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Eagerness   /ˈigərnəs/   Listen
Eagerness

noun
1.
A positive feeling of wanting to push ahead with something.  Synonyms: avidity, avidness, keenness.
2.
Prompt willingness.  Synonyms: forwardness, readiness, zeal.  "They showed no eagerness to spread the gospel" , "They disliked his zeal in demonstrating his superiority" , "He tried to explain his forwardness in battle"






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"Eagerness" Quotes from Famous Books



... going to hunt, in the eagerness of chase separated from the body of his attendants, and advanced near twelve miles from his camp.[106] The devoted infidels, informed of the circumstance, immediately hastened to intercept him, and arrived in sight when even his personal attendants, about two hundred ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... welcomed by the Kurfurst Johann George; when, from Konigsberg, a sad message reached them: namely, that the young Duke had suddenly been seized with an invincible depression and overclouding of mind, not quite to be characterized by the name of madness, but still less by that of perfect sanity. His eagerness to see his Bride was the same as formerly; but his spiritual health was in the questionable state described. The young Lady paused for a little, in such mood as we may fancy. She had already lost two offers, Bridegrooms snatched away by death, says Pauli; [Pauli, iv. 512.] ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... that he was poor, and if he came, he must work for his living. "What can you do?" asked the president. "Sweep the floors, light the fires, ring the bell, and make myself generally useful," answered the young backwoodsman. The president, pleased with his eagerness, promised to try him for a fortnight; and at the end of the fortnight, Garfield had earned his teaching so well that he was excused from all further fees during the remainder of his stay at the little institute. His post was by no mean an easy one, for he was servant-of-all-work ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... a chaste body, a moderate table, and a mind pure not from all unlawful but even from all superfluous pleasures, it was my delight to set strict limits to all voracity and gluttony. And these precepts, my Lucilius, have left some permanent results; for I embraced them with impetuous eagerness, and afterwards, when I entered upon a political career, I retained a few of my good beginnings. In consequence of them, I have all my life long renounced eating oysters and mushrooms, which do not satisfy hunger but only sharpen appetite; for this reason I habitually ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... valid, and for the rest of the day I struggled under my disappointment. But that night a new way seemed to open to me, and in my eagerness I awoke ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... of it,' replied the other, with a strange look of eagerness. 'But I don't know whether I can. No, I can't be ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... my heels at last, and no one followed me beyond the gate. A lumbering fellow, however, who sat by it eating a hunch of bread, picked up a stone to throw after me, and happily, in his stupid eagerness, threw, not the stone but the bread. I took it, and he did not dare follow to reclaim it: beyond the walls they were cowards every one. I went off a few hundred yards, threw myself down, ate the bread, fell asleep, and slept soundly ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... of such great condescension that even the haughty Kaunitz was seen to blush with gratified vanity. With unusual eagerness, he presented his snuff-box ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... his eyes. He rolled looks of rapture over the people. They questioned him on all sides with an eagerness that dazed him somewhat, the more easily since he was still as drunk ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola

... Vernon's own image, the most interesting surely in all the troop of our young kinsmen early baffled and gathered, that he glances at me out of the Paris period, fresh-coloured, just blond-bearded, always smiling and catching his breath a little as from a mixture of eagerness and shyness, with such an appeal to the right idealisation, or to belated justice, as makes of mere evocation a sort of exercise of loyalty. It seemed quite richly laid upon me at the time—I get it all back—that ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... Wilbur's letters arrived, he devoured them with tremulous eagerness, and sat up half the night writing an elaborate answer, while Nettie's letters ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... is another strong story of life in the "Five Towns" pottery district of Staffordshire. Although the hero, Edwin Clayhanger, is not a strong personality, Bennett's art makes us keenly interested in Edwin's simple, impressionable nature, in his eagerness for life, and in his experiences as a young dreamer, lover, son, and brother. Hilda Lessways (1911), a companion volume to Clayhanger, but a story of less power, continues the history of the same characters. Bennett reveals in these novels one of his prime gifts,—the skill to paint domestic ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... daily conversation is less emphasis, and more quietness and non-resistance. We need less eagerness and more vivacity and variety. We need a settled equanimity of mind that does not deprive us of our animation, but saves us from the petty irritations of everyday life. We need, in short, more poise and self-control in our ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... a gig driving up to the door, which was immediately succeeded by a violent knocking and ringing, and after a little time the servant who had admitted me made his appearance in the room. 'Sir,' said he, with a certain eagerness of manner, 'here are two gentlemen waiting to ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... marry her," Madelon repeated. She stood stiff and straight like a statue, and waited. Once, when Alvin made an impatient motion as though to open the door, she restrained him with such despairing eagerness that he drew back and looked at her wonderingly, and stood ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... contagious atmosphere of the world, find themselves so susceptible to the vanity which they inhale that all their pure desires vanish. Others have solemnly promised to renounce their resentments, to conquer their aversions, to suffer with patience certain crosses, and to repress their eagerness for wealth; but nature prevails, and they are ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser

... the ship was hove-to, having pointed out to the captain the exact position of those in the water, and being unable to restrain my eagerness, I sprang forward, and just had time to glide down the falls into the boat, which, under the charge of the mate, pulled by her crew, ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... Pierre and his new friend Henri St. Amant; and by and by came an invitation for Pierre to come again to Pont-de-Saint-Michel and spend the day visiting the Gaspard throwing mills, where the raw silk was twisted and prepared for weaving. The boy was all eagerness to go and his mother, too, favored the trip, for Pierre had been working very steadily and now had few pleasures. It seemed impossible to complete the never-ending round of duties, although with uncomplaining zeal Pierre kept patiently at ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett

... should seek refuge among strangers, wherever an asylum could be found. That asylum was afforded by Protestant England, who received these intelligent and unfortunate wanderers with cordiality, and learned with eagerness the lessons in mechanical skill which they had to teach. Already thirty thousand emigrant Netherlanders were established in Sandwich, Norwich, and other places, assigned to them by Elizabeth. It had always, however, been made a condition of the liberty ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... characteristics, were, in truth, only such as he really felt. But, even in his case, there was an evident disposition to know something more of Charlemont. He was really willing to return. He renewed the same subject of conversation, when it happened to flag, with obvious eagerness; and, though his language was still studiedly disparaging, a more deeply penetrating judgment than that of his uncle, would have seen that the little village, slightly as he professed to esteem it, was yet an object of thought and interest in ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... English origin. Better thoughts appear to have occurred to them in the course of the work; but their evil destiny overtook them before their thoughts could get themselves executed. We opened one volume with eagerness, bearing the title of 'Voyages to the North-west,' in hope of finding our old friends Davis and Frobisher. We found a vast unnecessary Editor's Preface: and instead of the voyages themselves, which with their picturesqueness ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... on some of the characters of Shakspeare (whom, in his Observations, he calls the great master of nature) breathe in many of his pages, that fire, which he could have caught only from those of the great poet. Such was his eagerness to complete his Observations, that he for a short while "suspended his design" of examining other characters of the poet, when the bright effusions of his genius "fled up to the stars from whence they ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... tempered, showing sunlight of the mind, mental richness rather than noisy enormity. Its common aspect is one of unsolicitous observation, as if surveying a full field and having leisure to dart on its chosen morsels, without any fluttering eagerness. Men's future upon earth does not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... journalism. Here we have a field in which the non-survival of the unfit is the rule in its most ruthless form. The journals that we see and read are merely the fortunate few of a countless number, dead and forgotten, that did not know what the public wanted to read about. The eagerness shown by the representatives of your press in recording everything your guests would say was accomplished by an enterprise in making known everything that occurred, and, in case of an emergency requiring a heroic measure, what did NOT occur, showing that smart ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... of Ludovico the Moor, Books of Hours inscribed in gold letters on pale blue vellum. These precious things seemed to increase in value under the touch of Elena's fingers; her little hands had a faint tremor of eagerness when they came in contact with some specially desirable object. Andrea watched them intently, and his imagination transformed every movement of her hands into a caress. 'But why did she place each thing upon the table instead of passing it ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... experiencing any ill effects; they go without a meal to day, and to-morrow eat to repletion, with only temporary inconvenience. One night they will sleep three or four hours, and the next nine or ten; or one night, in their eagerness to get away into some agreeable company, they will take no food at all, and the next, perhaps, will eat a hearty supper, and go to bed upon it. These, with various other irregularities, are common to the majority ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... without acknowledging sectional bias. Whether this difficult task could be accomplished would depend upon the South. Toombs, on his part, was anxious to continue making the party of evasion play the great American game of politics, and in his eagerness he perhaps overestimated his hold upon the South. This, however, remains ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... come down to us. We are told that he refrained from publishing his doctrines, except by word of mouth. "The Lucanians and the Peucetians, and the Messapians and the Romans," we are assured, "flocked around him, coming with eagerness to hear his discourses; no fewer than six hundred came to him every night; and if any one of them had ever been permitted to see the master, they wrote of it to their friends as if they had gained some great ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... made for being. Few, however, are in danger of going so grievously against the intellectual impulses of their nature: far more are in danger of following them without earnestness, or if earnestly, then with the absorption of an eagerness only worldly. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... than ever; and her hands and feet, and indeed her whole body, got such a fidgeting, that I fancied she began to think of getting St. Vitus for a bedfellow. Her eagerness made her ask me two or three times what made me think so; and, seeing her anxiety, I purposely delayed in order to worry her. I wished to see how far I could run her up. When I did begin to explain, I ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... hurried down the dark flight of stone steps upon which the door opened. Terrible emotions raged in her bosom—indescribable alarms, grief, suspicion, and also a longing eagerness to put faith in ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... the studio, at his master's side. How excited he was the first time he placed a palette in his hand and allowed him to copy on an old canvas a child St. John which he had finished for a society!... While the boy with his forehead wrinkled in his eagerness, tried to imitate his master's work, he listened to the good advice that the master gave him without looking up from the canvas over which his angelic ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... giving various opinions concerning the issue, the Chevalier de Grammont determined to be an eye-witness of it; a resolution which greatly surprised the court; for those who had seen as many actions as he had, seemed to be exempted from such eagerness; but it was in vain that his friends opposed ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... do; for he said it was a horrid crime to kill one that was ordained king by God, although he was a wicked man; for that he who gave him the dominion would in time inflict punishment upon him. So he restrained his eagerness; but that it might appear to have been in his power to have killed him when he refrained from it, he took his spear, and the cruse of water which stood by Saul as he lay asleep, without being perceived by any in the camp, who were all asleep, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... a time it had been of old, and for a long time they paced up and down, the conversation running sometimes in the strain that both loved, and Ellen now never heard; sometimes on other matters; such a conversation as those she had lived upon in former days, and now drank in with a delight and eagerness inexpressible. Mr. Lindsay would have been in dismay to have seen her uplifted face, which, though tears were many a time there, was sparkling and glowing with life and joy in a manner he had never known it. She almost forgot what the morrow would bring, in the exquisite pleasure ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... sighed. He spent a few minutes regretting that he hadn't chosen, early in life, to be a missionary to the Fiji Islanders, or possibly simply a drunken bum without any trouble, and then the report Mitchell had mentioned arrived. Malone picked it up without much eagerness, and ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the soil that holds the house, what holds up the earth that holds the soil; but his questions are not evidence of any genuine consciousness of rational connections. His why is not a demand for scientific explanation; the motive behind it is simply eagerness for a larger acquaintance with the mysterious world in which he is placed. The search is not for a law or principle, but only for a bigger fact.... But in the feeling, however dim, that the facts which directly meet the sense are not the whole story, that there is more ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... princess and other enquirers. In one of his early letters he says: "I really think that among barbarous nations there can be none that has more natural goodness than Japan."(147) In the same letter he says: "They are wonderfully inclined to see all that is good and honest and have an eagerness to learn." Xavier, in letter 79, narrates his meeting with the Buddhist priest whom he calls Ningh-Sit, which name he says means Heart of Truth. This priest was eighty years old, and in the conversation expressed great surprise that Xavier should have come all the way from ...
— Japan • David Murray

... standing in the room, and commenced singing the old, and on that occasion very appropriate, song of "Home again, home again, from a foreign shore." The tones of her voice were rich and full, and they reached the ear of Uncle Nat, who in his eagerness to listen, forgot everything, until Mrs. Elliott said, "It is Dora singing to my ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes

... no desire to learn, under these present circumstances, the arguments and incidents which the knots of men and women were discussing with so much vehemence as they passed by. She could guess enough to satisfy her. So she had hurried along, betraying more eagerness than was common with her to get out of the street. Not often was she so overcome of weariness,—not often so annoyed by heat and dust. Jacqueline, without remonstrance, followed her. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction, was every-where regarded by the constituents of the majority as a most happy initiatory step. The whole country listened with eagerness to hear what words would be spoken in Congress to give some clue to the course the committee would recommend. Words of no uncertain significance and weight were uttered at an early ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... said Mr. Belden with suspicious eagerness. Mary's after-dinner practising hour had tinged much of his existence with gall. "I insist that Mary shall have a rest. And you shall join the reading society now. Let us consider ourselves a little as well as the children; it's really best for them, too. Haven't we immortal souls as well as ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various

... always as impatient as Lady Cecilia herself both of his hypercriticism and of his never-ending fancies, each of which Beauclerc purused with an eagerness and abandoned with a facility which sorely tried the general's equanimity. One day, after having ridden to Old Forest, General Clarendon returned chafed. He entered the library, talking to Cecilia, as Helen thought, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... all her dinners; she had seen as yet very little of the great woman, and entered fully into Karen's eagerness that everything ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... not more—than themselves, did not disturb the Green Mountain Boys in the least. "A Grants man who is not good for two or three of the scurvy Yorkers, is no good at all!" Stephen Fay had declared when they set forth, and probably the only emotions the ten felt as they rode on were eagerness and wrath. ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... the pitcher into her small left hand as much water as this would hold, and extended the right to her companion. He, surprised by love, encircled the maiden's waist, brought his ear close to her delicate cheek, and watched with eagerness her strange performance. Auriola blew at first softly, then more vehemently, into the hollow of her hand, so that the water, bubbling up, ran to the slender rosy fingers, and, in glittering drops, sprinkled from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... out on the porch to meet him, but something in the boy's manner checked her, and she neither spoke nor asked a question while the boy took off his saddle and tossed it on the steps. Nor did Jason give her but one glance, for the eagerness of her face and the trust and tenderness in her eyes were an unconscious reproach and made him feel guilty and faithless, so that he changed his mind about turning the old mare out in the yard and led her to the stable, merely to get away from the ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... Piccadilly Circus, pursued, as he fancies, by a Brompton omnibus which has not yet reached St. James's Church, and is moving at a snail's pace; you may not have been with him on that occasion when, in his eagerness to be in time for the 'Flying Dutchman,' he arrives at Paddington an hour before it starts, and is put into the parliamentary train which is shunted at Slough to let the 'Dutchman' pass; but when you come to ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... less, no more; and it is the comparative freedom from such unfavorable influences which makes the Florida men seem more bold and manly, as they undoubtedly do. To-day General Saxton has returned from Fernandina with seventy-six recruits, and the eagerness of the captains to secure them was a sight to see. Yet they cannot deny that some of the very best men in the regiment are ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... this first eagerness wore off, and by the time she returned from the tea interval—during which her place had been taken by the girl who acted as "supply"—she had already begun to show faint beginnings of the slightly contemptuous, detached air of the official. She was pleasant still, but as a favour, and with the ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... stones, striking his head, mounting on an opposite piled rock; and with pine branches some aimed, and some hurled their thyrsi through the air at Pentheus, wretched mark;[57] but they failed of their purpose; for he having a height too great for their eagerness, sat, wretched, destitute through perplexity. But at last thundering together[58] some oaken branches, they tore up the roots with levers not of iron; and when they could not accomplish the end of their labors, Agave said, Come, standing round in a circle, seize each a branch, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... while some of his subordinates were reading or writing in the cabin. As they proceeded up the Shire it was seen that the promises of assistance from the Portuguese Government were worse than fruitless. Evidently the Portuguese traders were pushing the slave-trade with greater eagerness than ever. Slave-hunting chiefs were marauding the country, driving peaceful inhabitants before them, destroying their crops, seizing on all the people they could lay hands on, and selling them as slaves. The contrast to what Livingstone had seen on his last journey was lamentable. All their ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... allowing libraries and monuments of antique civilisation to crumble into dust; while they trembled under a dull and brooding terror of coming judgment, shrank from natural enjoyment as from deadly sin, or yielded themselves with brutal eagerness to the satisfaction of vulgar appetites. Preoccupation with the other world in this long period weakens man's hold upon the things that make his life desirable. Philosophy is sunk in the slough of ignorant, perversely subtle disputation upon subjects destitute of actuality. Theological fanaticism ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... the high hills and had brought down for him. They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them—the hill people were not much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph and their noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness which ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... ceaseless activity with which he busied himself in his chemical experiments, the convulsive twitching of his mouth from excessive eagerness, was but the result of the one burning thought that consumed him, and from which he sought relief in physical action. He cared nothing at all for these things about which he occupied himself, but long practice, systematically undertaken, and his own great ability, had rendered ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... probably by most of his contemporaries. In the sketch referred to, the Governor of Barataria is represented by the typical Irish peasant; O'Connell appears in the character of the Doctor; and Lord John Russell as the attendant and amused servitor. Pat's eagerness to enjoy the good things he has been led to expect, and his mortification at their being removed out of reach and out ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... to it, either by passive obstruction or active rebellion, as a praiseworthy and patriotic act. Can we wonder at this when we hear opposition to constituted authority openly preached by the instructors of "the nation," and witness the eagerness of the "national press" to free itself from the terrible suspicion of coming to the assistance, even involuntarily, of the government in its ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... of a beautiful woman are usually compared to the new moon of Ramazan (see note, Vol. I. p. 71 {see Vol. 1 FN26}). The meaning here is the same, the allusion being apparently to the eagerness with which the pagan Arabs may be supposed to have watched for the appearance of the new moon of Shaaban, as giving the signal for the renewal of predatory excursions, after the enforced close-time or Treve de Dieu of the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... up and down the small inner drawing-room at La Lierre, his restless hands fumbling together behind him, and his eyes turning every half-minute with a sharp eagerness to the closed door. But at last, as if he were very tired, he threw himself down in a chair which stood near one of the windows, and all his tense body seemed to relax in utter exhaustion. It was not a very comfortable chair ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... for the whole party were looking ahead with the most intense eagerness at a bear which their sudden advent had aroused from a nap in the crevice of the iceberg. A little cub was discerned a moment after standing by her side, and gazing at the intruders with infantine astonishment. While ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... watched its motions with increasing interest, and an eagerness he had never experienced before. Sometimes it would come up close to the spot, almost within reach of his hand, and after balancing on the surface awhile, again dart away, only to return and play a thousand fantastic ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... light repast; after which, each of us employs himself in some unoppressive labour. Some embroider, others apply themselves to painting, others cultivate flowers or fruits, others turn little implements for our use. Many of these little works are sold to the people, who purchase them with eagerness. The money arising from this sale forms a considerable part of our revenue. Our morning is thus devoted to the worship of God and to the exercise of the sense of Sight, which begins with the first rays of the sun. The sense of Taste is gratified ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... them—in dreary silence, for hilarity died when the fell brand came into view and started around—but their fortitude held for a short time only; then they made excuses and filed out, treading on one another's heels with indecent eagerness; and in the morning when I went out to observe results the cigars lay all between the front door and the gate. All except one—that one lay in the plate of the man from whom I had cabbaged the lot. One or two whiffs was all he could ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... o'clock, and by three the hall was half full. A queue had at one time been formed, which extended as far as the end of the Place Saint Ernuph, in front of the shop of Josse Lietrinck the apothecary. This eagerness was significant of an ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... for your amiability, Dithy," Charley remarked, "the intense eagerness and delight, with which everybody in this establishment hails your departure. Four dirty little Darrells run about the passages with their war-whoop, 'Dithy's going—hooray! Now we'll have fun!' Your step-mother's sere and yellow visage beams with ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... since, through the whole period of the war, the precipitate and hot tempers of their generals had been detrimental, and this very year the consuls had fallen into a snare for which they were not prepared, in consequence of their excessive eagerness to engage the enemy, but the immortal gods, in pity to the Roman name, had spared the unoffending armies, and doomed the consuls to expiate their temerity with their ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... the things which are set forth in these books deserved to be selected with such great eagerness and care as they were, then certainly, neither we ourselves nor others will repent of our industry. But if we appear either rashly to have passed over some doctrine of some one worth noticing, or to have adopted it without sufficient elegance, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... Warrender, and Chatty followed a step in the rear of all. The mother talked softly, more than she had done as yet. She told him that their home henceforward would probably be in Highcombe, not here,—"That is, not yet, perhaps, but soon," she said, with a little eagerness not like the melancholy tone with which a new-made widow talks of leaving her home,—and that it would please her to see him there, if, according to the common formula, "he ever came that way." And Dick declared with a little ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... picked up hope at the thought and put the order swiftly into execution. I had scarcely opened my mouth to issue the necessary commands, when eager men were springing to halyards and downhauls, and others were racing aloft. This eagerness on their part was noted by Wolf Larsen with a ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... arms, as if participating [Footnote: Reading [Greek: pompeyontes] (Dindorf, after Bekker).] in some festival procession, and we, too, were walking about in our best attire. The crowd chafed in their eagerness to see him and to hear him say something, as if his voice had been somehow changed by his good fortune, and some of them held one another up aloft to get a look at him from ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... who asked me whether lords in England ever spoke to men who were not lords. Nor can I omit the opening address of another gentleman to my wife. "You like our institutions, ma'am?" "Yes, indeed," said my wife, not with all that eagerness of assent which the occasion perhaps required. "Ah," said he, "I never yet met the down-trodden subject of a despot who did not hug his chains." The first gentleman was certainly somewhat ignorant of our customs, and the second was rather abrupt in his condemnation of the political principles ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... great objection just then, for I was scarce hoping for flowers, old or new, or even for fine scenery. I wanted in particular to learn what the Oquirrh rocks were made of, what trees composed the curious patches of forest; and, perhaps more than all, I was animated by a mountaineer's eagerness to get my feet into the snow once more, and my head into the clear sky, after lying dormant all winter at ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... with impatience as she watched her. Her eyes looked ready to pop out of her head with eagerness. "Why don't you let me read it to you?" she cried at last, irritably, and regretted her words as soon as they were spoken. Granny laid the letter on the table beside her and fixed her eyes on Mona instead. "I am not ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... genuine history of his early days; Make known the place where first he saw the light, Portray the scenes which pleased his boyish sight, Unfold his parentage, and backward trace Their line, descended from no common race; Speak of his eagerness to learn a trade, Mark what proficiency in that he made, Glance at his love scenes, and a lesson show, Which youths in general would do well to know. Fail not to tell how, in his eighteenth year, He did, as Christian, publicly appear. Make known ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... and glad to be off. To be sure, America had been kinder to me than ever, and I was loath, in a way, to be leaving her and all the friends of mine she held—old friends of years, and new ones made on that trip. But I was coming back. And then there was one great reason for my eagerness that few folk knew—that my son John was coming to meet me in Australia. I was missing him ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... panted for action; the British through impatience of their humiliating position, and an eagerness to chastise what they considered the presumption of their besiegers; the Provincials through enthusiasm in their cause, a thirst for enterprise and exploit, and, it must be added, an unconsciousness ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... perceive, then, in the productions of some representative masters of the madrigal drama in the latter half of the sixteenth century, an expression of this Italian eagerness to abandon even the external attitude of serious contemplation, which the spectacular delights of the intermezzi and the serious lyric drama had made at least tolerable, and to turn to the uses of pure amusement the materials of a clearly defined form of art. We shall find ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... association, and dissevers or enfeebles them; the accumulation of sensorial power soon occurs in the stomach; as no previous expenditure of it in that organ has occurred. Whence in sea-sickness the persons take food with eagerness at times, when the vertigo eases for a ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... influence there?" he asked of Colonel Dewes; and he spoke with a great longing, a great eagerness, and he waited for the answer in ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... the gold cords of the staff. His left hand thrust in the pocket of his blouse heightened the ease of his carriage, which was free of conventional military stiffness, while his eyes had the peculiar eagerness of a man who seems to find everything that comes under his ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... responsibility. But remember that our moral estimates come down to us from ancestors who hanged children for stealing forty shillings' worth, and sent their souls to perdition for the sin of being born,—who punished the unfortunate families of suicides, and in their eagerness for justice executed one innocent person every three years, on the average, as ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... friend paused and called for refreshments. I seized the advantage of his silence over a glass of peach and honey, to suggest an eagerness for the finale of ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... done so much to increase, from being squandered on unnecessary and unprofitable objects. This jealousy of foolish expenditure combined with his love of peace to make him very chary of spending money on national defences. When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Palmerston, his eagerness in this regard caused his chief to write to the Queen that "it would be better to lose Mr. Gladstone than to run the risk of losing Portsmouth or Plymouth." At the end of his career, his final retirement ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... plainly see will bear down all before it. In the distance another figure of Death flies madly over the hills, beating a drum which summons other soldiers to the field. It is impossible to convey in words the fierce eagerness of this figure, minute as it is, and composed of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... turned of threescore and ten, half naked, was gathering up from the dirt and ashes about the boiler of the steam boat, a few pieces of dried apples that had been dropped and trodden under foot, which, with her toothless gums, she attempted to masticate with all the eagerness of a starving swine. Little children, from one to four years old, were crawling about in a state of nudity, and almost of starvation, while their own mothers and fathers, were staggering, and fighting, and swearing. It is a fact, that while these poor creatures cannot articulate a word ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... with reserve, but with a suggestion of curious eagerness. I marked it at once. Not, however, till the usual questions as to my journeys and so on were over, did I get a clue to the cause of it. But then, when we were seated on stools by the great stone I have mentioned, big clay beakers of thin, ...
— The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • Robert Keable

... historical books of the Old Testament furnishes no exception. These had been sacred to almost a hundred generations of men, and it was difficult for the eye of faith to see them as other than absolutely infallible documents. Yet the very eagerness with which the champions of the Hebrew records searched for archaeological proofs of their validity was a tacit confession that even the most unwavering faith was not beyond the reach of external evidence. True, the believer sought corroboration with full faith that he would find it; but the very ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... chance of doing that?" asked Cora, in her eagerness laying her hand on the sleeve ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose

... Mrs. Wharton, an event of unusual importance in the field of Magazine literature. Selections from the diaries and letters of George Bancroft will be published. This is a notable contribution to the history of the century, and a publication that many have been awaiting with eagerness. There will be a series of important papers on European political questions of interest to American readers by F.A. Vanderlip, the author of a new series of letters from Mme. Waddington, the author (1903) of the most brilliant book of social letters ...
— Wholesale Price List of Newspapers and Periodicals • D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency

... Millet, with an amused smile at my eagerness. "Everything in nature is good to paint, and the painter's business is to be occupied with his manner of rendering it. These pears, a man or a woman, a flock of sheep, all have the same qualities for a painter. There are," with a gesture of his hands to make his meaning clear, "things that lie ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various

... of feeling in the Parliament at the prospect of a struggle with France had warned the French and English kings that a strife which both desired rather to limit than to widen must be brought to an end. The dexterous delays of Charles were seconded by the eagerness with which Lewis pressed on the Peace of Breda between England and the Dutch. To Lewis indeed it seemed as if the hour he had so long waited for was come. He had secured the neutrality of the Emperor by a secret treaty which provided for a division of the Spanish ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... and knelt on the floor before her. Bim, who had welcomed the two with eagerness, sat ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... in long and dangerous illness, his final shipment to Washington on sick-leave, and then a winter of keen delight, a social campaign in which he won fame, honors, friends at court, and a transfer to the artillery, and then, joining his new regiment, he plunged with eagerness into the gayeties of city life. The blues were left behind with the cold facings of his former corps, and hope, life, duty, were all blended in hues as roseate as his new straps were red. It wasn't a month before all the best ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... rapidly to Igiga, to beg from the commandant assistance and food for the rest of the party. When the poor creatures who were left perceived the dogs coming to assist them, nothing could exceed their joy. They sprang into the air, barked aloud, and set forward with such eagerness to meet them, that restraint was impossible. When they came up, they jumped and fawned upon them, and licked them with an expression of pleasure and satisfaction which it was impossible to mistake. As they approached ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... was out of the rut of his despondency; already the rust was knocked off his back, and the eagerness to crowd up to the starting-line was on him as fresh again as on the day when he had walked away from all competitors in the examination for a license before the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... was opposite our window; and here I used, very unwillingly at first, but afterwards, I do confess, with much eagerness, to take a couple of hours' daily sport. Ah! it was a strange place. There was an aristocracy there as elsewhere,—amongst other gents, a son of my Lord Deuce-ace; and many of the men in the prison were as eager ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Reviewer, who deals with Mr. Darwin as an Old Bailey barrister deals with a man against whom he wishes to obtain a conviction, per fas aut nefas, and opens his case by endeavouring to create a prejudice against the prisoner in the minds of the jury. In his eagerness to carry out this laudable design, the Quarterly Reviewer cannot even state the history of the doctrine of natural selection without an oblique and entirely unjustifiable attempt to depreciate Mr. Darwin. "To Mr. Darwin," ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... her over the top of her glasses in some surprise. Mrs. Wilkins, in her eagerness to tear the heart out quickly of Mrs. Fisher's reminiscences, afraid that at any moment Mrs. Arbuthnot would take her away and she wouldn't have heard half, had already interrupted several times with questions which appeared ignorant ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... mouths, and move, move, move! Oh!" and he would drop his head in despair. "And to think that I 've got to do something with these things in two weeks—two weeks!" Then he would turn to them again with a sudden reaccession of eagerness. "Now, at it again, at it again! Hold that note, hold it! Now whirl, and on the left foot. Stop that music, stop it! Miss Coster, you 'll learn that step in about a thousand years, and I 've got nine hundred and ninety-nine ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... is too unfrequent for progress to be made. Could I see the means of support, I would, without loss of time, place a person at the bay to teach regularly, and then I trust some good would be done. The eagerness manifested for First Spelling Books with large alphabets is amusing and pleasing. I have purchased all I could get in Kingston, and sold them again at the same price, which is three times as dear as if I had them from England. Mr. C. has written to several English friends, to beg them ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various

... state may be called disease; and excessive pains and pleasures are justly to be regarded as the greatest diseases to which the soul is liable. For a man who is in great joy or in great pain, in his unreasonable eagerness to attain the one and to avoid the other, is not able to see or to hear anything rightly; but he is mad, and is at the time utterly incapable of any participation in reason. He who has the seed about the spinal marrow too plentiful and overflowing, like a tree overladen with fruit, has ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... breakfast, Marjory went as usual to her room to signal to Blanche. Blanche was already at her window, waving wildly with a handkerchief in each hand, which meant might she come up at once. Marjory, all eagerness and excitement, waved back "yes," wondering what could be the reason for such an early visit. She was just going to run down the garden to meet Blanche when she heard Lisbeth's voice calling, "Hae ye coontit yer claes, ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness, "I hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... crowd set out full of spirits and eagerness for the adventure, for Kurt had clearly shown them that there could be no ghost. To go up there and sing loudly to a non-existent ghost was capital fun. Furthermore, they looked forward to boasting of their daring deed afterwards. Faster and faster they climbed, ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri

... go far. He sat on the top step of the stairs, only leaving to telephone for a doctor, and getting in everybody's way in his eagerness to fetch and carry. I got him away finally, by sending him to fix up the car as a sort of ambulance, in case the doctor would allow the sick girl to be moved. He sent Gertrude down to the lodge loaded with all manner of impossible things, including an armful of Turkish ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... verdict, by producing the impression on the public mind that the prisoners did not have a fair trial. We would not be understood as complaining of the verdict. We do not see how, with a strict adherence to the law and to the evidence, the jury could well have decided otherwise. It is the eagerness to convict the prisoners manifested on the part of the law-officers of the crown that is ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... land which the old gentleman had bought some years before. It was said that a railroad was to be built through it, and, if so, the value of the property would be greatly enhanced, and steps should be taken to get part of it into the market. Burt took hold of the scheme with eagerness, and was for going as soon as possible. Looking to note the effect of his words upon Amy, he saw that her expression was not only reproachful, but almost severe. Leonard heartily approved of the plan. Webb was silent, and in deep despondency, feeling ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... public life of grace, eloquence, and purity had not been especially distinguished for courage, pronounced with zeal and determination in favor of Mr. Lincoln's administration, and lent his efforts on the stump to the cause of the Union with wonderful effect through the Northern States. The eagerness of Virginia Democrats never could have swept their State into the whirlpool of Secession if the supporters of Mr. Bell in Tennessee and North Carolina had thrown themselves between the Old Dominion and the Confederacy. With that aid, the former Whigs of Virginia, led by Stuart and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... to me to close the shutters of the great broad windows,—sashless, of course, like all the glassless windows of Martinique;—the breeze was too delicious. It seemed full of something vitalizing that made one's blood warmer, and rendered one full of contentment—full of eagerness to believe life all sweetness. Likewise, I found it soporific—this pure, dry, warm wind. And I thought there could be no greater delight in existence than to lie down at night, with all the windows open,—and the Cross of the South visible from my pillow,—and the sea-wind pouring over the bed,—and ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... has perused with eagerness Mr Bulwer's accounts of the late extraordinary events in Spain, but must confess that she has in vain looked for an explanation of the real motives and causes of the crisis. Has Lord Palmerston received any private letters throwing more ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria



Words linked to "Eagerness" :   eager, willingness, elan, enthusiasm, ardour, ardor



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