"Observant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the circumstances were extended by each. They gave such information as possible through the Count, and declared that the Princess must die within a few hours. They now stood powerless by, very curious and observant of ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... somehow, been through all a sort of simplicity, a sort of quiet, so that I had not thought of the establishment and its operation, even so much as I had thought of Mrs. Makely's far inferior scale of living; or else, what with my going about so much in society, I was ceasing to be so keenly observant of the material facts as I had been at first. But I was better qualified to judge of what I saw, and I had now a vivid sense of the costliness of Mrs. Strange's environment. There were thousands of dollars in the carpets underfoot; there were tens of thousands in the pictures ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... educated he commenced that course of patient and observant travel which was to render his name illustrious as a philosophic tourist and historian. The shores of the Hellespont, Scythia, and the Euxine Sea; the Isles of the AEgaean; Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Colchis, the northern parts of Africa, Ecbatana, and even Babylon were the objects of his unwearied ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... he looked down at her; but his smile conveyed anxiety rather than amusement to her observant eyes. "Oh, if things are said by Gershom, they generally mean hell," he responded. "Perhaps I'll find out Thursday night; there's to be a meeting then, and it looks as if somebody might make trouble." ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... character she formed by degrees some remote conception; he was Steel by name and steel by nature, as the least observant might discern, and the least witty remark; a grim inscrutability was his dominant note; he was darkly alert, mysteriously vigilant, a measurer of words, a governor of glances; and yet, with all his self-mastery and mastery of others, there were human traits that showed themselves ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... such a man be, and cause others to be! He should go through the world laughing, merry, observant, kind-hearted. He should love everything in the world, because his profession regards everything. With books of lighter literature (for I do not recommend the genteel auctioneer to meddle with heavy antiquarian and philological ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... interrupted by a rush and dash. Attention had been diverted for the moment from the prisoner to the one who was pleading for him and to him who held his fate in his hands. The observant Vesey saw the inevitable trend of events, and, taking advantage of the chance, was off like ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... health and leisure and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate? Shall Ambition and Avarice never sleep? Shall they never want objects on which to fasten? Shall they be so observant to discover, so acute to discern, so eager, so patient to pursue, and shall the Benevolence of Christians ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... perhaps, and suddenly lost my recollection of everything since my good fortune had been announced. Perhaps if I waited a little, things would be clearer to me again. Yet my dinner with old Elvesham was now singularly vivid and recent. The champagne, the observant waiters, the powder, and the liqueurs—I could have staked my soul it all happened ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... promise of amusement, looking involuntarily grave and almost embarrassed as if by the sight of something unfitting; while Lydgate, who had habitually an air of self-possessed strength, and a certain meditativeness that seemed to lie behind his most observant attention, was acting, watching, speaking with that excited narrow consciousness which reminds one of an animal with fierce eyes ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... everything—to being present in the fields, at the threshing-floor, at the kilns, at the wharf, at the freighting of barges and rafts, and at their conveyance down the river: wherefore even the lazy hands began to look to themselves. But this did not last long. The peasant is an observant individual, and Tientietnikov's muzhiks soon scented the fact that, though energetic and desirous of doing much, the barin had no notion how to do it, nor even how to set about it—that, in short, he spoke by the book rather ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... when I washed before supper was top-heavy. It had two big coins at the top and sixpences and shillings beneath. Now it is one of my oddities that ever since I was a small boy I have arranged my loose coins symmetrically, with the smallest uppermost. That made me observant and led me to notice a second point. The English classics on the top of the chest of drawers were not in the order I had left them. Izaak Walton had got to the left of Sir Thomas Browne, and the poet Burns was wedged ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... exaggerated terms of his philosophical pretensions; whilst, in treating of Wordsworth, he points out with great skill the fallacy of some of his theories and the inconsistency of his practice. But whilst keenly observant of some of the failings of his friends, he reproduces others in even an exaggerated type. He shows to the full their narrow-minded hatred of the preceding century, of all forms of excellence which did not correspond to their favourite types, and of all speculation which did not lead to, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... devised and provided beforehand by Varvara Pavlovna! What charming knick-knacks appeared from various snug corners, what fascinating toilet-cases and coffee-pots, and how delightfully Varvara Pavlovna herself made the coffee in the morning! Lavretsky, however, was not at that time disposed to be observant; he was blissful, drunk with happiness; he gave himself up to it like a child. Indeed he was as innocent as a child, this young Hercules. Not in vain was the whole personality of his young wife breathing with ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the planting of the acorn; scattered from the lap of some wandering wind! Nay, when our oak flowered, or put on its leaves (its glad Events), what shout of proclamation could there be? Hardly from the most observant a word of recognition. These things befell not, they were slowly done; not in an hour, but through the flight of days: what was to be said of it? This hour seemed altogether as the last was, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... absurd about wanting the close circle of just his old friends to be unbroken when he's home. Where is he to-day?" As she spoke Mrs. Cherry had looked at Caroline Darrah with a glance in which Phoebe detected a slight insolence and at which the major narrowed his observant eyes. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... later in life president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain, but at the time of his American tour a young man of twenty-two. His journey in 1796-97 gave him a wide experience of stage, flatboat, and pack-horse travel, and his genial disposition, his observant eye, and his discriminating criticism, together with his comments on the commercial features of the towns and regions he visited, make his record particularly interesting and valuable to the historian. * Using Baily's journal as a guide, therefore, one can today journey with him across ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... eighty millions. Pamphleteers, historians and orators pronounced that now, at all events, our case was desperate. Yet the signs of increasing prosperity, signs which could neither be counterfeited nor concealed, ought to have satisfied observant and reflecting men that a debt of eighty millions was less to the England which was governed by Pelham than a debt of fifty millions had been to the England which was governed by Oxford. Soon war again broke ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... economy. For the proof of this, we would refer our readers, among other arguments more or less appropriate and powerful, to the tract already alluded to.[A] In all the external relations and visible arrangements of life, the Jews, during our Savior's ministry among them, seem to have been scrupulously observant of the institutions and usages of the "Old Dispensation." They stood far aloof from whatever was characteristic of Samaritans and Gentiles. From idolatry and slaveholding—those twin-vices which had always so greatly prevailed among the heathen—they seem at length, as ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... o'clock Joe quietly rose from his desk, took his hat, and unostentatiously walked out of the office. He punched the time clock gently so that it would attract the attention of only the most observant of clerks, and hurried away, feeling that this repeated dereliction was bound to bring him some notice, even if the first offense had not. But for some reason ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... guests who for several days filled both the manse and Tollman's house, were two who were not entirely beguiled by Conscience's gracious and buoyant demeanor. One pair of these observant eyes was violet blue and full of starry freshness. Intimate letters from Conscience, in the old days, had invested Stuart Farquaharson with a romantic guise for their possessor and Eben Tollman scarcely measured up to ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... prejudice and dislike. He was too clever, too keen-sighted and appreciative. Had he been indifferent toward her, and not so observant, she would have soon learned to like him and enjoy his society, for he had a bright, piquant way of talking, and was seldom at a loss for words. In fact, he had plenty of ideas, and was fast gaining more. One reason why Mildred shrank from him ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... of the nineteenth century there were even to observant eyes no signs of the coming blast. The Act of Queen Anne, restoring Patronage, though long protested against, had been sullenly acquiesced in by the Church. Moderates and Evangelicals, though contending together in the several Church Courts, kept themselves carefully within ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... a bird story too," said an observant-looking boy; "but the kindness was done by birds, instead of by people. Last week when a bill-poster was pasting up some advertisements on our barn, a sparrow perched on the edge of the bucket, and got his feet and the tips of his wing-feathers all ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... why gold veins grow poorer as they descend into the earth; why whirlwinds rotate in opposite directions in the two hemispheres; why the earthenware vessels of the Indians are rounded at the bottom and require to be placed in a little stand—on all the varied matters that come under his observant eyes he has something interesting to say. You learn how the natives obtain sugar, palm-wine, and rubber; what is the use of the toucan's huge beak, and how plants secure the fertilisation of their flowers. You watch the tricks of the monkey, the humming-bird's ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... put my helm hard aport and the two ships met and rammed each other, port bow to port bow." There could have been no time to think and, for Eblis's commander on the bridge, none to gather information. But he had observant subordinates, and he writes—and I would humbly suggest that the words be made the ship's motto for evermore—he writes, "Those aft noted" that the enemy cruiser had certain marks on her funnel and certain ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... close-penetrating tyrant, as he had done with a generous inexperienced King, he thought an air of inexorable cruelty to the royalists must remove, or at least lull the suspicions of the serpent, who lay wrapped round in observant coil, ready to spring upon him. As to the feelings of those whom he persecuted, for the sake of prolonging his own worthless life and preserving his ill-acquired fortunes, he either entirely forgot that they had any, or considered that ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... other games which we simply mention without describing. There are three games played by the hands, which every observant foreigner long resident in Japan must have seen played, as men and women seem to enjoy them as much as children. In the Stone game, a stone, a pair of scissors, and a wrapping-cloth are represented. The stone signifies the clenched fist, ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... this personage without taking any notice of her, as Americans are wont to do under such circumstances; but presently the observant Katy noticed that every one else, as they went in or out of the room, addressed a bow or a civil remark to this lady. She quite blushed at the recollection afterward, as she made ready ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... to one and all versions with fierce attention, he repaired to his dinner and consumed it in a silence which his observant wife knew betokened affairs of unusual weight. But it was not until he finished his dessert and pushed back from table ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... was all; but to Annixter it was a revelation. Never more alive to his surroundings, never more observant, he suddenly understood. For the briefest lapse of time he and Hilma looked deep into each other's eyes, and from that moment on, Annixter knew that ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... from one of his influential countrymen; in the absence of his fair entertainers at their domestic duties, he extracted infinite satisfaction from Foo-Yup, the Chinese servant, who was particularly detached for his service. From his invalid coign of vantage at the window he was observant of all that passed upon the veranda, that al-fresco audience-room of The Lookout, and he was good-humoredly conscious that a great many eccentric and peculiar visitors were invariably dragged thither by Miss Macy, and goaded into characteristic exhibition ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... smilingly suggested, "stand for the circumstance of the Grand Duke leaving Paris for Cadiz which is—well, nearer to Puntal—and less observant than Paris." He laid another on the marble table-top with its sulphur head close to the first, so that the two radiated from a common center like spokes from a hub. "Regard that as a coincidence of the arrival of the Count Borttorff from the other ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... MALWOOD faithful at his post, but he, too, observant of the Truce. Everyone tired to death of dullest Session ever lived through, and chiefly anxious to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... behind her coffee-pot, while the gentlemen went back and forth between the two tables, bringing cups and cake and what else was needed for this "German cotillion," as Mr. Linden called it. During which interlude Miss Essie, after taking an observant view of Faith, gave her a significant private admonition, that "somebody" would not like her being there. Faith in vain endeavoured to get some light on this dark information; Miss Essie was startling but enigmatical, and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... a man of rather less than the usual stature and the usual weight, with a quick, observant, agreeable dark eye, a small quantity of thin dark hair, and a small mustache. He had been standing with his hands in his pockets; and when Eugenia looked at him he took them out. But he did not, like Mr. Brand, look evasively and urgently at their host. He met Eugenia's eyes; he appeared ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... she did not know him very well now. All the years hitherto she had joined in the general admiration of him shyly and from a distance, the pretty waiting-lady's attitude toward the dazzling young crown prince. She was observant, and so she could not fail to observe now the cordiality with which people of all sorts saluted him, the touch of deference in the greeting of not a few. He was scarcely thirty, but it would have been clear to a duller eye that he was already something of a personage. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... I quite understand that," rejoined Helmsley. "Present-day people like to think that God takes no interest whatever in His own creation. It's a more comfortable doctrine to believe that He is indifferent rather than observant. But, so far as I'm concerned, I don't go ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... author's wit must not blind us to the ripeness of his wisdom, nor the general playfulness of his O'Dowderies allow us to forget the ample evidence that underneath them lurks one of the most earnest and observant spirits of the present ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... paragraphs, pages, whole stories even, were written over and over again. He worked upon a principle of elimination. If he wished to describe an automobile turning in at a gate, he made first a long and elaborate description from which there was omitted no detail, which the most observant pair of eyes in Christendom had ever noted with reference to just such a turning. Thereupon he would begin a process of omitting one by one those details which he had been at such pains to recall; and ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... Observant Friars, those friars who observe the rule of St. Francis; to abjure books, land, house and chapel, to live on alms, dress in rags, feed on scraps ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... everything au grand serieux, and to consider it. When other people were laughing she would be gravely observant, as if she were solving a problem; and she would sooner have thought of trying to discover what combination of molecules resulted in a joke, with a view to benefiting her species by teaching them how to produce jokes at will, than of trying to be witty herself. She had, too, a quite irritating trick ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... set down Root and Branch (ALLEN AND UNWIN), by R. ALLATINI, as the very clever first book of a very clever and observant writer of the (alleged) weaker sex. But I find the title-page gives two previous novels to her pen—I still guess a woman's hand. And I by no means withdraw the "clever." The characterisation of the various members of the Arenski family—the branches are better done than the root, old ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... hypocrisy!' exclaimed Ixion. 'It is not my forte. But if I began life anew, I would be more observant in ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... answered the American. "There are thousands of Jews in America as observant of the ordinances as the most pious in Kief. Yet it seems to me that a Jew can remain a Jew even if he neglect some of those ceremonials which have very little to do with Judaism pure and simple. Some are remnants of an oriental symbolism, others comparatively ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... engravings. But these marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... of it; the nobleness of his family, and his own personal merit, procured him respect from all the world, as well as from his pupil. No quarrel happened: the earl was reclaimed, being always very observant of his governor. He left Paris, and passing down the Loire went to the south of France, received in all places by the governors of towns and provinces with great respect and uncommon marks of honour and distinction. From thence he went into ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... within three lengths of Brazen-nose when we bumped," says the all-observant Miller in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... twelve and thirteen: Edward the elder, but scarcely as tall as Bertie, and far slighter, with a grave reserved air, and rather thoughtful face; Bertie sturdy, gay, careless, and frank, with restless, observant blue eyes, and a somewhat unceremonious way of dealing with people and things. Eddie called him rough and boisterous, and gave way to him in everything, not at all because Bertie's will was the stronger, but that Eddie, unless very much interested, was too indolent to assert himself, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... is important to translate as adequately as possible the positive side of Mr. Abbey's activity. None to-day is more charming, and none helps us more to take the large, joyous, observant, various view of the business of art. He has enlarged the idea of illustration, and he plays with it in a hundred spontaneous, ingenious ways. "Truth and poetry" is the motto legibly stamped upon his pencil-case, for if he has on the ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... have I left thee? Where, Euryalus, shall I follow thee? What clue Shall trace the mazes of this silvan snare, The tangled path unravelling?" Back he flew, Picking his footsteps with observant view, And roamed the silent brushwood. Steeds he hears, The noise, the signs of foemen who pursue. A moment more, and, bursting on his ears, There came a shout, and lo, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... to reach the enemy, run along the ground and, scaling his legs, inflict punishment on the first convenient patch of unprotected skin. Detachments muster in blobs, fall in a mass to the ground, and charge. If one of these forlorn hopes happens to be successful, the observant man will retire with little ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... thought the lad, and he stepped quickly over the leaves, to throw himself down close to Archie as if he were asleep, but keeping one half-closed eye fully observant of ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... to the other, amused, observant, and perceiving that they were all under that form of shyness which brings up family wit ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... lips is nay simply, yet we must not take that word as the whole locution, but as a mere text, to which the situation of the speaker and the matter spoken of form a commentary, legible to any observant eye. The word is an annotated text; nay in the body of the page, with secrets apart inscribed in the margin. The adequate utterance is the whole page, text and gloss together; that speech answers to the thought in the speaker's mind; therefore ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... who, Indian like, was wise and observant, only said, "Wait a minute or two and I will show you." Then she quickly hurried back into a swampy place and soon returned with a thick juicy leaf, to the under side of which several mosquitoes were still clinging, with their bodies distended ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... feet rested on the edge of the brass fender. A nimbus of smoke surrounded his swarthy features, his shock of black hair, his large, rather morose, dark eyes. He was a man of about twenty-five, with an almost horribly intelligent face, so observant that he tried people, so acute that he frightened them. His intellect was never for a moment at rest, unless in sleep. He devoured himself with his own emotions, and others with his analysis of theirs. His mind was always ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... Phoenix, thoughtfully, 'it didn't speak, but I gathered my information from something in its manner. I was always a singularly observant bird.' ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... to meet, say, Mrs. Bellward, if the gentleman has got a wife, or his mother. Keep out of a strong light; don't show your profile more than you can help, and remember that a woman is a heap more observant than ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... ourselves have." They build retiring places over the water, "but their language is quite unlicensed."[1500] In Micronesia reserve as to natural functions is lacking.[1501] Amongst central African negroes the king alone had a hut for retirement. "The heathen negroes are generally more observant of decorum in this respect than any Mohammedan."[1502] In Lhasa, Tibet, there are no latrines either public or private. The street is used.[1503] The Andamanese women are modest and very careful about decency of dress ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... gentleman with raven hair and beard, of a swart and terrible, not to say genteelly diabolical aspect, but who had shown himself the mildest of men; and a handsome young Englishwoman, travelling quite alone, who had a proud observant face, and had either withdrawn herself from the rest or been avoided by the rest—nobody, herself excepted perhaps, could have quite decided which. The rest of the party were of the usual materials: travellers on business, and travellers for pleasure; officers from India ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... I am, by nature, not overly observant; and in those moments, when I stood out there beside the pool, I think I came most forcibly to appreciate how little I habitually observe that which is not readily apparent. An incident now occurred to bring it home to me; and, quite ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... enlightenment of others, he is accepted as strong, sounds and wise; but let him add to practical sagacity a love of poetry and some skill in the practice of it; let him be not only honest and trustworthy, but genuinely religious; let him be not only keenly observant and exact in his estimate of trade influences and movements, but devoted to the study of some science, and there goes abroad the impression that he is superficial. It is written, apparently, in the modern, and especially in the American, consciousness, ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... more significant is the poet's development in the conception of character. In no other way, probably, does an observant mind change and expand so much as in this. For the infant all men fall into two very simple categories:—people whom he likes {91} and people whom he doesn't. The boy of ten has increased these ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Grayson to lead the way, and he noticed that he chose a course that did not take them back to the hotel. Moreover, he did not speak again for a long time, and Harley walked on by his side, silent, too, but thoughtful and keenly observant. He saw that his friend was troubled, and he divined the great struggle that was going on in his mind. Whether he could do it if he were in the place of the candidate he was unable to say, and he was glad that the decision did not lie ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... imposed design and authority and unity upon the letters of his country, and who so closed the epoch with which I have been dealing, was singularly suited to his task. Observant, something of a stoic, uninspired; courageous, witty, a soldier; lucid, critical of method only, he corresponded to the movement which, all around him, was ushering in the Bourbons: the hardening of Goujon's and de l'Orme's luxuriance ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... other, was highly characteristic. Chingachgook, a noble, tall, handsome and athletic young Indian warrior, first examined his rifle with care, opening the pan to make sure that the priming was not wet, and, assured of this important fact, he next cast furtive but observant glances around him, at the strange habitation and at the two girls. Still he spoke not, and most of all did he avoid the betrayal of a ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... did not see Miss Moore's contemptuous smile, or Mrs. Davis's grave glance. One of the pitiful things about jealous people is that they don't know how amusing—or else boring—or else irritating—they are to an observant and entirely unsympathetic world! Eleanor had no idea that the whole tableful of people knew she was jealous, and found her ridiculous. She only knew that Maurice seemed to like them—which meant that her society "wasn't ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Doctor's talks, many of which I can but barely mention, had opened my eyes a little to the possibility of accurate inferences, that is to say, his philosophy of cause and effect, or purpose, as he liked better to call it, had been urged upon me so frequently and so profoundly that I had become more observant; he had made me think of the relations of things. Philosophy, he had said, should be carried into everyday life and into the smallest matters; that was what made a good fisherman, a good farmer, a good merchant, and a good soldier, provided, ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... such of its contents as were indispensable for the night. There was the usual parade of trunks and writing-desks, and portfolios, and dressing-boxes, and those other oppressive conveniences which burden a comfortable man. The observant loiterers about the inn door, wrapped up in great dirt-colored cloaks, with only a hawk's eye uncovered, made many remarks to each other on this quantity of luggage that seemed enough for an army. And the domestics of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... longer able to converse, and very soon he found it difficult to sit still. Observant of his face and movements, the elder brother proposed that they should resume their walk together, and forth they went. But both were now taciturn, and they did not walk far ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... flustered, but it struck me that he overdid the thing. He waited on Mr. Rickman as if he positively loved him. That won't do, you know. He'll be raising fatal hopes in the bosom of the Savage Keith. Let us hope that Mr. Rickman is not observant." ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... impunity—the poor patient will not. That is, the patient will suffer, although neither he nor the inflictor of the injury will attribute it to its real cause. It will not be directly traceable, except by a very careful observant nurse. The patient will often not even mention what ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... Then, explosively, "On my word, for three moderately intelligent boys you aren't very observant. I suppose you were too busy making things warm for your house-master to see what lay under your noses when you were ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... further than the Empress intended that reprisals for lese-majeste should go. Still, she was curious to see how her strange acquaintance would bear himself under the test. She watched him from the corner of an observant eye. Would he be disconcerted by the brusqueness of the attack? Would he lose his temper? Would he cheapen himself to answer in kind? What would ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... they may not unnaturally be expected to be of a peculiar type. They live under peculiar conditions of descent, of climate, of government, and are hence very different from their European sisters. No testimony is more concurrent than that of observant foreigners on this point. More nervous, more sensitive, more rapidly developed in thinking power, they scarcely need to be stimulated so much as restrained; while, born of mixed races, and reared in this grand meeting-ground of all nations, they gain at home, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... sundown when Michael and Millicent got back to the camp. Abdul had come a little way to meet them. To an observant eye, the calm of his Eastern countenance showed some anxiety. Millicent did not see it. Michael was riding on ahead when Abdul met him. Abdul turned his mule and rode by ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... rose as they approached, and was immediately recognised by the Bossnowls as an old acquaintance, and saluted with the exclamation of "Captain Fitzchrome!" The interchange of salutations between Lady Clarinda and the Captain was accompanied with an amiable confusion on both sides, in which the observant eyes of Miss Crotchet seemed to read the recollection of ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... after a while there were several young men living there, pupils of Mr. Butt, so that there was often a large party. The two little children were never allowed to interrupt, but had to sit and listen, "whether willing or not"; and in this way the shrewd and observant Mary picked up endless scraps of knowledge while still very young. She tells us a good deal about her education in these early days. "It was the fashion then for children to wear iron collars round the neck, with a backboard ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... correct reply at once to all the voluminous questions that he put to me on these occasions, but he meant to make me observant and a ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the Honourable Hilary thoughtfully; and although the gubernatorial candidate was not an observant man, he was suddenly struck by the fact that the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the placid yellow face of Shaik Tsin appeared, as if materialized bodily out of the shadows. With folded arms he waited, dispassionately observant. Presently Prince Victor nodded to him over the head of the girl. Immediately the Chinaman moved round her chair and, employing both hands, in one instant switched off the hooded bulb and ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... wonder therefore, if Voice be natural to a Man, though he be Deaf, because Deaf Men Laugh, Cry out, Hollow, Weep, Sigh, and Waile, and express the chief Motions of the Mind, by the Voice which is to an Observant Hearer, various, yea, they hardly ever signifie any thing by Signs, but they mix with it some Sound or Voice. Thus the Exclamations of almost all Nations are alike; [a] is the Sound of him chiefly, who rejoyceth; [i] of him who is in Indignation, and Angry; ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... Cassion is not observant," returned the younger man pleasantly, "as I accompanied the Sieur de la Salle in his attempt to ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... then, to increase your vocabulary. Of course you must become observant of words and inquisitive about them. For words are like people: they have their own particular characteristics, they do their work well or ill, they are in good odor or bad, and they yield best service to him who loves ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... engravings. But these marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... was really seizing an opportunity and fixing an observant look on Grandcourt, who now for the first time, turned his eyes toward his companion, but slowly and without speaking until he had given two long luxuriant puffs, when he said, perhaps in a lower tone than ever, but with a ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... waist; sooty black was her hair, with a broad forehead, perpendicular but low; she had a pair of very fine, dark, lustrous eyes, and no other good feature—unless I may so call her teeth, which were very white and even. Her face was rather short, and swarthy as a gipsy's; observant and sullen too; and she did not move, only eyed us negligently from under her dark lashes as we drew near. Altogether a not unpicturesque figure, with a dusky, red petticoat of drugget, and tattered jacket of bottle-green stuff, with short sleeves, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... footsteps. But the fence is too high. Then he turns his back upon the direction in which you are departing, and runs around the yard. He is frantic with affection and desire. But he is not blind. He is observant. He is looking for a hole under the fence, or through the fence, or for a place where the fence is not so high. He sees a dry-goods box standing against the fence. Presto! He leaps upon it, goes over the barrier, and tears down the street to overtake ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... observant Betsy on re-entering the kitchen, "dey'se a man in yonda, look like he gwine eat somebody up. I was fur gittin' 'way ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... freckle-faced little girl with light bobbed hair and incredibly thin arms and hands. Nina Edmonds talked incessantly and, after a few ineffectual attempts to carry on a conversation with his aunt, the young doctor devoted himself to his dinner, keeping, however, an observant eye on the guest and on Rosemary who listened in evident fascination to the steady stream of words. He had a call to make, immediately after dinner and was surprised and distinctly annoyed when he returned at half-past ten to find Nina and Rosemary still talking animatedly, their arms around ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... alone is enough to impress it forever upon the observant mind. Its rich, deep, perfect splendor is a constant surprise. One steps from his hotel, not thinking of the Lake—the blue of it rises through the trees, over the rocks, everywhere, with startling vividness. Surely ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... guard in a way that gained him an advantage. Experts in the art of killing, know that, of two antagonists, the ablest takes the "inside of the pavement,"—to use an expression which gives the reader a tangible idea of the effect of a good guard. That pose, which is in some degree observant, marks so plainly a duellist of the first rank that a feeling of inferiority came into Max's soul, and produced the same disarray of powers which demoralizes a gambler when, in presence of a master ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... was immediately assured by the observant Jack. "All the same it was a smart trick, and somebody's bound to be hauled over the coals on account of ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... grateful affection—touching, because real. His handsome face, so like Amelie's, was peculiarly so when it expressed the emotions habitual to her; and the pleasure both felt in the presence of Pierre brought out resemblances that flashed fresh on the quick, observant eye of Pierre. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... had listened to this conversation with an air of shrewd, observant gravity; and she still kept her lips tightly compressed, as if determined fully to ascertain her longitude and ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Whitehall. He was small and thin, and possessed a pair of extraordinarily bright and intelligent brown eyes, which saw a good deal more of what happened around him than perhaps any other eyes within a radius of a mile from where he sat. He was, in other words, observant to a very high degree; and, what was more remarkable, he knew how to use his powers of observation. There was not a criminal in the length and breadth of the country who did not wonder uneasily whether he had really left the scene of his crime as devoid of clues as he imagined, when ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... end of a sentence, as though addressing a meeting. When they met Emma, it was always with a little startled look of surprise, followed by something that bordered on disapproval. Emma, the keenly observant, watching them, felt vaguely uncomfortable. She tried to be politely interested in what they had to say, but she found her thoughts straying a thousand miles away to the man whom she loved and who loved ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... all the twice-born(29) train. Forth to the woods he fared to meet His brother, fell before his feet, And cried, "Thy claim all men allow: O come, our lord and king be thou." But Rama nobly chose to be Observant of his sire's decree. He placed his sandals(30) in his hand A pledge that he would rule the land: And bade his brother turn again. Then Bharat, finding prayer was vain, The sandals took and went away; Nor in Ayodhya would he stay. But turned to Nandigrama, where He ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... a bench in one of the city parks led him to the conclusion that the only thing to do was to persuade the city editor of one of the daily journals that he possessed an observant mind and a ready pen, and that he could "do good work for your paper, sir, as a reporter." This, then, he did, standing at a most unnatural angle between the editor and the window to conceal the ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... whose doings in my absence pulled at my curiosity and keyed my interest to breaking point. But if you think that I tore open those envelopes and greedily absorbed their contents the moment they were put into my hands, you have never been a conductor or even an observant passenger on a "pleasure yacht." When the letters arrived I was engaged in persuading breakfast-lingerers (they of the eggs-and-bacon habit, who ought never to leave their peaceful English homes) that it would give them more real pleasure to be first ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... has sworn, oaths sworn, all falsehoods. He at a time deceived me when he should have been of all oaths most observant." ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... Labour is indeed, from one point of view, little else than the correlative of what has been happening to the more prosperous classes in the community. They have lost their self-discipline, their gravity, their sense of high aims, they have become the victims of their advantages and Labour, grown observant and intelligent, has discovered itself and declares itself no longer subordinate. Just what powers of recovery and reconstruction our system may have under these circumstances the decades immediately before us ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... light to visit her face "from the right or from the left" when her portrait was a-painting. She was an observant woman, and liked to be lighted from the front. It is a light from the right or from the left that marks an elderly face with minute shadows. And you must place a child in such a light, in order to see the finishing ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... is said that when the individual referred to first presented himself en militaire to his wife and little daughter, the latter, after gazing at him for a few minutes, turned to her mother, and exclaimed: "Why, Ma, that's not a real soldier—it's Pa!" Equally observant was another youngster, who was sent by his parent to take a letter to the post-office and pay the postage on it. The boy returned highly elated, and said: "Father, I seed a lot of men putting letters in a little place; and when no ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... herself they were a splendid spur. The young girl copied her manners, her gait, and her vocabulary. She watched her own conversation to see that she did not say "have went" and "those kind"; she became observant of the state of her finger-nails; if she had to lace her shoes with twine string, she blackened the string with soot from the under side of the stove lids, and polished her shoes from the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... in silk pyjamas of very excellent quality, swung himself out of the bunk and sat upon the side of it. The captain was an observant man and of somewhat luxuriant tastes himself, and he fully appreciated the texture and quality of the suspected man's night apparel. "This sounds remarkably interesting," Jocelyn said. "Very kind of you, Captain, I am sure, to come and tell ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in its heart to treat them as brethren and to feel toward them as brethren. Its protest against what it regards as their errors and defects is nowise weakened by the most unreserved manifestations of respect and good will as toward fellow-Christians. Thus it comes to pass that the observant traveler from other countries, seeking the distinctive traits of American social life, "notes a kindlier feeling between all denominations, Roman Catholics included, a greater readiness to work together for common charitable aims, than between Catholics ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Mall, through the park, out at Buckingham House, and on to Chelsea, a little beyond the church (5,748 steps), he says, in less than an hour, which was leisurely walking even for the contemplative and observant dean. Smollet laid a scene of his "Humphrey Clinker" in Chelsea, where he lived ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the husks of oats, and who were seen picking those husks, like chickens, from amidst dust and cinders, [683] Yet, even under such disadvantages, the natural fertility of the country, the rich green of the earth, the bays and rivers so admirably fitted for trade, could not but strike the King's observant eye. Perhaps he thought how different an aspect that unhappy region would have presented if it had been blessed with such a government and such a religion as had made his native Holland the wonder of the world; how endless a succession of pleasure houses, tulip gardens and dairy farms would have ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... labor in the formation and growth of the poor discalced Augustinians, the first provincial [i.e., Fray Joan de San Geronimo] gave a heroic end by beginning the very observant province of San Nicolas [26] de Tolentino, in the islands adjacent to Asia ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... the doors of death being set wide open, and the door of birth almost closed. Thus, in the half-year ending July 1888 there were twelve deaths and but one birth in the district of the Hatiheu. Seven or eight more deaths were to be looked for in the ordinary course; and M. Aussel, the observant gendarme, knew of but one likely birth. At this rate it is no matter of surprise if the population in that part should have declined in forty years from six thousand to less than four hundred; which are, once more on the authority of M. Aussel, the estimated figures. And ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who knew Maggie Oliphant, but did not know Prissie, was observant of the silent young stranger through all the delights of her pleasant talk. Almost imperceptibly she got Prissie to say a word or two. She paused when she saw a question in Prissie's eyes, and her timid and gentle words were listened to with deference. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... rigid preparation. In each culture province the Indians studied the heavenly bodies. The Arctic peoples regulated their lives by the long day and night in the year; among the tribes in the arid region the place of sunrise was marked on the horizon for each day; the tropical Indians were not so observant, but they worshipped the sun-god above all. The Mayas had a calendar of 360 days, with intercalary days; this solar year was intersected by their sacred year of twenty weeks of thirteen days each, and these assembled ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... empire, chanced on a certain occasion to be stopping at Bussora. And one evening, disguised, as was his wont, as a merchant, and, as usual, accompanied only by his faithful Grand Vizier, Giafer, he strolled through the bazaars silent and observant. Meeting with nothing worthy of arresting his particular attention, he wandered on until he came at length to some very narrow and mean lanes near the waterside. In one of these, and when passing the door of a low caravanserai, or public-house, frequented chiefly by sailors, they noticed some ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... Sorrento was doubtless not the only visit across the bay. Behind Naples along the ridge of Posilipo,[2] below which Vergil was later buried, in the mountains about Camaldoli, and behind Puteoli all the way to Avernus—a country which the poet had roamed with observant eyes—there could have been nothing but shepherd country. Here, then, are the crags and waterfalls and grottoes that Vergil describes in ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... Fabians. Yet what a difference may be detected in Bluebooks on the selfsame subject, and what an exciting hide-and-seek for souls we may there enjoy! Behind one we catch sight of the cautiously official mind, obsequious to established power, observant of accepted fictions, contemptuous of zeal, apprehensive of trouble, solicitous for the path of least resistance. Behind another we feel the stirring spirit that no promotion will subdue, pitiless ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... patient's forehead and gently presses the latter's eyelids with his thumb and forefinger. As soon as the patient shows signs of weariness, he carefully gets up, takes a seat next to the patient and continues carefully observant of the latter's behavior and expression of countenance. He makes note of everything that shows itself and rouses the patient after about a quarter of an hour, unless the latter awakes spontaneously. Now he talks over with him the material which has been procured and then has the patient go ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... pretty fruitful, for they had all children, more or less: I think the cook's mate's wife was big of her sixth child; and the mothers were all a good sort of well-governed, quiet, laborious women, modest and decent, helpful to one another, mighty observant and subject to their masters, I cannot call them husbands; and wanted nothing but to be well instructed in the Christian religion, and to be legally married; both which were happily brought about afterwards by my ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... their demands the better will be the supply with which the drama will respond. This being not only so, but seen to be so, the stage is no longer proscribed. It is no longer under a ban. Its members are no longer pariahs in society. They live and bear their social part like others—as decorously observant of all that makes the sweet sanctities of life—as gracefully cognizant of its amenities—as readily recognized and welcomed as the members of any other profession. Am I not here your grateful ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... quickly to her mind, with the plain living, to her share of which she had been made a thousand times welcome; while by this richer house, of which she was also heir, such rightful trinkets and treasures had been withheld. But at the next minute she could meet Miss Prince's observant eyes without displeasure, and wisely remembered that she herself had not been responsible for the state of affairs, and that possibly her aunt had been as wronged and insulted and beaten back as she complained. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Wallace only, the object of my search, was present to my fancy. Pervaded with remembrance of the Hadwins; of the agonies which they had already endured; of the despair which would overwhelm the unhappy Susan when the death of her lover should be ascertained; observant of the lonely condition of this house, whence I could only infer that the sick had been denied suitable attendance; and reminded, by the symptoms that appeared, that this being was struggling with the agonies of death; a sickness of the heart, more insupportable than ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Missouri Compromise, and who gave you, four years ago, full warning that their growing strength would probably result as it has resulted, have carried the late election; but I did not suppose that would disturb the equanimity of this body. I did suppose that every man who was observant of the signs of the times might well see that things would result as they have resulted. Nor do I understand now that anything growing out of that election is the cause of the present ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... observant, with some power of administration, studies mining engineering, moves to a mining center and expresses his individual and social powers along the lines of his work until he is sixty. The women who impinge against his life may ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... unfounded, that these cold pulpit moralities were in a great measure the recoil from Methodist extravagances. But far more generally, as the century advanced, Methodism promoted the beneficial change which had already been noted in the case of Secker. The more zealous and observant of the Clergy could not fail to learn a valuable lesson from the wonderful power over the souls of men which their Methodist fellow-workmen—the irregulars of the Church—had acquired. And independently ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... view either way; Agnes was fair, slight and small-featured with observant grey eyes and a good deal of detached humour. Since the incubation of his first unsuccessful play, he had argued out every character and situation with her; when feminine psychology was in dispute, her ruling was ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... should he keep silence on such an occasion? No one could know the good qualities of Cassiodorus so well or so intimately as Cassiodorus himself, and accordingly the Quaestor sets forth, with all the rhetoric of which he had such an endless supply, the virtues and the accomplishments which his observant eye has discovered in himself, the new Praetorian Prefect. Such a course would certainly not be often pursued by a modern statesman, but there is a pleasing ingenuousness about it which to some minds will be more attractive than our present methods, the "inspired" ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... observant stage of his development, noted the laconic, quiet answer and stored it away for classification and meditation among the many other details that his new attitude of watchful analysis was ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... children among this race is marvellously precocious, perhaps from the habit of having intrusted to them, at so early an age, the toils and responsibilities of middle age. Indeed, in conversing with Taee, I felt as if talking with some superior and observant man of my own years. I asked him if he could form any estimate of the number of communities into which the race of the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The study of theologians more considerable and even more typically conservative than Liddon does not confirm the description of religious intolerance given in good faith, but in serious ignorance, by a disputant so acute, so observant and so candid as Huxley. Something hid from each other's knowledge the devoted pilgrims in two great ways of thought. The truth may be, that naturalists took their view of what creation was from Christian men of science who naturally ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... were peculiarly observant of the defective modes of conveyance then in use. Thus, one Don Manoel Gonzales, a Portuguese merchant, who travelled through Great Britain, in 1740, speaking of Yarmouth, says, "They have a comical way of carrying people all over the town and from the seaside, for six pence. ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... rested upon his ear too frequently when reading for the purpose of criticism other works of mine. He declared in his paper that Nina Balatka was by me, showing I think more sagacity than good nature. I ought not, however, to complain of him, as of all the critics of my work he has been the most observant, and generally the most eulogistic. Nina Balatka never rose sufficiently high in reputation to make its detection a matter of any importance. Once or twice I heard the story mentioned by readers who did not ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... she betrayed somehow a barbaric taste for color in the dull ruddy hue of her dress, which was subdued with black braid, yet she looked quite a well-bred woman. All the same, her whole appearance gave an observant onlooker the idea that she would be more at home in a scanty robe and glittering with rudely wrought ornaments of gold. Perhaps Peru, where she came from, suggested the comparison, but Lucy's thoughts flew back to an account of the Virgins of the Sun, which the Professor had once described. ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... expression of his understanding of arrangements, etc. In it all, the essential thing is to bring him out in some kind of expression; both for the sake of the improved balance it gives himself, and as an indication to the observant teacher of his progress and of the next step to be ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... Had she been more observant, she would have wondered at the intense stillness of the bazaar, which, no matter at what hour of the night, is full of little sounds; the song of a woman, or her laugh, or her cry; the crack of a whip; the baying ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... satisfied with his son's progress in Latin, he got leave for him to enter, as was the custom, the house of cardinal Morton as a sort of page. Thomas was then about twelve, quick and observant, and though fond of joking, good-tempered and prudent, taking care to hurt the feelings of nobody. Morton was both a clever and a learned man, a good speaker and excellent lawyer, and the king, Henry VII., frequently ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... that the water of the aqueducts (formae) is being diverted to turn mills and water gardens—a thing which would not be suffered even in the country districts. Even in redressing this wrong we must be observant of law; and therefore if it should be found that those who are doing this can plead thirty years' prescription, they must be bought off, but the misuser must cease. If the diversion is of less ancient date[298], it must of course be at once stopped ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... tongue, brisket, and tenderloin of the two cows, while fresh, these being the tenderest and best parts of the buffalo, they added the rest of the meat to their stores in the Annex. As they had done already in several cases, they jerked it, a most useful operation that observant Dick had learned when they ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... dear, no! I never was the least bit observant; you know that, Arthur. But apart from that, and I hope you will not think me unsympathetic—but don't you think we must sooner or later be thinking of what's to be done? At present, though I fully agree with Mr Bethany as to the wisdom of hushing ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... his dark head towered above other heads in the throne room, it was observed even by those not usually observant, that never had Leopold ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... observant or she would have noticed her little brother's white face and quivering lips. If she had been sympathetic she would have understood that the sorrow which filled his heart was doubled, trebled, by the knowledge that his act—innocent little joke though it was, was at the bottom of the tragedy—but ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... business man, or even of the average professional man, is inordinately childish. It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world, or to ladle out its normal doses of bad medicine and worse law, than intakes to operate a taxicab or fry a pan of fish. No observant person, indeed, can come into close contact with the general run of business and professional men—I confine myself to those who seem to get on in the world, and exclude the admitted failures—without marvelling at their ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Giray, with downcast eye, As though some spell in sorrow bound him, His slavish courtiers thronging nigh, In sad expectance stood around him. The lips of all had silence sealed, Whilst, bent on him, each look observant, Saw grief's deep trace and passion fervent Upon his gloomy brow revealed. But the proud Khan his dark eye raising, And on the courtiers fiercely gazing, Gave signal to them to begone! The chief, unwitnessed and alone, Now yields him to his bosom's ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... stumbled across the shingle towards the open shed which marks the landing-place of the only ferry across the Ebro that Saragossa possesses. The ferry-boat was moored to the landing-stage. It is a high-prowed, high-sterned vessel, built on Viking lines, from a picture the observant must conclude, by a landsman carpenter. It swings across the river on a wire rope, with a running tackle, by the force of the stream and the aid of a ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... all dying to make a laugh about the equerries " wanting the ladies ; " and Colonel Fairly began ; but the gravity of my behaviour soon quieted him. Mr. Hagget was content to be observant of a new person ; General Harcourt scarce ever speaks but from necessity; and Major Price was as grave ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... seldom to write: their hushed tenderness over all this was like a religion, and was also an attributive honour, to fall away from which was a form of treachery. This wasn't the way people usually felt in London, she knew; but strenuous ardent observant girl as she was, with secrecies of sentiment and dim originalities of attitude, she had already made up her mind that London was no treasure-house of delicacies. Remembrance there was hammered thin— ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... and Margaret Ellison, and certainly no one made a fuss over him on account of it. Why should anybody make a hero of a young fellow just because he is not quite sure of himself in crossing the street, and because his mouth twitches? Boy scouts are both observant and patriotic, but they could not see that there was anything missing about Tom. All they had noticed was that in resuming his duties at the office he had seemed to be drifting away from them—from the troop. And when he came on Friday ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... attached to this church are the state archives of Venice. We did not see them, but they are said to number millions of documents. "They are the records of centuries of the most watchful, observant and suspicious government that ever existed—in which every thing was written down and nothing spoken out." They fill nearly three hundred rooms. Among them are manuscripts from the archives of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mode, sometimes art. Just now the latter is in the ascendant, though, as a rule, only in that inferior phase which has not reached the "concealment of art"—the point where extremes meet and the perfection of artifice presents all the appearance of artlessness. No one of an observant turn of mind, who is accustomed to the sight of English maids and matrons, can deny that making-up, as at present practiced, partakes of the amateurish element. Impossible reds and whites grow still ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... the ardent, passionate, romantic epistles recalling the fervid style and thought of the Nouvelle Hlose. They are substantial letters, concise and interesting, such as a good husband might write after ten years of marriage, but not at all a lover's letters. Josephine, who was quite observant, must have noticed the difference, but she had enough tact and prudence to avoid complaint. 1805 was not 1796; Napoleon still loved Josephine, but from habit, gratitude, and a sense of duty, not with mad passion. He paid ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... face, resting lightly on the palm of one white hand, while the other supports the elbow—a position which gives to her countenance a keen, enquiring expression which is very marked. Standing thus in repose, and yet keenly observant, was Florence Nightingale—that Englishwoman whose name shall never die, but sound like music on the lips of British men until the hour ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... prove very good, and are very devout and observant in their religion; for only the desire for salvation incites them to adopt our religion, so that there are many Christians in Japon. Accordingly they return freely, and without opposition, to their own country. At most there are about five hundred Japanese of this nation in Manila, for they ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... Latitudinarians and Socinians. An acute controversialist, skilled in the critical knowledge of Scripture, thoroughly versed in the annals of primitive antiquity, he was an opponent not lightly to be challenged. A devoted adherent of the English Church, scrupulously observant of all its rites and usages, and convinced as of 'a certain and evident truth that the Church of England is in her doctrine, discipline, and worship, most agreeable to the primitive and apostolical institution,'[61] his only idea of improvement and reform in Church matters was to remove ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... in Kensal Green. The clergyman appeared, read the service, and went away again. A few minutes ended it all. When the undertaker and his men had also departed, she sat down on a bench near to watch the sexton filling up the grave—Tom's grave. She was very quiet, and none but a closely observant person watching her face could have penetrated into the truth of what your impulsive characters, always in the extremes of mirth or misery, never understand about quiet people, that "still waters ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... the encroachment of his rule upon that old, that true England whose strength and virtue were so differently manifested. This fair broad land of the lovely villages signifies little save to the antiquary, the poet, the painter. Vainly, indeed, should I show its beauty and its peace to the observant foreigner; he would but smile, and, with a glance at the traction-engine just coming along the road, indicate the direction ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... The observant matron did not fail to report this conversation to Charity, who laughed at the time, but treated Mr Moddle that very evening with increased consideration, and presented her side face to him as much as possible. Mr Moddle was not less sentimental ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... them all, and some were even willing to go the length of saying that it represented more, and stood for dirty, drivelling, desperate, and a few other choice words which it is quite unnecessary to mention. Only a few, and these were among the knowing and peculiarly observant ones of Gorman's intimates, said that "D" stood for "deep." But then, many of those who thus pronounced their opinion, were comparatively worthless characters, given to scandal and slander; so the reader must not allow himself to be biassed too ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne |
