"Probing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... recognition of the danger and a frank fighting policy would have saved most of the sacrificed lives. The blame lay, not with those who had disclosed the peril, but with those who had fostered it by secrecy; probing deeper into it, with those who had blocked such reform of housing and sanitation as would have checked a filth disease like typhus. In time this would be indicated more specifically. Tenements which netted ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... with the exterior, in addition to the customary indirect way through the oviduct. These are the abdominal pores (a.p.) on either side of the cloaca in either sex. They can always be readily demonstrated by probing out from the body cavity, in the direction indicated by the arrow (a.p.) in Figure 1, Sheet 15. They probably serve to equalize the internal and external pressure of the fish as it changes its depth in the water, just as the Eustachian tubes ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... right-hand path which they were about to take. Only a few yards further on I found myself sinking in a floating quagmire, from which I extricated myself with much difficulty but just in time for as I discovered afterwards by probing with a pole, the water beneath the matted reeds was deep. That night I questioned the guides upon the subject, but without result, for they pretended to have seen nothing and not to understand what I meant. Of neither of these incidents have I any explanation to offer, except ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... with invisible hands. It played upon his every nerve, his every fiber, the innermost feelings of his sensibility. It grew stronger, this alien probing within him, grew as the glow pulsed ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... the Luxembourg;' to end: where? For example, what pale-visaged thin man is this, journeying towards Switzerland as a Merchant of Neuchatel, whom they arrest in the town of Moulins? To Revolutionary Committee he is suspect. To Revolutionary Committee, on probing the matter, he is evidently: Deputy Brissot! Back to thy Arrestment, poor Brissot; or indeed to strait confinement,—whither others are fared to follow. Rabaut has built himself a false-partition, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... learnt how to give expression to that of which they are aware. With reference to the incident which I have just cited, the thought that presented itself to me first, was that the entire process might possibly be no more than a matter of "suggestion." Yet, on probing further into the question, as well as by drawing comparisons, the conclusions arrived at only further confirmed what I have above stated. That this is so, will, I think, seem absolutely certain to anyone who reads through the whole of this book carefully—indeed, ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... a snail, and confident the others would do their part, Keith thrust his knife blade deep into the narrow crack, and began probing after the latch. In spite of all caution this effort caused a slight noise, and suddenly he started back, at the ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... and my reply to the press," he added, and laughed again, while probing me with inquisitive eyes: how far did I understand the need ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... taken in and Drew saw Rennie himself going from one of the wounded to another, applying bandages and once probing skillfully for a bullet. Drew commented on that, and ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... with the information which had come to him from other investigations, served to increase the feeling of the Procureur that Boursier's death called for probing. He issued an exhumation order, and on the 31st of July an autopsy on the body of Boursier was carried out by MM. Orfila and Gardy, doctors and professors of the Paris faculty of medicine. Their finding was that no trace existed of any ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... little box car beside the railroad. Thoughtfully he walked down toward the depot, wondering what to do. He had no heart to look for work. At the depot he met a young fellow of a friendly disposition who seemed disposed to talk with him. It took but a little probing by this smooth fellow to get from Austin all his story; for the boy was entirely unacquainted with the ways of the world. And to his new friend the whole thing seemed a joke. He confided to Austin that he was in nearly the same predicament, but that he knew a way to ride about the country ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... matter of our personalities in space and time. Human analysis probing with philosophy and science towards the Veiled Being reveals nothing of God, reveals space and time only as necessary forms of consciousness, glimpses a dance of atoms, of whirls in the ether. Some day in the endless future there may be a knowledge, an understanding ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... net level, stole forward, shining the lantern light full on the darting, hazy-winged creature, which was now poised, hovering over a white blossom and probing the honeyed depths with ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... years. When he made his rash vow to St. Anna, he still allowed two weeks to pass before he put his resolution into action. Try and picture to yourself his state of mind during those fourteen days! Moving about in his customary surroundings, he was daily probing the correctness of his contemplated change of life. He fought a soul-battle in those days, and the remembrance of his father made that battle none the easier. From the Catholic standpoint Luther deserves an aureole ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... when he chose, perhaps he was afraid to meet those clear-sighted eyes that read the depths of his soul. But when he read Chenier's poems with David, his secret rose from his heart to his lips at the sting of a reproach that he felt as the patient feels the probing of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of the attraction of the theme for Browning himself. He had inherited his father's taste for stories of mysterious crime.[49] And to the detective's interest in probing a mystery, which seems to have been uppermost in the elder Browning, was added the pleader's interest in making out an ingenious and plausible case for each party. The casuist in him, the lover of argument as such, and the devoted ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Their arquebuses were of little use; for the Spaniards were behind a strong bulkhead. There were cannon: but where was powder or shot? The boats, encouraged by the clamor on deck, were paddling alongside again. Yeo rushed round and round, probing ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... across the sky. It was eerie to watch the contour of the arc break, die away into a delicate pallor and reillumine in a travelling riband. Soon a long ray, as from a searchlight, flashed above one end, and then a row of vertical streamers ran out from the arc, probing upwards into the outer darkness. The streamers waxed and waned, died away to be replaced and then faded into the starlight. The arc lost its radiance, divided in patchy fragments, and all was ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... day. The careful examination of the surgeons gave little additional hope; it did, however, reveal the fact that no vital organ had been destroyed or injured. The ball had torn a great hole in his left side and had gone through the body. Probing was not necessary. The flow of blood was frightful. There was a spark of life left on which to build a frail hope, and they ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... hum of busy traffic many stories below them. His narrow eyes were earnestly reflective, but there was no concern in them. To the waiting man he was simply measuring the threat against him, and probing its possibilities ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... uncle, had often all but popped; only some let, hindrance, or just impediment had still interposed: once her pony kept prancing at each effort he made towards Hymen; they do say the subtle virgin kept probing the brute with a hair pin, and made him caracole and spill the treacle as fast as it came her way. However, now Talboys elected to pop by sea. It was the element his ancestors had invaded fair England by; and on ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... much interested by your two communications. {159c} They are both very painful in their details, and you develop a truly awful state of things. You are probing the wound, and I hope preparing the way for our pouring in by and by the healing balsam of the Scripture. We shall be anxious to hear from you again. We often think of you in your wanderings. We like your way of communicating ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... caressingly smoothed back from his brow the straggling curls, damp with night-dew. As she did so, every lock seemed to thrill to her touch, and to wake in her soft, timorous fingers a thousand exquisite nerves that had never stirred before. And then, with broken words and tears, and probing questions and solemn adjurations, she plighted her vows, and sought to bind to her heart forever a faith to which she trusted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... this stranger, his curiosity, occasioned no self-questionings, no probing into motives. For the time being his customary attitude of mind—that of the pessimist sceptically weighing every emotion—deserted him. He had been, in his small circle in Chisley, the one person with a tangible grievance against life, but here ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... readily manipulated and when fractured, its parts are more or less displaced. Recognition of fracture of any other single carpal bone must be done by detecting crepitation unless it be a compound fracture, whereupon probing is of aid in establishing ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... such as Roupall, who exulted in the possession of mere brute strength; and he had been sneered and scouted at by the giddy and the vain, who, dreading his sarcasms, repaid themselves by finding out his one vulnerable point, and probing it to the quick. Barbara had stolen into his heart unconsciously, as a sweet and quiet stream insinuates itself through the bosom of some rugged mountain, softening and fertilising so gently, that its influence is seen and acknowledged ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... numerous rooks stood about a field cawing loudly. In a few days this was explained: the field was covered with rooks; the original assemblage had been calling together a mouse-hunt, which could only be successfully carried out by a large number of birds acting in conjunction. By diligently probing the ground and blocking up the network of runs, the voles, one or more at a time, were gradually driven into a corner. The hunt was very successful, and no more voles were seen in ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... It is written in the spirit of a Liberal, but the narrative is distinct and clear, and I should suppose accurate. He has, however, given a bad sample of accuracy in the case of Lord Strangford, where his pointed affirmation has been as pointedly repelled. It is evident he would require probing. His defence of Moore is spirited and well argued, though it is evident he defends the statesman as much as the general. As a Liberal and a military man, Colonel Napier finds it difficult to steer his course. The former character calls on him to plead for the insurgent Spaniards; the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the manner and circumstances of her bringing-up. To-day they seemed to her own mind, for the first time, utterly insufficient. In a sudden crash and confusion of feeling it was as though she were tearing open the heart of the past, passionately probing and searching. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Cormorant, or some other wild bird retreats to secure its egg, and raise its young, or save itself from the hunter's pursuit. The peculiar cast of the sky, which never seems to be certain, butterflies flitting over snowbanks, probing beautiful dwarf flowerets of many hues, pushing their tender, stems from the thick bed of moss which everywhere covers the granite rocks. Then the morasses, wherein you plunge up to your knees, or the walking ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... up his transcript, indicating that he did not wish to be drawn into conversation. His eyes scanned quickly over the pages. Most of it was information he already had. Rainbolt's ship had been detected four days earlier, probing the outermost of the multiple globes of force screens which had enclosed Earth for fifty years as a defense both against faster-than-light missiles and Mars Convict spies. The ship was alone. A procedure had been planned for such an event, and it was now followed. The ship was permitted ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz
... dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like the confused beating of hearts, came forth. But when that murmur reached each couple in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and ceased; their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking, searching, probing the blackness. Suddenly, as though drawn by invisible hands, they, too, stepped over the railing, and, silent as shadows, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... exhibitions of her psychical power in addition to the seances, and even as Georgie the next afternoon was receiving Lucia's cruel verdict about Debussy, the Sybil was looking at the hands of Colonel Boucher and Mrs Weston, and unerringly probing into their past, and lifting the corner of the veil, giving them both glimpses into the future. She knew that the two were engaged for that she had learned from Mrs Quantock in her morning's drive, and did not attempt ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... in broken sentences, and with visible effort, for the surgeon was all the while poking and probing at the leg in a most uncomfortable manner, and De Berg was pale from pain and loss of blood. Oakley looked on with an expression of regret, and showed no disposition to ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... proves. A nurse offers it a mouthful, which it accepts with every sign of unimpaired vigor. As for the Volucella grub, it licks its lips after its own fashion, pushing its two fangs in and out; then, without further loss of time, goes and repeats its probing elsewhere. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... horrified gasp, Trella ran down the driveway toward the smoking heap of metal. Quest was already beside it, probing it. As she reached his side, he lifted the torn body of Dom Blessing. Blessing ...
— The Jupiter Weapon • Charles Louis Fontenay
... cross-legged like a Turk, she jerked herself forward on the grass and sat probing up into the Senior Surgeon's face like an excited puppy trying to solve whether the gift in your up-raised hand is a lump ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Mr. Wells' cabin Edwards lay on a bed, his face turned to the wall, and his side exposed. There was a bloody hole in his white skin. Zeisberger was probing for the bullet. He had no instruments, save those of his own manufacture, and they were darning needles with bent points, and a ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... results of digging to which I have referred are, as I have already said, the results merely of accidental digging. From a systematised application of the same means of discovery, in fit and proper localities, with or without previous ground-probing, Archaeology is certainly entitled to expect most valuable consequences. The spade and pickaxe are become as indispensable aids in some forms of archaeological, as the hammer is in some forms of geological research. The great antiquarian treasures ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... eine Seele sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund... they hardly spoke to each other, they dared hardly breathe a word; it was enough for them to feel each other's nearness, to exchange a look, a word in token that their thoughts, after long periods of silence, still ran in the same channel. Without probing or inquiring, without even looking at each other, yet unceasingly they watched each other. Unconsciously the lover takes for model the soul of the beloved: so great is his desire to give no hurt, to be in all things as the beloved, that with mysterious and ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... had his share in the fame of the Etna; he was a part of her character. Goodwin, though his mind still moved slowly, eyed him intently, gauging the man's strange and masked quality, probing the mildness of his address for the thing it veiled. He saw the mate of the Etna as a spare man of middle-age, who would have been tall but for the stoop of his shoulders. His shaven face was constricted primly; he had ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... seriously injured that there is little hope of his recovery; six other subalterns wounded—one being hit by shrapnel bullets or splinters in four places—and the mess waiter struck down by a heavy splinter that embedded itself beneath the ribs in a cavity too deep for probing at present. There was a curiously spiteful touch in the bombardment all day, and at midnight we were roused by sounds of rapid rifle-firing that began from Bell's Spruit and the railway cutting against Observation Hill and ran along to Rifleman's Ridge on one flank, and ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... the minister meant, not that which might well and to advantage be done if good and able men would resolve to do it, spite of all hindrances, but that which, upon a cunning review of party balances and a judicious probing of public opinion, seemed to be a policy fit for his party to pursue. The first, original and masterly statesmen are needed to initiate and perform—the other is simply the art of a genius who knows how most adroitly ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... as if in protest, 'there is no need to distress us all by probing the wounds made three years ago. Personally I think it ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... to the subject of our black population. I will touch this subject as tenderly as possible. It is with reluctance that I touch it at all; but in cases of great emergency, the State physician must not be deterred by a sickly, hysterical humanity, from probing the wound of his patient; he must not be withheld by a fastidious and mistaken delicacy from representing his true situation to his friends, or even to the sick man himself, when the occasion calls for it. What is the situation of the slave-holding States? ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... soon ascertained that the cattle had endeavored to seek shelter from the fury of the storm by getting under the branches of the bushiest trees. Going to these trees, the emigrants would thrust down long poles with sharpened nails in the ends of them. By thus probing about in the snow, the whereabouts of a number of cattle was discovered, and the bodies were speedily dug out ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... retire, Joan of Arc and her followers were exposed to a murderous hail of shot, arrows, and other missiles. Sending for fagots and fascines to be cast into the moat, in order to enable a kind of bridge to be thrown across, while probing with the staff of her banner the depth of the water, Joan was struck by a cross-bow bolt, which made a deep wound in her thigh. Refusing to leave the spot, she urged on the soldiers to fill the ditch. The day was waxing late, and the men, who ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... things are more interesting to them than the making of laws. We have not heard politics talked about in any class in New York. Attacks on the President often, because he is said to have interfered with trusts by probing their methods, which gets back to the vital point of dollars and cents. People will speak for and against him for hours, but not from a political point of view, and abstract political discussions we ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... still holding her little chin like a vise, the man's eyes narrowed to his further probing. "Eve," he frowned, "I'm not as well as I used to be! I've got pains in my arms! And they're not good pains! I shall live to be a thousand! But I—I might not! It's a—rotten world, Eve," he brooded, "and quite unnecessarily crowded—it seems to me—with ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... hand, barely touched the fingers of the stranger, and her keen, probing, inquisitorial eyes of palest grey wandered searchingly over the face and figure; while her haughty tone was chill—as the damp breath of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... birthday? Frenzied search in antique birthday books revealed not the horrid secret. Probing my diary for other suitable anniversaries, I came to February 1st—"Partridge and Pheasant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... vanished, and once more, as Professor Sykes had seen on that night so long ago, the blanket of clouds was broken. McGuire followed the gaze of the scientist whose keen eyes were probing in these brief moments into ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... concentrated fire of the enemy. As I sat upon the fallen trunk of a tree my brother made a hasty examination of my wound. All this while I was fully convinced I was near death's door. He pronounced my wound at first as fatal, a bit of very unpleasant information, but after probing my wound with his finger he gave me the flattering assurance that unless I bled to death quite soon my chances might be good! Gentle reader, were you ever, as you thought, at death's door, when the grim monster was facing ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... more: he lost consciousness from the terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting while being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing station. He did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when with other wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the hospital. During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was able to look ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... feelings from our mothers and forget our jealousy of our fathers. From the person in whom that childish wish has been fulfilled we recoil with the entire force of the repressions, that these wishes have since that time suffered in our inner soul. While the poet in his probing brings to light the guilt of OEdipus, he calls to our attention our own inner life, in which that impulse, though repressed, is always present. The antithesis with which the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... interpretation on her words. That was stimulating and pleasant too; it was a new form of intercourse, and she did not pretend she did not enjoy it for itself, as well as for the opportunity it gave her of probing his mind and ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... this unassuming practicality, the sort of thing with which Gargoyle's mind had been carefully inoculated for a long time, baffled, while it reassured Mrs. Strang. Also the sense of sacred trust placed in her hands made her refrain from any psychic probing. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and with burning hatred against Roland in his heart, Ganelon accompanied the Saracens back to Saragossa. A hate so bitter was not easy to hide, and as he rode beside him the wily Blancandrin was not long in laying a probing finger on this festering sore. Soon he saw that Ganelon would pay even the price of his honour to revenge himself upon Roland and on the other Douzeperes whose lives were more precious than his in the eyes ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... beautiful. It began surely, insistently, to undermine all that stout breastwork he had reared against her these twenty-four hours. But he thrust his hands in his pockets and turned to her with that upward look of probing, upbraiding eyes. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... to hoodwink Gregory Sweet, that must have got back on my conscience, besides being a dangerous thing. Deceived, the poor man had to be—for his own good, but my story must be made to hold water and ring true, else, with his doubting and probing nature, I well knew he'd ferret out the facts and very ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... ulcerated surfaces should be well washed off every day with soap and water, or a solution of borax, and the medicine (Hydrastin) in form of infusion, used half an hour after the other wash. If the neck of the womb looks dark, and is ulcerated, or is hard and painful to the touch, especially on probing the cavity, Cornus Sericea must be used both as a wash to the parts, and at the first dilution internally, using them twice a day. This remedy ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... gentle reproach, "a certain delicacy should be observed in probing the exact state of a man's young affections. At five-and-thirty (I know I am five-and-thirty, because you have told people so for the last three years) there exists a certain reticence in the youthful heart which declines to lay bare its inmost feelings even for an aunt to—we ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... in this hospital; at least I never saw any of it. One young Englishman, who had a bullet in his thigh, cried out in pain when the surgeon was probing for it. The German doctor sarcastically remarked, "Oh, I thought the English ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... time. Socrates wonders at their reluctance. Let them regard him rather as the swan, who, having sung the praises of Apollo all his life long, sings at his death more lustily than ever. Simmias acknowledges that there is cowardice in not probing truth to the bottom. 'And if truth divine and inspired is not to be had, then let a man take the best of human notions, and upon this frail bark let him sail through life.' He proceeds to state his difficulty: It has been argued that the soul ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... little services, but if they were alone together, they were tongue- tied, and never went deeper than surface subjects. Mrs. Poynsett never discussed her, never criticized her, never attempted to fathom her, being probably convinced that there was nothing but hard coldness to be met with by probing. Yet there was something striking in Cecil's having made people call her Mrs. Raymond Poynsett, surrendering the Charnock, which she had once brandished in all their faces, and going by the name by which her husband had been ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her then, his sharp face was certainly at that moment the face of an inquisitor, a set of keen and delicate instruments ready for probing, but so weary and childlike did she look, so weary and childlike was her speech, that he forbore. What did it matter, after all, what there was in her past? She had done what she had done, been what she had been. ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... of her dependent position, and had questioned and cross-questioned her as to whether she could remember any possible clue by which her father's whereabouts might be traced. Gipsy had already told all she knew, so the fresh catechism only seemed to her like the probing of an old wound. She felt so utterly helpless, so unable to offer any suggestions, or any way out of the difficulty. But she stuck tenaciously to her ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... faces the crowd, probing them with his eyes till they gradually become silent. He begins speaking. One of the bargemen ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... two of them against the chair between us. Mrs. Lascelles had taken possession of one, with which she was methodically probing the path, for there had been no time to draw their Alpine teeth. She did not comply with my ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... active, and sensibility so intense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its groundwork there. So Roger Chillingworth—the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician—strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and licence to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the answer appeared at the same instant. Winner Ihjel. The fat man with the strange pronouncements and probing questions. Had he cast a spell like some sorcerer—or the devil in Faust? No, that was pure nonsense. But he had done something. Perhaps planted a suggestion when Brion's resistance was low. Or used subliminal vocalization like the villain in Cerebrus Chained. Brion could find no ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... intelligence itself exists a halo of instinct. This halo represents the remains of the first nebulous vapour at the expense of which intelligence was constituted like a brilliantly condensed nucleus; and it is still today the atmosphere which gives it life, the fringe of touch, and delicate probing, inspiring contact and divining sympathy, which we see in play in the phenomena of discovery, as also in the acts of that "attention to life," and that "sense of reality" which is the soul of good sense, so widely distinct from common-sense. And the ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... when she and Helen were alone at tea, sounding her, probing her, for reassuring symptoms of warmth or affection. 'I so hope that we may keep really in touch with one another,' she said. 'I couldn't bear not to keep in touch with ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... again, inch by inch through the incredible maze of wiring in the rocket's innards. By very accurate analogy, they were probing the rocket's brains. The circuits, like nerves, carried messages to and from the central rocket control. One would signal "Rocket starting to yaw," and another would reply to the servomotors that activated the gimbal-mounted motor, "Compensate! Two degrees correction azimuth 350!" and the great ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... to raise the bar of the traffic sign and plunge it down again. It was certainly no tentacle of root that the probing bar struck, but something hard, yet ever so slightly yielding, something which gave forth a ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... entered it. But Hamlet has the imagination which, for evil as well as good, feels and sees all things in one. Thought is the element of his life, and his thought is infected. He cannot prevent himself from probing and lacerating the wound in his soul. One idea, full of peril, holds him fast, and he cries out in agony at it, but is impotent to free himself ('Must I remember?' 'Let me not think on't'). And when, with the fading of his passion, the vividness of this idea abates, it does so only to leave behind ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... tried to awaken him to a sense of religious consolation; but he was as yet unfit even for that sacred ministration; and all her efforts having failed to rouse him, even from the deathlike stupor in which he lay, she had recourse, by my advice, to probing the wound, to take off the stricture by which the natural humours were pent up. She discoursed pathetically on the qualities of the departed, which, she said, would be the passport of her spirit to a sphere where he ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... evening meal Henley saw his wife regarding him stealthily as she served the food to him and the others. Her look had a queer, shifting, probing quality, which at any other time would have inspired investigation, but she failed to rivet his attention to-night. There were other things to think of—things as new and startling as the dawn of day must have appeared to the opening eyes ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... Robert. "You see, it's a business errand, in a way. You go as a probing committee of ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Probing at random I had touched a very sensitive nerve. We had got down from underneath the political and reached the social. What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is not Slagters Nek, nor ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... She had looked for this daily for more than a year, and often wondered at her husband's tardiness. Had she desired it? Ah, that is the probing question. Had she desired an act of law to push them fully asunder—to make the separation plenary in all respects? No. She did not really wish for the irrevocable ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... inspire him, he said, and at the approaching festival of the Virgin, at the august and sublime hour of holy communion, he expected to hear the voice of Jesus speaking to his heart and announcing the line of conduct he ought to follow. The abbe was afraid of betraying uneasiness, if he insisted on probing this "Christian mystery," so he returned with this answer, which was least of all calculated to reassure me. He did not appear again either at the castle or in the neighbourhood, and kept himself so closely shut up in the convent that few people ever saw his face. However, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... instantly alive to her cause with all the sympathy that was in him—an especially sincere sympathy because as a missionary priest he was close to the hearts of all the folk of the north country, probing their affairs with an innocent but vivid interest and striving always to aid ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... know," she went on, still probing at him, "that your not caring is the principal reason for my—finding you interesting—for my liking ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... a daughter, hasn't he?" She was probing him quietly and without haste. Time enough for her sympathies to work when she got ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... answering him directly she proceeded in the same strain, probing his wounded self-respect to the quick, making his offence ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... examined him and found it was only a flesh wound. The women were full of gratitude as the Doctor bound up his arm after probing the wound, and lifted the man on a rude couch. From time to time Dick would look in at the door to see how things were going on. The field ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... three bay leaves, a large piece of chorissa or a slice of the root of a tongue smoked, a little whole pepper and salt; cover it with a gravy made from the trimmings of the veal, and stew till extremely tender, which can be proved by probing it with a fine skewer, then reduce part of the gravy to a glaze, glaze the meat with it and serve ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... turn, or else to keep his mind in the most profound ignorance; when he was willing to set himself right, when he was sedulous to examine the path which conducted to his felicity, when he was desirous of probing opinions so consequential to his peace, involving so much mystery, yet combining both his hopes and his fears, he was forbidden to employ the only proper method,—HIS REASON, guided by his experience; he was assured this would ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... they are, as a class, exceedingly difficult to portray, and one needs to strain one's faculties to the utmost before it becomes possible to pick out their variously subtle, their almost invisible, features. In short, one needs, before doing this, to carry out a prolonged probing with the aid of an insight sharpened in the acute ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a glittering rapier probing for the weakness of his opponent's defense. "I say that she and you were in the rooms of Uncle James at 9.50 the evening he was killed. I say that you concealed the fact at the inquest. Why?" ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... with them both, exclaiming brightly at her delight. Then, as they all sat down, she and Helen considered each other. Oddly, Helen had known all along that she would not like Mrs. Murray; now, and after the first probing glance, she was prepared for downright dislike. Longstreet, on the other hand, was obviously very favourably impressed. Nor without more than a little to be said on his side of the question. The woman was young, petite, dark ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... curious eagerness to the more distant landscape. He passed through the storm-broken trees and to the far rim of the flat, where he stood a long time staring frowningly at one after another of the spires and ridges lifted against the sky, probing into the mystery of the night still slumbering in the ravines. Now his look had to do, in intent concentration, with a slope not five hundred yards off; now with a blue-and-white summit toward which a man might toil all day and all night ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... real epic, whose very title, Ad Astra, is symbolic of the high altitudes in which he so triumphantly and so securely navigates. Outwardly it is a story of the War, but there is little difficulty in probing the allegory; and those who follow the hero's vicissitudes as a private in the Gasoliers, right through to his victorious advancement to the rank of Acting Lance-Corporal, unpaid (and there is a symbolism even in the "unpaid"), ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... research has by no means been confined to the English organization. All over the world investigators are now probing into the mysteries of the seemingly supernormal. But, as a general thing, their methods scarcely reach the strict standards set by the organized inquirers of England, and as a natural consequence they are more easily deceived ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... probing among the shadowy rafters of the room, seemed to be searching there for the secret on whose trail he rode. Through the interims the rain crashed and volleyed on the roof above them; the cold spray whipped down on them through the cracks; the wind ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... returned from Berlin," Mr. Hebblethwaite continued. "Busby, as you know, has been many times an honoured guest there at their universities and in their great cities. He has had every opportunity of probing the tendencies of the people. His mind is absolutely and finally made up. Not in all history has there ever existed a race freer from the lust of bloodthirsty conquest than the ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... procrastinated because two definite plans were fully worked out. It is a matter of choice between them: either publicity or complete secrecy. You know I am no believer in riding two horses at once. My mind is about made up; but let me hear your side again. Sometimes I get conviction by probing another mans." ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... manipulators and things floated out of her. Scows began landing and unloading prefab-hut elements. A water tank landed, and the cook-shed began going up beside it; a lorry came in with scanning and probing equipment, and a couple of men jumped off and huddled over a photoprint copy of one of ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... did not grow disheartened. Ever bravely diving more deeply into the South, he spent the days in beating up the thickets, probing the dwarf-palms with the muzzle of his rifle, and saying "Boh!" to every bush. And every evening, before lying down, he went into ambush for two or three hours. Useless trouble, however, for the lion did not ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... to Esther's school experience. It was a very varied talk; it roved over a great many fields and took looks into others; it was not inquisitive or prying, and yet Esther felt as if her interlocutor were probing her through and through, and finding out all she knew and all she did not know. In the latter category, it seemed to Esther, lay almost everything she ought to have known. Perhaps Miss Fairbairn did not think so; at any rate her face expressed ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... to draw Nan out, "sorry. And sorrier to think of Henry de Spain getting killed that way. Why, I knowed Henry de Spain when he was a baby in arms." He put out his hand cannily. "I worked for his father before he was born." His listener remained obdurate. There was nothing for it except further probing, to which, however, Jim felt abundantly equal. "Some say," he suggested, looking significantly toward the door of the barn, and significantly away again, "that Henry went down there to pick a fight with the boys. But," he asserted cryptically, "I happen to know ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... are confronted with a serious situation. But it is typical of the security problems of the world today. Powerful and aggressive forces are constantly probing, now here, now there, to see whether the free world is weakening. In the face of this there are no easy choices available. It is misleading for anyone to imply ...
— The Communist Threat in the Taiwan Area • John Foster Dulles and Dwight D. Eisenhower
... had been confined to those urgent cases that imperatively demanded it. Whenever Bouroche's rapid judgment told him that amputation was necessary, he proceeded at once to perform it. In the same way he lost not a moment's time in probing the wound and extracting the projectile whenever it had lodged in some locality where it might do further mischief, as in the muscles of the neck, the region of the arm pit, the thigh joint, the ligaments of the knee and elbow. Severed arteries, too, had to be tied without ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... first gun-shot wound that has come under my treatment during the three long years I have been stationed here. Quick, my fine fellow, take yourself to the hospital, and tell the orderly to prepare my instruments for probing." ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... his integrity; that was Terry. And then Lady Dawn—had he actually any moral right to interfere in her affairs? "Do it harder; I can bear more than that." He could hear her saying it in that deep, emotional voice of hers. He could feel her honest stone-gray eyes, probing his soul for motives ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... them, either, to trouble her for an explanation; no probing questions issue from their lips. She is sorry, that is all. It is enough for their sympathies. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... had to say with a judicial air, correcting them if they hinted at any tea costing less than four and sixpence per pound, commanding a cheese to be brought forward for inspection, as if it had been a prisoner in the dock, probing it with searching severity and giving a judgment upon it from which there was no appeal. He distinguished between customers, assigning to each such provisions as were suitable for their several homes, inquiring in a paternal manner after the welfare of their children, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... even be sitting quietly in an armchair in the Kremlin, probing through several thousand miles of solid earth to peep into the brains of the ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... has just removed camp, or was a day too late with his last requisition for cartridges? No doubt it is a trying ordeal to have some young regular-army lieutenant ride up to your tent at an hour's notice, and leisurely devote a day to probing every weak spot in your command,—to stand by while he smells at every camp-kettle, detects every delinquent gun-sling, ferrets out old shoes from behind the mess-bunks, spies out every tent-pole not labelled with the sergeant's name, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... for a moment at Jaeger, then sent out a probing thought, searching for some indication of mental activity from the boy. But there was nothing. It wasn't anything like a shield, he thought. It seemed more ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... from human years I stood A naked, probing mind. Aloof I heard the beating blood, The far-brought voices of the blood, Flow round me like a wind; In an abysmal solitude I staggered ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... cooperation from Horng on any further mind-probing. The Hirlaji lived among some of the ruins out on the Flat, where the winds threw dust and sand against the weathered stone walls, leaving them worn smooth and rounded. The aliens kept these buildings ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... Algiers; of pretending to fall ill and saying that Claude must take her away for a change; even of getting Alston Lake to send a telegram to Jernington saying that his presence was urgently demanded in his native Suffolk. Had he a mother? Till now Charmian had never thought of probing into Jernington's family affairs. When, driven by stress of circumstances, she began to do so, she found that his mother had died almost before he was born. Indeed, his relatives seemed to be as few in number as they were robust ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... my right arm or my leg if I could get a flashlight of this," said Obels, the reporter, enthusiastically. This elation made him reckless as he went about, probing the experiences of ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... his own severest critic; so, at least, he had always believed. He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into the palpitating entrails of his own soul; he was Brown Dog to himself. His weaknesses, his absurdities—no one knew them better than he did. Indeed, in a vague way he imagined that nobody beside himself was aware of them at all. It seemed, somehow, inconceivable that he should appear to other ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... a hard time of it. We had lost our medicine chest in the wreck; we had only little packages of bandages for skirmishes; but no probing instrument, no scissors, were at hand. On the next day our men came up with thick tongues, feverish, and crying: 'Water, water!' But each one received only a little cupful three times each day. If our water supply became exhausted we ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... emergency—by some extraordinary reward—they extend or exaggerate their old modes of practice, without touching their principles. What, for example, in this case of D—, has been done to vary the principle of action? What is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and scrutinizing with the microscope and dividing the surface of the building into registered square inches—what is it all but an exaggeration of the application of the one principle or set of principles of search, which are based upon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... country's literature from its clumsy, awkward childhood, and presented it as an ardent, inspired youth, ready for combat, upon the lips of whom the gods have placed the right word to express every feeling and every thought—a youth who is capable of probing the depths ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... again a silent smile. He had a kindly mouth and probing eyes. And he shook his head ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... can fale anythin'!" cried Garry, who was probing for the missile all the time. "A man that can walk about, faith, loike an opera dancer, with a blue-mouldy leg loike that, can't have much faling at all, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... be lightly clasped on her white lap, their long fingers playing with some flower she had taken from her belt. The lines of the girlish figure would be full of dignity and strength. She might have been herself the young America, arguing, probing, deciding for herself—refusing to be overawed or ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... anger rose within me. What right had anyone to deny knowledge of such a secret, or to discourage me in any attempt to find out its nature. I resolved to lose no time in probing the unworthy thing ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... American, we have been conscious of this weak- rootedness in our literature and trying to remedy it. This is why our flood of nature books for a century is so significant. They may seem peculiar instruments for probing tradition—particularly the sentimental ones. The critic has not yet admitted some of the heartiest among them—Audubon's sketches of pioneer life, for example—into literature at all. And yet, unless I am mightily mistaken, they are signs of convalescence as clearly as they are symptoms ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... composure that now in the emptiness it was his fate to remember with a sickening shudder of remorse. Here he had battled in vain for Joan, practicing brutally the telling of much truth; and here with his probing finger, Adam Craig had roused his slumbering conscience into new doubt and new despair. And here he must not forget he had told the tale of the fairy mill . . . and suspicion had come darkly to his mind. Suspicion of what? That, as ever, he refused ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... a beast into a man, a man into an angel, for the moment. Long after that evening was dead, both Julian and Doctor Levillier anxiously, and in their different ways analytically, considered it. They submitted it to a secret process of probing, such as many men enforce upon what they imagine to be great causes in their lives. That hour became an hour of wonder, an hour of amazement, viewed in the illumination of subsequent events. They found in it a curious climax of misunderstanding, a ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... out," her brother got up from the edge of the table where he had perched, "is to go and do a little probing of our own. We have a good two hours until lunch. Will you ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... never been known to smile, but at this speech he lifted one eyebrow and turned his saturnine face full at his superior, inquiry written upon every line of it. Captain Swarth was musing, however, and said no more; so the mate, knowing better than to attempt probing his mind, swung his long figure down the poop-ladder, and went forward to harass the men—which, in their opinion, was all he was ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... downward, with a hole between his shoulder blades, the dead man was lying where he might lie undiscovered for months or for years, or forever. His pedler's pack was buried in the mud so deep that not even the probing crawfishes could find it. He would never be missed probably. There was but the slightest likelihood that inquiry would ever be made for him—let alone a search. He was a stranger and a foreigner, the dead man was, whose comings and goings made no great ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Casserlys to have done a wrong deed at any time, the neighbours would be watching and probing my own brood till they would see might the track of it break out in any way. It ran through our race to be hard tempered, from the ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... the unchanging grief, weighing like a slab of stone on a grave, was ever present in his soul with inexorable and brutal force during these many months. He only half recalled the strange wonders that had been worked on him: bathing, feeding, probing into the wound, and later on the operation. He had been carried into a room full of gentlemen wearing aprons spotted with blood; he was conscious also of the mysterious, intrepid courage which, like a merciful hand, had supported ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... analysis and powerful presentation of evidence made it one of the most popular and convincing documents ever issued.] of Ohio, and Mordecai Oliver, of Missouri, which, by the examination of numerous witnesses, was probing the Border-Ruffian invasions, the illegality of the bogus Legislature, and the enormity of the bogus laws to ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... gave the horses their desire, until crowds and business were left behind, and they were driving down a broad avenue, lined on either side with stately yet quiet-looking homes. Then he drew rein, and obliged the horses to walk; he had by this time resolved on probing the wound, ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... have a duty to perform—a dreadful one, I grant; but, I pray thee, ask no more; for like my poor mother, I feel as if the probing of the wound ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... conscious at last of the wrong by which a woman's heart can be most deeply wounded. Her faithful servants had told her something; the rest she could guess. She was very ill, and did not know it. She knew only that she was angry— selfishly angry, because of the pain given her, cruel, probing, sickening pain. Midday came as she sat thinking how she could say least selfishly what it was now her duty to say,—the first words of reproach that would ever have passed her lips. Then her heart leaped with a shock ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... eminence of his virtue, and punished it like an avenging deity. Persius, pure in heart and passionless by education, while he lashes wickedness in the abstract, almost ignores its existence, and shrinks from probing to the bottom the vileness of the human heart. His works comprise six satires, all of which breathe the natural amiability and placid cheerfulness of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta |
