"Aptness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Her corrections," he said, "struck me as so many rays of light." "A point of morals will be no better discussed in a society of philosophers than in that of a pretty woman of Paris," said Rousseau. This constant habit of reducing thoughts to a clear and salient form was the best school for aptness and ready expression. To talk wittily and well, or to lead others to talk wittily and well, was the crowning gift of these women. This evanescent art was the life and soul of the salons, the magnet which attracted the most brilliant of the French ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... special messenger would speedily have advised him if news of the Andromeda had arrived since he left the office on Saturday afternoon. But it is said that drowning men clutch at straws, and the metaphor might be applied to Verity with peculiar aptness. He was sinking in a sea of troubles, sinking because the old buoyancy was gone, sinking because many hands were stretched forth to push him under, and never one to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Whether beside that value of money which is rated by weight, there be not also another value consisting in its aptness ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... game and fish, the innumerable bee-hives deposited in the hollow of old trees, and in the cavities of rocks, and forming, even in that rude age, a valuable branch of commerce, the size of the cattle, the temperature of the air, the aptness of the soil for every species of gain, and the luxuriancy of the vegetation, all displayed the liberality of Nature, and tempted the industry of man. [28] But the Goths withstood all these temptations, and still adhered to a life of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... New Testament are, many of them, such as would have done honour to any book in the world: I do not mean in style and diction, but in the choice of the subjects, in the structure of the narratives, in the aptness, propriety, and force of the circumstances woven into them; and in some, as that of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Pharisee and the Publican, in an union of pathos and simplicity, which in the best productions of human genius is the fruit ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... his opponent and expose it with merciless directness. He had an abounding sense of humor, and always employed it in illustration of his argument—but never for the mere sake of provoking merriment. In this respect he had the wonderful aptness of Franklin. He often taught a great truth with the felicitous brevity of an Aesop fable. His words did not flow in an impetuous torrent, as did those of Douglas; but they were always well chosen, deliberate ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... at her with a wondering smile. The aptness of the remark did not strike him. However, he was equal to ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... man had a great aptness for accounts. He had kept them—had rendered them. There was beauty, to him, in a correct, balanced, and closed account. An account unsatisfied was a deformity. The result is plain. That man, looking out night after night upon the grand and ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... own history by saying, I went to a North Country school, where I was noted for my aptness in learning; and my skill at 'prisoner's base,'—upon my word I purposed no pun! I was intended for the Church. Wishing, betimes, to instruct myself in its ceremonies, I persuaded my schoolmaster's maidservant to assist me towards promoting ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... probably inherent in the shepherd of the flock, since my wards might well be likened, I thought, to helpless young sheep. By this comparison I mean no disrespect; the simile is employed because of its aptness and for no other reason. It would ill become me, of all men, to refer slightingly to any of our student-body, we at Fernbridge making it our policy ever to receive only the daughters of families having undoubted social standing in their respective communities. I trust this explanation ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... several times lately she has made herself heard in the garden with recitations to the fat boy on the subject of Peris weeping before the gates of Paradise, or warbling elegies under the green sea in regard to Araby's daughter. There is a real aptness in the latter reference; for this boy's true place in nature is the deep seas of the polar regions, where animals are coated with thick tissues of blubber. If Sylvia ever harpoons him, as she seems seriously bent on doing, she will have to drive her ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... ill wind that blows nobody any good," however, and the aptness of the adage was well illustrated in the present instance, the men feasting on roast pork, besides putting by some tit-bits salted down for a rainy day, at the expense ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... pleased. There was not a trace of Pennycuick to be discerned in him; nevertheless, he was a good-looking, intelligent and interesting boy. He sat by her on the sacred brocaded sofa while she brightly questioned him, brightly answering her with aptness and good sense; his parents beaming on the pair, even the father content to play second fiddle to give the son his chance. Here, at any rate, thought Deb, was material to hand for the work she ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... remark was sailing, you may say, almost within three points of the wind; and his own accidental allusion to Romeo had brought it about with an aptness and a celerity which were better for my purpose than anything I had privately developed from the text of Bottom and Titania; none the less, however, did I intend to press into my service that fond couple also as basis for a moral, in spite of the sharp turn which those last words of ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... head and inspiration of all enterprise in that new place. People to whom that country was strange, and that included nearly all of them, looked to him for advice, and regarded with admiration and wonder his aptness in answering everything. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... hand a flower. One she smelt and held her face long to it, as though its sweetness kept her senses willing prisoners; turning to the other, she smelt it for a short instant and then drew away, her face, that told every mood with unfailing aptness, twisted into disappointment or disgust. She leant out looking down on me; now behind her shoulder I saw the King's black face, half-hidden by the hangings of the window. She glanced at the first flower, then at the second, held up both ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... But the distinction between the two might be conveyed with at least equal aptness ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... I noted the aptness of the description; but, indeed, Felipe had sometimes a strange felicity in rendering into words the sensations of the body. "And your mother, too," said I; "she seems to feel this weather much. Do you not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lord Earlybird is a very good man,—so much so that many of us may well envy him,—he is not just the man fitted for this destination. A Knight of the Garter should be a man prone to show himself, a public man, one whose work in the country has brought him face to face with his fellows. There is an aptness, a propriety, a fitness in these things which one can understand perhaps ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... fitness that was in this youth to enjoy this world, so much the less chance was thereof his being fit for any other world. What could it do for him there,—this beautiful grace and elegance of feature,—where there was no form, nothing tangible nor visible? what good that readiness and aptness for associating with all created things, doing his part, acting, enjoying, when, under the changed conditions of another state of being, all this adaptedness would fail? Had he been gifted with permanence ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is your special fitness for work; that is, your education, experiences, aptness, power of ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... is as apt to take wysdome As is an olde, and if it rotyd be It sawyth sede of holy lyfe to come Also in children we often tymes se Great aptness outwarde and syne of grauyte But fyll an erthen pot first with yll lycoure And euer after it ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... support in walking; he was able, therefore, to oppose the thumb to the other four fingers, to seize hold of objects and to fashion tools; and it is well known that the hands are great promoters of the intelligence. This same position gave to the lungs, trachea, larynx, and mouth an aptness for the production of articulate speech, and speech is intelligence. Moreover, this position, causing the head to weigh vertically upon the trunk, facilitated its development and increase of weight, and the head is the seat of the mind. But ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... Words have no meaning in themselves. They are merely the artificial representatives of those ideas affixed to them by compact or agreement among those who use them. In English, for instance, to a particular kind of metal we assign the name gold; not because there is, in that sound, any peculiar aptness which suggests the idea we wish to convey, but the application of that sound to the idea signified, is an act altogether arbitrary. Were there any natural connexion between the sound and the thing signified, the word gold would convey the same idea to the ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... there is no effectual value; that is to say, no wealth. A horse is no wealth to us if we cannot ride, nor a picture if we cannot see, nor can any noble thing be wealth, except to a noble person. As the aptness of the user increases, the effectual value of the thing used increases; and in its entirety can co-exist only with perfect skill of use, and fitness ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... this pretended reason should not be so contemptibly spoken of as were fit and medicinable, in regard that hath been too much exalted and glorified, to the infinite detriment of man's estate. Of the nature of words and their facility and aptness to cover and grace the defects of Anticipations. That it is no marvel if these Anticipations have brought forth such diversity and repugnance in opinions, theories, or philosophies, as so many fables of several arguments. That had not the nature of civil customs and government ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... Mackenzie smiled at the aptness of Dad's comparison. It was, indeed, as if Reid interposed a film like a frog when he plunged from one element into another, so to speak; when he left the sheeplands in his thoughts and went back to the haunts ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... who excelled in both, obtained as a young man the most tumultuous applause. For he possessed that strong leaning for polished and condensed maxims which Menecles displayed; as with whom, so with Hortensius, some of these maxims were more remarkable for sweetness and grace than for aptness and indispensable use; and so his speech, though highly strung and impassioned without losing finish or smoothness, was nevertheless not approved by the older critics. I have seen Philippus hide a smile, or at ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... this kind is undoubtedly useful to the political speaker in that it enables him to be apt without being exact, and thereby frees him from the possibility of being pinned down to a stated position, but in serious discussion exactness rather than aptness is desired, and to the thinking man the figure of speech, by which the notion of two lines running always parallel without meeting is applied to the course of development of two races living together in one country, ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... important discoveries, my aptness for house-work was found out by accident. Our next neighbor happened to be thrown, without a word of warning, into one of those dreadful whirlpools in regard to help, to which even the best regulated households ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... the book, drawn by the aptness of the text to my problem. Had Maupassant given me the key of the whole enigma? Was this astonishing genius, who had so wrought upon our imaginations, was he a criminal irresistibly driven to tell us the story of his evil life? Were the police of Europe and America even now scouring ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... don't care what they buy, just so they buy. They've got no sense of value left. Why, a man found an outcrop of a zinc lode under his chicken-coop yesterday—and to-day the price of chicken-coops has gone up." Madeira patted Steering's shoulder again and laughed again, pleased at his aptness in ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... said, quoting a passage whose aptness had somehow seen it through a dozen reorganizations of insular tongue and a final translation to universal Terran. "If they're none of those three, we've only one conclusion left. There's no one down there at ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... and yet have not been afraid beyond measure." When the Reformer, worn out by excess of labor and anxiety, was at length laid to his rest, the regent, looking down into the open grave, exclaimed in words which made a strong impression from their aptness and truth— "There lies he who never ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... near the seashore show wonderful aptness in opening oysters and shell-fish with sharp stones, exactly as a man would do. Monkeys have already reached the degree of civilization where they select the stones best suited for their work, and from their progress in the past it is reasonable ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... 'Lord Seaforth's deafness was a merciful interposition to lower him to the ordinary rate of capacity in society,' insinuating that otherwise his perception and intelligence would have been oppressive. And the aptness of the remark was duly appreciated by all those who had the good fortune to be able to form an estimate from personal observation, while, as a man of the world, none was more capable of generalizing. Yet, as a countryman, he never affected to disregard those local predilections ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... humorous turn in his talk, or a sunny geniality which served instead. Perhaps my recollection of a pervading element of humour is the more vivid, because the best talks were with Mr. Huxley, in whom there is the aptness which is akin to humour, even when humour itself is not there. My father enjoyed Mr. Huxley's humour exceedingly, and would often say, "What splendid fun Huxley is!" I think he probably had more scientific ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... a wise man who familiarizes himself with the grave. For me; I must deny myself, for I go tomorrow to take part in festivities the reverse of funereal. I commend the propriety and aptness of your ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich to George Ade's Fables in Slang is a far cry, but one is as typical a style of humor as the other. Ade's is the more distinctly original, for he not only created the style, but another language. The aptness of its turns, and the marvelous way in which he hit the bull's-eye of human foibles and weaknesses lifted him into instantaneous popularity. A famous bon mot of George Ade's which has been quoted threadbare, but which serves excellently ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... detriments the costumes were very poor, especially the disguise of Alonzo as the Hollander, and Haunce's own 'fantastical travelling habit,' dresses on the aptness of which the probability of the intrigue can be ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... The aptness of these words, spoken in a dogmatic tone, aroused the approval of the Arabs, and the Jew could not restrain himself from exclaiming: "Capital!" but no sooner had it escaped him than he shrank as quick as lightning out of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... operations of the day by discharging his rifle at his candle after he had snugly ensconced himself in bed; and of the celebrated scene in which Henry Clay won an old hunter's vote in an election, by his aptness in turning into a political simile some points in the management ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... all have been blacksmiths, the child will be born with the muscles of the right arm more developed than those of the left, and the first plaything he demands is a hammer. So, where a family have been traders, will the offspring naturally discover an aptness for bargaining and commerce. This is illustrated in the instincts of the Jews, a people of extraordinary brain and wonderful tenacity of purpose. Five thousand years since, a small fragment of the Semitic race, residing in Mesopotamia between the waters of the Euphrates ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Pompey—and no finer instances of tragic declamation can be chosen from the work of this great master of rhetorical dignity and pathos—I cannot but think we shall perceive in it a comparative severity and elevation which will be missed when we turn back from it to the text of Fletcher. There is an aptness of phrase, an abstinence from excess, a "plentiful lack" of mere flowery and superfluous beauties, which we may rather wish than hope to find in the most famous of Shakespeare's successors. But if not his work, we may be sure ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... this connotation of wasteful and archaic, whether it is used to denote the dead languages or the obsolete or obsolescent forms of thought and diction in the living language, or to denote other items of scholarly activity or apparatus to which it is applied with less aptness. So the archaic idiom of the English language is spoken of as "classic" English. Its use is imperative in all speaking and writing upon serious topics, and a facile use of it lends dignity to even the most commonplace and trivial string of talk. The newest form of English diction is of ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the country, Jonathan, and noticed an immense rock split and shattered by the roots of a tree, or perhaps by the might of an insignificant looking fungus? I have, many times, and I never see such a rock without thinking of its aptness as an illustration of this Socialist philosophy. A tiny acorn tossed by the wind finds lodgment in some small crevice of a rock which has stood for thousands of years, a rock so big and strong that men choose it as an emblem of the ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... poem of extraordinary power, has so much more markedly the defects of his qualities that I take it to be, at the utmost, the poise of the first gradual refluence. This analogy of the tidal ebb and flow may be observed with singular aptness in Browning's life-work—the tide that first moved shoreward in the loveliness of "Pauline," and, with "long withdrawing roar," ebbed in slow, just perceptible lapse to the poet's penultimate volume. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... wrought an important change in our hero. We leave him an uneducated boy of fifteen. We meet him again a youth qualified to appear to advantage in any society. Of course, this change was not wrought without persistent effort. Tom was, as we know, an unusually smart boy, with a quick wit, and an aptness to learn. But talent avails little unless cultivated. Our hero, however, kept up his habit of evening study, at first under Mordaunt's instruction. The latter was amazed at the progress of his pupil. ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... put without thought, but its aptness seemed almost to imply an intuitive knowledge of their previous conversation. 'Yes,' said ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... excels," according to an English cousin, "in an openness to ideas, an aptness for intuitions, and sometimes a seemingly positive preference for the bird in the bush," which latter may account for that skilful Yankee versatility so perfectly exemplified in the chaplain, poet, editor, merchant, speculator, politician, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... occasioned measureless ridicule and disgust. The difference in what is vaguely styled temperament does not wholly explain the contrast between the two peoples, for the performance was creditable both to the readiness of the King in an emergency and to the aptness of his people, the main distinction being that in Italy there was in 1821, and still is, a recognized and cultivated language of signs long disused in Great Britain. In seeking to account for this it will be remembered that the Italians have a more ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... lads laughed at the aptness of the "shiny night," for that was evident to the dullest capacity. Thus encouraged, he tried a ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... son. Gruesome tales of the ferocity of the convicts. John still anxious to find some particular cave. His chart. The unsolved mystery of the boat. The clothing of the natives. Bracelets. Glitter to attract natives. Weaving, the only industry. The aptness of native women to adopt fancy articles of dress and ornament. John's scheme, anticipating the wedding of Sutoto and Cinda. A "State affair." The mission to the Professor. Sending the Pioneer to Wonder Island. Stut captain ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... roses. Since the back street must be the "right street" and its accompaniments must wear an aspect of at least seeming to belong to the right order of detachment and fashionable ease, one was always in debt and forced to keep out of the way of duns, and obliged to pretend things and tell lies with aptness and outward gaiety. Sometimes one actually was so far driven to the wall that one could not keep most important engagements and the invention of plausible excuses demanded absolute genius. The slice of a house between the two big ones was a rash feature of the honeymoon but a year of giving ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... passion in him, even as defeating the hopes of the Vaufontaines was more than a religion with the Duke. By no trickery, but by a persistent good-nature, alertness of speech, avoidance of dangerous topics, and aptness in anecdote, he had hourly made his position stronger, himself more honoured at the Castle Bercy. He had also tactfully declined an offer of money from the Prince—none the less decidedly because he was nearly penniless. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
