"Penetration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her a marvellous brilliance. To this height she has raised the man of her choice! And already she is making plans for removing her own establishment to St. Petersburg, to a mansion not too far from the Embassy; while the Prince, with his pale sunk cheeks and rapt look—the look whose penetration Bismarck could never sustain—checks upon his contemptuous lips the smile at once mysterious and dogmatic, compounded of diplomacy and learning, and thinks to himself: 'Now Colette must make up her mind. She could come out there, we could be married quietly at the Chapelle ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... did not encourage intimacies with people. He found it painful to look with involuntary penetration into the confusion ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... to some extent overcome these difficulties by his improved apparatus, and has skiagraphed, though rather obscurely, the shoulder and trunk, and Rowland has been able to do the same. Doubtless when we are able to devise apparatus of greater penetration, and to control the effect of the rays, we shall be able to skiagraph clearly even through the entire thickness of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... distinction to be early made privy to Miss Burney's intention to resign her appointment; but this less from any wish of her own, than as I concluded from my own observation. She did not suspect this, nor that the Queen's ready penetration had prepared her also for the coming resignation before it was respectfully laid at her feet. Indeed, much of what follows she was a total stranger to, and might have found it difficult to credit had ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... the dying youth, whose insensibility forbade him to recognise his friend, or unfold the cause of his destruction. I accompanied his remains to the grave; I tended the sacred spot where he lay; I once more exercised my penetration and my zeal in pursuit of his assassin. Once more my meditations and exertions ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... you do not show in this case any evidence of penetration. These love-stories which are attributed to her are so little like her! She is a child who does not even know what it ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... the negro of Port Royal? Let them expect. It is amusing to hear M. W.[171] She understands all the peculiarities of affairs down here with wonderful quickness and penetration; I have learned to respect her judgment and opinion. To hear her rail at these people, and slip out sly hints about the conduct of the "friends of the freedman" is ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... Woodstock. We shall see that his Court, the most dissolute, perhaps, that England ever tolerated, corrupted the manners of the students. On one of his Majesty's earliest visits he had a chance of displaying the penetration of which he was so proud. James was always finding out something or somebody, till it almost seemed as if people had discovered that the best way to flatter him was to try to deceive him. In 1604, there ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... to pay a superstitious regard to whatever could be collected concerning them, and to admire all they delivered as oraculous. Our other discoverer, Candish, was likewise a man of great parts and great penetration, as well as of great spirit; he had, undoubtedly, a mighty genius for discoveries; but the prevailing notion of those times, that the only way to serve the nation was plundering the Spaniards, seems to have got the better of his desire to find out unknown countries; and made him choose to be known ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... of larger and deeper thinking, every courageous mind should be able to cross the threshold of any of the profound problems of the universe with safe and circumspect steps, however certain it may be that only a slight measure of penetration of the problem may be attainable. A well-ordered mind will remain at once complacent and wholesome when brought to the limit of its effort by the limit of evidence. The problem of the origin of celestial worlds, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... an attempt to push analysis to its ultimate limits; valuable in its method, even if defective in its results; a striking example of the acuteness and subtle penetration of its author. There is another branch of his philosophy in which he is regarded as a metaphysical sceptic, in reference to the passage of the mind outwards, by means of its own sensations and ideas, into the knowledge of real being, wherein ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... "Was a spy. Therefore we secretly took to the woods, and left you to travel post alone over our prearranged route. That misled our pursuer, and my people in the mountain castle besides; they were hourly expecting the disguised Flora, and with more zeal than penetration they took you for the Fraeulein. Even here at the castle they thought Flora was among the mountains; they inquired about her, they wrote to her—did you not receive a note?" In an instant I produced the note from my pocket: "This letter, then—?" "Is addressed to me," said Fraeulein Flora, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... way, to much the same as Miss Quiney had taught him out of the catechism. Miss Quiney had used pious words; in Miss Quiney's talk everything—even to sitting upright at table—was mixed up with God and an all-seeing Eye; and his father—with a child's deadly penetration Dicky felt sure of ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... consider, that Fairfax himself, a private gentleman, who had not the advantage of a seat in parliament, had, through the same steps, attained even a superior rank, and, if endued with common capacity and penetration, had been able to retain it. To incite such an army to rebellion against the parliament, required no uncommon art or industry: to have kept them in obedience had been the more difficult enterprise. When the breach was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... to read Virgil for his own amusement, and not in school hours as a task." Such is the force of self-education in genius, that the celebrated physiologist, JOHN HUNTER, who was entirely self-educated, evinced such penetration in his anatomical discoveries, that he has brought into notice passages from writers he was unable to read, and which had been overlooked by ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... army marched; the President made known that he was going to command it; Hamilton, as I have understood, requested to follow him; the President dared not refuse him. It does not require much, penetration to divine the object of this journey. In the President it was wise, it might also be his duty. But in Mr. Hamilton it was a consequence of the profound policy which directs all his steps; a measure dictated by a perfect knowledge of the human heart. Was it not interesting ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... poetry and philosophy, became an author, putting forth the strangest books with the strangest titles; considered for a time a strange, crack-brained mixture of enthusiast and buffoon; was recognised at last as a man of infinite humour, sensibility, force, and penetration; his writings procured him friends and fame, and at length a wife and a settled pension; settled in Baireuth, where he lived thenceforth diligent and celebrated in many departments of literature, and where ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... parallel to the prying, tattling, backbiting littleness of the place elsewhere in the world. A small country village in America or England has its meddlesomeness, but not its worldly, wicked sharpness. Figure the meanness of a chimney-corner gossip, added to the bitter shrewdness and witty penetration of a gifted roue, and you have some idea of Venetian scandal. In that city, where all the nobler organs of expression are closed by political conditions, the viler channels run continual filth and poison, and the people, shut out from public and free ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... still not so much any foreboding of the future that moved Fleda's tears as the sense of her grandfather's present pain, the quick answer of her gentle nature to every sorrow that touched him. His griefs were doubly hers. Both from his openness of character and her penetration, they could rarely be felt un- shared; and she shared them always ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... pictures were studied with this searching thoroughness; the secrets of skill in each were uncovered, the sources of beauty or power discerned; and the eye and hand of the pupil gained intelligence, quickness, penetration. Month after month passed in what seemed to be a monotony of mechanical imitation; but in this arduous and literal reproduction of the skill of others was laid the sure foundations of individual skill. This devout attention to methods secured for a considerable number of men a technical ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... what you are portraying. Velasquez had become acquainted with humanity, and gotten on intimate terms with life. He had haunted the waysides and markets to good purpose; he had laid the foundation of those qualities which characterize his best work: mastery of expression, penetration into character, the ability to look upon a face and read the thoughts that lurk behind, the crouching passions, and all the aspirations too great for speech. To picture great men you must be a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... like a fly than I am like an a—a—." But as the connoisseur approached his finger to the picture, the fly flew away—-His eyes are half closed; this is called the wise man's wink, and shews he can see the world with half an eye; he had so wonderful a penetration, so inimitable a forecast, he always could see how every thing was to ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... penetration to realize, Colonel, that, after the scene which took place today between you and my friend, Oldendorf as a man of honor could neither write such an article nor allow it ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the idea of this high elevation being, it is stated, to obtain a steep angle of descent for the shells at comparatively short ranges, in combination with a high remaining velocity so as to ensure the penetration of overhead cover. These howitzers are also employed in siege and fortress defence warfare. They have been used along the Aisne positions as auxiliaries to ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various
... of the three "brothers," as he supposes them to be; he calls Ellis "a fine, quaint spirit;" and speaks of "an evident power of wing that may reach heights not here attempted." Again, with some degree of penetration, the reviewer says, that the poems of Ellis "convey an impression of originality beyond what his contributions to these volumes embody." Currer is placed midway between Ellis and Acton. But there is little in the review to strain out, at this distance of time, as worth preserving. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... has been already said, was the executioner of this horrid injustice against his will, had two daughters, the eldest called Scheherazade, and the youngest Dinarzade: the latter was a lady of very great merit; but the elder had courage, wit, and penetration, infinitely above her sex; she had read abundance, and had such a prodigious memory that she never forgot any thing. She had successfully applied herself to philosophy, physic, history, and the liberal arts, and for verse exceeded, the best poets of her ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... are, however, not wanting in discernment, penetration, finesse; in this light they are superior to many of the white girls in the lower classes of society, girls so impenetrably dull, that like that of Balsac's village, they are too stupid to be deceived by a man of breeding, gallantry ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... dim in the gloaming. Judith explained to the peddler that the convict her husband had bought proved to be an old enemy of his. She stammered a little in her endeavor not to betray the real reasons for selling him, and Perkins, who was proud of his own penetration, inferred that Browne was afraid of his life if he should keep the new servant. He saw in this an unexpected chance for profit. When Mrs. Browne offered to sell him if Perkins would take him to the eastern shore or some ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... life and character were the delight of all these four moralists. As a judge of character, Dr. Hedge, who knew Emerson well, has spoken to me of his extraordinary gift, and no reader of "English Traits" can have failed to mark the formidable penetration of the intellect which looked through ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Mellicent, "brother, had I so much cause to think meanly of my own judgment, and own the superiority of dear Isabel's penetration, as when she rejected my advice, and refused that vacillating time-server; shewing that she needed not the light of prosperity to ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... last year, (restorations being threatened) merely to show the way in which the light is let through the edges of the angle by penetration of the upper capital, and of the foliage in the sculpture below; so that the mass may not come ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... faith, the short-sighted apostles, were men of the meanest occupations, and their church, a wretched room in a miserable tenement. The superb buildings of St. Peter's in Rome, and St. Paul's in London, used by their followers, were not within the reach of their penetration. They were also totally ignorant of tripple crowns, red hats, mitres, crosiers, robes, and rochets, well ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... Effect. It is a well-settled rule, that the penetration projectiles is proportionate directly to their weight and diameter, and to the square of their velocity. For example, the 10-1/2-inch Armstrong 150-pound shot, thrown by 50 pounds of powder at 1,770 feet per second, has nearly twice the destructive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Pattison (Satires of Pope, p. 158) points out Warburton's 'want of penetration in that subject [metaphysics] which he considered more peculiarly his own.' He said of 'the late Mr. Baxter' (Andrew Baxter, not Richard Baxter), that 'a few pages of his reasoning have not only more sense and substance than all the elegant discourses of Dr. Berkeley, but infinitely better entitle ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Thomas Keightley's, published in 1859, which contains excellent notes, and Prof. David Masson's, which is the work of the most learned and devoted of all Milton's editors. Both of these have the advantage of Todd in some respects; Keightley in acuteness and penetration, Masson in completeness of knowledge. But no single editor's work can be a perfect substitute for a variorum edition like that of Todd, giving the comments and suggestions of many different minds. The most complete edition of Masson's work is the final library one ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... little of the inner world of the heart, and knew too imperfectly its agitations. When, however, he deals with literature—and a just judgment in letters may almost be called an element in morals—all his penetration and power become apparent. To clear the ground for the new school of nature, truth, and reason was Boileau's first task. It was a task which called for courage and skill ... he struck at the follies and affectations of the world of letters, and he struck with ...
— English Satires • Various
... is, as it were, the symbol of that spark of light that slumbers in the soul of man, or, as the alchemists often say, the hidden fire that is to be awakened by the process. If we reflect that in this symbolism the cross expresses a penetration, the alchemic symbol [Symbol: mercury] is explained. It is now quite interesting that the like connection appears in the subterranean places of worship in this form [Symbol: female with concave arc underneath it], (l. c., p. 27). Keller calls it a ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... jumble of dialogue and soliloquy, in which he tries to jerk out his thoughts, as if he would have them known, and yet not have them known. I believe men generally credit themselves with peculiar penetration when they are in the act of being deluded, whether by themselves or by others. Hence, again, the strange and even ludicrous conceit in which Leontes wraps himself. "Not noted, is 't," says he, referring to the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... material achievement and of social progress, in short, a national forward movement almost unequalled in history. The world looked on in admiration, perhaps not entirely free from a tinge of envy. Germany was conquering the earth by peaceful penetration; and no one stood in its way. It had free access to all the seas and ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... know whether you are serious or not," she said. "For your own sake, I hope you are not. Rose has been flirting with you, but I thought you had penetration enough to see through her. I hope, I trust, Frank, you have not allowed yourself to think ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... often brings to an acute intelligence. You are to remember that for close upon two months now the sword had been Andre-Louis' daily exercise and almost hourly thought. Protracted concentration upon the subject was giving him an extraordinary penetration of vision. Swordsmanship as he learnt and taught and saw it daily practised consisted of a series of attacks and parries, a series of disengages from one line into another. But always a limited series. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... modestly, in the journal which he kept of the expedition. Three months from the time he started, he was back again in Williamsburg, having faced his first great responsibility, and done his work absolutely well. He had shown a cool courage that nothing could shake, a fine patience, and a penetration and perception which nothing could escape. He was the hero of the hour in the little Virginia capital; the whole colony perceived that here was a man to ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Alexander admired the penetration and free manners of Diogenes. After some conversation, he said to him: "I see, Diogenes, that you are in want of many things; and I shall be happy to have an opportunity of assisting you: ask of me what you will." "Retire a little to one side then," replied Diogenes; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... Mongol authority in China. Not long after that event died the great general, Suta, of whom the national historians give the following glowing description which merits preservation: "Suta spoke little and was endowed with great penetration. He was always on good terms with the generals acting with him, sharing the good and bad fortune alike of his soldiers, of whom there was not one who, touched by his kindness, would not have done his duty to the death. He was ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... vicinity of his poor home. His appreciation of the crude mysteries of the filmed detective drama amused the famous expert in the finer art of actual crime detection, until he discovered that the boy possessed natural gifts of intuition and observation, combined with penetration. Crewe grew interested in developing the boy's talent for detective work. When the lad's mother died Crewe decided to take him into his Holborn offices as messenger-boy. Crewe soon discovered that Joe had a useful gift for "shadowing" work, and ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... be ameliorated, by having one common object of benevolence remaining; in the exercise of which the jealousies and angry passions incident to a state of hostility could not have any part with a generous and a high-minded people; whilst the experience and penetration of liberal and enlightened governments could, without difficulty, form such arrangements as would prevent that which was intended as a benefit to mankind, from being made ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... so full of human nature that, as some one has said, "we feel them made of good flesh and blood like ourselves, with whom we have something, be it ever so little, that keeps us from being alien one to another." Her keen but sympathetic penetration attains some of the happiest results in the wholesome realism of her child characters; her children become real to us, creep into our hearts, and we love them, and in sympathy with this sentiment springs up a spontaneous reawakening ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Flag-river, because the Indians waved large white cloths on long poles, like colours, as if inviting the Spaniards to land. The country, on the coast of which the Spaniards now were, was a province of the great empire of Mexico, over which Montezuma then reigned, a prince of great wisdom and penetration, who had heard of the exploits of the Spaniards, and the pains they took to become acquainted with the sea coasts of his dominions. He was uneasy on this account, and was anxious to learn who and what these people were, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... was shown in the last chapter, excites the primary radicle to bend downwards with very little force, quite insufficient to penetrate the ground. Such penetration ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... cousin, it does to need much penetration to divine what malady it is under which you have labored since the ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... perceive, sagacious to anticipate, prompt to decide, and daring in execution, he was born with the qualities which constitute a great commander. His military coup d'oeil his intuitive penetration, his knowledge of men and his capacity to control them were known to all his companions in arms, and commanded their respect; while the gentleness of his disposition, the courtesy of his deportment, his scrupulous regard to their ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... comforts or misery. He therefore brought back with him a stock of knowledge not to be acquired from books, but only found in the world by frequenting different and opposite societies with observation, penetration, and genius. With manners as polished as his mind is well informed, he not only, possesses the favour, but the friendship of his Prince, and, what is still more rare, is worthy of both. All Sovereigns ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... that Mrs. Pasmer wished to confine the meaning of their talk to Miss Anderson, and she assented, with a penetration of which she saw that Mrs. Pasmer ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Lana! We just put our heads together—the whole of us—that's all! Put our heads together! You know! As men will!" His stammering eagerness did not satisfy her feminine penetration. Her daughterly interest in the Senator's political standing was stirred ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... rather pathetic reading when he kept to the point, for love for his wife cropped out plainly between the lines after years of separation. Suddenly he began to adorn me with a variety of fine qualities. He assured me that I had penetration, clear judgment, and a sense of justice, as ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... easily misinterpret an attention to the truth of character into the real doctrine of the poet, and this too, when a Chorus was at hand to correct and disabuse their judgments, what must be the case, when the whole is left to the sagacity and penetration of the people? The wiser sort, it is true, have little need of this information. Yet the reflexions of sober sense on the course and occurrences of the representation, clothed in the noblest dress of poetry, and enforced by the joint powers ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... ahead with a long stick, which he thrusts continually down through the snow. The slightly harder surface over which sleds and dogs have passed reveals itself by offering more resistance to the penetration of the stick, and that is the only way the trail can be found. Even with three feet of new snow upon it, it is well worth while finding, or otherwise there is no bottom at all and way must be made through all the snow of the winter. But all Alaskan trails ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... they take shelter, and to whose rule they submit, because of love which masters and controls them. The heart cries out for a person—not for things. Spirit desires spirit; soul yearns for soul. It is the genius of woman to be electrical in movement, intuitive in penetration, and spiritual in tendency. She excels not so easily in classification or recreation as in an instinctive seizure of causes, and a simple breathing out of what she receives, that has the singleness of life, rather than the selecting and energizing of art. More native is it to her to be the living ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... exhausted by the struggle she made to let me thus far into her history. The concluding part of her statement, combined with the still unexplained secrecy of my call, surprised me, and defied my powers of penetration. This lady had been dangerously ill for a month, during all which time no medical man had been called to her aid; and even now, when her body was attenuated, and her strength exhausted to the uttermost, professional ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... slapping his thigh with a big hand. "On my soul I have the penetration! Ye don't need to tell me one thing except this: I told ye I'd lead ye somewhere; haven't I kept ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... wanted to live. Once or twice, when all was quiet, and the pain was having its night-time orgy with her, she cried out in the unbearable agony of it. She would have no one with her at nights, but Aunt Janet's uncanny penetration guessed at the pain and she made Dr. Angus leave morphia tablets for her. At first, though they were at her hand, she ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... wasteful exhibition of human power to attempt the creation of a new party by the force of combined will and resolutions formulated in public meetings. Abraham Lincoln's great experience or keener penetration, or both, guided him at the outset of the realignments on political issues, and at the opening of the Congressional campaign of 1858, I followed him firmly and without mental reservation into the ranks ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... discoverer of the finest regions, yet it must be borne in mind, that the difficulties of traversing those regions cannot be nearly so great as those encountered by the less fortunate traveller who finds himself surrounded by heartless deserts. The successful penetration of such a region must, nevertheless, have its value, both in a commercial and a geographical sense, as it points out to the future emigrant or settler, those portions of our continent which he should rigorously avoid. It never could ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... is easy to me, and every sensation reverberates again and again within me. What might be, spoils for me what is. What ought to be consumes me with sadness. So the reality, the present, the irreparable, the necessary, repel and even terrify me. I have too much imagination, conscience and penetration, and not enough character. The life of thought alone seems to me to have enough elasticity and immensity, to be free enough from the irreparable; practical life ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to day the dread of some unknown but inevitable evil in the shadow of which she lived became more and more keen and terrible. Therefore, during the rare moments when Diard and Juana met she would cast upon his hollow face, wan from nights of gambling and furrowed by emotions, a piercing look, the penetration of which made Diard shudder. At such times the assumed gaiety of her husband alarmed Juana more than his gloomiest expressions of anxiety when, by chance, he forgot that assumption of joy. Diard feared his wife as a criminal fears the executioner. In him, Juana saw her children's shame; ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... speaker a look of steady penetration. He met it with a glance of perfect confiding. "She sees me," he said, at the ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... larvae, "they immediately commence spinning their cocoons, which takes just about thirty-six hours." I think it very likely; but when I admit it, I cannot imagine how it was ascertained;—the faculty of looking through a mill-stone I do not possess, and it requires about the same optical penetration to look into one of these cells after it is sealed over, as it is all perfect darkness. Suppose we drive away the bees and open the cell, to give us a look at the interior: the little insect stops its labor in a moment, probably from the effect of air ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... despised for his want of savoir faire, his slovenliness, his timidity; and it was a great surprise to discover, long after, a bundle of letters from Mr. Russell to his father, in which he found his abilities and shortcomings discussed with extraordinary penetration. ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his forging—long-wrought charcoal iron; the world would know no better. Still, with his penetration of the future, he realized that the old, careful processes were doomed. He had difficulty in assembling enough adequate workmen to fill the increasing contracts for bar iron and rails now; and the demand, with the extension of steam ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... sure, they each began to scrimmage; the broken-spirited Christie exhibiting both alacrity and penetration in searching obscure corners. In the dining-room, behind the dresser, three or four books were discovered: an odd volume of Thackeray, another of Dickens, a memorandum-book or diary. "This seems to be Latin," said Jessie, fishing out a smaller book. ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... some of these puppet-shows which are so frequently acted on the great stage; but though thou shouldst have resided all thy days in those remote parts of this island which great men seldom visit, yet, if thou hast any penetration, thou must have had some occasions to admire both the solemnity of countenance in the actor and the gravity in the spectator, while some of those farces are carried on which are acted almost daily in every village in the kingdom. He must have a very despicable opinion of mankind indeed ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... and seize them at the hazard of his life, he was scarcely more an object of attention among the women than among the men. Greatly did they admire his courage and unshaken presence of mind while engaged in so perilous an adventure; but still more were they astonished at his penetration in discovering where the bravoes concealed themselves, an attempt which foiled even the keen wits of the so ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... "has done more than he promised; and that, without the pomp of notes or the boast of criticism, many passages are happily restored." The preface, in his opinion, "cannot be said to discover much profundity or penetration." But he acknowledged Rowe's influence on Shakespeare's reputation. In our own century, more justice has been done Rowe, at ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... of imagination which adds the blind terror of bodily suffering and of death, envisaged as an accident to the body alone, strictly—to all the other apprehensions on which the sense of one's existence is based. Unfortunately, Captain Mitchell had not much penetration of any kind; characteristic, illuminating trifles of expression, action, or movement, escaped him completely. He was too pompously and innocently aware of his own existence to observe that of others. For instance, he could not believe ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... soil for the growth of ideas springing from her fertile brain; which led her to be both conservative and impetuous, grave or vivacious, ever fearless and versatile, all pervaded with the wholesome balance of quick penetration. ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... Graydon would wish to kiss her too often. She is just as fond of him as he is of her, and in just the same way; but if I had his chance I'd soon have it a different way;" and the good lady was complacency itself over her penetration, as she bade Graydon good-night. No one could see and report the surface of ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... I know thy penetration Many a stain and blot will see, In the languid long narration, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... that Mr. Slumper was doing battle. How much it cost the poor sinner to pick up the letter, emerge from his closet, and make his way upstairs to Mr. Blithe's ante-chamber will never be known. That it reduced his overdraft in Heaven goes without saying. Curiously enough, the penetration of the barrier erected upon the obnoxious personality of a managing clerk proved a less formidable business than Mr. Slumper had expected. The very truculence of the fellow stung the derelict to a sudden defiance. This was but a flash in the pan—yet enough for a bully.... After ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... much pain from the development of the larva of the H. lineata. During the spring of the year, the pain resulting from the presence of the larvae beneath the skin and the penetration of the skin is manifested by excitement and running about. Besides the loss in milk and beef production, there is a heavy yearly loss from the damage ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... had Gustavus Adolphus merited, by his courage and success, their confidence, when they began covertly to circumvent all his plans. Through a continual struggle with the arts of enemies, and the distrust of his own allies, must his victories henceforth be won; yet resolution, penetration, and prudence made their way through all impediments. But while his success excited the jealousy of his more powerful allies, France and Saxony, it gave courage to the weaker, and emboldened them openly ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... gained great influence. It seems that the king gave him the history of his complaints, of his debility, of his old asthma, and of his imperfect digestion, but talked in raptures of the wretch's sagacity and penetration; for merely by looking at the tongue and feeling the pulse before the infidel was told what was the state of the case, he asked whether his majesty did not use the hot baths very frequently;[37] whether, when he smoked, he did not immediately bring on a fit of coughing; ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... leaving your house without returning when the police have revealed to you a conspiracy—to know how to return at the right time—this is the lesson which is hard to learn. In this matter everything depends upon tact and penetration. The actual events of life always ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... of the Intelligence Director. They were noted for their icy penetration, but upon this night they were like steel knives. It was as though he surveyed Hillerman from behind the bulwark of some new and hostile information. Even as he stared, Cargill was booming ...
— The Clean and Wholesome Land • Ralph Sholto
... the liquid sulphurous acid proceeds very rapidly in the free air. This process is an exceedingly convenient one; it does away with danger from fire, and it leaves the gildings and metallic objects that chance to be in the room absolutely intact. Finally, the acid's power of penetration appears to be still greater than that which is obtained by the combustion of sulphur. It has but one drawback, and that is its high price. Each siphon is sold to the public at the price of one dollar. To municipalities using sulphurous acid in this form the price ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... particularly, and in all villages house cellars had been enlarged and connected by new galleries, the debris from the buildings forming a thicker roof against penetration by shells. Where there had seemed no life in Beaumont-Hamel battalions were snug in their refuges as the earth around trembled from the explosions. Those shell-threshed parapets of the first-line German trenches which appeared to represent complete ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... but the wild plums of the prairies. At evening, one of my Indians, an experienced warrior, started alone to spy into their camp, which he was successful enough to penetrate, and learn the plan of their expedition, by certain tokens which could not deceive his cunning and penetration. The boat-house contained a large sailing-boat, besides seven or eight skiffs. There also we had in store our stock of dried fish and fishing apparatus, such as nets, &c. As we had been at peace for several years, the house or post, had no garrison, except that ten or twelve ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... particular vanity, she would discover wherein his interests were centred and attack him through that avenue. So skilful was she, so insinuating in her flattery and in her questions, that she rarely failed to secure admiration as a woman of singular penetration. She had the gift of being able to listen with apparent interest to a conversation, throwing in the necessary question here and there. When it was necessary to talk, she could change her tactics and make conversation for the shy, ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... was never very subtle in her dealings with people, and her own natural honesty made her often stupid about men's motives. But the thing for which she feared her uncle most was his, as it seemed to her, supernatural penetration into the ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... sincere. She often reproached herself for her faults and love of contradiction. Though she appears to have loved her husband, she was not blind to his weaknesses, and he was afraid of her sallies. So vain and sensitive a man could not feel comfortable in the society of a woman of her keen penetration, and her wit was not always tempered by discretion. Madame Recamier gained by the contrast. She believed in him, and "there are few things so pleasant," says a writer in Fraser, "as to have a woman at hand that believes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... disciples of Socrates? What of Aristotle? I am at a loss to know what most to admire in him, his vast and profound erudition, or the great number of his writings, or his pleasing style and manner, or the inventions and penetration of his wit, or the variety of his works. And as to Theophrastus, his elocution has something so noble and so divine that it may be said that from ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... he easily brought over the Grand Sun to favour his scheme, he being a young man of no experience in the world, and having no great correspondence with the French: he was the more easily gained over, as all the Suns were agreed, that the Sun of the Apple was a man of solidity and penetration; who having repaired to the Sovereign of nation, apprised him of the necessity of taking that step, as in time himself would be forced to quit his own village; also of the wisdom of the measures concerted, such as even ascertained success; and of the ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... long speech the boy's eyes had never wavered from hers. After one or two efforts to protest he had listened quite intensely, marvelling at the startling revelation of such depths of mind and heart-the startling penetration to the truth, for he knew it was the truth. And when she rose he stayed where he was, clinging to her hand, and kissing it reverently. He was speechless even when, obeying the impulse of her hand, he rose in front of her and ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... The actual facts are not purely logical but neither are they completely interpenetrated since they lend themselves to classification: they tend to logical form on the one hand and to complete inter-penetration on the other without going the whole way in either direction. What Bergson does in the description of the facts which he offers is to isolate each of these tendencies making them into two separate distinct abstractions, one called matter and the other mind. Isolated, what in ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... vigentibus, "flourishing," instead of urgentibus, "urgent." But it is sufficiently evident, from other passages, that the causes which were operating gradually, but surely, to the destruction of the Roman empire, did not escape the penetration of Tacitus, even when disguised by the most flattering appearances. The common ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... whatever between, so as to give nearly the aspect of a conical rifle bullet to the entire front of the body; and, indeed, the bird moves more like a bullet than an arrow—dependent on a certain impetus of weight rather than on sharp penetration of the air. I say dependent on, but I have not yet been able to trace distinct relation between the shapes of birds and their powers of flight. I suppose the form of the body is first determined by the general habits and food, and that nature can make ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... Government, at least as long as Roosevelt was President, would repel any attempt by foreigners to violate the Monroe Doctrine, and set up a nucleus of foreign power in either North or South America. He devoted himself all the more earnestly to pushing the sly work of peaceful penetration, that work of spying and lying in which the German people proved itself easily first. The diabolical propaganda, aimed not only at undermining the United States, at seducing the Irish and other hyphenate groups of Americans, but at polluting the Mexicans and several of the South American States; ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Edward's penetration had been sufficiently quick to discover that there was a mystery about the angler, that there must have been a cause for the blush that rose so proudly on Ellen's cheek; and his Quixotism had been not a little mortified, because she did not ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... diplomatic circles, was followed by a year at Oxford, where Thomas Allen, the mathematician and occultist, looked after his studies. Allen "quickly discerned the natural strength of his faculties, and that spirit of penetration which is so seldom met with in persons of his age." He felt he had under his care a young Pico di Mirandola. It may have been now he made his boyish translation of the Pastor Fido, and his unpublished version of Virgil's Eclogues. As to the latter, ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... variations of the rifle, for the sake of obtaining force of penetration, nothing yet compares with the Accelerating Rifle, invented some years since by a New York mechanic. In this the ball was started by an ordinary charge, and at a certain distance down the barrel received a new charge, by a side chamber, which produced an almost incredible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... in my features and asked in a kind tone if I were ill. M. de la Marche seemed neither to observe nor to guess anything. The abbe alone examined me attentively. More than once I caught his blue eyes anxiously fixed on me, those eyes in which natural penetration was always veiled by habitual shyness. The abbe did not like me. I could easily see that his kindly, cheerful manners grew cold in spite of himself as soon as he spoke to me; and I noticed, too, that his face would invariably assume a sad ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... small, but well-made and muscular, and able to go through astonishing exertion—frequently marching on foot over mountains and plains without exhibiting the slightest fatigue. His eyes were dark, large, and full of fire and penetration, denoting wonderful energy of mind and greatness of soul. His nose was aquiline and well-formed, his face rather long, and his complexion somewhat sallow. As Uncle Richard and I had the honour of being invited to his table, I had an opportunity ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... engine for the oppression of the negro race and white laborers as well, Emerson saw clearly that the season of respect for law had passed by, and he celebrated John Brown as the apostle and martyr of a holy cause. This accurate historical penetration on the part of one who knew but little of history is the finest flower in the poet's crown. What he said of John Brown may now seem somewhat exaggerated; but the importance of the event ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... employers thoroughly informed of the progress of the North German military organisation; he had warned them that the South German States would most certainly act with the North against a foreign assailant; he had described with great accuracy and great penetration the nature of the tie that existed between Berlin and St. Petersburg, a tie which was close enough to secure for Prussia the goodwill, and in certain contingencies the armed support, of Russia, while it was loose enough not to involve Prussia in any Muscovite enterprise ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... position? Half a dozen States in the League might for one reason or another wish to resist the claim of the United States for redress. Names of States which might possibly so combine could be given, but it is better to refrain. It is not inconceivable that German penetration and intrigue at some future time might promote a combination of the kind. All sorts of influences might be brought to bear on certain of the States and on their representatives. Dynastic ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... penetration was not long in scenting out who was the formidable rival to whom Daddy Mainspring alluded. Sacre! to think the mercenary old hunks could dream of sacrificing my lovely Lucy to such a hobgoblin of a fellow as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... been commended by the ancients for the fidelity of their attachments, and they are still scrupulously exact to their words, and respectful to their kindred; they have been universally celebrated for their quickness of apprehension and penetration, and the vivacity of their wit. Their language is certainly one of the most ancient in the world; but it has many dialects. The Arabs, however, have their vices and defects. They are naturally addicted to war; and so vindictive as scarcely ever to ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... man must be in love with some actress; then it became his business to know who she was; this, too, soon betrayed itself. Then it became more than ever Sir Charles's business to know whether Mrs. Woffington returned the sentiment; and here his penetration was at fault, for the moment; he ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... height and could not, I think, have weighed over one hundred and fifty pounds. His face was pinched and careworn, but this effect was more than redeemed by a pair of full, black eyes having a depth and penetration I have never seen equalled, albeit there was, ever and anon, a suggestion of wildness which somewhat marred their deep, contemplative beauty. The brows and the carriage of the head at once bespoke the scholar. While thus I watched him, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... Bigelow. As, in the settlement of his father's estate, it was found to be wholly insolvent, Henry, unwilling to be dependent on his mother, who had a small income in her own right, gave notice to the Judge that he was about to leave his office. Now, the Judge was a man of penetration, and had already discovered in the quiet, reserved young man, just the qualities needed to give success in the practice of law. He looked calmly at his student for some moments after receiving this announcement, conning over his face, which by no means gave ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... hand, there is more conceptive power in youth, and at that time of life a man can make more out of the little that he knows. In age, judgment, penetration and thoroughness predominate. Youth is the time for amassing the material for a knowledge of the world that shall be distinctive and peculiar,—for an original view of life, in other words, the legacy that a man of genius leaves ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... inferior arches, and adding to the grace of the larger one by striking another arch above it with a more removed center, and placing the voussoirs at an acute angle to the curve, we have the truly noble form of domestic Gothic, which—more or less enriched by moldings and adorned by penetration, more or less open of the space between the including and inferior arches—was immediately adopted in almost all the proudest palaces of North Italy—in the Brolettos of Como, Bergamo, Modena, and Siena—-in the palace of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... next three years the Italian conquest of Tripoli (next door to Egypt) and the two wars in the Balkans hurt Germany's friends, the Turks and Bulgarians, a great deal, and thus threatened the German Berlin-to-Bagdad "line of penetration" through the Near East and into the Asiatic sea flank of the hated British. With 1914 came the completion of the enlarged Kiel Canal (exactly as foretold by Fisher years before); and this, together with the state of the world for and against the Germans, made the war an absolute ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... useful and substantial pledges of a sincere repentance; nor could he be persuaded, by the assurances of peace, to suspend, for an instant, the operations of an active war. A dark conspiracy was detected by the penetration of Theodosius; and he satisfied, without much reluctance, the public indignation, which he had secretly excited. Several of the guilty accomplices of Firmus were abandoned, according to ancient custom, to the tumult of a military execution; many more, by the amputation of both their hands, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... a word is, the more likely are common ideas about it to be hazy. We substitute acquaintance with the sound for penetration into the sense. A frond of sea-weed, as long as it is in the ocean, unfolds its delicate films and glows with its subdued colours. Take it out, and it is hard and brown and ugly, and you have to plunge it into the water again before you see ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... owed their prosperity, partly to their own wisdom and perseverance, in the beginning, and partly to the contempt with which sovereigns, in the days of chivalry, viewed commerce, might, with very little penetration, and much less exertion of wisdom than they had displayed, have seen that the spirit of commerce was becoming general, and that moderation and prudence were necessary to preserve them in their proud ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... white races had economic designs of their own on China, and one of the preliminary conditions of their execution was that Japan's aspirations should be foiled. Witte opened the campaign by inaugurating the process of peaceful penetration, but his remarkable efforts were neutralized and defeated by his own sovereign. The Japanese, after the Manchurian campaign, which they had done everything possible to avoid, contrived wholly to eliminate Russian aggression from the Far East. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to be no laughter left in literature free from the preoccupation of a sham real-life? So it would seem. Even what the great master has not shown us in his work, that your critic convinced of pathos is resolved to see in it. By the penetration of his intrusive sympathy he will come at it. It is of little use now to explain Snug the joiner to the audience: why, it is precisely Snug who stirs their emotions so painfully. Not the lion; they can see through that: but the Snug within, the human Snug. And Master Shallow has the ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... form is strongly tinged with the deep orange that indicates conceit. It was at a theosophical meeting that this special shape was encountered, and it accompanied a question which showed considerable thought and penetration. The answer at first given was not thoroughly satisfactory to the inquirer, who seems to have received the impression that his problem was being evaded by the lecturer. His resolution to obtain a full and thorough answer to his inquiry became more determined than ever, and his thought-form deepened ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... same thought as is expressed in Paul's other utterance of irrepressible aspiration and effort, 'Not as if I had already attained, either were already perfect, but I follow after,' or as he had just said, 'press towards the mark,' in continual approximation to the ideal. A complete penetration of all our actions by the principles and emotions of the Gospel is what is set before ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in connection with their activity should be pointed out, because it goes to prove the soundness of judgment, the penetration, and expansiveness characteristic of Jews. While the movement for woman's complete emancipation has counted not a single Jewess among its promoters, its more legitimate successor, the movement to establish woman's right and ability to earn a livelihood in any branch of ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... you was pretty hearty," answered the deacon, rather surprised at Ben's penetration. ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... must be so, unless all "adeptism" is a baseless lie. The adept may be more secure from ordinary dangers than the common mortal, but he is so by virtue of the superior knowledge, calmness, coolness and penetration which his lengthened existence and its necessary concomitants have enabled him to acquire; not by virtue of any preservative power in the process itself. He is secure as a man armed with a rifle is more secure than a naked baboon; ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... shallow in thought, devoid of large ideas of legislation, hazarding the loosest speculations with the utmost intellectual impudence, and depending for success on volubility of speech, rather than on accuracy of knowledge or penetration of intelligence. "The tendency of institutions like those of England," he adds, "is to encourage readiness in public men, at the expense both of fulness and of exactness. The keenest and most vigorous ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... confessedly the lighter side of the balance, when the higher and finer attributes are in the scale—woman has above them all her own unique life, which man can learn only as a student and spectator, the depths of which all his penetration does not enable him to explore, the secrets of which his consciousness can never report. From and through the powers and attributes which centre herein, come those experiences, perceptions—those faiths, hopes, trusts, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... terms in the professions and sciences are borrowed from these languages, it renders them easily understood. The study of the structure and combination of words and sentences calls forth the reflecting powers of youth, and expands their genius. It leads to penetration and judgement. It induces habits of diligence and patience. By means of this knowledge we have access to the sacred writings in the languages in which they were written, and we are therefore not liable to be imposed upon, for the sense of them, by others. We become ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... and attempts to swallow, but suddenly it chokes, half strangles, and back comes the milk, pouring out through the nostrils. Paralysis of the soft palate has occurred from poisoning of the nerves controlling it, caused by direct penetration of the toxin. Sometimes the muscles of the eye become paralyzed and the little one squints, or can ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... to risk a ceremonious call on our neighbors as a family, I saw no reason why I should not speak to the husband as an individual, when I happened to encounter him by the wayside. I made several approaches to do so, when it occurred to my penetration that my neighbor had the air of trying to avoid me. I resolved to put the suspicion to the test, and one forenoon, when he was sauntering along on the opposite side of the road, in the vicinity of Fisher's sawmill, I deliberately crossed ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... his pencil so painstakingly, knew all this and more. To his natural endowment of keen-eyed penetration had been recently added the illuminating experience of a year as sole head of the household—a year in which the little mother had been absent in a sanitarium recovering her shattered health and he had been responsible for the ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... the planets in certain early Italian engravings, are profoundly poetical and impressive. They seem to be something more than mere symbolism, [99] and to be connected with some peculiarly sympathetic penetration, on the part of the artist, into the subjects he intended to depict. Symbolism intense as this, is the creation of a special temper, in which a certain simplicity, taking all things literally, au pied de la lettre, is united to a vivid pre-occupation with the aesthetic beauty of the image itself, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... published, on pretence of raising a subscription for maintaining a trade between Great Britain and the king's territories on the Elbe; but it was a mysterious scene of iniquity, which the committee, with all their penetration, could not fully discover. They reported, however, that it was an infamous fraudulent undertaking, whereby many unwary persons had been drawn in, to their great loss: that the manner of carrying it on had been a manifest violation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... profound truth, as it is intended to be; but it needs no penetration to see here a man whose sympathies with all kinds of those "come-outers" who then multiplied exceedingly in his neighborhood, would be infinitesimal. He had not, however, yet engaged with this problem so closely as he was to do. So far one would discern only that ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... in a period of less facility of printing, he would have become mythological in a very few years, like AEsop or Pilpay, or one of the Seven Wise Masters, by his fables and proverbs. But the weight and penetration of many passages in his letters, messages, and speeches, hidden now by the very closeness of their application to the moment, are destined hereafter to wide fame. What pregnant definitions; what unerring common sense; what foresight; ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... know, either by the spirit of prophecy, or by intuitive penetration, that the majority of mankind would never observe these rules to any great degree, but would be blindly precipitated by their passions into every excess against which he so benevolently cautioned them; should this be a reason for his withdrawing his precepts and admonitions, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... homophones: and that something better should win the first place, I hold to be the most desirable of possible events. But perhaps our 'S.E.' is not yet so far committed to the process of decay as to be incapable of reform, and the machinery that we use for penetration may be used as well for organizing a reform and for enforcing it. There is as much fashion as inevitable law in our 'P.S.P.' or 'S.E.' talk, and if the fashion for a better, that is a more distinct and conservative, pronunciation should set in, then at the cost of a little ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... masculine and feminine. Max Muller's way of stating his theory, both in this Essay and in his later Lectures, affords one among several instances of the curious manner in which he combines a marvellous penetration into the significance of details with a certain looseness of general conception. [155] The principles of philological interpretation are an indispensable aid to us in detecting the hidden meaning of many a legend in which the powers of nature are represented in the guise ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... determined, and found to be 67.2 per cent. Liquid and vapor, therefore, differed from each only 0.5 per cent.; in other words, they were practically identical in their action. The radiation from the lime light has a greater power of penetration through transparent substances than that from the spiral. In the emission from both of these sources we have a mixture of obscure and luminous rays; but the ratio of the latter to the former, in the lime light is greater than in the spiral; and, as the very meaning of transparency ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... "had once a great trouble. It has made an old man of him before his time. I find that I can take it from him." She looked up at him with this. Now, there was a certain shrewd penetration under the softness of Kitty's eyes. Noting it, McCall instantly lost sight of her beauty and tears. He returned her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... exposed for sale. The king had a minister, named Moon, who could not restrain his curiosity; and he peeped at her from a balcony. The princess, as he did so, caught sight of him and made signs to him, which were interpreted by the penetration of his wife to be an invitation to meet her clandestinely. The wife hardly displayed what most ladies would deem "a proper spirit" in advising compliance; and the consequence of taking that advice would have been serious trouble both to himself and to the princess, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... the Ark, after school, and look over the books I have. We will talk some more about it, and you shall select as you please, or I will select for you, if you desire," I said, looking at Rebecca with kindly though severe penetration. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... and have something of the precise clearness of an antique cameo. The expression is that of a mind in continuous exercise—of a mind accustomed not to slow but to quick deliberation, and to instant decision. The definition of the face gives the eyes the aspect of penetration, as if they saw at once ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... The young man listened with his wonted attentive courtesy until the dolorous appeal disguised as fatherly counsel came to an end. Then in his blue-gray eyes appeared the gleam that revealed the tenacity and the penetration of his ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... space Dennis feared that he had offended. A shade of depression darkened the lovely features before him, but his companion looked into his apprehensive eyes reassuringly as she said: "You have penetration." ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... cross-examined as to their reality and substance, but there they are, and not all the argument in the world could impugn their reality to us. What is the most emotional of all the Arts? Music. No art has a deeper power of penetration, no other can render shades of ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... polishing a language still more rugged in metre than it was in prose. His contemporary history, on the other hand, can hardly have conveyed more explicit, and certainly would have contained less faithful, information than his private correspondence; while, with all the penetration he assuredly possessed, it may be doubted if his diffuse and graceful style was adapted for the deep and condensed thoughts and the grasp of facts and events which are the ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... nationality, and into the natural trap of patriotic conceit. The dissent of the Indian and Colonial governing class to the first crude applications of liberal propositions in India has found a voice of unparalleled penetration in Mr. Kipling, whose want of intellectual deliberation is only equalled by his poietic power. The search for a basis for a new political synthesis in adaptable sympathies based on linguistic affinities, was greatly ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the king heard from his retainer; and declared that he who could say such things had either more than mortal wisdom or more than mortal folly; in these few words fathoming the full depth of Amleth's penetration. Then he summoned his steward and asked him whence he had procured the bread. The steward declared that it had been made by the king's own baker. The king asked where the corn had grown of which it was made, and whether any sign was to be ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... almost as difficult to strike a blow with a sword as it was to effectively draw a bow. Working his way quietly but rapidly forward in the effective manner which he had acquired by several months' practice in the penetration of such growth, Dick at last stretched out his hand and touched what he at once knew was the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... not bearing the distinctive marks of his genius, is peculiarly interesting for two reasons,—it gives us an insight into his wide range of reading and study, and it exhibits his penetration and sanity as a critic. In the long list of great names he never fails to put his finger on the vulnerable spot. Frequently he is exceedingly felicitous, as when he speaks of "rapt Behmen, rapt too far," or of "Emerson, ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... upon him, so that you are a perfect prisoner when he has once got hold of you. To interrupt him is a physical impossibility. If you get a chance to remonstrate for a moment, he raises his voice and bears you down. True, he does you no injustice, and, with his admirable penetration, sees the disclaimer in your mind, so that you are not morally delinquent; but it is not pleasant to be unable to utter it. The latter part of the evening, however, he paid us for this, by a series of sketches, in his finest style of railing and raillery, of modern French literature, ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... have seen, the facts collected by Klaproth are very curious, and throw an unexpected light on the migration of ancient races. The penetration and sagacity of the traveller were marvellous, and his memory was extraordinary. The scholar of Berlin rendered signal services to the science of philology. It is to be regretted that his qualities as a man, his principles, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... range of vision. But his good sense—which in the field of speculation was very good—joined to his gentleness, his insinuating charm, and his admirable ease of manner, ought to have compensated, more than they have done, for his defect of penetration. He has always suffered from an habitual irresoluteness; but I do not know to what this irresoluteness should be attributed. He has never been a warrior, though very much a soldier. He has never, through his ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... came the last of the great offensives. It was a smash on a sixty-mile line from Chateau-Thierry up the Marne, around Rheims, and then east to a few miles west of the Argonne forest. This offensive at the start made a penetration of from three to five miles, but was held firmly and much of the gain lost, through the counter-attacks of the Allies. It was at this point that the American troops first began to be seriously felt, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... I asked, amazed at Annerly's instinctive penetration into the mysteries of the psychic world, "how do you intend to get it ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... had had more penetration he would have seen that there was no trace of sentimentality in him, but something indeed quite the opposite. But Avdotya Romanovna noticed it. She was intently and ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... globulus, which, not being able to compete with the former in the variety of nasal titillations it gives rise to, probably consoles itself with coming off the distinct victor in the department of power and penetration. The leaves and twigs of this tree are distilled for oil. This oil is in large demand on the Continent, the fact of there being no other species than the globulus in the neighborhood being a guarantee of the uniformity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... the King's will that he married. At first he was passionately fond of his wife; but at the end of three months he fell in love with a little, ugly, black femme de chambre. The Duchess, who had sufficient penetration, was not slow in discovering this, and told her husband immediately that, if he continued to live upon good terms with her, as he had done at first, she would say nothing about it, and act as if she were not acquainted with it; but if he behaved ill, she would tell the whole affair to the King, ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... made efficient by "imagination-penetrative," a thing concerned not with the combining but the apprehending of things. A possession, akin to the power, Ruskin says, all great pictures have, which "depends on the penetration of the imagination into the true nature of the thing represented, and on the scorn of the imagination for all shackles and fetters of mere external fact that stand in the way of its suggestiveness"—a possession which gives the strength of distance to his eyes, and the strength ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... noted that the penetration into European thought of this additive concept of number was responsible for developing the idea of the machine; for it accustomed human beings to think calmly of zero as a quantity existing side by side with ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... not gifted with any great degree of penetration, and the generosity of his disposition combined with his vanity to render him generally the dupe of outward homage and fair professions. He repaid the insidious complaisance of Leicester with good will and even with confidence; and it was not till all was ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... by your dress? and one in search of a ship, as I am ready to qualify to;" continued the publican, chuckling, perhaps, at his own penetration. "We have many such that passes hereaway; but people mustn't think, because Newport is so flourishing a town, that births can always be had for asking. Have you tried your luck yet in the Capital of the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... sanity, such breadth and tolerance of mind, and such penetration into the inner meanings of outward phenomena as to make it a book which no one can afford to ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... plan which he here looks for in vain. If in his earlier combinations he did not in every instance take all possibilities into the account, but overlooked some, this must be ascribed not so much to the want of military penetration, as to his firm confidence in his good fortune, and in his ability to turn unforeseen accidents to his own advantage, or at least to render them harmless. Rarely has a general been so highly favoured by fortune for a long series of years as he. It is no wonder then that this confidence at length ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853) |
