, that in this drama called Nausicaa, or "The Washerwomen," in which, after Homer, the princess at the end of the washing, amuses herself at a game of ball with ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... who familiarizes himself with the grave. For me; I must deny myself, for I go tomorrow to take part in festivities the reverse of funereal. I commend the propriety and aptness of your researches, ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... the sun," said Anna-Felicitas, even in that moment of excitement not without complacency at her own aptness. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... Webster, to be quoted in the school-books and repeated on every platform. But no words of mine—and I have used many in the effort—are able to convey a notion of the masterful ease and charm of his manner on the floor of the Senate or of the singular modesty, courtesy, aptness and simplicity of his words as they fell from his lips. There were the thunderous Webster, the grandeur of whose sentences no American has equaled; the agile-minded Clay, whose voice was like a ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... of Dorothea as a volume in the new collected edition (CONSTABLE) of the works of Mr. MAARTEN MAARTENS has at this moment a strange aptness. For you may remember that Dorothea, herself of Dutch-English extraction, married into a Prussian family. Nay, more, into the family of a Prussian general. A very obvious interest attaches to the impression made by these people upon the mind of the author. Of the old General ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... Underground Rail Road; but in conversing with him, they found him possessed of more intelligence than they had supposed; indeed, they perceived that he could read and write a little, and that what he lacked in aptness of speech, he supplied as a thinker, and although he was slow he was sure. He was owned by a man named John Lewis, who also owned about seventy head of slaves, whom he kept on farms near the mouth of the Sassafras River, in ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... ye, Henry," said the old man, as he transferred a duck to his plate and proceeded to carve it with the aptness of one who had practical knowledge of its anatomy, "I tell ye, Henry, the birds be gittin' fat; and I sartinly hope the flight this fall will be a good un. Don't be bashful, Lad, in yer eatin'," he continued, as he transferred half of the bird to his companion's plate, ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... The noises ceased entirely, and the symbols of opposition disappeared. The audience, hushed into attention, gave vent to no sounds but those of admiration for the genius of the actor. When, in the course of his part, he repeated the words, "So! I am in London again !" the aptness of the expression to the circumstances of the night, was felt by all present, and acknowledged by a round of boisterous and thrice repeated cheering. It was a triumphant scene for Mr. Kemble after his long annoyances. He had achieved a double victory. He had, not only as a manager, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... of their houses. We passed the Post-Office, the village shops, with their names, the Monaghans and Gerahtys, such as we find again in Miss Edgeworth's novels. We heard the local politics discussed over the counter with a certain aptness and directness which struck me very much. We passed the boarding-house, which was not without its history—a long low building erected by Mr. and Miss Edgeworth for a school, where the Sandfords and Mertons of those days were to be brought up together: ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... aptness of the description his voice had grown louder till it completely filled the building. His fine head erect, his steady passionless blue-gray eyes fastened more on the dark sopping cedars outside the window than upon the people in front, his large but ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... faithful to the original, and the subtitle calls attention to the aptness of the Discourse as a defense of Pope's satiric practice.[25] It is so apt, indeed, that one could almost suspect Pope himself of making the translation and submitting it to Harte or his publisher. Pope had already invoked Boileau's name ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... little book made up—apparently against the writer's will—of certain of the master's letters and mots.... It is useful and pleasant reading; for not only does it prove the painter to have a certain literary talent—of aptness, unexpectedness, above all impertinence—but also it proves him never to have feared the face of art-critical man.... To him the art-critic is nothing if not a person to be educated, with or against the grain; and when he encounters him in the ways of error, he leaps upon him joyously, scalps him ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... without thought, but its aptness seemed almost to imply an intuitive knowledge of their previous conversation. 'Yes,' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... wished I might introduce some of our American friends into our teachers' meetings on a Sabbath afternoon, or to the Sabbath-school at the intermission of public worship, where nearly the whole congregation remains, exhibiting a zeal and aptness in the discussion of religious truths scarcely surpassed in the most favored churches in New England. The weekly woman's prayer-meeting is sometimes left entirely in the hands of the native sisters, and any one of half a dozen is always ready without embarrassment to take the lead, discoursing ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... large number of round dark spots, which present the appearance of a row of beads upon a string. These circular spots, which some have regarded as lakes, Mr. Lowell believes are rather oases in the great deserts, and granting the correctness of his theory of the canals the aptness of ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... that assembly was the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which, as I have already stated, he himself drafted. It is said, however, that he was most valuable in committee work, because of the aptness of his sensible and methodical mind, and the ingenuity he possessed in putting his ideas upon paper, and doing it in such a way as to create but little, if any, antagonisms. In all of the official stations ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... in this point of view that I have urged upon you the close consideration of the permanent influences of every present action. At your age, and with your inexperience, I know that there is an especial aptness to deceive one's-self by considering the case of those who, after leading a gay life for many years, have afterwards become the most zealous and devoted servants of God. That such cases are to be met with, is to the glory of the free grace of God: ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... on his amazing aptness in the knowledge of Holy Writ were checked by a sudden discovery that my best silver cigarette case had vanished ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips |
