"Sensitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he ever shows any real anxiety or despondency about the commonwealth. His opinions on the subject are at the mercy of the last mail. It is disappointing to find an elegant trifler like Horace Walpole not only far more discerning in his appreciation of such a crisis, but also far more patriotically sensitive as to the wisdom of the means of meeting it, than the historian of Rome. Gibbon's tone often amounts to levity, and he chronicles the most serious measures with an unconcern really surprising. "In a few days we stop the ports of New England. I cannot write volumes: ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... reply. The accusation cut into the most sensitive part of a wound which nothing could allay; and he was not ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... devoid of anything like gentlemanly refinement.—We are no great critic of the art of piano teaching; but we opine that it is rather unnecessary, in the first stages of the instruction, to clasp a lady's waist, or even to bring one's mouth in too close proximity to her rosy lips. It leads a sensitive female, or a fastidious gentleman to suspect the existence of a strong desire to enjoy a more familiar intimacy with a feminine pupil, and is apt to result in the teacher's ignominious ejection from the house and family which ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... how to begin. Mr. Donkin became impatient, and tapped with the fingers of his left hand on his desk. Philip's sensitive nerves felt and rightly interpreted ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... answers its needs, as certain kinds of food answer the needs of hunger, violent desire is excited. If both these magnets should be equally powerful, the disturbance to both will be great. The longer the personal association is continued the more violent becomes this disturbance, until in highly sensitive natures it develops into an obsession which obscures reason ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... learn to treat books with the respect which is instinctive amongst people of refinement in most European countries. To see a book rudely treated, or knocked about, is almost as distressing to many people as if it was an object sensitive to pain. But a book in the hands of even a cultivated Indian is almost sure to suffer. If it is a new book, he will open it vigorously, and bend it back as far as it will go, in order to make it open properly. Its broken back is the permanent memento ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... struggles to get through the Slough of Despond, his terror under the flames of Mount Sinai, his passing unhurt the darts from Beelzebub's castle, and his finding refuge at the Wicket Gate. It is true, that the most delicate Christian must become a stern warrior—the most sensitive ear must be alarmed with the sound of Diabolus' drum, and at times feel those inward groanings which cannot be uttered—pass through 'the fiery trial,' and 'endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ'; while at other periods of his experience, flushed with victory, he will cry out, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you, distinguished emotion, because it makes you respond to the throb of life more intensely, more justly, and more nobly. And it is capable of doing this because Charles Lamb had a very distinguished, a very sensitive, and a very honest mind. His emotions were noble. He felt so keenly that he was obliged to find relief in imparting his emotions. And his mental processes were so sincere that he could neither exaggerate nor diminish ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... visitor, is a very delicate, sensitive boy, whose soul is full of art. He is very skilful at drawing and painting; and he has a wonderful set of picture-books by the Old Japanese masters. The last time he came he brought some prints to show me—rare ones—fairy ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... manuscripts come from persons to whom the difference between an hour and a minute is of the very smallest importance. This, however, is a digression, only to be excused partly by the natural desire to say a word against one's persecutors, and partly by a hope that some persons of sensitive conscience may be led to ponder whether there may not be after all some moral obligations even towards ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... is specially thin, slender, and skeleton-like. It looks like the tool of some lock-picker. Our large-eyed little friend, like the burglar, comes out at night and finds these holes on the trees where he slept during the day. His sensitive thin ears, made to hear every scratch, can detect the rasping of the retired grub, feasting in apparent security below. Naturalists sometimes hear at night, so Samouelle once told me, the grubs of moths ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... remained at the table, unconscious of everything but the lay of her cards; shuffling, dealing, setting them out afresh in perpendicular rows, muttering at the obstinacy of the kings and queens as though their painted faces were alive and sensitive to her reproof. The old house creaked and groaned in the wind, then became suddenly silent, like a man overtaken by sleep in the midst of stretching and yawning. Time sped on. Thalassa did not return, but she did not notice his absence. More rain fell, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... charity, or a 'helping hand' to the sick or needy, is more of a direct personal matter. The givers strive to be wise and tactful, so that our people may not lose their self-respect; for, as a rule, they are naturally very sensitive, and if self-respect is lost some are encouraged to become ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... pursuit, and was beaten afresh at every new effort. Whichever way I turned, the gallows still rose as the same immovable obstacle between me and fortune, between me and station, between me and my fellowmen. I was morbidly sensitive on this point. The slightest references to my father's fate, however remote or accidental, curdled my blood. I saw open insult, or humiliating compassion, or forced forbearance, in the look and manner of every man about ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... and creaking about the shack, but lay shivering with fear until dawn; but not for worlds would she have admitted to Manley her dread of staying alone. She believed it to be necessary, or he would not require it of her, and she wanted to be all that he expected her to be. She was very sensitive, in those days, about doing her whole duty as a wife—the wife of a ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... wife of Lord Sensitive. "Of noble parents, who perished under the axe in France." The young orphan, "as much to be admired for her virtues, as to be pitied for her misfortunes," fled to Padua, where she met ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... membership in any such organization prima facie evidence of disqualification for employment in the public schools. Referring to the Garner Case above, Justice Minton, for the Court, said: "We adhere to that case. A teacher works in a sensitive area in the schoolroom. There he shapes the attitude of young minds towards the society in which they live. In this, the state has a vital concern. It must preserve the integrity of the schools. That the school authorities have the right and the duty to screen the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... The sensitive plant is too vulgar an allusion; but if the truth of modern naturalists may be depended upon, there is a plant which, instead of receding timidly from the intrusive touch, angrily protrudes its venomous juices upon all who presume to meddle with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... around her breathed, And freshness of young nature's play, The sensitive plant shrank not away, And cactus' ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... it went "swishing" along the edge of the raft, instead of rousing them acted rather as a lullaby to their rest. The boy awoke first. He had been longer asleep; and his nervous system, refreshed and restored to its normal condition, had become more keenly sensitive to outward impressions. Some big, cold rain-drops falling upon his face ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... It had been said that to call this or that doctrine the distinguishing characteristic of a particular Church was so far forth to separate it from the Church Catholic. Kettlewell saw at once that this argument wounded High Churchmen in the very point where they were most sensitive, and for the future preferred to speak of non-resistance as characteristically 'a Doctrine of the Cross.'[101] The epithet was quickly adopted, and no doubt was frequently a source of consolation to Nonjurors. At other times it might have conveyed a painful sense of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... to those Supernal Powers without, which touch and stir it. Deep humility as towards those Powers, a willing surrender to their control, is the first condition of success. The mystics speak much of these elusive contacts; felt more and more in the soul, as it becomes increasingly sensitive to the subtle ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... in a marvel of wonder, Over the dawn of a blush breaking out; Sensitive nose, with a little smile under Trying to hide in a blossoming pout— Couldn't be serious, try as you would, Little mysterious ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... hat on, slouched at a tremendous angle. We wondered how it could keep on unless it was pinned to his ear. Mr. Kasson begged us to pretend not to notice it, because the man was very sensitive on the subject. He told us his story. The man had been fishing with some friends, near an Indian settlement, when the Indians attacked them and killed the others outright. The baggage-master saved ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... and the injured, those words shot again and again, like a horrible pang that would have brought misery and dread even into a heaven of delights. The idea of ever recovering happiness never glimmered in her mind for a moment; it seemed as if every sensitive fibre in her were too entirely preoccupied by pain ever to vibrate again to another influence. Life stretched before her as one act of penitence; and all she craved, as she dwelt on her future lot, was something to guarantee her from more falling; her own weakness haunted her ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... it were heavy and tired. His face has a look of illness; his eyes are large, and the spaces around them are hollow. His wide and well-formed brow, and all the features, betray a temperament delicate, passionate, and sensitive to excess. This portrait was painted, according to tradition, in the little summer-house studio, at the corner of the Via Strozzi. The windows look out over the garden with its cypress walks, its old pine trees, its rows of cabbages and artichokes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... his pocketbook, and to avoid the girl herself and yet feel like committing assault and battery with intent to kill, because some other man occasionally rides with her for an hour or two, he is extremely sensitive to averted glances and chilly ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... vous me fesiez la guerre de n'avoir point de barbe; car c'est ce qui me fait estimes beau des Sauvages."—Lettres de Garnier, MSS. ] His constitution, bodily or mental, was by no means robust. From boyhood, he had shown a delicate and sensitive nature, a tender conscience, and a proneness to religious emotion. He had never gone with his schoolmates to inns and other places of amusement, but kept his pocket-money to give to beggars. One of his brothers relates of him, that, seeing an obscene book, he bought ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... But Barbara was not sensitive to-day so did not feel offended at these remarks; neither did she take pains to disguise her real sentiments when it would have been kinder to ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... be sarcastic, but she seemed to be, and Walter, of course, like a properly sensitive ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... found that my foot was gangrened. An accident of my early days was the cause of this new trouble. At Soreze I had my right foot wounded by the unbuttoned foil of a schoolfellow with whom I was fencing. It seemed that the muscles of the part had become sensitive, and had suffered much from cold while I was lying unconscious on the field of Eylau; thence had resulted a swelling which explained the difficulty experienced by the soldier in dragging off my right boot. The foot was frost-bitten, and as it had not been ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... various kinds of severe punishments, being inhumanly subjected to shame and extensive suffering, till at last for their devotion to the Lord of Heaven, they are tortured to death. Others, even men of resolution, solicitous for the sensitive body and dreading the torture, have, while hiding their grief, obeyed the royal will and recanted. Things continuing in this state, all the people have united in an uprising in an unaccountable and miraculous manner. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... from my spirits, and made me feel like a new man; and I am very sure that he felt better and happier also, for no man does a generous act to one below him in rank or station, without being recompensed therefor by a feeling of the liveliest satisfaction. I may have been too sensitive, and may not, probably did not, realize fully the necessity for prompt action, and the weight of responsibility which rested upon the General. There are times when there is no time for explanation; ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... thoughtfully. "Well, Vernon's a good sort, but I see some light; the girl is sensitive and very proud! No doubt, she feels her Canadian adventure—ridiculous, of course! But Barbara's hard to move. All the same, if Vernon's the ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... its needs, and then before lying down again to his own rest, thought he would go and praise the dog for her faithful work. You know how sensitive collies are to praise or criticism. He went out and stooped over with a pat and a kindly word, and was startled to find that the life-tether had slipped its hold. She lay there lifeless, with her little ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... to be easily shocked, whereas the greatest saints of all are the people who are never shocked; they may be distressed, they may wish things different; but to be shocked is often nothing but a mark of vanity, a self-conscious desire that others should know how high one's standard, how sensitive one's conscience is. I do not of course mean that one is bound to join in laughter, however coarse a jest may be; but the best-bred and finest-tempered people steer past such moments with a delicate tact; ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... before pain is experienced by the patient. That the area of tenderness corresponds to the area of inflammation is almost an axiom of surgery. Pain and tenderness are due to the irritation of nerve filaments of the part, rendered all the more sensitive by the abnormal conditions of their blood supply. In inflammatory conditions of internal organs, for example the abdominal viscera, the pain is frequently referred to other parts, usually to an area supplied by branches from the same segment ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... nothing he could say; and with a strange swelling at the throat he walked on beside the doctor, gazing at the pavement a couple of yards in front of him, and suffering as a sensitive boy would suffer as he felt how degraded and dirty he looked, and how many people in the town must know of his running away, and be gazing at him, now that he was brought back by the doctor, who looked upon him ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... of poetry when it is not artificial and formal. I ought to have said, as I had seen, that not one of his lovely landscapes in which I could discover no human figure, but thrilled with a human presence penetrating to it from his most sensitive and subtle spirit until it was all but painfully alive with memories, with regrets, with longings, with hopes, with all that from time to time mutably constitutes us men and women, and yet keeps us children. He has the gift, in a measure that I do not ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... point out to the members of the Nut Growers' Association the chief difference between nuts and other food staples. Nearly all of our cultivated vegetables, including maize, beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squashes and pumpkins, are annuals, sensitive to frost, which must be raised from seed each year, and which differ so greatly from the primitive plants from which they came that their ancestral forms cannot be definitely determined. Most of these vegetables are in all probability ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... whenever he spoke he was forced to wipe it with a handkerchief to avoid dribbling, and that his small eyes were not yet grown dull, but twinkled under their overhanging brows like the eyes of mice when, with attentive ears and sensitive whiskers, they snuff the air and peer forth from their holes to see whether a cat or a boy may not be in the vicinity. No, the most noticeable feature about the man was his clothes. In no way could it have been guessed of what his coat was made, for both its sleeves ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... she followed with an eager and joyous interest all that he had to say to her. Then how easily could she accentuate her sympathetic listening with this expressive face! The mobile, somewhat large, beautifully formed mouth, the piquant little nose with its sensitive nostrils, the eloquent dark eyes could just say anything she pleased; though, to be sure, however varying her mood might be, in accordance with what she heard and what was demanded of her, her normal expression was one of ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... said to himself, it is all very well to wear a crown of thorns, and indeed every sensitive creature carries one in secret. But there are times when it ought to be worn ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... world, picked up the enigmatic broadcasts consistently. Betsy was a standard Mark IV communicator, now carefully isolated from any aerial. She was surrounded by recording devices for vision and sound, and by the most sensitive and complicated instruments yet devised for the detection of short-wave radiation. Nothing had yet been detected reaching Betsy, but something must. No machine could originate what Betsy had been exhibiting on her screen and emitting from ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... red paper, suffices for my own purpose; but the too attentive chowkee-dar, observing that my room is in darkness, and fancying that my light has gone out accidentally, comes flaring in with a torch, threatening the sensitive negatives with destruction. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades. The highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... moment, was in a state of mind which made every fibre of his being particularly sensitive to suspicions and speculative ideas—he had no sooner slipped Mrs. Saumarez's note into his pocket than he began to wonder why she had sent for him? Of course, it had something to do with Wallingford's murder, but what? If Mrs. Saumarez knew anything, why did she not speak at the inquest? She had ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... His voice sounded hurt, and Honor, who was sensitive to its inflection, immediately yielded. She feared venomous tongues, but, the most deadly of them all being absent—Mrs. Fox having taken up her abode in Calcutta while her ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... limited; that it was all guess-work; that her cunning rested in a shrewd knowledge of character,—of certain likings springing out of contrasts, which led her to match the tall with the short, the fair with the dark, the mild with the impetuous, the sensitive and timid with the bold and adventurous. On these seeming contrarieties the whole art of fortune-telling, as far as ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... road, we stopped to rest at a point covered with a sensitive plant so delicate that, on stepping on it anywhere, the nervous thrill, if that is what it is, would run three or four feet or more in all directions before dying down. From this point we turned north, our way taking us through ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... cried. "And you know how sensitive my skin is!" By this time Mollie had glanced around her, something which Grace had not ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... however, quite possible that a man may have gifts of public speech, and possess a studious disposition, and still be without the preaching mind. Such a mind will be more sensitive to spiritual truths and influences than the average intellect. It will manifest a talent for religion, a natural interest in things that are divine and heavenly for their own sake and not merely because they are to form the ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... as his word, but the high-strung, sensitive child, so soon as she was in her mother's embrace, went from one fit of hysterics ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... thick darkness, if yet the cables held; they could not see till daybreak whether the sea had swallowed up their treasures. I wonder the wives were not white haired when the sun rose and showed them those little specks yet rolling in the breakers!" How clearly these scenes were photographed on the sensitive plate of her mind! She never forgot nor really lost sight of her island people. Her sympathy drew them to her as if they were her own, and the little colony of Norwegians was always especially dear to her. "How pathetic," she says, "the gathering of women on the headlands, when out ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... much head behind his ears, and his tawny fleece grew down thick to the back of his neck. His eyes were not frank and wide apart like those of the other boys, but were deep-set, gold-green in colour, and seemed sensitive to the light. His mother said he got hurt oftener than all the others put together. He was always trying to ride the colts before they were broken, teasing the turkey gobbler, seeing just how much red the bull would stand for, or how sharp ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... say, sensitive souls or none, and their sayings on this third occasion took a singular shape. 'Surely,' they whispered, 'there is something more than chance in this . . . The death of the first was possibly natural; but what of the death of the second, who ill-used her, and whom, loving the third so desperately, ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... of one of the many ways in which a young married woman, who is naturally thick-skinned and selfish—as most women are—and who thinks she loves her husband, can spoil his life because he happens to be good-natured, generous, sensitive, weak or soft, whichever ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... surprised horses, sensitive and quick-tempered as all highly organized beings are, nearly leaped out of the harness. Never before had their flanks received a more unwarranted stroke of the lash. They reared and plunged, and broke into a mad gallop, which was exactly what ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... Jason threw their weight against the door it slammed against the big bear's nose,—a very sensitive spot. She gave a savage growl. Apparently she blamed the two other bears either for hurting her nose or for being in the way. At any rate, a row started; halfway in the door the bears began to fight; for a few seconds ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... your pardon?" returned Stoddard in that civil, colourless interrogation which should always check over-familiar speech, even from the dullest. But Conroy was not sensitive. ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... She was not without a sense of shame. Her love for Victorine made her sensitive to the stain ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... horrible nightmare. She felt that she was surrounded by unseen foes, who were gradually tightening the toils in which she and Pattmore had become entangled. She was neither brave nor self-sacrificing; she had a sensitive dread of exposure, trial, and punishment, which was aggravated by a knowledge of guilt and an uncertainty as to the extent to which she had become legally liable; also, she had none of the spirit of devoted affection which sometimes prompts a woman to bear the ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... said in a strong harsh voice, "the thanks must come entirely from me for the honor you have conferred upon me by accepting trifles so insignificant—especially at a time when the cold brilliancy of mere diamonds must jar upon the sensitive feelings of your recent widowhood. Believe me, I sympathize deeply with your bereavement. Had your husband lived, the jewels would have been his gift to you, and how much more acceptable they would then have appeared in your eyes! I am proud to think ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... beauty. Carving and gilding can go no farther than they have gone in the decoration of this shrine in Ahmedabad. But the troop of monkeys that came to us in the park to be fed, seemed to us quite as sensitive to human needs as were the holy men who sat about that temple of the Jains, for these latter devotees use God's gifts not rationally, but for inferior ends, and especially for their own interest and comfort. Ahmedabad is an example, not of the worst, but still of a misplaced, religious zeal that ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... when freely coined, or by the laws limiting their coinage. And as this limitation of the supply bears no definite relation to the demand for money, the value of the money necessarily fluctuates. Our industrial system is constantly growing more sensitive to even slight changes in money value, owing to the greater diversification of industries and the greater division of labor, and the need for preventing such changes is ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... Berkeley's execution of Captain Carver. Yet he attempted to rule impartially and well. Writs were issued in the spring of 1679 for an election of Burgesses, and the people were protected from intimidation at the polls. The Assembly, as a result, showed itself more sane, more sensitive to the wishes of the commons, than had been either of the sessions of 1677.[878] Several laws were enacted redressing some of the most flagrant evils of the old governmental system of Berkeley. The voters of each parish were empowered to elect two men "to sitt ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... against the windows, and the loud talking in the house, gave her the first clear impression she had received of the exile to which she had condemned her boy. However guilty he might be, he was still her child—her Jack. She remembered him as a little fellow, bright, intelligent, and sensitive, and the idea that he would presently appear before her as a thief and in a workman's blouse, seemed almost incredible. Ah! had she kept her child with her, or had she sent him with other boys of his age to school, he would have been kept from temptation. The old ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... I don't somehow think ministers in a general way know how to treat it. The heart, in its common acceptation, is very sensitive and must be handled gently; if grief is there, it must be soothed and consoled, and hope called in to open views of better things. If disappointment has left a sting, the right way is to show a sufferer ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... much to see everywhere. The Poet and the Naturalist find "tropical forests in every square foot of turf." It may even be better, and especially for the more sensitive natures, to live mostly in quiet scenery, among fields and hedgerows, woods and downs; but it is surely good for every one, from time to time, to refresh and strengthen both mind and body by a spell of Sea air or ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... conversation, and was fit for discussing nothing. When I could get him to listen, I saw it pleased him that his sister had left her husband; whom he abhorred with an intensity which the mildness of his nature would scarcely seem to allow. So deep and sensitive was his aversion, that he refrained from going anywhere where he was likely to see or hear of Heathcliff. Grief, and that together, transformed him into a complete hermit: he threw up his office of magistrate, ceased even to attend church, avoided the ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... forth that fatal hour, Mrs. O'Dowd woke up her Major, and had as comfortable a cup of coffee prepared for him as any made that morning in Brussels. And who is there will deny that this worthy lady's preparations betokened affection as much as the fits of tears and hysterics by which more sensitive females exhibited their love, and that their partaking of this coffee, which they drank together while the bugles were sounding the turn-out and the drums beating in the various quarters of the town, was not more useful and to the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... send him my card," said Mrs. Vostrand, while Jeff was following his up in the elevator. "He was so very kind to us the day we arrived at Zion's Head; and I didn't know but he might be feeling a little sensitive about coming over second-cabin in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... by sensation. Digestion. Generation. Pleasure of existence. Hypochondriacism. 2. Pain introduced. Sensitive fevers of two kinds. 3. Two sensorial powers exerted in sensitive fevers. Size of the blood. Nervous fevers distinguished from putrid ones. The septic and antiseptic theory. 4. Two kinds of delirium. 5. Other animals ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Sensitive as a barometer to every variation, every shading, in public sentiment and sympathy, Morgan patroled the town nightly until the streets were deserted. Night by night he felt, rather than saw, the growing insolence of the pale feeders on ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... career—such, madam, are, in my humble opinion, the true elements of permanent amelioration. At the same time we must not conceal from ourselves that our constitution is by no means one of ordinary organization. None of your hedger and ditcher class, but delicate, fragile, impulsive, sensitive, liable to inopine derangements from excessive ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... But, while thus sensitive to the vicissitudes of his country's fortunes, he did not readily entertain the thought of being himself defeated. "As to being prepared for defeat," he wrote before New Orleans, "I certainly am not. Any man who is prepared for defeat would ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... and laughed in stentorian tones that caused the eyebrows of the sensitive Smith on the floor above ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... root and flowered during the night, and your dish is filled from side to side with a bouquet of chrysanthemums; each has expanded into a hundred-petalled flower, crimson, pink, purple, or orange; touch one, and it shrinks together like a sensitive plant, displaying at the root of the petals a ring of brilliant turquoise beads. That is the commonest of all the Actiniae (Mesembryanthemum); you may have him when and where you will: but if you will search those rocks somewhat closer, you will find even more gorgeous species ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... continued Mrs. Harcourt, "that she is easily excited, and she's so very sensitive that her ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... was not listening to Haldgren's words; his slim, sensitive hand was reaching for the ball-control to build up still more the tremendous blast of a forward exhaust that was checking their speed and making them as heavy as if their bodies were ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... 2: There is a twofold appetite in man; to wit, the intellective appetite which is called the will, and the sensitive appetite known as the sensuality. Now it is proper to man that his lower appetite be subject to the higher appetite, and that the higher move the lower. Hence man may become outside himself as regards the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... and the Yosemite. In all the newspaper accounts of the excursion, Mrs. Long was spoken of as the brilliant centre of all festivities. I understood well that this was the first reaction of her proud and sensitive nature under an irremediable pain. She never returned to ——, but established herself in a Southern city, where she lived in great retirement for a year, doing good to all poor and suffering people, and spending the larger part ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... no council. The body had been clad in an alb and chasuble. Its face was bare and black, and the gross frame was bursting from its clothes. Every one else had a gum, an essence or incense; but Hugh, who was peculiarly sensitive to malodours, showed nothing but tenderness for the corrupt mortality, and seemed to cherish it as a mother a babe. The "sweet smelling sacrifice" shielded him in his work of ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... her fifteenth birthday in March, a day or so before Doug arrived at the dignity of seventeen, had changed too. She had been less profoundly affected by the murder than Douglas; not that she was less sensitive or intelligent than he, but she was far less introspective than her foster-brother. And Judith had two unfailing foods for all hungers of the mind. One was her love of reading, the other, her love of riding; both absorbing, to the ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... support. Full well I know that I must utter things unwelcome to many in this body, which I cannot do without pain. Full well I know that the institution of Slavery in our country, which I now proceed to consider, is as sensitive as it is powerful, possessing a power to shake the whole land, with a sensitiveness that shrinks and trembles at the touch. But while these things may properly prompt me to caution and reserve, they cannot change my duty, or my determination to perform it. For ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... and ridiculous than this; and if you allow yourself to be wounded and affected to such a degree by a conduct such as his, you will, I apprehend, suffer endless wounds and anguish; so be quick and dispel this over-sensitive nature!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... look unkempt. His long, straight nose was as large as the nose of a successful business man, but it was not bulbous nor were the nostrils wide and distended. It was a delicately-shaped and pointed nose, with narrow nostrils that were as sensitive as the nostrils of a racehorse: an adventurous, pointing nose that would lead its owner to valiant lengths, but would never lead him into low enterprises. He had grey eyes that were quick to perceive, so ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... an ever stronger impression of the glory round poor Petter Nord's head. So it was not necessary to plunge him into the depths of remorse with the heavy burden of sin around his neck. Was he such a man? Such a tender-hearted, sensitive man! She sank back, closed her eyes and thought. She did not need to say it to him. She was astonished that she felt such a relief not to ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... be too damn considerate of Miss Hammond's sensitive feelin's." There was now no trace of the courteous, kindly old rancher. He looked harder than stone. "How about my feelin's? I want to know if you're goin' to let this sneakin' coyote, this last gasp of the old rum-guzzlin' ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... dressed again with flying fingers. These night battles with death roused all her fighting blood. There were times when she felt as if, by sheer will, she could force strength, life itself, into failing bodies. Her sensitive nostrils dilated, her brain ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was a pure, sensitive soul, and her attitude to the big, beautiful world came of a genuine eagerness for knowledge and a great delight in the ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... be proud of her, if it had to listen to her the way we do. There's some exports it doesn't pay to advertise, I guess, and she and her sister are that kind. Every time they laugh I can see that Lady Erkskine shrivel up like a sensitive plant. I hope she don't think all American ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... time, but usually November to March; occasional tornadoes; low level of some of the islands make them sensitive to ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... field, the one in reference to food and the other in reference to clothing, which are the two great wants already spoken of by Christ in the previous verses. I am not going to linger at all on the exquisite beauty of these illustrations. Every sensitive heart and pure eye dwell upon them with delight. The 'fowls of the air,' the lilies of the field,' 'they toil not, neither do they spin'; and then, with what an eye for the beauty of God's universe,—'Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... "Alvord!" said others, but most of the votes appeared to be for Brassfield—a name which the professor hailed joyfully as insuring against failure. It is not often that the audience will hit on the only practised sensitive ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... imagination and memory. Stoddard was then, as always, a handsome man, strong and stanch, black-haired and black-bearded, with strong eyes that could look both fierce and tender. He was masculine, sensitive, frank, and humorous; his chuckle had infinite merriment in it; but, as his mood shifted, there might be tears in his eyes the next moment. He was at that time little more than five-and-twenty years old, and he looked hardly that; he was a New England country ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... shook into our places. Captain Cranley, I found, was somewhat of the old school—very kind-hearted and simple-minded, and not less strict towards himself than towards others—with a nice sense of honour, and very sensitive of rebuke. I was very glad to find that my old friend Jack Stretcher had volunteered, with the hope of one day becoming a warrant-officer. I must also mention the boatswain, who, though an oldish man, had not long taken out his warrant. He was a prime seaman, with nothing very ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... ruddy mounds, the apples they had borne that year; while others (hardy evergreens this class) showed somewhat stern and gloomy in their vigour, as charged by nature with the admonition that it is not to her more sensitive and joyous favourites she grants the longest term of life. Still athwart their darker boughs, the sunbeams struck out paths of deeper gold; and the red light, mantling in among their swarthy branches, used them as foils to set its brightness off, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... As a rule she spent little thought upon her personal appearance, but to-day things were different. She found herself wondering what impression Miss Waspe was likely to have of her at first sight. This was characteristic of Marjory, who was over-sensitive with regard to other people and their opinions of her. In this case it was not, "Shall I like Miss Waspe?" but, "Will Miss Waspe ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... some things," but on the whole he evidently does not trust his statemanship. He knew the late Lord Lytton and his wife, and met her after their quarrel at Roger's, the poet, and thought her a very fine clever woman, with charms of manner. Lord Lytton he thought very unpleasant; very deaf, and sensitive about it, and would not use his trumpet. Macaulay was very ponderous, and had a Niagara flow of language. He always engrossed all conversation, and one got tired of listening. Mr. Winthrop greatly ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... minds, one simple and practical, the other sensitive and speculative, did not move in the same atmosphere, and could not understand one another. Ambrose was in the condition of excitement and bewilderment produced by the first stirrings of the Reformation upon enthusiastic minds. He had studied ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... not, she undoubtedly did attempt to indicate how altogether important is renunciation to a life of true development, how difficult it is to attain, and that it is the vital result of all human endeavor. She surrounded a tender, sensitive, musical and poetic soul, one quick to catch the tone of a higher spiritual faith, with the common conditions of ordinary social life, to show how such an "environment" cripples and retards a soul full of aspiration and capable of the best things. Maggie saw the way to the light, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... organic tissue is capable of life it must react to every stimulus. And I do! To pain I respond with tears and outcries, to baseness with indignation, to filth with loathing. To my mind, that is just what is called life. The lower the organism, the less sensitive it is, and the more feebly it reacts to stimulus; and the higher it is, the more responsively and vigorously it reacts to reality. How is it you don't know that? A doctor, and not know such trifles! To despise suffering, to be ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... This caterpillar is covered with bristling hairs, very closely set. Almost any bird objects to hair in his victuals; and this particular larva has hair more than ordinarily objectionable, for it irritates wherever it pricks the sensitive skin. This coating seems to protect the caterpillar from the sparrow, with the result that Philadelphia's trees were soon nearly defoliated by this comparatively new pest, worse than the spanworm. With the ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... the only believer in religion whom he found in intellectual society at Paris. He was the earliest foreign statesman who studied and understood the modern force of opinion; and he identified public opinion with credit, as we should say, with the city. He took the views of capitalists as the most sensitive record of public confidence; and as Paris was the headquarters of business, he contributed, in spite of his declared federalism, to that predominance of the centre which became ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... massy Rock. The flat roofs of the sleeping city lay like a dark and peaceful ocean. The mountains spread around in shadow-wrapped hush. Far away the dark stretch of the sea sent back a silver shimmering in answer to the moon. A landscape only possible at Athens! The two sensitive Orientals' souls were deeply touched. For long they were silent, then the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... affections and our feelings; it is thus they excite the emotions they express, and whose image we there recognize. If this influence of our sensations is not owing to moral causes, how is it that we are so sensitive where a barbarian would feel nothing? How is it that our most touching airs would be but so much empty noise to the ear of a Carribee? All require the kind of melody whose phrases they can understand; to an Italian, his country's airs are necessary; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Danton before the Revolution signs himself Danton even in authentic writing, which is an usurpation of nobility and at that time subject to the penalty of the galleys.—The double-faced infidelity in question must have been frequent, for their leaders were anything else but sensitive. On the 7th of August Madame Elizabeth tells M. de Montmorin that the insurrection would not take place; that Petion and Santerre were concerned in it, and that they had received 750,000 francs to prevent it and bring over the Marseilles troop to the king's side (Malouet, II. 223).—There is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... twilight, when he seeks his favorite feeding places. His sight is imperfect by day, but at night he readily secures his food, assisted doubtless by an extraordinary sense of smell. His remarkably large and handsome eye is too sensitive for the glare of the sun, and during the greater part of the day he remains closely concealed in marshy thickets or in rank grass. In the morning and evening twilight and on moonlight nights, he seeks his food in open places. ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Reggie Chivers and young Newland protested, while Mr. Selfridge Merry looked genuinely alarmed, and an expression of pain and disgust settled on Mr. van der Luyden's sensitive face. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... exile, and Cicero was welcomed back to Rome amid an outburst of popular enthusiasm. But he was no longer a power in the world of politics; he could not see his way clearly; and he was so nervously sensitive to the fluctuations of public opinion that he could not decide between Pompey and the aristocracy on the one hand, and Caesar and the new democracy on the other. His leanings had hitherto been toward Pompey and the senate and the old republic; but as time went on, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... recovered from fatigues which (without being harsh), I must say, were not brought upon her entirely unassisted, developed a very becoming and dutiful state of the soul. I have seldom been more hopeful of a case of conscience. But it is a sensitive plant, the soul of a young and naturally amiable girl; rough blasts may bruise it; even excessive nurture may cause an exuberance of growth and weaken the roots. I do not doubt your real repentance, my Francis—Heaven ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... that there must necessarily be as many modes of conveying our impressions to our fellow-creatures, as there are senses or modes of receiving impressions in them. Accordingly, there are five senses and five languages; to wit, the audible, the visible, the olfactory, the gustatory, and the sensitive. To the two first belong speech and literature. As illustrations of the third, or olfactory language, may be cited the presentation of a pinch of Prince's Mixture to a stranger, or a bottle of "Bouquet du Roi" to a fair acquaintance; both of which are but forms of expressing to them nasally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... in a terrible condition; he seemed like a man suffering from hydrophobia, so sensitive were his nerves, and so depressed was his mind. His thoughts could turn in only one direction, and that ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... around the earth causes it to be very sensitive to the varying attraction of the sun and moon, due to the alterations from time to time in the relative positions of the three bodies. Fig. [Footnote: Plate I] shows diagrammatically the condition of the water in the Southern Ocean when the sun and moon are in the positions ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... strange similarity in our tastes and dispositions; and we consequently spent much of our time in each others society. There were those who sometimes smiled to see a young and sunny-haired youth so constantly with the sensitive, shrinking Mary Warner; but then they knew we were playmates from childhood, and thought no more. Mother was dead, and I was under the guidance of my remaining parent, an only child—an idolized and favored one; and in my sixteenth year, claimed as the bride of Samuel Wayland. Parental ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffling and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... together. She was conscious of a tingling of vague shame. Yet she lingered. The strange fascination of his half-savage melancholy, and a reproachfulness that seemed to arraign her, with the rest of the world, at the bar of his vague resentment, held the delicate fibres of her sensitive being as cruelly and relentlessly as the thorns of the cactus had gripped her silken lace. Without knowing what she was saying, she stammered that she "was glad he connected her with his better fortune," and began to move away. He ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... during the previous war, in the way here indicated,——"the disgrace" of which, says Lingard, "sunk deep into the heart of the King and the hearts of his subjects." History of England, Vol. IX. Ch. III., June 13, 1667.]. The England of Charles the Second was hardly less sensitive than the France of Louis Napoleon, while in each was similar indifference to consequences. But France has precedents of her own. From the remarkable correspondence of the Princess Palatine, Duchess of Orleans, we learn that the first war with Holland ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... best results are obtained from a slow fire at the beginning, until some of the moisture has been driven off, when the stronger application of heat may be given for development. An intense heat in the beginning often results in "tipping", or charring, the little germ at the end, the most sensitive ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... am keenly sensitive to "skyey influences." I profess no indifference to the movements of that capricious old gentleman known as the clerk of the weather. I cannot conceal my interest in the behavior of that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... After school she used often to run down to the store to see her mother, while Theodore went home to practice. Perched on a high stool in some corner she heard, and saw, and absorbed. It was a great school for the sensitive, highly-organized, dramatic little Jewish girl, for, to paraphrase a well-known stage line, there are just as many kinds of people in Winnebago as there are ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... utmost to subject it, and Portugal, to French influence, or even dominion! Upon my word, the English people, at this moment, are like a man palsied in every part of his body but one, in which one part he is so morbidly sensitive that he cannot bear to have it so much as breathed upon, whilst you may pinch him with a hot forceps elsewhere without his ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... was especially fond of the cretic. Rhythm pervades the whole sentence but is most important at the end or clausula, where the swell of the period sinks to rest. The ears of the Romans were incredibly sensitive to such points. We are told that an assembly was stirred to wild applause by a double trochee [-u-u].[9] If the order were changed, Cicero says, the effect would be lost. The same rhythm should be found in the membra which compose the sentence. He quotes a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Mrs Tipps, flushing slightly—for she was extremely sensitive,—and evidently much relieved by this information. "Well, my good man, what do you wish me to do for you? anything that is ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... primitive discomfort, this last mitigated by the never-failing kindness of the proprietor. His little children fell over one another in eager service to my invalid; they were always sure of appreciative recognition from him, and every child is sensitive to kindness. ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... coarse stuff. The plant is most valuable for grazing when young. Johnson grass will not grow on really dry land, but it will take the best moist land it can find and hold on to it. It is sensitive to frost and is not a winter grower except in ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... brunt of the Parliamentary struggle fell upon Mr. Gladstone. Bright had a marvellous gift for rousing political emotion, but he had not the application necessary to give legislative effect to his aims; and Charles Dilke, though fully sensitive to the beauty of cadence in Bright's language, and enthusiastic for the music of "his unmatched voice," nevertheless inherited something of his grandfather's suspicion of "that old humbug Oratory"—at all events, when the oratorical gift was not ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... what I had just heard at the Assembly, I feared the Jacobins had discovered her plans with Barnave, De Lameth, Duport, and others of the royal party. Her countenance, for some minutes, seemed to be the only sensitive part of her. It was perpetually shifting from a high florid colour to the paleness of death. When her first emotions gave way to nature, she threw herself into my arms, and, for some time, her feelings were so overcome by ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... not shock the most sensitive conscience. The very fact that a neurosis breaks out is proof that the phantasies are repellent to the owners of them and are thrust down into the subconscious as unworthy. In fact, every neurosis is witness to the strength ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... slaves are absolutely free from emotion of any sort: they move round as stolidly as the blind-folded horses that work the water-wheels in gardens beyond the town, or the corn mills within its gates. I think the sensitive ones—and there are a few—must come from the household of the unfortunate Sidi Abdeslam, who was reputed to be a good master. Small wonder if the younger women shrink, and if the black visage seems to take on a tint of ashen grey, when a ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... mandarin's action as the overruling of Providence on their behalf, and accepted tickets which involved no verbal recantation of their faith. Others, amongst whom was Mrs. Hsi (now a widow), with more sensitive spiritual perceptions, refused to take advantage of even the semblance of ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... her children before they were expressed—with an independent income, and a beloved and admiring circle of intimate friends, is not likely to be imaginatively equipped to explore the spiritual fastnesses of a sensitive and alien orphan. Beulah tried earnestly to get some perspective on the child's point of view, but she could not. The fact that she was torturing the child would have been outside of the limits of her comprehension. She searched her mind for some immediate application of the methods of Madame ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... Torres, who had stood leaning over the vessel's side, turned toward the speaker, his sensitive face showing pale and grave in the light of the swaying lantern. "Ah, Bernal," he said sadly, "has not the whole world become a great sea of endless waves for the unhappy children of Israel?" He shuddered slightly and drew his rich cloak more tightly about him. "I am a strong ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... The sensitive ears of the blind man "scented" so to speak the well known footfalls while they were still approaching on the distant ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... here," said Eva Allen, "she went home early. She told me she could not bear to see anyone unhappy. She is so sensitive you know?" Eva Allen was devoted ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... honours, and the blood Through centuries clotted there, has floated down The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live 225 Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee, Which, nor the tempest-breath of time, Nor the interminable flood, Over earth's slight pageant rolling, Availeth to destroy,—. 230 The sensitive extension of the world. That wondrous and eternal fane, Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join, To do the will of strong necessity, And life, in multitudinous shapes, 235 Still pressing forward where no term ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... followed; the weakness incident to long confinement, prostrated faculties, and inadequate nourishment brought on illness; they could not, at once, bear the excitement, digest the food, or sustain the keen pleasure; and a rigorous climate quelled their sensitive vitality. But universal sympathy now environed them; their very custodian ministered to their wants; and the Emperor ordered them to be removed to the Castle of Gradisca, on the confines of Italy, where a milder ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... ships, showed an exceeding bitterness against the Catholics. Chief among them was Michel, who had instigated and conducted the enterprise, the merchant admiral being but an indifferent seaman. Michel, whose skill was great, held a high command and the title of Rear-Admiral. He was a man of a sensitive temperament, easily piqued on the point of honor. His morbid and irritable nerves were wrought to the pitch of frenzy by the reproaches of treachery and perfidy with which the French prisoners assailed him, while, on the other hand, he was ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... this stricken flower of the city faded away with it. He could no longer sit and look upon his former playmates; the airs of Autumn were too cool at last for his sensitive, ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author
... "Association" to the "Conference," with a view to unity on terms that would be in themselves Christian and agreeable to both the parties interested, as well as acceptable to Congregationalists everywhere. All of our churches have an interest in a matter of such significance, as they would also be sensitive to the reproach of there being two distinct Congregational Associations in the same State, separated from each other on the un-Christian caste line of race and color. With the temper and spirit manifest in the communication ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... successors to the original Martians had the rugged power of revival. This one showed the usual paper-dry whorls or leaves, and the usual barrel-body, perhaps common to arid country growths, everywhere. Scattered over the barrel, between the spines, were glinting specks—vegetable, light-sensitive cells developed into actual visual organs. The plant had the usual tympanic pods of its kind—a band of muscle-like tissue stretched across a hollow interior—by which it could make buzzing sounds. Nelsen knew that, like any Earthly ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... hands, and hold on like "grim death," keeping him at arm's length, while his paws beat a tattoo to a double quick time on my breast and body, stripping my garments into ribbons in a most workmanlike manner, and ornamenting my sensitive skin with a variety of lines and characters, done in red—a process which I did not care to prolong, however, beyond a period when I could soonest put a stop ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... days I was not altogether a hardened politician, and felt somewhat sensitive on the charge. I returned to Winton, called a meeting to consider whether I should resign and contest another election, or retain my position. The meeting, which was a large one and representative, decided that I should retain the seat. I must say that after ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... me," answered Harley, "to strive against such remembrances,—to look on them as sickly dreams? I am prepared to brave them. Can you be more sensitive ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of their bare natures. The pictures in the house were bad beyond belief, and the only flowers were some petunias, growing in a pot, carefully tended by Grandma Pritchard. They bore a mass of blossoms of a terrible magenta, like a blow in the face to anyone sensitive to color. It usually stood on the dining-table, which was covered with a red cloth. "Crimson! Magenta! It is no wonder they are lost souls!" cried the ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... taking your life. I'd like to see anyone who'd have acted otherwise. Under the circumstances only an insane man would keep his ground. The episode has been awkward, I admit. But it's all nonsense—excuse me for saying so—your being sensitive about that part of it. And for the rest, I say again, it's given us an advantage; in short, the very one you wanted, if I understand your ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... generally, they experience their first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while sound, let a warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich sweet cider, better than any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I am better acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press. Others, which have more substance, are a sweet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... on wood by the late Mr. THACKERAY. Probably the best of these will be found in the "Novels by Eminent Hands," in one of which (in amusing burlesque of Phiz's spirited title-page to "Charles O'Malley") we see the hero flying over the heads of the French army. Charles Lever was nervously sensitive to ridicule, and, although he laughed at and enjoyed the clever jeux d'esprit in which "Phil Fogarty," "Harry Jolly-cur," "Harry Rollicker," etc., put in their respective appearances, he declared nevertheless, with evident vexation, that he himself might just ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... truth of this fact, already proved by Paganini on the violin. That fine genius is less a musician than a soul which makes itself felt, and communicates itself through all species of music, even simple chords. Ursula, by her exquisite and sensitive organization, belonged to this rare class of beings, and old Schmucke, the master, who came every Saturday and who, during Ursula's stay in Paris was with her every day, had brought his pupil's talent ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... acutely sensitive and she was quick to feel the atmosphere of hostility. She read it in the countenances of the passersby on the sidewalk, in the cold eyes staring at her from the windows, in the bank president's uncompromising attitude, even in the cashier's ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... vain, Are your fond eyes and yearning hearts upraised; The young, the loved, the honoured, and the praised? Come hither;—look upon the faded cheek Of that still woman, who with eyelids meek Veils her most mournful eyes;—upon her brow Sometimes the sensitive blood will faintly glow, When reckless hands her heart-wounds roughly tear, But patience oftener sits palely there. Beauty has left her—hope and joy have long Fled from her heart, yet she is young, is young; Has many years, as human tongues would tell, Upon the face of this ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... sustaining the strong. The sad contrast between the untroubled and unwearied strength of the calm heavens and the soon-exhausted strength of struggling and often beaten men strikes the poet prophet's sensitive soul. He did not know, what modern astronomy teaches us, that change, convulsions, ruin, are not confined to earth, but that stars as well as men faint and fail, dwindle and die. The scriptural view of Nature is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... observer would say that he was hopeless. He is a poor performer at Bridge, as I was compelled to hint to him on Saturday night. His eyes have no animated sparkle of intelligence. And the cut of his clothes jars my sensitive soul to its foundations. I don't wish to speak ill of a man behind his back, but I must confide in you, as my Boyhood's Friend, that he wore a made-up tie at dinner. But no more of a painful subject. I am working away at him with a brave smile. Sometimes I think that I am succeeding. Then he ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... put the objection out of their minds. But he could not put it aside carelessly, and it was characteristic of him to exaggerate its importance. He dearly loved to play what the French call le beau role, even at the cost of his self-interest. Of a sensitive, artistic temperament, he had for years nourished his intellect with good books. He had always striven, too, to set before his hearers high ideals of life and conduct. His nature was now subdued to the stuff he had worked in. As an artist, an orator, it ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... awfully up against it," said Larry with troubled eyes. "She can't stop trying to remember. It is a regular obsession with her. And she is very shy and sensitive and afraid of strangers." ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper |
