"Keenness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... versus Beckford; and as Pringle was almost exactly twice as good as each of the twins taken individually, when they combined it made the sides very even, and the test matches were fought out with the most deadly keenness. ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... first class, the keen and regular player, little need be said. A keen player is a gem of purest rays serene, and when to his keenness he adds regularity and punctuality, life ceases to become the mere hollow blank that it would otherwise become, and joy ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... he replied with something complimentary. But afterwards he continued to look at me in silence with a keenness and curiosity I did not understand. At last, when M. de Rosny's impatience had reached a high pitch, the marquis seemed impelled to add something. 'You quite understand M. de Rosny?' he said. 'Without saying anything disparaging of M. de Marsac, who is, no doubt, a man of honour'—and he ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... of these lay his power, and yet in all of them it was in some fashion apparent. No great force of personality characterised him, and yet his monarchy was absolute. No splendour of intellect, no keenness of wit, no smartness of repartee were his. Only a shrewdness of understanding that was never cruel, a humour that had ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... fragrant odors and fresh or close smells. There is some evidence when we observe animals, or even primitive men, that the human race has been evolving greater sensibility to certain odors, while at the same time there has been a loss of keenness ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... continuous chain, and which run in almost a straight line from north to south. From the icy pole the wind sweeping over the frozen ocean and the snowy wastes of the northern provinces finds nowhere a hindrance to its cruel blasts, and spreads its chill over the whole land with such steady keenness as to make the climate of the exposed parts of the Black Sea coast almost as wintry as that of the White Sea. At Odessa in the early days of October both our hotel and the private houses we had occasion to enter had already put up double doors and windows, and people lived in ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... the eighteenth there was a gradual progress toward religious liberalism. The population steadily increased, and New England's unremitting struggle with a not too friendly soil, her hardihood upon the seas, and her keenness in trade, became proverbial throughout the country. Her seaport towns were wealthy. The general standards of living remained frugal, but extreme poverty was rare. Her people still made, as in the earliest days of the colonies, silent and unquestioned sacrifices for education, and her chief ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... till the reader sees not the real figures, but the enormous, grotesque shadows of them, executing wild dances on a screen. An instance of this process is described by himself in his Vision of Sudden Death. But his unworldliness and faculty of vision-seeing were not inconsistent with the keenness of judgment and the justness and delicacy of perception displayed in his Biographical Sketches of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and other contemporaries: in his critical papers on Pope, Milton, Lessing, Homer and the Homeridae: his essay on Style; and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... had seen his face. She had seen—and it was not her imagination, but a real and bitter irony—that of all the people in the room she alone had been the object of his quiet greeting. She knew then—for her eyes had not lost their keenness—that the eighteen months in which they had scarcely met had made no difference to him. He still reverenced and loved her. For him she was still "Lakshmi," the goddess of beauty and perfection; for him she was still ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... of the leading Prussian social stars Opines that War, although it makes for leanness, Not only banishes discordant jars And purifies Berlin of all uncleanness, But places her, beatified by Mars, Upon a pinnacle of mental keenness, Changing the cult of trencher and of bowl To feasts of reason and o'erflows ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... The keenness of the crew to get to work was evidenced by the fact that although the men's dinner was now ready, it was with the utmost difficulty that they could be persuaded to go below and eat it; and when at length they went, in obedience to the Captain's imperative orders, they returned to the deck ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... each other. What especially struck me in the youth was a kind of sweetness and innocence—perhaps what some would call "greenness"—that at home I had associated only with country boys, and not even with them latterly. The smartness and knowingness and a certain hardness or keenness of our city youths,—there was no trace of it at all in this young Cockney. But he liked American travelers better than those from his own country. They were more friendly and communicative,—were not so afraid to speak to "a fellow," and at ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... is very nicely discriminated. Beatrice, intelligent as she is, has little of reflection in her wit; but throws it off in rapid flashes whenever any object ministers a spark to her fancy. Though of the most piercing keenness and the most exquisite aptness, there is no ill-nature about it; it stings indeed, but does not poison. The offspring merely of the moment and the occasion, it catches the apprehension, but quickly slides from the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... language lived long and died slowly, and the Christian hymn-writers wrote in its decadence. It was then an instrument that has lost its fineness, and keenness, and polish—worn out and ineffective,—not the language of the men whose thoughts still charm the world, and who by its deft use gained for themselves and for their work immortality. It has little of the subtilty of expression, the variety of cadence, or the intellectual possibility, of ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... be unprepared for an event, nor taken unawares by an idea; to live, in fact, with the requirements of the masses ever in his mind, to spread the protecting wings of his thought above them, to sway them by the thunder of his voice and the keenness of his glance; seeing all the while not the details of affairs, but the great issues at stake—is not that to be something more than a mere man? Therefore the names of the great and noble fathers of nations cannot but ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... general appearance; but his Milesian face was handsome, and his eye clear and candid, with a dash of determination and fire in it. Very different, indeed, was it from the eye that was scrutinizing him at that moment, with such keenness and penetration. There are such things as antipathies; otherwise why should those two individuals entertain, almost in a moment's time, such a secret and unaccountable disrelish towards each other? Woodward did not love Alice, so that the feeling could not proceed from ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... noise the Count made in coming in and disposing of his cloak, the major-domo presently appeared. Picture to yourself a lean, dried-up cook, very tall, with a nose of extravagant dimensions, casting about him from time to time, with feverish keenness, a glance that he meant to be cautious. On seeing Andrea, whose attire bespoke considerable affluence, ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... watch the show. He found many new points of interest and much that was instructive, as he studied each act attentively and with the keenness of one who had been in the show ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... It thus became necessary to resort more generally to farming, especially to raising large fields of corn, whose golden ears could easily be converted into pork and into bread. With these two articles of food, cornbread and bacon, life could be hilarious on the frontier. Keenness of appetite supplied the want of ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... however, incapable of avenging myself if I have been offended, or if my honour demanded I should resent an insult put upon me; on the contrary, I feel clear that duty would so well discharge the office of hatred in me that I should follow my revenge with even greater keenness than other people. ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... difficult, are peculiarly so when he attempts to treat of recent events. In such a case, the historian whose mind is not so warped by sympathies and antipathies as to make him utterly incompetent to his task must possess a rare impartiality of judgment and extraordinary keenness of insight, all assisted by candid and painful research. To what extent these qualities are united in Mr. Ormsby, we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... might have read and a hundred other interesting but only partly relevant things, he did the citizen of Geneva a wrong. The ulterior motive is there, and the faint taste of a thesis in the most modern manner. But the method is saved by the perception which, though it sometimes lacks the perfect keenness of complete understanding, is exquisite enough to suggest the answer to the questions it does not satisfy. Though the environment is lavish the man is ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... the bulwarks of aristocracy, and such keenness in cutting through its heavy arguments, carried him farther. Logic forced him to pass from the attack on aristocracy to the attack on slavery, just as logic forces the Confederate oligarchs of to-day to pass from the defence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... man himself Brought Death into the world; and man himself Gave keenness to his darts, quickened his pace, And multiplied destruction on mankind. First Envy, eldest born of Hell, imbrued Her hands in blood, and taught the sons of men To make a death which nature never made, And God abhorred; ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... tossed the violet letter over to Mr. Meyers without seeming to know that he did so. Then he plunged back into his absorption without seeing his henchman read rapidly through the missive, look at him once with a gem-like keenness, and again begin ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... watchfulness, the year seems to have escaped us. We know that the birds sang, that the flowers bloomed, that the grass was green, but it seems to us that we did not take our joy of them with sufficient keenness; our sweetheart came, but we did not look deep enough into her eyes. If only we live to see the wild rose again! But ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... kissed Bill good-by at the station next day with perfect good humor and no parting emotion of any particular keenness. And if he were a trifle sober he showed no sign of resentment, nor uttered any futile wishes that she ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... significance, but it was so in this case. There were more than 1,000 Maori spectators present—men who had fought on opposite sides in the recent battle of Kororareka. The orderliness of the proceedings, and the delightful atmosphere of keenness and pleasure which pervaded the scene, drew all parties together and served to weld ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... little hazy. But he never lost sight of this anchor light for more than a few moments at a time. Were the girls to get away without his discovering it he knew what to expect at the hands of his companions. Then again, Larry Goheen prided himself on his keenness. It would be very humiliating to be outwitted by the girls. He, with the rest of the boys fully believed that the girls were planning some trick for ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... trade; and the furthest I ever get in the way of confidence is to believe that I shall preach well next time. However, there may be some advantages in hearing one who is not too far away from the difficulties with which you will soon be contending yourselves; and the keenness with which I have felt these difficulties may have made me reflect, more than others to whom the path of excellence has been easier, on the means ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... change. And what we need in change is surely keenness. For instance, if one wanted to go sailing in the old days, one left London, had a bleak drive in the country, got nearer and nearer the sea, felt the cold and wet and discomfort growing on one, and after half a day or a day's gradual introduction to the thing, one ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... this exercise in shading is very tiresome, it will be well to vary it by proceeding with another at the same time. The power of shading rightly depends mainly on lightness of hand and keenness of sight; but there are other qualities required in drawing, dependent not merely on lightness, but steadiness of hand; and the eye, to be perfect in its power, must be made accurate as well as keen, and not only see ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... were walking up and down, but not together, on the sunny side of the court-yard. It was the only spot, they declared, in the whole island where they could be sheltered from the biting keenness of the wind, and feel any of the warmth to which they were accustomed in their own country. Both were anxious to hear whether a son or daughter was born to the lady of the mansion. Pedro Alvarez was certainly ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... his feet and begins to pace the room; his keenness coming back to him, his brow knitting again with ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... the sordidness of daily life. He valued this, and loved to feel himself better out here in the midst of the water and the air, where the cares of life, and life itself, always lose, the former their keenness, the ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... empire's fate. It was the grave dignity of a lost cause; striving, before being doffed forever, to leave behind a new cause. Or, if failing, to accept the lot of surrender. In either case, her chevalier de Missour-i was wearing the dear uniform for the last time. With her keenness for intuition and sympathy, Jacqueline knew. She knew what it must mean. And he looked so strong, so splendid! Her eyes unexpectedly ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the interval in bed) on a business footing. She found in him the same carelessness of the world and its obligations that there was in herself, but found it carried to the point of scorn and allied to a tenacity of purpose and a keenness of vision which she had never owned. Not a reproach escaped him—less, she thought, from generosity than because he chose to concentrate his mind on something useful. It was no use lamenting the past; it might be possible to undo it for all practical purposes. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... He was anything but an enthusiast, as his philosophical and religious writings, well worthy of a perusal, will show. He was the intimate friend of Fenelon, and throughout his whole life was remarkable rather for his piety and virtue, than for keenness in ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... he could discern the outline of his horse, with head lowered, evidently dozing. Having in mind the keenness of desert-bred stock, he watched the horse. The minutes drifted by. The horse seemed more distinct. Waring thought he could discern the picket rope. He endeavored to trace it from horse to picket. Foot by foot his eyes followed its slack outline across the ground. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... the St. Lawrence towards the pole and to the westward; and also from the enormous chain of mountains which extend to an unknown distance through that frozen region, covered with eternal snow and frost; over which the wind in its passage acquires that piercing keenness which is felt as far as the Gulf of Mexico, but more severely in the ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... was wrapped in a long and ample robe of costly white woolen stuff, and his whole appearance would have been striking for its peculiar refinement, even if the eyes had not sparkled with such vivid and piercing keenness from under the thick brows, and if the high, smooth, slightly prominent forehead had not borne witness to the power and profundity of his mind. Melissa knew of no one with whom to compare him; he reminded Andreas of the picture of John as an old man, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hard to submit to college rules, to walk in the ranks, to live within the four walls of a room where eighty boys were sitting in silence on wooden forms each in front of his desk. His senses were developed to such perfection as gave them the most sensitive keenness, and every part of him suffered ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... endeavour of the wrestler and the runner and the player of games—all will compete, not for sordid coin and base material reward, but for the joy that shall be theirs in the development and vigour of flesh and in the development and keenness of spirit. All will be joy-smiths, and their task shall be to beat out laughter from the ringing anvil ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... gentleness of his mind, the efforts by which he clung to truth in the cruel darkness of mental disease, and the innocent gayety and light-heartedness which alternated with gloom. Like Rousseau, Cowper had, by the very reaction from sadness, a rare keenness of enjoyment. Little things were enough to feast it, and hence the most trivial matters came naturally into his verse. His poems have certainly had a varied history. Written to afford occupation to a mind on the verge of madness, linked with the slightest events of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... embarked, excepting four of the masons, who, from the beginning, mentioned that they would decline working on Sundays. It may here be noticed that throughout the whole of the operations it was observable that the men wrought, if possible, with more keenness upon the Sundays than at other times from an impression that they were engaged in a work of imperious necessity, which required every possible exertion. On returning to the floating light, after finishing the tide's work, the boats were received by the part of the ship's crew left on board ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... possessed"; but here Chloe was without the last quality. In 1868, General Grant's election pending, Chloe was affiliated with the Democratic party, and had been chosen one of the captains of its citadel, a sachem of Tammany. Scenting success for Grant, with the keenness of the vulture for his prey, he attended a Radical meeting and announced his intention to give twenty thousand dollars to the Radical election fund. This sum appears to have been the market value of a seat in the Cabinet, to which ultimately he was ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... met anyone who impressed me so much with a sense of GREATNESS as Professor Sebastian. And this was not due to his scientific eminence alone: the man's strength and keenness struck me quite as forcibly as his vast attainments. When he first came to St. Nathaniel's Hospital, an eager, fiery-eyed physiologist, well past the prime of life, and began to preach with all the electric force of his vivid personality that the one thing on earth worth a ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... these men. They hated and distrusted their old lord with a hatred he had well merited; and degraded as they had become in his service, they had not yet sunk so low but that they could feel with the keenness of instinct, rather than by any reasoning powers they possessed, that this young knight was a man to be trusted and be loved — that if they became his vassals they would receive vastly different treatment from any they had received ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... despite herself she had grown greatly to honor him. She might reason as she would that only a sense of right and a yearning for the fullness of a righteous life had made him give up his profession and fellows and turn aside to follow the harder creed of Fox, but she well knew with a woman's keenness of view that she herself had gone for something in this change; and now, as sometimes before, she reproached herself with his failures. As we came in she hastily dried her eyes and went out of the room. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... showed their keenness of vision by observing the stranger almost as soon as he descried them. He saw several of the warriors who were on foot point toward him. They seemed to expect Deerfoot to come forward, but, when he did not do so, showed no ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... quiet as a mouse upon the piano-stool, was the only one who saw these strange currents drifting dangerously about. That her own heart ached miserably did not prevent her from observing things with all her usual keenness. Ah, Nora, Nora, who have everything to give and yet give nothing, why do you play so heartless a game? Why hurt those who can no more help loving you than the earth can help whirling around the ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... wound in and out jagged peaks covered with light foliage and abrupt slopes clad with vines, we come to the sombre pine-forests, passing from one forest to another, the air blowing upon us with sudden keenness. No sooner do we emerge from these gloomy precincts than we come upon the pretty little village of Nans, smiling and glowing in a warm sunlit valley, and most enticing to us after the sombreness and ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... woman, Mollie Ainslie was not speculative. She could not solve this problem of strength and weakness. In power of thought, breadth of reasoning, and keenness of analysis she felt that he was her master; in knowledge—the power of acquiring and using scientific facts—she could but laugh at his weakness. It puzzled her. She wondered at it; but she had never sought to assign a reason for it. It remained for the learner ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... little church in Sonora for some weeks before he made himself known to me. As I learned afterward, he was weighing the young preacher in his critical balances. He had a shrewd Scotch face, in which there was a mingling of keenness, benignity, and humor. His age might be sixty, or it might be more. He was an old bachelor, and wide guesses are sometimes made as to the ages of that class of men. They may not live longer than married men, but they do not show the effects of life's wear and tear so early. He ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... most other princes would have considered as degrading, and not without a sense of amusement, the Monarch of France waited till his Life Guardsman had satisfied the keenness of a youthful appetite. It may be supposed, however, that Quentin had too much sense and prudence to put the royal patience to a long or tedious proof; and indeed he was repeatedly desirous to break off his repast ere Louis ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our constitutions; we stand buffet among friends and enemies; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, and so circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease more painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us. It is ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whine or snap his jaws, though he heard the Indian dogs occasionally doing so. The comradeship of a fugitive, ever on the watch for his fellow men, had made him silent and velvet-footed, and had sharpened his senses to the keenness of knives. He, too, felt the impelling force of an approaching menace in this night of stillness and mystery, and he watched closely the restless movements of his master's body, and listened with burning eyes to the name which he had spoken three times in the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... Melinoff of old, then a sprightly enough man for his years, was no more, and it was a decrepit, stoop-shouldered, dirty and grey-bearded figure that shuffled now around the old-clothes shop, apathetic of "bargains," where before it had been a man whose keenness was matched only by the sort of eager craft and low cunning with which he had ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... disagree with him, but he smoked it because it had been presented to him a few minutes ago by the client upon whom he was in attendance. He had rather deep-set blue eyes, which might have been attractive but for a certain keenness in their outlook, which was in a sense indicative of the methods and character of the young man himself; a pale, characterless face, a straggling, sandy moustache, and an earnest, not to say convincing, manner. ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spirit and inclination are attached to us: in other things resembling the Batavians, save that as they still breathe their original air, still possess their primitive soil, they are thence inspired with superior vigour and keenness. Amongst the people of Germany I would not reckon those who occupy the lands which are under decimation, though they be such as dwell beyond the Rhine and the Danube. By several worthless and vagabond Gauls, and such as poverty rendered daring, that region was ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... and energy were unimpaired. Of all his characteristics, however, nothing attracted my attention so much as his eyes, which were almost covered by their drooping lids, and yet looked out through the thin slits which remained with marvellous brightness and keenness. A passing glance might give the idea that he was languid and half asleep, but a closer one would reveal those glittering, shifting lines of light, and warn the prudent man not to trust too much to his ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of intense and exclusive nationality which has in the present generation arisen in so many countries and which seeks to expel all alien or heterogeneous elements, and to mould the whole national being into a single definite type. The movement has been still further strengthened by the greater keenness of trade competition. In the midst of many idle, drunken, and ignorant populations the shrewd, thrifty, and sober Jew stands conspicuous as the most successful trader. His rare power of judging, influencing, and managing men, his fertility ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... to the meet. Sitting in an open boat at 4 A.M. on a dark winter's morning, with perhaps a head wind and four miles of a choppy sea to battle against, required a considerable amount of endurance and keenness, but we did it all right. It used to strike me as an odd circumstance in those days that the Tommies who manned the boat were so pleasant over the job. They were not going to hunt. They were not out to enjoy themselves. We were. ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... were everywhere. He was in the Admiral's vessel, and although sometimes hardly able to drag himself upon deck, he would note with all his old keenness every nook and cranny in the precipitous shores, every movement of the enemy, every natural advantage which could possibly be made use of in ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... made of it. For foot-gear, two pairs of heavy yarn socks, with rubber shoes or buckskin moccasins. In hunting, "silence is gold." Go quietly, slowly and silently. Remember that the bright-eyed, sharp-eared woodfolk can see, hear and smell, with a keenness that throws our dull faculties quite in the shade. As you go lumbering and stick-breaking through the woods, you will never know how many of these quietly leave your path to right and left, allowing you to pass, while they glide away, unseen, unknown. It is easily seen that ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... flame of your soul play all about me, That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire, The life and joy of tongues of flame, And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune, I may rouse the blear-eyed world, And pour into it the ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... himself now in the keenness of his remembered emotion: the church faded into a far horizon, he felt the slight heave of the ship and heard the creaking of the wheel as the steersman shifted his hands; from aloft came the faint slapping of the bunt lines on rigid canvas, the loose hemp ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... praise. It feeds and fattens on commendation. It constantly seeks to be highly esteemed, to have its worth properly appraised. It is immensely impressed with its own importance, its value to society, its keenness, wisdom or aptness, and wishes others to be so impressed also. It is fond of a mirror, especially one made to magnify. It seeks recognition. It presses forward, rudely or politely, according as its habitat has been trained in rude or ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... powdery white sand, and every hollow and hillock should be gay with the star convolvulus and the flaunting scarlet poppies—then Death should come, borne on winged feet, and bearing the sword of keenness, to sever the iron bonds of Andromeda chained to the rock. And here was Summer, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... taught school in St. Louis, and among other things, organized churches and lectured in Mississippi. The wide experiences of both gentlemen offered to them unusual opportunities to develop the power, keenness of insight, and knowledge of human nature so essential ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... against the hard blue sky, The peaks had winter's keenness; And, close on autumn's frost, the vales Had more than ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... property and the city's law and order, but he jumped into a hornet's nest? We managed to keep it all out of the morning paper but something is sure to creep in. Hadn't we better have a conference with the editors?" Tom was a solid quantity to be reckoned with in a stress that called for keenness of judgment ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... with the delightful audacity of the talker who is born, not made. She spoke of her own youth, of historic flirtations in the early twenties, of great beaux she had known, and of famous recipes that had been handed down for generations. Everywhere he felt her wonderful keenness of perception, that intuitive understanding of men and manners which had kept her for so long the reigning belle among her ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... act in connexion with Parliamentary Reform; but the keenness of his interest remained unabated till the day was won. On the 12th of December 1831, the Reform Bill was brought in a third time. It again passed the House of Commons, and was again threatened with destruction in the Lords. Sydney Smith wrote ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... the terrace with hurried steps, while Emily remained leaning on the balustrade in deep thought. The information she had just received excited, perhaps, more alarm than it could justify, and raised once more the conflict of contrasted interests. She had never liked Montoni. The fire and keenness of his eye, its proud exultation, its bold fierceness, its sullen watchfulness, as occasion, and even slight occasion, had called forth the latent soul, she had often observed with emotion; while from the usual expression ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... every pleasure, but almost the necessaries of life to save the sum she thought ought to be hers before sending to Ireland for a widowed mother. Just as she was on the point of doing so she heard that her mother had died fifteen months before. The keenness and persistence of her grief defy description. With a delicacy of feeling which showed the native poetry of the Irish mind, she dwelt, most of all, upon the thought that while she was working, and pinching, and dreaming of happiness with her mother, it was indeed but a dream, and that cherished ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... keenness of the air, and this morning my heart was very light. Although it had rained so heavily in the night the frost had turned everything hard and stiff; but as I ran on my way down the long avenue, and heard ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... Only that you've met things I never had to meet, met them much better, doubtless, than I should have met them. Only that you've fought in the real, while I've flitted around here on the playground." Katie's eyes contracted to keenness. "And I wonder if there isn't more dignity in fighting—yes, and losing—in the real, than just sitting around where you get nothing more unpleasant than the faint roar of the guns. To lose fighting—or not to fight! Why certainly there can be no question about it. What ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... gave him a look of such keenness that Prescott saw again the strength and penetration underlying her timid and doubtful manner. She seemed to be ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... with the finest statues of the ancient empire. The men's heads are veritable portraits, in which such details as a peculiar conformation of the skull, prominent cheekbones, deep-set eyes, sunken cheeks, or the modelling of the chin, have all been observed and reproduced with a fidelity and keenness of observation which we fail to find in such works of the earlier artists as have come down to us. These later sculptors display the same regard for truth in their treatment of animals, and their dog-headed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was equally enthusiastic the following day. He was also glowing pleasantly in the confirmation of his own keenness of intuition. ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... passed, but the party had changed. More especially I was soon conscious that something had happened to the three Ministers. I noticed Mulross particularly, for he was my neighbour. The look of keenness and vitality had died out of him, and suddenly he seemed a rather old, rather tired man, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... renewed—what plainer symbol, yet what more historic or more mystic one can we ask than this of the lamb with the banner? While of the contrasted yet complemental civic life of fullest, broadest action, what expression like the Roman eagle—the very eyes of keenness, and the ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... our utter dependence upon Another, and living it. And this controls our touch with our fellows. In this lies the secret of all strength,—mental keenness and vigour, sympathetic touch with others, and power of action in life and in service. All this touches the weakest spot in ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... writers, and artists. Even the passionate zeal of the Reformation seemed to be subdued there. The people who inhabited the border land, mostly of the Lower Saxon strain, with a slight tinge of Slavic blood, were a tough, sturdy race, not specially graceful in social manners, but with unusual keenness of understanding and clearness of judgment. Those who lived in the capital had been glib of tongue and ready to scoff from time immemorial: all were capable of great exertions; industrious, persistent, and of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... freshmen. For a week preceding the time of the parade the freshmen were striving by every means in their power to smuggle their canes into Winthrop so that they would all be supplied when the day of emancipation arrived, and the test of the sophomores' keenness was in being able to thwart the plans of their adversaries and prevent the entrance of the ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... other tended to foster the most delicate of all passions, more than the rough ministrations of terror and the knowledge that each was the occasion of injury. A woman's heart is peculiarly unfitted to sustain this conflict. Her sensibility gives keenness to her imagination and she magnifies every peril, and writhes beneath every sacrifice which tends to humiliate her in her own eyes. The natural pride of her sex struggles with her desire to confer happiness, and her ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... concern them so much?' Vida craned her head. 'Beside you, only one!' Borrodaile's mocking voice went on. 'Isn't this an instance of your sex's indifference to the whole thing? Isn't it equally an instance of man's keenness about public questions?' He couldn't forbear adding in a whisper, 'Even such a ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... regular movement. All about him had become alive. Vitality, like the vitality of youth upon mountain tops, pulsed and whirled about them, pouring into them the currents of a rushing glorious life, undiluted, straight from the source. In his little person he felt both the keenness of sharp steel and the vast momentum of a whole ocean. Thus he describes it. And the more clearly he uttered in his thoughts the sound given to him by his leader, the greater seemed the influx of strength and ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... aggravated by the fact that Elsa did not take to me. I did my best to be pleasant; I made her several gifts. She accepted my offerings, but was not bought by them; myself she considered dull. I had not the flow of animal spirits that appeals so strongly to children. I played with her, but her young keenness detected the cloven hoof of duty. She told me I need not play unless I liked. Cousin Elizabeth apologized for me; Elsa was gentle, but did not change her opinion. The passage of years, I reflected, would increase in me all that the child found least to her ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... born to the full power and passion of sex, and with all the delicate keenness of the feminine brain, utterly without principle or scruple, that the Cleopatras are made. For black-browed Egypt, the serpent of old Nile, can sit in a country byre, and read a letter to another woman. For Cleopatra is not history; she ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... have taken up the matter with the greatest keenness. She was evidently in dead earnest about it. Marjorie was agreeably surprised, and on the strength of this mutual confidence her old affection for her chum revived. Once more they went about the school arm in arm, sat next to each other at tea, and wrote each other private little notes. St. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... supposed that Sir Henry Barnard, in his advance to Delhi, was unopposed. Whatever the sepoys may have been in British pay, in revolt they were energetic and persevering, and, as long as they entertained any hope of success, fought with keenness; as a loyal native in Delhi described them, "they were willing to take life, and willing to give their lives away." It had been arranged, before General Anson's death, that a brigade should advance from Umballah, under General Barnard, and that General Hewett, at Meerut, should order another brigade ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... grandfather and that proud day for Clump, the keenness with which he had felt our rudeness, and the excitement of recital were, all together, too much for our good old castellan. The erectness of his figure gave way as he concluded, the enthusiasm in his features faded into dejection, and, as he turned from the table to leave the room, ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... men are precisely those in whom it is most difficult to arouse wants, those in whom it is hardest to inspire the desire to rise out of their condition; so that man must already have gained a certain degree of comfort by his labor, before he can feel with any keenness that need of improving his condition, of perfecting his existence, which I ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... in this worthless pretender, Maria! I love you myself, and with the keenness of love I have watched you follow him with your eyes, have seen the growing warmth in your voice—all through those days on the ocean, aboard the Mauretania. I warn you—royal princesses must aim higher ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... something may belong to a thing's perfection in two ways. First, as constituting the essence thereof; thus the soul is necessary for man's perfection. Secondly, as necessary for its well-being: thus, beauty of body and keenness of perfection belong to man's perfection. Wherefore though the body does not belong in the first way to the perfection of human Happiness, yet it does in the second way. For since operation depends on a thing's ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... period to save Burgoyne; and though the passes in the highlands were acquired, they could not be retained. The British had reduced to ashes every village, and almost every house within their power; but this wanton and useless destruction served to irritate, without tending to subdue. A keenness was given to the resentment of the injured, which outlasted the contest between ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... and Latin being considered the only two subjects worth a gentleman's attention. Botany and entomology were the unofficial subjects that had won the school its name, but Ishmael soon found that to show any keenness for these two pursuits was to class yourself a prig. The robuster natures preferred rod and line, or line only, in the waters of Bolowen Pool to any dalliance with stink-pots and specimen cases. Like far greater schools, it was really run by the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... her employer pursued, with a look excusing the transient keenness of her scrutiny, "our Island air agrees with you. If you have had one poor night, all the same you're quite another girl than the one who came here—was it only four days ago? I ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... oddly for a minute, while he leaned and stroked Boise's flat forelegs, that told of speed. "Wee-ll," he hesitated, soft-heartedness battling with the horse-buyer's keenness, "since Bud is na ere to ride him, he'll make a good horse for the roundup. I'll give ye "—more battling—"a hundred and fifty dollars for him, ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... pipe-hole listening idly to the sound from below. She could hear John Coulson's low, deep voice, and Sarah Emily's loud lamentations. She wished she could act like Sarah Emily, it seemed so much more sympathetic. Her mind seemed to have become possessed of a keenness never felt before. She thought out every detail of the changed circumstances John's death must bring, forgetting nothing. It would mean that she could not leave home quite so soon, she reflected, and even wondered how Mrs. Jarvis would ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... pleasure in long expeditions with a gun, though nothing in the way of slaughter come of them. My lack of keenness at the proper moment has been the scorn and the despair of native guides and hunters. Once, in Egypt, at the inundation of the Nile, I had been rowed for miles by eager men, and had lain out an hour upon an islet among reeds, only to ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... on the hammock-rope. He was conscious only of a friendly feeling of compassion for this fair young creature, built for vigour and an active life, now condemned for months, it might be years, of weariness and pain. Whether any unconscious keenness of scrutiny crept into his eyes or not, is not known; but as Vesta Blyth looked up and met their gaze, a wave of angry crimson rushed over ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... private conversation with Margaret across the narrow table; but Margaret innocently had begun a conversation with Bud about the school, and had to be addressed by name each time before Mr. West could get her attention. Bud, with a boy's keenness, noticed her aversion, and put aside his own backwardness, entering into the contest with remarkably voluble replies. The minister, if he would be in the talk at all, was forced to join in with theirs, and ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... work that requires quickness of wit and change, appeals to them more than any other. They make clever actors, barristers, and a certain class of public speakers, also diplomatists, stock brokers, company promoters, or inventors of new methods in business. In all careers that require keenness of brain, they can attain success, provided they have developed a sufficient amount of will power and continuity of purpose to stick long enough ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... to Champlain. The summer of 1628 was wearing on, and no supplies had arrived from France. It was obvious that some accident had detained the transports, and they might not arrive at all. His provisions were nearly exhausted. To subsist without a resupply was impossible. Each weary day added a new keenness to his anxiety. A winter of destitution, of starvation and death for his little colony of well on towards a hundred persons was the painful picture that now constantly haunted his mind. To avoid this catastrophe, if possible, he ordered a boat to be ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... outcome of their desire to think, feel, and act with greater delicacy, women introduced propriety in expression, finesse in analysis, keenness of esprit, psychological subtleness: qualities that surely tended to higher standards of morality, purer social relations, finer and more subtle diplomacy, more elegance and precision in literature. Therefore, preciosite in France had ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... are governed, and how the hot-bed of Mohammedan and Hindoo revolution is kept in order. Five to five were his office hours, you advocates of eight hour bills! In the rest of the twenty-four hours he was on the alert for sudden duty calls, yet he painted with me after five, with more keenness than professional ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Damaris' attitude of valour, and inwardly applauded it, although himself in woeful state. For he was hard hit, badly upset. Conscious of waste of tissue, he set about to restore it without apology or hesitation, trouble putting an edge to appetite in his case also, and that of formidable keenness. Bitterly he grieved, since bearing the patient, he feared very certainly to lose, an uncommon affection. He loved Charles Verity; while, from the worldly standpoint, his dealings with The Hard meant very much to him—made ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... legislation; an active scientific group, headed by the Pictets, De la Rive, and the botanist Auguste-Pyrame de Candolle, kept the country abreast of European thought and speculation, while the mixed nationality of the place—the blending in it of French keenness with Protestant enthusiasms and Protestant solidity—was beginning to find inimitable and characteristic expression in the stories of Toepffer. The country was governed by an aristocracy, which was not so much an aristocracy ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... position at her side, but he regarded her with an expression of respect and interest that caused Ida Mayhew, who was watching from her covert near, a sense of pain and envy that surprised her by its keenness. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Christians there are who so thoroughly believe God made them that they can laugh in God's name; who understand that God invented laughter and gave it to his children. Such belief would add a keenness to the zest in their enjoyment, and slay that sneering laughter of which a man grimaces to the fiends, as well as that feeble laughter in which neither heart nor intellect has a share. It would help them also to understand the depth of this miracle. The Lord of gladness ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... influences his mind rapidly developed. A retentive memory, a lively imagination, strong reasoning powers, and untiring application, soon placed him in the foremost rank among his associates. Intellectual discipline ripened his understanding, and aroused an activity of mind and a keenness of perception that were preparing him for the conflicts of ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... a certain keenness of relish for life which vanishes only too soon. There are plenty of our young men and women too, of this day, no doubt, who are as blase and wearied before they are out of their 'teens as if they were fifty. So much the sadder for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... scarcely to have been the subject of serious impressions before her seventeenth year. Until that time she enjoyed the pleasures of the world with few misgivings and with a keenness of relish which led her to think herself, as she says, "the happiest creature on earth." She adds, "I so far surpassed my friends in gayety and mirth, that some of them were apprehensive I had but a short time to continue in my career of folly, and ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... of night-work in a mill whose atmosphere is vile with odours, humid with unhealthfulness, filled with the particles of flying cotton, a pandemonium of noise and deafening roar, so deafening that the loss of hearing is frequent and the keenness of hearing always dulled ... whether the atmosphere combined with the association of men and women whose morals or lack of morals is notorious all over the world, is good for a growing child? Is it conducive to progressive ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... will walk nowhere but on the king's highway.' In a wilderness a man should take the track which will carry him home. In a revolution we must have recourse to the highest law, the safety of the state." Another veteran Roundhead, Colonel Birch, took the same side, and argued with great force and keenness from the precedent of 1660. Seymour and his supporters were beaten in the Committee, and did not venture to divide the House on the Report. The Bill passed rapidly, and received the royal assent on the tenth day after the accession ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seems to have led him to attack St. Paul, whom he took to be responsible for dogmatic theology, and therefore for the catechism; and he cross-examines the apostle, and confronts his various accounts of the conversion with a keenness worthy of a professional lawyer. In one of the MSS. at University College the same method is applied to the gospels. Bentham was clearly not capable of anticipating Renan. From these studies he was led to the far more interesting book, published under the name of Philip Beauchamp. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... it to Aristophanes and Lucian creates a supposition that his Greek was inferior to his Latin scholarship. It is not always easy to distinguish humour from wit; of the two, the former seems the higher quality. Wit is verbal, conversant with language, combining keenness and terseness of expression with a keen perception of resemblances or differences; humour has, comparatively speaking, little to do with language, and is of different kinds, varying with the class of composition in which it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... seemed bent on some errand, but the revellers at the fire caught her attention, and she suddenly swerved towards them, and came into the dull glow, her great black eyes shining with bewildered brilliancy and vague keenness, her long fingers reaching out with a sort of chafing motion. She did not speak till she was among them. I drew into the shade of a broken wall, and watched. She looked all round the circle, and then, without a word, took an iron crucifix which hung upon her breast, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a long speech, and the captain was near to suffocation when it was finished, but he watched her with anxious keenness as he waited for her to reply. The stern lines of her mouth relaxed slowly. A brilliant red geranium in the window glowed in the sunlight which had just reached it. The world was not all dark. The room ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... distinguished for being a rascal or a thief, an adulterer or a cut-throat, or in any shape an infamous fellow, branded him with great freedom. Upon these [models] Lucilius entirely depends, having imitated them, changing only their feet and numbers: a man of wit, of great keenness, inelegant in the composition of verse: for in this respect he was faulty; he would often, as a great feat, dictate two hundred verses in an hour, standing in the same position. As he flowed muddily, there was [always] something that one would wish to remove; he ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... two young uninvited guests with new keenness in the morning light. Molly was demure enough, though there was a lurking gleam in her dark eye which suggested rather armed truce than accepted peace. As for Madeleine, though to be serene was an actual necessity of her delicate nature, there was more than resignation in the blushing radiance ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... was over, and felt a sudden assurance in the success of his enterprise. For at first it had been a reckless determination to achieve something at any cost, and now it resolved itself into an adventure worthy of all his reason and cunning, and keenness of eye ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... well, when I set about it. He was a delightful man! I remember him with the liveliest appreciation. I was nervous and embarrassed, but in two minutes he put me at my ease. From his manner you would have supposed that my errand was as ordinary and conventional as buying a postage stamp, while his keenness, his cleverness, his professional zest were refreshing to behold. He stared at, and criticised my face, with as much impersonality as if it had been ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... nearer when Dinah Morris mounted the cart which served as a pulpit. There was a total absence of self-consciousness in her demeanour; she walked to the cart as simply as if she were going to market. There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations. When Dinah spoke it was with a clear but not loud voice, and her sincere, unpremeditated eloquence held the attention of her audience ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... lightly; the weight of the back iron which is fixed on the saw will ensure the saw feeding into the work quite fast enough. If the saw is newly sharpened it will, in fact, be an advantage to slightly ease the weight of the saw from off the wood, owing to the keenness of its edge. If the halving is a very wide one, additional cuts may be sawn between the outside marks, and these will greatly facilitate the removal of the waste wood when paring it away. For sawing the joint reference may be made to the chapter ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... better than a sleepless night; I've tried both, so I ought to know. I shouldn't even wonder if he did himself more than justice to-morrow; one often does when just less than fit; it takes off that dangerous edge of over-keenness which so often ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... their improvement. The first side they played ran through them to the tune of three goals and four tries to a try, and it took all the efforts of the Head of the house to keep a spirit of pessimism from spreading in the ranks. Another frost of this sort, and the sprouting keenness of the house would be nipped in the bud. He conducted himself with much tact. Another captain might have made the fatal error of trying to stir his team up with pungent abuse. He realised what a mistake this would be. It did not need a great deal ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... what the cupidity of ordinary mankind is he well knew. He had a half dozen sovereigns and a bank-note in his pocket-book; but were he to attempt to purchase rougher clothes attention would at once be attracted to him. As the afternoon wore on hunger continued to torment him with increasing keenness. Knowing that upon the elevated ground he would be likely to find a hard-wood grove, he set out, and, after an hour's tramp, was rewarded by finding himself in a grove of beeches. He gathered nigh unto a pint of nuts which gave ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... brave. That one might expect. It was not even that he was unselfish. That also did not arouse surprise. The pride in him, I found, was chiefly due to the fact that he was so good a soldier in the sense of discipline, enthusiasm, keenness, even intelligence. It is, I believe, a well-ascertained fact that an unusually high proportion of reformatory boys and other socially doubtful men have won rewards for exceptional deeds, and every one knows the case of the man with twenty-seven convictions against him who won the V.C. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... took up his game with renewed keenness. It was a game which attracted him immensely because it called upon his imagination and held his audience spellbound, besides plunging him into ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... measure inborn traits, not achievement. Hence the results from actual measurement are very few and are confined to the sensory and sensorimotor traits. Woodworth, in summing up the results of these tests, says, "On the whole, the keenness of the senses seems to be about on a par in the various races of mankind.... If the results could be taken at their face value, they would indicate differences in intelligence between races, giving such groups as the Pygmy and Negrito a low station as compared with most of mankind. ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... as he wanders through this dreamland of the new reason that More touches the great problems which were fast opening before the modern world, problems of labour, of crime, of conscience, of government. Merely to have seen and to have examined questions such as these would prove the keenness of his intellect, but its far-reaching originality is shown in the solutions which he proposes. Amidst much that is the pure play of an exuberant fancy, much that is mere recollection of the dreams of bygone dreamers, we find again and again the most important social and ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... had captured a boy the night before and were just on the eve of sacrificing him to their idols when a policeman got track of what was going on. As some policemen passed this part of the crowd they were cheered, cheer on cheer, for their keenness and bravery in rescuing an American from such a fate. Others, who claimed to know, said it was worse even than that, for one of the policemen had confided to him that the Dahomey people were about to practice canabalism and had secured ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... men, good men, workers and idlers, all are there, and all at one in their keenness over the game. . . . Anything that puts very many different kinds of people on a common ground must promote sympathy and kindly feelings. The workman does not come away from seeing Middlesex beating Lancashire, or vice versa, with evil in his heart against the upper ten; nor the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... life you can never pass. Into it you have brought disappointment, humiliation, and a keenness of suffering such as I never imagined I was capable of enduring; and some recompense I will have. You hope to plunge into the vortex of a great city, where you can elude observation and obliterate all traces. Do not cherish the ghost of such a delusion. Go where you may, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... raised his battle-axe, and struck from a neighbouring oak-tree a branch, wellnigh as thick as a man's arm, which (with all its twigs and leaves) rushed to the ground between De Walton and the Scotchman, giving a singular instance of the keenness of his weapon, and the strength and dexterity ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... threaten a change in the relations of Canada to the empire. But these explanations do not alter the fact that his attitude caused the Liberal party to lose touch with a movement characterized by intellectual keenness and generosity of sentiment, representing a real though ill-defined national impulse, and destined to leave its mark upon the history ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... Tennessee Alvin York had won fame as one of the best shots with both rifle and revolver that those mountains had ever held, and his imperturbability was as noted as the keenness of his sight. ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... and see and smell with all the keenness of a young animal or a savage. And that must have made his sense of being alive very much more vivid than is ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier |
