"Quickness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a few arpeggios and scales, or a brilliant etude will put the hand in condition. After one has rested, or had a vacation, some foundational exercises and finger movements may be necessary, to limber up the muscles and regain control and quickness. One may often have to review first principles, but technical facility is soon regained if it has once been thoroughly acquired. If one has stopped practise for quite a period, the return is slower, and needs to be ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... miserable wight! And at the same time I dropped a piece of gold into his grotesque cap, which he had taken off in his begging. I then trotted on; but he screamed after me, and suddenly with inconceivable quickness was at my side. I urged my horse into a gallop; the imp ran too, making at the same time strange contortions with his body, half-ridiculous, half-horrible, and holding up the gold-piece, he cried, at every leap, 'False money!, false coin!, false ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... mind that he must live at all costs. There was no one to care for Juanita in the troubled times that were coming. Juanita was his only thought. And he fought for his life with skill and that quickness of perception which is the real secret of ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... a scene of violence beyond the power of words to express. A great roar, which shook the very heavens, went up from the cavernous throat, and well it was for Sigurd that he darted aside with the quickness of light. The huge coils unwound and contracted again in the monster's agony, and the furious lashing of his enormous tail utterly destroyed the surrounding vegetation, while his cruel talons, all powerless now to do aught else, ploughed deep furrows in the hard and ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... becoming aware that the gods were approaching, threw his net into the fire, and ran to conceal himself in the river. When the gods entered the house, Kvasir, who was the most distinguished among them all for his quickness and penetration, traced out in the hot embers the vestiges of the net which had been burnt, and told Odin that it must be an invention to catch fish. Whereupon they set to work and wove a net after the model they saw imprinted in the ashes. This net, when finished, ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... amiable as sheep—regarded her with a reserved curiosity; and the moose calves, the strangeness of her form and color once worn off, treated her with great respect. Though she was so much smaller and lighter than they, her quickness on her feet and her extremely handy way of butting made her easily master of them all. Even the supercilious young cow who had been so disagreeable to her at first grew indifferently friendly, and all was peace around the secluded ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... respecting Johnson and others, was indeed an intellectual treat of no ordinary description. Mr. Cradock and Mr. Nichols possessed a similarity in taste and judgment. They were both endowed with peculiar quickness of comprehension, and with powers and accuracy of memory rarely equalled." One may say of the liberal minded Mr. Nichols, what Mr. Murphy said of Dr. Johnson, that his love of literature was a passion that stuck to his last stand. The works of ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... question of his father this time. Perhaps he had seen, with a child's quickness, that it had already made his father uncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as if it was quite an old one to him, and had ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... adjusted to him, he performs it as a matter of routine. There are, however, stations which are more or less provocative of tact and ready-wittedness, and which require those qualities which schoolmasters cannot give nor Civil Service examiners take away; such as tact, promptitude, quickness in emergency, good-natured ease, patience, and pluck above all. These, I say, are great gifts, and it would be well if we knew how to find them. Let us take, by way of illustration, the Messenger Service. These Foreign Office Mercuries, who travel the whole globe at a pace only short of the telegraph, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... so daintily, hung upon Cambridge so beseechingly, imploring her to prepare a cool mash for Mistress Dulcie's finger points, the moment they were all gone—that Dulcie could have cried for his tenderness of heart, and quickness and keenness ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... short tour to Negroponte, in which his noble friend was unable to accompany him, Mr. Hobhouse expresses strongly the deficiency of which he is sensible, from the absence, on this occasion, of "a companion, who, to quickness of observation and ingenuity of remark, united that gay good-humour which keeps alive the attention under the pressure of fatigue, and softens the aspect of every difficulty and danger." In some lines, too, of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... fixed for an altitude test," he said dazedly; "this ship was to be used, and he was to find her ceiling. He saw what the others were getting, and he flew himself through on a jet of pure oxygen—" He stopped in utter admiration of the quickness of thought that could outwit death in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... driven by a Numidian who was crowned with a diadem of plumes. He hurled javelins with frightful quickness, giving at intervals a long shrill whistle. The great beasts, docile as dogs, kept an eye on ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... ripens faster, into deep and serious subjects: and that her range of literature should be, not more, but less frivolous; calculated to add the qualities of patience and seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought and quickness of wit; and also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. I enter not now into any question of choice of books; only let us be sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap as they fall out of the package of the circulating library, wet with the last and lightest spray ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... physical and mental power which were afterwards to render him dangerous to the integrity of the colony itself. In a temperate climate such a change would have been so gradual as to escape observation for a long period; —in the tropics it was effected with a quickness that astounds by its revelation of the natural ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... And it was their great effort to keep him busy enough to prevent a real appreciation of his isolated life. Their plans were made skilfully and carried out to the letter. Wherefore the fact that their end was not actually accomplished, could be charged only to the merciless quickness of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... and Pastorellas come down. One of these two is excessively in pain, that the ugly being called Time will make wrinkles in spite of the lead forehead-cloth; and therefore hides, with the gaiety of her air, the volubility of her tongue, and quickness of her motion, the injuries which it has done her. The other lady is but two years behind her in life, and dreads as much being laid aside as the former, and consequently has taken the necessary ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... alteration. So that, though the mind and attention are now given almost exclusively to the things of God, yet when the things of the world have to be dealt with, this is accomplished with extraordinary efficiency and quickness, though very distasteful to ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... have been born with a pencil in his hand, and by constant practice, added to a natural quickness, he acquired that extraordinary facility of hand which, while in his subsequent career, it tended to corrupt art, materially aided his fame and success. He was also indefatigable in his application. Bellori says, "he made twelve different ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... dexterity. It is wonderful to see them manage their bark canoes, which are extremely light. These little boats are narrow at both ends, a little wider in the middle, and generally about nine or ten feet long. They move with surprising quickness in the midst of the angry waves. Two persons are sufficient to propel them, and it can be done by one. When fishing eels they stand at the end of their canoes and spear the eels with a long stick, to the end of which is fastened a sharp ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... to carry on his back. Several joined us from the two English stations on the river, and we then amounted to a very large party; all in high spirits, and anxious to proceed on our journey. When our natives had distributed the luggage, they loaded themselves, which they did with both skill and quickness; for a New Zealander is never at a loss for cords or ropes. Their plan is to gather a few handfuls of flax, which they soon twist into a very good substitute: with this material they formed slings, with which they ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... less than medium height, thin and agile. In all his actions he showed quickness and alertness. He had large, black, piercing eyes, his eyebrows were curved and thick; his nose straight and long; his cheeks somewhat sunken; his mouth, not particularly well formed but expressive and graceful. From early youth ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... behind her; "you are much too good a girl for other people's plagues to visit you." Then, as he saddled his pleasant old nose with the tranquil span of spectacles, the smile on his lips and the sigh of his breast arrived at a quiet little compromise. He was proud of his daughter, her quickness and power to get the upper turn of words with him; but he grieved at her not having any deep impressions, even after his very best sermons. But her mother always told him not to be in any hurry, for even she herself had felt no very profound impressions until she married ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... he, laughing. "Verily thou hast come at my meaning with a commendable quickness. Well, and if thou wert the wife o' a ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... a consequence of this physical sensibility; indeed, wit is nothing more than the facility which some beings, of the human species possess, of seizing with promptitude, of developing with quickness, a whole, with its different relations to other objects. Genius, is the facility with which some men comprehend this whole, and its various relations when they are difficult to be known, but useful to forward great and mighty ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... of his system. But it was the arsenic that saved his life. He had at last to come and lie down beside me. We heard the sound of rapid firing in the distance; and suddenly two men entered our enclosure, with revolvers in each hand, and shot down our defenders with an extraordinary quickness of aim. They were Harris ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... fox. Now was the time for the fox to show his boasted wit, for his position was one of danger. That rash-headed Duke of Burgundy was never the man to be played with, and in his rage was as perilous as dynamite. It was, in truth, an occasion fitted to draw out all the quickness and shrewdness of mind of Louis, those faculties on which he prided himself! To gain friends in the castle he bribed the household of the duke. As for himself he remained quiet and apparently easy and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... position; comparison of father and son; the father's use of grotesque rhymes in teaching him; qualities he inherited from his mother; weak points in regard to health throughout his life; characteristics in early childhood; great quickness in learning; an amusing prank; passion for his mother; fondness for animals; his collections; experiences of school life; extensive reading in his father's library; early acquaintance with old books; his early attempts in verse; spurious poems in circulation; 'Incondita', the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... meant everlasting slaughter, and the fiercest races of fighters would be just the ones to survive and perpetuate their kind. Those most successful primitive men, from whom civilized peoples are descended, must have excelled in treachery and cruelty, as in quickness of wit and strength of will. That moral sense which makes it seem wicked to steal and murder was scarcely more developed in them than in tigers or wolves. But to all this there was one exception. The family supplied motives ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... as he was bid, and then Viola, who of course knew perfectly well that she had left no ring behind her, saw with a woman's quickness that Olivia loved her. Then she went back to the Duke, very sad at heart for her lover, and ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... Locke, who asserts that "Wit lies in an assemblage of ideas, and putting them together with quickness and vivacity, whenever can be found any resemblance and congruity whereby to make up pleasant pictures ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... was slow to come, but she did not seem disturbed by that. The hands of the clock above her seemed to move with the unbelievable quickness characteristic of clock hands when there is no other activity in the room, and she observed them calmly. Soon they pointed to the quarter hour, they passed it. She looked faintly worried then. The telephone rang again; she pressed ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... Curiously she watched the loop open with beautiful precision, as the coils were loosed and the long, thin line lengthened through the air. It seemed to move so slowly—those wickedly lowered horns were so near! Then she saw the rider's right hand move with flashlike quickness to the saddle horn, as he threw his weight back, and the horse, with legs braced and hoofs plowing the ground, stopped in half his own length, and set his weight against the weight of the steer. The flexible riata straightened as a rod of iron, the steer's head jerked sideways; his horns ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... buttoning his vest as he caressed her and that his eyes wandered to the clock with a wary alertness. "Perhaps you'd better wait and tell me at the table," he went on briskly. "I'm all ready to go down." He pulled his coat on with his astonishing quickness, and ran downstairs. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... as she ceased, and with her usual quickness of motion, jumped out of bed to get a handkerchief. Turning on the electric light, she went to the chair over which hung the dotted dress. She remembered having slipped a clean handkerchief into its pocket before going ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... the most prominent men in France. His gigantic physique, half-broken by disease and imprisonment, his shaggy eyebrows, his heavy head, gave him an impressive, though sinister, appearance. And for quickness in perceiving at once a problem and its solution, as well as for gifts of reverberating oratory, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... a magnificent show of strength, quickness and accuracy. The sparks hissed and crackled from the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... me, gradually increasing in quickness and volume with an irresistibly definite progression. When it was quite near the sound began to move in my nerves and blood, and to urge me ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... becoming an expert in the line had chosen for his calling. On the other hand Jack began to believe that he was a little too slow-witted ever to make a shining success as a fighting aviator, where skill must be backed by astonishing quickness of mind and body, as well as something else within the heart ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... changed its place to somewhere else?" asked the lawyer, speaking with more than usual quickness, and turning over ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... among the works of the British poets. There is not a year in which hundreds of verses as good as any that he ever wrote are not sent in for the Newdigate prize at Oxford and for the Chancellor's medal at Cambridge. His mind had indeed great quickness and vigour, but not that kind of quickness and vigour which produces great dramas or odes; and it is most unjust to him that his loan of Honour and his Epistle on the Battle of the Boyne should be placed side by side with Comus and Alexander's Feast. Other eminent statesmen and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... like the rush of a cobra's head past his temple, nipping his hat and striking the opposite wall with force enough to kill two or three men. It was the yataghan of Mustad, who had drawn and hurled it with inconceivable quickness and with an aim so unerring that it would have brained the unsuspecting American but for ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... across the pond, and then decided that it was time to go home, and began making their parting thanks accordingly; so that in a few moments every one was gone but Dr. Barnett and his sister; and that sister, with feminine quickness, understood that this moment might be the very one her brother wanted, so she engaged Kittie and Kat in a lively conversation, and together they all went up stairs for ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... execution is simplicity. The more unpretending, quiet, and retiring the means, the more impressive their effect. Any ostentation, brilliancy, or pretension of touch,—any exhibition of power or quickness, merely as such, above all, any attempt to render lines attractive at the expense of their ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... moons before he could swing by his hands and hunt for his food in the tree-tops? He might have learned after awhile where the wild paw-paws hang thickest, and where the sweetest, plumpest bananas grow; but when would he ever have mastered all the wood-lore of the forest folk,—or gained the quickness of eye and ear and nose that belongs to all the wise, wild creatures? Oh, how I longed to see him at the mercy of our old enemies, the Snake-people! One of those pythons, for instance, "who could slip along the branches as quietly as moss grows." That would have given him a worse ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... not love Buonaparte, she feels no repugnance. But can she meet his wishes or fulfil his desires? "I admire the general's courage; the extent of his information about all manner of things, concerning which he talks equally well; the quickness of his intelligence, which makes him catch the thought of another even before it is expressed: but I confess I am afraid of the power he seems anxious to wield over all about him. His piercing scrutiny has in it something strange and inexplicable, that ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... law. The only outsiders who saw the shooting were friends of Hagan's; there was bad blood between us. They'd sworn to do for me. And they would. I shot Hagan with his own gun. He pulled it on me, and I turned it into him, by the greatest piece of quickness and good luck that ever I had. And somehow—somehow—I couldn't see myself swinging for that, or going to prison for life. And I saw my chance and took it. I told the whole thing to the minister that married us; he believed me, and so would any one that knew me then—except Hagan's ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... down with a loud "whish-sh-sh!" He dropped almost perpendicularly, grazing the squirrel so closely, that all three looked for it in his talons as he flew off again. Not so, however. The squirrel had been upon his guard; and, as the hawk swooped down, had doubled around the tree with the quickness of a flash of lightning. By the guidance of his rudder-like tail the hawk soon turned, and flew round to that side of the tree on which the squirrel had now settled. A few strokes of his powerful wings soon enabled ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... give any direct answer, saying they were making fun of him. Pat was then introduced, and the question being propounded to him: "What should I be like?" says he; "why, like to get could, to be sure, your honours." "This," says he, "they call mother wit; and the most illiterate have a quickness in parrying the effect of a question by an evasive answer. I recollect hearing Sir John Fielding giving an instance of this, in the case of an Irish fellow who was brought before him when sitting as a magistrate at Bow ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... the prince asked when Ned had concluded his story. "It seems to me that this lad has shown a courage, a presence of mind, and a quickness of decision that would be an honour to older men. The manner in which he escaped from the hands of Von Aert, one of the craftiest as well as of the most cruel of the Council of Blood, was excellent; and had he then, after obtaining ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... Situation of the Parts, the Retention of the Body, and the regular Motion of the Wrist: The Situation requires this advantageous Point of all the Parts, to communicate Freedom and Vigour to the Action, that they may act with Quickness. In order to retain the Body, it is necessary that it be always in it's perfect Situation, during the Motions previous to the Thrust; and if the Thrust consist of one Time only, the Wrist ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... which the Phœnicians and Egyptians followed him. They have more vitality, more spiritual force, than any other creature; of a fiery nature, shown by the rapidity of their motions, without the limbs of other animals. They assume many shapes and attitudes, and dart with extraordinary quickness and force. When they have reached old age, they throw off that age and are young again, and increase in size and strength, for a ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... falls in love with a plough-boy at first-sight, which she certainly would not have done, but that some preternatural agent whispered to her, he was a young man of birth. But whether this magical information came from the palpitation of her heart, or the quickness of her eye, she has not said.—A reader will, however, gladly impute the cause of her sudden passion to magic, rather than to the want ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... would you collect the vessels you have mentioned, and in the manner you have named, if you do not deem my inquiry indiscreet?" demanded the baronet, with quickness. ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he came again, bowed politely, fetched a bit of paper out of his waistcoat-pocket and sat down on a chair by the stove. This visit annoyed her: with the quickness with which small-minded people weigh and think over a matter, her eyes went to the window to see if anybody had observed him come in and was likely to set evil tongues a-clacking. It was almost bound ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... Aunt Maria, who was a compassionate woman at heart, and who only lacked somewhat in quickness of sympathy, perhaps by reason ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... receiving even his food until the meanest white had satisfied his appetite, submissive, unrepining, laborious and obedient—the highest eulogium that all these patient and unobtrusive qualities could obtain, was a reluctant acknowledgment that he had "no sa'ce." His quickness and courage saved the John, nevertheless; and I have always said it, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... quickness, whether in body or soul or in the movement of sound, and the imitations of them which painting and music supply, you must have praised yourself before now, or been present ...
— Statesman • Plato
... well dressed and appeared to be a gentleman, recovered himself with surprising quickness, ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... uncle himself isn't here." Meantime, covered dishes were brought in for the feast. Then the stranger saw what nobody else could perceive, that the good food was abstracted from the dishes with wonderful quickness, and worse put in its place. It went just the same with the jugs and bottles. Then the stranger asked for the master of the house, greeted him politely, and said, "Don't be offended that I have come to the feast as an uninvited stranger." "You are welcome," ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... pointing out that so old a creature would probably not have such a fine set of teeth, and Michelangelo, taking the hint, in a moment had not only knocked out a tooth or two but—and here his observation told—hollowed the gums and cheeks a little in sympathy. Lorenzo was so pleased with his quickness and skill that he received him into his house as the companion of his three sons: of Piero, who was so soon and so disastrously to succeed his father, but was now a high-spirited youth; of Giovanni, who, as Pope Leo X many years after, was to give Michelangelo the commission ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... poets, who allege that all vain and deceitful dreams lie hid and in covert under the leaves which are spread on the ground—by reason that the leaves fall from the trees in the autumnal quarter. For the natural fervour which, abounding in ripe, fresh, recent fruits, cometh by the quickness of its ebullition to be with ease evaporated into the animal parts of the dreaming person—the experiment is obvious in most—is a pretty while before it be expired, dissolved, and evanished. As for your drink, you are to have it of the fair, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... escape. It is notorious, that he was never known to have a dollar in his life; to swear an oath, or drink a drop of spirits. As to his ignorance, he certainly never had the advantages of education, but he can read and write, (it was taught him by his parents,) and for natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension, is surpassed by few men I have ever seen. As to his being a coward, his reason as given for not resisting Mr. Phipps, shews the decision of his character. When he saw Mr. Phipps present his gun, he said he knew it was impossible for him to escape as the woods ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... in the Governor—to judge from the only picture of him which remains—was unmistakable. Delicate features, small, beautifully shaped hands and feet, were accompanied in my mother by a French vivacity and quickness, an overflowing energy, which never forsook her through all her trials and misfortunes. In the Governor, the same physical characteristics make a rather decadent and foppish impression—as of an old stock run to seed. The stock had been reinvigorated in my mother, and one ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... necessary for the operator worked with uncanny quickness of hand. One fleeting glance at the scroll, a lightning adjustment of dials in the torpedo, a touch upon a tiny button, and a messenger was upon its way. But quick as he was, Seaton's flying fingers kept up ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... this: that death had come far too soon, putting an end to his plans to live, to act, to succeed, to make a great and a good place for himself in this world before he should leave it for another. Out of this a second idea now liberated itself with incredible quickness and spread through him like a living flame: it was his lifelong attitude of victory, his lifelong determination that no matter what opposed him he must conquer. Young as he was, this triumphant habit had already yielded him its due result that growth of character ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... of the Duke of Marlborough's finances, he could not possibly lay out any such sum on Blenheim. Monsieur Bertrand would not give up the point, but repeated his assertion. On which Buonaparte said, with quickness, "Bah! c'est impossible." "Oh!" said Bertrand, much offended, "if you are to reply in that manner, there is an end of all argument;" and for some time would not converse with him. Buonaparte, so far from taking umbrage, did all he could to soothe him and restore him to good-humour, which ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... quickness of thought from his victim, the settler was in the next moment at the side of Middlemore. Seizing him from behind by the arm within his nervous grasp, he pressed the latter with such prodigious force as to cause him to relinquish, by a convulsive movement, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... got to the end in time to see the really remarkable feat of Abernethy jumping on to the wolf, thrusting his gloved hand into its mouth, and mastering it then and there. He never used a knife or a rope in taking these wolves, seizing them by sheer quickness and address and thrusting his hand into the wolf's mouth in such a way that it lost all power to bite. You would have loved Tom Burnett, the son of the big cattle man. He is a splendid fellow, about thirty years old, and just the ideal of what a ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... be wanted for recovery. When, therefore, the servant in livery opened the door, which he did, as Frank thought somewhat suddenly, she was able to be standing on her legs before she was caught. The quickness with which she sprung from her position, and the facility with which she composed not her face only, but the loose lock of her hair and all her person, for the reception of the coming visitor, was ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... For over and above the natural ease and dignity which accompanies physical beauty, and the modesty, self-restraint, and deep earnestness which he had acquired under the discipline of the Laura, his Greek character was developing itself in all its quickness, subtlety, and versatility, until he seemed to Hypatia some young Titan, by the side of the flippant, hasty, and insincere talkers who made ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... prowling about, asking the boys what they thought of it, and whether I was like to be killed, because of my mother's trouble. But finding now that I had foughten three-score fights already, he came up to me woefully, in the quickness of my breathing, while I sat on the knee of my second, with a piece of spongious coralline to ease me of my bloodshed, and he says in my ears, as if he was clapping spurs ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... good boys, about noon like men, and in the afternoon like devils.[314] In the spring of 1757 he sailed for England, and was for a time at Falmouth; whence Colonel Matthew Sewell, fearing that he might see and learn too much, wrote to the Earl of Holdernesse: "The Baron has great penetration and quickness of apprehension. His long service under Marshal Saxe renders him a man of real consequence, to be cautiously observed. His circumstances deserve compassion, for indeed they are very melancholy, and I much doubt of his being ever perfectly cured." He was afterwards a long time at Bath, for the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... passengers who were enjoying the battle immensely. At this moment he put his fingers to his teeth and uttered a long, sharp whistle. "Ho! Lawyer Ed!" he shouted. The man on the bridge started. His angry face, with the quickness of lightning, ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... first two years was routine and devoid of excitement, except for occasional strenuous experiences the result of Mr. Derham's brusqueness and quickness to resent anything that he deemed an attempt to take advantage of, or put a slight upon him. He was the sort of man that makes a steadfast friend or a bitter enemy, with no room for anything ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... child led and Van Landing followed. In and out of stores they went with quickness and decision, and soon on the seat and on the floor of the cab boxes and bundles of many shapes and sizes were piled, and then Carmencita said there should be ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... turn, I received my bucket of sand at the mouth of the tunnel, and walked slowly away with it. The most disagreeable part was in turning my back to the guard. Could I have faced him, I had sufficient confidence in my quickness of perception, and talents as a dodger, to imagine that I could make it difficult for him to hit me. But in walling with my back to him I was wholly at his mercy. Fortune, however, favored us, and we were allowed to go on with our work—night ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... whom I am writing lived on there quietly; things without thus ministering to him, as he sat daily at the window with the birdcage hanging below it, and his mother taught him to read, wondering at the ease with which he learned, and at the quickness of his memory. The perfume of the little flowers of the lime-tree fell through the air upon them like rain; while time seemed to move ever more slowly to the murmur of the bees in it, till it almost stood still on June afternoons. How insignificant, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the old books of natural history, you will find they say that when the mongoose fights the snake and happens to get bitten, he runs off and eats some herb that cures him. That is not true. The victory is only a matter of quickness of eye and quickness of foot,—snake's blow against mongoose's jump,—and as no eye can follow the motion of a snake's head when it strikes, that makes things much more wonderful than any magic herb. Rikki-tikki knew he was a young mongoose, and ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... have heard Captain Clements say he as a boy heard as many as seven or eight old men each giving the particulars of what he saw then. One saw a shipload of horses hauled up to the quay, and the horses walked out all harnessed, and the quickness with which each man knew his horse and mounted it surprised them. Another old man said: "I helped to get on shore the horses that were thrown overboard, and swam on shore guided by only a single rope running from the ship to the shore"; and another would describe the rigging ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... presently flames burst out. Now they ran up the trees, now along the tall lank grass dried by the heat. They darted from tree to tree—the bush (as the forest is called) was on fire. The flames spread with fearful quickness. ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... all day. If I had been pleased with what I saw of the Officers before, I was more so to-day. Their eagerness to hear, and quickness to understand, the readiness with which they assented to every call and everything laid before them, was delightful. No body of men more simple or apparently ready for action ever sat ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... of health, fell into a galloping consumption. As soon as she apprehended the danger with which her life was threatened, she prepared every thing for her removal to London; but as she did not expect ever to return, this took more time than the quickness of her decay could well allow. The hasty approach of her dissolution affected her extremely on the account of her little niece, and she often expressed her concern in terms intelligible to her who was the occasion of it, who gathered ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... in awe of him. He was not as heavy as of old, but there was more firmness in his face and figure. Perhaps it was his clothes that had given him a strange new grace, for in the old days he was a ponderous, slow-moving fellow. Now there was a lightness in his step and quickness in his every motion. Had I not known him, I should have seen in the scrupulous part in his hair a suggestion of the foppish. But I knew him, and while I liked him best with his old tousled head, and tanned face, and homely hickory shirt, ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... any emergency, and keep out of an undignified scuffle, the means are most easily afforded him by the art, which Pythagoras founded. Apart from this, boxing exercises every muscle in the body, and gives a wonderful quickness to eye and hand. These same remarks apply, though in a minor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... approached that bull among car-warriors, viz., Vasusena, when they beheld the latter deeply afflicted with the shafts of that foremost hero of Sini's race. That force, however, vast as the ocean, assailed by foes possessed of great quickness viz., the Pandava warriors headed by the sons of Drupada, fled away from the field. At that time a great carnage occurred of men and cars and steeds and elephants. Then those two foremost of men, viz., Arjuna ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... last quarter of an hour had here and there been piercing the greyness, made fitful streaks across the convent wall, causing some awe-stricken spectators to start timidly. But soon there was a wider parting, and with a gentle quickness, like a smile, a stream of brightness poured itself on the crystal vase, and then spread itself over Savonarola's ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... and at Bridge's command of, "Hands up!" Billy, lightning-like in his quickness, drew and fired. The bullet raked Bridge's hat from his head but ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... eyes as it saw David and Jonathan walking together across the fields that afternoon. The Den, with native quickness of perception, instantly snuffed a battle in the air, and dogged the heels of the champions ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... horizontally, forming a smooth bottom or interior. In external form it is a shapeless ball about 8 or 10 inches in diameter, and has an unfinished opening at the side. The birds build with astonishing quickness, picking up the leaves one after another from the ground just beneath the nest. When fresh the eggs are fleshy white, becoming pure white when emptied; they are large for the size of the bird, rather stumpy ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... momentary danger of losing his life, if he relaxed in the least his vigilance and caution, because a wild steer is naturally ferocious. Even in cutting them out of the round up I have known them to get mad and attack the cowboys who only saved themselves by the quickness of their horses, or the friendly intervention of a comrade who happened to be near to rope the maddened long horn, and thus divert his attention to other things. But in the case of the 7 Y-L steer such intervention is against the rules, and the cowboy who ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... false reasoning with more quickness; but unluckily he called in Wit at the exposure; and Wit, I am sorry to say, held the lowest place in his household. He sadly mistook the qualities of his mind in attempting the facetious; or, rather, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... regarded and practiced chiefly as means of opening the opponent's guard; hence, a thrust must immediately follow each parry. 5. The foot movements shown in the old manual are useful only to promote quickness and steadiness. They should, therefore, be practiced in combination with the points and butt blows, and so combined can be executed in the oblique directions as well as at right angles. The left foot moves in the ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... Westminster in 1640, and of the Assembly of Massachusetts or of New York as late as 1770. The final flash of a long unconscious train of thought or intent is ever a surprise and a shock. It is a mistake to set these swift changes down to political levity; they were due rather to quickness of political intuition. It was the King's attempt at flight in the summer of 1791 that first created a republican party. It was that unhappy exploit, and no theoretical preferences, that awoke France to the necessity of choosing ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... the lonely figure of the man in tattered deerskin jacket and shapeless hat somehow fitted. His attire matched the gray-white coloring of rock and boulder; his spare form and agile movements, together with the intentness of his bronzed face and the steadiness of his eyes, hinted at the quickness of observation, the stubborn endurance, and the tireless activity, by which alone life can be maintained in the savage North. He had the alertness of the wild creatures of the ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... bringing the man back to life. Then he was carried off, expression so unlike that of a human being that the less hardened shuddered. Said Homma—"No confession yet?" He raised his hand to make a sign. Iemon knew the quickness of response. He almost screamed his appeal for further respite. The Law had triumphed. As Iemon put his thumb seal to the confession of guilt to insolence (futodoki) the magistrates rose and disappeared. "Futodoki"—they and he knew that it meant ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... forgotten them,' she said, looking up with eager quickness; 'I do not regret his attempt because it was wrong!—O no! on that point I am armed—but because it was impossible it ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... ground, sheltered among the thickets which are scattered over the dry and sterile hills. With its tail erect, and stilt-like legs, it may be seen every now and then popping from one bush to another with uncommon quickness. It really requires little imagination to believe that the bird is ashamed of itself, and is aware of its most ridiculous figure. On first seeing it, one is tempted to exclaim, "A vilely stuffed specimen has escaped from some museum, and has ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... on the Hill are singularly homogeneous, and thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the place. In the chapter on "The Ideals of the New Quakerism," I have commented on Irish acquisition of a character like that of the Quakers. The gentleness of manner, the quickness of social sympathy and the industrious quietness of the Quakers have come to be theirs. Yet they are loyal Catholics, and with very few exceptions support their Church in the village regularly. Many of them who have not conveyances have for years employed a stage-driver to transport them ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... your tongue, Chalamel. I know nothing about it; but what is sure is, that, when he recovered his Senses, it was another song. He knit his brows in a terrible manner, and said to me, with quickness, without giving me time to answer, 'What did you come here for?—have you been a long time here?—can I not be alone in my own house without being surrounded by spies?—what have I said?—what have you heard? Answer, answer.' He looked so wicked that I replied, 'I have ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... and the accuracy with which they could give the names, habits and uses of animals and plants in the jungle, and the traveller cannot but admire the general handiness and adaptability to changed circumstances and customs and quickness of understanding of the Malay coolies whom he engages to ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... Greek in its readiness, its symmetry, and its point! But it was not the intellectual merit of the answer that pleased the Master. Cleverness is cheap. It is the faith he praises, [Footnote 5: Far more precious than any show of the intellect, even in regard of the intellect itself. The quickness of her answer was the scintillation of her intellect under the glow of her affection. Love is the quickening nurse of the whole nature. Faith in God will do more for the intellect at length than all the training of the schools. It will make the best that can be made of the whole man.] which was ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald |
