"Incisive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in his incisive voice, not waiting for his superior to give an opinion, "it will best to shoot half a dozen ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... was sharp and incisive. His face was grey and anxious. She herself remained lifeless. All that there was of emotion between them seemed to have become ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... paper Life is not equalled by any of its contemporaries. From the fifty-two numbers of the last twelve months the best of the humorous designs have been selected and bound into a handsome quarto volume.[M] Pen and pencil combine in making its pages laughable, and there are many incisive thrusts at the weak spots in society, but without coarseness ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... could not help feeling surprised at Narcisse's language, for he remembered his incisive voice and clear, precise, financial acumen when speaking of money matters. And, at this recollection, the young priest's mind reverted to the castle fields, and intense sadness filled his heart as for the last time all the want and suffering rose ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... besides, words stand for realities with them, and are, therefore, used with sincerity. Shakespeare's Richard III. uses plain speech as a hypocritical mask, but already Shakespeare is a dramatist and in his clever hands Richard's plain speaking is so allied with his incisive intelligence that it appears to be now a mask, now native shamelessness, and thus the characterization wins in depth and mystery. Every now and then, too, this Richard sees things which no Englishman has been capable of seeing, except Shakespeare himself. The whole of Plato's "Gorgias" ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... handed to Joan across the luncheon table at the Plaza. She read the characteristic effusion with keen amusement. She could hear the old lady's incisive voice in every word and the tap of her stick across the hall as she laid the letter in the box. How good to see the country again and go through the woods to the old high place where she had turned and found Martin. How ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... by their walk, of their approach. They are unconscious of this loud incisive tread, and most of them will be surprised to read it here. But their friends will recognize it. The chances are that they have often spoken ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... theatre seriously, i. e., neither as a fencing ground for propagandists nor for puling poets, this new Sudermann piece will please. It has triumphed in Berlin and Munich. Its people are portraits taken from fashionable West End Berlin, while the dialogue, witty, incisive, and also characteristic, is one of the consolations of a play that does not for a moment produce any illusion. There are plenty of striking episodes, but logic is lacking, not only the logic of life, but the logic of the theatre. No living playwright knows better how to arouse suspense ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... encounter on the hillside at Troezene, the seizure in Phormio's house, the coming of Democrates and his boasts over the captives, the voyage and the pursuing. The son of Neocles never hastened the recital, though once or twice he widened it by an incisive question. At the end ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... however, to the fence and the locusts whom Master Robin did not molest. When a prolonged, incisive "pu-eep" in the martial and inspiring tone of the great-crested fly-catcher broke the silence, I observed that the robin always had plenty of his own business to attend to. I admire this beautiful bird, perhaps ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... this point Newmark broke into the discussion. "Have you a pack of cards?" he asked in his dry, incisive manner. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... independent of literary art and of genius, but which is made known to others, and therefore becomes possible to be recognized, only through literary forms. The creative imagination, the airy fancy, the exquisite grace, harmony, and simplicity, the rhetorical brilliancy, the incisive force, all the intellectual powers and charms of style with which that feeling may be expressed, are informed and vitalized by the sympathy itself. But whether a man who writes verses has genius,—whether he be a poet according to arbitrary canons,—whether some of his lines resemble ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... clear, incisive tones. "A positively infallible recipe for the invasion of England: Wait until the Channel freezes and then skate ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... seated Father Sergius on the bench under the elm, took on himself police duties and drove the people off very resolutely. It is true that he spoke in a low voice so that Father Sergius might not hear him, but his words were incisive and angry. ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... surprise that he should prefer such a request upon no acquaintance at all, that he should even faintly expect her to grant it, and so on, all the while leaning languishing upon his breast with all her weight. Whereupon Mr. Middleton lost patience and with incisive sarcasm he began: ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... hum of voices grew louder overhead. It stopped suddenly, and she could only hear Sobrenski's slow, incisive tones. No doubt they were listening to him as to one inspired while he preached his gospel of destruction. Arithelli shivered, pressing her hands over her ears that she might shut out the sound of that hated voice that had ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... in the old stone-walled fort was a busy one for the new recruits. After they were sworn in by Colonel Osborne Smith, that officer returned to his duties at Upper Fort Garry. He had done a good day's work, and if he addressed the men in the crisp, incisive style I have often heard him use on patriotic occasions, then he had made additional contribution to the considerations that inspired the Police to determined endeavour. On his leaving Superintendent ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... that his colleagues in the Senate, especially the younger members, are somewhat in fear of the incisive tongue, for he wields it frequently and contemptuously. When after his election, Mr. Harding went South with Senator Frelinghuysen, Senator Davis Elkins, and Senator Hale, the older Senators, not, perhaps, without a tinge of disappointment at having been left out, marveled at the entourage the President ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... raised his head and half turned back as if to speak, but thinking better of it, he resumed his chair and watched the approach of the detective with an angry frown. Clancy did not glance at Radnor, but gave his evidence in a quick incisive way which forced the breathless attention of every one in the room. He told without interruption the story of his arrival at Four-Pools and his conclusions in regard to the ha'nt and the theft; he omitted, however, ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... was fairly well informed of the causes that agitated the soul of "King" Plummer, and as he shot westward on a Limited Continental Express he considered the best way of approach, inclining as always to delicate but incisive methods. Long before he reached Boise his mind was well made up, and he felt content because he anticipated no difficulty in handling the crude mountaineer, who was unused to ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... had scarcely regained the perpendicular when the name began to impress him. "Martha." "Pizen-neat." He bit his lip, and without venturing again to meet Miss Lacey's cool, incisive gaze he turned and vanished into ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... motive concealed in it, the psychological spring and basis of it, the whole fabric of weakness, habit and aberration underlying it. The one achieved an agreeable romance, and an agreeable romance only. The other achieves an extraordinarily brilliant and incisive study of the Latin-American temperament—a full length exposure of the perverse passions and incomprehensible ideals which provoke presumably sane men to pursue one another like wolves, and of the reactions of that incessant pursuit upon the men themselves, and upon their primary ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... of his conspicuous merits characterize these papers, the peculiar power he possessed of enlisting and retaining the attention for what are commonly supposed to be dry and difficult subjects, and the capacity he had for controversy, sharp and incisive, but so candid and generous that it ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... at stake regarding the soundness of their rector's doctrine, as the loss of their rector himself. The older members of the congregation loved Brenton as a son, the younger ones as something a little dearer than a brother. One and all, they missed his pastoral visitations, his incisive sermons on the righteousness of honest living; above all else, they missed his voice. If they could have kept these personal marks of the man himself, their rector might have been welcome to believe anything he ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Marie Laurencin to the dust and tang of the American Circus. He is eclectic. But wherever he goes he chronicles not so much these actual worlds as his own pleasure of them. They are but mirrors, many-shaped and lighted, for his own delicate, incisive humor. For Hartley is an innocent and a naif. At times he is profound. Always he ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... light—a heavy six-shooter gleaming forebodingly in it. His arms were still crossed, but as he talked he had turned a very little and now the muzzle of the weapon was at a level—trained fairly upon Radford's breast. And then came Ferguson's voice again, quiet, cold, incisive. ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... doctor from the distant town, was positive in his opinion. The scene is clear to me now, after many years. We three stood in the outer room; The Duke and her father were with Gwen. So earnest was the discussion that none of us heard the door open just as young Fawcett was saying in incisive tones: ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... execution is simply superb. Every line is strong and effective: the modelling, the poise of the figure and the breadth of the shadows in dry point, are masterly. The Salon articles, five in number, are from the pen of M. Ph. Burty, the most radical, incisive and original writer on the staff—champion of the Impressionists, bitter enemy of the Academics and warm admirer of any fresh, sincere and individual talent. In his short review of the work of American artists in the Salon his sympathies are frankly with those who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... owed their origin each to a single founder; this is due to the fact that the insight and constructive genius of the founder have chosen out of the mass of the existing thought those broad principles that the times demanded and have presented them in incisive form and with freshness and enthusiasm.[2035] Buddha's followers quickly formed themselves into associations, the entrance into which was by free choice. As his doctrine of salvation was nontheistic, so his church was ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... leaves of new books that promised well. The infusion would do for me without the vegetable fibre. You understand me; I would have a person whose sole business should be to read day and night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I would have: a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive fellow; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in new costume; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... who had assisted to fit him for his career in the Church, had expected great things of him. Some said he would be a Bishop before he was thirty; others considered that he would probably content himself with being the most intellectual and incisive preacher of his time. But he turned out to be neither one nor the other. A certain Henry Arthur Brent, his fellow student at College and five years his senior, had, with apparent ease, outstripped him in the race ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... as fierce as that upon the center, the defense was led by a warrior named Grom, who seemed no less redoubtable than the Chief himself. He, too, like the Chief, fought in grim silence, saving his breath, except for an occasional incisive cry of command or encouragement to those about him. And his club also, like that of the Chief, kept a zone of death ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... too miscellaneous and extensive to become one multitudinous mutual-admiration-society, will, through cliques and coteries, betray some of its vices. In this voluminous series of papers the critical pen, when most earnestly eulogistic or most sharply incisive, is wielded with so much skill and art and fine temper, that personality is seldom transpicuous. The Parisian reader will no doubt often perceive, in this or that paragraph or paper, a heightening or a subduing of color ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... that America was threatened; that was enough. It was to them a summons; sharp, quick, incisive to duty. It was, although one hundred and forty years after, the voice of Washington at Valley Forge; the call of Perry to their fathers, needing soldiers at the battle of Lake Erie; of Jackson at New Orleans. It was to their listening ears the echo of ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... He could make no reply to such a question. Mrs. Luttrell scored a triumph, and continued in her hard, incisive way:— ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... blood astir. At last he was about to remove his doubt—or prove Viola's guilt. "Doctor," he said, and his voice was incisive, "take the other side and place a hand on her wrist. That will be permitted?" ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... there, stealing glances at myself, I became conscious that my little blond man was studying me. Other men had looked at me, but never with such a cold, calculating gaze—and when he spoke to me, I nearly jumped out of my shoes—his voice was crisp, incisive. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... corner. I am sure it is very good of you to come and see us once a month; I wonder you don't send us your cards in an envelope. When you do, pray have them with black edges; it will be for the death of my last illusion." It was in this incisive strain that Mrs. Tristram moralized over Newman's so-called neglect, which was in reality a most exemplary constancy. Of course she was joking, but there was always something ironical in her jokes, as there was always ...
— The American • Henry James
... this manner, the more it results in a deeply incisive change in man's being. The power issuing from the pictures in the consciousness gradually becomes unable to extend over the whole human bodily frame, which divides into two parts, or two natures. Members are formed subject ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... do is to emulate the mugger. But this"—Hodson lifted the paper and he grew crisp, incisive, his grey eyes blued like temper purpling polished steel—"we've got to act: they've got to be delivered, ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... duster to wipe up anything; and his skull-cap, lined with cotton wool to protect him from neuralgia, formed a very ugly border round his head. With all that he was full of passion and eloquence, somewhat sarcastic at times, but witty and incisive. He had little literary culture, but he often came out with some unexpected sally. You could feel that his was a powerful individuality which faith kept under due control, but which ecclesiastical discipline had not crushed. He was a saint, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... to death": the phrase crystallised in his brain with such suddenness that he said it aloud. Now he knew what it was that was troubling him. He had not consciously recalled the words, nor had they even made a very incisive impression on him at the time; but they had evidently lain dormant, now to return and to strike him, as if no others had been said. He explained to himself what they meant. It was this: outside, in the crisp, stinging air, people lived and moved, busy with many matters, or sported, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... set hundreds of policemen to restore order, but order is not restored. What is the average policeman as a criminal-taker? Cloddy and coarse of fiber, rarely with personal heredity of mental or bodily vigor, with no training at arms, with no sharp, incisive quality of nerve action, fat, unwieldy, unable to run a hundred yards and keep his breath, not skilled enough to kill his man even when he has him cornered, he is the archetype of all unseemliness as the agent of a law which to-day needs a sterner upholding than ever was the case in all ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... Sullivan and Bartlett were nevertheless strong men and thoroughly prepared. Sullivan was a good lawyer and a fluent and ready speaker, with great power of illustration. Bartlett was a shrewd, hard-headed man, very keen and incisive, and one whom it was impossible to outwit or deceive. He indulged, in his argument, in some severe reflections upon Mr. Webster's conduct toward Wheelock, which so much incensed Mr. Webster that he referred to Mr. Bartlett's argument in a most ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... elective affinities of the lonely widower. He met her once in a while, and said to himself that she was a good specimen of the grand style of woman; and then the image came back to him of a woman not quite so large, not quite so imperial in her port, not quite so incisive in her speech, not quite so judicial in her opinions, but with two or three more joints in her frame, and two or three soft inflections in her voice, which for some absurd reason or other drew him to her side and so bewitched him that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... can't," Talbot replied in the same calm, incisive way, that contrasted strongly with the coarse, whisky-thickened tone of ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... in a clear, incisive voice, though he could hardly control the trembling of his legs. "I will have no more of it. I shall not permit anyone.... I can see very well what you are at with those allusions.... Inquire, investigate! I defy you, but I ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... towards the front of the train, near the locomotive, came the sharp, incisive report of a revolver; then two more almost simultaneously; then, after ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... talks, but he don't p'int out; an' he argufies an' he argufies, but he never shows wherein. A party who's goin' to make a pulpit-play, or shine in Arizona as a racontoor, has done got to cult'vate a direct, incisive style.' ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Institute were among the most noted of that distinguished platform, and everywhere the poet was one of the most popular of "attractions". There were not wanting those who maintained that his use of the platform was the correct one, and that the orators who, often by happy but incisive indirection, fought the good fight of ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... burst of sunlight into a dark place, the coming of this earnest, joyous, outspoken nature into the old woman's narrow and monotonous and comparatively uncheered life. She had never seen a person of Mercy's temperament. The clear, decided, incisive manner commanded her respect, while the sunny gayety won her liking. Stephen had gentle, placid sweetness and much love of the beautiful; but his love of the beautiful was an indolent, and one might almost say a-haughty, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... said, his words rushing over each other in a confused jumble utterly unlike his usual incisive speech. "You're safe in here. I'll shoot the brute if he dares ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... heed the foreman's scoffing. Instead, he began in a low incisive voice the narration of his experiences of the previous night, beginning with the bear hunt and ending with his finding his way out ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... warning expression, as evident as a wink, and the expression was evanescent as a breath. I caught on, and made my face agreeable and subservient. Immediately her own reassumed a harsh, proud set, her voice became even more incisive and cold. ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... Pope complained of these lines, and had the hypocrisy to say that he never thought any great matters of his poetical capacity, but prided himself on the superiority of his moral life. Hill returned a masterly and incisive reproof to this ridiculous statement, in the course ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Columbian Magazine), perhaps the best of his humorous stories. The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether (November, 1845, Graham's Magazine) may be rated higher, but it is not essentially a humorous story. Rather it is incisive satire, with too biting an undercurrent to pass muster in the company of the genial in literature. Poe's humorous stories as a whole have tended to belittle rather than increase his fame, many of them verging on the inane. There are ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... of Mr. Lawson's tales photograph life at the diggings or in the bush with an incisive and remorseless reality that grips the imagination. He silhouettes a swagman in a couple of pages, and ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... life, and the life in the great outer world, in which she was girlishly and eagerly interested. She asked him many questions about it—direct and incisive questions which showed that she had already formed decided opinions and views about it. Yet it was plain to be seen that she did not regard it as anything she might ever share herself. Hers was the dispassionate interest with ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... conformed in no way to the accepted physical type of his profession. He was over six feet in height, broad-shouldered and powerfully made. His features were cast in a large mould, he was of fair, almost sandy complexion, even his mouth was more humourous than incisive. His eyes alone, grey and exceedingly magnetic, suggested the gifts which without a doubt lay behind his ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus (and ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... place among the foremost prose writers of the time. His style is in marked contrast to the dithyrambic eloquence of Carlyle, or to Ruskin's pure and radiant coloring. It is a quiet style, restrained, clear, discriminating, incisive, with little glow of ardor or passion. Notwithstanding its scrupulous assumption of urbanity, it is often a merciless style, indescribably irritating to an opponent by its undercurrent of sarcastic humor, and its calm air of assured superiority. ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... Each word was incisive, and seemed to cut slightly like falling steel from those soft, warm lips. A sudden desire rushed through me to teach her—at any rate, to exert myself to the utmost to teach her—that her life was valuable to her for other things than the capacity it gave to work. But I checked the words ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... I resumed, and now my voice had become earnest and incisive, "firstly you have a wife, then you have a father-in-law whose wealth is beyond the dreams of humble people like myself, and whose one great passion in life is the social position of the daughter whom he worships. Now," I added, and with the tip of my little finger I touched the sleeve of my ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... shapes, holding living organisms, and with instruments—some of them of a form unknown to my experience. I saw too that books, papers and rolls of parchment littered the bare wooden floor. Then Smith's voice rose above the confused sounds about me, incisive, commanding: ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... closely, and both he and Black Hoof were uneasy and relieved when she departed. Toward me their manner was incisive, and they demanded certain information. As I knew conditions had changed vastly since I was captured I talked freely and improvised considerably. There was no military value whatever to ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... are often slovenly and sometimes bombastic; George Eliot is sometimes pedantic, and Ruskin has been stirred into hysterics. But Thackeray's English, from the first page of his first volume to the last page of his twenty-sixth volume, is natural, scholarly, pure, incisive, and yet gracefully and easily modulated—the language of an English gentleman of culture, wit, knowledge of the world, and consummate ease and self-possession. It is the direct and trenchant language of Swift: but more graceful, more flexible, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... sentence, he fell to the floor, overcome by sickness and the responsibilities he had carried for twelve years. Storrow, in a different way, was fully as indispensable as Smith. It was he who built up the superstructure of the Bell defence. He was a master of details. His brain was keen and incisive; and some of his briefs will be studied as long as the art of telephony exists. He might fairly have been compared, in action, to a rapid-firing Gatling gun; while Smith was a hundred-ton cannon, and Lockwood was the maker ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... grandes dames and of dames not so very grand, of ornate Latinists and of inarticulate street hawkers, of priests and generals—in fact, the history of all humanity as it appears to his penetrating eye, serving a mind marvellously incisive in its scepticism, and a heart that, of all contemporary hearts gifted with a voice, contains the greatest treasure of charitable irony. As to M. Anatole France's adventures, these are well-known. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... brilliant ideas came to him in flashes and gleams. That is why so much of his work has come down to us in the form of aphorisms and paragraphs. He was, essentially, a poet among the metaphysicians, which again favors the conception of him as a pituitary-centered with a dominant post-pituitary. Yet his incisive critical faculty, as well as his love of music, also ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... He came to her after that interview with Mr. Wharton and told her, speaking with the soft yet incisive voice which she used to love so well, that they were to dine in the Square on the following day. "Let there be an end of all this," he said, taking her in his arms and kissing her. Of course she did not tell him that "all this" had sprung from his ill-humour and not ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... naming, the effect, that is, of saying that the labor groups C and M, but not X, are underpaid, instead of saying that Labor is Exploited, is incisive. Perceptions recover their identity, and the emotion they arouse is specific, since it is no longer reinforced by large and accidental connections with everything from Christmas to Moscow. The disentangled idea with a name of its own, and an emotion that has been scrutinized, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... strange to say, the Act was put in operation against Talleyrand, nominally his adviser, and the champion of the Anglo-French entente. The ex-Bishop of Autun penned an eloquent protest, which apparently had some effect, for he was not expelled until March 1794.[168] Far more incisive was Chauvelin's complaint. We can imagine his feelings when Grenville curtly declined to receive it.[169] At the same time Grenville refused to discuss or explain the stoppage of certain cargoes of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... to The House of Eld is incisive writ out of true experience—phantasy there becomes solemn, if not, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... thou love life?" asks Poor Richard in The Way to Wealth. "Then," he continues, "do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of." Franklin modestly disclaimed much originality in the selection of these proverbs, but it is true that he made many of them more definite, incisive, and apt to lodge in the memory. He has influenced, and he still continues to influence, the industry and thrift of untold numbers. In one of our large cities, a branch library, frequented by the humble and unlearned, reports that in one year his Autobiography was called for four hundred times, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... forms of agitation. For if the Indian Councils Act of 1892 had opened the doors of the Viceroy's Legislative Assembly to some of the most distinguished among them, what had it profited them? The official benches merely gave a courteous hearing to the incisive criticisms proceeding from men of such undisputed capacity as Mehta and Gokhale and bore less patiently with the Ciceronian periods of the great Bengalee tribune Surendranath Banerjee. Government paid little or no heed to them. Equally powerless had been their passionate ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... character. In the same way you may note that the French popular airs are those most calculated to strike the imagination, the best-modulated melodies are taken over by the people; clearness of thought, the intellectual simplicity of an idea attracts them; they like the incisive sayings that hold the greatest number of ideas. France is the one country in the world where a little phrase may bring about a great revolution. Whenever the masses have risen, it has been to bring men, affairs, and principles into agreement. No nation has a clearer conception of that ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... who is educated all over; whose nerves are brought to their acutest sensibility, whose brain is cultured, keen, incisive, penetrating, broad, liberal, deep; whose hands are deft; whose eyes are alert, sensitive, microscopic, whose heart ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... door the commander-in-chief met us, shook hands, and murmured clearly and slowly, with incisive distinctness, the formal words of French greeting; he spoke no English. Instantly there was the suggestion of Kitchener, not of Kitchener as you see him in flesh, but in photographs, the same coldness, decision. The smile that accompanied the words of welcome vanished and the face was utterly ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... squarely athwart the vague crescendo of the floor came the single incisive stroke of a great gong. Instantly a tumult was unchained. Arms were flung upward in strenuous gestures, and from above the crowding heads in the Wheat Pit a multitude of hands, eager, the fingers extended, leaped into the air. All articulate expression ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... my last article, we had a "raking-up talk,"—to wit, Jenny, Marianne, and I, with Bob Stephens: my wife, still busy at her work-basket, sat at the table a little behind us. Jenny, of course, opened the ball in her usual incisive manner. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... age. Unique in some capacities, versatile and varied in arts and accomplishments, at once vindictive and forgiving, impetuous and politic, shrewd and impulsive, heroic and mean, of long memory for wrongs committed, of decisive act and incisive speech, relentless and magnanimous, strong and weak. A man whose influence has never died out among men, and who is to-day a vital force in the world of religion, of philanthropy, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone," ever preached such a sermon as Burns in his Address to the unco Guid? and in his epistle of advice to a young friend, what wisdom! what incisive aphorisms! In passages like these scattered throughout his writings, and in some single poems, he has passed beyond all bonds of place and nationality, and spoken home to the universal ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... moment or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... unconscious humour of Lyndon's heroic lament, the comparison between the cardsharpers' discomfiture and the fall of mighty warriors, make up a fine example of Thackeray's eye for graphic detail, and prove the force and temper of his incisive irony. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... with a sense of hurry, came back vividly, yet in fragments, all that she had gone through in relation to Grandcourt—the allurements, the vacillations, the resolve to accede, the final repulsion; the incisive face of that dark-eyed lady with the lovely boy: her own pledge (was it a pledge not to marry him?)—the new disbelief in the worth of men and things for which that scene of disclosure had become a symbol. That ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... to include that particular item in the report?" Lidgerwood did not mean to give the inquiry the tang of an implied reproof, but the fight with the outlaws was beginning to make his manner incisive. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... of the distant mountains, giving grandeur to a scene which might otherwise have been deemed tame. The climate, although chilled by recent heavy rains, is deliciously soft, and the breeze has none of that incisive quality common to the more northern hills. It is needless to say that at sunrise there is no chance of meeting any watchers of the "Boycotting" brigade. At seven o'clock any quantity of cargo might ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... language, which bears the impress of the labors of a hundred masters; while Kielland has to produce his effects of style in a poorer and less pliable language, which often pants and groans in its efforts to render a subtle thought. To have polished this tongue and sharpened its capacity for refined and incisive utterance, is one—and not ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Gregg (Kans.), The Stepping Stone to a Yet Untried System of Government; Mrs. Lucretia L. Blankenburg (Penn.), Municipal Corruption under the Present System a National Disgrace. Each topic was treated in a keen, incisive manner. Miss Gregg described the practical benefit that the women's municipal vote had been to Kansas. Dr. Siewers gave a dramatic illustration of the need of women's votes in her own city of Cincinnati, which ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... This incisive statement somewhat jarred the poet's self-sufficiency and he subsided for the moment, but jealousy is a cunning adversary and the rival awaited his ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... have been justified of his reasonings had there existed no flaw in his premises. The San Reve was far from being gifted with that cold, incisive wisdom which he ascribed to her. Given a situation wherein the San Reve had no concern, and she would be sound enough; her speculations would defend themselves, her advice be worth a following. Endow the San Reve with a personal ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... inspect a motor that lay dismounted on a wooden stand, as if there were nothing further to discuss. Indeed, though his speech was rapid and incisive, and his every movement full of an allure that spoke of splendidly poised muscles, he was in face and manner alike the most singularly immobile man I had ever met. He gave the impression of employing neither words nor actions except ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... voices, those foreign accents, incisive or stammering, glancing at those varying types of countenance, some uncivilized, passionate, unrefined, others over-civilized, faded, of the type that haunts the boulevards, over-ripe as it were, and observing the same varieties in the corps of servants, where "flunkeys," taken the day before ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... frequently do not weigh above six or seven pounds; or a third less than the skeleton of an individual of the same size, recently stripped of the muscular flesh. The conformation of the skull has some slight resemblance to that of the white race of the ancient Egyptians; and the incisive teeth of the Guanches are blunted, like those of the mummies found on the banks of the Nile. But this form of teeth is the result of art; and on examining more carefully the physiognomy of the ancient Canarians, Blumenbach and other able anatomists ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... in case of her sudden return, you ask an agent?" said a keen, clear, and incisive voice, which had not yet been heard. "Gentlemen, shall we cast lots for the honor of watching the Countess St. Auban in case ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... and Appleton and I will leave at daylight. The men will wait here until we get back." His voice was incisive, its ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... there are betweens here before full ripening of fruit comes. There's purifying, cleansing by blood, cleansing by a soft fire burning within, and pruning by the Gardener and by His human assistant, you, sharp, incisive, ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... his rules for diet, etc., forgetting that these simple directions are based on deep knowledge of the human frame. Let them laugh. Many who have tried them know they have been different people in consequence. His incisive words—"My friend, you eat too much!" "My friend, you drink too much!" would not he appreciated by all; but Sir Andrew thought nearly all diseases were the outcome of the constant and apparently unimportant violation of the laws of health. Those who were hopelessly ill would ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... never lowered nor raised his incisive, high-bred voice for any man. His reply left no doubt of the question. "No, Mr. Upham," said Doctor Prescott. "You must pay me in money for medicine. I have enough wood ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... led the way without a word through the driveway, and finding the street clear, hurried on rapidly. Her mind, strangely stimulated, was working in quick, incisive flashes. Her work was not yet done. The Sparrow was safe, as far as his life was concerned; but her possession of even the necklace would not save the Sparrow from the law. There was the money that was gone from the safe. She could not recover ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... to her daughter's incisive method is no proof against this. She breaks into an affectionate laugh, and kisses its ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... it and the general history of mankind. This psychologic ability contributes vastly to the interest aroused by Mr. Dubnow's historical works outside of the limited circle of scholars. There is a passage in one of his books[1] in which, in his incisive manner, he expresses his views on the limits and tasks of historical writing. As the passage bears upon the methods employed in the present essay, and, at the same time, is a characteristic specimen of our author's style, I take ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... suppose we had made a good deal of a riot. When the fact became evident, I, of course, shouldered the whole responsibility. Thereupon she turned on me. Unexpectedly Talbot Ward spoke up from the obscurity of his corner. His clear voice was incisive, but so courteous with the cold finality of the high-bred aristocrat, that Mrs. Simpkins was cut short in the middle ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... police. She was an able public speaker, and could convince her audiences for a time of the reasonableness of opinions which next morning appeared to be the outcome of delirium. She wrote, not, like Mary O'Dwyer, verse in which any sentiment may be excused, but incisive and vigorous prose. Occasionally even the Castle officials got glimmerings of the meaning of one of her articles, and suppressed the whole issue of the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... incisive, not to be disobeyed. He had prayed in vain. The procession halted; Lizzie checked her babble and stood staring, with an arm about ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... all charges against John D. Curtis?" demanded Devar, and his clear, incisive voice was distinctly hostile in its ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... scorn as his former earnestness commanded respect and sympathy. When, for instance, he tells us, "it would also argue ingratitude towards my genius if I were not to rejoice that to the faculty of an incisive, analytical criticism was added the innocent pleasure in artistic production," it may astonish him to hear that, in spite of this self-praise, there are still men who maintain exactly the reverse, and who say, not only that he has never possessed the gift of artistic production, but that ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... one's inspection, these records were still far removed from the character of real historical writings. How scanty the contemporary record still was at the close of this period and how ample room is left for the caprice of subsequent annalists, is shown with incisive clearness by a comparison of the accounts as to the campaign of 456 in the annals and in the epitaph of the consul Scipio.(14) The later historians were evidently unable to construct a readable and in some measure connected narrative out of these notices from the book ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... comparatively easy. There was not much feeling in it perhaps—even Vera, who read it with partial eyes, could not help noting the fact—but, after all, it was in a sense a matter of business; and so she was able to find consolation in its clear, incisive phrasing. She was glad when it was finished, more glad still when they had strolled down to the pillar box outside the gates, and dropped the envelope in it. Their relations were on a definite footing now, and she had little doubt that her father would be well pleased. Of course, Jimmy was ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensuous mouth, was a fair index of the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... share alike with the sterner sex. After a graceful introduction by Colonel J. W. Bush, the lecturer plunged at once with ease and distinction into her subject and line of argument.... She is a very able and incisive speaker, talks fluently and distinctly, and makes easy and graceful gestures. In a word, she is as good a lecturer as a ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... keen in the wit and humourist of thirty-nine; a desire, moreover, undulled by twenty years of vivacious living. Surely not the least amazing feature of Fielding's genius is this dual capacity for exuberant enjoyment, and incisive judgement. "His wit," said Thackeray, "is wonderfully wise and detective; it flashes upon a rogue and brightens up a rascal like a ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... to argue," was the incisive interruption. "Take your pen and fill out a check payable to your own order for one hundred thousand dollars, and do it now. If that door opens before we have concluded, you ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... somewhat unpolished, but the spirit is zealous. The article I read was certainly far superior, in point of precision and positiveness, to anything of the sort ever written when I was a young man. The author of the article, Monsieur Paul Meyer, points out every error with a remarkably lucid power of incisive criticism. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... with Mr. Lindsay," she said, in clear incisive tones, "I ain't going to let in no lunatic asylum to drive him clean out of his mind. Deacon Strong and Deacon Todd, if you'll step this way, I presume Mr. Lindsay'll be pleased to see you. And if the rest of you 'ud ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... natural and proper interest in history, it never for a moment crossed the minds of any of them to talk like the ladies of the ancien rgime or to imitate them in any sort or way. They were as natural and unsophisticated as they were incisive, intrepid, and amusing in ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... And in half a dozen words she had exposed the lack of real wit in my attempts at playwriting. I was humbled before her superior intelligence. Her speech had still a faint flavour of the uneducated, but her judgments were brilliantly incisive; despite her inferentially limited experience, she had a clearer sight of humanity ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... not the Spirit."[30] To the disciples scattered throughout the province of Galatia who had been much disturbed by false leaders he gives a rule to be followed, "Walk by the Spirit."[31] The other two of these incisive words of advice are found in the Ephesian letter—"Grieve not the Spirit of God,"[32] and "be ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... he would go down to the slope below, among the weird, stunted trees, and look once more upon the broken tables, and ponder upon the strange signs written by time thereon. The insistent fall of the rain, the incisive blasts of the wind, coming again and again, though the centuries went, were registered here in mystic runes. The surface had weathered to a whitish-gray, but still in tiny depressions its pristine dark color showed in rugose characters. A splintered fissure ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... is found in every city in the country in which there is much diversity of condition among the inhabitants. Nor did Morrissey mean simply to protest against training as a qualification for the work of administration, as the Tribune assumed in a sharp and incisive lecture which it read him the other day. We doubt if any pugilist in his secret heart despises training. He knows how much depends on it, and as he is not apt to possess much discriminating power, he is not likely to mark off any particular class of work as not needing it. What ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... ten from you;" he said, with an incisive clipping of his teeth. "Not a cent more, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... a peculiar smile crossing his features. Then, looking me straight between the eyes and using the sharp, incisive language of a German official, ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... earned popular applause and the V.C. by remaining with a wounded comrade whom he was actually too frightened to leave. That was a good beginning, and I said to myself that Mr. GARDINER was of the right stuff; he had a vigorous, incisive style that suited well the matter of pain and anguish that he had in hand. But, alas! in its hours of case the story became much more uncertain. All the characters, including the involuntary hero and the man he rescued (now a lord), turn up at an hotel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... its outlet in tears and wailing; it had turned and struck inward, and now his deliberate ferocity was icy and devilish. Only a glint in his eyes told of exultation, and his words were sharp and incisive; one could well imagine one heard the click of his teeth as they bit off the consonants: every letter was clear-cut, every syllable startling ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... from the Priestly Code to Ezekiel or from Ezekiel to the Priestly Code. The Law of Holiness underwent a last revision, which represents, not the views of Ezekiel, but those of the Priestly Code, and by means of which it is incorporated in that code. This revision has not been equally incisive in all parts. Some of its corrections and supplements are very considerable, e.g., xxiii. 1-8, 23-38; xxiv. 1-14, 23. Some of them are quite unimportant, e.g., the importation of the Ohel Moed (instead of the Mikdash or the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... herself useful, having divined the altered state of the family finances, was pulling out basting-threads, with a puckered little face bent over her work. She was a very thin child, but there was an incisive vitality in her, and somehow Fanny and Ellen contrived to keep her ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Illustrated London News, gives his experiences of the Russo-Turkish Campaign. He concisely sums up the qualifications of a War Correspondent by saying that he should "have an iron constitution, a laconic, incisive style, and sufficient tact to establish a safe and rapid connecting link between the forefront of battle and his own head-quarters in Fleet Street or elsewhere." As Mr. IRVING MONTAGU seems to have lived up to his ideal, it is a little ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... chapter, Peter Newby, as usual, was on his feet ready to tell the class all about it. He noticed Robert and Mary and, knowing that they were strangers, he put on his most condescending and insinuating air. Raising himself to his full height, and giving his grizzled head just the right angle for incisive ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... even the trader's information that Telford spoke excellent French, and had certainly been a deal on red carpet in his time, did not prepare him for the sharply incisive words just uttered. Yet it was not incongruous with. Telford's appearance—not even with the red sash peeping at the edge of ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... Finney's useful life were indeed mellow and most lovable. In the days of his prime he had a commanding form, a striking face and a clear, incisive style of speech. Simple as a child in his utterances, he sometimes startled his hearers by his unique prayers. For example, he was one day driven from his study at Oberlin by a refractory stovepipe ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... cry of "All hands," and had tumbled out without waiting for a more formal summons. This man I now found to be excellent in such an emergency as the present; calm, cool, and collected; not hurrying anybody, yet, as it were, infusing his own energy and vitality into the men by the sharp, incisive tones of his voice, and putting quicksilver into them by—as it seemed—the mere exercise of his will. Under such masterful supervision the work progressed rapidly, and in something over half an hour we had the ship under her fore and main-topsails (which were ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... of other material. Frequently its editorials have spoken for the sober sense of the people with amazing success. As a constant reader of the Nation since 1866, I have felt the fascination of Godkin, and have been consciously on guard against it. I tried not to be led away by his incisive statements and sometimes uncharitable judgments. But whatever may be thought of his bias, he had an honest mind, and was incapable of knowingly making a false statement; and this, with his other qualities, ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... French claims to rights of lobster fishing. The claim was first clearly advanced in 1888, that none but Frenchmen were entitled to catch lobsters and erect preserving factories upon the French shore. This at once elicited an incisive English remonstrance, in deference to which French diplomacy had recourse to the evasion that the factories were merely temporary. They were not, however, removed, and finally in 1889 further remonstrances by Lord Salisbury were met with the bold contention that these factories were comprehended ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... unlooked for amongst us Friends, and that description of any part of the Lord's works is as unnecessary and carries with it as little of what we mean as can be. Incidents are greater than description, as the telling to me how a tree looked when it was in full foliage is not near so incisive as that the tree fell with a great crash during a storm in the night. Therefore it would be using needless language, which a Friend's discipline enjoins him to beware of, for me to say how friend Hicks's daughter might have seemed to those ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... 'come!' and she ushered me without much ado into a den of discomfort where sat a man, with a great beard and such heavy overhanging eyebrows that I could hardly detect the twinkle of his eyes, keen and incisive as they were. ...
— The Staircase At The Hearts Delight - 1894 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... face the rushing tide of steel, the regiment of Bougainville whirled on their flank and then Bougainville was almost at his side. He saw fire leap from the little man's eye. He saw him shout commands, rapid incisive, and correct and he saw clearly that if this were Napoleon's day that marshal's baton in the knapsack would ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mathematical certainty, one's innermost thoughts,—and the poor fellow blushed to the tips of his ears. —But he was no boy, this Maitland, and betrayed no other sign of the tempest that was raging within him. His utterance remained as usual, deliberate and incisive, and I thought this perplexed the young lady. Before leaving, both Maitland and I were invited to become parties to a six-handed game to be played the following week, after the grounds ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... indisputable truth as words cannot easily tell it to the ear. In this way caricature is one of the most powerful agents in public discussion. But, like speech or writing, it may be merely blackguard. The incisive wit, the rich humor, the withering satire of speech, gain all their point and effect from the truth. They have no power when they are ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... toward the little post-office the rhythm of those lines was in her ears; the assured, incisive tones of that man's voice pulsed through her very soul. She was conscious of no hope for the future; she had no regret for the past; the present was a glory. In that moment Lucyet had taken a long, dizzying draught from the ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... art. But this time Lord Alfred's will was stronger than the doctor's. He jumped off the pedestal and flatly declined to mount it again. He was crimson in the face with mortification and embarrassment. Then, when the cheering subsided a little, Mr. Billing's voice was heard, clear and incisive. He had pushed his way from the door of the hotel and was ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... thematic writing respectively. The prelude in C minor, for instance, is almost an exercise, being without clearly expressed melody (although the accents in the soprano distinctly suggest a melody), and the whole is rapid and incisive. The fugue, on the other hand, opens with a very sprightly idea, which is carried out delightfully, quite in the manner of a scherzo. The prelude in D major, again, is very light and graceful, yet having a character somewhat between a fancy ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... She has set out deliberately to ensnare my poor Euty," said the mother, with an incisive drawing in of her expressively thin lips. "I knew it the very first ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... have been possible in the following pages to reproduce the elegant and incisive style of a master of French prose, not even the inadequacies of a translation can obscure the force of his argument. The only introduction, therefore, that seems possible must take the form of a request to the reader to study M. Faguet's criticism ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... made no advances with Annie toward the discussion of her friends; but when Annie asked about their families, she answered with the incisive directness of a country-bred woman. She delivered her judgments as she went about her work, the morning after the ladies' visit, while Annie sat before the breakfast-table, which she had given her leave to clear. As she passed in and out from the dining-room to the kitchen she kept talking; ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... life, whatever they may have been, upon the old moralist, who entertained for him a peculiar affection. He specially admired Beauclerk's skill in the use of a more polished, if less vigorous, style of conversation than his own. He envied the ease with which Beauclerk brought out his sly incisive retorts. "No man," he said, "ever was so free when he was going to say a good thing, from a look that expressed that it was coming; or, when he had said it, from a look that expressed that it had come." When Beauclerk was dying (in 1780), Johnson said, with a faltering ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen |
