"Sharper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stretched a greyish-brown expanse of sore and sodden park grass, dotted with big oaks; while far off, behind a jagged fringe of dark Scotch firs, the wet sky was suffused with the blood-red of the sunset. Between the falling of the raindrops from the ivy outside, there came, fainter or sharper, the recurring bleating of the lambs separated from their mothers, a forlorn, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... manner. The last act of the drama was so inglorious that I am almost ashamed to tell it. He was the King of the Trout Stream; over and over he had run Fate's gauntlet, and escaped with his body unharmed and his wits sharper than ever; he knew the wiles of the fly-fishermen better than any other trout in the river; and yet, alas! he fell a victim to a little Indian boy with a piece of edging for a rod, coarse string for a line, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... however, with equal speed; but the man who walked fast was the man from the other end of the tunnel, so they both arrived before the secret stage door almost at the same instant. They saluted each other with civility, and waited a moment before one of them, the sharper walker who seemed to have the shorter patience, knocked at ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... stand a better chance of circlin' around to where we left Jacob, while the villains have somethin' to keep 'em busy. Now there's no longer any need to fight, they'll likely keep sharper watch. Yet I count that Peter Sitz, if they haven't killed him already, has a bigger show of livin' a spell longer ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... completed the isolation which the President's own temperament had initiated. Thus day after day and week after week, he allowed himself to be closeted, unsupported, unadvised, and alone, with men much sharper than himself, in situations of supreme difficulty, where be needed for success every description of resource, fertility, and knowledge. He allowed himself to be drugged by their atmosphere, to discuss on the basis of their plans and of their data, ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... survive." As he grew more angry, he became more abusive. He ridiculed Washington's "cold, unmilitary conduct" during the War of Independence, and accused his administration, since the new constitution, of "vanity," "ingratitude," "corruption," "bare-faced treachery," and "the tricks of a sharper." He closed this wretched outbreak of peevishness and wounded self-conceit with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... scramble up the tree; but as he climbed, the thorns stuck their sharp points into him. The higher he climbed, the longer and sharper grew the thorns of the tree, piercing and tearing, ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... shouted Mr Merryboy from the window, "the dinner's gettin' cold, and granny's gettin' in a passion. Look sharp. If you knew what news I have for you you'd look sharper." ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... his cane at a sharper angle until it bent in upon itself, threatening to snap, and flung one gray-spatted ankle ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... the door, the jehu cracked his whip, and a moment later the hoarse breathings of the motionless engines became lost in the sharper noises of the city carts. The unknown leaned against the faded cushions, curled his mustache, and smiled as if well satisfied with events. It is quite certain that his sense of ease and security would have been somewhat disturbed had he known that another cab ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... the doorway of their home in the great hollow tree and watched Unc' Billy out of sight. Her sharp little eyes seemed to grow sharper as she watched. "Ah done sent that no-account Possum to hunt fo' something fo' dinner, but 'pears to me he's plumb forgot it already," she muttered. "Just look at him with his head up in the air like he thought dinner fo' we uns would drap right ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Mocker • Thornton W. Burgess
... of the smaller elongated bullet, necessitated by the smaller calibre of the rifle, entailed some definite disadvantages. The lighter bullet is more affected by wind. Its greater relative length to diameter necessitates a sharper pitch of rifling in order properly to revolve the bullet (one turn in 10 in. for the .303 rifle as compared with one turn in 22 in. for the Martini-Henry). This, in its turn, necessitates a hard nickel envelope ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... all withdrawn to rest for a few hours; the women who attended on the dying Francesca had fallen asleep. She was lying motionless on her couch of pain. Her sufferings had been sharp; they were sharper than ever that night. She endured them in the strength of the Cross, from which neither her eyes nor her thoughts wandered. The whole house, and apparently the city also, was wrapt in slumber; for not ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... our faults, and make battlefield of our meadows instead of pasture—so long, truly, the Flaming Sword will still turn every way, and the gates of Eden remain barred close enough, till we have sheathed the sharper flame of our own passions, and broken down the closer gates of our ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... venomous reptiles disturbed the pirate's progress; for, though there were plenty of them coiled or crawling near, yet their instinct probably taught them that he was a monster with a more deadly poison than themselves, and whose fangs were sharper, though his tongue did not hiss a note of warning. Captain Brand put down his burden and crept forward on hands and knees, the blazing torch lighting up the damp and dripping rocks, all green and ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... One puts up with anything. On this February day, Though the winds leap down the street, Wintry scourgings seem but play, And these later shafts of sleet —Sharper pointed than the first - And these later snows—the worst - Are as a half-transparent blind Riddled ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... had grown bitter and hard. The knives of the trappers were sharp, and not one whit sharper than their tempers. Some one said that the friendly Pawnees were conspiring with the Sioux, who were always treacherous, to sack the settlement. The trappers doubted this. They and the Pawnees had been friends many years, and they had together killed the Sioux in four famous ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... th' old missis—she as is mother to Master William—her has a tongue what's sharper nor longer than any vixen's going. But that's between you ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... among other charges exhibited against him, it was particularly insisted upon, that he used to calumniate Caesar, he turned round to the accuser, and said, with an air and tone of passion, "I wish you could make that appear; I shall let Aelianus know that I have a tongue too, and shall speak sharper of him than he ever did of me." Nor did he, either then or afterwards, make any farther inquiry into the affair. And when Tiberius, in a letter, complained of the affront with great earnestness, he returned him an answer in the following terms: "Do not, my ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Milos. "I will give you a sharper sword with which to cut off the malicious head of the noble Piam. See, with this sword did the good-for-nothing treacherously slay my father. ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... implied criticism, law must work far more minutely than in less exacting communities. Every tendency to introspection and self-judging was strengthened to the utmost, and merciless condemnation for one's self came to mean a still sharper one for others. With every power of brain and soul they fought against what, to them, seemed the one evil for that or any time—toleration. Each man had his own thought, and was able to put it into strong words. No colony has ever known so large a proportion of learned men, there being ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... for Banawe, the capital of the sub-province of Ifugao, and Gallman's headquarters. The cheers of our late hosts accompanied us as we entered the trail and began to climb. The country now took on a different aspect, due to our increasing altitude. The valleys were sharper and narrower, and so of the peaks. From time to time we could see the proud crest of Amuyao ahead of us. Over 8,000 feet high, this mountain, whose name means "father of all peaks," or "father of mountains," is the Ararat of the Ifugaos. Their legend has it that, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... preparations of Hemling, at Bruges, we imagine to have been in water-color, and perhaps the picture was carried to some degree of completion in this material. Van Mander observes that Van Eyck's dead colorings "were cleaner and sharper than the finished works ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... small, The conquered admiral of a conquered fleet, Shorn of his glories, thrown from his high seat, Great by the very greatness of his fall. Hope, honor, fortune, lost beyond recall, Greyhaired and bitter-hearted; doomed to meet His country's censure, sharper than defeat; His foeman's pity—that was ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... and measures his endowments. Evidences of latent talent in any particular direction are scrutinized with maternal shrewdness, and encouraged by applause and caresses. The lonelier the cabin, the more secluded the settlement, the sharper seem to grow the mother's eyes, and the more profound this intuitive faculty. It is the mother who first discerns the native bent and endowments of her child, and she too is the quickest to encourage and draw them out. How many eminent and useful men whose ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... A loose stone in a pavement, under which water lodges, and on being trod upon, squirts it up, to the great damage of white stockings; also a sharper neatly dressed, lying in wait for raw country ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... love. He was little with us, and, as I said, the house was still, except when he was mandating his sermons for Sabbath. This he always did, not only viva voce, but with as much energy and loudness as in the pulpit; we felt his voice was sharper, and rang keen ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... terror breaking over him, Hugh Noland slackened his hold on the line and flung himself off the high seat to run to her assistance. As he jumped, the horses of their own accord turned sharper yet, and the bull-wheel, striking a badger hole, threw the machine over sidewise and completely upside down. The wheel horses, released by the coupling-pin falling from the main clevis, kicked themselves loose from the other team and tore ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... with the Bishop of Meissen he refused to withdraw. To Spalatin he broke out again in February 1520, in terms more decided than any he had previously given vent to, and which led people to expect still sharper utterances. 'Do not suppose,' he said, 'that the cause of Christ is to be furthered on earth in sweet peace: the Word of God can never be set forth without danger and disquiet: it is a Word of infinite majesty, it works great things, and is wonderful ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... eventually subdued and some semblance of order was restored, but greater woes and sharper shames awaited this unhappy nation, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... realized better what it was that he had heard. While prudent persons were already trembling at the King's effrontery and daring in the past, Henry was meditating a yet further step. He began to see now that the instinct of the country was, as always, sharper than that of the individual, and that these uneasy strivings everywhere rose from a very definite perception of danger. The idea of the King's supremacy, as represented by Cromwell, would not seem to be a very startling departure; similar protests of freedom had ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... each standing erect above the heads of the crowd, could not have showed sharper contrast. Penniston was coarse of limb and feature; a low grade of moral disorder stamped his face as clearly as inferior articles are ever stamped; no inspector of goods so relentless as God's servant Time! Halsey had bared his head to the open sky, as though invoking the presence of ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Jack, "it's true enough. I've seen the newspaper cutting of the time, and I'm the son of a murderer, who was also a forger, a thief, and a card-sharper. Old Glanville told me this evening. It was then that our engagement ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... sharper man, Gunn," said Rogers, still in the same hot whisper, as he relaxed his grip a little; "you are too simple, you hound! When you first threatened me I resolved to kill you. Then you threatened my daughter. I wish that you had nine lives, that ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... bondage of the flesh or mind, Some slough of sense, or some fantastic maze Forged by the imperious lonely thinking-power. And each succeeding age in which we are born Will have more peril for us than the last; Will goad our senses with a sharper spur, Will fret our minds to an intenser play, Will make ourselves harder to be discern'd. And we shall struggle awhile, gasp and rebel— And we shall fly for refuge to past times, Their soul of unworn youth, their breath of greatness; And the reality ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... had no rights or business here.... Most clearly they courted persecution, suffering, and death; and, as the magistrates affirmed, 'they rushed upon the sword.' Those magistrates never intended them harm, ... except as they believed that all their successive measures and sharper penalties were positively necessary to secure their jurisdiction from the wildest lawlessness and absolute anarchy." [Footnote: Mass. and its Early History, p. 110] His conclusion is: "It is to be as frankly and positively affirmed that their Quaker tormentors were the aggressive ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... anything the row with him,' returned the other. 'He's by no means the first comer, my Uncle Joseph, I can tell you! Very respectable old gentleman; interested in leather; been to Asia Minor; no family, no assets—and a tongue, my dear Wickham, sharper than a serpent's tooth.' ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the eyes which rage had already rendered blind. She left the snow and struck out upon the ice. That instant a cloud swept over the moon. Her shadow forsook her then—even her shadow! A step, a hoarse plunge, and a piercing cry rushed up from that break in the ice, a cry that cut through the air sharper than an arrow, piercing far and wide through the cold night! Then the moon came out, and revealed a ghastly face low down in the blackness, and two hands grasping the ragged edges of the ice, slipping away—clutching out again, and still ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... pounds close to the ground, massive of hand and jaw, was a second. After that their choice had fallen on "Judge" Lodge. The judge wore spectacles and a judicial air. He had a keen eye for cows and was rather a sharper in horse trades. He gave his costume a semiofficial air by wearing a necktie instead of a bandanna, even at a roundup. The glasses, the necktie, and his little solemn pauses before he delivered an ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... things as quick as ever you can, afore he lays eyes on 'em. He's sharper'n a sail needle, that young one is, and if he can't see through brown paper he can GUESS through it, I bet you. Take em away and put ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... did not stir as, with Aimee's cold hand in his, he made the tiptoed descent and slipped softly about the corner of the steps. Then, instead of going on down the hall to some hiding place in the ruins, he took a suddenly revealed, sharper turn into a narrow passage just beyond ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... said, it was because Lamarck had borne the brunt of the laughing. The "Origin of Species" was possible because the "Vestiges" had prepared the way for it. The "Vestiges" were made possible by Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin, and these two were made possible by Buffon. Here a somewhat sharper line can be drawn than is usually found possible when defining the ground covered by philosophers. No one broke the ground for Buffon to anything like the extent that he broke it for those who followed him, and these broke it ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... the muffled but eager monosyllable to a sharper one; and being reminded, felt in her lap, under her napkin, for her "ornaments," ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... both so happily that, for aught I know, his greatest excellency is in his diction. In all other parts of poetry he is faultless, but in this he placed his chief perfection. And give me leave, my lord, since I have here an apt occasion, to say that Virgil could have written sharper satires than either Horace or Juvenal if he would have employed his talent that way. I will produce a verse and half of his, in one of his Eclogues, to justify my opinion, and with commas after every word, to show that he has given almost as many lashes ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... thought, made it neutral, and we all, North and South, recognize in it the boldest anti-slavery document extant. Why else do Northern demagogues ridicule it, and Southern demagogues revile it? Yet Jefferson made it far stronger and sharper against negro slavery than it is now. Look closely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... whenever He passed out from fellowship with God in the stillness of His soul into the contemptuous and hostile world. His spirit carrying with it the still atmosphere of the Holy Place, would feel more keenly than any other would have done the jarring tumult of the crowds, and would know a sharper pain when met with greetings in which was no kindness. Jesus was sinless, His sympathy with all sorrow was thereby rendered abnormally keen, and He made others' griefs His own with an identification born of a sympathy which the most compassionate cannot attain. The greater the love, the greater ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... and as he paused Mr Wentworth leaned forward in his chair, with another pucker in his forehead and a still sharper gleam of suspicion in his eyes. "His father had been offended time after time in the most serious way. This time he had threatened to give him up to justice. I can't tell you what he had done, because it would be breaking my trust—but he had made himself obnoxious ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... who overcomes in one trial merits thereby a sharper trial still. You have braved Polydectes, and done manfully. Dare you ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... must be taken by the stern masters Tradition and Propriety. There is little to be wondered at, if this matter of curriculum was treated by the more passive scholars as a matter of course, and by the sharper and less reverent disciples as a matter of fun. Indeed, if any personality is then evinced in the adaptation of these old world themes, it is generally connected with a more or less emphatic disparagement or grotesque distortion of their ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... that made me break away from her in the beginning. She'd had more love affairs than one; her late father's masquerading as a doctor for another. They had only used that as a cloak. They had run a gambling-house on the sly—he as the card-sharper, she as the decoy. They had drained one poor fellow dry, and she had thrown him over after leading him on to think that she cared for him and was going to marry him. He blew out his brains in front of her, poor wretch. They say she never turned a hair. You wouldn't believe it possible, ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... hurriedly to the companionway and went below, while the mate continued, "Stand by to let go your topsail halliards and man the gear. Sharper with the mizzen sheets and unbend those clew lines and garnets... stow the clews in a harbor furl." At a rhythmic shout the bunts of the three ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... stage to Kansas City and en route to Kansas City he fell in with a sharper at Bent's old fort, and told him that he had a drove of 7000 sheep coming. The sharper had 20 blooded brood mares and a stallion, and bantered Dillon for a trade. They made the trade and Dillon gave the "shark" a bill of sale for the sheep with the provision that ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... Philadelphia, and other cities, and appreciated so deeply their intrinsic worth and excellence, as men and brethren, that he felt their insults and injuries as if they were done to himself. He knew that beneath many a dark skin he had found real ladies and gentlemen, and he knew how sharper than a serpent's tooth to them was the American prejudice against their color. In 1832, just after a visit to Philadelphia, where he was the guest of Robert Purvis, and had seen much of the Fortens, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... in earth and sky, and in my bones, too; yet, through this Northern forest ever and anon came faint reminders of receding snows, melting beyond the Canadas—delicate zephyrs, tinctured with the far scent of frost, flavoring the sun's balm at moments with a sharper essence. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... result of quickening the boys' movements; Dick, if the slowest in the water, being the sharper of the two in getting into his clothes. Rover was even speedier still, having only to give himself one good shake, administering in the action a shower-bath of drops to the Captain, when, there he was all ready, with a smart new curly black coat, glistening from his dip, ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... word, my dear boy. He is a faithful servant. If he is jealous of a friend, he would have a still sharper eye upon an enemy if one should happen along. Now, Pixy, good, brave dog, eat this piece of candy, and let us ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... Expostulation took a sharper tone; old subjects of complaint were revived; and the armies on each side were already pressing towards the frontier when the unhappy Louis was brought down to the Assembly by his Ministers, and compelled to propose the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... ineffective person, and when he has purged his fault we continue to punish him in petty and underhand ways, mostly degrading to those on whom they are inflicted and always degrading to those who inflict them. We have found no substitute for the sharper way of our ancestors, which was not only more effective socially, but even more pleasant for the victim. For if it was a cause of temporary triumph to his enemies, it was a source of everlasting ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... the lay of a poor Irish harper, And scorn not the strains of his old withered hand, But remember the fingers could once move sharper To raise the merry strains of his dear native land; It was long before the shamrock our dear isle's loved emblem. Was crushed in its beauty 'neath the Saxon Lion's paw I was called by the colleens of the village and valley Bold Phelim Brady, ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... Blackana, and he told me that Satan feared that which was sharper than a two-edged sword more than a large number of professing Christians not filled with the word ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... that it is your goodness and not your evils or your weakness, that men dislike. The world has a very keen eye for the inconsistencies and the faults of professing Christians, and it is a good thing that it has. The loftier your profession the sharper the judgment that is applied to you. Many well-meaning Christian people, by an injudicious use of Christian phraseology in the wrong place, and by the glaring contradiction between their prayers and their talks and their daily ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... power to use against man," said Anna, who had a less courageous spirit than her mistress. "Sharper measures than ever, it is said, are to be taken to put down our secret worship. Woe unto them who are found keeping the Passover to-morrow! It will be done unto them, as it was done ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... to my right senses. I almost think I felt sharper and clearer in my head than I had done for ever so long. Then I was able to realise the misery I had come down to after all our blowing and roving. This was the crush-yard and no gateway. I was safe to be hanged in six weeks, or thereabouts—hanged like a dog! Nothing could alter that, and ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... nature—explains them all, and is, in turn, explained by them—be found in the Hebrew Hagiographa, of what less value is it to science than if it had been originally enunciated by Aristotle or Plato? Or—to make the inquiry still sharper and more emphatic—of what less value is it to science than if it had originally come from Professor Tyndall or ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... they's uncommon. The boys was tellin' me the news about Bassett and Campbell. I says I knew them birds wouldn't come to no good end. I ain't one to talk agin one of them as has passed on, Doctor, but them was bad birds. Here's how I come to know it. I got eyes and ears sharper'n Tophet, even if I be nigh on to seventy and perhaps a little more, and I heard things along back that sot me to suspicionin' them two, and I kind o' says to myself it was my duty to the school to detect around a mite and find ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... breast A lance that was poised in rest, And it was sharper than diamond stone, It made Sir Oluf's ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... flames, although two of them were severely wounded in doing so. At length we had the satisfaction of seeing her three lower masts go by the board, ripping the partners up in their fall, as they had been shot through below the deck, and carrying with them all their sharp-shooters to look sharper in the next world, for as all our boats were shot through we could not save one of them in this. The crew were then ordered with the second lieutenant to board her. They cheered and in a short time carried her. They found the gallant French Admiral Magon killed at the foot ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... two little things, as the use of particular words in what I quote from him, etc., have made me pause, as possibly inexact. I have not altered these things, because, when I wrote this account, my memory of the events and words was sharper than it is today. Memory is a bad witness, and inexact in very little things, such as the precise words used in talk some years before. The reader must however believe that the words quoted, if not the very words used by Synge, are as near to the very ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... the answere of our ambassadours, he sayd nothing, but commaunded his Bashas that they should begin the battell againe to the towne, the which was done, and then the truce was broken, and the shot of the enemies was sharper then it was afore. And on the other side nothing, or very litle for fault of pouder: for that that there was left, was kept for some great assault or neede. Howbeit the sayd Acmek Basha kept one of the ambassadours, and messire Lopez onely entered. The great master seeing the warre begun, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... still temblors, but the sharper shocks no longer came. There was conflagration in the wood, where the lurching ship had left a long fresh streak of forest-fire. The two castaways stared at the round, empty landing-place. Overhead, the blue sky turned yellow—but where the smoke from the eruption rose, the sky early ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... said nothing. The months continued to come and go, and still the famine-edge of their love grew the sharper. Never did they dull it with a permitted love-clasp. They ground and whetted it on self-denial, and sharper and sharper it grew. This went on until even I doubted. Did the gods sleep? I wondered. ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... my young hopeful of a nephew," exclaimed Adair. "I must look sharper after the lad than I have done when he gets on shore, or he'll come to grief, and my good sister, his mother, who doats on him, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... differing widely from each other. We have a striking illustration of this fact in the part of India in which we have lived. Bengalees abound in the public offices in the North-West Provinces and in the Punjab. They are deemed sharper in intellect, and are better educated, than the Hindustanees, and on account of their superior education they have got situations which would have been filled by natives of the country, had their ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... normal person. He is not adjusted to the social will. It is natural that he should attract especial attention. Thus the "Thou shalt not!" is given prominence. To this I might add, that punishments are cheaper and easier than extraordinary rewards. Pains are sharper than pleasures, and ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... not all. He must use the Word of the Lord as a sword. "The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and of spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." How will the hearers like that? The preacher must not ask that, he must use the Word as it is given him, whether his ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... has part. The sky above is sickening, the clouds of God's hate cover it, Body and soul shall suffer beyond all word or thought, Till the pain and noisy terror that these first years have wrought Seem but the soft arising and prelude of the storm That fiercer still and heavier with sharper lightnings fraught Shall pour red wrath upon ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... next morning, he realized with a start that he had overslept, which was a new experience for one whose life had been devoted so consistently to hard toil; and he saw with a sharper start, that his wife, who always got up about a half hour earlier than himself, was not even yet awake. He wondered what had come over him that he should have committed such a sin, and as his tired mind opened one of its doors and let the confused impressions flutter out, ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... grew sharper as we neared the palisade, which was dimly seen in the starlight, and the flashes of the rifles and the lights we saw going here and there added to the excitement of the scene as ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... rival of Smilinda, for the love of Sharper; "strong as the footman, as the master sweet."—Pope, Eclogues ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... in four languages hung upon the wall, and, to add to his cheerfulness, it advised him to leave all his valuables at the office of the hotel—as if he had penetrated a forest infested with brigands. The rigid writing warned him still further that they looked upon him as a probable sharper, and that his bill would be presented ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... our purse is shrinking fast, And our friend is lost, (the last!) And the world doth pour its pain, Sharper than the frozen rain,— There is still a spot of green Whence the heavens may ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified her sense of beauty and her craving for the external finish of life; there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her own opportunities. This was one of the moments when the sense of contrast was uppermost, and she turned away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset, glittering in serpentine ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... though both seemed in every part of the field. It was a desperate struggle man to man; the clash of swords became one strange continuous mass of sound, instead of the fearful distinctness which had marked their work before. Shouts and cries mingled fearfully with the sharper clang, the heavy fall of man and horse, the creaking of the engines, the wild shrieks of the victims within the walls mangled by the stones, or from the survivors who witnessed their fall—all formed a din as terrific to hear, as dreadful to behold. With ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... then illuminated by the flash of a bomb, shell, or gun. The simile could be pursued no further, for to those who had not yet been in action the noise going on seemed to indicate that some fierce fighting must be in progress. The dull but powerful thud of exploding hand bombs, the sharper crashing explosion of shell, the report of a discharging gun and the roar of its projectile, echoed and re-echoed, in its flight along one of the numerous ravines, induced belief that very little time must elapse before the 28th would be "in ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... B., the best steerer, runner and swimmer in Oxford; amphibious himself and sprung from an amphibious race. His own boat is in no danger, so he has left her to take care of herself. He is on the look-out for recruits for the University crew, and no recruiting sergeant has a sharper eye for the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... this, there is enough humor of situation in the gigantic tale and enough latitude of speech on the part of the acting personages to prevent monotony and to render intellectual scintillations of the compiler comparatively unnecessary. Occasionally, for the sake of sharper focus on the portrait of some leader, Dio will introduce this or that trivial incident and may perhaps feel called upon immediately, under the strictness of his self-imposed regime, to apologize or ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... fittings was ready for profitable occupation. Thus abundantly had God furnished Israel with all that was needed for fruitful, happy service. What was true of the ancient Church is still more true of us who have received every requisite for holy living. Isaiah's solemn appeal has a still sharper edge for Christians: 'Judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... precision, her heart was not in her work. Both on this day and the next she seemed to exist solely in her two ears. The one strained to catch any scrap of news about "poor Ned"; the other listened, with an even sharper anxiety, to what went on in the store. Several further attempts were made to get arms and provisions from Richard; and each time an angry scene ensued. Close up beside the thin partition, her hands locked under her cooking-apron, Polly sat and trembled for her husband. He ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... reached a place which seemed to them to be exactly one league due north of Needle Islet. Looking back they saw that the rocks on the island seemed from this distance closer together, and thinner and sharper, so that they actually bore a greater resemblance to needles from this point ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... Montjoy the herald? speed him hence: Let him greet England with our sharp defiance.— Up, princes! and, with spirit of honour edg'd More sharper than your swords, hie to the field: Bar Harry England, that sweeps through our land With pennons[3] painted in the blood of Harfleur: Go down upon him,—you have power enough,— And in a captive chariot into Rouen ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... decent woman—and you have proved not one thing against her—a decent woman will keep him up to the mark and stop him getting slack. She'll make him responsible and manly, for much as I like Rickie, I always find him a little effeminate. And, really,"—his voice grew sharper, for he was irritated by Ansell's conceit, "and, really, you talk as if you were mixed up in the affair. They pay a civil visit to your rooms, and you see nothing but dark plots ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... temper). Remus is a sharper, Remus is a cheat, Remus collared my side, And made it a dead heat. I'll collar Remus' side, Whether he likes or no; I'll not be done by him - At ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... behavior on the occasion to be taken into consideration. There was not a dog west or east of the Alleghany Mountains who had a sharper nose than Pow-wow for detecting an ill wind; yet, all this while, he had set there on his haunches, without betraying the least sign of uneasiness or distrust, nor even of curiosity, as if a Manitou to him were ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... went from the place in the midst of an impressive stillness, which made the sharper and more distressful to me the clank of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... further change: And, poor souls, they think, because at such a sermon, or such a communion, they had some such convictions and sharp challenges, therefore they imagine all is well with them; when a Judas may have convictions, sharper than ever they had, and a Felix, Acts ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... and down the folded sail;—this sentence was different—sharper, pithier, better rounded than she had written it. A soliloquy was missing there—and better so, its inclusion would have been a mistake. Oh, how good, how good he was! Her quivering fingers fumbled ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... that even parents in old age have had occasion to say with the forsaken King Lear, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" It is right training in early life alone that will ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the requirements of this or that formula. But the path of the bibliographer is beset with difficulties. "Al Sirat's arch"—"the bridge of breadth narrower than the thread of a famished spider, and sharper than the edge of a sword" (see The Giaour, line 483, note I)—affords an easier and a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... by the contrast with English manners, or that my Yankee friends assumed an extra peculiarity from a sense of defiant patriotism, so it was that their tones, sentiments, and behavior, even their figures and cast of countenance, all seemed chiselled in sharper angles than ever I had imagined them to be at home. It impressed me with an odd idea of having somehow lost the property of my own person, when I occasionally heard one of them speaking of me as "my Consul"! They often came to the Consulate in parties of half a ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... themselves round the Bed. They answered her groans with reproaches; They interrupted with sarcasms the prayers in which She recommended her parting soul to mercy: They threatened her with heaven's vengeance and eternal perdition: They bad her despair of pardon, and strowed with yet sharper thorns Death's painful pillow. Such were the sufferings of this young Unfortunate, till released by fate from the malice of her Tormentors. She expired in horror of the past, in fears for the future; and her agonies were such as must have amply gratified the ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... and misty meadows; you know when your stops to nibble by the wayside will not be noticed, and you alone know when it is time to get the young couple home; you know, alas! when the courtship—blissful period of loitering for you—is ended and when the marriage is made, by the tighter rein, the sharper word, and the occasional swish of the whip. Ah, Dobbin, you and I—" The ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... the subject or viewed it from so many angles, brought out so many aspects of natural history and human history. In a field where ignorance has often prevailed, Roe has to be iconoclastic in order to be constructive. If his words are sometimes sharp, his mind is sharper. The one ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... sharper trial of Amyas's promise to his mother; and one which made him, for the first time in his life, moody, peevish, and restless, at the thought that others were fighting Spaniards, while he was sitting idle ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... screen just inside the entrance to this gallery, and behind it are Minnie Hescott and Mr. Gower. Randal's eyes are sharp, but Minnie's even sharper. They both note, not only Maurice's abrupt entrance, but the ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... and once more the bet is offered. Eager to prove his sagacity, our friend produces a 'V' or 'X spot' and covers the sharper's money. The thimble is raised, a moment of expectation, a single glance, and the ball is gone! A shout of laughter from the swindler and his confederates standing around, announces the fact that the gentleman from the rural districts has been 'sold.' Pocketing, not his money, but ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... either case is made up of outlines more lightly and slightly drawn. In two scenes the figure of King John rises indeed to the highest height even of Shakespearean tragedy; for the rest of the play the lines of his character are cut no deeper, the features of his personality stand out in no sharper relief, than those of Eleanor or the French king; but the scene in which he tempts Hubert to the edge of the pit of hell sounds a deeper note and touches a subtler string in the tragic nature of man than had been struck by any poet save Dante ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... something, but it is very indistinct. It is moving in sharper now. Yes, it is a space-ship, ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... His voice was still sharper. "No nonsense, Monsieur. The veil must be raised and immediately; you are keeping the whole train back. What do you suppose I am here for?" There was menace in his tone as he took a step forward. "Now, Madame, will you raise ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... his camp, designing to bring the Red Sea within the circuit of his expedition, especially as he saw how difficult it was to hunt after Mithridates with an army, and that he would prove a worse enemy flying than fighting. But yet he declared, that he would leave a sharper enemy behind him than himself, namely, famine; and therefore he appointed a guard of ships to lie in wait for the merchants that sailed to Bosporus, death being the penalty for any who should attempt ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... that the place had all the picturesqueness of a sea-port, without the ugliness that attends the rising and falling tides. A delicious freshness breathed from the lake, which lying so smooth, faded into the sky at last, with no line between sharper than that which divides drowsing from dreaming. But the color was the most charming thing, that delicate blue of the lake, without the depth of the sea-blue, but infinitely softer and lovelier. The nearer expanses rippled with dainty waves, silver and lucent; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... But a sharper mortification was in store for her. The letter of her husband's friend, in which he had returned the due bill for one hundred dollars, fell accidentally into her hands, and overwhelmed her with consternation. For that new carpet, which had failed to win more than a few extorted ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... the occasional lifting of his head on the pillow, the very soothing draught, came to him, unreal at first: parts only of the dull, lifeless pleasure. There was a sharper memory pierced it sometimes, making him moan and try to sleep,—a remembrance of great, cleaving pain, of falling giddily, of owing life to some one, and being angry that he owed it, in the pain. Was it he that had borne it? He did not know,—nor care: it made him tired ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... gloriously, but the air bit ever sharper, and while Peggy went about her cooking, assisted by her husband and the outlaw, Alice pulled Ward down to ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... was carrying on a still sharper battle in his attempt to bring the Church courts—which William I had separated from the ordinary courts—under control of the same system of justice. In these Church courts any person claiming to belong to the clergy had a right to be tried. Such courts had no power to inflict ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... any of the others had been roused. So we sat on the alert for perhaps fifteen minutes, when the sounds above us began receding, and we lay down again. But just as we were passing back into dreamland, Curly again startled us with a sharper, fiercer note that meant ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... time, was one of the principal stove-fitters in Paris; he died in 1819, leaving his son a fine fortune. But the younger Judici wasted all his money on bad women; till, at last, he married one who was sharper than the rest, and she had this poor little girl, who ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... by any one, although interpreters of almost every tongue have been tried. Their country is destitute of iron, yet they have swords edged with sharp stones; and their arrows are pointed by the same means, and are sharper even than ours. Our people brought from thence part of a broken sword with gilded ornaments, which seemed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... by running west, away from the glen, had then turned right-handed, and was heading north over the mountain whose lower slopes were cleft by Gloun Kieraun. The scent served well; the gurgling music with now and then a sharper note, like a fife among flutes and 'cellos, flowed on, and Larry and Joker, two happy creatures, the world forgetting (though by no means by their world ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... are sharper than I gave them credit for, and have got us like rats in a trap. We were allowed to come in, and now they propose to shoot us down at their leisure, for the gang can't afford to let us ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... Nineteenth Century will get little thanks from his readers for allowing so much space in closely successive numbers to my talk of old-fashioned men and things. I have nevertheless asked his indulgence, this time, for a note or two concerning yet older fashions, in order to bring into sharper clearness the leading outlines of literary fact, which I ventured only in my last paper to secure in silhouette, obscurely asserting itself against the limelight of recent ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the nameless, the hard-to-understand,"—it says there,—"we firstlings of a yet untried future—we require for a new end also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier than all healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longeth to experience the whole range of hitherto recognised values and desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all the coasts of this ideal 'Mediterranean ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... family circumstance, and also by the friendly disposition of Mr Wegg, as exemplified in his so soon dropping into poetry, Mr Boffin again shook hands with that ligneous sharper, and besought him to name his hour. Mr ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... are two species which furnish the most powerfully pungent condiment known to commerce; but the tiny dark brown seeds of the Black Mustard are sharper than the serpent's tooth, whereas the pale brown seeds of the White Mustard, often mixed with them, are far more mild. The latter (Brassica alba) is a similar, but more hairy, plant, with slightly larger yellow flowers. Its pods ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... however, the composer cuts loose entirely from what we call language. It is the medium of expression of emotion of every kind. It is not restricted to the voice or to any instrument, or even to our sharps, flats, and naturals. Through stress of emotion the sharps become sharper, with depression the flats become flatter, thus adding poignancy to the declamation. Being unfettered by words, this emotion has free rein. The last element, as I have said, is extremely difficult to define. It is declamation that suggests and paints at the same time. We find hardly a bar ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... aroused, as the king of the earth sets himself against their claims in behalf of the royal prerogative. The king and the people are at war. Which will come off conquerer? There is only one answer to that question, for the battle is one between the pigmy and the giant. The contest grows sharper as the months go on, and the people are in constant alarm. Murders are common, and even Buckingham, the favorite minister, dies at the point of the assassin's knife, and the murderer goes to the Tower and the scaffold accompanied by the tumultuous cheers of London. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... void abrupt, and with its roar, With groans commixt, and shrieks, and boundless yells, Astounds the nearest stars: calm now and slow, With dreadful peace the universal waves Of sulphur roll, and pour a mightier flood On those tormented, their eternal crimes Avenging with fresh pain and sharper darts Of never-dying torture.—They meanwhile, The caitiff and his puissant guide, on wing Impetuous, skirt creation's flaming waste, And suns innumerable, and with prone flight Descending down, light sheer ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... no sharper contrast conceivable than between Joshua and Jesus. The contrast and the parallel are both ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... been different,—less extravagant, less dissipated, less indolently spendthrift,—he might have exercised a better influence, and his brother's young life might have been more prudently launched upon the world. He felt, too, with a sharper pang than he had ever felt it for himself, the brilliant beggary in which he lived, the utter inability he had to raise even the sum that the boy now needed; a sum so trifling, in his set, and with his habits, that he had betted it over and over again in a clubroom, on a single game of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... flung up both arms and fell spent by the sentry-box. The sentry sprang to the other side of the roadway and let fly his charge at random as box, man, and bull crashed to earth together, and a dreadful bellow mingled with the sharper ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lasted only a few moments. Then suddenly there came from up the valley and close around those distant roofs the faint sound of rapid firing. Paled by the moonlight into tiny, ruddy flashes, the flame of each report could be seen by the sharper eyes among the few watchers at Phillips's. The attack had ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... Oxford but was contributing to The Loiterer a paper on the sentimental school of Rousseau, and considering 'how far the indulgence of the above-named sentiments affects the immediate happiness or misery of human life.' Henry, whose course in life was marked by sharper curves than that of any of his brothers, was no doubt a very attractive personality. His niece, Mrs. ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... that route one's baggage must be shipped and unshipped into small boats. There are all manner of difficulties attached to it. Perhaps no direct road to and from any city on the world's surface is subject to sharper fatigue while it lasts. Journeying by this route also, the traveller leaves San Jose mounted on his mule, and so mounted he makes his way through the vast primeval forests down to the banks of the Serapiqui river. That there is a track for him is of course true; ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... dragged on, there were interesting, even exciting moments—when you hardly felt the ache. But other times—evenings and Sundays—it came back sharper than ever. And in the course of those weeks he had learnt a number of things not included in the school curriculum. He had learnt that it was better to clench your teeth and not cry out when your ears were tweaked ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... grew sharper as they descended, and the pace of the car increased. Now, at the bottom, stretching across the white road, they could see a heavy shadow and above on what was unquestionably the railway, half ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... to feel Grief sharper than the tyrant's steel, And bosom big with swelling thought From ancient ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... mystery was explained, and the cause of his firm seat discovered. One of the bystanders, sharper than the rest, had chanced to look under the belly of the mustang, and ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... together from her head to her shoulders. The red peppers were heaped thick, hiding the whole roof, and she stooped among them, levelling them to a ripening layer with buckskin gloves (for peppers sting sharper than mustard), sorting and turning them in the bright sun. The boy looked ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... on her sofa, with her eyes closed, having had nothing to say during the discussion. They thought she had perhaps not heard it. Mr. Carleton's sharper eyes, however, saw that one or two tears were glimmering just under the eyelash. He bent down over ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... I, addressing myself to Frank and Harry, 'that it is about the size of a cat, although broader and fleshier in the body, lower upon the limbs, and with a sharper and more ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Book is fuller in scope and greater in detail than the other governmental publications, and while largely cumulative in its character, it serves to bring into a sharper light certain phases of this ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... tempted Victor Hugo, who was essentially a lyric poet, and the elder Dumas, who was essentially a playwright. There are not lacking signs of late that the drama is likely in the immediate future to assert a sharper rivalry with prose-fiction; and novelists like Sir James Barrie and the late Paul Hervieu have relinquished the easier narrative for the more difficult and more dangerous stage-play. But there is no ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton |
