"Directness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... downright directness of Cecil, Hawkins, and the other parties in the matter. There is no wrapping up their intentions in fine phrases, no parade of justification. They went straight to their point. It was very characteristic ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... them for ye, I would ask?" demanded Mrs Forsyth with scathing directness. "I've the shop to mind, and the dinner to cook; it's not likely I can be out picking fruit at the same time, and there's not anither soul in the house forbye mysel! I'm thinking you'll have to wait, ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... exertion; but she appeared to feel justified in generalizing—in deciding that the conditions of action on this provincial continent were not favorable to really superior women. The elder world was, after all, their natural field. The unembarrassed directness with which she proceeded to apply these intelligent conclusions appeared to the little circle of spectators who have figured in our narrative but the supreme exhibition of a character to which the experience ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... this order. Aunt Maria was the active partner of their establishment. She was a clever, vigorous, well-educated, inartistic, kindly, managing woman. She was not exactly "meddling," but when she thought it her duty to interfere in a matter, no delicacy of scruples, and no nervousness baulked the directness of her proceedings. When she was most sweeping or uncompromising, Uncle Ascott would say, "My dear Maria!" But it was generally from a spasm of nervous cowardice, and not from any deliberate wish to interrupt Aunt Maria's course of action. He ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... not destroyed. In so far as his published words remained open to censure, I may also, without indelicacy, urge one more plea in his behalf. That which to the merely sympathetic observer appeared a subject for disapprobation, perhaps disgust, had affected him with the directness of a sharp physical blow. He spoke of it, and for hours, even days, was known to feel it, as such. The events of that distant past, which he had lived down, though never forgotten, had flashed upon him from the words which ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... little turn for speculation, and in the religious changes of the day we find him constantly lagging behind his brother-reformers. But he had the moral earnestness of a Jewish prophet, and his denunciations of wrong had a prophetic directness and fire. "Have pity on your soul," he cried to Henry, "and think that the day is even at hand when you shall give an account of your office, and of the blood that hath been ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Halloway, and she was soon of the settled conviction that she should never meet any one quite like him again. He was true to his promise to help her; (he never made a promise that he did not honestly try to keep;) and he applied himself to the by no means thankless task with the good-humored directness and energy that characterized all his actions. There was quite a number of young girls in his parish, more proportionately than in the others. Bell Masters and Amy Duckworth had long been hovering on its borders, and the advent of so young and ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... me frostily when I went to visit her a few days after the conversation with my father, and suffered me to kiss both her cheeks in turn without evincing a sign of being mollified. Remembering that she was fond of directness, I opened fire at once by observing that I was invited to a ball at Mrs. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Felix got more than they bargained for. Paul was not now the prisoner, but the preacher; and his topics were not wanting in directness and plainness. He 'reasoned of righteousness' to one of the worst of unrighteous governors; of 'temperance' to the guilty couple who, in calling themselves husband and wife, were showing themselves ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... of stone and iron,"—equipped for his work by nature as Sallust describes Catiline as being. "He had a directness of action never before combined with such comprehension. Here was a man who in each moment and emergency knew what to do next. He saw only the object; the obstacle ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... "there is a quality in the English character which to me is very praiseworthy. It is a certain directness of purpose. You know what you wish to do, and you proceed calmly to do it, without stopping to consider what your neighbours may think of it. Now with the Gallic races—for I take this virtue of straightforwardness as Teutonic—and in my own country especially, men seek to gain their ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... began to laugh at his own discomfiture; and she, elbow on the gunwale, small hand cupping her chin, watched him with an expressionless directness that very soon extinguished his amusement and left him awkward in ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... find few other guests, and to fall into the hands of one of those simple, strawberry-like English housemaids, who gives him a cozy, snug little parlor all to himself, as was the luck of Irving also; who answers his every summons, and looks into his eyes with the simplicity and directness of a child; who could step from no page but that of Scott or the divine William himself; who puts the "coals" on your grate with her own hands, and, when you ask for a lunch, spreads the cloth on one end of the table while you sit reading or writing at ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... child is conscious of such a thing as purity, delicacy, directness, or strength of style, he has been acted upon unconsciously, so that when the period of conscious choice comes, he is either attracted or repelled by what is good, according to his training. Children are fond of vivacity and color, and love a bit of word painting ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... means to be at the ball. Expect trouble if you do not give him the diamond,' or something to that effect. But why was it passed up to her unfinished? Was the haste too great? I hardly think so. I believe in another explanation, which points with startling directness to the possibility that the person referred to in this broken communication was not Mr. Durand, but one whom I need not name; and that the reason you have failed to find the messenger, of whose appearance ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... close of the second song, he leaned his elbow on the top of the instrument, and stood so, searching her face with such discomposing directness that a burning wave of colour submerged her, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... because I ran off with Clarence," said Joy with remorseful directness, and her usual child-likeness. "I was cross because you ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... perception recognized the sincerity in the ring of the pleasant young voice, and he was quite won by the boyish directness. An instinctive confidence moved him to extend the right hand ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... the letter and looked expectantly at the Secretary of State, who returned the look with one of utter dismay. Never in all his career had the diplomat been so completely dumbfounded as he was now by the simple directness of the man of action. In himself Dom Miguel Forjas was both shrewd and honest. He was shrewd enough to apprehend to the full the military genius of the British Commander-in-Chief, fruits of which he had already witnessed. He knew that the withdrawal of Junot's ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... the Avenue MacMahon, the shadow which she had seen at the corner of the Rue Galilee came near her with a directness ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... with his whole nature, and so collectedly because reason, in him, is not in conflict with passion, but passion's ally. His senses speak with unparalleled directness, as in those elegies which must remain the model in English of masculine sensual sobriety. He distinguishes the true end of such loving in ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... doctrine that men are formed by the laws, but insists that moralists and statesmen have always led us wrong by legislating and prescribing conduct on the false theory that man is bad, whereas he is in truth a creature endowed with natural probity. Then he strikes to the root of society with a directness that Rousseau could not imitate, by the position that "these laws by establishing a monstrous division of the products of nature, and even of their very elements—by dividing what ought to have remained entire, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... his strength, his gaunt, awkward figure under the uncertain torches, his wide, impassioned gestures, with the carpenter's nail claw always before his hearers, made him a strange kind of specter in the night. Yet the simplicity of his manner and the directness of his appeal went to the hearts of his hearers. The first part of his message was one of peace. He told the workers that every inch they gained they lost when they tried to overcome cunning with force. "The dynamiter tears the ground from ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... coaxing and pulling got him into the kitchen, and Puss tumbled over herself to set out coffee and rolls. He showed himself ravenously hungry, and ate with a simple directness that speedily accounted for everything in sight. "You have saved my life. Now I am going, and thank you a thousand times. There, by Heaven, I've forgotten Wickwire! He is with me—waiting down in the cottonwoods at the fork. Could Puss put up a lunch I could take to him? He hasn't had a scrap for ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... political usefulness, and to the same effect was the general talk of the town. The common suspicion that the writer was doing the work of the hated Puseyites grew darker and spread further. Then in April came Macaulay's article in the Edinburgh, setting out with his own incomparable directness, pungency, and effect, all the arguments on the side of that popular antagonism which was rooted far less in specific reasoning than in a general anti-sacerdotal instinct that lies deep in the hearts of Englishmen. John Sterling ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... insinuate, Victor?" she said, lightly, but with pointed directness. "That I have been in love with two men at the same time? No; nothing of my own will nor my own action stands between us. Forgive, forsooth!" and she gave ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... French empire exemplified. Hatred to England, her name, race, and institutions, seems to have amounted to a monomania with him; yet he was not himself of Celtic lineage. His intolerance of opinion and rashness of action would have been utterly unendurable, were it not for the directness of his aims, the sincerity of his motives, the disinterestedness of his spirit, and the suavity of his disposition. The only other member of the Young Ireland party deserving notice as a chief was Charles Gavin Duffy, the editor and proprietor of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... full forehead, and an intensely black silky beard and mustache framed the lower portion of his face most fittingly. His eyes were soft and womanly, though there was a patient boldness about their great brown pupils and a directness of gaze which suited well the bearded face beneath. The lines of suffering were deeply cut upon the thoughtful brow and around the liquid eyes, and showed in the mobile workings of the broad mouth, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... made with all the swiftness and directness of one who seeks the shortest distance between two points, little remains in memory except a few moving pictures, vivid and half-real, as ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... golden pen's or lip's persuasion, But a fine sense of right, And Truth's directness, meeting each occasion Straight as a ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... IMAGINATION, AND RELATED QUALITIES. Another main question in judging any book concerns the union which it shows: (1) of the Intellectual faculty, that which enables the author to understand and control his material and present it with directness and clearness; and (2) of the Emotion, which gives warmth, enthusiasm, and appealing human power. The relative proportions of these two faculties vary greatly in books of different sorts. Exposition (as in most essays) cannot as a rule be permeated with so much emotion ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... degree of accomplishment. The landscapes he painted were very fresh and pleasing, delicately coloured, with lots of air in them, and a dreamy, suggestive sentiment. His brother sculptors declared that his statuettes were modelled with exceeding dash and directness; they were certainly fanciful and amusing. I remember one that I used to like immensely—Titania driving to a tryst with Bottom, her chariot a lily, daisies for wheels, and for steeds a pair of mettlesome field-mice. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... have hitherto led. You and Seward should be among the foremost to brandish the lance and shout for joy."[612] To this the famous editor, giving a succinct view of his policy, replied with his usual directness. "I have not dreamed of anything inconsistent with Republican duty. We owe our existence as a party to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. But for the ever blind spirit of slavery, Buchanan would have taken away our ammunition and spiked our guns. The continued ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of woman's attack on man's life, apart from the essential soundness of the impulse which drove her to make it, lay then in its directness and practicality. She began by asking to be educated in the same way that man educated himself. Preferably she would enter his classroom, or if that was denied her, she would follow the "just-as-good" curriculum of the college founded for her. In the last sixty or ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... originality; that is just what I can't see. What he has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of touch—marvellous! ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... pp. 10-50, and the end is abrupt. The treatment of the "Novel" contrasts curiously with that of the Chavis MS. which forms my text, and whose directness and simplicity give it a European and even classical character. It is an excellent study of the liberties allowed to themselves by Eastern editors and scribes. In the Cotheal MS. the tone is distinctly literary, abounding in verse (sometimes repeated from other portions ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... she opened the door, and answered the mortgage jobber's somewhat embarrassed greeting with a frigid stare. Having some experience of Sally's uncompromising directness, he was inclined to fancy that the game was up, but he said nothing further, and she fixed her eyes ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... enough of them to cancel her one miserable debt! But the man behind them grew increasingly repugnant in the light of Selden's expected coming. The contrast was too grotesque: she could scarcely suppress the smile it provoked. She decided that directness would ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... deceased wife, irreproachable woman as she had been; but the suddenness of her death had shaken his nerves, and Mr. Woodwell's address on the uncertainty of life involved considerations of conduct on earth that bore with singular directness upon Havill's unprincipled manoeuvre for victory in the castle competition. He wished he had not been so inadvertent as to take his customary chair in the chapel. People who saw Havill's agitation did not know that ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... ever wrote. He himself speaks of it as very puerile and silly—a verdict which Chambers endorses, but in which I cannot agree. Simple and artless it no doubt is, but with a touch of that grace which bespeaks the true poet. Here is one verse which, for directness of feeling and felicity of language, he hardly ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... protruding from the bandage; or explaining how the legend of Lord KITCHENER'S survival arose from a trivial error that caused the news of the Hampshire disaster to reach Berlin a few minutes before it was published in London, he always writes with directness and verve. Admiral BROWNRIGG tells a good deal about the censorship, and illustrates his theme with some excellent reproductions of naval photographs before and after the Censor had "re-touched" them. He tells us even more about his work in a less ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... low wages; the closest scrutiny revealed no strikes or internal clamorings about wrongs; and I unconsciously relaxed and breathed more deeply at the thought of this nature world, moving so smoothly, with directness and simplicity as apparently ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... The want of directness, the absence of candor, the non-recognition of truth in its broad and deep sense, is, indeed, a characteristic phase of life, of expression, and of manners in France. A lover of his nation confesses that even in "galantes aventures l'esprit prenait la place du coeur, la fantaisie ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... remorseless logic as that of logarithms. It will produce a habit of definiteness, directness, and concentration invaluable to you. The young gallants of a century ago used to practise fencing for an hour each morning. Why should not you do the same thing in intellectual fencing—you, the devotee of the noblest ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Lesley looked after him helplessly, with a mingled feeling of offence and relief. She did not see him again, but was conveyed to her room by Miss Brooke, who spoke to her kindly indeed, but with a matter-of-fact directness which seemed hard and cold to the convent-bred girl, whose teachers and guardians had vied with one another in sugared sweetness and a tutored amiability ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... carboniferous formation, limestone, about 1600 feet high. The canyon was surprisingly beautiful and romantic. The river seemed to change its mood here, and began to flow with an impetus it had exhibited nowhere above. It swept on with a directness and a concentration of purpose that had about it something ominous. And just here, at the foot of the right hand wall which was perpendicular for 800 feet, with the left more sloping, and clothed with cedar shrubs, we beheld ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... able to give you a fairly good dinner," she said with a simple directness that pleased me. "My husband went fishing yesterday and I have some very good pan fish and some oysters. If you are very hungry I can give you the oysters almost at once, and it will not take very long to broil the fish. Then, ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the fatal resemblance between the two daughters of one father, the conspiracy of which Anne had been the innocent instrument and Laura the innocent victim could never have been planned. With what unerring and terrible directness the long chain of circumstances led down from the thoughtless wrong committed by the father to the heartless injury ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... had taken lodgings in Duke Street, and Emily knew the quarter thoroughly. Walderhurst watched her being nice, through his fixed eyeglass, and he decided that she had really a very good manner. Its goodness consisted largely in its directness. While she never brought forth unnecessarily recollections of the days when she had done other people's shopping and had purchased for herself articles at sales marked 11-3/4d, she was interestingly free from any embarrassment in connection ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... What a great directness of purpose may be traced in the career of Pitt, who lived—ay, and died—for the sake of political supremacy. From a child, the idea was drilled into him that he must accomplish a public career worthy of his illustrious father. Even from boyhood he ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... was Mr. Ballard, a man self raised from the ranks of labour but indebted for the eminence which he ultimately attained to Mr. Brassey's discrimination in selecting him for the arduous undertaking. He has borne interesting testimony to his superior's comprehensiveness and rapidity of view, the directness with which he went to the important point, disregarding secondary matters and economizing his time ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the entrance of the United States into the World War and the suffragists consecrated time, strength, life itself if necessary to its demands. The call to the annual convention held in Waco in May, 1917, indicated with what directness and intelligence the women approached their added responsibilities. It was "a call to the colors," to work for the war. War and Woman's Service; What can we do? Our Need of the Ballot to do it; True Americanism, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... obsequious attempts to curry favor with Captain Wirz, who took him outside several times for purposes that were not well explained. Finally, some hours after one of Poll Parrot's visits outside, a Rebel officer came in with a guard, and, proceeding with suspicious directness to a tent which was the mouth of a large tunnel that a hundred men or more had been quietly pushing forward, broke the tunnel in, and took the occupants of the tent outside for punishment. The question that demanded immediate solution ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the influence of the wily and unscrupulous Murray, who flattered his weaknesses and assumed an air of deference to his opinions. Lord George Murray, on the other hand, was but too prone to give offence. He was haughty and overbearing in manner, expressed his opinions with a directness and bluntness which were very displeasing to the prince, and, conscious of his own military genius and experience, put aside with open contempt the suggestions of those who were in truth ignorant of military matters. Loyal, straightforward, ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... Bellafront's morning reception at the opening of the second act of the first part. But here we may assert with fair confidence that the first and the last scenes of the play bear the indisputable sign-manual of William Rowley. His vigorous and vivid genius, his somewhat hard and curt directness of style and manner, his clear and trenchant power of straightforward presentation or exposition, may be traced in every line as plainly as the hand of Middleton must be recognized in the main part of ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... principle was called for the discord existed confessedly, and the one course had been the palinode of the other. But such a theory is quite inadmissible to our minds; it tallies neither with the long-headed and comprehensive sagacity of Sir Robert Peel, nor with the spirit of simplicity, directness, and determination in the Duke of Wellington. Next came an evening paper, of high character for Conservative honesty and ability, which (having all along justified the past policy of vigilant neutrality) could not be supposed to acknowledge any fickleness in ministers: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... broadside ballad commemorating that splendid fight has a fine disregard for the more pedantic rules of making verse, and the metre is a good example of what is called 'rugged'; but those who are superior to such details will appreciate the directness and air of enjoyment that are very appropriate to the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... childhood, while he lived among the peasants, he became familiar with their mode of thought and speech, and it entered into his being, and became his own natural mode of expression. There is in his daily conversation a certain grim directness, and a laconic weightiness, which give an air of importance and authority even to his simplest utterances. This tendency to compression frequently has the effect of obscurity, not because his thought is obscure, but rather because energetic brevity of expression ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... sparks," and, even in their boyhood and school days, earn a reputation for being bons camarades (though with it all they come in for some hard knocks) for the reason that their faces evince an element of frankness, directness, and enterprise which enables them soon to make friends, and, almost before you have had time to look around, to start addressing you in the second person singular. Yet, while cementing such friendships for all eternity, almost always they begin quarrelling ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Even the method and style of the book are, contrary to general opinion, much more distinctly English than German. I do not forget his Hegelian dialectic with its un-English subtleties, but against that must be placed the directness, vigor, and pointedness of style, and the cogent reasoning, with its wealth of concrete illustrations, which are as characteristically English. Marx belongs to the school of Petty, Smith, and Ricardo, and their work is the background of his. ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... similar." Felicia's cool voice corrected him. She had an exasperating directness of manner! "Whenever you are counting how vairee much money you did have from 'The Juggler' do you not sometimes think that the girl who wrote the play ought to have ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... girl drew back. The directness of his challenge was startling, and roused in her a belated defensiveness. Going away? It sounded suddenly terrible to her, and thrilled her with a rush of fear which set her shivering. And yet she knew that ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... not apt to be labored, 'to smell of the lamp;' and they are, therefore, in general, his best specimens. In letter writing there will be found a facility, a freedom from constraint, a simplicity, and a directness, which are the capital traits of a good style. Of Shakspeare it is said, in the preface to the first edition of his works: 'His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered with that easiness, that we ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... thing, we ought immediately to do it. And if the love of God were in our hearts; if we were inwardly "conformed unto" the Divine law; if there were nothing lacking in our religious character; we should obey with the same directness and alacrity with which Peter and Andrew, and James and John, left their nets and their fishing-boat, their earthly avocations, their fathers and their fathers' households, and followed Christ to the end of their days. In the present ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... Yes, I'll come. I can come now. But are you sure she will like it?" Dinah's bright eyes met his with frank directness. "I don't want to intrude on her, ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... drew his chair a little nearer to her. His eyes were fixed upon her with a yet more intent gaze as he said, with directness and decision: ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... him with her childlike directness as she had done at the bazaar, and said, "I want to tell you everything." But her eyes filled fast with tears as she said it, and all the pent-up excitement of her humiliating walk would have its vent ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... flee from simpers; they put down presumption. If married, they laugh heartily with their wives over any letter or episode that is comical or sentimental. If not married, they get out of things the best way they know how, with a sort of plain, manly directness. If a minister would arrogate to himself his free-born privilege of being a thorough-going man, many ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... who had not unmixed delight in it. She had a certain shamefacedness about going through the streets in such a fashion. She avoided looking at the people whom she met, and kept her head slightly bent and averted, instead of carrying it with the proud directness which was her habit. She felt vaguely that this was the element of purely personal vanity which degrades a triumph, and the weakness of delight and gloating in the faces of her relatives irritated her. It was a sort of unveiling ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Aeneas, beside quite recent things felt or done—stories which, floating to us on the light current of to-day's conversation, leave the soul in a flutter! At best, poetry of the past could move one with no more directness than the beautiful faces of antiquity which are not here for us to see and unaffectedly love them. Gaston's demand (his youth only conforming to pattern therein) was for a poetry, as veritable, as intimately near, as corporeal, as the new faces of the hour, the flowers of the actual ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... that will be widely read and much discussed. A powerful sketch of an adventuress who has much of the Becky Sharpe in her. The story is crisply written and told with directness and insight into the ways of social and political life. The characters are strong types of the class ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Grand Duke Nicholas, the eldest son of Alexander II,—a young man of gentle characteristics, greatly resembling his father,—died upon the Riviera, the next heir to the throne was his brother Alexander, a stalwart, taciturn guardsman, respected by all who knew him for honesty and directness, but who, having never looked forward to the throne, had been brought up simply as a soldier, with few of the gifts and graces traditional among the heirs of the Russian monarchy ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... practical question that is distressing me: on that I think I see my way. But I am terribly worried for fear you should be angry or sorry about all this. I am only kept in hope by the remembrance that I had the same fear when I told you of my engagement and that you dispelled it with a directness and generosity that I shall not forget. I think, my dear Mother, that we have always understood each other really. We are neither of us very demonstrative: we come of some queer stock that can always say least when it means most. But I do think ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Bernard Shaw, who like Mark Twain have achieved comprehensive international reputations, have succeeded in preserving the early vigour and telling directness acquired in journalistic apprenticeship. It was by the crude, almost barbaric, cry of his journalese that Rudyard Kipling awoke the world with a start. That trenchant and forthright style which imparts ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... indeed, seemed to lack elements of attraction and interest; and the readers to whom the same man will tell even new things are apt to grow weary of his mode of saying, even though that mode have improved in directness and force; the tide of his small repute had already begun to take the other direction. Those who understood and prized his work, still holding by him, and declaring that they found in him what they found in no other writer, remained stanch ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... sharing her deepest moods with any one, and the world in which she lived with Denis was too bright and spacious to admit of any sense of constraint. Her smile was in truth a tribute to that clear-eyed directness of his which was so often a refuge ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... sled standing outside now, with twenty fiftypound sacks of flour on it," Matthewson went on with brutal directness; "so don't let ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... him as at a deep mystery, but with the searching directness characteristic of her, a fearlessness so absolute that it embarrassed ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... commenced to speak, made it unnecessary to put the story into words. Samson told how his mother had turned pallid, and stretched out her arm gropingly for support against the door-jamb. Then the man had found his voice with clumsy directness. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... one there now," said Rushbrook, with practical directness; "come and take a look at it." She complied without hesitation, walking by his side, tall, easy, and self-possessed, apparently accepting without self-consciousness his half paternal, half comrade-like informality. The boudoir was ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... he must yield—yield by a long way—to Dryden in strength and easy command of whatsoever craft he tried, to Coleridge in depth and range and philosophical grasp, yet he has his revenges. Beside his delicacy and his cosmopolitan accomplishment, Dryden is blunt and unscholarly; beside his directness of aim, if not always of achievement, his clearness of vision, his almost business-like adjustment of effort to result, the vagueness and desultoriness of Coleridge look looser and, in the literary sense, more disreputable than ever. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... I was entirely unused to the amenities of society. I used no subterfuges, and made no attempt to disguise my interest in Cynthia, or to pretend to other interests. I dare say my directness was smiled upon, as part of the eccentricity of these literary people; one of Ernest's friends, quite a recluse, and so forth. I gathered as much a little ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... that I see what's been wrong with me from the start. You've tried to say it yourself at times, only I couldn't take it in. Do you remember the day in my office when you came to tell me that"—he nerved himself to approach the subject with the simple directness he knew she desired—"that ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... to greatness as possible, if it be not actually destined to rank among world-renowned masterpieces. It is fresh and new, while in harmony with the established canons of art; and though apparently labored and over-developed in places, speaks with the force and directness of genius." ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... here in this anxiety up-stairs, down in the garden I could hear not the words, but the tones of our children as they spoke together. Charles's voice sounded first for a long time, with an air of calmness and directness; and Peggy answered him at intervals of listening, answered apparently less with surprise at what he told her than in a quiet acceptance, with a little throb of control, and then in accord with him. Then it was as though ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... hitherto understood and felt it. Through them we feel the breath of another air than that which he had breathed when he strained his invention to make poetic compliments to Kaethchen Schoenkopf. In the intensity and directness of passion which they express we may trace all the new poetic influences which he had come under in Strassburg—Shakespeare, Ossian, the popular ballad, the inspiration of Herder. What is remarkable in these ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... grew weary of the diplomacy which he had advocated; after all it had turned out to be Lady Evenswood's, not his, which may have had something to do with his change of mood toward it. He took up the task with a brisk directness. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... faithfulness; a courageous sense of justice which impelled him to fight valiantly for a cause that he deemed right, however unimportant or hopeless the cause might be; a reformer's contempt for hypocrisy and shams, and a blunt directness in freeing his mind about wrong of every kind. He had the faults of his virtues, likewise. Sure of himself and of the right of his position, he had the impatience of an unimaginative man with any other point of ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... nervous tension under which modern, especially modern urban, life is lived. These include what are commonly called the hysterical or over-emotional, or "temperamental" types. In a civilization where most professions demand regularity, restraint, punctuality, and directness, unstability and excess emotionalism are necessarily at a discount. There are the vagabond types who, like young Georges, Jean-qhristophe's protege, regard a profession as a prison house, in which most of one's capacities are cruelly confined. There ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... hoch" has qualities of simplicity, directness, and warm human feeling which link it to the less ornate forms of carol literature. Its first verse is adapted from a secular song; its melody may, perhaps, have been composed by Luther himself. There is another Christmas hymn of Luther's, too—"Vom Himmel kam der Engel Schar"—written ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... There was still another interval before she spoke, and then, with calm directness, ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... nor gesture did she manifest the least consciousness of, or concern for, the inanimate form visible in the adjoining room. With sudden directness, and ignoring the implied threat in her ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Boys were quick to recognize the sincerity of the man. He was often impetuous but he was always candid. His decisions were firm, but he never shirked an argument. His sermons in Chapel were not steeped in oratory but the directness of his appeal, the persistent summons to the standard of Duty and the obvious depth of his emotion gave them power. Largeness of numbers never appealed to him, and he did not in any way strive to call the attention of the world to the School. He wished for success in ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... direct course so as to hunt for Brindle, that Fred had seen, but she was not found. To their delight, however, they saw her footprints on the edge of the creek, proving that she had gone home with the directness of one who felt remorse for wandering from the straight path. She had swum the stream, and was doubtless before the MacClaskey ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... in his mouth when the scout dashed forward like a catapult and struck a tremendous blow, driven with such directness and swiftness that it could not have been parried. At the very instant Hardynge made the charge, Lone Wolf did the same, and the two similar blows, aimed at the same moment, encountered half way with such terrible violence ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... superstition of the Greco-Roman world in the third century, he will find no vagueness at all in Dr. Jacks's interpretation of the teaching of Jesus. He may perhaps find in that interpretation a simplicity, a clarity, and a directness which are not wholly convenient to his idea of a God Who repents, is angry, and ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... the adventures of innocence have so often been the material of fiction? Yes," Voyt replied; "that's exactly what the bored reader complains of. He has asked for bread and been given a stone. What is it but, with absolute directness, a question of interest or, as people say, of the story? What's a situation undeveloped but a subject lost? If a relation stops, where's the story? If it doesn't stop, where's the innocence? It seems to me ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... 1831, he began the publication of the Unitarian Essayist, a small monthly pamphlet, in which the leading theological questions were discussed. In a few months Mr. Peabody went to Cincinnati; and the Essayist was continued by Mr. Huidekoper, who wrote with vigor and directness on the subjects he ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... account has a dignity, a clearness and cogency of statement, worthy of Blackstone or Marshall. It is in marked contrast to the evasive reply of Secretary Cass, both for its fine English and for the directness of its logic. It is published at length in Julian Hawthorne's biography of his father, and is unique for the insight which it affords as to Hawthorne's mental ability in this direction. We may infer from it that if he had made a study of jurisprudence, he might have risen to the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... desired, you should not, as my Mother said, 'lose any time in seeking for it, but ask God to guide you to it'. In many junctures of life this is precisely what, in sober fact, they did. I will not dwell here on their theories, which my Mother put forth, with unflinching directness, in her published writings. But I found that a difference was made between my privileges in this matter and theirs, and this led to many discussions. My parents said: 'Whatever you need, tell Him and He will grant it, if it is His will.' Very well; I had ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... scrawled, "neither Dorothy nor anyone else." With succinct directness he covered the whole story—explained, elucidated. Through every word the golden thread of his deep devotion glowed steadily. Would the letter ever reach her? Would her eyes ever see the reassuring lines? He refused to ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... the Celtic or Iberian brilliance was balanced by a classical delicacy and precision of feature. He had the brow, the nose, the upper lip, the finely-moulded chin, which belong to the more severe and spiritual Greek type. Certainly of Greek blitheness and directness there was no trace. The eye was wavering and profoundly melancholy; all the movements of the tall, finely-built frame were hesitating and doubtful. It was as though the man were suffering from paralysis of some moral muscle or other; as ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Weisheit (1550), a collection of forty-nine fables in which Alberus embodies his views on the relations of Church and State. His satire is incisive, but in a scholarly and humanistic way; it does not appeal to popular passions with the fierce directness which enabled the master of Catholic satire, Thomas Murner, to inflict such telling blows. Several of Alberus's hymns, all of which show the influence of his master Luther, have been retained in the German Protestant hymnal. After Luther's ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of a Thief' is not only stranger but far more interesting than much of the present day fiction. The autobiography of 'Light-fingered Jim' is absorbing, in many pages startling, in its graphicness.... In spite of its naturalness, daring and directness, the work has a marked literary style—a finish that could not have been given by an unexperienced hand. But this adds to rather than detracts from the charm of the ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... straight to the root of the evil, and made no admissions and no compromises. Slavery for him was conceived in greed, born in sin, cradled in shame, and worthy of utter and relentless condemnation. He had the quality of directness and simplicity. When Collins would have turned the abolition influence to the support of a communistic scheme, Douglass opposed it vehemently. Slavery was the evil they were fighting, and their cause would be rendered still more unpopular if they ran after ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... said Will, parenthetically, walking along with his eyes on the ground; she, on the contrary, looked at him often, with frank directness. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... follows in general the traditional arrangement. But in those subjects where his own inventiveness is given free play, as in the series of frescoes illustrating the life of St. Francis, he reveals an extraordinary faculty of design and a dramatic sense which is matched by a directness ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... at an understanding?" she asked, with a grave directness which Bernard thought the most beautiful thing he ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... noted for the qualities which have since made her famous, and is one of the best known among a group of women etchers. Her work, exhibited at the New York Etching Club, is conspicuous on account of its strength, directness, and firmness, allied ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... H. FIELDING-HALL Fiction Short stories dealing with the spirit of England at war. "Admirably written without one superfluous word to mar the directness of their appeal."—New ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... Their quarry had found safety beyond water, or in a lake, and the muhekuns were on a fresh trail. By this time not more than a quarter of a mile of the forest separated Baree from the lone wolf, but the lone wolf was also an old wolf, and with the directness and precision of long experience, he swerved in the direction of the hunters, compassing his trail so that he was heading for a point half or three-quarters of a mile in ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... about the strangers, until they had made a half circuit, keeping the latter in constant expectation of an assault. Then, perfectly secure of their object, the Tetons raised a loud shout, and darted across the prairie in a line for the distant rock, with the directness and nearly with the velocity of the arrow, that has just been ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... pastorate of four and one-half years in the Pilgrim Congregational Church in New Haven, that was applicable only to that church, but possibly some statements have more or less general application. At any rate, it is an interesting case and the sermon was remarkable for its almost brutal directness, its cutting satire, its searching exposition of the wholesale spirit of charity mixed with kindly humour which ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... at him with grave wonder, and then said with her old directness: "But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I should have told you." She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color. "I mean," she said hesitatingly, "of course you have acted nobly, generously, kindly, wisely—but ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... conversational interchange and lights where Mary Nellen excitedly arrayed them. Alston Choate had come to call, and following him appeared an elderly lady whom Jeffrey greeted with more outward warmth than he had even shown his father. Alston Choate had walked in with a simple directness as though he were there daily, and Anne impulsively went forward to him. She felt she knew him very well. They were quite friends. Alston, smiling at her and taking her hand on the way to the colonel and ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... the University, but also by those qualifications which had made him so long a leader in the Faculties of the University. An unusually dignified presence and somewhat judicial manner only conceal a rare simplicity, directness, and kindliness revealed to every one with whom he comes into personal contact. He has the rare qualification of a real and sincere interest in the affairs of those with whom he is dealing, and the kindly ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... so utterly matter-of-fact and there was about his remark so simple an air of directness and of finality that there was no escaping his sincerity, unduly interested though ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... allegro giocoso (giocoso primarily means jokingly), opens with full orchestra. This movement takes the place of a scherzo. It is earnest, vigorous, and free; at times, as Mr. Apthorp says, "almost fierce"; and for straightforward directness stands in manly contrast to ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... was almost embarrassing in his directness, though she acquitted him of any crude intention of ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... put into concise and eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and liked to have someone to listen to him. His most usual and natural listener was his brother. And so in spite of the friendliness and directness of their relations, Konstantin felt an awkwardness in leaving him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch liked to stretch himself on the grass in the sun, and to lie so, basking ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... marriage, to be in the least satisfactory, must be based on love; and that love worth the name is an essentially two-sided business. Indirectly the girl had learnt much on this difficult subject from her great-aunt; and with characteristic directness had agreed with herself to wait till her heart was touched, if she waited a lifetime—though of exactly in what either her heart, or the touching of it, consisted she was deliciously innocent ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of present or future advantage, the rank and fortune of those around, the taunts and censures, or the praise, of those who were hostile to him, had no influence whatever over his actions, and apparently none over his thoughts. It is difficult even to express the simplicity and directness of purpose that adorned him. Some few might be found in the history of mankind, and some one at least among his own friends, equally disinterested and scornful, even to severe personal sacrifices, of every baser motive. But no one, I believe, ever joined this noble but passive virtue to equal active ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... become so inextricably intermingled, that it is very often extremely difficult for us to make out any meaning at all. Then many of his thoughts are so subtle and so profound that they cannot easily be drawn up from the depths in which they lie. No man can write with greater directness, greater lyric vigour, fire, and impulse, than Browning when he chooses— write more clearly and forcibly about such subjects as love and war; but it is very seldom that he does choose. The infinite complexity of human life and its manifold experiences have seized and imprisoned ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... heard anyone speak with the crystal directness of Dom Corria. Each word chipped away some part of the fence which he had deliberately erected around his own intelligence. Certain facts had found crevices in the barrier already; Dom Corria broke ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... at the King's theatre. There were also Handel performances at Covent Garden. Such effects as that of the throbbing mass of vocal tone in the chorus from Joshua, "The people shall tremble," must have overwhelmed him, and the swift directness and colossal climaxes of the "Hallelujah" from the Messiah certainly impressed him. However great the revelation of Handel's supreme might, Haydn never imitated Handel's style or devices for getting ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... essayist on account of the elegance with which they were urged. On the contrary, we would be inclined to disbelief. But when all ornament save that of simplicity is disclaimed—when we are attacked by precision of language, by perfect accuracy of expression, by directness and singleness of thought, and above all by a logic the most rigorously close and consequential—it is hardly a matter for wonder that nine of us out of ten are content to rest in the gratification thus received as in the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... doesn't send us something pretty solid, I'm going into this thing lame," said Kent, dubiously. "Of course, what Boston can send us will be only corroborative; unfortunately we can't wire affidavits. But it will help. What we have secured here lacks directness." ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... left hand, picked up a pencil, and began to write. She headed the petition: "To all who know and love the mountains," and she told the story with the simpleness of one speaking from the heart, and the directness of one who speaks to those sure to understand. "And so I found her here by the Denver paper," she said, after she had stated the tragic facts, "because it was the closest she could come to the mountains. Her heart is not breaking because she is going blind. It is breaking because ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... bodily needs. She went to the fire, and began to pour out some nourishing soup, which she always had there in readiness,—and while she was thus engaged, Thelma's brain cleared more and more,—till with touching directness, and a new hope flushing her face, she asked softly and beseechingly for her child. "I forgot!" she said simply and sweetly. "Of course I am not alone any more. Do give me my baby—I am much better—nearly well—and I should ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... to each other as they groped about in the road, and either making jokes at the expense of the new Electricity Department, or frankly cursing it with true Five Towns directness of speech. And as Mr Blackshaw went down the hill into the town his heart was as black as the street itself with rage and disappointment. He had ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... from hers, but, to his annoyance, they met at Couthie's corner. He would have passed her with a distant bow, but she would have none of that. "You have followed me," said Grizel, with the hateful directness that was no ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... The directness of the question startled the gambler. "I have, no peace of any kind; my heart is full of storms and my life is a ruin," ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... to come over this morning," he began with that directness which always amazed his Turkey Track neighbours and put them all astray as to the man, his real meaning ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... Thou, lowering his eyes, unwilling to give importance to his resolution by the directness ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... occupants of high and responsible stations. The next English sovereign will be pretty much what he was made by his father; and it is no light thing to have had the formation of a mind that may be made to act, with more or less directness, on the condition of two hundred ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... at her, and the playful, companionable directness of her answering gaze thrilled him through and through. He studied her face in silence while she turned and twisted, feeling, but scarcely understanding, the deep import ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... Darwin's place in literature, that is due supereminently to his thoughts. In his expression of them he had the saving quality of directness, and usually wrote with simplicity. Incisive he was not ordinarily; caution of his type harmonises ill with incisiveness. But what he lost thereby he gained in solidity and in permanence. Sometimes, as we have pointed out, his imagination carried him beyond his ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... flickering life that alone was left to me with pungent salt breezes and stinging baptisms of spray, but I had liked that little pretty well. I did not think her so silly as Laura did: she seemed to me so purely simple, that I sometimes wondered if her honest directness and want of guile were folly or not. But I liked to see her, as she cantered past my door on her pony, the gold tendrils thick clustered about her throat and under the brim of her black hat, and her bright blue eyes sparkling with the keen air, and a real wild-rose bloom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... Riviere's world would have cloaked their curiosity under some conventional, indirect form of question. Her frank directness struck him as refreshing, and he answered readily: "The lady you saw in the Cote d'Azur Rapide was my sister-in-law, Mrs Matheson. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... at it again, as I thought, with a directness that left nothing to her intelligence. I told her what I meant was that he couldn't do ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... obscure the significance of words. To disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the 'Discoveries', is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in the subtler graces ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... some excellences lost to the later work. Gareth and Lynette, however, by its fluency and simplicity, and by not being overcharged with meaning, seems to part company with some of this overweighted later performance, and to attempt a recovery of the directness and spring of the start. It is, however, far behind all of them in a momentous particular; for in narrating them, the poet, while able to keep up his immediate connection with the source of tradition, and to narrate with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... from artifice immediately coalesce, as metals that are perfectly pure can be readily cemented together. Mr. Palmer and Mr. Walsingham were intimate in half an hour. There was an air of openness and sincerity about Mr. Walsingham; a freedom and directness in his conversation, which ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... possibility of evil, observe, attaches to knowledge pursued for the noblest ends, if it be pursued imprudently. I have assumed, in speaking of its effect both on men generally and on the artist especially, that it was sought in the true love of it, and with all honesty and directness of purpose. But this is granting far too much in its favor. Of knowledge in general, and without qualification, it is said by the Apostle that "it puffeth up;" and the father of all modern science, writing directly in its praise, yet asserts this danger even in more absolute ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... these days, Letitia," said Billy, with the greatest innocence of mien and expression, a manner he always uses in speaking to Letitia's rather literal directness and in which he delights greatly. "They undress. You are unclothed enough as to ankles and if you roll the sleeves of your tennis shirt to your shoulders, take off your collar and tuck in the flaps, it will be enough to satisfy our cravings for fashionable ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... European tools of the 17th and 18th centuries obscured technical improvement. By contrast, in England and America, tools gained distinction through the directness of their design. Following English patterns, tools of American make were straightforward. Only later, in new tool types, did they imitate the rococo flourish of their European predecessors. In America, as in England, the baroque for things functional seemingly had little ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... that indicate these qualities. What admirable characteristics does the whole selection exhibit? Simplicity, directness, and eloquence of language, noble emotion, loftiness of character, and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... more, force of will, firmness of conviction, energy of character are conducive to strength. Where these exist there will be directness of aim, and the style will be clear, unwavering, and strong. There will be positiveness of statement, and sometimes intolerant dogmatism. Carlyle and Macaulay are among our strongest writers, the former being rugged, and the latter more polished ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... no effort to instruct the congregation, but speaks with simplicity and directness, to ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... the Hellenic instinct for simplicity and grace and directness. They delighted in deep symbolism and parable, in thunder and lightning of diction and imagery, in pomp and state and grandeur. They felt no scruples about going beyond the golden mean. With them all ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... evading any brutal directness of reply, "I have been very much interested with his energy; he is the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... obligatory. Rigid discipline must deal with errors in spelling, grammar, the choice of words and phrases. Previous college training in composition must in general be revised and made over to secure directness and simplicity. At the end, the utmost that can be gained for nineteen out of twenty is some facility, a little sense of style and diction, and copy that will be above the average of the newspaper and not much above that. Examine the writing in the newspapers ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... supposing," he asked with a directness he had learnt from her own methods, "that by that time I may have fallen ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller |
