"Keen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this world—is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism. To use a commercial metaphor, competition is so keen, and the margin of profits has been cut down so closely that virtue cannot afford to throw any bona fide chance away, and must base her action rather on the actual moneying out of conduct than on a flattering prospectus. She will not therefore neglect—as some do who are prudent ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... on the quays, and the rebellion of 1865 was nipped in the bud. Much dissension and dissatisfaction then arose within the Fenian Councils. A great deal of money had been spent and the attempt had proved a failure. The vigilance of the British authorities was so keen, and arrests so numerous, that the available prisons were soon filled, and the hopeful warriors who so valiantly boasted that they would quickly unfurl the "Sunburst of Erin" on the walls of Dublin Castle were obliged to retire into strict seclusion ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... of Fragonard's Cupids." Here we have the younger of the Goncourts, delineated with all the subtlety of a delicate mannerism. Edmond was eighteen at the time. Scarcely free of the ferule of his pedagogues, he already looked at life with that air of keen astonishment which was never to leave him, and which was to kindle in his eye the sort of phosphorescent reflection that shone there to his last hour. It was the elder and more observant of the two who first attempted ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... of a similar kind came about, clearing the way to a natural acquaintanceship. Henriot watched the process with amusement, yet with another feeling too that was only a little less than anxiety. A keen observer, no detail escaped him; he saw the forces of their lives draw closer. It made him think of the devices of young people who desire to know one another, yet cannot get a proper introduction. Fate condescended to such little tricks. They wanted a third ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... thrills to the 'still, sad music of humanity'—that the songs of the poets I love find an echo in your spirit and the aspirations of all struggling souls a sympathy in your heart. Believing this, I have written freely to you, taking a keen pleasure in thus revealing my thoughts and visions to one who will understand. For I too am friendless, in the sense of one standing alone, shut out from the sweet, intimate communion of feeling and opinion that may be held with the heart's friends. Shall you have read this as ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... turned round again, and bent over her baby. It was a pang of acute disappointment, he could not but see, that went through her, though she would not have allowed him to say that name. Strange inconsistency! it ran over John too with a sense of keen indignation, as if he had taken from her ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... sixty per cent. of the plants of the entire Coast, including Alaska. That's why I've been so keen about that north country, Boyd. You ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... that ye drank and ne'er thought of paying for it (not that I minded it muckle in thae days, though I have felt a lack of it sin syne), why I will waste an hour on ye at ony time.—and where is Captain Redgimlet now? he was a wild chap, like yoursell, though they arena sae keen after you poor bodies for these some years bygane; the heading and hanging is weel ower now—awful job—awful job—will ye ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... however, caught sight of the little calabashes of coca which the English carried. That woke them from their torpor, and they began coaxing abjectly (and not in vain) for a taste of that miraculous herb, which would not only make food unnecessary, and enable their panting lungs to endure that keen mountain air, but would rid them, for awhile at least, of the fallen Indian's most unpitying foe, the malady ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Mr. Hampton, and Lord Rufford,—for the hounds went out on Friday, though the Squire of Bragton was lying dead;—but he did not tell Mr. Mainwaring, whom he encountered in the street of the town as he was coming home early, and who was very keen to learn whatever news ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... affection, he hit on the now famous principle, which, if fit for HAHNE-MAN, was fit for ORION. He went to gazing at the sun. What would have destroyed his vision if he had had any, now restored it when he didn't have any, and his sight became so keen that he was able to see through OEROPION—though, I believe, he reinforced his powers of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... like a melon, or developed into nipple-like protuberances, or variously angular, but in the greater number of the species furnished copiously with tufts of horny spines, some of which are exceedingly keen and powerful. These tufts show the position of buds, of which, however, comparatively few are developed. The stems are in most cases leafless, using the term in a popular sense; the leaves, if present at all, being generally reduced to minute scales. In one genus, however, Peireskia, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... must know that the people of Tarascon were tremendously keen on hunting, and Tartarin was the chief of the hunters. You may think this funny when you know there was not a living thing to shoot at within miles of Tarascon; scarcely a sparrow to attract local sportsmen. Ah, but you don't know how ingenious ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... thrust aside, and the little ones came out. At sight of them she leaped forward, a great gladness showing eloquently in every line of her graceful body, rushed up to them, dropped her head and ran her keen nose over them, ears to tail and down their sides and back again, to be sure that they were her own little ones and were not harmed. All the while the fawns nestled close to her, as they had done a moment before to me, and lifted their heads to touch her sides with their noses, and ask in their own ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... on guard below, no doubt. But their eyes are not so keen as yours nor their ears so sharp—and then my imitation of the Prince's voice and manner was very good. I admit I kept my face somewhat in the shadow. They passed me ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... around, with Tom and the others looking for a good place to land. They were out of sight of the village now but did not doubt but that they were observed by the keen eyes of the ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... shall be. The quiet passage of the Confiscation Act was an immense step of governmental progress. Perhaps it was all that the nation as a whole and the government were ready for. It may answer as a keen wedge. But we trust that, in December, Congress will make clean work by the full emancipation of all slaves in the rebel States, and by provision in some way for the speedy and certain extinction of slavery ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... Idealist; at least, you don't like practical details. But still you take a great interest in other people psychologically. You want to know, I'm sure, just how a shepherd really feels, and why he feels it. I don't even care for that, and I'm not very keen on scenery, or places either, or even things. My Uncle Ted's so frightfully fond of Things. He's a collector, you know, and I don't sympathise a bit. In fact, ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... they slept beneath the stars, uncovered by any tent, and saluted constantly by the whining coyotes, whose vocalization was betimes broken by the hoarser, roaring note of the great gray buffalo wolf. At morn they awoke to an air surcharged with some keen elixir which gave delight in sense of living. The subtle fragrance of the plains, born of no fruit or flower, but begotten of the sheer cleanliness of the thrice-pure air, came to their nostrils as they actually snuffed the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... excessively weary of the work before the end of the eight years, he had much keen enjoyment in the course of it. Thus he wrote to Sir J.D. Hooker (1847?):—"As you say, there is an extraordinary pleasure in pure observation; not but what I suspect the pleasure in this case is rather derived from comparisons ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... friends were remonstrating with him about an incidental allusion in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, his old friend, Lord Kames—still at eighty-three as keen for metaphysical controversy as he had been with Bishop Butler sixty years before—was preparing an elaborate attack upon the theory of the book itself, which he proposed to incorporate in a new edition of his own Principles of Morality and Religion. Before publishing this examination ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... showed keen interest. This newest development had rather startled him, and made an almost irresistible appeal to his love for the bizarre in crime. The very fact that the circumstances smacked of the impossible intrigued him. He narrowed his eyes and gazed again upon the form of the dead man. Finally ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... of blindness which denies us the gift to see ourselves as others see us I never had reckoned myself to be in his class, avoir-dupoisefully speaking. But as we lined up two abreast alongside the station, with our camp duffel piled about us, the keen-eyed guide, standing slightly to one side, considered our abdominal profiles, and the look he cast at my companion said as plainly as words, "Well, I see you've brought a spare set along with you in case ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... wrath on us, this keen revenge? We never injured Saiawush; the kings Of Ind and Chin are guiltless of his blood; Then why this wrath on strangers? Spells and charms, Used by Afrasiyab—the cause of all— Have brought us hither to contend against ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... part is bad enough, but the physical symptoms are appalling beyond representation. The look on the face of the opium sufferer is indeed one of such keen mental anguish that outsiders may well be excused for supposing that is all. I shall never forget till my dying-day that awful Chinese face which actually made me rein my horse at the door of the opium hong where it ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... many of these solemn people. Whenever I see an exceedingly solemn man, I know he is an exceedingly stupid man. No man of any humor ever founded any religion—never. Humor sees both sides, while reason is the holy light; humor carries the lantern and the man with a keen sense of humor is preserved from the solemn stupidities of superstition. I like a man who has got good feeling for everybody—good fellowship. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... intolerably affected him. He felt toward them a kind of reasonless antipathy that was something more than the physical and spiritual repugnance common to us all. Doubtless this feeling was due to his unusually acute sensibilities—his keen sense of the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been the cause, he could not look upon a dead body without a loathing which had in it an element of resentment. What others have respected as the dignity of death had to him no existence—was ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... dinner interrupted them in the midst of their talk; a not unwelcome summons, for exercise in the bracing winter air had given them keen appetites. ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... that attribute of genius, ability to command slumber at will. Swiftly the troubled deeps of thought grew calm; on their placid surface inconsequent visions were mirrored darkly, fugitive scenes from the store of subconscious memory: Crane's lantern-jawed physiognomy, keen eyes semi-veiled by humorously drooping lids, the extreme corner of his mouth bulging round his everlasting cigar ... grimy lions in Trafalgar Square of a rainy afternoon ... the octagonal room of L'Abbaye Theleme at three ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... interest in the world of nature is our opportunity to lead him to love the gracious source of all beauty and goodness. How keen is the child's enjoyment of the beauty of the world! Can we forever fix the general concept of all this beauty as the thought of God in the words of flower and leaf, mountain and stream? And might we not also connect the idea of God with the affairs of daily life? That depends on ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... Plato became a god and Gemisthos not less than divine for bringing the tidings. He kept a lamp always burning before Plato's bust, and later founded the Platonic Academy, at which Plato's works were discussed, orations delivered, and new dialogues exchanged, between such keen minds as Marsilio, Pulci, Landini, Giovanni Cavalcanti, Leon Battista Alberti, the architect and scholar, Pico dell a Mirandola, the precocious disputant and aristocratic mystic, Poliziano, the tutor of Lorenzo's sons, and Lorenzo the Magnificent himself. It was thus from the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... be going through that scene with another as his bride; and as the years rolled by he would forget her, or think of her only now and then at times—not with keen regret, but with ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... conversations and public utterances, which her owners did not fail to recognize and appreciate. Her only distinct recollection of her native home was, that every morning early her mother poured out water before the rising sun. Her growing intelligence and keen appreciation of the blessings of civilization overreached mere animal grief at the separation from her mother. And as she knew more of the word of God, she became more deeply interested in ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... a land, I, too, Where warm keen incense on the sea-wind blows, And all the winter long the skies are blue, And the brown deserts blossom with ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... rests—now find in the reported decisions of the courts of last resort in all the other States a fertile source of supply when they are looking for a rule to fit a case for which the ancient law made no direct provision. Keen intellects from the bench, aided perhaps by keener ones from the bar in forty-five different jurisdictions, are discussing the problems of the day as they appear mirrored in litigated causes. What is a new question in one State was set at rest ten years or ten days ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... game of goose was there expos'd to view And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew: The seasons, fram'd with listing, found a place, And Prussia's monarch shew'd his lamp-black face The morn was cold; he views with keen desire, A rusty grate unconscious of a fire. An unpaid reck'ning on the frieze was scor'd, And five crack'd tea-cups dress'd the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... slashes of his knife, held quarte and tierce, he cut a circle around the top of the head, as perfect as if it had been traced by compasses. He then took a turn of the hair over his wrist, giving it a quick jerk outward. At the same instant, the keen blade passed under the skin, and the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... pastoral Colin Clout, for he ever retained his first poetic name, was faithful to his ideal. But in the stern Proconsul, under whom he had become hardened into a keen and resolute colonist, he had come in contact with a new type of character; a governor under the sense of duty, doing the roughest of work in the roughest of ways. In Lord Grey, he had this character, not as ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Leigh, who resided in a handsome house in the Strand. I frequently paid him a visit, and was now sorry to see that his health was breaking, and that he was becoming gradually weaker and weaker. Still he was as vivacious and full of anecdote as ever, while he took a keen interest ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... is not too much to say that nothing more interesting or more wholesome is offered this year for older boys and girls. It is a charming story, in which the author has delineated character as carefully, and with as keen an artistic sense, as if she had been writing a novel. Her book is a novel, indeed, with children and the lives of children, instead of men and women and their lives, for its ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... closing to say a few words of Dr. Storrs as a friend. Through many years he was not only my pastor but the most honored and beloved friend of my life. His sense of humor was keen, and his playfulness of manner constituted not the least of his charms to those who knew him intimately. He never seemed to take a narrow view of any subject, but was always lenient to and tolerant of those whose opinions differed from his own, ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various
... shapes at whose dread sight the base Olympians fled to their fitting earth? Warriors, whose weapons were the rocks, whose firebrands were the burning woods, is the day forgotten when Jove himself turned craven, and skulked in Egypt? At least my memory is keen enough to support my courage, and whatever the dread Enceladus may counsel, my voice ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... force and distinctness; their vision penetrates the tangle and obscurity where that of others fails like a spent or impotent bullet. How many eyes did Gilbert White open? how many did Henry Thoreau? how many did Audubon? how many does the hunter, matching his sight against the keen and alert sense of a deer or a moose, or fox or a wolf? Not outward eyes, but inward. We open another eye whenever we see beyond the first general features or outlines of things,—whenever we grasp the special details and characteristic markings that ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... that he had found the children, and that they had undoubtedly seen a woman exactly corresponding with Holmes's description, and wearing either spectacles or eyeglasses, failed to rouse any sign of keen interest. He was more attentive when Susan, who waited upon us at lunch, volunteered the information that she believed Mr. Smith had been out for a walk yesterday morning, and that he had only returned half an hour before the tragedy occurred. I could not myself see ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Human-kindness in its warmest glow Wants but Occasion, its full worth to show! Sometimes a Settler viewed him with suspicion, And paused ere he would give the least permission For him to enter his small, rude, log dwelling, While WILLIAM'S heart was with keen feelings swelling. Anon, a gentle word would turn the scale— The man would list the youthful tinker's tale; Would give a hearty welcome to his house, And introduce him to his thrifty spouse; Would bid her bring; that leaky pail, or ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... his strength, of medium stature, his body vigorous and without the corpulency of his later years, appearing tall beside the small, delicate, boyish form of Melanchthon. In the face which showed the effects of vigils and inward struggles, shone two fiery eyes whose keen brilliancy was hard to meet. He was a respected man, not only in his order, but at the University; not a great scholar—he learned Greek from Melanchthon in the first year of his professorship, and Hebrew soon after. He had no extensive book learning, and ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... her keen eyes noticing the varied assortment of articles displayed for sale. A long line of red handkerchiefs was fastened to a cord high above one counter. Long shelves were stacked high with ginghams, calicoes and finer dress materials. There were gaudy rugs and blankets ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Indians, some of the girls are pretty and interesting, but with exposure, cruelty, immorality, debauchery, idle and loose habits, the pretty, dark-eyed girl soon becomes the coarse, vulgar woman, with the last trace of virtue blown to the winds. If any one with but little keen sense of observation will peep into a Gipsy's tent when the man is making pegs and skewers, and contrast him with the low-caste Indian potter at his wheel and the carpenter at his bench—all squatting upon the ground—he will not be long ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... diminished rapidly until only fine dirt and the smallest bits of gravel remained. At this stage he began to work very deliberately and carefully. It was fine washing, and he washed fine and finer, with a keen scrutiny and delicate and fastidious touch. At last the pan seemed empty of everything but water; but with a quick semicircular flirt that sent the water flying over the shallow rim into the stream, he disclosed a layer of black sand on the bottom of the pan. So thin was this layer ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... chest, carelessly swinging one knee over the other; a man of middle height, neither tall nor short, with well-bronzed cheeks, a forehead broad and white, and an aquiline nose. He wore a beard and moustaches, and his chin jutted out. His eyes were keen, but good-humoured. Though spare he was sinewy; and an iron-hilted sword propped against his thigh seemed made for use rather than show. The upper part of his dress was of brown cloth, the lower of leather. A weather-stained cloak, which he had ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... bright shallows of her eyes. "Come, love is not so bad," she said, "and Hamdi can be charming." Then as she saw a shudder run through the young girl before her, "Oh, if you do not fancy him!" she cried airily, yet with a keen look. ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... he won his battles. That is right—his to the last! How keen and cold it looks! Will it be very painful?.... No—I will not try the point, or my heart might fail me. I will fall on it at once: let it hurt me as it may, it will be too late to draw back then. And after all it is his sword—It will not have the heart to torture me much. And yet ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... a consecutive narrative. They will be given in full, of course, in the scientific report, but here it will be far more convenient to continue simply to abstract and quote as in the former chapter. We have subjected every word to a keen critical scrutiny, and my own brief memories and impressions of lunar things have been of inestimable help in interpreting what would otherwise have been impenetrably dark. And, naturally, as living beings, our interest centres far more upon the strange community of lunar insects in which ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... sea-water is extracted from the ham, and the coffee, which is in the berry and unroasted, after a course of judicious washing and scorching, is also rendered fit for use. The biscuits also turn out better than was anticipated. So their breakfast is not so bad, after all—indeed, to appetites keen as theirs, ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... Norman-French in very ancient characters, and so faded and mouldered away as to be almost illegible. It was apparently an old Norman drinking song, that might have been brought over by one of William the Conqueror's carousing followers. The writing was just legible enough to keep a keen antiquity hunter on a doubtful chase; here and there he would be completely thrown out, and then there would be a few words so plainly written as to put him on the scent again. In this way he had been led on for a whole day, until he had ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... among the most attractive of the many tales which the great French novelist wrote for her grandchildren. They are full of fancy, of vivid description, and of a keen appreciation of the best way to arouse ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... international, world-wide, revolutionary movement. Here is a tremendous human force. It must be reckoned with. Here is power. And here is romance—romance so colossal that it seems to be beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. These revolutionists are swayed by great passion. They have a keen sense of personal right, much of reverence for humanity, but little reverence, if any at all, for the rule of the dead. They refuse to be ruled by the dead. To the bourgeois mind their unbelief in the dominant conventions ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... welcome in its place, the charm for the sake of which we read depended on something different from either. My elders used to read novels aloud; and I can still remember four different passages which I heard, before I was ten, with the same keen and lasting pleasure. One I discovered long afterwards to be the admirable opening of "What will He Do with It": it was no wonder that I was pleased with that. The other three still remain unidentified. One is a little vague; it was about a dark, tall house at night, and people groping ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at this period, for new impressions and ideas gained from descriptions and accompanying pictures is as keen as his desire for sense impressions gained from the world of nature and activity about him. This wider range of information and ideas, it is believed, he may in some measure gain from ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... a clear day, and the shepherds' keen eyes could see far along the winding road that stretched out across the low hills towards Shechem. Long before Joseph came within hail, his brothers saw his figure in the distance hastening towards them. Perhaps it was the gay colour of his coat that ...
— Joseph the Dreamer • Amy Steedman
... gay, between musical evenings, children's parties, clerical feastings of district visitors, soirees for Sunday-school teachers, and Christmas-trees for their scholars. Such a universal favourite as Harry, with so keen a relish for amusement, was sure to fall an easy prey to invitations; but the rest of the family stood amazed to see him accompanied everywhere by Tom, to whom the secular and the religious dissipations of Stoneborough had always hitherto been equally ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whitewashed buildings under thatched roofs, more often a bleak granite building, built to withstand the buffeting of winter storms, grey amid its setting of bare grey ash-trees or twisted grey alders, with the brown hills behind and the brilliant blue of the sky overhead. The air here is keen and brilliant; there is an edge to all outlines, and a keenness to all colours, which the softer and more humid air of sheltered country does not give. The yellow of the primroses which cluster thickly in hollow and on bank has a brilliance ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... impressionable. They admire people for being excited. An American so struggling for some disproportionate trifle (like one of my lectures) really feels in a mystical way that he is right, because it is his whole morality to be keen. So long as he wants something very much, whatever it is, he feels he has his conscience behind him, and the common sentiment of society behind him, and God and the whole universe behind him. Wedged on one ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... and oak, yielding now a glimpse of Tiber and S. Peter's, now opening on a purple section of the distant Sabine Hills, we came to Monte Rotondo. The sun sank; and from the flames where he had perished, Hesper and the thin moon, very white and keen, grew slowly into sight. Now we follow the Tiber, a swollen, hurrying, turbid river, in which the mellowing Western sky reflects itself. This changeful mirror of swift waters spreads a dazzling foreground to valley, hill and ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... I had grieved that aviation, in which I took a keen interest as a member of the Aerial League, was being fostered for military purposes instead of for that ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... a like nature followed, and the Rover boys listened with keen interest to every word that was said. They recognized in Carson Davenport the man who had written to Jack's father hoping to get the latter interested in some fake oil companies, trusting that The Rover Company in New York ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... of this war, very singular skill is manifested. A keen observer of all that passed before him, aided by a most retentive memory, and a fertile imagination, enabled our pilgrim forefather to gain much knowledge in a short time. He had been engaged, as a private ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a reason; and on some slight pretenses and hearsay evidence I was sent to the Tower, where the lady who was my greatest enemy was appointed to watch me and lie in the same chamber with me. This was really as bad a punishment as my death, for she insulted me with those keen reproaches and spiteful witticisms, which threw me into such vapors and violent fits that I knew not what I uttered in this condition. She pretended I had confessed talking ridiculous stuff with a ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... move on and let a man do his work!" said the middle-aged street-sweep, smacking his lips over the fine flavour of his chewing tobacco and taking a deep breath of the keen autumn air. ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... the odd name of Pansie, and whether it was really her baptismal name, I have not ascertained. More probably it was one of those pet appellations that grow out of a child's character, or out of some keen thrill of affection in the parents, an unsought-for and unconscious felicity, a kind of revelation, teaching them the true name by which the child's guardian angel would know it,—a name with playfulness and love in it, that we often observe to supersede, in ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this remark, and a light flashed from his eyes in the darkness of the room, which he could not conceal from his keen-sighted friend. "M. de Baisemeaux!" he said, "why did D'Artagnan send ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... steps of the building, amid the crowd of brokers and speculators, I saw a tall, broad-shouldered man of fifty or fifty-five, his face keen, shrewd and hard, broad at the temples and tapering to a strong jaw, a yellow-gray mustache and imperial half-hiding and half- revealing the firm lines of the mouth, with the mark of the wolf strong upon the whole. It was ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... weakness overtakes the heart, and a species of communion with this splendid calm of evening, with this vague and mysterious chilliness of outspread life, with the keen and melancholy poetry which seems to arise from flowers and things, develops itself revealed at this sweet and pensive ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... all this, for the Yogis, while preaching the folly of sense life, and manifesting the teaching in their lives, nevertheless believe in any and all exercises calculated to "sharpen" the Mind, and develop it to a keen state and condition. ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... evening Cousin Tom called, bringing Will Challice again—but how changed! Was such a change really due to evening dress? Keen of feature, bright of eye, full of animation. "Why, Will," said Nelly, "what is the matter with you sometimes? When you were here this morning, one could not get a word out of you. Your ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... traversing the circuit of the world, and ransacking the universities and high schools of various provinces, were zealous in combatting for our desires, in the sure and certain hope of reward. What leveret could escape amidst so many keen-sighted hunters? What little fish could evade in turn their hooks and nets and snares? From the body of the Sacred Law down to the booklet containing the fallacies of yesterday, nothing could escape these searchers. Was some devout discourse uttered at ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... A small, keen-faced man, whose steady gray eyes were shielded by tortoise-rimmed spectacles, had come into the room and now stood quietly at the bar, sipping a glass of Vichy. He was sharply observant of the party as it broke up, Pedlow and Sneyd preceding the younger men to the corridor, ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... engaged to a man, named Hardwicke—a rich city man, rather a bore, but a man who would make an excellent husband. Loudwater knew that Hardwicke was ready and eager to marry me, and I suppose that that helped to make him keen on me. At any rate, he made love to me, not nearly so badly as you'd think, and persuaded me ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... fish in the room restored me. I knew not whence it came, but its soft presence yielding to my keen detector restored my professional pride and self-respect. I then felt I was something of a detective after all. I eyed a revolving ventilator in the window-pane as a possible avenue of its entrance from the culinary department. I did ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... the great ocean that stretched away before her eyes lay a world she knew nothing of; yet since her earliest childhood her keen mind had told her that the silk with which she was clothed, the jewels that encrusted her dagger-hilt, the ships whose pillage had yielded up these things, must come from lands far distant, more desirable than the maroon country of Jamaica. More, her ears attuned to the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... foreignness, this likeness in difference, that made it strike so sharply, with such a pleasant pungency on Elizabeth's senses? Or was it something else—some perception of an opening future, not only for Canada but for herself, mingling with the broad light, the keen air, the lovely strangeness of ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... smiles or fumes, according to the force of the instinct for justice with which he has been blessed—or cursed—by nature. Nothing, unless it be a healthy, athletic conscience, is so wofully destructive of all happiness and comfort in this life as a keen sense ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... knees his beard was flowing, To his spurs his locks descended. Fathom-wide his eyes were parted, Fathom-wide his trousers measured; Round his knee the girth was greater, And around his hip 'twas doubled. 160 Then he sharpened keen the axe-blade, Brought the polished blade to sharpness; Six the stones on which he ground it, Seven the stones on which ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... acts of man gifted with superhuman powers. In the unscientific, primeval periods in which these beliefs were born and elaborated into oral and written form, their origin is not surprising. But to all who have studied the creation of a mythology, no phase is a more curious one than that the keen, practical American of to-day should engage in the same process of hero-building which has given us Jupiter, Wotan, King Arthur, and others. By a slow evolution we have well-nigh discarded from the lives of our greatest men of the past all human ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads Above men's oft-unheeding heads, And his big blessing downward sheds. I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves; Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, And briery mazes bounding lanes, And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, And milky stems and sugary veins; For every long-armed woman-vine That round a piteous tree doth twine; For passionate odors, and divine Pistils, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... was against him, for he could not get near the captain the whole of that day, and there were keen eyes always fastened upon him by the convicts, who were on deck by fifty at a time, and watched each other closely for fear of treachery. Amongst each fifty there were always some who were in the plot, and if they had suspected Birt of betraying them they would have made short work of him, ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... a keen student of the political history of this country to determine how far the opinions and activities of those who were in opposition on questions of such prime importance as slavery, secession, and unrestricted immigration, served as ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... with anxious eyes The thoughts that flicker'd on Alceste's mien, Veiling dishonour under Virtue's guise, And avarice as though 'twere sorrow keen; And still 'mid tears, and groans, and piping sighs, He querulled forth his plaints the space between, "Must thy poor father beg so near the grave, "Be not so ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... modern composer uses ("the only proper orchestra for comedy," as Berlioz said), eschewing even those "epical instruments," the trombones. It would not do to push the parallel too far, though a keen listener might feel tempted also to see a point of semblance in the Teutonism which tinctures the Italian music of both men; a Teutonism which adds an ingredient more to the taste of other peoples than that ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... hour in the afternoon and Gladys danced for her amusement. The girls gasped with wonder and delight, for they had never seen anything like it. She was as light on her feet as thistledown and as graceful as a swaying rose. Nyoda watched her with keen pleasure, but it was not her twinkling feet, nor the artistic posing of her limbs that held her attention, but the new expression on her face. The old selfish, blase' look was gone, and her features were lit up by an eager smile that sparkled in her eyes and curved up the corners of her pretty mouth. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... more to himself than to them, but one little fellow, catching the word salient took a chance on nose and jumped up and down in joyous abandon, calling, "Bump le nez—le salient!" apparently in keen appreciation of the absurdity of the ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... refiner of English versification, was a member of the lower house; a man of considerable fortune, and not more distinguished by his poetical genius than by his parliamentary talents, and by the politeness and elegance of his manners. As full of keen satire and invective in his eloquence, as of tenderness and panegyric in his poetry, he caught the attention of his hearers, and exerted the utmost boldness in blaming those violent counsels by which the commons were governed. Finding all opposition ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... had assembled at Oxford. But the little company of philosophers had hardly begun their meetings at Gresham College when they found themselves objects of a general interest. Science suddenly became the fashion of the day. Charles the Second was himself a fair chymist, and took a keen interest in the problems of navigation. The Duke of Buckingham varied his freaks of rhyming, drinking, and fiddling by fits of devotion to his laboratory. Poets like Dryden and Cowley, courtiers like Sir Robert Murray and Sir Kenelm Digby, joined the scientific company to which in token of his sympathy ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... the county," said Aunt Jane exultingly, as she followed the vanishing carriage with her keen gaze. "He went to the legislatur' last winter; the 'Hon. Richard Elrod' they call him now. And I can remember the time when he was jest Milly Baker's boy, and nothin' honorable ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... remark must be made before quitting the subject of the relation of public opinion to the opinion of the majority. The late Gabriel Tarde, with his habitual keen insight, insisted on the importance of the intensity of belief as a factor in the spread of opinions. There is a common impression that public opinion depends upon and is measured by the mere number of persons to be ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... His keen, dark eyes swept the room with an alert glance. On her desk glowed a vase of sunshine-colored daffodils. She remembered afterward that, while his one swift glance had seemed to take in everything in the room, it had ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... Corporal Downey, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police." At the word police Wentworth started ever so slightly, but caught himself on the instant. He searched the keen gray eyes of the officer as he extended his hand, but if Downey noticed the momentary trepidation ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... on the coast, sea-bathing will be found of singular benefit. The effects, however, of sea-bathing upon such a constitution must be particularly watched, for unless it is succeeded by a glow,—a feeling of increased strength,—and a keen appetite, it will do no good, and ought at once to be abandoned for the warm or tepid bath. The opinion that warm baths generally relax and weaken, is erroneous; for in this case, as in all cases when properly employed, they would give tone and vigour to the whole system; in fact, ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... The keen eye of the young man looked with hers, and found the reason for the sudden scene. A serpent, some feet in length—one of the mottled, harmless species sometimes locally called the blow-snake—obviously had ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... he literally lifted his gaze from the trail, seeking an answer in the sky, he saw something that halted him abruptly. He stood rooted in his tracks, his head thrust slightly forward, very much as a keen pointer freezes ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... This Government feels a keen satisfaction in having thus been enabled to testify its adherence to the broadest principles of humanity even amidst the clash of war, and it is to be hoped that the extension of the Red Cross compact to hostilities by sea as well as on land ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... so in the evolution of a forceful people, its character takes on the form of the means that has been most efficacious in moulding it. There is no instance in the authentic annals of the human family where a masterly people has emerged into greatness from the tame school of gentle methods. Trials keen and severe, have first slashed, cut and tortured the entire being in mind and soul to fit it for the new life it is to enjoy in accordance with its destined end. What has ever been thus ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... stood with one little hand on the rail and the other on the brim of the hat the wind would have torn away from her, her pose displayed a daintily-proportioned figure. The girl was, however, as oblivious of her companions as she was of the dust, and her eyes were at last keen with wonder. She had seen nothing which resembled the panorama that unrolled itself before her as the great mountain locomotives sped on through the primeval wilderness, and the wild beauty of it left a deeper mark on her because her Canadian journey had been more ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... more hold of, through their nobility; and by them, of more through their authority. By how much the more welcome then the heart of Victorinus was esteemed, which the devil had held as an impregnable possession, the tongue of Victorinus, with which mighty and keen weapon he had slain many; so much the more abundantly ought Thy sons to rejoice, for that our King hath bound the strong man, and they saw his vessels taken from him and cleansed, and made meet for Thy honour; and become serviceable for the Lord, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... other, watch closely and you will see their lips move in readiness to pronounce them. There may be some whose lip-movements you will be unable to detect. If so, it will be because your eye is not quick enough or keen enough to ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... was a somewhat short and thick-set but bright and active-looking boy, with a pair of very keen, greenish-gray eyes. But, after all, the first word he spoke to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... little of the dwarf's distortion about him. He is simply a man in miniature: in aspect, much like any other man. His specialty is impersonation. First he appears as a drill sergeant, then as a headwaiter, then as a gas collector, then as some other familiar fellow. But what keen insight and penetrating humour in every detail of the picture! How mirth bubbles out! Here we have burlesque, of course, and there is even some horseplay in it, but at bottom how deft it is, and how close ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... aeroplane may travel rapidly it is not too fleet for a keen observer who is skilled in his peculiar task. He may only gather a rough idea of the disposition of troops, their movements, the lines of communication, and other details which are indispensable to his commander, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... when you tell her it's your subject and that you want it," went on Mrs. Kennedy, smoothly. Genevieve did not see the keen, almost fearful glances, that Mrs. Kennedy was giving her between the ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... South Carolina, and left thirty men to hold it. They were at that time the only white men from-Mexico to the North Pole, and a keen business man could have bought the whole thing, Indians and all, for a good team and a jug of ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... National Character.—Closely related to climate and soil, these qualities of race are a powerful directing influence in industry. Muscular strength and endurance, yielding in a temperate climate an even continuity of vigorous effort; keen zest of material comfort stimulating invention and enterprise; acquisitiveness, and the love of external display; the moral capacities of industry, truth, orderly co-operation; all these are leading ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... of those who have passed on, as well as for those who remain, requires that all the facts be given full weight. The truth of the matter is that it is our keen sense of loss that gives rise to the desire for a message of some sort. We long to once more get into touch with one that seems to be lost to us. We are not really thinking much about his welfare. As a matter of fact he has not lost sight of us and ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... open declivity to his right. He looked in that direction, but though the columns would have been visible quite far off, they were not to be seen. It seemed to the count that things were beginning to stir in the French camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant confirmed this. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... was spent in meditating on these recent incidents. I contrived, and alternately rejected, innumerable methods of accounting for the presence of Zenobia and Priscilla, and the connection of Westervelt with both. It must be owned, too, that I had a keen, revengeful sense of the insult inflicted by Zenobia's scornful recognition, and more particularly by her letting down the curtain; as if such were the proper barrier to be interposed between a character like hers and a perceptive faculty like mine. For, was ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... interferes with the action of another, and operates instead by force of superior inherent strength or temporary activity. For example, alimentiveness may be in powerful operation with regard to its appropriate object, producing a keen appetite, and yet it may not act, in consequence of the more powerful operation of cautiousness, warning against evil consequences likely to ensue from the desired indulgence. This liability to flit from under the control of one feeling ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... out, and the fresh, keen autumn air refreshed and invigorated her. She found the little cottage nearly hidden from view by the heavily-laden apple trees, but there was a stillness about the place that was not usual. The door was on the latch, and when she stepped inside ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... with Elias was complicated by a strain of keen anxiety upon his own account. Though most of the story seemed absurd to his intelligence, there remained enough of possible and even probable to justify dismay in so respectable a man. It seemed more than likely that his nephew, that unlucky boy, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... great earth and makes it different things to all its children. With what measure we mete to it, it measures to us again. This is the rebound of the hard earth—sensitive and soft, although we call it hard, and feeling with an instant keen discrimination the different touch of each different human nature which is laid upon it. Reaction is equal to ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Caecilius, "that feeble frame, ah! how will it bear the strong iron, or the keen flame, or the ruthless beast? My child, what do I feel, who am free, thus handing you over to be the sport of ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Ancient Rome and Italy, as the most thoroughly versed scholar now living in these departments of historical investigation. To a wonderfully exact and exhaustive knowledge of these subjects, he unites great powers of generalization, a vigorous, spirited, and exceedingly graphic style and keen analytical powers, which give this history a degree of interest and a permanent value possessed by no other record of the decline and fall of the Roman Commonwealth. "Dr. Mommsen's work," as Dr. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... statement that as yet she was entirely oblivious of self. The opening vistas of a broader, higher life were too absorbing, too intoxicating in themselves, to permit the intrusion of the disturbing element of personality. Her eager absorption of the minutest detail, her keen perception of the slightest discordant note, pleased Miss Hartwell as much ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... row of ill-built houses was straggling towards the harbor. The moonlight fell upon no passenger along the whole extent, but in the third domicile which Robin passed there was a half-opened door, and his keen glance detected ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... readily. On the other hand the summer is more kindly in the mountains for then the upland grass is rich when the pastures of the plains are burnt, and it is more comfortable to cultivate the trees in a keen air. ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... easy to judge how the girl fares for whom the weekly wage is less. In the East End it falls sometimes as low as three shillings and sixpence (84c.). The girls club together, huddling in small back rooms, and spending all that can be saved on dress. Naturally, unless with exceptionally keen consciences, they find what is called "sin" an easier fact than starvation; and so the story goes on, and out of greed is born the misery, which, at last, compels greed to heavier poor rates, and thus an approximation to the distribution ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... got started they found that the air was particularly keen. Both of them were glad they had taken the precaution to cover up their ears, and wear their ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... which that of Ulysses was a plaything, "Twelve hours a day for twenty years together!" Can a man, then, who plays the barbiton be always playing also with his little ones? No, Pisani; often, with the keen susceptibility of childhood, poor Viola had stolen from the room to weep at the thought that thou didst not love her. And yet, underneath this outward abstraction of the artist, the natural fondness flowed all the same; and as she grew up, the dreamer had understood the dreamer. And now, shut ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of Lactantius, which he has published with Latin notes. He is also to give you a few anecdotes for your Life of Thomson, who I find was private tutor to the present Earl of Hadington, Lord Hailes's cousin, a circumstance not mentioned by Dr. Murdoch. I have keen expectations of delight from your edition of The ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell |
