"Sharpness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to meet the wicked magician every night in the middle of the forest. Jack now put on his coat of darkness, and his shoes of swiftness, and was there before her. When the lady came, she gave the handkerchief to the magician. Jack, with his sword of sharpness, at one blow cut off his head; the enchantment was then ended in a moment, and the lady was restored to her former virtue and goodness. She was married to the prince on the next day, and soon after went back, with her royal husband ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... gradations downwards till you come to the smallest, which to my sight, were almost invisible; but nature has adapted the eyes of the Lilliputians to all objects proper for their view: they see with great exactness, but at no great distance. And, to show the sharpness of their sight towards objects that are near, I have been much pleased with observing a cook pulling a lark, which was not so large as a common fly; and a young girl threading an invisible needle with invisible silk. Their tallest trees are about seven ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... were softened by the loose bodice and long full skirt of her dress, and by the folds of a large white muslin handkerchief which was crossed over her breast. The face, sheltered by the plain shady hat, was also a little spoilt from the point of view of beauty by the sharpness of the lines about the chin and mouth, and by a slight prominence of the cheekbones, but the eyes, of a dark bluish gray, were fine, the nose delicately cut, the brow smooth and beautiful, while the complexion had caught the freshness and purity of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... also as thus occupied, of his sixteenth year, to which the somewhat lengthy or attenuated structure of the limbs is conformable. And then, in this attenuation, in the almost Egyptian proportions, in the shallowness of the chest and shoulders especially, in the Phoenician or old Greek sharpness and length of profile, and the long, conventional, wire-drawn hair of the boy, arching formally over the forehead and round the neck, there is something of archaism, of that archaism which survives, truly, in Myron's own work, blending with the grace and power of well-nigh the maturity of Greek ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... dispenses excellent bread and cheese and beer; at Effingham Prince Bluecher used to stand on the main road, quite correctly placed to the east of the Duke; he has now marched down into the village and billeted himself as comfortably as before. The atmosphere of swords and sharpness has even entered ecclesiastical precincts. In East Horsley church there is a curious fresco, painted, I am told, by the late Lady Lovelace. It shows St. Martin dressed as a soldier in high boots, cloak and hat, cutting off ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... for his very bushy hair, whiskers, and moustache, from which emerged merely the tip of a nose and a pair of round eyes in spectacles. As, however, the hair was of an orange colour and the eyes of a piercing and pinlike sharpness, the eclipse of feature was not a loss of effect. And as the flamboyant head was a tolerably familiar object in the shop-windows of the photographers and in the illustrated papers, Fenwick recognised almost immediately one ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... worthy son of your father. I didn't give 'e credit for sharpness enough to perceive that. Can ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... upon the eye. But a nearer approach destroys the charm. It is found to be a "sham." The lines of the mouldings, mullions, etc., are warped by the heat attendant upon the process of the manufacture. The exquisite sharpness of outline produced by the chisel is wanting, and there is (in consequence of the impossibility of undercutting) an absence of that effect of light and shade which is the characteristic of the mediaeval carvings. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... commonplaces are as fully conscious of the market value of their goods as any later poet who has borrowed from them their giants and enchanters, their forests and their magic castles; and these and similar properties are used in the twelfth century with the same kind of literary sharpness, the same attention to the demands of the "reading public," as is shown by the various poets and novelists who have waited on the successes, and tried to copy the methods, of Goethe, Scott, or Victor Hugo. Pure Romance, such as is found in the old Northern poems, is very rare in the French ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... wood of which the mechanism has to be made, by means of fire; either baking it in hot sand or ashes, or otherwise applying heat to a degree just short of charring its surface. The mechanism will then retain the sharpness of its edges under a continuance of pressure, and during many hours of wet weather. The slighter the strain on the springe, the more delicately can its mechanism ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... from the sharpness of her tone. "I am sorry," he said again; but the words glided, with a perfunctory grace, on the surface of emotion. Suppose that what he said was true, she told herself; suppose that it was really "over"; suppose that she also recognized only the egoist's view of duty—of the ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... writing is. What she writes is full of her time. It is full of observation, imagination, pathos, wit and humor, all of a high class in themselves; but what is more, all saturated with modern ideas poured into a language of which every word bites home with peculiar sharpness to the contemporary consciousness." This is true even more of her poetry than of her prose. That poetry lacks where the age lacks, in true poetic quality. The ideal, the breath of eternal ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... could not account for the fact, that the worthy gentlemen were cutting at each other, and the timid girl became insensibly alarmed at the unaccountable sharpness of their brief encounter. She looked with an anxious countenance, first at one, and then at the other, but scarcely knew what to say. Woodward, however, who was better acquainted with the usages ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Mrs. Poyser. "Yes, I might spend all the wind i' my body, an' take the bellows too, if I was to tell them gells everything as their own sharpness wonna tell 'em. Mr. Bede, will you take some vinegar with your lettuce? Aye you're i' the right not. It spoils the flavour o' the chine, to my thinking. It's poor eating where the flavour o' the meat lies i' the cruets. There's ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Cleft returned with the famous surgeon, Professor MacDonald. He was elderly, with the broad high forehead, dignity of poise, and sharpness of glance which bespeaks the successful scientist. His face, to-night, was chalky and the firm, full mouth twitched with nervousness. He greeted Shirley abstractedly. The criminologist's manner was ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... argue the Reformation!" said the Bishop, with a new sharpness of note. "We should be here all night. But let me at least point out to you that the Church kept her Creeds!—the Succession!—the four great Councils!—the unbroken unity of essential dogma. But you"—he turned with renewed passion on his companion—"what have you done with the Creeds? ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of these impressions were coarse and rusty, owing to the presence of iron in the water; but where the necessary precautions had been taken to precipitate this, the casts came out with a highly polished surface, together with a sharpness of outline and a precision of detail, that left no room for competition to Odellis, else unrivalled Roman casts, which, confronted with these, look like impressions of impressions derived through a hundred successive stages; add, too, that these have the solid ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the summit of a little rise the riders had plainly stopped for a few moments, then had turned and galloped fast for the southwest. The lengthening tracks, the sharpness of them, the carelessness with which the riders took the rougher ground to follow a straight line, all suggested an urgent and ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... play, of histrionic activity, had that effect upon this perfect artist and impoverished human being ... An artist, a real one, not one whose official profession is art, but a predestined and pre-condemned artist, you can pick out of a thousand men, with a little sharpness of sight. The feeling of separation and of non-membership, of being recognized and observed, is in his face, something at once regal and perplexed. In the features of a prince walking in ordinary clothes through a crowd one can see something similar. But ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... occasionally seen, were used for the purpose. I, consequently, gathered some very ripe fruit, scraped the soft part with a knife, and washed it until all the sweet substance was out, and then boiled it; by which process it lost almost all its sharpness, had a very pleasant taste, and, taken in moderate quantities, did not affect the bowels. The fruit should be so ripe as to be ready ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... not a strong or even a fairly strong light; certainly not nearly strong enough to read an average book by. But it cast a shadow of myself and the cot on the floor, and had a yellowish, penetrating force that hinted at things more potent than luminosity. This I perceived with unhealthy sharpness despite the fact that two of my other senses were violently assailed. For on my ears rang the reverberations of that shocking scream, while my nostrils revolted at the stench which filled the place. My mind, as alert as my senses, recognized the gravely unusual; and almost automatically ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... and drink both, so that divers, especially in age, do desire to live with them with little or no meat or bread. And above all we strive to have drinks of extreme thin parts, to insinuate into the body, and yet without all biting, sharpness, or fretting; insomuch as some of them put upon the back of your hand, will with a little stay pass through to the palm, and yet taste mild to the mouth. We have also waters, which we ripen in that fashion, as they become nourishing, so that they are indeed excellent drinks, and many will use ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... her life to intellectual pursuits, opposed with the most barbarous legal disabilities and the still more barbarous incubus of public opinion. Yet notwithstanding all this oppression and want of opportunity, she has shown a quickness of perception, an intuitive acumen, a sharpness of forecast and solidity of judgment that among nearly all married men has made her opinion a matter of great importance. Few are the married men that are willing to risk a disrespect of their wives' judgment in any important matter. An eminent lawyer of Virginia once ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... is shame at the idea of belonging to such a collectivity. It is obvious that the United States of America as they exist to-day impress a mind like General Lea's as so much human blubber. Where is the sharpness and precipitousness, the contempt for life, whether one's own, or another's? Where is the savage "yes" and "no," the unconditional duty? Where is the conscription? Where is the blood-tax? Where is anything that one feels ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... in no wise becoming in an orator, though it is not amiss to affect it. Do you imagine that I am angry when in pleading I use any extraordinary vehemence and sharpness? What! when I write out my speeches after all is over and past, am I then angry while writing? Or do you think AEsopus was ever angry when he acted, or Accius was so when he wrote? Those men, indeed, act very well, but the orator acts better than the player, provided he be really an orator; but, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... has the firmness and weight (without sharpness or pounding) of a man's playing—the strength and surety that most women lack and that some women know they lack. When she makes a slip she is ruthless with herself, and replays until the difficulty is overcome. And she ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... long months since Mr. Cameron's death, his days had been filled with anxiety and fear for his covenant. When the first sharpness of grief at the loss of his old friend had passed, the Watchman slowly awakened to the knowledge that he was living among a strange people. Under Mr. Cameron's wise, loving rule all classes in the congregation had been unanimous; the elder folk believed him perfect and the younger respected ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... come from the intermixture of races, either when wild or in a state of domestication? All these causes, in the course of time, alter even the most constant forms, so that the imprint of Nature does not preserve its sharpness in races which man has dealt with largely. Those animals which are free to choose climate and food for themselves can best conserve their original character, ... but those which man has subjected to his own influence—which he has taken with him from clime to clime, whose food, habits, and manner ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... silently borne because it was borne for Sydney. Lettice spared him as far as she could; but there was much that she was obliged to tell, as she had been for so long the depositary of her father's secrets and his cares. Man-like, Sydney showed his sorrow by exceeding sharpness ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... content myself with what excuses you are pleased to make, than be inquisitive into what I must not know: I am sure the winter has been too unpleasant for me to desire the continuance of it: and I wish you were to endure the sharpness of it but for one short hour, as I have done for many long nights and days, and then I believe it would move that rocky heart of yours that can be so thoughtless of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... defined by Professor Cassius J. Keyser, in his book The Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking (Columbia University Press, 1916), mathematics is the science of "Exact thought or rigorous thinking," and one of its distinctive characteristics is "precision, sharpness, completeness of definitions." This quality alone is sufficient to explain why people generally do not like mathematics and why even some scientists bluntly refuse to have anything to do with problems wherein mathematical ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... daughter should not lack intelligence, yet, for the life of me, I cannot bring myself to approve of a woman like this. And still less likely is it that such could be of any use to the wives of high personages like yourselves. Give me a lovable nature in lieu of sharpness! I quite agree with Sama-no-Kami ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... noisily up and down the room, taking up the whole conversation of the party. We did not try to make the most disagreeable personal remarks; or if we did we were sent up-stairs at once, and not laughed at for our "sharpness." ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... two-edged satire that Mr. Robinson employs in his "Patriots" (1912), a satire that cuts into the sham agitation of some political leagues, an agitation that is talk only, and at the same time cuts with almost equal sharpness into the physical force party. It is true that it is not the motives but the wisdom of these latter men that Mr. Robinson satirizes in the failure of James Nugent, the returned political prisoner, to stir his townsmen with ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... sunset rays, as he tested its sharpness between thumb and finger. The Arab watched with a smile. "We understand one another," he said. There was no need to finish the description of his plan. With a solemn wave of his hand he ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... beheld Roland, his eyes were satisfied. He said, "Dear Roland, thank God the field is thine and mine. We have fought a good fight." Then joined he his hands as though he fain would pray, and Roland, seeing the archbishop like to faint for the sharpness of his distress, took and dragged himself to a running stream that he espied pass through the valley; and he dipped up water in his horn to bring to him, but could not, for he fell upon the bank and swooned. And when he came to himself, and crawled to where the archbishop lay, he found ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... imperceptible degrees from dry land to moist and from moist land into pool or marsh. Generally, however, the swamps were filled with a growth of cypress trees. These cypress groups were well defined in the pine woods by the closeness of their growth and the sharpness of the boundary of the clusters. Usually, too, the cypress swamps were surrounded by rims of water grasses. Six miles from Myers we crossed a cypress swamp, in which the water at its greatest depth was from one foot to two feet deep. A wagon road had been cut through the dense ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... connection between evil done and evil suffered, which reaches its highest exemplification in the death which is the 'wages of sin.' And just as some men that have invented instruments for capital punishment have themselves had to prove the sharpness of their own axe, so the lawgiver, whose message it had been to declare, 'the soul that sinneth it shall die,' had himself to go up alone to the mountain-top to receive in his own person the exemplification of the law that had been spoken by his own lips. He sinned when, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... she wax not so proud of her fresh painting, to straggle in her plumes abroad, but to contain herself within the walls of your house; so am I sure she shall be safe from the tragedian tyrants of our time, who are not ashamed to affirm that there can no amorous poem savour of any sharpness of wit, unless it be seasoned with ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... and the fragrance and old love constrained them, and they had kissed each other, and each knew they were to live together now, and sharpness would be put away perhaps; or, if it were not quite, Andrew would understand, knowing other things, too, and ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... The sharpness of his agreement made her look at him in surprise. "She mustn't talk about Mrs. Dale!" he ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... rounded, precipitous point, on which the Boer guns were stationed. Under that heavy-hanging bank of clouds, yet just behind it, a clear steel-like light was showing. Against this, upon the top of the hill, silhouetted with most delicately accurate sharpness, were the figures of the Manchesters. The Gordons were in the same line over the rounded top of the hill. They advanced at a run, crouched, then swarmed forward again, and again lay low. Then the little runs became shorter, the rests longer, and the fire hotter and more continuous. Were they ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... part of the truth," she said. "They have more sharpness than I gave them credit for possessing. They have scented out a part of the truth, but they can not follow the scent. Ha, ha, ha! They may advertise from now till doomsday, but they will never get a response from him! Let them rake the Susquehanna if they can! Perhaps, ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the operator appeared to be much disturbed by the frequent and capricious opening of the door by the other passengers, which let in torrents of intensely cold air from without, and chid the offenders with a wholesome sharpness. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... character and talents and your mother's temperament. You have the spirit of her nature, but the framework in the main is like the father. You have large benevolence, not only in the direction of sympathy but of gratitude. You have frankness of character, even to sharpness, and you are obliged to bridle your tongue lest you speak more than is meet. You have mechanical ingenuity, the planning talent, and the minds of others are apt to be used as instruments to accomplish your objects. For instance, if you were a lawyer, you would arrange the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... assault, and it is now time that this unnecessary jealousy and mistrust of a kindred race should cease. The Swedes have all the honesty which the Norwegians claim for themselves, more warmth and geniality of character, and less selfish sharpness and shrewdness. Mugge tells a story of a number of Swedes who were at a dinner party in Paris, where the health of "the King of Sweden and Norway" was proposed and drunk with great enthusiasm. One glass was observed to be untouched. It belonged to a Norwegian, who, when ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... attentions to me; his conversation has lost all the acuteness for which I remember you admired it; he has walked Broadway in a moody state of mind all winter, and grown as dull as is consistent with the essential sharpness of his nature. I ought to except our last interview, though, for his entreaties to Mamma that she would bring you home ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... into your eyes; with what pleasure you laughed; what genuine love for others, what generous sympathy for everything good and noble, filled your pure youthful soul! One must tell the truth: you were not distinguished by excessive sharpness of wit; Nature had endowed you with neither memory nor industry; at the university you were regarded as one of the least promising students; at lectures you slumbered, at examinations you preserved a solemn silence; but who was beaming ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... that I look at all that sort of age?" was Lady Sellingworth's thought as, for a brief instant, she contemplated him, with an intensity, a sort of almost fierce sharpness which she was ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... to me—to me, your lover, who had never a thought that was false to you!—to me, your mate of many years!—to me, your almost husband!" cried the youth, losing all self-command in the sharpness of his pain, and bursting into a tempest of grief and rage, and launching fierce ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... that, as there is nothing portable in the settlement except my own notes, they have no fear that I shall run away with them. They know I am thoroughly conversant with the principles of banking, and as they have plenty of industry, no lack of sharpness, and abundance of land, they wanted nothing but capital to organise a flourishing settlement; and this capital I have manufactured to the extent required, at the expense of a small importation of pens, ink, and paper, and two or three inimitable copper plates. I have abundance ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... exploits, which, without much exaggeration, were almost as long, and had perhaps as little substance as himself; but the former was his favourite topic: to hear him, one would have imagined that his face, in borrowing the sharpness of the needle, had borrowed also its attraction;—and then the prettiness of Mons. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a band of Colonel O'Donnel's bandidos, eh?" said Dick; then drew in his breath with a sharpness that cut the sentence short, as we whirled round a hummock at a turning of ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... assistance in choosing his lens by laying it on a sheet of blue wove post paper, when he will immediately perceive the slightest yellow tinge in the glass, this being the fault which frequently affects many well-ground and well-made lenses. Of course, for sharpness of outline he must be guided entirely by experiment in the camera; but where weakness of action exists, it most frequently arises from this yellow colouration, and which the manufacturers say is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various
... seem to add more than a cubit to their stature; men endowed with certain gifts of personal—dignity I may perhaps call it, though the word rises somewhat too high. They look as though they would be able to say a clever thing; but their spoken thoughts seldom rise above a small, acrid sharpness. They respect no one; above all, not their elders. To such a one his horse comes first, if he have a horse; then a dog; and then a stick; and after that the mistress of his affections. But their fault is not altogether of their own making. It is the girls themselves ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... must do to be forgiven," Henderson said to Lyon, with that good-natured smile that was so potent to smooth away sharpness. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a man of some sharpness, the Sphinx displays his wiles; he spreads his wings and folds them up again; he shows you his lion's paws, his woman's neck, his horse's loins, and his intellectual head; he shakes his sacred fillets, he strikes an attitude and runs away, he comes and goes, and sweeps the place with his terrible ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... when a soft, quiet hand seems to begin to crumble them down and to wear them away to nothing. You write the principle which was so hard to receive upon the tablet of your memory; and day by day a gentle hand comes over it with a bit of india-rubber, till the inscription loses its clear sharpness, grows blurred and indistinct, and finally quite disappears. Nor is the gentle hand content even then; but it begins, very faintly at first, to trace letters which bear a very different meaning. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... most simple and unsuspicious of the female sex have (God bless them!) an instinctive sharpness of perception in love matters, which sometimes goes the length of observing partialities that never existed, but rarely misses to detect such as pass actually ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... in difficulties he "rushed out and ate oysters in reg'lar desperation." It is certain that some of the eaters look desperate enough; but the seller is a middle-aged, quiet-looking man, who eyes his customers sharply, but serves them with generous cupfuls. The sharpness is evidently acquired, and not native, and he has need of it, the London newsboys, who are his best patrons, being ready to drive a bargain as keen as their fellows on the other side of the sea. His stand is opposite a cat's-meat market, a sausage shop ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... he was told, and, poor marksman with his new device, of course missed the big tree repeatedly, broad as the mark was, but when, at last, the bolt struck the hard trunk fairly there was a sound which told of the sharpness of the blow and the headless shaft rebounded back for yards. Old Mok looked upon it ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... so that the mahout may take it by the handle. I have purposely given elephants things to lift which they could never have seen before, and they were all handled in such a manner as to convince me that they recognized such qualities as hardness, sharpness, ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... street and walking rapidly towards home, the professor spoke once more. This time, there was no sharpness, but rather the same note of appeal which Brenton had heard ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the girl that's come here? That movie actress?" asked the young woman with added sharpness in her tone. "What you going ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Rose at that moment he felt quite certain that it was not Mr. Ned Quince, and he trembled with anger as he saw the absurd situation into which the humorous Mr. Rose had led him. For years Little Haven had accepted his decisions as final and boasted of his sharpness to neighbouring hamlets, and many a cottager had brought his boots to be mended a whole week before their time for the sake ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Lionel, with more of sharpness in his tone than was at all usual with him; with a little sharpness also in his eye, as George quickly observed. "Not his heir—who is ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... with that peculiar sharpness and rapidity of movement which Wilton had always remarked in him from their first meeting. The young gentleman, on his part, went over to the house of the Earl of Sunbury, and telling the old housekeeper, and the girl who opened the door to him, that a gentleman would soon be there ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... eagle the virtue of sight is most mighty and strong. For in the eagle the spirit of sight is most temperate and most sharp in act and deed of seeing and beholding the sun in the roundness of its circle without blemishing of eyen. And the sharpness of her sight is not rebounded again with clearness of light of the sun, nother disperpled. There is one manner eagle that is full sharp of sight, and she taketh her own birds in her claws, and maketh them to look even on the ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the same diligence as he the disease; I see he fears, and I fear with him; I overtake him, I over-run him in his fear, because he makes his pace slow; I fear the more because he disguises his fear, and I see it with the more sharpness because he would not have me see it.' As he lies in bed, he realises 'I am mine own ghost, and rather affright my beholders than instruct them. They conceive the worst of me now, and yet fear worse; they give me for dead now, and ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered, is, that every day and week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are the dragon's teeth of yore, in everything but sharpness; aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind, and artful suppressions of all its good influences: such things as these, and in a word, Dishonest Faction in its most depraved and most unblushing form, stared ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... so from the sharpness of the flower-leaves (petals), my lady, but it is a beautiful yellow lily; the leaves are also pretty; they are veined or clouded with milky white or dusky purple. The plant has a bulbous root, and in the month of April sends up its single, nodding, yellow-spotted flowers; they ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... that I should take notice of the severe Remarks that have been formerly made upon him by Mr. Rhymer. I must confess, I can't very well see what could be the Reason of his animadverting with so much Sharpness, upon the Faults of a Man Excellent on most Occasions, and whom all the World ever was and will be inclin'd to have an Esteem and Veneration for. If it was to shew his own Knowledge in the Art of Poetry, besides that there is a Vanity in making that only his Design, I question if ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... learn the progress of the storm, and, seeing the bright stars of Cassiopeia's chair shining brightly down upon him, fell contentedly asleep. See how many traces from which we may learn the chopper's history. From this stump we may guess the sharpness of his axe, and, from the slope of the stroke, on which side he stood, and whether he cut down the tree without going round it or changing hands; and, from the flexure of the splinters, we may know ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... Prudence Ash Tree, Grandeur Aspen Tree, Lamentation Asphodel, My Regrets Follow Auricula, Painting Auricula (Scarlet) Avarice Austurtium, Splendour Azalea, Temperance Bachelor's Buttons, Celibacy Balm, Sympathy Balm (Gentle), Pleasantry Balm of Gilead, Cure Balsam, Yellow, Impatience Barberry, Sharpness of temper Basil, Hatred Bay Berry, Instruction Bay Leaf, I change but in death Bay Tree, Glory Bay Wreath, Reward of merit Bearded Crepis, Protection Beech Tree, Prosperity Bee Orchis, Industry ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... not better follow him then?" she said, with sharpness. "He is at M. Carnot's. He may ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... by Dr. Horne, in his Introduction to the Study of the Bible, in explanation of Acts, xvi. 11, 12. The specimen in my possession is in lead, finely struck, and therefore not a cast, and in all respects equal in point of sharpness and execution to the silver of the same size and type in the British Museum; and was dug up by a labourer at Chesterton, near Cambridge. How is the metal of which my specimen is composed ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... the rings on the planet is best seen when the rings are but moderately open, and Saturn is in or near quadrature. When the shadow lies outside the rings it is best seen, as the dark ring takes off from the sharpness of the contrast when the shadow lies within the ring. It would take more space than I can spare here to show how it is to be determined (independently) whether the shadow lies within or without the ring. But the 'Nautical Almanac' gives the means of determining this point. When, in the table for ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... rhythmic quality in the play from softness to sharpness on the edges of masses. A monotonous sharpness of edge is hard, stern, and unsympathetic. This is a useful quality at times, particularly in decorative work, where the more intimate sympathetic qualities are not ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... no words for such a thought, but he knew now, in all the sharpness of the bitter certainty, that between them there was a great gulf ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... clings to him, for, though fallen, he is still an angel! Mephistopheles in his real nature is without any higher aspirations, he argues with a sarcastic smile on his lips, he is ironical with sophisticated sharpness. Satan has unconsciously gigantic ideas, he is ready to wrestle with God for the dominion of heaven. Mephistopheles is perfectly conscious of his littleness as opposed to our better intellectual nature, and does ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... to the affiliated duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg.[782] During the (p. 557) later years of the reign successive ministries grappled vainly with this problem, and the political forces of the kingdom came to be divided with unprecedented sharpness by the conflict between the separatist tendency and the demand for immediate and complete incorporation. The king himself was brought eventually to consent to the framing of a constitution for the whole of his dominions, as a means of holding the realm together; ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... specify that sand for concrete shall be clean and sharp, and silicious in character. Neither sharpness nor excessive cleanliness is worth seeking after if it involves much expense. Tests show conclusively that sand with rounded grains makes quite as strong a mortar, other things being equal, as does sand with angular grains. The admixture ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... assured him since he was engaged that Marie Bromar was the handsomest girl in Lorraine or Alsace; and he felt it to be an injury that this handsome girl should prefer such a one as George Voss to himself. Marie, with a woman's sharpness, perceived all this accurately. 'Remember,' said she, 'that I had hardly seen you when George and I were—when he and I ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... lawyers of Old France, whom LaFontaine depicts in his lively fable as swallowing the oyster and handing to each litigant an empty shell, did not differ in any essential point from their brothers of the long robe in New France, and differed nothing at all in the length of their bills and the sharpness ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... an abundant, share of native sense. We may see it evinced in respect to the very questions of morality, in cases where they are quite compelled, as will occasionally happen, to feel themselves brought within the cognizance of one or other of its plainest rules. In such cases we have witnessed a sharpness and activity of intellect claiming almost our admiration. What contrivance of deception and artful evasion. What dexterity of quibble, and captious objection, and petty sophistry. What vigilance to observe how the plea in justification or ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... with a tendency to corpulence and good works. She was also afflicted with a high color, and a chronic eruption of diamonds. Her husband had an eye for them, having begun life as a jeweller's apprentice, and having developed sufficient sharpness of vision in other directions to become a millionnaire, and a Congressman, and to let his ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... digging, and that even now some thief had stolen back there and was uncovering his hoard. His mother looked at him often, and at last said that he looked very weary; to which he replied with some sharpness, so that she said ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... round the line; and then the Prior spoke with a tinge of sharpness, inflicting the penances, and giving Chris a heavy sentence of twenty ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... even a few such documents, it might be possible to plot cultural areas, as has been done for North America—the areas in question being regions of fairly uniform culture, marked off with some sharpness from other such areas. It would then appear whether the African areas depended on geographic conditions, on plant or animal distributions, or on the superior inventive genius of certain tribes or races. On the other hand, it might appear that the whole culture area hypothesis was untenable, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... sat drinking their beer and watching Larkin. But only Cleve was aware of the skill with which the man worked. The gradual application of pressure; the careful moving forward from bog to bog with the path of retreat always open. From sharpness to brusqueness. From the brusque to the harsh. From ...
— The Terrible Answer • Arthur G. Hill
... severe beauty, but time and grief had dealt ungently with it. The lips were pale and anaemic, two or three folds, sharp as if made with a knife, surrounded them. About the eyes, whose soft and lambent light of other days had turned into a hard and troubled sharpness, spread concentric rings, united by a net-work ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... off the tent walls when we had camped. On we went, however, confident but silent. No other sound now but the swish, swish of our ski as we sped through the soft new snow. In the light of the Aurora objects stood out with the razor-edge sharpness of an after-blizzard atmosphere, and the temperature seemed to fall even lower than at midnight. Our fingers seemed to be cut with the frost burn, and frost bites played all round our faces, making ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... great sharpness or quickness or hardness is termed violence or madness; too great slowness or gentleness is called cowardice or sluggishness; and we may observe, that for the most part these qualities, and the temperance and manliness of the opposite characters, are arrayed as enemies ...
— Statesman • Plato
... sooner checked, but he did start, though he made it a part of the action of taking out his pocket-handkerchief. How Wemmick received the announcement I am unable to say; for I was afraid to look at him just then, lest Mr. Jaggers's sharpness should detect that there had been some communication unknown to him ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... no wise becoming in an orator, though it is not amiss to affect it. Do you imagine that I am angry when in pleading I use any extraordinary vehemence and sharpness? What? when I write out my speeches after all is over and past, am I then angry while writing? or do you think AEsopus was ever angry when he acted, or Accius was so when he wrote? Those men, indeed, act very well, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... two-thirds of his life, metaphorically, at this woman's feet, and had formed a habit of admiration and lovership which no facts nor developments could ever alter. He was frowning, he replied with a certain sharpness, and yet he leaned towards her as he spoke, and his eyes followed her long, graceful lines and noted the clear delicacy of her features against the crimson background. "How the child looked—how the child looked; Cynthia, you do not realize what you did. You have not the faintest realization of ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a singularly intelligent child, and so must often have wondered what has become of all the interesting things that you read about in the old fairy-tales—the shoes of swiftness, and the sword of sharpness, and the cloak that made its wearer invisible, and things like that. Well, the fact is all these things are still in the world, hidden about somewhere, only people are so busy with new inventions, wireless telegraphs and X rays, ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... strongly barbed.[26] Apex more or less acuminated; width and thickness variable; sides strongly furrowed. Fork (fig. 1 a) generally less wide than the widest upper part of the valve, with the two prongs diverging from each other at less than a right angle; their sharpness and precise form variable; rim between them reflexed (figs. 1 a and b), making a slight notch behind. Peduncle smooth, wrinkled, length in proportion to that of the capitulum varying, from barely equalling it, to six or seven times as long. I have noticed a specimen including mature ova, with ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... can see farther than other people's,' returned Richard. 'Heaven knows whence they have their sharpness. But suppose it were a heartache now, have you got e'er ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... as many of the blacks are, but long and black, with the most beautiful, yet careless tresses spreading over his shoulders. He had a very high and large forehead, with a great vivacity and sparkling sharpness in his eyes. His skin was not so tawney, as the Virginians, Brazilians, or other Americans; but rather of a bright dun, olive colour, that had something agreeable in it, though not very easy to give a description of. His face was round and plump, with a small nose, very different ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... ears now," said Miss Fancy, alluding, with the sharpness that her position as village sharpener demanded, to the contrast between the rattle of knives and forks and the late notes of ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... which rings out an announcement as we open the door, that, few and far between, there has been an arrival in the way of a customer, though it may be, as sometimes happens, that the bell, with all its untuned sharpness, fails to triumph over the din of domestic affairs in the little back-room, which serves for parlor, and kitchen, and hall, and proves unavailing to spread the news against the turbulent clamor of noisy ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... this last declaration with the sympathy it deserved, might have commended the noble aspirations of his kinswoman. But what struck him, rather, was the oddity of so sudden a sharpness of pitch in an intercourse which, an hour or two before, had begun in perfect amity, and he burst once more into an irrepressible laugh. This made his companion feel, with intensity, how little she was joking. "I don't know why I should care ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... and very irregular end; not resembling a Cone, as is imagin'd, but onely a piece of a tapering body, with a great part of the top remov'd, or deficient. The Points of Pins are yet more blunt, and the Points of the most curious Mathematical Instruments do very seldome arrive at so great a sharpness; how much therefore can be built upon demonstrations made onely by the productions of the Ruler and Compasses, he will be better able to consider that shall but view those points and lines ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... you please," answered Leslie, with some sharpness of tone. "You have no right to think or to suggest that I should do any such thing. Perhaps, however, you may have misunderstood me," he continued, more gently. "What I had in my mind was this. It occurred to me that it might not be difficult ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... expression, suggested a melancholy humour delighting in subdued and tranquil thoughts, inclined naturally to the romantic view, or to what in the eyes of youths of twenty appears to be the romantic view of life. He had suddenly found her answering him with a sharpness which, while it roused his wits, startled his sensibilities. But he was flattered as well. His instinct and his observation of Mrs. Goddard when in the society of others led him to believe that with Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose, or even with Mr. Juxon, she was not in the habit of talking ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... rendered him insensible; but I did not dare to quit the tiller for an instant, as it required all my faculties, bodily and mental, to manage the schooner. For an hour the blast drove us along, while, owing to the sharpness of the vessel's bow and the press of canvas, she dashed through the waves instead of breasting over them, thereby drenching the decks with water fore and aft. At the end of that time the squall passed away, and left us rocking on the ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne |
