"Sharper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... less and less; the native life showed itself more in the sparsity of the sojourners. The sweet fern in the open fields, and the brakes and blackberry-vines among the bowlders, were blighted with the cold wind; even the sea-weed swaying at the foot of the rocks seemed to feel a sharper chill than that of the brine. A storm came, and strewed the beach with kelp, and blew over half the bath-houses; and then the hardiest lingerer ceased to talk of staying through October. There began to ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... no angelic mood. Her cheek was swollen and her face ached. The schoolroom was cold and smoky, for the fire refused to burn and the children were huddled about it in shivering groups. Anne sent them to their seats with a sharper tone than she had ever used before. Anthony Pye strutted to his with his usual impertinent swagger and she saw him whisper something to his seat-mate and then glance at her with ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in four languages hung upon the wall, and, to add to his cheerfulness, it advised him to leave all his valuables at the office of the hotel—as if he had penetrated a forest infested with brigands. The rigid writing warned him still further that they looked upon him as a probable sharper, and that his bill would be ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... was a very faithful steward, and very respectful to my lady; although sometimes, I thought she was sharper to him than to any one else; perhaps because she knew that, although he never said anything, he disapproved of the Hanburys being made to pay for the Earl Ludlow's ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sharper and clearer out of the darkness in the direction of the town, the first stroke of nine o'clock from the tower of the new church. Before the second stroke had sounded she was hanging by her two hands from the ledge. She ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... tap came a kind of little pattering and scratching, like baby taps, not quite sure of their own existence; then, had Grandpapa's and Grandmamma's ears been a very little sharper, they could not but have heard ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... Yes, even amongst wiser militants, how many wounds have been given and credits slain, for the poor victory of an opinion, or beggarly conquest of a distinction! Scholars are men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than Actius's razor. their pens carry farther, and give a louder report than thunder. I had rather stand the shock of a basilisko than in the fury of a merciless pen. It is not mere zeal to learning, or devotion to the muses, that wiser princes patron ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... see very distinctly the beautiful white face of the mistress pressed against the blue damask cushion, and clear in outline as she had once observed it on the background of ocean; and she noticed that the features were sharper and that the figure was thinner. From the silvery lamp-light the gray hair seemed to have caught a metallic lustre on the ripples that ebbed back from the blue-veined temples, and the woman looked like a marble snow-crowned image, draped ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... she found Bruce awaiting her. Since morning, mixed with her palpitating love and her desire to see him, there had been dread of this meeting. In the back of her mind the question had all day tormented her, should she, for his own interests, send him away? But sharper than this, sharper a hundredfold, was the fear lest the difference between their ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... had not been above half a minute when he felt a tremendous tug. Pulling up the line quickly, he found that he had captured a magnificent nine-pounder in splendid condition, the fish being very like a salmon in shape, make, and colour, excepting that it had a longer, sharper head, and a finer tail. Securing his prize, he at once put about and made for the shore, as he was anxious to reach the camp on the other side of the ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... some of these drawings, and pause over them awhile; and, first, one of those at Florence—the heads of a woman and a little child, set side by side, but each in its own separate frame. First of all, there is much pathos in the reappearance, in the fuller curves of the face of the child, of the sharper, more chastened lines of the worn and older face, which leaves no doubt that the heads are those of a little child and its mother. A feeling for maternity is indeed always characteristic of Leonardo; and this feeling is further indicated here by the half-humorous pathos of the diminutive, rounded ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... would detain him. From that on, there was nothing but sobs on her side, and explanations on his—explanations to which her love, direct and selfish, would not listen for a moment. The unreserve and unreason of her passion at last disgusted him. His tone grew sharper. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... about in a vain endeavor to escape from Riley's clutches, getting only a sharper cuff for his pains. Ben Berry, arriving presently, enjoyed the sport, while some of the smaller boys and girls, coming in, looked on the scene of torture in helpless pity. And ever, as more and more of ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... become of me?" thought Betty, as she heard the grindstone go round and round as the knife got sharper and sharper. "I look so like a pig they will kill me too, and make me into sausages if I don't run away. I'm tired of playing piggy, and I'd rather be washed a hundred times a day than be put ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... inconvenience that next year a sharper and much more drastic law was passed, by which it was laid down that every literary composition should make sense within the meaning of the Act, and should be original so far as the reading of the judge appointed for the trial of ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... whole body is one pain. I cannot stand on my legs any more. I stagger. I fall back on my bed. My eyes close and fill with smarting tears. I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot. My body becomes heavier and heavier and filled with sharper pain. My flesh is enraged ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... sister, Elsie, a school-teacher, came in. She had quicker movements and a sharper look than the stenographer and she bore strong resemblance to her father. Anna was the prettier of the two. We went down into the dining-room, where we found Russian tea, cake, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... because she knew that by him I had been brought for the present to that doubtful state of faith I now was in, through which she anticipated most confidently that I should pass from sickness unto health, after the access, as it were, of a sharper fit, which physicians call ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... came out into the road, and, catching Dick by the bridle, jerked him forward, using, at the same time, the customary language on such occasions, but Dick met this new ally with increased stubbornness, planting his fore feet more firmly and at a sharper angle ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... regard man as a complicated unity; you represent, if you do not suppose, the several capacities of his nature,—the different parts of it, sensational, emotional, intellectual, moral, spiritual,—as set off from one another by a sharper boundary line than nature acknowledges. They all work for immediate ends, indeed; but they all also work for, with, and upon each other, for other ends than their own. Yet, as they all exist in one indivisible ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... try to work with less water, as the boil is more liable to grain, which can be seen by an expert and avoided. Before putting on the boil see that there is sufficient fuel on the furnace to carry through the operation. To make up a fire during the process spoils the color and quality. The sharper the sugar is boiled the better ...
— The Candy Maker's Guide - A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling • Fletcher Manufacturing Company
... purse with her, but the wallet with her money was stuffed inside her blouse and made an uncomfortable lump there at her waist. But she hid this with her arm, feeling that she must be on the watch for some sharper all ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... the Yellow Book is fuller in scope and greater in detail than the other governmental publications, and while largely cumulative in its character, it serves to bring into a sharper light certain phases of ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... in favor of the resolution and only six against it, the six being all English names. McCord, Ross, Cuthbert, Gugy, and such like. If the practice of the avocats was sharp, the practice of the Governor was yet sharper. Down came the Governor-in-Chief in two days after the search for precedents had begun in the Assembly, in not the best of humour, to the Legislative Council Chamber. On the 26th of February, the ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... a much sharper fellow, could have helped a great deal, but his back was up at the first word, and he would do nothing but sulk. Moreover, George himself detected him doing away with some wood out of that which was to make Farmer Goodenough's farm gates, under colour that it was a remnant ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... soul with its effulgence. Such intensity of light, such warmth of colors, fill the dullest mind with inspiration; the blood is quickened in its circulation; the respiration is full and free; the intellect becomes clearer and sharper; the whole man is quickened into the highest condition of mental and physical vitality. Is it a matter of wonder, then, that the people of California should be brave, generous, and loyal—that they should have a high sense ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... then we'll leave you: the Air is far sharper than our anger, Sir, and these you may reserve to ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... wife and little daughter, 'Mid the fragrant Georgia bloom,"— Then his cry rang sharper, wilder, "Oh, God! pity all their gloom." And the wounded, in their death-hour, Talking of the loved ones' woes, Nearer drew unto each other, Till they ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... in the excitement of examining many other Christmas offerings, had rushed on, leaving the box of roses on Roberta's bed. The recipient took out a single rose and examined its stem. Thorns! She had never seen sharper ones—and not one had been removed. But ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... I didn't reason. I merely fled—like Orestes; fled like an automaton along the path we had come by. And was followed? Yes, yes. Glancing back across my shoulder, I saw that brute some twenty yards behind me, gaining on me. I broke into a sharper run. A few sickening moments later, he was beside me, scowling down into ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... mine; I soon discovered a real farm without spires and towers, whose outlines became distincter and sharper the nearer I came to it, and which, flanked by peat-stacks, looked much larger than it really was. Its inmates were unknown to me. Their clothes were poor, their furniture simple, but I knew that the heath-dweller ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... and peaked than nature had intended. It is true that Miss Clegg was always of a bony and nervous outline, but it seemed slowly but surely borne in upon her older friend that of late she had been rapidly becoming sharper in every way. Mrs. Lathrop felt that she ought to speak—that she ought not to lead her next door neighbor into the false belief that her sufferings were unnoticed by the affectionate spectacles forever turned her way,—and yet—Mrs. Lathrop being Mrs. ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... swallow when he pursues his prey, and all present cheered her with wonder. She had never danced so elegantly before. Her tender feet felt as if cut with sharp knives, but she cared not for it; a sharper pang had pierced through her heart. She knew this was the last evening she should ever see the prince, for whom she had forsaken her kindred and her home; she had given up her beautiful voice, and suffered unheard-of pain daily for him, while he knew nothing ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... which would continue to burn in her young heart. She had by then passed the round, soft baby period and had entered into that phase when bodies and legs grow long and slender and small faces lose their first curves and begin to show sharper modeling. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a winter in eastern France. None, indeed, were more imbued with the forthfaring spirit than these women, who were leaving, without regret, sheltered, comfortable lives to face hardships and brave dangers without a question. And no sharper proof of the failure of the old social order to provide for human instincts and needs could be found than the conviction they gave of new and vitalizing forces released in them. The timidities with which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wart-hog (see Phacochoerus aethiopicus, Fig. 67) the tusks in the upper jaw of the male curve upwards during the prime of life, and from being pointed serve as formidable weapons. The tusks in the lower jaw are sharper than those in the upper, but from their shortness it seems hardly possible that they can be used as weapons of attack. They must, however, greatly strengthen those in the upper jaw, from being ground so as to fit closely against their ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... circumstance to account. Some of our party would not buy of them, because they said they were sharpers, trying to get all they could out of people; but if every body who tries to do this is to be called a sharper, what is to become of respectable society, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the cold must have become monotonous. But this night's cold touched a sharper nerve of agony than any before. Our 'rest' came, by a refinement of cruelty, not immediately before dawn, but between 2.30 and 4.30 a.m. We were then on bleak uplands, swept by arctic winds. In ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... saw that the masts were exceedingly tall; they held enough canvas to propel ten ships. And each stick sloped back at so sharp an angle—much sharper than forty-five degrees—that the wind not only blew the craft along in its course, but ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... that he had heard. While prudent persons were already trembling at the King's effrontery and daring in the past, Henry was meditating a yet further step. He began to see now that the instinct of the country was, as always, sharper than that of the individual, and that these uneasy strivings everywhere rose from a very definite perception of danger. The idea of the King's supremacy, as represented by Cromwell, would not seem to be a very startling departure; similar protests of freedom ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... to know," he said. "I was for three years in a gambling house in Paris, where every other man was a sharper. I have been in places of the same sort in Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Italy. At first I was only a boy waiter, and as until evening there was nothing doing at these places, men would sometimes amuse themselves by teaching me tricks, easy ones to begin with, and ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... to hear you say that,' I returned quickly: 'you are just the sort of man, Max, to be hoodwinked by any designing person. I am less charitable than you, and women are sharper in these matters. I have already found out that Miss Darrell ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... water and swimming with swift strokes to the waiting boat; but Rex refusing absolutely to be pulled aboard. He only splashed and shook himself, scattering a very geyser of salt water on the tugging boys, and barked louder and sharper still as if he were doing ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... anyhow? When I think of my mother it all comes up again. When I was very little I would sit in a room with my mother and a crowd of her friends and they would say everything in front of me. I would see men and women go into rooms and I kept wondering what they did in there. I think I was quicker and sharper then than I am now. I think I was about 3 when I used to see them smoking and drinking. Then I used to think it was all right. I thought it was swell and that I would like to do it too. I thought about it a lot. Mother, you see, would ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... was sharper and more arduous work to come; this, merely a foretaste of the last, fierce stand of the besieged; a stand in which they knew they were fighting for everything, where defeat meant the second conquest of Mexico! From the batteries the assailants had captured to the foot of the castle seemed but ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... but instead of reflecting little Gluck's head, as he looked in he saw, meeting his glance from beneath the gold, the red nose and sharp eyes of his old friend of the mug, a thousand times redder and sharper than ever he had seen them ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... time he reached his shack the storm was beating up against the wind which had turned unexpectedly to the northeast. Mutterings of thunder grew to sharper booming. It was the first real thunderstorm of the season, but it was going to be a hard one, if looks meant anything. Irish went in and got his slicker and put it on, and then hesitated over riding on in search of the cattle and the men in pursuit ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... everything is quite still on board, and then let the boat drift alongside. Dance will hold on with the hook; we shall board her and take them by surprise as they did us, unless their watch is sharper than ours." ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... "emotional"—in love, anguish, ecstasy, adoration—is hidden from us too. Symptoms, appearances, are all that our intellects can discern: sudden irresistible inroads from it, all that our hearts can apprehend. The material for an intenser life, a wider, sharper consciousness, a more profound understanding of our own existence, lies at our gates. But we are separated from it, we cannot assimilate it; except in abnormal moments, we hardly know that it is. We now begin to attach at least a fragmentary meaning to the statement that "mysticism is ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... young I was a gay fellow—indeed, what might have been called "a perfect blade." I look old and rusty hanging here on the nail, but take me down, and though my voice is a little squeaky with old age, I can tell you a pretty tale. I am sharper than I look. Old scissors know more than you think. They say I am a little garrulous, and perhaps I may ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... contentedly, I could see they were precarious. I had paid more than was due; other lodgers fell into an opposite error, and forgot to pay Janet at all. Then, Janet being ignorant of all indirect modes of screwing money out of her lodgers, others in the same line of life, who were sharper than the poor, simple Highland woman, were enabled to let their apartments cheaper in appearance, though the inmates usually found them twice as dear in the ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... One puts up with anything. On this February day, Though the winds leap down the street, Wintry scourgings seem but play, And these later shafts of sleet —Sharper pointed than the first - And these later snows—the worst - Are as a half-transparent blind Riddled by rays from ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... my man," said Sanders, unpleasantly; "for I have a whip which bites sharper than the dragons in the trees and ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... her sofa, with her eyes closed, having had nothing to say during the discussion. They thought she had perhaps not heard it. Mr. Carleton's sharper eyes, however, saw that one or two tears were glimmering just under the eyelash. He bent down over her and ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... has now become so tough that no man can hurt you. Your strength is greater than that of ten elephants. Your foot is so swift that you can distance the wind. Your wit is sharper than the bulthorn. Let the man fear, but drive fear from your own breast forever; for of all your race you ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... thunderous voices. Downstream Aldous could see that the tumult grew less; from the rent in the mountain came the deeper, more distant-rolling thunder that they had heard on the other side of the range. And then, as he looked, a sharper cry broke from Joanne, and she dragged him back from the ledge, and pointed toward ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... think it right to tell lies to children, even on this account, that they are sharper than we think them, and will soon find out what we are doing; and our example will be a very bad training for them. And so of equivocation: it is easy of imitation, and we ourselves shall be sure to get the worst of ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... boisterous embrace with a martyr-like expression. Zell was evidently a privileged character, the spoiled pet of the household. But a new voice was now heard that was sharper than the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Clyde steamers was very keen. Foremost among the competitors was the late Mr. David Hutchinson, who, though delighted with the Mountaineer, built by the Thomsons in 1853, did not hesitate to have her lengthened forward to make her sharper, so as to secure her ascendency in speed during the ensuing season. The results were satisfactory; and his steamers grew and grew, until they developed into the celebrated Iona and Cambria, which ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... into minutes, the minutes into hours, as they waited there, fascinated. Already the sharper rattle of musketry broke out on the hills south of the Saar, and the projectiles fell fast in the little river, beyond which the single spire of Saarbrueck rose, capped with the smoke ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... that he could not refuse me the small sum of eight reals, as he knew me to be a man of honor, without either office or pension; my parents having brought me up to nothing: yet this knave, who is as great a thief as Cacus, and as arrant a sharper as Andradilla, would give me but four reals! Think, my lord governor, what a shameless and unconscionable fellow he is! But as I live had it not been for your worship coming, I would have made him disgorge his winnings, and taught him how to ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... God, however, has left us the law of a gentleman's sword to avenge its master's wrong. The Baron de St. Castin will soon return to vindicate his own honor, and whether or no, I vow to heaven, my Lady, that the traitor who has wronged that sweet girl will one day have to try whether his sword be sharper than that of La Corne St. Luc! But pshaw! I am talking bravado like an Indian at the war post. The story of those luckless New England wives has carried ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... vedette. Juancho would have passed him by without recognising him, or thinking of seeking his enemy under the round jacket and felt hat of a manolo, but Militona, concealed in the corner of her window, had not been deceived for an instant by the young man's disguise. Love has sharper eyes than hatred. Devoured by anxiety, the manola asked herself what could be the projects of the persevering cavalier, and dreaded the terrible scene that must ensue should Juancho discover him. Andres, his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... young man, as I said before, of good appearance"—with a glance at Wyatt's sumptuous apparel—"and some little brains"—another and a sharper glance, "One who will obey orders if he breaks owners, who will stand without being tied, and who doesn't especially care whether school keeps or not. I would particularly request that he leave his money, his memory, acquired good habits, if any, and his ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... corners, or turning their heads with curious glances. They were expectant and appeased as if that old man, who looked at no one, had possessed the secret of their uneasy indignations and desires, a sharper vision, a clearer knowledge. And indeed standing there amongst them, he had the uninterested appearance of one who had seen multitudes of ships, had listened many times to voices such as theirs, had already ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... hath gone. For as the same doe lie vnder the climats of Briton, Aniou, Poictou in France, betweene 46 and 49 degrees, so can they not so much differ from the temperature of those countries: vnlesse vpon the outcast lying open vnto the Ocean and sharper windes, it must in deede be subiect to more colde, then further within the land, where the mountaines are interposed, as walles and bulwarkes, to defend and to resist the asperitie and rigor of the sea weather. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... a bit sharper. He heard me out, looked at my deceased poppies, and arranged a conference with a bigwig from the State Department. Then things got really messy. When I pointed out that in a few weeks every damned opium plant in Asia would be deader than the Ming Dynasty, this little creep from Foggy Bottom ...
— Revenge • Arthur Porges
... no power at all. She was pierced by a sharper sense of her situation than had ever come to her before, and that had been enough. She was one too many in the world. She must give place, and she must not be long about it. A ringing was in her ears; a darkness was around her. But she called back ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... train bearing the Brabazons Londonwards steamed out of the station. She brushed her hand across her eyes as she hopped briskly into the car which had brought them to the station, giving the chauffeur the order "Home!" in a sharper voice than she usually employed towards her servants. "Drat the man! It looks as though a single engagement has demoralised ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... that he had thought much and deeply of the future which lay before him. If, as now appeared probable, he should live to man's estate, his life must, at best, be one long endurance, rendered all the sharper and harder to bear because within that helpless body dwelt a soul, which was, more than that of most men, alive to every thing beautiful, ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... provoked a louder laugh. Just then another gust came down the chimney and sent a wave of mingled heat and cold through the room. The windows rattled louder with the wind and crackled sharper with the pelting sleet. The ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... the Sunday services and the parochial work, and had been very urgent in impressing on Mr Crawley that the duties were to be left entirely to himself. Hence had come some bitter words, in which Mr Crawley, though no doubt he said the sharper things of the two, had not been able to vanquish his enemy so completely as he had done on ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... our boys of a similar grade, but seem sharper and more intelligent," he said. "But surely," pointing to Rodney, "that boy is not one of the—Arabs. Why, he looks ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... tortured by the idea that his wife was suffering, dying, and that he was not near to help, to assist, to assuage. He forgot that they were penniless, homeless; all was lost in a boundless pity, and he listened to the footsteps growing sharper as they approached, and duller as they went. At last the sound of the latchkey was heard in the lock, and Dick started to his feet. It ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... first; I see you use both the die and the furnace. Hem! this piece is not bad—you have struck it from an iron die?—right—it makes the impression sharper than plaster of Paris. But you take the poorest and the most dangerous part of the trade in taking the home market. I can put you in a way to make ten times as much—and with safety. Look at this!"—and Monsieur Giraumont took a forged Spanish dollar from his ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trees crashed and whistled in the gusts, those farther off contributed a humming bass like the roar of cities; and yet, to any man less absorbed, there must have risen at times over this turmoil of the winds, the sharper note of the human voice from the settlement. There all was activity. Attwater, stripped to his trousers and lending a strong hand of help, was directing and encouraging five Kanakas; from his lively voice, and their more lively efforts, it was to be gathered ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... at best a puny rivulet, and depending for their corrasion on intermittent floods, meet on equal terms the great Colorado, the giant that never for a second ceases its ferocious attack. Admitting that the sharper declivity of the Kanab would enhance its power of corrasion, nevertheless we should expect to see it approach the Grand Canyon by leaps and bounds, like the Havasupai farther down, but, on the contrary, there are parts that appear ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... in a strange land, the scoundrels will accost them in their own language. Glad to hear the mother-tongue once more, the emigrant readily enters into conversation with the fellow, and reveals to him his destination, his plans, and the amount of money he has with him. The sharper, after some pleasantries meant to lull the suspicions of his victim, offers to show him where he can purchase his railroad tickets at a lower rate than at the office in the Landing Depot, and, if the emigrant is willing, conducts him to a house in Washington, Greenwich, West, or some neighboring ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... I said nothing. The months continued to come and go, and still the famine-edge of their love grew the sharper. Never did they dull it with a permitted love-clasp. They ground and whetted it on self-denial, and sharper and sharper it grew. This went on until even I doubted. Did the gods sleep? I wondered. Or were they dead? I laughed to myself. The man and the woman had made a miracle. They had outwitted ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... lips of Ludlow. "Let thy ship feign the silence of a wreck, but, in truth, let there be watchfulness and preparation even to her store-rooms! You have done well, Captain Ludlow, to be on the alert, though I have known sharper eyes than those of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... sergeant explained that it was the prisoner appointed to buy provisions, paying off out of the food money what was owing to a sharper who had won from or lent money to the prisoners, and receiving back little tickets made of playing cards. When they saw the convoy soldier and a gentleman, those who were nearest became silent, and followed them with looks of ill-will. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... the hard-to-understand,"—it says there,—"we firstlings of a yet untried future—we require for a new end also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier than all healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longeth to experience the whole range of hitherto recognised values and desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all the coasts ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... one second ponder it. It was an obvious first crude cast-about In the important reckoning of means For his great end, a strong monarchic line. The more advanced the more it profits us; For sharper, then, the quashing of such views, And wreck of that conjunction in the aims Of France and Russia, marked so much of late As jeopardizing ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the man. The loss of serenity, the dark evidences of inward conflict, of yielding against conviction, of consequent dissatisfaction with self and gradual deterioration, make between his past and future a break as clear, and far sharper than, the startling increase of radiancy that attends the Battle of the Nile, and thenceforth shines with undiminished intensity to the end. The lustre of his well-deserved and world-wide renown, the consistency and ever-rising merit of his professional ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... upon their oil stove. Although the year was in its last months it was still warm and sunny, and Mrs. Minto clambered about the room half-dressed, with her grey hair hanging behind in ragged tails. With her bodice off she looked more than ever meagre, her thin face sharper and greyer than of old, and her movements more uncertain. As Sally watched her mother she realised that the unsightly walls and battered furniture were just of a piece with the creeping figure. What she did not understand was ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... their boats till a safe opportunity seemed to present itself, and then dart in and capture a Spanish village and carry off all the pretty women they could find. It was a pleasant business, and was very popular. The Spaniards built these watchtowers on the hills to enable them to keep a sharper lookout on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Washington's "cold, unmilitary conduct" during the War of Independence, and accused his administration, since the new constitution, of "vanity," "ingratitude," "corruption," "bare-faced treachery," and "the tricks of a sharper." He closed this wretched outbreak of peevishness and wounded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Over the gods themselves, lord of all loves, Ruler of Pleasure's realm. Laughing he came Unto the Tree, bearing his bow of gold Wreathed with red blooms, and arrows of desire Pointed with five-tongued delicate flame which stings The heart it smites sharper than poisoned barb. And round him came into that lonely place Bands of bright shapes with heavenly eyes and lips Singing in lovely words the praise of Love To music of invisible sweet chords, So witching, that it seemed the night ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... your letters; figures are a great deal sharper than letters. I'll make one a night ...
— Three People • Pansy
... of clamoring at her like a lot of ungrateful little brutes and wanting the whole earth, why don't you show her you are grateful for what she's doing?" went on Captain Dillingham in a sharper tone. ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... death-bell, or the murmur of many people in conversation. 'Twas thus M'Mahon felt during the whole procession. Sometimes he thought it was relief, and again he felt as if it was only the mere alternation of suffering into a sharper and more dreadful sorrow; for, change as it might, there lay tugging at his heart the terrible consciousness that she, I the bride of his youthful love and the companion of his larger and more manly affection—the ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... which the future may show to be well taken. This band contains a number of young men who seem to be in earnest, and studious; and some of them possess noticeable talent. Their leader, Mr. George W. Sharper, is painstaking, and ambitious to ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... fury of the storm culminated in a blaze of white light that seemed to spring upon them from all sides at once, with a shout as of fiends let loose; and, through the echoing after-roll of thunder, came a sharper, harsher sound,—the death ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... churches, great and cold, whose service moved with slumbrous calm, and his ardent soul was chilled. He found others where activity bristled and cheerfulness prevailed, but where the world held court as obvious as in the market square; and from these he turned away with a still sharper grief. He found other congregations built in strife and schism, but with some fragrance still of the name of Jesus Christ, and rejoiced that ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... In any case abnormalities of this kind appear to be of a special type as compared with ordinary fluctuating variations. Darwin pointed out this difference; Bateson (Bateson, "Materials for the study of Variation", London, 1894, page 5.) has attempted to make the distinction sharper, at the same time emphasising its ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... against her! Why should she keep, through years and silent absence, The holy tablets of her virgin faith True to a traitor's name! Oh, blame her not; It were a sharper grief to think her worthless Than to be what I am! To-day,—to-day! They, said "To-day!" This day, so wildly welcomed— This clay, my soul had singled out of time And mark'd for bliss! This day! oh, ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... over the money, his face drawing into closer and sharper lines as the amount grew, under his fingers, to the sum ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... to me you are mighty stupid, my friend. They hid away the real nugget, and put this in its place. That Yankee is a good deal sharper than you are, and he wasn't going to run ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... divisions in our line enabled us to resume from the 4th to the 8th a vigorous offensive. On the 10th and 11th this offensive, brought up against fresh and sharper German attacks, was checked. Before it could be renewed the arrival of fresh reinforcements had to be awaited, which were dispatched to the north on Nov. 12. By the 14th our troops had again begun to progress, barring the road to Ypres against the German attacks, and inflicting on the enemy, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the Turks. On the other hand, in describing a certain battle I was allowed to speak of divisions of Lowland troops, Welshmen and Londoners, allusions which would convey (if there were anything to give away) precisely as much information to the dull old Turk and his sharper Hun companion in arms as though the 52nd, 53rd, and 60th Divisions had been explicitly designated. This practice seemed in effect to be designed more with the object of keeping our people at home in the dark, of forbidding them glory in the deeds of their children and brothers, than ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... to his parents. ("Hear, hear!" and an audible sob from Mr. Kitterbell.) But should he not be what we could wish—should he forget in after times the duty which he owes to them—should they unhappily experience that distracting truth, "how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child"'—Here Mrs. Kitterbell, with her handkerchief to her eyes, and accompanied by several ladies, rushed from the room, and went into violent hysterics in the passage, leaving her better half in almost as bad ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... more distinct. Yes, the sounds were sharper. The softness had gone, developing into the rhythmic beat of hard hoofs speeding from either direction. Two horses were galloping down the trail at a rapid pace, and quickly it became evident that their meeting must occur somewhere almost directly beneath the watchful ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... through the light of her own. The look of energy in her face was a powerful auxiliary in the spell her eyes exercised over mankind. The mother's face was oval—of pure outline and broad design; the daughter's was longer, sharper, the forehead higher and framed by abundant light brown hair. Her eyebrows were straight, her nose was aquiline, her chin decided, her lips firmly cut. The beauty of a Valkyrie, but not so defiant. Her magnetic attraction came from enthusiasm, from ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... tread across the lawn as I stepped back into my own grounds to enter the pavilion. But as I left the path and put foot inside the wall, I heard a far, faint sound like the harsh closing of a door in timid hands, followed by another bark from the dog, louder and sharper than the first—for he did not recognize my Aline as mistress, though I had striven for six months to teach him the place she held ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... There were more and sharper words from the man; then a sudden rustle; she had sprung to her feet. Mrs Brooks, thinking that the speaker was coming to rush out of the door, hastily ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Diavolo answered, "we don't think it's fair for Angelica only to have a beastly governess to teach her when she knows as much as I do, and is a precious sight sharper." ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the customary Pandourade," and what form it would take this morning. "Close on five o'clock; and not a mouse stirring! We are not to have our Pandourade, then?" On a sudden, noise bursts out; noise enough, sharp fire among the Free-corps people; fire growing ever sharper, noisier, for the next half-hour, but nothing whatever to be seen. "Battalion Plothow had soon got its clothes on, all to the spatterdashes; and took rank to right and left of the FLECHE, and of my two guns, in front of its post: but on account of the thick ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... a prolonged and grave roaring was heard, with which was mingled a sort of sharper shuddering. Tom stood up and stretched out his hand toward a dense thicket, a mile or ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... a sharper puff than usual came, the Buzzard gave a lurch that Malvoise in vain tried to counteract by using his ailerons. These balancing devices are almost automatic in their control, and usually can be depended on to control an airship to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... king put English to the horn[1], To England thus spake England over sea, "In peace be friend, in war my enemy"; Then countering pride with pride, and lies with scorn, Broke with the man[2] whose ancestor had borne A sharper pain for no more injury. How otherwise should free men deal and be, With patience frayed and loyalty outworn? No act of England's shone more generous gules Than that which sever'd once for all the strands Which bound you English. You may search the lands In vain, and vainly rummage in the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... therefore attempt to persuade me, that a Lord Lieutenant is to be dispatched over in great haste before the ordinary time, and a Parliament summoned by anticipating a prorogation, merely to put an hundred thousand pounds into the pocket of a sharper, by the ruin ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... means illiterate but it is upon illiteracy in the mass that they must depend to carry out their plans. An ignorant voter may be an honest one but unless he is intelligent enough to study public questions for himself he is an easy prey for the political sharper. It is beyond the power of the pen to portray what a magnificent government would be possible with an educated electorate. The idea can be approximated only when we consider how much we have been able to accomplish even with all the inefficiency, vice and ignorance ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... of those precious and delightful scrapbooks people disinter in old country houses; its very poverty of synthetic power leaves its ingredients, the cuttings from and imitations of Plato, the recipe for the hatching of eggs, the stern resolutions against scoundrels and rough fellows, all the sharper and brighter. There will always be found people to read in it, over and above the countless multitudes who will continue ignorantly to use its name for everything most alien to More's ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... can make arrangements—and I'd like nothing better than for Dick to drop what he's doing and get into something constructive and useful like this. But Dick cannot do it alone; he's too unsettled, and too inexperienced to cope with some of the sharper ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... lovely summer day which followed the events which have been described. The sky was of the deepest blue, with a few white, fleecy clouds drifting lazily across it, and the air was filled with the low drone of insects or with a sudden sharper note as bee or bluefly shot past with its quivering, long-drawn hum, like an insect tuning-fork. As the friends topped each rise which leads up to the Crystal Palace, they could see the dun clouds of London stretching ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... effect of this terrible speech, or perhaps he wished to judge of the effect of it, like those who, suffering from a chronic pain, and seeking to break the monotony of that suffering, touch their wound to procure a sharper pang. Anne of Austria was near fainting; her eyes, open but meaningless, ceased to see for several seconds; she stretched out her arms toward her other son, who supported and embraced her without ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... question "Materialism or Antimaterialism" still agitated the Georgia Augusta, in whose province the conflict had assumed still sharper forms, owing to Rudolf Wagner's speech during the convention of the Guttingen naturalists three years prior ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... queer scarlet glow which looked as if a magazine had been hit. For about two hours the firing was intense, and then it died down. But it was towards the north that I kept turning my head. There seemed to be something different in the sound there, something sharper in the report of the guns, as if shells were dropping in a narrow valley whose rock walls doubled the echo. Had the Russians by any blessed ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Opposition. "We shall," adds Rose, "drag on a wretched existence and expire not creditably. What next will happen God only knows."[702] Canning was equally annoyed at the new Coalition.[703] His sharp tongue and still sharper pen had deeply annoyed Addington. Who, indeed, would not have resented this reference in the "Apothecary's ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... to feel Grief sharper than the tyrant's steel, And bosom big with swelling thought From ancient ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... stand sometimes, with her arms folded, leaning on a stile, and idly watching her men at work, till they wondered what had happened to their mistress. She lost a little of the color from her cheeks, and the full moulded lines of her chin grew sharper. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... complaints brought against clergymen, either of scandalous lives or of notoriously Laudian opinions and practices—a very large number of clergymen had been placed on the black books, and some actually ejected, before the commencement of the war. But, after the war began, sharper action became necessary. For now the Parliament had to provide for what were called "the plundered ministers" —i.e. for those Puritan ministers who, driven from their parsonages in various parts of the country by the King's ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... "Leddy know he can't fight. Leddy know there is only two of us!" His tone was without satire, but its sting was sharper than satire; that of an Indian shrug over a negligible quantity. It started Prather on all fours ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer |
