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More "Acuteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speedy and unembarrassed judgments that have so injured him with the profession. If he followed his course, he would see him, soon after the opening of the House of Lords, addressing their Lordships on some intricate question of Law, with an acuteness that drew approbation even from his opponents, or, on some all-engrossing political topic, casting firebrands into the camp of the enemy, and awakening them from the complacent repose of conviction to the hot contest with ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... distinguished when the difference is any way considerable, but not when it is minute, for want of some common measures, which perhaps may never come to be discovered. In these nice cases, supposing the acuteness of the sense equal, the greater attention and habit in such things will have the advantage. In the question about the tables, the marble-polisher will unquestionably determine the most accurately. But notwithstanding this want of a common measure for settling many ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... previous day, or whether others had joined that tooth; Ben-Tovit's entire mouth and his head were filled with terrible sensations of pain, as though he had been forced to chew thousands of sharp, red-hot nails, he took some water into his mouth from an earthen jug—for a minute the acuteness of the pain subsided, his teeth twitched and swayed like a wave, and this sensation was even pleasant as compared with ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... himself: "You have heard the latest theories about old age, that it is due to microbic poisons secreted in the intestines and penetrating the intestinal walls? Well, in premature senility the symptoms are the same as in senility, only mental acuteness is not so impaired." ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... and one son, who, when I first came here, was about twelve years old. Of the acuteness of that woman's sufferings, of the gentle and enduring manner in which she bore them, of the agony of solicitude with which she reared that boy, no one can form an adequate conception. Heaven forgive me the supposition, if it be an uncharitable one, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... times gone by. When at last his joints grew too stiff, and other troubles of age came upon him, he settled ashore in some little cottage and devoted himself to quiet meditation of a pessimistic kind. Every morning he rolled down to the quay and criticised with cruel acuteness the habits of the younger generation of mariners; every evening he took his place in the tavern parlour and instructed the assembled skippers. At last the time came for him to go: then the men whom he had scored with ropes'-ends in his day were the first to mourn ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... every plan for her improvement suggested by her new mamma, (for she never called her by any other name,) she engaged with docility and eagerness; and her behaviour and her progress exceeded the most sanguine hopes that I had formed as to the softness of her temper and the acuteness of her genius. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... as the crew settled down into the well-known long sweep, what we may call consciousness returned; and, while every muscle in his body was straining, and his chest heaved, and his heart leaped, every nerve seemed to be gathering new life, and his senses to wake into unwonted acuteness. He caught the scent of wild thyme in the air, and found room in his brain to wonder how it could have got there, as he had never seen the plant near the river, or smelt it before. Though his eye never wandered from the back of Diogenes, he seemed to ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... clergymen even then avowed their desire, that the next time they were brought up to Oxford to give a vote, it might be in order to put down the Popery of the Movement. There was another reason still, and quite as important. Monsignore Wiseman, with the acuteness and zeal which might be expected from that great Prelate, had anticipated what was coming, had returned to England by 1836, had delivered Lectures in London on the doctrines of Catholicism, and created ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... those figures and metaphors in the original poets, which, stripped of their justifying reasons, and converted into mere artifices of connexion or ornament, constitute the characteristic falsity in the poetic style of the moderns; and as far as he has, with equal acuteness and clearness, pointed out the process by which this change was effected, and the resemblances between that state into which the reader's mind is thrown by the pleasureable confusion of thought from an unaccustomed train of words and images; and that ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of the Son, and of the ever-present Comforter; of creation, redemption, and sanctification, and all the deep truths of the faith, receiving them with the belief that is born rather of love than of reason; for though the acuteness of the boy's questions and remarks often obliged Reginald to bring his own strong intellect to bear on them, they arose from no spirit of antagonism, but were the natural outcome of a thoughtful, inquiring mind. Sometimes, however, Wikkey was too tired ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... Thus the revolution was completed. Edward, Gaveston, Lancaster, and Pembroke had each in their turn been tried and found wanting. Thanks to the jealousies of the barons, his own spasmodic energy, and the acuteness of the Despensers, Edward was still to have another chance, under the guidance of his new friends. We shall see how the restored rule of the Despensers was blighted by the same incompetence and selfishness which had ruined their predecessors in power. The ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... himself back in the corner of the wide sofa and crossing his long legs. He had thought more deeply on a good many subjects than the majority of his acquaintance supposed; with the consequence that he occasionally surprised his fellow-peers by the acuteness of his observations in debate. Lord Fallowfeild, it may be added, took his recently acquired office of hereditary legislator with a commendable mixture of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... and acuteness of this analysis! In what a superior style is this struggle between spirit and the suffering of nature developed! How correctly the author has seized each of the phenomena in which the animal element and the human element manifest themselves, the constraint of nature and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a man turning away in weariness from the controversies, the insincerities, and the pretentiousness of the intellectualists around him, has exclaimed, "Give me my Horace." But Horace with all his bonhommie, his common sense, and his acuteness, is but the representative of a narrow Roman coterie of the Augustan age. How thin, flimsy, and unspiritual does he appear in comparison with the marvellous depth, the spiritual insight, the tenderness and power of expression ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the decanter out of which Lord De Vayne drank?" said one of the seniors after a pause, and with an intense belief in the acuteness of the suggestion. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... friend. This was not the only occasion on which of late Durrance had surprised his friends by an unusual acuteness. Calder glanced uncomfortably at the letter which he was still ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... Brahmans in the country of Anga, called Vrikshaghata. In it there lived a rich sacrificing Brahman named Vishnusvamin. And he had a wife equal to himself in birth. And by her he had three sons born to him, who were distinguished for preternatural acuteness. In course of time they grew up to be young men. One day, when he had begun a sacrifice, he sent those three brothers to the sea to fetch a turtle. So off they went, and when they had found a turtle, the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Thus it became the typically American region. Even the New Englander, who was shut out from the frontier by the Middle region, tarrying in New York or Pennsylvania on his westward march, lost the acuteness of his ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... wrong, he always had the best of the argument with them. His reasoning powers were striking. I have had harder work maintaining an argument with him in a watch, even when I knew myself to be right, and he was only doubting, than I ever had before, not from his obstinacy, but from his acuteness. Give him only a little knowledge of his subject, and, among all the young men of my acquaintance at college, there is not one whom I had not rather meet in an argument than this man. I never answered ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... could but die. His mind was wanting in the stamina for self-support; it was a plant that would twine beautifully round something stronger than itself, but if repulsed, or torn away, it had no choice but to wither on the ground. Dorothy's acuteness taught her that severity would crush the spirit of the child, and she nurtured him with the gentle care of one who handles a butterfly. Her husband manifested an equal affection, although it grew daily ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... developed by austerity of life, was of the highest acuteness. Sight, touch, and taste in him acquired the most exquisite delicacy. He was wont to say that he feared no poison in his food, since he could discriminate the least adulteration of natural flavors. His mental perspicacity was equally subtle. As a boy he could recite thirty lines ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... acute keenness of any sense, by reason of age or experience should be conserved.[14] Such acuteness is often the result of some need, and, unless consciously preserved, will ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... must not be forgotten that at a place for action like Petersburg, the Minister will chiefly have to look to his instructions from home, while at a place of observation, as Lord Palmerston justly calls Frankfort, everything depends upon the acuteness and impartiality of the observer, and upon the confidence with which he may be able to inspire those from whom alone accurate information can be obtained. Lord Cowley possesses eminently these qualities, and Sir H. Seymour has at all times shown himself equal to acting ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... But this very acuteness of apprehension induces a caution in not resenting the assaults of wit, unless the wounded can retort with success by a similar weapon, or that the attack has been so obvious that he is justified in resenting it by a less ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... since,—lovely, smiling, enchanting,—and then the sombre brain-wave, reminding of the hopelessness, the mockery of life's inexorable circumstance, would roll in upon his mind; and heart would seem tightened, crushed, strangled with a pain that was actually physical—of such acuteness indeed, that, had that organ been weak, he would be in danger of falling dead on the spot. And this was a part of the penalty he had to pay for his ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... skin beside her father. He smiled faintly and stretched a hand for hers, and her fingers slipped between his, cool and strong against the lifeless dryness of his palm. She gave back his smile bravely, her eyes steadfast. She had no desire for tears, no acuteness of sensation. A weight as heavy as the world lay on her, crushing out struggle and resistance. She knew that he was dying. When they told her there was no doctor in the camp her flickering hope had gone out. Now she was prepared to sit by him and wait with a lethargic patience beyond ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... employed himself again in reading the public journals of France and of foreign countries; he read assiduously all periodical works of a political tendency; he studied these productions; he investigated them with acuteness, and he could well divine the meaning of a writer who was compelled to be silent, and conjecture the nature of intelligence which an editor was forced ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... society, with its long and deep-hidden processes of growth, its innumerable intricacies and far-off historic complexities, be as an open book to any reader of its pages who brings acuteness and passion, but no patience nor calm accuracy of meditation? Objects of thought and observation far simpler, more free from all blinding and distorting elements, more accessible to direct and ocular inspection, are by rational consent reserved for the calmest and most austere moods ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... the greatest questions of strategy were discussed by those who carried their packs as common soldiers in the ranks. Movements and manoeuvres were criticised, attacked, defended, ridiculed, and condemned, with a degree of acuteness and knowledge that showed the enormous progress the nation had made in military science, and with what ease the republic could recruit her officers from the ranks ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... year 1819. There are, indeed, few books in the English language which contain passages of greater power, feeling, and eloquence than this work, which delineate frailty and vice with more energy and acuteness, or describe historical scenes with such bold imagery and such glowing language. We remember the opinion of a writer in the Edinburgh Review, soon after the publication of Anastasius. With a degree of pleasantry and acumen peculiar to northern criticism, he asks, "Where has ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... noble. (It may seem improbable to the unthinking reader that a timid and alarmed maiden should be able to read the character of a foe by his features under such circumstances. But those very circumstances tended to produce such acuteness. And this is not only the case with human beings, but even with dumb brutes—for, at the moment they are about to be assailed, they invariably and instinctively look the assailant in the eye, mercy being the only remaining hope.) Again the young warrior turned ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... two ways of settling these questions—adjudication and compromise. The difficulties of adjudication were great; I think insuperable. Whatever acuteness and diligence could do has been done. One person in particular, whose talents and industry peculiarly fitted him for such investigations, and of whom I can never think without regret, Mr Hyde Villiers, devoted himself to the examination with an ardour and a perseverance, which, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... uniformity of the institutions and customs. "I opposed him occasionally," says Mueller, "and he entered into discussion. Quite impartially and truly, as before God, I must say that the variety of his knowledge, the acuteness of his observations, the solidity of his understanding (not dazzling wit), his grand and comprehensive views, filled me with astonishment, and his manner of speaking to me with love for him. By his genius and his disinterested ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... race, has remarked their intense keenness of vision. Their eyes, for acuteness, and capability of discerning distant objects, resemble those of the eagle or the lynx; and their cat-like tread among the grass and leaves, seems so light as scarcely to shake off the dew drops. Thus they advance on their expedition rapidly and in profound silence, unless some ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... several times set forth, and several times answered. Mr. Lowe has seen these answers, but does not allude to them, far less attempt to meet them. There are, no doubt, individuals, who show in their public speaking the outward and visible signs of a greater degree of acuteness than they can summon to guide their private thinking. If Mr. Lowe be not one of these, if the power of his mind in the closet be at all comparable to the power of his tongue in the House, it may be suspected that his reserve with ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... when sight is lost the sense of touch and hearing increase to almost unbelievable acuteness—Rush knew that. The blind often also develop a sense almost like radar which allows them to perceive an object ahead of them and gives them the ability to ...
— Now We Are Three • Joe L. Hensley
... man, as a rule, that they are growing better, because he hopes to turn them to account. It is, however, always a purely empirical question; and in the solution of it, the observer's eye may acquire a singular acuteness by the comparative study of as many nations as possible, especially of those which have ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... Jew, once taunted Mendelssohn with being a Jew and yet conducting a "Passion Play." The gibe was a home-thrust and a cruel one, since Mendelssohn had neither the wit nor the mental acuteness to avoid the pink of the man who was hated by Jew and Christian alike. Towards the exiled Heine, Mendelssohn had only a patronizing pity—"Why should any man offend the people in power?" he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... examining and registering a lady's features one after another, like the articles of a bill of lading; but the cold and systematic gallantry of a Frenchman is not so scrupulous.—The officer, however, who is employed for this purpose here, is civil, and I suspected the infinity of my nose, and the acuteness of Mad. de 's chin, might have disconcerted him; but he extricated himself very decently. My nose is enrolled in the order of aquilines, and the old lady's chin pared off to a "menton ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... that there are many among the despised slaves as amiable and accomplished as herself. Such, at least, was the account she gave us of their condition, that we felt convinced of the superiority possessed by many, in moral worth and intellectual acuteness, above their oppressors."—E. S. Abdy, Journal of a Residence and Tour in the United States of America from April, 1833, to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... that it may well seem incredible. Yet we cannot think that we have misrepresented the tendency of the argument; though, of course, we have given no ideas of the acuteness and flexibility of the reasoning, the extent of the knowledge, and mastery of logic, in this work. That such a position should be taken by a religious man, in the supposed interest of Christianity, is ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... purpose, conscientious maintenance of opinion, and pursuit of public objects with disregard of self, was one of very high example. So averse was Mr. Dilke to every kind of display that his name appears to none of the literary investigations which were conducted by him with an acuteness wonderful as his industry, and it was in accordance with his express instructions that the literary journal which his energy and self-denial had established kept silence ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... whistling of the golden orioles, which are plentiful in the park. I started at last a conversation. I directed it to suit my plans, for however much my mind is closed against influences that have no bearing upon my feeling, within their sphere I have a well-nigh redoubled presence of mind,—an acuteness of perception, as have those plunged into a hypnotic trance, and in a given direction see more clearly than people in their normal state. We passed speedily on to personal topics. I spoke about myself in the confidential tone in which one speaks to those nearest, who alone ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... am sure I often cover my face, or turn it away, for it seems as if she saw one change colour, though she has been blind these twenty years. She is worth visiting, were it but to say you have seen a blind and paralytic old woman have so much acuteness of perception and dignity of manners. I assure you, she might be a countess from her language and behaviour. Come, you must go to see Alice; we are not a quarter of a mile from ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the Euthydemus and Gorgias, by Dr. Routh, president of Magdalen College, Oxford. This last editor has enriched his edition of these two dialogues with very valuable and copious philological and critical notes, in which he has displayed no less learning than judgment, no less acuteness than taste. He appears indeed to me to be one of the best and most modest of philologists; and it is to be hoped that he will be imitated in what he has done by ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... of the theory of evolution) of the first man; but we can get a very tolerable idea of the Paulo-prehistoric man, if I may so say—of man as he existed some short time (as we now reckon shortness), some ten thousand years, before history began. Investigators whose acuteness and diligence can hardly be surpassed—Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Tylor are the chiefs among them—have collected so much and explained so much that they have left a fairly ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... into sympathy; his thin, long nose, ran out as if it was eager to bore into the nature of things in general; his sleek, thin, black hair was stuck eagerly forward, and all his motions and evolutions expressed a dry, cautious acuteness. The great man poured out a big tumbler half full of raw spirits, and gulped it down without a word. The little man stood tiptoe, and putting his head first to one side and then the other, and snuffing considerately in the directions of the various bottles, ordered at last a mint julep, in ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Paltravi still alive, but very low and very much troubled because he had not heard from Jaqui. The latter soon perceived it would be utterly useless to try to deceive or in any way to mislead the old man, who, although in sad bodily condition, still preserved his acuteness of mind. Jaqui had to tell him everything, and he began with Florino and ended with himself, not omitting to tell how the lady had recognized the situation, and what she had said. Then, fearing the consequences of ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... "The acuteness of animal senses has its drawbacks. These dogs must have heard some sound in the street that is entirely inaudible to us. Well, Rupert, what is it? Lie down again and go ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... inherent attribute of all savages to be far in advance of the whites in the alertness and acuteness of two or three of the senses, the baby Pawnee was wonderfully so. He could hear the footsteps of a bear or the scratching of a panther, or even the tramp of a horse's hoof on the soft sod, long before the old trapper could make out the slightest sound. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... about to perform an action of doubtful propriety, he is never at a loss to find arguments to defend the course he is about to pursue, and though he may not be able to satisfy his conscience, he can, at least to some extent, deaden the acuteness of its pangs. Richard Ashton endeavored to justify his present action to himself, in the moment which intervened between his new-formed resolution and its consummation. The reader is no doubt aware, from experience, ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... the originals in his valuable collection. Mr. Pinkerton was born at Edinburgh, in February 1758, and died at Paris in May 1826. "He was," says Mr. Dawson Turner, "a man of a capacious mind, great acuteness, strong memory, restless activity, and extraordinary perseverance: the anecdotes contained in this correspondence afford a striking proof of the power of talent,, and industry to raise their possessor in the scale of society, as ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... be a witness of her humiliation; and accordingly he rang the bell, and ordered the negro to be sent up. Nero entered the room, and observing the triumphant chuckle of the Dead Man, and the dejected look of his mistress, with his natural acuteness instantly comprehended the true state of affairs. The contempt with which Julia had treated him was still fresh in his memory, and led him to view that lady with hatred; he therefore determined to add to her chagrin and hatred on the present occasion, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... shrewdest plungers and manipulators, men to whom the tape yields up its secrets as the penitent to the priest; to whom the ticker babbles the inner mysteries of directors' meetings and deep-down deals—these men whose eyes, ears, and noses decades of stock-play had trained to supernatural acuteness were as impotent to track the truth as the veriest tyro. All admitted that the conditions were unusual, that the subscriptions had far exceeded expectation, that time would be required to get them straightened out. Because of this it was natural that the market should be slow ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... I have since found that my greatest service at the beds of the sick is as an interpreter of symptoms rather than a vender of drugs. The friends of the sick read indications for good or bad with wonderful acuteness, as a rule; and I have rarely found myself mistaken in my ability to read the condition of patients in the faces of the friends, even before I enter the rooms ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... I was dreaming when I heard a young woman in her position reasoning with more acuteness than Minerva displays in her colloquies with Telemachus. She had captured not only my esteem but ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to be so obvious. She thought of no funeral garments for the old man but one shroud [Greek: speiron] (Odyssey, II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a character of late Ionian, not of genuine old AEolic epic, she should have known better. It is manifest that if even the acuteness and vast erudition of Helbig can only find such invisible differences as these between the manners of the genuine old epic and the late Ionian innovations, there is really no difference, beyond such trifles as ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... The acuteness and the significance of the Captain's eye as he cocked it in reply, no words short of those unutterable Chinese words before referred ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... remained throughout the war. This unhappy remnant constantly looked to the American ministry for aid to subsist and to escape violence. Mr. Hoffman ventures to place the banishment of the Germans, for acuteness if not mass of suffering, by the side of the ejection of the Huguenots and the Moors. This exaggeration serves at least to show the impression it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... "O yes! O yes!" outside in the street proclaiming the Resolution of the Council. Young though he was, my Grandson—who was unusually intelligent for his age, and bred up in perfect reverence for the authority of the Circles—took in the situation with an acuteness for which I was quite unprepared. He remained silent till the last words of the Proclamation had died away, and then, bursting into tears, "Dear Grandpapa," he said, "that was only my fun, and of course I meant ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... being confident he would have attained to great eminence. And, indeed, I cannot conceive a man better qualified to make a distinguished figure as a lawyer; for, he would have brought to his profession a rich store of various knowledge, an uncommon acuteness, and a command of language, in which few could have equalled, and none have surpassed him[379]. He who could display eloquence and wit in defence of the decision of the House of Commons upon Mr. Wilkes's election for Middlesex[380], and of the unconstitutional taxation of our fellow-subjects ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Then came Mrs. Stephen Colfax; after her Mr. Endsleigh Jarrott, who had on his right Mrs. Reginald Pole. Mrs. Pole's neighbor was Charles Conquest, whom she shared with Mrs. Rodney Wrenn. Now and then Wayne himself would give proof of that increased acuteness in his hearing of which he had spoken more than once since his blindness had become total. "Colfax Yorke is here," he observed at one time. "I hear his voice. He's sitting on our side of the table." "Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott is next but one to you," he said at another time. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... impulse of this idea, the closing portions of his twelve-paged letter became a fierce tirade against the existing state of society; but the last sentence was so astonishing to me individually, that I blushed with the acuteness of my feelings. "Believing as I do," he wrote, "in the expansion and overflow of the human soul, I would fain have saved you from the cramped and bloodless nature to which you are about to ally yourself in preference to mine. He has robbed me of you, and thereby ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... welcomes you. She notes the Impenetrable Placidity of the old one, and the Imperceptible Acuteness of the youth." ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... there we have a most unjustifiable account both of Shakespeare and his age. "Born in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either from the world or from books." How could a man of Hume's acuteness suppose for a moment that a poet, whose characters display such an intimate acquaintance with life, who, as an actor and manager of a theatre, must have come in contact with all descriptions of individuals, had no instruction from the world? But this is not the worst; he goes even so far as to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... vehement protestations of the ship's captain, he stamped his foot and tapped the handle of his sword. "Aha! I have unmasked you," he cried, triumphantly. "You are tearing your hair from despair at my acuteness. Am I a child to believe that a light in that brass box can show you where the harbour is? I am an old soldier, I am. I can smell a traitor a league off. You wanted that gleam to betray our approach to your friend the Englishman. A thing like that show you the way! What a miserable ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... behind his old master's counter, that he and Belinda shall marry before long. Mr. Richard Sidebottom is one of the 'reformed drunkards,' and eschews Madeira especially. He is now an attorney, in embryo, and gives ample promise of carrying into his profession all the acuteness and cunning which distinguished his exploits on the memorable night that opened this chapter in the biography ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... outward indifference and inward surprise; for while unwilling, through jealousy of an amateur, to flatter the barrister by a visible compliment, yet he silently admitted that Denzil had made his discoveries and profited by them with much acuteness. What annoyed him, however, was that the young man had pushed his inquiries to the uttermost limit; and that there was no chance of any glory accruing to himself by prosecuting them further. Still, on the possibility that something might ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... every endeavour. He succeeded, and gained the treasure almost at the expense of life. He was not mistaken in his supposition. In the box were deposited documents of the highest importance to his master; and the latter, delighted with the boy's acuteness, and grateful for the service, was eager to remunerate him. My father made known his wishes, and his acquaintance with accounts, and in less than six months as soon, indeed, as the house was rebuilt—he had his foot on the first step of the ladder, and took his place amongst the clerks in the counting-house. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Colonel Brandon, a grave but sensible bachelor on the wrong side of thirty-five. Marianne, however, scorned and laughed at the idea, being reasonable enough to allow that a man of five-and-thirty might well have outlived all acuteness of feeling and every exquisite power of enjoyment; and having met with an accident which led to her being carried home by a handsome and vivacious young gentleman called Willoughby, who had a seat called Combe Magna in Somersetshire, she rapidly developed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Schutze, the brother-in-law of poor George Ellis. We conversed about our mutual friend, and about the life Canning was to have written about him, and which he would have done con amore. He gave me two instances of poor George's neatness of expression, and acuteness of discrimination. Having met, for the first time, "one Perceval, a young lawyer," he records him as a person who, with the advantages of life and opportunity, would assuredly rise to the head of affairs. Another gentleman is briefly characterised ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... spoken with M. de Crillon's usual acuteness," replied the baroness. "Isidore is more likely in his anger and disappointment to betake himself anywhere else than to Beaujardin, and in any case you know that he is now married, and ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... handsome bright-eyed fellow, with a soldier's frame and a smile as broad and beaming as laughter, indicating much of that mixture of acuteness, and simplicity which is a characteristic of the South, and means no more than that the extreme vivacity of the blood exceeds at times ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and with a tender hand righted the structure, while the powder flew about in light puffs at her touch, readjusting a curl here and a cleverly wrought wave there. The valet's pious aspiration from the doorway, "Bress de Lord!" betokened the acuteness of the danger over-past. ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... man, with an expression of acuteness, and a trick of rubbing his head with a circular motion, as if he were trying to effect a tonsure by force of friction. He nodded a recognition of Wilder and his men, and sent a look of surprise at Von Rittenheim, whose appearance was not what was ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... expedition to the Torres Straits have shown that in acuteness of vision, hearing, smell, etc., these peoples are not noticeably different from our own. We conclude that the remarkable tales adduced to the contrary by various travelers are to be explained, not by the acuteness of sensation, but ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a distant hill, trickled into his ears. Ordinarily he would have given up such a station in disgust, and waited for the air to clear. Now he wanted to establish his ability, to demonstrate the acuteness of hearing for which ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... by the gypsies, nor otherwise done away with. Cousin Rachel was so glad that she would not have to return to Polotzk empty-handed that she would not let anybody scold me. She made me tell over and over what I had seen on the way, till they all laughed and praised my acuteness for seeing so much more than they had supposed there was to see. Indeed, I was made a heroine, which was just what I intended to be when I set out on my adventure. And thus ended most of my unlawful escapades; I was more petted ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... they would be raised to the rank of philosophers by the possession of leisure. In those countries where nature is the most redundant in spontaneous produce the inhabitants will not be found the most remarkable for acuteness of intellect. Necessity has been with great truth called the mother of invention. Some of the noblest exertions of the human mind have been set in motion by the necessity of satisfying the wants of the body. Want has not unfrequently given ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... the artist's well of happiness. But it was noticed of Charles Lamb that the very fact of possessing the little pleasures of everyday life only under a lease, as it were, which Fate at any moment might refuse to renew, caused him to be the very poet of such pleasures, experiencing them with an acuteness that became to him an inspiration. With du Maurier the enjoyment of social life, so manifestly evident in his art at one time, may well have been entered into with something of the fierce delight with which we take our sunshine in a rainy summer. In later years he became home-staying ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... after it rose he published "An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution," which was, in effect, a popular defense of the work of the Convention, especially as regards the division of the legislature into two houses. The paper shows rather zeal and fervor than acuteness, and seems to have been hastily written to serve some special and temporary purpose. It has a magniloquence not elsewhere found in his writings, as when he says: "This western world now beholds an aera important beyond conception, and which posterity will number with the age ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... where such things are indigenous, that a very good duke of Argyle was to arise having red hair, and that the present duke had verified the prediction by uniting both requisites. They say that he is quite a young man, with a small, slight figure, but with a great deal of energy and acuteness of mind, and with the generous and noble traits which have distinguished his house in former times. He was a pupil of Dr. Arnold, a member of the National Scotch Kirk, and generally understood to be a serious and religious man. He is one of the noblemen who have been willing to ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... distinguishes at first sight the different passions of mankind, which seizes upon the different forms they assume, and, remarking the objects of their notice, discovers at the same time the means by which they are attained." If this be a true statement, the acuteness of feminine observation has gained but little in the progress of the centuries, and her literary sisters of the present era can hardly hope to eclipse the penetration of Marie ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... letters of Cowper, or of Lamb. They are just the common-sense epistles of a man who to his last day remained too modest to believe in the extent of his own genius. The letters in this collection which show most acuteness on literary matters are not Scott's, but Lady Louisa Stuart's, who appreciated the Novels on their appearance (their faults as well as their merits) with a judiciousness quite wonderful in a contemporary. Scott's ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... seated outside of a flower is rarely utilised as a means for cross-fertilisation by the aid of insects; but this occurs with the bracteae of the Marcgraviaceae, as the late Dr. Cruger informed me from actual observation in the West Indies, and as Delpino infers with much acuteness from the relative position of the several parts of their flowers. (10/51. 'Ult. Osservaz. Dicogamia' 1868-69 page 188.) Mr. Farrer has also shown that the flowers of Coronilla are curiously modified, so that bees may fertilise them whilst sucking ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... was rather tall, slender, and remarkable for the easy grace of her movements. Her complexion was very fair, while her eyes were dark and her hair like ebony. Her glance and her smile showed a union of goodness and acuteness which it was almost impossible to conceive; it was as if Heaven had given her two souls, one wholly of intellect, the other wholly of feeling. She was naturally cheerful and brave—an angel, indeed, whom the sorrows of humanity had not yet dared ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... had Cecil to do with the plot, except that he hit upon the clue to the dark allusions in the letter to Monteagle, of which he was courtier enough to let the king take the credit? James's admirers have always reckoned this, as he did himself, a vast proof of sagacity: yet there seems no great acuteness in the discovery, even if it had been his own. He might have recollected the circumstances of his father's catastrophe, which would naturally put him on the scent ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... forbidding countenance, sat next us; and, in the course of the conversation, he mentioned the fact that he had once passed a year in New York, of which place he conversed with interest and vivacity. B—— was anxious to know who this gentleman might be. I could only say that he was a man of great acuteness and knowledge, whom I had often met in society, but, as to his name, I did not remember ever to have heard it. He had always conducted himself in the simple manner that he witnessed, and it was my impression that he was the private secretary of the master of the house, who was a dignitary ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... time destroyed all hopes of coming up with our game; for the Kamtschadales assured us, that it was in vain to expect to meet with bears, whilst we were to the windward, owing to their being possessed of an uncommon acuteness in scenting their pursuers, which enabled them, under such circumstances, to avoid the danger, whilst it is yet at a very great distance. We returned therefore to the boat, and passed the night on the beach, having brought a tent with us for that purpose, and the next day, by the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... say, into the literary chit-chat and un with holding frankness of a rich genius whose sands are seed-pearl. Of his controversies, those against Popery are the most powerful, because there he had subtleties and obscure reading to contend against; and his wit, acuteness, and omnifarious learning found stuff to work on. Those on Original Sin are the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... I believe, has never been recorded in history than the fate of William Lyon Mackenzie, a man possessing an acuteness of mind, powers of reasoning, and great persuasiveness, with indefatigable research and industry, such as rarely fall to ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... briefly a test which it is customary to apply, but which is not so much an estimate as it is a measure. I refer to the various respects in which an individual or community may be said to be more or less religious. Thus, for example, certain religious phenomena surpass others in acuteness or intensity. This is peculiarly true of the phenomena manifested in conversion and in revivals. In this respect the mysteries of the ancients exceeded {219} their regular public worship. Individuals and communities vary in the degree to which they are capable of enthusiasm, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... originally bestowed upon Jude, in recognition of his success in swindling a mining partner; but, with an acuteness of perception worthy of emulation, the miners determined that the length of the appellation detracted from its force, so ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... but most remarkable to us because the test of direct comparison with our own sense was permitted us, was their acuteness of hearing. Often while "jumping" a roaring rapids in two canoes, my companion and I have heard our men talking to each other in quite an ordinary tone of voice. That is to say, I could hear my Indian, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... acuteness, felt that Archie even in his present rehabilitated condition would be an object of suspicion to the keen eyes of Pussy Comstock, whom she was beginning to find troublesome. And she felt quite inadequate to explaining Archie plausibly. So it was decided between ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... he seemed employed in keeping, he was seen in front, with his elbow resting on his knee, and his chin in the palm of his hand. The pensive and reflective attitude of this young man, dressed as a beggar, the power expressed in his large forehead, the acuteness of his penetrating glance, and the firm lines of the mouth, seemed to reveal indomitable resolution, combined with superior intelligence and ready craft. Beneath this figure, the emblems of the papacy encircled a medallion, in ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... regarded as binding. And certainly a nation that never kept such a treaty for more than a week would find itself in a position where it was impossible to make any treaties at all. Still, if upon a vague calculation of men's memories, the acuteness of the circumstance, the advantage ultimately to follow, and so on, it be to the advantage of Prussia to break such solemn treaty, then such ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... I am speaking in extreme figures, in superlatives. I wish I knew some other way to render the mental life of the immigrant child of reasoning age. I may have been ever so much an exception in acuteness of observation, powers of comparison, and abnormal self-consciousness; none the less were my thoughts and conduct typical of the attitude of the intelligent immigrant child toward American institutions. And what the child thinks ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Chevalier de Grammont was informed by Jones, his friend, his confidant, and his rival, that there was another gentleman very attentive to Mrs. Middleton: this was Montagu, no very dangerous rival on account of his person, but very much to be feared for his assiduity, the acuteness of his wit, and for some other talents which are of importance, when a man is ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Zabriskie, who seemed to have an almost supernatural acuteness of hearing, gave a violent start at this, and spoke up for the first time with real passion ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... far-reaching effects of traditional prejudice, than the errors into which some of our ablest contemporary scholars have fallen by reason of their not having studied Paine. Professor Huxley, for instance, speaking of the freethinkers of the eighteenth century, admires the acuteness, common sense, wit, and the broad humanity of the best of them, but says "there is rarely much to be said for their work as an example of the adequate treatment of a grave and difficult investigation," and that they shared with their adversaries "to the full ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... other." And in our opinion Dr. Ingleby might have gone even farther, and demanded for it a spark of that creative power which is genius. But it must not be inferred that all the difficult passages in Shakespeare can be thus explained away. Despite all learning, or acuteness, or genius, there remains a considerable number that have never yet been solved, and never will be, in general acceptation, till the crack of doom. These, however, bear so small a proportion to the vast mass of perplexing riddles that have been satisfactorily settled that, like an infinitely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... doubt useless to recall here the elementary fact that if manners change with the times, man himself is quite as strangely modified. If, according to education, and the manner of life, such or such a sense may develop an acuteness which confounds common experience—hearing in the musician, touch with the blind, etc.—we may estimate by this how much sharper certain senses may have been then than now. Several centuries ago visual delusion was with adults what it is now with children in remotest country parts. A quivering ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Antiquarian Society of Perth, with just zeal for the objects of their pursuit, have published an accurate plan of this memorable mansion, with some remarks upon its connexion with the narrative of the plot, which display equal acuteness ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... claimed by him who is willing to hear instruction and can perceive right and wrong when they are shown to him by another;—but he who hath neither acuteness nor docility—who can neither find the way by himself, nor will be led by others, is a wretch ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... as well as his talents, were such as to encourage his father's expectations. He had acuteness of intellect, joined to habits of long and patient study, improved no doubt by the discipline of his father's house; to which, generally speaking, he conformed with the utmost docility, expressing no wish for greater or more frequent relaxation than consisted ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... of her humiliation; and accordingly he rang the bell, and ordered the negro to be sent up. Nero entered the room, and observing the triumphant chuckle of the Dead Man, and the dejected look of his mistress, with his natural acuteness instantly comprehended the true state of affairs. The contempt with which Julia had treated him was still fresh in his memory, and led him to view that lady with hatred; he therefore determined to add to her chagrin ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... too, inconceivable pain and anguish from his wound. The sword had pierced to the bone, and the inflammation which had supervened was of the worst character. After some days, the acuteness of the agony which he at first endured passed gradually away, though the extent of the injury resulting from the wound was growing every day greater and more hopeless. The sufferer lay, pale, emaciated, and wretched, on his couch, his mind, ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... God which illustrates all of this with a charming picturesqueness. Professor Johan Albrecht Bengal was a teacher in the seminary in Denkendorf, Germany, in the eighteenth century. "He united profound reverence for the Bible with an acuteness which let nothing escape him." The seminary students used to wonder at the great intellectuality, and great humility and Christliness which blended their beauty in him. One night, one of them, eager to learn the secret ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... states varies between the two opposite poles of hyperaesthesia and anaeesthesia; in other words, the senses may be extraordinarily exalted, as in somnambulism, or, as in lethargy, they may be extinct, except sometimes hearing. In somnambulism the field of vision and acuteness of sight are about doubled, hearing is made very acute, and smell is so intensely developed that a subject can find by scent the fragment of a card, previously given him to feel, and then torn up and hidden. The ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... was mild, gentle, and "meek as a maid," and possessed exactly of the courteous manners ascribed by our father Chaucer to the pattern of chivalry whom he describes upon his pilgrimage to Canterbury. But with all his gentleness, De Valence showed a great degree of acuteness and accuracy in his queries; and well pleased was Bertram that the young knight did not insist upon seeing his supposed son, although even in that case his ready wit had resolved, like a seaman in a tempest, to sacrifice one part to preserve the rest. He was not, however, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... loss of the elegant, cultivated if somewhat indolent ease described by Horace. Would the graceful elegancies of life, the high culture of the arts, indeed be safe in the rude and devastating hands of the new barbarians? He followed at a distance the progress of events, and an acuteness of perception, which he would scarcely have been supposed to possess, often enabled him to predict occurrences which were not anticipated even by the best informed. But though such observations escaped him, he never developed them. His concise remarks attracted no attention until ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... the genius of common sense. Of perfect intellectual acuteness and aplomb, he sprang from a Virginia pedigree and was born in Kentucky. He knew all about the South, its institutions, its traditions and its peculiarities. He was an old-line Whig of the school of Henry Clay, with strong Emancipation leaning, never an Abolitionist. "If slavery be not wrong," he ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... would risk everything rather than withdraw the case. He kept Red Mick and Peggy up to the mark with assurances that she was certain to win. Neither he nor they knew that Considine had been found. Even the most respectable solicitors sometimes display acuteness, and the old man's return had been kept secret by Pinnock, so that public opinion ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... letter, which was read by the Wazir Yottreb. Ar-Ryf had written, "Be on your guard against Kamrya, O King, for she hath poison with her, and is ordered to kill you when she is alone with you." The King now began loudly to praise the acuteness of his Wazir, and went immediately to Kamrya with his drawn sword. When he entered, she rose and kissed the ground, but he exclaimed, "You have come here to poison me!" She was confounded, and took out the poison, and handed it to the King, full of artifice, and thinking, "If I tell ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Williams, whether educated or not, they had a man of no ordinary acuteness to deal with; they realised that, though apparently free as air to act as they pleased, an unceasing watch was being kept upon them, and they felt that henceforth they must not place any dependence upon the hope of help from without. They all, therefore, individually ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... strapped down the receivers. A long, faint whisper, as indistinguishable as the lisp of leaves on a distant hill, trickled into his ears. Ordinarily he would have given up such a station in disgust, and waited for the air to clear. Now he wanted to establish his ability, to demonstrate the acuteness of hearing ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... accuracy the most important events in British History. Boys of fifteen years of age, black in colour, will recite the most favourite passages from Shakespeare, ably quoting the notes of the English and German commentators. They excel in mathematics, and in legal subtleties their acuteness ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... De Revolutione Animarum, adduces in two hundred problems all the arguments which may be urged in favor of the return of souls into human bodies according to Jewish ideas. Of English thinkers, the Cambridge Platonists defended it with much learning and acuteness, most conspicuously Henry More; and in Cudsworth and Hume it ranks as the most rational theory of immortality. Glanvil's Lux Orientalis devotes a curious treatise to it. It captivated the minds of Fourier and Leroux. Andre Pezzani's book on The Plurality ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... unprejudiced student" of the question that "Aldus stands clearly convicted of being an extremely unsafe textual critic of Pliny's Letters."[76] "This conclusion does not depend, as that of Keil necessarily did, on any native or acquired acuteness of critical perception. The wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein."[77] I speak as a wayfarer, but nevertheless I must own that Professor Merrill's path of argument causes me to stumble. I readily admit that Aldus, in editing a portion of text that ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... you think that you have such acuteness, then, and I—" Nellie Hayden paused, raised her eyebrows a little coldly, and let the cockatoo ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their madness? Yet just so it is that men proceed in matters intellectual,—with just the same kind of mad effort and useless combination of forces,—when they hope great things either from the number and cooperation or from the excellency and acuteness of individual wits; yea, and when they endeavour by Logic (which may be considered as a kind of athletic art) to strengthen the sinews of the understanding; and yet with all this study and endeavour it ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... of George Fox's Journal, where a strong spirit clothes its utterance in simple, downright Saxon words; the quiet and beautiful enthusiasm of Pennington; the torrent energy of Edward Burrough; the serene wisdom of Penn; the logical acuteness of Barclay; the honest truthfulness of Sewell; the wit and humor of John Roberts, (for even Quakerism had its apostolic jokers and drab-coated Robert Halls;) and last, not least, the simple beauty of Woolman's Journal, the modest record ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... be easily determined by means of an "acoumeter." This little instrument measures the acuteness of the hearing very accurately by means of shot dropped from varying heights upon strips of glass, copper and cardboard. Tests with this device indicate whether the subject's hearing is ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... which ceases just at the moment when the sleeper clasps an amorous form; it was as and more complete than in nature, long and accomplished, accompanied by all the preludes, all the details, all the sensations, and the orgasm took place with a singularly painful acuteness, an ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... did not concern him, his way of unmasking her secret thoughts, his powers of seeing round corners, if not through sealed envelopes, but as time went on she grew fond of his honest boy-nature, and learned to laugh at his precocious acuteness. Perhaps with Stephen's departure there were fewer occasions for her to resent the challenge of his intrusive eye. There were, also, alleviations coincident with the school year, for then she was free from ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... power over its actions, strove to explain human emotions by their primary causes, and, at the same time, to point out a way, by which the mind might attain to absolute dominion over them. However, in my opinion, he accomplishes nothing beyond a display of the acuteness of his own great intellect, as I will show in the proper place. For the present I wish to revert to those, who would rather abuse or deride human emotions than understand them. Such persons will, doubtless think it strange that I should attempt ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... remarkable also for the acuteness of his hearing, having a large ear-drum, and being provided with an apparatus by which he can exalt this faculty, when under the necessity of listening with greater attention. Hence, while he is silent in his own motions, he is able to perceive the least sound from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... plague under the scorching rays of the sun. Cardinal Filomarino had either lost his influence or else the dread of losing his popularity made him impotent. Yet he wrote to the Pope: "The wisdom, the acuteness, and the moderation first shown by this man are entirely gone since the signature of the capitulation, and are changed into audacity, rage, and tyranny, so that even the people, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... in your reading of this discourse, you will be apt to blame me for two things: First, Because I have not so beautified my matter with acuteness of language as you could wish or desire. Secondly, Because also I have not given you, either in the line or in the margent, a cloud of sentences from the learned fathers, that have, according to their wisdom, possibly, handled these matters ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... greatest excess."—Nutting's Gram., p. 33. "The Superlative increases or diminishes the Signification of the Positive or Adjective, to a very high or a very low Degree."—British Gram., p. 97. What excess of skill, or what very high degree of acuteness, have the brightest and best of these grammarians exhibited? There must be some, if ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... daughter; he remembered her tears and pleading on the preceding day; the situation came to him now, as perceptions come to dull minds, with force that had gathered with the lapse of time. He had not the refinement and acuteness of mind necessary to make him understand the disinterested element in Bates's tyranny, and while he sympathised cunningly with the selfishness of which, in his mind, he accused Bates, it seemed to him that the promise to the dead was ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... regiment, with a short and suitable address. I faintly heard this laconic speech, but not distinctly enough to offer any criticism upon the eloquence of the speaker. This exhibition had its intended effect, and displayed the genius of this extraordinary man, who, with unerring acuteness, knows so well to give to every public occurrence that dramatic hue and interest which are so gratifying to the minds of the people over whom he presides. After this ceremony, the several regiments, preceded by their bands of music, marched before ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... vehemently attacked, as containing a series of clever forgeries rather than of genuine letters. And there does seem reason to believe that in a few instances, chiefly in the earlier portion of the correspondence, the critical acuteness of the editor was imposed upon, and that some of the letters inserted were not written by the persons alleged to be the authors. But of the majority of the letters there seems no solid ground for questioning the authenticity. Indeed, in the later and more important portion ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... he has just said, madame, for the wanderings of a madman," whispered the doctor; "he handles in this way sometimes the most difficult questions of geometry or astronomy, with an acuteness which would do honor to the most illustrious learned men. His knowledge is great. He speaks all the living languages, but he is, alas! a martyr to his thirst for erudition and pride of learning. He imagines that ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... interest and safety are so highly concerned as that of Mr. Wood, and this in a country where loyalty is woven into the very hearts of the people, seems a little extraordinary. Sir William Scroggs was the first who introduced that commendable acuteness into the courts of judicature; but how far this practice hath been imitated by his successors or strained upon occasion, is out of my knowledge. When pamphlets unpleasing to the ministry were presented as libels, he would order the offensive paragraphs to be read before ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... with the acuteness of his misery, charged them all with want of skill, and wrote instantly into the country for ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... catholic, even to latitudinarianism; not from any want of acuteness, but from a disposition to be easily satisfied. He was quick to discern the smallest glimpse of merit; he was indulgent even to gross improprieties, when accompanied by any redeeming talent. When he said a severe thing, it was to serve a temporary purpose,—to support an argument, or to tease ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... realise—when peace is broken—the practical conditions of war demands an effort of which the unfettered intelligence alone seems capable. The great majority of successful leaders in war on both elements have not been considerably, or at all, superior in intellectual acuteness to numbers of their fellows; but they have had strength of character, and their minds were not squeezed in a mould into ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... and unblushing, and D'Alembert's Dream plunged exactly into those parts of physiology which are least fit to be handled in literature. The attempt to give an air of polite comedy to functions and secretions must be pronounced detestable, in spite of the dialectical acuteness and force with ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... d'Anthropologie Criminelle, May 15, 1897. Marro, who quotes this observation (Puberta, p. 467; in French edition, p. 61), remarks that his own evidence lends some support to Lombroso's conclusion that under ordinary circumstances woman's sensory acuteness is less than that of man. He is, however, inclined to impute this to defective attention; within the sexual sphere women's attention becomes concentrated, and their sensory perceptions then go far beyond those of men. There is probably ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and lamenting the good times gone by. When at last his joints grew too stiff, and other troubles of age came upon him, he settled ashore in some little cottage and devoted himself to quiet meditation of a pessimistic kind. Every morning he rolled down to the quay and criticised with cruel acuteness the habits of the younger generation of mariners; every evening he took his place in the tavern parlour and instructed the assembled skippers. At last the time came for him to go: then the men whom he had scored with ropes'-ends in his day were ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... that moment—very determined to shield the Marchesa from the consequences of her deed. All Italy is ringing with your quixotic, your chivalrous, your superb action. Nevertheless, if I had quitted the Duchess' apartment, if my natural and trained acuteness had not made one last effort respecting the screen, I do not think you would have followed me into the ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... in securing the town-clerkship of Melbourne, in succession to Mr. John Charles King, the first clerk. The Corporation was still hardly beyond infancy, and Kerr's natural legal acuteness was of great service at his new post, where reigned he practically master, and was an authority far outside his official sphere, and even in legislative difficulties of the young Parliament, for we are now entering into Victorian life, and ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... danger point (produced by alien autos) at precisely the right instant, never the wrong one, and this gives you a beautiful confidence in your luck and your driver: although the real secret must lie in the acuteness of your guardian angel or patron saint. Vedder, who when young was a champion boxer, is very superstitious, and Mr. Somerled allows him a large gold medal of St. Christopher on the dashboard. St. Christopher, it seems, has undertaken the spiritual care of motor-cars, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... often found, that this rejection did not make him indifferent to the person who gave it. On the contrary, he professes the most warm admiration of this Emilie, and has not ceased to correspond with her; and I, for I read all their letters, cannot but confess her extraordinary knowledge and acuteness. But to know all this near is what I would indeed be very gladly excused, since I cannot help thinking that my husband's "old flame" has something of cold-heartedness in her, and my heart has no great inclination to become warm ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... me, were among the least of my misfortunes. Reading, that great field of enjoyment, which was daily opening more amply upon me, was totally cut off. My curiosity had been awakened, my memory praised, and my acuteness admired: in an instant, as it were, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... prolific. They rest from their labors and their works do follow them. Their sermons and theological treatises are not literature: they are for the most part dry, heavy, and dogmatic, but they exhibit great learning, logical acuteness, and an earnestness which sometimes rises into eloquence. The pulpit ruled New England, and the sermon was the great intellectual engine of the time. The serious thinking of the Puritans was given almost exclusively to religion; the other world was all their art. The daily secular ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... Wealth' (1821). Ricardo pronounced his arguments upon the Corn-trade to be 'unanswered and unanswerable,'[354] and he himself claimed to be an independent discoverer of the true theory of rent.[355] He was certainly a man of considerable acuteness and originality. In these writings we find the most sanguine expressions of the belief that political economy was not only a potential, but on the verge of becoming an actual, science. Torrens observes that all sciences have to pass through a period ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... written with great acuteness, containing many observations, both curious and useful for politicians; but, as I conceived, not altogether complete. This I ventured to tell the author, and offered, if he pleased, to supply him with some additions. He received my proposition with more compliance than is usual among writers, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... Sermon. The faith and devotion of the emperor has furnished Batonics with a specious argument in favor of his early baptism. Note: Compare Heinichen, Excursus iv. et v., where these questions are examined with candor and acuteness, and with constant reference to the opinions of more ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... who is particularly interested in some maiden's voice or footstep will be able to make correct distinctions which simply do not exist for anyone less actively interested in that particular lady. Concentration enables any sense to become more acute. This increased acuteness naturally gives its possessor the power to receive impressions which would otherwise escape record. In the sense of not being usual, this acute sensitiveness of the artist is thus an abnormality: but ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... engineers for the construction of the cupola, of returning to Rome, thinking that he would have more reputation and be more sought for from abroad, than if he remained in Florence. When Filippo had returned to Rome accordingly, the acuteness of his genius and his readiness of resource were taken into consideration, when it was remembered that in his discourses he had showed a confidence and courage that had not been found in any of the other architects, who stood confounded, together ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... thoughtfully at his friend. This was not the only occasion on which of late Durrance had surprised his friends by an unusual acuteness. Calder glanced uncomfortably at the letter which he was still ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... is not near so common a thing as is imagined. Let not therefore a young lady be alarmed at the acuteness of her own wit, any more than at the abundance of her own knowledge. The great danger is, lest she should mistake pertness, flippancy, or imprudence, for this brilliant quality, or imagine she is witty, only because she is indiscreet. ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... have been following. I met him a year ago, at the table d'hote, at Zurich, where he delivered a series of lectures on physiology on a new and original system. He is now going on with them in Scotland, where his wonderful acuteness and originality have produced an immense sensation, and I have no doubt that in his hands this discovery of my father's will ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have acquired in compensation for the loss of their eyesight an increased acuteness in their other senses; I was therefore curious to make some trials with my test apparatus, which I will describe in the next chapter. I was permitted to do so on a number of boys at a large educational blind asylum, but found that, although they ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... not like the dreams caused by haschich or the somewhat sickly visions that come from opium; it was an amazing acuteness of reasoning, a new way of seeing, judging, and appreciating the things of life, and with the certainty, the absolute consciousness that ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the strength of woman's love—her devotedness, her acuteness, and energy and activity, in contriving and executing plans for the relief or comfort of her loved one in affliction. His four companions in misfortune, with all that philosophical indifference to calamity and danger that characterizes ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Undoubtedly, too, real cures have been effected by means of these modern mental methods, and any one who denies this must surely be ignorant of the vast amount of steadily accumulating evidence in their favour. The many advantages of the system are doubtless pointed out with acuteness and insisted upon with vigour in the books which defend it, and need not be re-stated here. And yet, while I acknowledge all this; while I am forced to admit the many wonderful cures and much mental relief on account of these newer methods of healing, I still believe that a vast amount of harm is ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... conversation. I directed it to suit my plans, for however much my mind is closed against influences that have no bearing upon my feeling, within their sphere I have a well-nigh redoubled presence of mind,—an acuteness of perception, as have those plunged into a hypnotic trance, and in a given direction see more clearly than people in their normal state. We passed speedily on to personal topics. I spoke about myself in the confidential tone in which one speaks to those nearest, who alone have the right to ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... have melted us to tears or excited us to indignation. When he, whose merry and satirical laugh rung in our ears the moment before, faints before us, with "a plague o' both your houses, they have made worms' meat of me," the acuteness of our feeling is excessive: but, had we not heard the laugh before, there would have been a dull weight of melancholy impression, which would have ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... Station Health and marriage The "Boreas" returns to England Employed on the Impress Service Annoyances and dissatisfaction Prejudices against him The "Boreas" paid off Sensitiveness under censure Flattering reception at Court Efforts to suppress frauds in West Indies Breadth and acuteness of intellect Results of his efforts against frauds Prejudices against him at the Admiralty His partisanship for Prince William Henry Insubordinate conduct of the latter Nelson's difference with Lord Hood Out of favor at Court On ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Jodocus Badius Ascenshls, who adds a third letter written by himself to Bishop Urne, vindicating his application to Saxo of the title Grammaticus, which he well defines as "one who knows how to speak or write with diligence, acuteness, or knowledge." The beautiful book he produced was worthy of the zeal, and unsparing, unweariable pains, which had been spent on it by the band of enthusiasts, and it was truly a little triumph of humanism. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... a keener sense than the elder of the things that lie between them; they need to gain assurance of the importance of their existence, even at the cost of injustice or of lying to themselves. But this feeling varies in its acuteness from one period to another. In the classic ages when, for a time, the balance of the forces of a civilization are realized,—those high plateaux ending on all sides with steep slopes—the difference in level is not so great from one generation to another. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... steps, carelessly testing them. For the rest, he was going back here; something of the cold, loose freshness got into his brain, he believed. In the two years of absence his power of concentration had been stronger, his perceptions more free from prejudice, gaining every day delicate point, acuteness of analysis. He drew a long breath of the icy air, coarse with the wild perfume of the prairie. No, his temperament needed a subtiler atmosphere than this, rarer essence than mere brutal freedom. The East, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... fact that he had once passed a year in New York, of which place he conversed with interest and vivacity. B—— was anxious to know who this gentleman might be. I could only say that he was a man of great acuteness and knowledge, whom I had often met in society, but, as to his name, I did not remember ever to have heard it. He had always conducted himself in the simple manner that he witnessed, and it was my impression that he was the private secretary of the master of the house, who was a ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... consulting other understandings than their own, and of considering the sentiments and opinions of those who, however neglected in the present age, had in their own times, and many of them a long time afterwards, such reputation for knowledge and acuteness as will scarcely ever be attained ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the imperfection of accurately discriminating ideas one from another lies, either in the dulness or faults of the organs of sense; or want of acuteness, exercise, or attention in the understanding; or hastiness and precipitancy, natural to some tempers, I will not here examine: it suffices to take notice, that this is one of the operations that the mind may reflect on and ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... forces—which last is the chief business of statesmanship. Add to this again the effect upon the hearer of conversation from a mind full, not indeed of literature, but of life; a conversation of wide range, of acuteness, of clear statement and strong opinion, of infinite ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... she loved him no longer, and in the deadness of emotion which had followed on the first acuteness of her grief for her lost idol, and the physical exhaustion caused by her late illness, she had thought she spoke the truth. But, after all, what was this yearning over him, in spite of all his errors, but love? what this continual thought of him, this aching sense of loss, even ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... matter of impressment, and only to a less degree in that of the regulation of trade by foreign force, as impeaching national independence, is not enough to induce admiration for the course of American statesmanship at this time. The acuteness and technical accuracy of Madison's voluminous arguments make but more impressive the narrowness of outlook, which saw only the American point of view, and recognized only the force of legal precedent, at a time when the foundations of ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... bustling man, with an expression of acuteness, and a trick of rubbing his head with a circular motion, as if he were trying to effect a tonsure by force of friction. He nodded a recognition of Wilder and his men, and sent a look of surprise at Von Rittenheim, whose appearance was not what was usual in the prisoners brought before him, although ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... where it is due, as to give praise where it is not due; and we think that few readers will be inclined to quarrel with him for the quickness and depth of his sympathies with his hero, except that small class of "knowing" minds who, mistaking disbelief in human probity for acuteness of intellect, find a mischievous satisfaction in depressing heroes into coxcombs, and resolving noble ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... feel with increased acuteness what a base deceiver he was, when they consulted him at breakfast (they had ordered sweet milk- and-water, and toast and currant jelly, overnight) about the pony. It really was as much as he could do, he don't mind confessing to me, to look them two young things in the face, and think what ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... latent sense, developed by circumstances, as some have supposed, but a wonderful acuteness of the nerves of the face, and more particularly of the nerves of the eye-lids. These phenomena may, I think, be explained in this way. When one of the superior senses is absent, the perceptive force that has watched ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... took upon himself the defence of the national intelligence, he incorporated in his Preface a long passage from Schlegel, because, in his opinion, no English critic had shown like enthusiasm or philosophical acuteness. We cannot regret the delusion if we owe to it the Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, but his patriotic task would have been easier, and might even have appeared unnecessary, had he known that ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... coroner. As fortune would have it, he was no stranger to me. I had not only seen him before, but had held frequent conversation with him; in fact, knew him. His name was Hammond, and he was universally regarded as a man of more than ordinary acuteness, fully capable of conducting an important examination, with the necessary skill and address. Interested as I was, or rather was likely to be, in this particular inquiry, I could not but congratulate myself upon our good fortune in ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... break of day, he was woke by the sound of the factory bell, and found assembled a crowd of men, women, and children. The door opened, they entered, the child accompanied them. The roll was called; his unauthorized appearance noticed; he was questioned; his acuteness excited attention. A child was wanted in the Wadding Hole, a place for the manufacture of waste and damaged cotton, the refuse of the mills, which is here worked up into counterpanes and coverlids. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... others. He brings to the presence of others a repulsive breath, and clothing tainted with offensive odors. He poisons the atmosphere that others must inhale, and disputes their rights to breathe a pure, untainted air. The free use of tobacco by young people dulls the acuteness of the moral senses, often leads to prevarication and deceit in the indulgence, and is apt to draw one downward to bad associates. It is not the speed but the direction that tells on the future character and ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... chap he looked up and in a sharp, clear voice, he cried: "Good-bye! Come back soon!" These words cut into my soul. Was it possible that this little ragamuffin was the only one in that village who was sorry to see me depart and who desired my return? And the acuteness of this cut was not decreased by the remembrance that on several occasions when he had accompanied his mother to my lodging I had given him ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... of man, and in the existence of the spiritual life. As one critic says: "The earnestness, depth and grandeur, humility and conscious choice of high ideals, have raised his work far above mere intellectual acuteness and minuteness." ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... saw more of her, she seemed the most remarkable woman he had ever known. Her loss of sight had been more than compensated by an extraordinary acuteness of mental vision. The world about her might now be one of darkness, but she had a precise comprehension of its nature, its manifestations, its complexities. He had always taken blindness as a synonym for helplessness, a matter of uncertain ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... yellow slip of paper as the symbol of problems that reappeared with burning acuteness in his mind. It smiled at him in the satire of John Prather triumphing in Little Rivers. It visualized pictures of lean ranchers who had brought him flowers in the days of his convalescence; of children gathered around him on the steps of his bungalow; of all ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... doesn't come that way, Mrs. Pindar. (With sudden acuteness.) It was on account of George, not Dr. Jonathan, that you wanted to get me out of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... manifold; even Herschel himself fell into error in taking minute stars to be satellites and actually calculating their periods; so that when we remember the difficulties of the question our doubts are not altogether dispelled. Extreme acuteness of vision will, in individual instances, lead to success of abnormal character, and certainly in Mr. Ward's case the remarkable accordances in the observed and calculated positions appear to be conclusive evidence ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... has created a second nature in man. It has its joys and its sorrows; its health, its sickness; its wealth, its poverty; it compels reason, in spite of herself, to believe, to doubt, to deny; it suspends the exercise of the senses, and imparts to them again an artificial acuteness; it has its follies and its wisdom; and the most perverse thing of all is that it fills its votaries with a complacency more full and complete even than that ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance, that only made me feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, I had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... their natural acuteness and habitual dexterity in such matters, the Canadians have one weak point; they are too ready to believe that Englishmen are made of money. All that an emigrant has to do to acquire the reputation of having money, is to seem quite easy, and free from care or anxiety ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... vultures of the sea are still cleverer in other ways. Their forefathers have lived on the sea for thousands of years, and their senses have been developed to the greatest acuteness and perfection. They know the regular winds, and can perceive from the colour of the water if a cold or warm sea current sweeps along below them. If now our friend the albatross, travelling westwards over ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... shroud [Greek: speiron] (Odyssey, II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a character of late Ionian, not of genuine old AEolic epic, she should have known better. It is manifest that if even the acuteness and vast erudition of Helbig can only find such invisible differences as these between the manners of the genuine old epic and the late Ionian innovations, there is really no difference, beyond such trifles as diversify custom in ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... say the least of it, quite equal to, her expectations. She was certainly an excellent wife, full of acuteness, industry, and enterprise. Had Peter been married to a woman of a disposition resembling his own, it is probable that he would have sunk into indolence, filth, and poverty, these miseries might have soured their tempers, and driven them into all the low ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... part," and he waved his hand towards the window. It was almost as if he pleaded for encouragement. In common with most men who came in contact with Wilding, he had felt the latent force of this man's nature, the strength that was hidden under that calm surface, and the acuteness of the judgment that must be wedded to it. He longed to have the word of such a man that his enterprise was not as desperate as Wilding had seemed at first to paint it. But Wilding made no concession to hopes or desires when he ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... henchman Nat to play the part of father, she had journeyed fearlessly forth, and had made for the coast, which she would probably have reached in safety had it not been for the acuteness of Peter Sanghurst, who had guessed her purpose, had dogged her steps with the patient sagacity of a bloodhound, and had succeeded in the end in capturing his prize, and in bringing her ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... fast upon her track. She distinguished them with morbid acuteness through the speed of her own flight. They were mingled steps—a feeble hurrying footfall, and an iron tread. She threaded a group of bystanders, and, weak and helpless as she was, prepared to dive into a mirk close. Not that black opening, Nelly Carnegie, it is doomed to bear for generations ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... a curious episode. A classmate of mine, never distinguished for logical acuteness, came out in a leading daily paper with a violent attack upon me and my lecture. He lamented the fact that one who, as he said, had, while in college, shown much devotion to the anti- slavery cause, had now faced about, had ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the narcotics, because the four parts already mentioned are too weak of themselves to expel a disease before the crisis. Observe then, concerning composition, to forestall the critical day. Recipes prepared in this manner, are very helpful for diseases in all degrees of acuteness. ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... rigor, rigorousness, harshness, exactness, cruelty; seriousness, gravity; violence, intensity, acuteness; austerity, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... collected together in the Academy, diligently maintained those doctrines which they had received from their predecessors. Zeno and Arcesilas had been diligent attenders on Polemo; but Zeno, who preceded Arcesilas in point of time, and argued with more subtilty, and was a man of the greatest acuteness, attempted to correct the system of that school. And, if you like, I will explain to you the way in which he set about that correction, as Antiochus used to explain it. Indeed, said I, I shall be very glad to hear you do so; and you see that ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... in political economy, namely, that it is spending and not saving that gives employment to the poor. If Mandeville's aim had been less critical, and had he been less delighted with his famous paradox, we may infer from the acuteness of his reasoning on the subject, that he would have anticipated the true doctrine of political economy, as he saw through the fallacy of the mercantile theory. (2) He employs the term, luxury, with great latitude, as including whatever is not a ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... no great acuteness to see that a system of control which, in selecting a Professor of Mathematics or Language or Rhetoric or Physics or Chemistry, asked first and above all to what sect or even to what wing or branch of a sect he belonged, could hardly ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... was the acuteness of his remorse, impenitent in its character, which so long seemed to demand from my compassion to spare every semblance of reproach, every look of grief, which might have said to his conscience, "You have made ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... distended; and finding the rats abstracted from beneath the basin, he concluded that the eagle had devoured them. Fearing the consequences, he lost no time in opening the crop, took out the rats, and sewed up the incision; the eagle did well and is now alive. A proof this of the acuteness of smell in the eagle, and also of the facility and safety with which, even in grown birds, the operation of opening the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... rule. Thirsting to be amused, he could not conjugate the active verb "to amuse." No man was more fitted to adorn a court, yet no man could less play the courtier. He admired the manners of the sovereign,—he did homage to the natural acuteness of his understanding; but, accustomed as he was to lay down the law in society, he was too proud to receive it from another,—a common case among those who live with the great by right and not through sufferance. His pride made him fear ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... faint sound, as from far off, of the wild waving of wings. They were folded now over the breasts of buried generations; but a flutter or two lived again in the turned page of shock-headed slouch-hatted loiterers whose young intensity of type, in the direction of pale acuteness, deepened his vision, and even his appreciation, of racial differences, and whose manipulation of the uncut volume was too often, however, but a listening at closed doors. He reconstructed a possible groping Chad of three or four years before, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... bill in its present stage, and the house went into committee upon it. On the 10th of June Sir Edward Sugden proposed on this occasion to omit the first clause of the bill, after which he proceeded to dissect its provisions with considerable acuteness. Mr. Labouchere defended the measure, and Messrs. Gladstone and Goulburn objected to it. The latter said that tire present bill differed but little from the former, and, in his opinion, only differed for the worse, as it offered a premium to the council for disapproving of the acts ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... number of artistic niceties, all tending to advance him towards perfection of execution. He was really possessed of natural talents of a high order, and in the development of these he now evinced great acuteness, as well as industry. His master, an artist who had made a reputation years before, and who had won high patronage, and earned for himself a large fortune, thus being beyond the reach of any feelings of professional jealousy, was much delighted with Conrad's progress, was proud to have discovered ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... lady, no thoroughly wicked creature ever yet committed suicide. Self-destruction, when it is not an act of madness, implies some acuteness of feeling—sensibility to remorse or to shame, or perhaps a distorted idea of making atonement. There is no such thing as remorse or shame, or hope of making ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... the cold and changeable climate of England. The grand objects of the savage, in almost every part of the globe, are to baffle his human enemies, and to assert his dominion over the lower races of animals. For these purposes, the activity, secrecy, acuteness, and sagacity of man in an uncivilised state are almost incredible; nor could we have supposed, were not the truth shown in numberless instances, that the senses of human beings were capable of so great perfection, their bodies and limbs of such exertion and agility, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... walks about without saying a word, but he reflects upon the acuteness which his wife is acquiring: he sees her daily gaining in strength and in acrimony: she is getting to display an art in vexation and a military capacity for disputation which reminds him of Charles XII and the Russians. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... occurring in overloading resembles those seen in bloating. The symptoms may be mild and extend over a period of several days, or it may take on a highly acute form, terminating fatally within a few hours. The acuteness of the attack depends on the character and quantity of feed eaten. If a large quantity of green feed is eaten, fermentation occurs and the animal may die within a few hours. The swelling on the left side has a doughy feel. It is not ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... Sir George's wrath and fearing him above all men, acted faithfully her part of gaoler. She smiled, half in sadness, when she told me of the girl's simplicity in thinking she could hoodwink a person of Lady Crawford's age, experience, and wisdom. The old lady took great pride in her own acuteness. The distasteful task of gaoler, however, pained good Aunt Dorothy, whose simplicity was, in truth, no match for Dorothy's love-quickened cunning. But Aunt Dorothy's sense of duty and her fear of Sir George impelled her to keep good ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... prehistoric times. The early astronomer who accomplished that feat, when devoid of instrumental assistance and unsupported by accurate theoretical knowledge, merits our hearty admiration for his untutored acuteness and penetration. On the other hand, the discovery of the exterior boundary of the planetary system is worthy of special attention from the fact that it was founded solely on ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... child of this description is the most disagreeable thing in existence, and is rendered only the more so, from any talent or natural acuteness it may happen to possess, since that never fails to give a spice of sin to what would otherwise be mere folly. The thinking mind shudders at the airs of infantine coquetry and malicious sneers, which are merely ludicrous to another stander-by; but how any person ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... the name of one child come to her lips and not the other? Did the old lady's affection, or natural acuteness, discern that Mr. Dillwyn was not drawn to Shampuashuh by any particular admiration of his friend Mrs. Barclay? Had she some of that preternatural intuition, plain old country woman though she was, which makes a woman see the invisible and hear the inaudible? which serves as one of the ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... back in the corner of the wide sofa and crossing his long legs. He had thought more deeply on a good many subjects than the majority of his acquaintance supposed; with the consequence that he occasionally surprised his fellow-peers by the acuteness of his observations in debate. Lord Fallowfeild, it may be added, took his recently acquired office of hereditary legislator with a commendable ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... greatest questions of strategy were discussed by those who carried their packs as common soldiers in the ranks. Movements and manoeuvres were criticised, attacked, defended, ridiculed, and condemned, with a degree of acuteness and knowledge that showed the enormous progress the nation had made in military science, and with what ease the republic could recruit her officers from the ranks of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... separated from the school of thinkers to whom pity and affection are but refined forms of self-love. This is characteristic of Rousseau, who was free from that craving for system which is the snare of those minds in which logic and pure reason prevail over acuteness of self-observation. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... blood frequently into my forehead. All I hope is, that I may not lose all interest in human affairs—that the solitary indifference I feel for applause, even from the finest spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not think it will. I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them. But even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself, but ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... 1580 it does not seem that there was any good reason for the Protestant nervousness, even if some northern counties and northern and Border peers preferred Catholicism. The king himself, a firm believer in his own theological learning and acuteness, was thoroughly Protestant. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... multitude who had indolently fattened for years on the easy plunder of the public stores. However, the reform went on: perquisites were abolished, privileges taken away; and, rough as the operation was, nothing could be more salutary than its effect. The acuteness of the gallant old man at the head of the Admiralty could not be evaded, his vigour could not be defied, and his public spirit gave him an influence with the country, which enabled him to outlive faction and put down calumny. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... ye public of England! A sensible house dog is to be preferred to St Vincent, Nelson, Collingwood, Exmouth, and all those great men who have aided their country as much with their pen as with their sword; as much by their acuteness and firmness in diplomacy, as by their courage and conduct ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... dryness of the method and the barrenness of the system which revolted Erasmus. It was also the qualities of his own mind, which, in spite of all its breadth and acuteness, did not tend to penetrate deeply into philosophical or dogmatic speculations. For it was not only scholasticism that repelled him; the youthful Platonism and the rejuvenated Aristotelianism taught by Lefevre d'Etaples also failed to attract him. For the present he remained a humanist ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... dexterously continued the subject of the Elsmeres. Dropping his bantering tone, he delivered himself of a very delicate critical analysis of Catherine Elsmere's temperament and position, as in the course of several months his intimacy with her husband had revealed them to him. He did it well, with acuteness and philosophical relish. The situation presented itself to him as an extremely refined and yet tragic phase of the religious difficulty, and it gave him intellectual pleasure to draw it out ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
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