"Probe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... approached the wharf and the dwarf pines and yellow sand-banks of Chadwick's Landing, a whispered consultation between these two ladies resulted in one desperate attempt to probe the heart of Mabel Hutch that was. Drawing camp-stools up near the vicinity of the parrot's cage, they began with what might to a suspicious nature have seemed rather pointed speculation, to wonder who might or might not be at the wharf when ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... pulled the oar out of the crevice, and found it would make me a good pole to probe my way with and support myself by up the slope. The boat was now held by the mast, which I shook and found very firm. I put an empty beer-bottle in my pocket, meaning to see if I could fill it, if the snow above was sweet enough to be well-tasted, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... IV on the dissolution was another delusion, and so on in perverse, wicked, contradictory human nature. Those who like to probe such systems may do so—the only wise conclusion is Swift's, "If you want to confute a lie, tell another in the opposite direction." Madame de Sevigne tells of a curate who put up a clock on his church. His ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... keen, stern face with its cold blue eyes and the grimly tightened lips. She had seen some such expression there before, and she knew there were depths within his soul which she had never probed, and hoped that she might never have to probe. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... the punishment awarded the famous Jesuit, Girard, who was loaded with honours when he should have got the rope. He died in the sweetest savour of holiness. His was the most curious affair of that century. It enables us to probe the peculiar methods of that day, to realize the coarse jumble of jarring machinery which was then at work. As a thing of course, it was preluded by the dangerous suavities of the Song of Songs. It was carried on by Mary Alacoque, with a marriage of Bleeding Hearts spiced with the morbid ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... too delicate to ask another question that might probe a sorrow which he divined to be recent. Romola, who knew well what were the fibres that Tito's voice had stirred in her father, felt that this new acquaintance had with wonderful suddenness got within the barrier that lay between them ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... changed, grew stern, grew implacable. He bent towards her, still holding her firmly by the wrists. He looked closely into her eyes, and in his own was neither accusation nor condemnation, only a deep and awful questioning that seemed to probe her through and through. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... fact that he had seen Mrs. Wilder, he had not taken her under the close observation of his mental microscope. She stood on one side until such time as he should have need to probe into her reasons for silence, and he wondered if Hartley was right, and if, by chance, the earnest face of the clergyman, with its burning, stricken eyes, had appealed to her sympathy. Could it be so, he asked himself once or twice, but the immediate question was the one that Coryndon gave his ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... corresponding to the nature of the nucleus comes out into manifestation on the plane of the objective and relative. This is the universal method of Nature on every plane. Some of the most advanced thinkers in modern physical science, in the endeavour to probe the great mystery of the first origin of the world, have postulated the formation of what they call "vortex rings" formed from an infinitely fine primordial substance. They tell us that if such a ring be once formed on the minutest scale and set rotating, then, since it would be moving in pure ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... to the Roman religious mind? There is no more difficult question than this in our whole subject; as we probe carefully in those dark ages she baffles us continually. Undoubtedly she was a woman's deity, and we may aptly say of her "varium et mutabile semper femina." The most singular fact we know about her cult is that women used to speak of their Juno as men spoke of their Genius;[283] ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... with the situation, yet determined now to probe the mystery to the bottom, I silently followed the black, attentive to his slightest movement. It was a brief walk down one of the narrow streets leading directly back from the river front, so that within less than five minutes I was being silently shown into the small reception ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... orator—downcast, as with the inward oppression of the same solemnity that he, in speaking, cast like a spell on the audience—indefinitely heightened the magical power of the awful conception excited. Not Bourdaloue himself, with that preternatural skill of his to probe the conscience of man to its innermost secret, could have exceeded the heart-searching rigor with which, in the earlier part of the discourse, Massillon had put to the rack the quivering consciences of his ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... too, appeared to be infinite in variety; and Rob was never weary of watching the tiny humming-birds as they poised themselves before the trumpet blossoms of some of the pendent vines to probe their depths for honey, or capture ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... make with me One passionate tranquillity! Wrap thyself in them as a robe, She shares them not; their azures probe, No countering wings thy flight endures. Nay, they do stole Me like an aura of her soul. I yield them, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... and the secretary faced each other in silence, each apparently trying to read the other's thoughts and probe the depth of the other's knowledge; then, as the gentlemen were heard approaching, she ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... mimic, he knows how to put on, turn and turn about, the smiles of persuasion, satisfaction, and good-nature, or drop them for the normal expression of his natural man. He is compelled to be an observer of a certain sort in the interests of his trade. He must probe men with a glance and guess their habits, wants, and above all their solvency. To economize time he must come to quick decisions as to his chances of success,—a practice that makes him more or less a man of judgment; on the ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... Indianapolis. He's no end smart, that fellow. And I figure that if the road goes into a receivership the bonds will pay sixty anyhow. You see where that puts you—no more of this farmer rot. You'd be well fixed. And it will be easy for you to satisfy Kirkwood. Just the right word and he will pull his probe out of the administratorship, and get a receiver who will represent us and give us the proceeds when the trouble's all over. Damn it! Don't look at me that way! Don't you see that I've been taking big chances in hiding ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... as the unknown exerted himself to withstand that poignant inquisition, only to come back in, clearer than before, as Seaton advanced the potentiometer still farther. Finally, flesh and blood could no longer resist that lethal probe and the picture became sharp and clear. It showed the captain—for he was no less an officer than the commander of the vessel—at a great council table, seated, together with many other officers, upon very low, enormously strong metal stools. They were receiving orders from their Emperor; orders ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... "It is cheating," he said. "Well—even if what you do is not cheating, it is delusion—unconscious cheating. Even if there is something in it, it is wrong. True or not, it is wrong. Why don't they thought-read each other? Why should they want you? Your mind is your own. It is sacred. To probe it!—I won't have it! I won't have it! At least you are mine to that extent. I can't think of you like that—bandaged. And that little fool pressing his hand on the back of your neck and asking questions. I won't have it! I would rather ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... to probe this matter to the bottom, I have examined the British Foreign Office archives relating to Spain for the months of December and January. They are detailed and apparently complete. F. J. Jackson, our ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the General, with a searching note in his voice which seemed to probe coldly and with deadly accuracy among the strenuous emotions in the young man's mind. "Harris—you are an officer of promise. Don't cut that promise short." With a flick of his ashes to one side he ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... him and staring into her eyes as if to probe into her soul—slowly.] If your oath is no proper oath at all, I'll have to be taking your naked word for it and have you anyway, I'm thinking—I'm needing ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... facias' dices oroque ne facias.' Humane, dure, large, firmeque, benigne, Ignaveque, probe vel avare sive severe, Inde rove, plene, vel abunde sive prolerve, Dicis in er vel'in e, quamvis sint ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... this, let us try and probe with our express train even a little of the new gulf which now lies before us. At our old rate of going it took almost two years to cover a million miles. To cover a billion miles—that is to say, a million times this distance—would thus take of course nearly two million ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... as mystified when she fell asleep at dawn as she had been when first her discovery was made. She was half determined to probe for an explanation of the coincidence when she came downstairs to a late breakfast. But no good opportunity presented itself for the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... dignity, your place and position in the universe; she will remind you of your gifts and faculties, and enable you to battle with the weak and the strong; she will give you the secret of knowledge and train you to soar above your fellow-creatures and probe the mysteries of God and Heaven." Then Pleasure, with dimpled cheeks and laughing eyes, and words that sound like music to the ears, hurries out to greet the passers-by, and charms them by her shining gifts. "Make me your object and your end," she says, "and I will make ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... believe seriously, Moran, that you were sent for a purpose?' Moran didn't answer, and his silence irritated Father Oliver, and, determined to probe his curate's conscience, he said: 'Aren't you satisfied now that it was only an idea of your own? You thought to find me gone, and here I am sitting before you.' After waiting for some time for Moran to speak, he ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... replied; "but they have also invented these questions, which probe the mind to the marrow ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... indecision which afflicted him. To state the case roughly, he had too much knowledge for his will. Busy people reason by instinct with sufficient accuracy, but with this man no conviction was for five minutes free from the probe of a metaphysical argument. Yet from glimpses I had obtained of that overwhelming System of Things elaborated by the two Vannelles, I could understand the condition in which its partial apprehension had left Clifton. The more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... rem tamen probe absolvebat: nam tunc forte in manus meas inciderat, Gebri Hispani liber, cujus auxilio non parum adjutus sum."—Opera, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... nothing to say to this outburst, feeling that back of it were facts into which I had no right to probe, and we rode along quietly. Then he ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... dreams dead and his boyish tastes atrophied; a useful hard-working, clear-sighted member of society. And there was truth in this conception of himself. There was truth, too, in Madame von Marwitz's probe. He had more than the normal English sensitiveness where ideals were concerned and more than the normal English instinct for a protective literalness. He didn't intend that anybody should lay their hand on his heart and tell him of lofty aims that it would have made him feel awkward to look at ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... him to say more, but at length, with the same measured mildness, he spoke on. This amazing Charlotte, bereft of father, brother and mother, ward of a light-headed married sister, and in these distracted times lacking any friend with the courage, wisdom and kind activity to probe the pretensions of her suitor, had been literally snared into marriage by this human spider, this Oliver, a man of just the measure to simulate with cunning and patient labor the character, bearing and antecedents of a true ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... both came to the conclusion, in a flash, that the babe which they had adopted was most assuredly this man's son. Mr. Trent, a clever, as well as a careful man, wished to probe the matter to his entire satisfaction, so he dismissed Daniel on some errand. Then he questioned the stranger, as to his name, his place of residence, the year and the month and all circumstances surrounding that ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... You may creep Across the syllables on hands and knees, And stumble often, yet pass me with ease And reach the spring upon the summit steep. Oh, I could lay me down, dear child, and weep These charr'd orbs out, but that you then might cease Your upward effort, and with inquiries Stoop down and probe my heart too deep, too deep! I thirst for Knowledge. Oh, for an endless drink Your goblet leaks the whole way from the spring— No matter, to its rim a few drops cling, And these refresh me with the joy to think That you, my darling, have the morning's wing To cross the mountain ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... one she gave her directions and the man obeyed swiftly and unquestioningly. He watched her probe the wound, saw her eyes narrow, knew that she had made her diagnosis. As she washed the ugly hole in the flesh and made her own bandage Brocky Lane was wincing, his eyes again open. Both men were watching her now, the same look in each eager ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... looked at her keenly, until she sat silent under his scrutiny. He was not deceived. Nevertheless he humored her for the moment, knowing that she was no match for his astuteness when the time came to probe her hurt. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... grounds of belief, and that the scope of Logic includes Induction as well as Deduction; whereas, according to Hamilton, Induction is only Modified Logic, a mere appendix to the theory of the "forms of thought as thought." Indeed, Mill endeavoured in his Logic to probe the grounds of belief deeper than usual, and introduced a good deal of Metaphysics—either too much or not enough—concerning the ground of axioms. But, at any rate, his great point was that belief, and therefore (for the most part) the Real ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... manner in which things are conducted in the grain trade to-day is the result of long experience and gradual improvement of conditions. It must be remembered that in the earlier days the trade was not so well organized for efficiency and in 1905 when E. A. Partridge began to probe for "plugging" he had a big job on his hands, especially in view of the fact that he was treated for the most part as a meddler who was not entitled ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... his prodigality of logical balance-wheels and escapements, resemble the superfluous clock-work of the "automaton" which plays its game as the gentleman concealed inside shall judge expedient. It is of course impossible to probe the Two Absolutes, or the wonderful marriage which takes place between them. Mr. Frothingham sees that so it is. Men of aspirations as high, and of intellect as cultivated, will think that they have no difficulty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... no harm to be ready; but take no step till I come back,' said the doctor, who had stuffed a great roll of lint and plaister, and some other medicinals, into one pocket, and his leather case of instruments, forceps, probe, scissors, and all the other steel and silver horrors, into the other; so he strutted forth in his great coat, unnaturally broad about the hips; and the major, 'devilish uncomfortable,' accompanied him at a smart pace to the great gate of Brandon. He did not care ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... probe my heart With sharpest instruments of pain, And listen if the sweet refrain Still wells up through the smart— "Thy ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... was "only good in the sense that Greek and Roman civilisations were good." Modern Japan represented "the best of Europe minus Christianity; the moral backbone of Christianity is lacking." "Probe a dozen Buddhist priests in turn," he said, "and you find something lacking; you don't find the Buddhist or Confucian really ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... lie beyond the probe of the cynic, or the wit of the literary man. They spring from sympathetic observation and a quietly serious mind. And there is something equally fresh and unexpected in some ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... shone faintly through the reeds. Lying flat behind a roll of matting, Rudolph could see, as through the gauze twilight of a stage scene, the tossing lights and the skipping men who shouted back and forth, jabbing their spears or pikes down among the bales, to probe the darkness. Their search was wild but thorough. Before it, in swift retreat, some one crawled past the compradore's room, brushing the splint partition like a snake. This, as Rudolph guessed, might be the man whose ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... at the present stage of development of the science is a deeper investigation of the aesthetic attitude of mind as a whole, of what we may call the aesthetic psychosis. We need to probe the act of contemplation itself, the mode of activity of attention involved in this calm, half-dreamlike gazing on the mere look of things unconcerned with their ordinary and weightier imports. We need further to determine the effect of this contemplative attitude ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... administered the consolations of religion! Perhaps he was like the doctor who could get no benefit from his own prescriptions. Philip was puzzled and shocked by that eager cleaving to the earth. He wondered what nameless horror was at the back of the old man's mind. He would have liked to probe into his soul so that he might see in its nakedness the dreadful dismay of the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... have a probe rammed through your hand twice a day?" demanded James with a smile. "But it's all part of the game. Comforts for Tommy. Everyone has their own way of making us happy, not forgetting the dear lady what sent us three hundred little lavender bags, with pretty little bows on them, all sewn by herself, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... we should always follow our conscience, or our highest conviction of what is right, we should assiduously probe our conscience day by day to seek for errors in the part that is dependent upon information. In other words, a truly conscientious person not only scrupulously does what he believes to be right; but he also constantly ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... in all faith," replied Sakr-el-Bahr, with fervour. "Yet I am uneasy, and I must know where I stand if the worst takes place. Go thou amongst the men, Vigitello, and probe their real feelings, gauge their humour and endeavour to ascertain upon what numbers I may count if I have to declare war upon Asad or if he declares it upon ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... primates is the character of their self-consciousness. This useful faculty, that can probe so-deep, has one naive defect—it relies too readily on its own findings. It doesn't suspect enough its own unconfessed predilections. It assumes that it can be completely impartial—but isn't. To instance an obvious way in which it will betray them: beings that are intensely self-conscious ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... is intelligible until we come to the beating of the heart and the contraction of the muscles of the blood-vessels. Excretion is also partly explained, but here again we finally must refer certain processes to the vital powers of active cells. And thus wherever we probe the problem we find ourselves able to explain many secondary problems, while the fundamental ones we still attribute to the vital properties of the active tissues. Why a muscle contracts or a gland secretes we have certainly not yet answered. The relation of the actions ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... large, genial, and ever cheerful, that Eve could not bear it. "I must shake him out of this, at all hazards," thought she: yet she put off the experiment, and put it off, partly in hopes that David would speak first, partly because she saw the wound she would probe was deep, and she winced beforehand ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... what abyss came these desires that wrenched his body and mind? He was like a bow stretched to breaking point by a strong hand,—to what end unknown?—which then springs back like a piece of dead wood. Of what force was he the prey? He dared not probe for it. He felt that he was beaten, humiliated, and he would not face his defeat. He was weary and broken in spirit. He understood now the people whom formerly he had despised: those who will not seek awkward truth. In the empty hours, when he remembered that time ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... says, aims at the careful unraveling of events and at sobriety of speech, but he lacks faith (religio) and truth; "and so we have been at pains, relying not on intellectual force but on the promptings of faith, to probe for the inner meaning of Jewish history and to extract from it more of value to our posterity." Josephus is often mentioned by name as authority for the statements, but at the same time considerable ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... the case is too often that he does all he can not to think about any things of any sort whatever, except cricket and promotion. Schoolmistresses, again, will sometimes come near boasting to the inquiring parent of our "ethical hour," and if you probe the facts you will find that means no more and no less than an hour of floundering egotism, in which a poor illogical soul, with a sort of naive indecency, talks nonsense about "Ideals," about the Higher and the Better, about Purity, and about many secret ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... science, literature, and history, on the acts and thoughts of other minds; and could we take the mightiest intellect that ever awed and controlled the world, and unravel his powers, and return their constituent particles to the multitudinous objects whence they were derived, the last probe of our analysis, after we had stripped him of all his faculties, would touch that unquenchable fiery atom of personality which had organized round itself such a colossal body of mind, and which, in its simple naked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... acceptance of the principles supposed to be glorified thereby. But the magnifiers of the past are often quite unconscious of the hollowness of their admiration, and honest in their horror of their fathers' acts; and we all need the probe of such words as Christ's to pierce the skin of our lazy reverence for our fathers' prophets, and let out the foul matter below—namely, our own blindness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... repeated slogan of our time is, among all politicians, the Socialists included, that ours is an era of individualism, of the minority. Only those who do not probe beneath the surface might be led to entertain this view. Have not the few accumulated the wealth of the world? Are they not the masters, the absolute kings of the situation? Their success, however, is due not to individualism, but to the inertia, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... her head. She met the gleaming eyes of Vance, and then let her glance probe the fire ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... would wish to have repeated. The Chinese soldiers cut off the heads of those they took. The English sailors contented themselves with depriving the fugitives of their pig-tails, generally giving them a probe in the back before they applied the final stroke. The whole ground for some distance was strewn with the dead, while under the walls they lay still more thickly, proving the desperation with which they fought, and the hot fire poured down upon them. Captain Rogers with his men ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... documents to be conned and signed, and the matter took some days, for Eboli's possessions were not only considerable, but scattered, and his widow displayed an acquired knowledge of affairs and a natural wisdom that inspired her to probe deeply. To my undoing, she probed too deeply in one matter. It concerned some land—a little property—at Velez. She had been attached to the place, it seemed, and she missed all mention of it from the papers that I brought ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... felt that this calmness was only on the surface; something strange had stirred the depths of his chief's keen, masterful mind. He would have liked to ask a question or two, but knew from experience that it was neither wise nor profitable to try and probe citizen Chauvelin's thoughts. So after a moment or two he turned back obediently ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Nature, so far as Nature can be judged from what we see of her on this planet, is correct, he has now to determine. The profound mystery which everywhere prevails in the forest and which exerts such a compelling spell upon us he will want to probe to the bottom. He will not be content with the outward prettiness of butterfly and orchid, or with the mere profusion and variety of life, or with the colossal size of animals and trees. He will want to burrow down and get at the very root and mainspring of this forest life. He will ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... to-day discusses institutions and ignores the nature of the men who make and live under them. I have heard professors reply that it wasn't their business to discuss human nature but to record and interpret economic and political facts. Yet if you probe those "interpretations" there is no escaping the conclusion that they rest upon some notion of what man is like. "The student of politics," writes Mr. Wallas, "must, consciously or unconsciously, form a conception of human nature, and the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... and structure of creation. Nature herself is MAYA; natural science must perforce deal with her ineluctable quiddity. In her own domain, she is eternal and inexhaustible; future scientists can do no more than probe one aspect after another of her varied infinitude. Science thus remains in a perpetual flux, unable to reach finality; fit indeed to formulate the laws of an already existing and functioning cosmos, but powerless to detect the Law Framer and Sole Operator. The majestic manifestations of gravitation ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... to frown, and probably Varia added this last sentence in order to probe his thought. However, at this moment, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... limes, Geoffrey had—if Helena so pleased—a longer tete-a-tete before him, and a more generous opportunity, even, than the gods had given him on the lake. His pulses leapt; goaded, however, by alternate hope and fear. But at least he had the chance to probe the situation a little deeper; even if prudence should ultimately forbid ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... copilot, Bud Barclay—Tom had been given the job of directing the recovery phase of the United States government's Project Jupiter survey. The Swifts and their rocket research staff had built the missile and engineered the space probe for the government. ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... as an accessory; indeed, books almost without number have been written about it, and around it. This is as it should be, for perhaps no great church is more worthy, or more prolific in material. For those who would probe deeply into its story, there is but one way to acquire an intimate knowledge thereof,—to undertake a course of reading and study in some such way as a lawyer sets about reading up on a great case. By no other method could be acquired a tithe of the commonly known facts regarding ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... environment of these children had been, how little of companionship or kindness or spoken love had entered their baby lives. The absence of mother kisses, of father comradeship, of endeavor to understand them individually, to probe their separate and various dispositions—things so essential to the development of all that is best in a child—went far towards governing their later actions in life. It drove the unselfish, sweet-hearted ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... being tested, and so this morning as they moved forward he seemed like one undergoing a peculiar examination. That his war record had made a deep impression upon Weston he was well aware. But the man did not yet seem satisfied. He evidently wished to probe to the very soul of the one who ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... with a final probe among the surrounding rocks before selecting one to lean against. "Yet if this person ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... forget-me-not's centre that first led Sprengel to believe the conspicuous markings at the entrance of many flowers served as pathfinders to insects. This golden circle also shelters the nectar from rain, and indicates to the fly or bee just where it must probe between stigma and anthers to touch them with opposite sides of its tongue. Since it may probe from any point of the circle, it is quite likely that the side of the tongue that touched a pollen-laden anther in one flower will touch the stigma ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... But he was a kind-hearted man, and a warm and steady friend—intimately acquainted with all my family, and much esteemed by them all. I was under great obligations to him for the countenance he showed me when I came to the bar, just sixty years ago, and therefore I was resolved to probe the matter to the bottom. For that purpose, I directed the record of the South Circuit to be carefully searched, and the result is, that Lord Braxfield never tried any man for forgery at Dumfries. But I was not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... meet him again two days hence in order to repeat to him what she had heard the while of Sir Marmaduke's movements, and when she was like to be free to go to Dover. During those intervening two days she tried hard to probe her own thoughts; her mind, her feelings: but what she found buried in the innermost recesses of her heart frightened her so, that she ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... probe into the history of a business that has grown great and overspread the earth, we find a Man; and the Western Electric is no exception to this rule. Its Man, still fairly hale and busy after forty years of leadership, is Enos M. Barton. His career is the typical American story of self-help. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... whole country. An extensive and varied experience amongst Hindus of almost every class and age has led to the conviction that the great depth which could not be fathomed is really a shallow, and that we should have realised that we touched bottom long ago, except that we continued to try and probe for it in a region which does ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... moment Barton glanced back over his shoulder at Edgarton, and then turned round again to probe Eve's preferences in the matter. As sluggishly determinate as two black turtles trailing along a white sand beach, her great dark eyes in her little pale face seemed headed suddenly toward some ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... ex argilla factae orificio posteriori dictam herbam probe exiccatam, ita ut in pulverem facile redigi possit, immittunt, et igne admoto accendunt, unde fumus ab anteriori parte ore attrahitur, qui per nares rursum, tamquam per infurnibulum exit, et phlegma ac capitis defluxiones magna ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... proposed to probe for the bullet, he said it was not worth while as it had done all the harm it could. He remarked that he did not believe it possible for a person to suffer so much pain and yet live. But not once did he utter a groan. His agony was beyond description ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... these Rougon-Macquarts, but Zola, who had based his whole theory of the experimental novel upon the analogy of medical research, was not on the outlook for healthy subjects; he wanted social sores to probe. This is a fact much too often overlooked by readers of detached parts of the series, for it should always be kept in mind that the whole was written with the express purpose of laying bare all the social evils ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... Importance of Being Earnest, Mr. Galsworthy's Silver Box. Widely as these plays differ in type and tone, they are alike in this, that they do not attempt to present very complex character-studies, or to probe the deeps of human experience. The last play cited, The Silver Box, may perhaps be thought an exception to this rule; but, though the experience of the hapless charwoman is pitiful enough, hers is a simple soul, so inured to suffering that a little more ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... challenge scrutiny for our industry, for our commerce, for our social customs, for our municipal affairs, for our State questions, for all that we believe, and all that we do, and everything that we build. We are not in haste to be born in respect to any feature of life. We say—probe it, question it, put fire to it. We ask the experience of the past to sit and try it. We ask the ripest wisdom of the present to test and analyze it. We ask enemies to plead all they know against it. We challenge ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... equally at sea in locating creation. That successive phases of animate existence were rising and fading with the oscillations of the earth's inclination to its orbit never occurred to him to whom "all was light." To probe the stars was to him a simpler process than to anatomize the globe ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Grundy, how divers weddings came about: and each marriage appears, upon the whole, to have resulted satisfactorily. Dame Melicent and Dame Adelaide, not Florian, touched the root of the matter as they talked together at Storisende: and the trio's descendants could probe no deeper. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... to probe her embarrassment with an unflinching eye. "What you really meant was that you've snubbed the Brys horribly; and you know ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... was to commence his examination. This now took place, and Dunwoodie stood looking the operator in the face, with an expression that seemed to read his soul. The patient shrank from the application of the probe, and a smile stole over the features of the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... brings to its own interpretation? Miss Smith and I took a night train back to Moscow in that tumult of feeling which is always produced by contact with a conscience making one more of those determined efforts to probe to the very foundations of the mysterious world in which we find ourselves. A horde of perplexing questions, concerning those problems of existence of which in happier moments we catch but fleeting glimpses and at which we even then stand aghast, pursued ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... revolutionaries, but could not guide them. It had waited like a handmaid on the abstractions of Nature and Reason; it had hardly realised an independent life. The time had come for systematic attempts to probe its meaning and definitely to ascertain the direction in which humanity is moving. Kant had said that a Kepler or a Newton was needed to find the law of the movement of civilisation. Several Frenchmen ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... the night had come. Every sound of human activity had long ago ceased. It was the quiet time when one may most easily probe an intense experience. I felt that more was to be known,—something which the minister longed to tell,—something to which what he had caused me to read was to serve as a prelude. I suspected how powerless must have been this sensitive man in the presence of the Idea which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... way, was one of those "prosy, ridiculous girls"—so I had been compelled to classify her, although I was secretly troubled by a sincere admiration of her virtues,—who had made it an absorbing pursuit of her school-days to probe her text-books for useful information, and was also accustomed to defer to her teachers as high authority on matters of daily discipline. She was not in "our set." She was poor, and studious, and obedient, yet a friendship ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... me down at night to calm repose. No more condemn'd the mercenary tool Of brutal lust, while heaves the indignant heart With Virtue's stiffled sigh, to fold my arms Round the rank felon, and for daily bread To hug contagion to my poison'd breast; On these wild shores Repentance' saviour hand Shall probe my secret soul, shall cleanse its wounds And fit the faithful penitent ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... acquiring a quasi-reputation as a democrat. One fact will describe him. When, being at Ham, he published his book "On the Extinction of Pauperism," a book having apparently for its sole and exclusive aim, to probe the wound of the poverty of the common people, and to suggest the remedy, he sent the book to one of his friends with this note, which we have ourselves seen: "Read this book on pauperism, and tell me if you think it is calculated ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... the boys concentrated on the catch basin, alert for any sign of the ghost. Their flashlights were ready to probe the apparition ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... footsore, and shivering, to its last home in the slaughter-house; the dog, yielding up its noble life inch by inch under the tortures of the knife, loyally licking the hand of the vivisector while he drove his probe through its quivering nerves; the unutterable hell in which all these gentle, kindly, and long-suffering creatures dwelt for the pleasure or the vanity, the avarice or the brutality of men,—these he pitied perpetually, with a tenderness for them that ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... habia en el cosas curiosas, y otras que tocaban a sigillos astrologicos, y otras que claramente eran de cercos y invocaciones, aunque a la verdad todo ello me parecia que aun en aquella arte era burleria. Y acusome que leyendo este libro, para ver la vanidad del, probe un sigillo astrologico, y en un poco de plomo que me dio el mismo licenciado, con un cuchillo pinte no me acuerdo que rayas, y dije unas palabras que eran sanctas, y proteste que las decia al sentido que en ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... be produced in various ways; such as by applying one metal between the gum and the upper lip, and the other under the tongue; or by putting a silver probe up one of the nostrils, and a piece of zinc upon the tongue; a sensation resembling a very strong flash of light is perceived in the corresponding eye, ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... something magical about his personal regard for one, that sets up a barrier of mystery between them. So long as I in former years went on the gay assumption that every girl's character was on the surface, and I made no effort to probe deeper, I was the confidant, the friend, of many a fine woman. They all smiled at my douce sobriety, but in the end they preferred it to the gaudy recklessness ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Not the hooked probe nor hum of whirring file, The fearful forceps nor the needled lance Will wholly banish my expectant smile That greets "the foaming grape of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... Maupassant brought a facile and dramatic pen, a penetration as searching as a probe, and a power of psychological vision that in its minute detail, now pathetic, now ironical, in its merciless revelation of the hidden springs of the human heart, whether of aristocrat, bourgeois, peasant, or priest, allow one to call him a ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... skilful in medicine that they can aid wonderfully in such cases, and surgeons so apt at operating that they too, can do much good. But we should not for a moment think of leaving patients to depend on what can be swallowed, or what lancet and probe can do, when the very sources of life itself are neglected, and cures waited on for months that may be secured in a week or even less. Above all, when you know how to do it, infuse new life in the body, and promote the throwing ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... swinging table, where Doc took a probe, poked into the wound, wrapped cotton around the probe, soaked it in iodine, jabbed it in, twisted it around, swabbed it out, dressed it down, slapped the patient on the chest, said "Next," and did it ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... To seek a reason for friendship is as inhuman as to probe for the causes of love. Don't, for goodness' sake, let your intellect triumph over your humanity, Valentine. Of all modern vices, that seems to me the most loathsome. But you could never fall into anything loathsome. You are sheeted against that ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... tete-a-tetes. Mrs. Morrell managed to convey the idea that she was displeased, and Keith was of a sufficiently generous and ingenuous disposition to be intrigued by the fact. He had no chance to probe the matter. In a moment or so Mrs. Morrell rose and strolled toward the drawing-room. The others straggled after her. She rather liked thus to emphasize her lack of convention as a hostess, making a pose of never ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... know what was the virtue of these men, more especially that of Curran, we must probe to the bottom the corruptions and baseness of that society, which deserves to be branded as among the most base and the most corrupt that history has hitherto described. The temptations which England employed, the horrible corruption ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... George scrutinized her face, trying to probe deep down in her heart. Had she, after all, some affection left for this boy lover—and her future husband within hearing distance! No! This was not his Kate—he understood it all now. It was the spell of the story that still held her. Richard's voice had upset her, ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... immoral?' For the usual purpose of mystery and allegory; in order to make people think. The soul that wishes to know God must make its own effort; it cannot expect simply to lie still and be told. The myths by their obvious falsity and absurdity on the surface stimulate the mind capable of religion to probe deeper. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... other, why are they not brought together? Shall I, because my birth baulks my fancy, shall I pass my life a moping misanthrope in an old chateau? Supposing I am in contact with this magnifico, am I prepared? Now, let me probe my very soul. Does my cheek blanch? I have the mind for the conception; and I can perform right skilfully upon the most splendid of musical instruments, the human voice, to make those conceptions beloved by ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... are you, Padre? Do you find that there are those who can probe into the secrets within you and tell more than you as patient can tell yourself? Has a physician who follows the biblical advice, "Heal thyself," a Fool for a Doctor? What has been taught you in the ill-smelling center ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... amazement. It may have been one minute, or fifteen, before the drum, passing over my head, through the boards again, commenced a slow march around the shanty. When it had finished the first, and was about commencing the second round, I shook off my stupor, and determined to probe the mystery. Opening the door, I advanced in an opposite direction to meet it. Again the sound passed close beside my head, but I could see nothing, touch nothing. Again it entered the shanty, and I followed. I stirred up the fire, casting a strong illumination into the darkest corners; I thrust ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... not patience to rehearse calmly the story of these trials, which will long remain the reproach of British lawyers. We shall not probe the motives which led to the appointment of two such men as Justice Mellor and Justice Blackburne as Judges of the Commission, but history will be at no loss to connect the selection with their peculiar ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... me your absolution. I cannot face my life without some sign of forgiveness. I believe—I think I believe. You probe too deeply. Sometimes it seems to me that there must be a future life, sometimes it seems to me—that it would be too terrible if we ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore |
