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More "Inquisitiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the benefit of my health, I arrived at Savannah, in Georgia, on the 10th of February, 1834; and, indulging the common inquisitiveness of a stranger about the place, was informed that just one hundred and one years had elapsed since the first settlers were landed there, and the city laid out. Replies to other inquiries, and especially a perusal of McCall's ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... which she was not old enough to understand, or wise enough to reverence. We were too young then to see it fully, but her frivolity jarred upon us, though she amused us, and excited our curiosity. She was not worse than many other girls, with plenty of inquisitiveness and sharp sense, and not too much refinement and feeling; whose accomplishments are learnt from the 'first masters,' and whose principles are left to be picked up from gossip, servants, and second-rate books; digested by ignorant, inquisitive, ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... not sooner successful than they were is due to a combination of small things—each perhaps trivial in itself, but the whole most efficacious in perpetuating Napoleon's hold on the French. During his presence in Paris all the old inquisitiveness and boundless concern for detail seemed to return without diminution of force. Before his last departure he had won the popular heart by the model family life of the Tuileries, which, though never ostentatiously displayed, was yet ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... or less mean or extraneous in a work of sculpture, and which would assuredly be offensive to the perfect taste in its moments of languor, or of critical judgment, will be grateful, and even sublime, when it meets this frightened inquisitiveness, this fascinated watchfulness, of the roused imagination. And this is all for your advantage; for, in the beginnings of your sculpture, you will assuredly find it easier to imitate minute circumstances of costume or character, than to perfect the anatomy of simple forms ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... when you think yourself quite alone in the woods, Mooween is there. The wind has told your story to his nose; the clatter of your heedless feet long ago reached his keen ears, and he vanishes at your approach, leaving you to your noise and inquisitiveness and the other things you like. His gifts of concealment are so much greater than your powers of detection that he has absolutely no thought of ever seeing you. His surprise, therefore, when you do meet unexpectedly ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... much content in that phase of the situation, feeling that mere personal inquisitiveness was dignified in this case under the aegis of law and authority. It was exactly this view of the matter that most disturbed Cap'n Aaron Sproul, for that hateful Pharisee, Squire Reeves, had supplied the law to compel his ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Finally, a morbid, meddling inquisitiveness goaded the chatty little woman beyond the bounds of ministerial decorum, and, having rashly wagered a pair of gloves that she would gain an entrance to the parlors (whereof the upholsterer's wife told marvellous tales), she armed ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... not know the guards personally, but knew their command. And so we returned to the camp to await the return of our pickets and night. It was soon noised in camp that there was a fine fat porker to be distributed after tattoo, and no little eagerness and inquisitiveness were manifested, as all wished a piece. Armed with a crocus-sack, we returned to the house; all was dark and still. We whistled the signal, but no answer. It was repeated, but still no reply. The guard had ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... to his dignity and her own. Although the sovereigns of neighbouring nations paid similar visits of ceremony and of curiosity, yet this illustrious woman is particularly noticed in the sacred page, on account perhaps of her sex, her inquisitiveness, the remoteness of her situation, the magnificence of her equipage and offerings; but especially the piety of her views, and the impressive language of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... pushed their inquisitiveness about ancestry to the breaking-point Patsy blinked a pair of steely-blue eyes while she wrinkled her forehead into a speculative frown: "Faith! I can hearken back to Adam the same as yourselves; ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... language possess, and afterward, when you some thing say will, will you at least yourself understand what you said had. But often nowadays, when you a mile-long sentence from you given and you yourself somewhat have rested, then must you have a touching inquisitiveness have yourself to determine what you actually spoken have. Before several days has the correspondent of a local paper a sentence constructed which hundred and twelve words contain, and therein were seven parentheses ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a rocky nullah within the jungle; and from the high bank they had seen the tiger devouring the hind-quarters. This was satisfactory, although I was afraid that the tiger might have been disturbed by the inquisitiveness of the people; however, they laughed at the suggestion, and the beaters being ready, we sallied out to make a drive for a hopeless beast that was ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... deep an interest as the courses of the stars, and read in the real spectacle of life with as profound emotion as in the miraculous page of Vergil; and no scholar ever read Vergil with such feeling—no astronomer ever watched the stars with more eager inquisitiveness. The whole man opens to the world around him; all affections and powers, soul and sense, diligently and thoughtfully directed and trained, with free and concurrent and equal energy, with distinct ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... gleamed upon the windows, and the door was timorously unbarred and opened. A hard-featured hag, in a faded suit of an obsolete fashion—the genius loci—received the party. She scrutinized Lucille with a protracted stare of audacious inquisitiveness, and when she had quite satisfied her curiosity, she led the way through several halls and lobbies up the great staircase, along a corridor, through a suite of rooms, upon another lobby up a second staircase, into a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... and wearily, but he felt no resentment at the older man's inquisitiveness. Larry's face expressed too much kindliness to make resentment possible, but Richard was ill at ease to be talking thus intimately with a stranger who had but just chanced upon him. He rose ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... looking down with a sort of comic inquisitiveness at the unconscious old man. "No matter," he added, with lofty negligence; "one is enough till another ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... I carried my spoon to my mouth I examined her furtively. My hostess had excused me from dressing, but her daughter, neat in her widow's collar and cuffs, sat prim and upright, her eyes now and then raised to mine in undisguised inquisitiveness. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... Thoughtless" (1751) she reached the full fruition of her powers as a novelist. Her heroine, like Natura, is little more than a "humour" character, whose prevailing fault is denoted by her surname.[4] Though not fundamentally vicious, her heedless vanity, inquisitiveness, and vivacity lead her into all sorts of follies and embarrassments upon her first entry into fashionable life in London. Among all the suitors who strive to make an impression upon her heart Mr. Trueworth alone succeeds, but her levity and ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... a great deal owing to this habit of mind that the manners of the Burmese are usually so good, children in civilization as they are. There is amongst them no rude inquisitiveness and no desire to in any way circumscribe your freedom, by either remark or act. Surely of all things that cause trouble, nothing is so common amongst us as the interference with each other's ways, as ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... no answer. It is a curious inquisitiveness which it would do no one any good to gratify. I did not think it necessary to the happiness of my friends that they should know, and if it would afford me any satisfaction, it was far better that they should name the amount than I. They could exaggerate it; ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... Mrs. Folliot's inquisitiveness had been aroused, and that her tongue would not be idle: Mrs. Folliot, left to herself, had the gift of creating an atmosphere, and if she once got it into her head that there was some mysterious connection ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... in my own way, through my customary channel of communication with the public. I hope I shall not be misunderstood as implying any reproach against the inquirers who, in order to get at facts which ought to be known, apply to all whom they can reach for information. Their inquisitiveness is not always agreeable or welcome, but we ought to be glad that there are mousing fact-hunters to worry us with queries to which, for the sake of the public, we are bound to give our attention. Let me begin with ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... plainer than any explanations that I am back again among our pool-loving friends, the subjects of the Shah. As I bid Mohammed Ahzim Khan farewell, I feel almost like parting—from a friend; he is a good fellow, and with nine-tenths of his inquisitiveness suppressed, would make a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... great admiration, with frequently an expression of doubt or disapproval; and very often a strange, slight, inexpressible air of one who felt herself to belong to a different world, to which all these things were more or less foreign. Charity showed also intense eagerness and curiosity, and inquisitiveness; and mingled with those, a very perceptible flavour of incredulity or of disdain, the latter possibly born of envy. But Lois and Madge were growing with every journey to distant lands, and every new introduction to the great works of men's hands, of every ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... thinking of the impression he made. With an insatiable inquisitiveness and an omnivorous curiosity, he was looking for the secret of power in nations. Nothing escaped him—cutlery, rope-making, paper manufacture, whaling industry, surgery, microscopy; he was engaging artists, officers, engineers, surgeons, buying ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... rolled off, followed by a crowd of runners, eager out of pure inquisitiveness to see the matter through. They passed Government House, turned into dusty Macleod Road, and in five or six minutes reached the Custom House, where, turning to the left for a short distance along the Napier Mole, the driver pulled up ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... nature who argued that since birds could raise themselves by flapping their wings, man had only to make suitable wings, flap them, and he too would fly. As early as the thirteenth century Roger Bacon, the scientific friar of unbounded inquisitiveness and not a little real genius, announced that there could be made 'some flying instrument, so that a man sitting in the middle and turning some mechanism may put in motion some artificial wings which may beat the air like a bird flying.' But being a cautious man, ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... so many voices that hummed in harmony with the cries of birds and the chattering of monkeys. In among the tall, golden stems, short-statured brown ghosts moved, sarong clad; little people whose eyes gazed at the intruder with soft inquisitiveness as he strode sturdily forward. And a patch of gorgeous jungle was entered to the whisk and flirt of graceful heads and slim, swift legs, all the visible signs revealed by herds ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... of mankind from moral duties. Every preacher would become, as it were, a religious prize-fighter, drawing round him an auditory as a means of subsistence, instead of instructing a congregation in their duty to God. So there would be endless dispute, nice sifting of abstract ideas, and censorious inquisitiveness into the spiritual state of our neighbours, but little humility, charity, or true piety; which consist in grateful adoration of, and sincere obedience to our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, and not in speculations on the incomprehensible nature and unfathomable purposes of God. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the events that had led up to his presence on the raft, only omitting, of course, the object of the experiments. The doctor was very curious on this point, but his inquisitiveness was destined to go unsatisfied. Billy had no intention of betraying the boys' confidence in so important a matter as the proposed recovery of the golden galleon. The secret was theirs alone, he ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... not to be supposed that the disappearance of the village grocer from his usual post for a whole day together, and particularly on Christmas, that busiest of all days, failed to excite a degree of general curiosity and inquisitiveness as to the cause of his absence; but to the many inquiries of his friends touching that subject, he only replied by shaking his head and saying that time would show. Enough had leaked out, however, to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... first leg of the journey would be the same for all of us we bought other kit, packed it, and booked passages for British East Africa. Between then and the next afternoon when the British India steamboat sailed we were fairly bombarded by inquisitiveness, but contrived not to tell much. And with patience beyond belief Monty restrained us from paying court to ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... of loneliness. In one, on a dresser, Kirkwood found a stump of candle in a china candlestick; the two charred ends of matches at its base were only an irritating discovery, however—evidence that real matches had been the mode in Number 9, at some remote date. Disgusted and oppressed by cumulative inquisitiveness, he took the candle-end back to the hall; he would have given much for the time and means to make a more detailed investigation into ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... race might have been saved much tribulation if Eden had been located in some calm and tranquil land—like Ireland. There would at least have been no snakes there to get into the garden. Now woman in her thirst after knowledge, showed her true female inquisitiveness in her cross-examination of the serpent, and, in commemoration of that circumstance, the serpent seems to have been curled up and used in nearly all languages as a sign of interrogation. Soon the domestic troubles of our first parents began. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... purpose which must at once annihilate all your doubts. The prince was watched; measures were being taken to gain information regarding his mode of life, associates, and general habits. I know not with whom this inquisitiveness originated. Let me beg your attention, however, to what ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a little shy notwithstanding the friendly disposition of the other, answered him smilingly, aware somehow that there was something marked in this inquisitiveness, natural, after all—something anxious. His name was Powell, and he was put in the way of this berth by Mr. Powell, the shipping ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... my Wolseley sleeping bag, on the other a box in which to put my clothes, and on which stood a lantern. When Philo and I retired for the night we were really very comfortable, but we were much annoyed by earwigs and the inquisitiveness of the cows, who (p. 095) never could quite satisfy themselves as to what we were. Many is the time we have been awakened out of sleep in the morning by the sniffings and sighings of a cow, who poked round my tent until I thought she had the intention ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... as confessor to the society of which Isaura was so zealous a member. The old priest and the young poetess had become dear friends. There is in the nature of a woman (and especially of a woman at once so gifted and so childlike as Isaura, combining an innate tendency towards faith with a restless inquisitiveness of intellect, which is always suggesting query or doubt) a craving for something afar from the sphere of her sorrow, which can only be obtained through that "bridal of the earth and sky" which we call religion. And hence, to natures like Isaura's, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... when she had essayed to dig for the hidden thing there had been too much frost in the ground. Besides, doubtless Ruth and Helen's inquisitiveness had frightened the strange girl away. Now she was back again—somewhere now on Bliss Island. She had not accomplished her purpose as yet. Ruth smote the hard ground at her feet with all her strength. The pick sunk ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... chest just the faintest tip-end of a sigh, and tell some young lady, in a confidential undertone, that one of these days she would tell her something,—and then there would come a wink of her blue eyes and a fluttering of the pink ribbons in her cap quite stimulating to youthful inquisitiveness, though we have never been able to learn by any of our antiquarian researches that the expectations thus ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... animals, her cordage flapped loosely in the breeze, and every thing about her bespoke the merchant-vessel. Her captain, being hailed by the dock-loafers, and made the victim of the proverbial Yankee inquisitiveness, stated that he had just come from the West Indies with a load of lignum-vitae, pineapples, and hides, which he hoped to sell in Boston. The self-constituted investigating committee seemed satisfied, and the captain strolled on into ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... coincided with suspicions he had formed, since our last interview, in consequence of certain communications from his housekeeper. It seems the character of Clithero had, from the first, exercised the inquisitiveness of this old lady. She had carefully marked his musing and melancholy deportment. She had tried innumerable expedients for obtaining a knowledge of his past life, and particularly of his motives for coming to America. These expedients, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... of this same braggadocio in an opposite direction, when he calls the "present with its political disorders simply an intermediate state,—the transmission of the natural or unconscious wisdom of the fathers, through the inquisitiveness of their children to the rational acknowledgment of that wisdom by their grandsons." ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... foolishly placed his bottle of red ink in the chiffonnier—that was what her poor, foolish gentleman had done; and it was owing to her inquisitiveness, her restless wish to know things she would be none the better, none the happier, for knowing, that this ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... not remain a minute longer, but goes without asking if she desires to continue the conversation. For thirty years he has had the same duties and has fulfilled them in the same manner. He has never been accused of a mistake—he has never been guilty of inquisitiveness or intrigue. Thus the empress has great and firm confidence in him. She is so convinced of his truth, disinterestedness, and probity, that he has gained a sort of influence over her, and as she knows that ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... remunerative of industries, is almost unknown. The market grower already engaged in growing mushrooms appreciates his situation and zealously guards his methods of cultivation from the public. This only incites interest and inquisitiveness, and the people are becoming alive to the fact that there is money in mushrooms and an earnest demand has been created ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... somewhat cryptic cablegram roused Matt Peasley's curiosity. He could not rest until he had interviewed the agent—and after that sop to his inquisitiveness he returned to the Retriever a broken man. The loyal and disgusted Murphy read the trouble in the ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... confounded inquisitiveness, they add insult to injury, by making a point of dining out every day at some hut within the limits of their jurisdiction. As for the gentleman of the house, his meek endurance of these things is amazing. But "good easy man," there is ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... bare feet made little curtesies to the Friar. Children in long dresses ran into the cabins at sight of the strangers, like rabbits scuttling back to their burrows. Having found refuge they looked out over the half-doors as the car passed, their eyes sparkling, humorous, full of an alert inquisitiveness, their faces fresh as ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... eagerness to get hold of the watch, that he would be equally as eager for a share of the gold, and Mr. Brown and myself were both aware that he deserved a handsome reward for the dangers through which he had passed to free us from the inquisitiveness of the bushrangers. Therefore, the more backward Day appeared the more firmly did we insist upon ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... him by the hand, like a fond young bride, as her uncle came rapidly up the stairs. The door was opened at his elbow by a white-haired, almost "bearded" woman, large, sharp-sighted, and ugly, with many signs of both inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness upon her. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... that my curiosity was immensely piqued; though I flatter myself that my interest was quite legitimate, that it contained no element of vulgar inquisitiveness. Nevertheless, I did want to know—the outcome, at least—and I could decide upon no intermediary who would give me just the information ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... intending to execute a work, whether it be "to build a tower," or drain a field, "sitteth down first and counteth the cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it." There is good sense and discretion in the inquisitiveness which suggests so often the inquiry, "How much does it cost to drain an acre?" or, "How much does it cost a rod to lay drains?" These questions cannot be answered so briefly as they are asked; yet much information can be given, which will aid one ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... seemed in an admirable humor, stepped just outside the tent to look at the fish, and in that little interval his assistant, seized with inquisitiveness, stole up to his table, and picked up the tiny object lying ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... so sorry," answered Miss Smith contritely. "But please believe me—it was not mere cheap inquisitiveness that made me look." ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... make the humble complaint that the Hon'ble Coach was defective in courteous attention to my inquisitiveness, which he totally ignored. For I could not prevail upon him to explain what thing it was that he directed the oarmen to "wait for," to "spring at from a stretcher," and "catch at the beginning;" nor why they were forbidden to row with their ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... head, he tried to find out whether David had any money with him; he wanted to be paid something on account. The old man's inquisitiveness roused his son's distrust; David remained close buttoned up to ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... beggar man—or jilt. Now, however, his confidence was back in his heart, and when, on Sunday afternoon, he placed himself inconspicuously in the window of an ice-cream parlour, squarely opposite the Orpheum, it was merely to satisfy his inquisitiveness, and ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... as to diversify the appearance. A square apartment of great loftiness is yet standing; its use I could not conjecture, as its elevation was very disproportionate to its area. Two corner towers, particularly attracted our attention. Mr. Boswell, whose inquisitiveness is seconded by great activity, scrambled in at a high window, but found the stairs within broken, and could not reach the top. Of the other tower we were told that the inhabitants sometimes climbed it, but we did not immediately discern the entrance, and as ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... political argument in the hands of a hoodlum, but it does not make its target playful. To the Chinaman in America the situation is new and grave, and he looks sober and holds his peace. Even the funny-looking, be-cued little Chinese children wear a look of solemn inquisitiveness, as they toddle along the streets of San Francisco by the side of their queer-looking mothers. In his own land, overpopulated and misgoverned, the Chinaman has a hard fight for existence. In these United States his advent is regarded somewhat in the same spirit as that of the ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... as essential an ingredient of Prussian character as conceit, indifference to the feelings of others, jealousy, envy, self-satisfaction, conceit, industry, inquisitiveness, veneration for officialdom, imitativeness, materialism, and the other national attributes that will occur to those who know Prussia, as distinct from ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... heart that beats, the tears which start, the blood which courses through them, keep time with our own. The desire to penetrate still further into the intimacy to which they admit us is quite distinct from the vulgar inquisitiveness which pursues celebrity, or merely notoriety, into privacy. His biography has lately been published by one who recognizes the true nature of this curiosity: Paul de Musset has reserved the right of telling his brother's story, regarding it, he says, "not only as a duty I owe to the man I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... very shape and size of its lock. It might be as well to try that lock, but he would have to cross a very wide strip of moonlight in order to do so, and he feared to attract attention to his extreme inquisitiveness. Yet who was there to notice him at this hour? Mr. Cumberland had not moved, the girls were upstairs, Zadok was busy with his paper, and the footman dozing over his pipe in his room over the stable. Sweetwater had just come from that room, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... things, Arthur Gride was appealed to. The robbery, partly owing to the inquisitiveness of the neighbours, and partly to his own grief and rage, had, long ago, become known; but he positively refused to give his sanction or yield any assistance to the old woman's capture, and was seized with such a panic at the idea of being ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... wisely," said the Princess to Bianca, with some sharpness, "if I had let thee converse with this peasant; his inquisitiveness seems of a piece with ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... nation to put a girdle of empire around the earth. It had courage, enterprise, intelligence, perseverance, faith in itself, the instinct of self-government and self-help, hatred of tyranny, the disposition to domineer, aggressiveness, greediness, inquisitiveness, insolence, the love of science, of liberty, and of money—all this in unlimited extent. It had one great defect, it had no country. Upon that meagre standing ground its hand had moved the world with an impulse to be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... each other before to-day? Quite impossible! Had they heard anything of each other? Impossible again! I could speak to Mr. Franklin's astonishment as genuine, when he saw how the girl stared at him. Penelope could speak to the girl's inquisitiveness as genuine, when she asked questions about Mr. Franklin. The conference between us, conducted in this way, was tiresome enough, until my daughter suddenly ended it by bursting out with what I thought the most monstrous supposition I had ever ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... doubt, though how she came in such company, and in such a place, he could not imagine, and could hardly reconcile to his belief. He, however, listened, and when he caught her name uttered by her prostrate suitor, his rage at the discovery was unbounded. Yet his inquisitiveness to hear more, and know how she received the addresses, overcame for the moment, the first impulse of his malevolence; and kept him silent until the moment, when he dismounted from his horse, we have seen him appear ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... by his side he asked many questions about myself and many of our schoolfellows; but on my questioning him in turn about himself, his way of life, and his future plans, he avoided entering into any explanation: indeed, he gave such short and evasive answers, that, thinking my inquisitiveness displeased him, I rose to take my leave. I observed that I had not been lucky enough to see Lord Byron in any of my rambles, to which he replied, "Byron is living at his villa, surrounded by his court of sycophants; but I shall shortly see him at Leghorn." We then shook hands. I never ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... overlooking gardens as far as one could see. An advantage of the flat was that it had nothing opposite, so that the occupant could move about with the windows open if he liked, and yet have nothing to fear from the inquisitiveness of neighbours. ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... he went on, apparently with a view to palliating his inquisitiveness by a show of candour. 'I find it a very convenient sort of religion in Connaught. There isn't a single place of worship belonging to my denomination in the whole province, so I'm always able to get my Sundays to myself. I don't want to convert you to anything ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... character. He certainly loved and respected his father as long as he lived. Many years thereafter, when his father was old and infirm, he was wont to perform frequent journeys from Philadelphia to Boston, to visit him. It was on one of these journeys that he rebuked the inquisitiveness of a landlord, by requesting him, as soon as he entered his tavern, to assemble all the members of his family together, as he had something important to communicate. The landlord proceeded to gratify him, and as soon as they were brought together in one room, he said, "My name is Benjamin ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... characteristic of our circuit judge that he should have voiced his curiosity aloud. Talking to himself when he was alone was one of his habits. Also, it was characteristic of him that he had refrained from betraying his inquisitiveness to his late caller. Similar motives of delicacy had kept him from following the other man ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... by the appearance, in the open front doors, of a strange creature with a bright pink ribbon arranged as a sort of cockade around and above its left ear—a brown, hairy, unclean-looking thing that gazed with human inquisitiveness at the approaching figures. As the elder Ranger drew down his eyebrows the creature gave a squeak of alarm and, dropping from a sitting position to all fours, wheeled and shambled swiftly along the wide hall, walking human fashion with its ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... nothing so much as of a voracious inquisitiveness. He wanted to know. He was resolved to know. Nothing but the knowledge would satisfy him; and craftily he cast about for means whereby he might ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... somehow given herself a scratch upon the tip of this odd, investigating member; and it blushed for its inquisitiveness under a scrap ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... excursions, and his clerk had learned not to ask questions. Diplomacy in such matters was partly what the clerk was paid for. A good fellow to work for was Bill Talpers if no one got too curiously inclined. One or two clerks had been disciplined on account of inquisitiveness, and they would not be as beautiful after the Talpers methods had been applied, but they had gained vastly in experience. Some day he would do even more for this young Indian agent. Bill's cracked lips were stretched in a grin of satisfaction ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... recollection of the mysterious man inspired, that despite the permission to tell what had happened she mentioned her adventure to no one, and did not even complain to her neighbour, Madame Rapally, of the inquisitiveness which had led the widow to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... positive impulses of his own spirit.[6] There is, indeed, a whole heaven betwixt the serenity, balance, and bright composure of the one, and the vehemence, passion, masterful wrath, of the other; and the vast, incessant, exact inquisitiveness of Goethe finds nothing corresponding to it in Mr. Carlyle's multitudinous contempt and indifference, sometimes express and sometimes only very significantly implied, for forms of intellectual activity that do not happen to ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... bombs." The hair crinkled upwards into the lad's steel helmet and he carried that box to its destination with all the lavish care and tenderness of a mother for her babe. Placing it gingerly down and unable to overcome the strong trait of inquisitiveness latent in all soldiers, he forced up the lid and peeped upon—two heavy sets ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... attention by the trembling care with which he re-read a perfect mountain of notes in a feminine hand, which he burnt one by one in a basin, gathering up the ashes and preserving them in a bottle—not a bad way of keeping tender memories quite safe from any inquisitiveness But all these warlike preparations were thrown away. When the Belle Poule cast anchor at Cherbourg on November 3Oth, the storm had passed by. My mission closed at Cherbourg, but I found orders there to tranship the coffin on to a steamboat, and then ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy;[37:1] that dominant individualism, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... are much amused in these parts at our gallant fleet, and so early at sea; and I permit them all their conjectures, neither have they gained much allay of them from me by their inquisitiveness. ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... reader will learn why I give neither his name nor real rank) spoke with some bitterness of the inquisitiveness which rendered it impossible, he said, to trust an American with a secret, and very difficult to keep one without lying. We were presently joined by Major B——, who had been employed during the war in the conduct of many critical communications, and had shown great ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Chase was a Yankee; and though a cultivated one, he had not parted with an innate inquisitiveness, and had an off-hand way of asking such questions as first presented. He catechised these three missionaries as faithfully, even in presence of Dr. Adams, as if he had been President of the American Board. He desired to know the number of years spent in the ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... The inquisitiveness of Keith with regard to his ancestors and the past life of his parents continued for quite a while. Other family connections seemed unreal and did not interest him. Having no sister or brother of his own, relationships of that kind were meaningless to him. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... very sensitive to any such inquisitiveness on the part of the opposite sex. To this cause, perhaps, and possibly, also, to the fear of causing disgust, may be ascribed the objection of men to undress before women artists and women doctors. I am told there ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... always together; and as the days passed by he spoke freely of himself and his affairs, obeying unconsciously the rudder of my tactful inquisitiveness. By the end of the first week I knew as much about him ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... Inquisitiveness is fatal to real charm. No one cares to talk twice with a person who, no matter what his wit or ability to entertain, has betrayed one into divulging facts or making remarks ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... gray showed low down in the east, and Ellerey pressed forward as quickly as possible to find an asylum. He passed the first scattered dwellings he came to, having no desire to knock up some sleepy peasant and have to combat his inquisitiveness, as well as his annoyance, at being so unceremoniously disturbed. Presently where two cross-roads met he espied a small habitation, from which a thin wreath of smoke was rising into the morning air, and decided to try his fortune here. He had set his burden down by the gate when an old woman ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... Kansan confessed that the two tribes had been a bit hostile of late, but what with raiding, razing, and murdering, he guessed they'd laid the foundation for a mutual self-respect, as behooved valiant redskins. So she often got strange answers for her inquisitiveness, but she had grown wary among Westerners, and she usually paid them back. They were a happy party. But Driscoll wanted a more definite focusing of the joy. And at times, indeed, yielding to temptation herself, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... consciousness sufficiently to be able to see them. It was known that she had sent for me on being taken ill, and that I remained at Roughborough, and I own I was angered by the mingled air of suspicion, defiance and inquisitiveness, with which they regarded me. They would all, except Theobald, I believe have cut me downright if they had not believed me to know something they wanted to know themselves, and might have some chance of learning from me—for it was plain I had been in some way concerned with ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... say one word to vindicate the lover of old musty writings, and the explorer of rude antiquities, from the charge of unprofitableness, and to protect him from the sneer of ridicule. For whilst some see in the dry studies of the antiquary a mere inquisitiveness after forgotten facts and worthless relics; I can see, nay, have felt, something morally elevating in the exercise of these inquiries. It is not the mere fact which may sometimes be gained by rubbing off the parochial whitewash from ancient tablets, or the encrusted oxide ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the diving-suit in Grant's hand, stared at Grant's face with a sharp, penetrating, unashamed inquisitiveness that made Grant use all of his will-power to stare ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... rather hackneyed to begin with?' suggested Drake with a perfectly serious inquisitiveness. The ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... did they erect it on the slave rather than on the free side of the Ohio? This institution I was anxious to see; but I found it too far off, and the roads too bad. Feeling weary and faint, we called at a house of refreshment, where we had a genuine specimen of American inquisitiveness. ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... occasionally engage in conversation with a few whose evident incompetency seemed to make them safe confidants. One, a man who during his life had more than once been committed to an institution, took a very evident interest in me and persisted in talking to me, often much against my will. His persistent inquisitiveness seemed to support his own statement that he had formerly been a successful life-insurance agent. He finally gained my confidence to such a degree that months before I finally began to talk to others I permitted myself to converse frequently with him—but only when we were so situated ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... the whole country around her was inhabited by a rich and respectable people, principally from New-England, as much distinguished for their spirit of inquisitiveness as for their habits of industry and honesty, who had all heard from one source and another a part of her life in detached pieces, and had obtained an idea that the whole taken in connection would ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... is correct," assented Chester, uncertain whether Blennerhassett was speaking in earnest or in irony. "I confess I am not a literary student. Pardon the interruption and my inquisitiveness, but am I correctly informed that the young lady to whom I was introduced, a few weeks ago, when I called here, is related to Mr. Hale of whom ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... her narrow, sun-dried face wrinkling into new lines of inquisitiveness. "They said you had a piano in your bedroom, but I thought they were just foolin' me! Seems I never heard of havin' a piano upstairs. Most folks like to show 'em off in the parlor. Must be kind of funny, takin' ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... probably in some measure to pay me out for this scrape, and to give me another lesson in the unwisdom of too much independence and inquisitiveness in a youngster, that my parents, soon after this sad event, allowed me to get into trouble ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... had informed him that all inquiries respecting the birth and first marriage of Lady Vargrave had failed. Evelyn evidently knew but little of either, and he felt a certain delicacy in pressing questions which might be ascribed to the inquisitiveness of a vulgar family pride. Moreover, lovers have so much to say to each other, that he had not time to talk at length to Evelyn about third persons. He slept ill that night,—dark and boding dreams disturbed his slumber. He rose late and dejected by presentiments ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IX • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... but two small lots of prime whiskey, such as we have been selling these twenty years. But why these chiding inquiries? They disquiet me exceedingly. And to tell you the plain truth, I am more than half offended at this morbid inquisitiveness. ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... beach at the base of the cliff; so they all climbed down the steep path, followed by Mumbles, who had not perceptibly grown in size during the trip but had acquired an adventurous disposition which, coupled with his native inquisitiveness, frequently led him ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... Copernicus furnishes a signal example of the accordance between profound religious sentiment and the utmost inquisitiveness respecting the secrets of nature and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... anything is done or said that resembles Mission work as invented in stories, and described by the very vivid imagination, of sensational writers. The crowd is great, the noise greater, the heat, the dirt, the inquisitiveness, the endless repetition of the same questions and remarks, the continual requests for a fish-hook, for beads, &c.—this is somewhat unlike the interesting pictures, in a Missionary Magazine, of an amiable ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... publishes the book 'as a warning to all Christians and sensible people to avoid the terrible example of Doctor Faustus.' He evidently takes the thing very seriously and has purposely (as he says) omitted all 'magic formulae,' lest 'any should by this Historia be incited to inquisitiveness and imitation.' Johann Faust, according to this version, was born at Roda, a village near Weimar. (Other versions say at Knittlingen in Wuertemberg.) His parents were honest God-fearing peasants. His great abilities induced a rich relation in Wittenberg to adopt and ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... not been idle. The keen inquisitiveness of his nature was now shown in a very different way, for his eyes were searching the depths of the forest as he peered through the gloom among the dimly-seen trunks again, and he fired twice in the direction from which the splashing of paddles had ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... red deer, the newest importation into those woods. The Bush Robin never quite knew the reason of his own inquisitiveness, and the roaming deer never quite knew why the little bird took so much interest in his movements, but the fact remained that whenever the antlered autocrat came to drink at the stream, the Bush Robin would stand on a branch near by, and sing till the big buck thought the little ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... answer or satisfy his inquisitiveness, the door of the carriage was opened in haste, and the landlord sprang to offer his shoulder. A tall young man whose shaped riding-coat failed to hide that which his jewelled hands and small French hat would alone have betrayed—that he was dressed in the height of fashion—stepped down. A room and ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... characteristic that the worst kind of American travellers possess, these countrymen of ours display an amount of insolent conceit and cool assumption of superiority, quite monstrous to behold. In the coarse familiarity of their approach, and the effrontery of their inquisitiveness (which they are in great haste to assert, as if they panted to revenge themselves upon the decent old restraints of home), they surpass any native specimens that came within my range of observation: and I often grew so patriotic when I saw and heard them, that I would ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... business with me, sir?" She offered me a chair, and I sat down. She put the child, not yet awakened, into the arms of the black, who kissed it and rocked it in her arms with great satisfaction, and, resuming her seat, looked at me with inquisitiveness mingled with complacency. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... filled with young females, fancifully decorated with flowers, who gazed upon me as I rose with faces in which childish delight and curiosity were vividly portrayed. After waking Toby, they seated themselves round us on the mats, and gave full play to that prying inquisitiveness which time out of mind has been ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... in a good situation, I believe?' said Manston, imitating that inquisitiveness into the private affairs of the natives which passes for high breeding in ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... specific field of scientific industry the colored man has, contrary to the belief of many, made his entry, and has brought to his work in it that same degree of patient inquisitiveness, plodding industry and painstaking experiment that has so richly rewarded others in the same line of endeavor, namely, the endeavor both to create new things and to effect such new combinations of old things as will adapt them to new ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... Such are often the first causes of our resolves; for it is necessary to act, but impossible to know the consequences of action, or to discuss all the reasons which offer themselves on every part to inquisitiveness and solicitude. Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability. Yet this is but a small part of our perplexity. We set out on a tempestuous sea in quest of some port, where we expect to find ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... with the inquisitiveness of a land to which few strangers come, did not see that recognition of a Nemesis, and quickly, in order that the stranger himself might not see it, the man drew a long breath into his chest and schooled himself to the stoic bearing of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Boston. He was a youth of twenty-three, of German aspect, and I think his face was somewhat seamed with small-pox. But his sweet and candid expression, his gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of mental unrest which William Henry Channing was ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... did great credit to her maid, and gave additional height to the head and length to a thin white neck. Her light blue eyes were very direct and observant. Their expression implied both considerable knowledge of the world and a natural inquisitiveness. Many persons indeed were of opinion that Lady Selina wished to know too much about you and were on their guard ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it is doubtful if Aleck noticed this tribute to his sex. Sallie looked withered and pinched, but more by nature and disposition than by age. She stood with arms akimbo near the center-table, regarding Aleck with inquisitiveness not unmixed with liking. ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... appearance was intense. They were chiefly fishermen or husbandmen, and notwithstanding the uncouth and remarkable dress of the Landers, they behaved to them without rudeness and even with civility, so that their inquisitiveness was not disagreeable. Speaking trumpets, it was imagined, were quite a novelty with the men at Brass, by the extraordinary rapture which they displayed for their music, which certainly was anything but melodious. It has been already ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... curiosity by a sight of the man whose name and exploits had already been the theme of many a conversation among them. If ever Yankee, or American, (which is the more appropriate term, we will not attempt to decide) inquisitiveness was exhibited, it certainly could be then seen at Fort Laramie. The large majority of those who were thus anxious to see the famous guide, were led astray by the descriptions which they had heard and read, and picked out some powerfully built trader who chanced to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... kinny-kinick, was passed from one to another in silence. Not a word escaped them, the Chiefs viewing with each other in betraying no symptom of idle curiosity or impatience. At length a Chief turned his eyes slowly towards the old Sachem, and in a low voice, with great delicacy in excluding all inquisitiveness, addressed him: ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... her in an assured, not unkindly inquisitiveness, the girls fresh and bright-faced, with crisp lovely clothes; their mother, in a smart mantle and little bonnet with knots of French flowers, greeted her with a direct question tempered by a smile. William Ammidon, smoking, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... explained as ananusandhana or the absence of inquisitiveness or curiosity. By pratibha is meant inquiry after improper things or things ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... pierced his heart, and remained stiller than the crawling roots around him, and not half so easy to see. But it was no good. Up shot the dozen heads above the herbage, and two dozen vacuous eyes regarded his vicinity with empty-headed inquisitiveness. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... and trees took dim, mysterious shape; the edge of the moon peeped with glorious inquisitiveness over the clouds. Calmly, royally the moon rose. So deliberately was she unveiled, that it seemed as if she were revealing her beauty to the world for the first time, like a proud, adored mistress ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... solemnity as in the old school days when he had to meet his teacher after some of his occasional mischiefs. With these and other agreeable memories relishing my time in that office, I heard a loud applause in the store and the words "Father is here," aroused my inquisitiveness and before I could leave my chair, there was at the door of the office standing the man whom I wanted to see. Sturdy and resolute with two slow steps he now extends a welcome hand to me and as he called me by my childish ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... book, Karankaway Country (Garden City, 1950), is misleading. The Karankawa Indians start it off, but it goes to coon inquisitiveness, prairie chicken dances, the extinction of species to which the whooping crane is approaching, browsing goats, dignified skunks, swifts in love flight, a camp in the brush, dust, erosion, silt—always with thinking added to seeing. The foremost naturalist of the Southwest, Bedichek constantly relates ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... questions had elicited no satisfaction from her brother, and Evadne had answered simply, "Louis took a fancy to put it on my finger: I am wearing it to please him, that is all:" and even Isabelle found her cousin's sweet dignity an effectual bar against her morbid inquisitiveness. ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... Abbey rent free on condition that they were put back into cultivation. The patron himself had gone away for the winter to Rome and Florence, and Mark was glad that he had, for he was sure that otherwise his inquisitiveness would have been severely snubbed by the Prior. Father Burrowes went away as usual to preach after Christmas; but before he went Mark was clothed as a novice together with two other postulants who had been at ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... These consisted of a bandana handkerchief or two, a few yards of gaudily printed calico, a few yards of copper wire, and a handful of mixed beads to each of the women; and from the grins of appreciation of the recipients I concluded that they were all well satisfied. Then, with the inquisitiveness of the lower type of savage, they began to question me, not in a straightforward fashion, but covertly and by roundabout processes, with the view of discovering my motive for journeying so far from my own people; whereupon I told them frankly that ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... practical bent, his definiteness,— in fact, the sharp New England mould in which he is cast. He is the master Yankee, the centennial flower of that thrifty and peculiar stock. More especially in his later writings and speakings do we see the native New England traits,—the alertness, eagerness, inquisitiveness, thrift, dryness, archness, caution, the nervous energy as distinguished from the old English unction and vascular force. How he husbands himself,—what prudence, what economy, always spending up, as he says, and not down! How alert, how attentive; ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... confound your inquisitiveness. Hasn't Agnes lost all her money because of this selfish marriage with Noel, hang him? How the dickens do you expect us to carry ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... victimized into reading the profound and prosy remarks which I shall make in my efforts to initiate you into the mining polity of this place. Now, you may rest assured that I shall assert nothing upon the subject which is not perfectly correct; for have I not earned a character for inquisitiveness (and you know that does not happen to be one of my failings) which I fear will cling to me through life, by my persevering questions to all the unhappy miners from whom I thought I could gain any information? Did I not martyrize myself into a human mule by descending to the bottom of ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... judge it as quickly as possible!—one would think modern men had but one virtue left—presence of mind. Unfortunately, it much more closely resembles the omnipresence of disgusting and insatiable cupidity, and spying inquisitiveness become universal. For the question is whether mind is present at all to-day;—but we shall leave this problem for future judges to solve; they, at least, are bound to pass modern men through a sieve. But that this age is vulgar, even we can see now, and it is so because ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... their nature, would then frequently approach, now stopping, now drawing nearer, till the hunter would suddenly lift his bow, drawing his arrow to let it fly at the nearest animal, which would in most instances suffer the penalty of its inquisitiveness. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... king continued seated, directing his eyes towards his judges, or towards the spectators, without betraying any emotion. Once he rose; turned his back upon the court to see what was passing behind him, and again sat down with an expression at once of inquisitiveness and indifference in his manner. Upon hearing the words: "Charles Stuart, a tyrant, traitor, and murderer," he laughed, though he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... increased suspicion, doubtless imagining me to be enumerating themselves and reins for the purpose of taxation, or something worse. Several came close up to me, and peered over the cabalistic signs on my paper with a sort of gloomy inquisitiveness. I spoke to the Lap who understood Norwegian, and he acted as tolk in interpreting anew to his brethren the purely amicable nature of my intentions. As to the half-dozen of little wild imps of children, I had already won their confidence by distributing among them large ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... by doing so; yet quickwitted as he is, this obvious device never seems to have occurred to Reynard. Among slightly teachable mammals, however, there is one group more teachable than the rest. Monkeys, with their greater power of handling things, have also more inquisitiveness and more capacity for sustained attention than any other mammals; and the higher apes are fertile in varied resources. The orang-outang and gorilla are for this reason dreaded by other animals, and roam the undisputed ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... curiosity, since every one desired to know who the knight was that had gained so many laurels, yet had refused, even at the command of Prince John, to lift his visor or to name his name. But their officious inquisitiveness was not gratified. The Disinherited Knight refused all other assistance save that of his own squire, or rather yeoman—a clownish-looking man, who, wrapt in a cloak of dark-coloured felt, and having his head and face half-buried ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... awake, tossing his head restlessly from side to side, the attentive monks noticed that something was disturbing his mind; but nobody dared ask what it might be, for the abbot was of a stern disposition, and never would brook inquisitiveness. Suddenly he called for Father John, and that venerable monk was soon ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... placed between a Scylla and Charybdis, between what is due to the subject, and what is expected by the public. If something is left out of the portrait, the likeness will be imperfect; if the anxiety or the inquisitiveness of readers to know private details is left ungratified, the writer will be met by the current cant that the public has a right to know. The line is not easily drawn, and few subjects for the biographer can ever desire to be as candidly dealt with by him as Cromwell acted with Sir Peter Lely, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... spilled a basin of hot milk over herself and was badly scalded; that cured her of inquisitiveness. Maren put her to bed and treated her burns with egg-oil and slices of new potato; and it was some time before Ditte was herself again. But when she was again about, there was not so much as a scar ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... straightforwardness, a natural courtesy and extreme good-nature, which was very agreeable. Although they were all very anxious to talk to a European—who, in these blockaded times, is a rara avis—yet their inquisitiveness was ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... lying on the bed laughing, Jake, looking at him with a smile which spoke inquisitiveness more plainly than he could have articulated the word, inquired: "Vot you laffin at? You laff like a tam fool. It makes me feel like a tam fool, too; I kan't tell but vot you iss laffin at ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... betrayed by my apparent lack of inquisitiveness into a relation of the details I was ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... I find with American women, if it can be so called, and that is their inquisitiveness; I know that this is a common fault with all women, but it is most conspicuous in the Americans. They have the knack of finding out things without your being aware of it, and if they should want to know your history they will learn all about it after a few minutes' conversation. They ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... impresses one as having the intelligence of a much older child than three years (now five years), but his height, dentition, and general appearance indicate the truthfulness of the age assigned. An evidence of his symmetrical mental development appears in his extreme inquisitiveness. He wants to understand the meaning of what he is taught, and some kind of an explanation must be given him for what he learns. Were his memory alone abnormally great and other faculties defective, this would hardly be the case; but if so, it ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... of Jones, as surprize for a moment did that of Partridge; but he soon recovered the use of speech, and after a short preface, in which he declared he had no inquisitiveness in his temper, enquired what Jones meant by a considerable sum—he knew not how much—and what was become of ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... once or twice a week I will go to Gunnersbury and drink a bottle with Princess Amelia. Alas, dear lady! and cannot you do all that without skuttling from one end of the world to the other?—This was the, upshot of all Cineas's inquisitiveness: and this is the pith of this tedious letter from, Madam, your ladyship's most faithful Aulic Counsellor and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... achievements of our great undertaking. We shall be able to point to you in proof that zeal for knowledge may thrive even under the pressure of secular callings; that mother-wit does not necessarily make a man idle, nor inquisitiveness of mind irreverent; that shrewdness and cleverness are not incompatible with firm faith in the mysteries of Revelation; that attainment in Literature and Science need not make men conceited, nor above their station, nor restless, nor self-willed. We shall be ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... was in him something of the sensitiveness of a dreamer who is easily jarred. He had said to himself that the all-knowing one would only preach again about the evils of solitude and worry his head off in favour of some forlornly useless protege of his. Also the inquisitiveness of the Editor had irritated him and had closed his lips in ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... sun in those days was not regarded with the cold-blooded inquisitiveness or matter-of-fact apathy, according as there is or is not anything to be learnt from it, with which such an event is now regarded. Every occurrence in the heavens was then believed to carry with it the destiny of nations and the fate of individuals, and accordingly was of surpassing ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... sciences; certainly it is rich in strange curiosities, like those mystic stones which were fingered and arrayed by the pupils in that allegory of Novalis. I am not likely to regret the accident which brought me up on fairy tales, and the inquisitiveness which led me to examine the other fragments of antiquity. But the poetry and the significance of them are apt to be hidden by the enormous crowd of details. Only late we find the true meaning of what seems like a mass of fantastic, savage eccentricities. I very well remember the moment when ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... than one's peaceful thoughts. To be a civilian was a distinguished honor now, and I enjoyed the staring of the citizens, who pondered as to my purposes and pursuits, as only villagers can do. There is a quiet pleasure in being a strange person in a country town, and so far from objecting to the inquisitiveness of the folk, I rather like it. One may be passing for a young duke, or tourist, or ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... sharply to the pony. Baldy stopped and eyed the foreman with vapid inquisitiveness. "Now, son, I got three things to tell you," and the foreman gathered up the reins. "First—keep on keepin' your mouth shut and tendin' to business. It pays. Second—always drop your reins over a hoss's head when you get off, whether ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... (p. 15) he suggests that "our God, the Captain of Mankind," may one day enable us to "pierce the black wrappings," or, in other words, to get behind the veil. There is nothing, then, unreasonable or absurd in man's incurable inquisitiveness as to God, in the non-Wellsian sense of the term. God simply means the key to the mystery of existence; and though the keys hitherto offered have all either jammed or turned round and round without unlocking ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... with interest, for so little was known of Sparta by the rest of the Greeks, especially outside the Peloponnesus, that these details gratified his natural spirit of gossiping inquisitiveness. ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... traveling in small flocks, even in the breeding season, and keeping up an almost incessant chorus of shrill twitters as they flit hither and thither through the woods. The first one to come near me was full of inquisitiveness; he flew back and forth past my head, exactly as chickadees do in a similar mood, and once seemed almost ready to alight on my hat. "Let us have a look at this stranger," he appeared to be saying. Possibly ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... chirruping chafe of bamboo shoots were so many voices that hummed in harmony with the cries of birds and the chattering of monkeys. In among the tall, golden stems, short-statured brown ghosts moved, sarong clad; little people whose eyes gazed at the intruder with soft inquisitiveness as he strode sturdily forward. And a patch of gorgeous jungle was entered to the whisk and flirt of graceful heads and slim, swift legs, all the visible signs revealed by herds ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... intelligent lad, with a strong predilection for study; and in the next place there was little else for you to do on this group but learn, until we started to build the cutter. Now, Billy, what you have told me relative to Van Ryn's inquisitiveness and his cross-questioning of you has greatly interested me, for a reason which I will explain later on; therefore, while I am not as a rule inquisitive, I will ask you to make a point of reporting to me the substance of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... It is a curious inquisitiveness which it would do no one any good to gratify. I did not think it necessary to the happiness of my friends that they should know, and if it would afford me any satisfaction, it was far better that they should name the ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... to flash into teacups as though they were crocuses, that loves to run a golden finger along the beautiful wrinkles of old faces and light up the noble hollows of age-worn eyes; the sunlight that loves to fall with transfiguring beam on the once dear book we never read, or, with malicious inquisitiveness, expose to undreamed-of detection the undusted picture, or the gold-dusted legs of remote chairs, which ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... strange curiosity about this youth, but as Richard gave my inquisitiveness no food, and conducted his attentions to his charge in an orderly, business-like manner, I dismissed the subject from ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... to the pony. Baldy stopped and eyed the foreman with vapid inquisitiveness. "Now, son, I got three things to tell you," and the foreman gathered up the reins. "First—keep on keepin' your mouth shut and tendin' to business. It pays. Second—always drop your reins over a hoss's head when you get off, whether he's trained ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of his devotion and honesty of purpose which must at once annihilate all your doubts. The prince was watched; measures were being taken to gain information regarding his mode of life, associates, and general habits. I know not with whom this inquisitiveness originated. Let me beg your attention, however, to what I am about ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... in the woods,—the one who had stood silhouetted on the hill top? Barry could only guess. Again he chided himself for his inquisitiveness and walked on. Almost to Ba'tiste's cabin he went; at last to turn from the road at the sound of hoofbeats, then to stare as Medaine Robinette, on horseback, passed him at a trot, headed toward her home, the shadowy Lost Wing, on his calico pony, straggling along in the rear. ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... just as essential an ingredient of Prussian character as conceit, indifference to the feelings of others, jealousy, envy, self-satisfaction, conceit, industry, inquisitiveness, veneration for officialdom, imitativeness, materialism, and the other national attributes that will occur to those who know Prussia, as distinct from the ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... remained stiller than the crawling roots around him, and not half so easy to see. But it was no good. Up shot the dozen heads above the herbage, and two dozen vacuous eyes regarded his vicinity with empty-headed inquisitiveness. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... gave additional height to the head and length to a thin white neck. Her light blue eyes were very direct and observant. Their expression implied both considerable knowledge of the world and a natural inquisitiveness. Many persons indeed were of opinion that Lady Selina wished to know too much about you and were on their guard ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... what would at other times be felt as more or less mean or extraneous in a work of sculpture, and which would assuredly be offensive to the perfect taste in its moments of languor, or of critical judgment, will be grateful, and even sublime, when it meets this frightened inquisitiveness, this fascinated watchfulness, of the roused imagination. And this is all for your advantage; for, in the beginnings of your sculpture, you will assuredly find it easier to imitate minute circumstances of costume or character, than to perfect the anatomy of simple forms or the ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... doc for Gid. Seems he got caught out and froze up somehow—tho I never s'picioned that weather would have any effect on the old sanup. P'rhaps you've been hearin' all about how it happened? Feller wouldn't stop long enough to explain to us." The man's gaze was full of inquisitiveness and the others crowded around ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... begun, and you will be one of the proudest achievements of our great undertaking. We shall be able to point to you in proof that zeal for knowledge may thrive even under the pressure of secular callings; that mother-wit does not necessarily make a man idle, nor inquisitiveness of mind irreverent; that shrewdness and cleverness are not incompatible with firm faith in the mysteries of Revelation; that attainment in Literature and Science need not make men conceited, nor above their station, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... schemers were not sooner successful than they were is due to a combination of small things—each perhaps trivial in itself, but the whole most efficacious in perpetuating Napoleon's hold on the French. During his presence in Paris all the old inquisitiveness and boundless concern for detail seemed to return without diminution of force. Before his last departure he had won the popular heart by the model family life of the Tuileries, which, though never ostentatiously displayed, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... are also very sensitive to any such inquisitiveness on the part of the opposite sex. To this cause, perhaps, and possibly, also, to the fear of causing disgust, may be ascribed the objection of men to undress before women artists and women doctors. I am told there is often difficulty in getting men to pose nude ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... stood upon the wharf, the curiosity and inquisitiveness of the New England people would naturally lead them into the midst of the poor Acadians. Prying busybodies thrust their heads into the circle wherever two or three of the exiles were conversing together. How puzzled did they look at the outlandish ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... apron on in place of the colored gingham she had worn before; but it is doubtful if Aleck noticed this tribute to his sex. Sallie looked withered and pinched, but more by nature and disposition than by age. She stood with arms akimbo near the center-table, regarding Aleck with inquisitiveness not ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... him the events that had led up to his presence on the raft, only omitting, of course, the object of the experiments. The doctor was very curious on this point, but his inquisitiveness was destined to go unsatisfied. Billy had no intention of betraying the boys' confidence in so important a matter as the proposed recovery of the golden galleon. The secret was theirs alone, he reflected. What was his amazement, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... from the presence of another as an unwelcome intrusion. Conscious of her secret, Jane's prying eyes were already beginning to irritate her nerves. Never had she seen a human face that so completely embodied her idea of inquisitiveness as the uncanny visage of this child. She saw that she would be watched with a tireless vigilance. Her recoil, however, was not so much a matter of conscious reasoning and perception as it was an instinctive feeling of repulsion ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... softening down, still persisted as survivals in the place of their origin, even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy;[37:1] that dominant individualism, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... nature, would then frequently approach, now stopping, now drawing nearer, till the hunter would suddenly lift his bow, drawing his arrow to let it fly at the nearest animal, which would in most instances suffer the penalty of its inquisitiveness. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... roused Matt Peasley's curiosity. He could not rest until he had interviewed the agent—and after that sop to his inquisitiveness he returned to the Retriever a broken man. The loyal and disgusted Murphy read the trouble in the ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... their sister had recovered consciousness sufficiently to be able to see them. It was known that she had sent for me on being taken ill, and that I remained at Roughborough, and I own I was angered by the mingled air of suspicion, defiance and inquisitiveness, with which they regarded me. They would all, except Theobald, I believe have cut me downright if they had not believed me to know something they wanted to know themselves, and might have some chance of learning from me—for it was plain I had been in some way concerned with the making of their sister's ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... they moved cautiously on again and presently saw the little harmless mipt, half fairy and half gnome, giving shrill, contented squeaks on the edge of the world. And they edged away unseen, for they said that the inquisitiveness of the mipt had become fabulous, and that, harmless as he was, he had a bad way with secrets; yet they probably loathed the way that he nuzzles dead white bones, and would not admit their loathing; for it does not become adventurers to care who eats their bones. Be this as it may, they edged ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... persuaded Sir Charles Horner to let to the Abbey rent free on condition that they were put back into cultivation. The patron himself had gone away for the winter to Rome and Florence, and Mark was glad that he had, for he was sure that otherwise his inquisitiveness would have been severely snubbed by the Prior. Father Burrowes went away as usual to preach after Christmas; but before he went Mark was clothed as a novice together with two other postulants who had been at Malford since ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... it best, on the whole, to give an ambiguous order about the tea to her small domestic, for she knew that lively creature to be a compound of inquisitiveness and impudence, and did not choose to tell her who it was that she expected to call. She was very emphatic, however, in impressing on the small domestic the importance of being very civil and attentive, and of offering tea, insomuch ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... said they were men of Sleswik, and had left their land "for manslaughter". The king thought that this statement referred not to their vow to commit the crime, but to the guilt of some crime already committed. For they desired by this deceit to foil his inquisitiveness, so that the truthfulness of the statement might baffle the wit of the questioner, and their true answer, being covertly shadowed forth in a fiction, might inspire in him a belief that it was false. For famous men of old thought ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... about and done, and that men were placed at Oxford under heavy responsibilities to use their thoughts and their leisure for the direct service of their generation. Clever fops and dull pedants joined in sneering at this new activity and inquisitiveness of mind, and this grave interest and employment of intellect on questions and in methods outside the customary line of University studies and prejudices; but the men were too powerful, and their work too genuine ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... than once the summons was repeated, and at last a faint light gleamed upon the windows, and the door was timorously unbarred and opened. A hard-featured hag, in a faded suit of an obsolete fashion—the genius loci—received the party. She scrutinized Lucille with a protracted stare of audacious inquisitiveness, and when she had quite satisfied her curiosity, she led the way through several halls and lobbies up the great staircase, along a corridor, through a suite of rooms, upon another lobby up a second staircase, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... amused in these parts at our gallant fleet, and so early at sea; and I permit them all their conjectures, neither have they gained much allay of them from me by their inquisitiveness. ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... looked at me, not keenly and scrutinizingly, as her brother had done, but with a kindly inquisitiveness, as though she wanted to know all about me, and to put me at my ease as soon as possible. I flushed a little at that, and my unfortunate sensitiveness took alarm. If it were only Carrie, I thought, with her pretty face and soft voice; but I was so sadly unattractive, no one ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... looked at him in silence; the French soldiers had spent twelve years in the ceaseless exertions of an amused inquisitiveness to discover the antecedents of their volunteer; the Arabs, with their loftier instincts of courtesy, had never hinted to him a question of whence or why he had come upon ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... not a whit dismayed by the rebuke and the air of rather contemptuous disdain with which it was uttered. He waved his revolver toward Mary, merely as a gesture of inquisitiveness, without ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... certainly loved and respected his father as long as he lived. Many years thereafter, when his father was old and infirm, he was wont to perform frequent journeys from Philadelphia to Boston, to visit him. It was on one of these journeys that he rebuked the inquisitiveness of a landlord, by requesting him, as soon as he entered his tavern, to assemble all the members of his family together, as he had something important to communicate. The landlord proceeded to gratify him, and as ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... after a few remarks on other subjects, "that you would tell me a little more about yourself. You understand that I do not ask from mere inquisitiveness; but after what has happened, you see, we seem to have got into close relationship with each other; and if I knew more about you, I could the easier see in what way I could most really be useful to you, out there. Are you what you ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... for it. A statesman should know more than a part of human life; and Pitt never realized the full extent of his powers because he spent his time almost entirely amongst politicians of the same school. His mind, though by no means closed against new ideas, lacked the eager inquisitiveness of that of Napoleon, who, before the process of imperial fossilization set in, welcomed discussions with men of all shades of opinion, and encouraged in them that frankness of utterance which at once widens and clarifies the views of the disputants. It is true that Pitt's private ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... who pushed their inquisitiveness about ancestry to the breaking-point Patsy blinked a pair of steely-blue eyes while she wrinkled her forehead into a speculative frown: "Faith! I can hearken back to Adam the same as yourselves; but if it's some one more modern you're asking for—there's that ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... shadow of such a dilemma. With Mrs. Renney, as with every one else, Fleda was held in highest regard always welcome to her premises, and to those mysteries of her trade which were sacred from other intrusion. Fleda's natural inquisitiveness carried her often to the housekeeper's room, and made her there the same curious and careful observer that she had been in the ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... later, oddly enough,—had been given a seat on the bench, in company with one or two other local dignitaries, one of whom, I observed with some curiosity, was that Reverend Mr. Ridley who had given evidence at the inquest on Phillips. All these folk, it was easy to see, were in a high state of inquisitiveness about Crone's murder; and from certain whispers that I overheard, I gathered that the chief cause of this interest lay in a generally accepted opinion that it was, as Mr. Lindsey had declared to me more than once, all of a piece with the crime of the previous week. And it was very easy ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... so deep was the terror which the recollection of the mysterious man inspired, that despite the permission to tell what had happened she mentioned her adventure to no one, and did not even complain to her neighbour, Madame Rapally, of the inquisitiveness which had led the widow to spy ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... winter when she had essayed to dig for the hidden thing there had been too much frost in the ground. Besides, doubtless Ruth and Helen's inquisitiveness had frightened the strange girl away. Now she was back again—somewhere now on Bliss Island. She had not accomplished her purpose as yet. Ruth smote the hard ground at her feet with all her strength. The ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... in the yard. Sally's eyes came to a focus upon him, crouching by a hole in the fence which kindly old Mrs. Wallingford had erected as a protection against the prying inquisitiveness of an eight-year-old determined to ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long
... often a strange, slight, inexpressible air of one who felt herself to belong to a different world, to which all these things were more or less foreign. Charity showed also intense eagerness and curiosity, and inquisitiveness; and mingled with those, a very perceptible flavour of incredulity or of disdain, the latter possibly born of envy. But Lois and Madge were growing with every journey to distant lands, and every new introduction to ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... for the benefit of my health, I arrived at Savannah, in Georgia, on the 10th of February, 1834; and, indulging the common inquisitiveness of a stranger about the place, was informed that just one hundred and one years had elapsed since the first settlers were landed there, and the city laid out. Replies to other inquiries, and especially a perusal of McCall's History ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... of their weaknesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer. Without all the qualities which made him the jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and garrulity ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... his office he took the precaution to baffle any inquisitiveness on the part of his landlady by locking his sitting-room door and carrying away the key, but it was in a very different mood from his former light-hearted confidence that he sat down to his drawing-board in Great Cloister Street that morning. He could not concentrate his ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... he has finished he does not remain a minute longer, but goes without asking if she desires to continue the conversation. For thirty years he has had the same duties and has fulfilled them in the same manner. He has never been accused of a mistake—he has never been guilty of inquisitiveness or intrigue. Thus the empress has great and firm confidence in him. She is so convinced of his truth, disinterestedness, and probity, that he has gained a sort of influence over her, and as she knows that he is to be won neither by gold, flattery, promises of position and rank, she constantly ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... plead guiltless to the charge of ever having made such an insinuation," said the captain; "and do now confess to having a full share of inquisitiveness." ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... before her in an assured, not unkindly inquisitiveness, the girls fresh and bright-faced, with crisp lovely clothes; their mother, in a smart mantle and little bonnet with knots of French flowers, greeted her with a direct question tempered by a smile. William Ammidon, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... will not be altogether hidden" (p. 108). And in another place (p. 15) he suggests that "our God, the Captain of Mankind," may one day enable us to "pierce the black wrappings," or, in other words, to get behind the veil. There is nothing, then, unreasonable or absurd in man's incurable inquisitiveness as to God, in the non-Wellsian sense of the term. God simply means the key to the mystery of existence; and though the keys hitherto offered have all either jammed or turned round and round without unlocking anything, it does not follow that no real key ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... too, as though the rude inquisitiveness of the world were slowly passing away. Either one had abandoned the critical condition of her wedded happiness for more vivid topics, or else she had become accustomed to the ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... will, will you at least yourself understand what you said had. But often nowadays, when you a mile-long sentence from you given and you yourself somewhat have rested, then must you have a touching inquisitiveness have yourself to determine what you actually spoken have. Before several days has the correspondent of a local paper a sentence constructed which hundred and twelve words contain, and therein were seven ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mirthfulness. The brickbat may be a good political argument in the hands of a hoodlum, but it does not make its target playful. To the Chinaman in America the situation is new and grave, and he looks sober and holds his peace. Even the funny-looking, be-cued little Chinese children wear a look of solemn inquisitiveness, as they toddle along the streets of San Francisco by the side of their queer-looking mothers. In his own land, overpopulated and misgoverned, the Chinaman has a hard fight for existence. In these United States his advent is regarded somewhat in the same ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... his eyes towards his judges, or towards the spectators, without betraying any emotion. Once he rose; turned his back upon the court to see what was passing behind him, and again sat down with an expression at once of inquisitiveness and indifference in his manner. Upon hearing the words: "Charles Stuart, a tyrant, traitor, and murderer," he laughed, though ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... her reticent soul shrinking from the frank inquisitiveness. "I don't know anybody," she said honestly. "I never ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... questions of the most vapid and senseless order conceivable— always prevented the son from working. Likewise, the old man occasionally arrived there drunk. Gradually, however, the son was weaning his parent from his vicious ways and everlasting inquisitiveness, and teaching the old man to look upon him, his son, as an oracle, and never to speak ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... place, when he had been prevailed on to start fairly for the walk, Mat began to ask questions with the same pertinacious inquisitiveness which he had already displayed on the day of the picture-show. He set out with wanting to know whether there were to be any strange visitors at Mr. Blyth's that evening; and then, on being reminded that Valentine had expressly said at parting, "Nobody but ourselves," ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... and, turning back his coat-collar, proceeded to smear his countenance with a damp towel of very unwholesome appearance, which made his complexion rather more cloudy than it was before. But, while he was thus engaged, his caution and inquisitiveness did not forsake him, for with a face as sharp and cunning as ever, he often stopped, even in this short process, and stood listening for any conversation in the next room, of which he ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... everything was lost till he suddenly asked Maula, pretending not to know, where my hut was; why everybody said I lived so far away; and when told, he said, "Oh! that is very far, he must come nearer." Still I could not say a word, his fussiness and self-importance overcoming his inquisitiveness. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... worst kind of American travellers possess, these countrymen of ours display an amount of insolent conceit and cool assumption of superiority, quite monstrous to behold. In the coarse familiarity of their approach, and the effrontery of their inquisitiveness (which they are in great haste to assert, as if they panted to revenge themselves upon the decent old restraints of home), they surpass any native specimens that came within my range of observation: and I often grew so patriotic when I ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... in the sleepy quiet of June, Jolly Roger answered the questioning inquisitiveness in Peter's face ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... of No. 331 opened its door herself to these two visitors. Her look of speculative interest on seeing two highly respectable elderly gentlemen changed to one of inquisitiveness when ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... Declaration of Independence. Which way we turn there is a big interrogation-point, often not for information but for negation. Of the good resulting from the inquisitive spirit, we all know; of the baneful influence of inquisitiveness that has become a mere intellectual pastime or amateurish agnosticism, we likewise have some knowledge; but the evil side of this tendency has seldom been put more forcibly, I think, than in this stanza from Lanier's 'Acknowledgment': "O ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Croix;" her decks were littered with poultry and domestic animals, her cordage flapped loosely in the breeze, and every thing about her bespoke the merchant-vessel. Her captain, being hailed by the dock-loafers, and made the victim of the proverbial Yankee inquisitiveness, stated that he had just come from the West Indies with a load of lignum-vitae, pineapples, and hides, which he hoped to sell in Boston. The self-constituted investigating committee seemed satisfied, and the captain ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... tittered furiously, let the sarcasm glide over them, unhit by its truth. Inez herself, indeed, was inclined to consider the governess's taunt a compliment, as proving that she was incapable of a vulgar inquisitiveness. But Laura, though she laughed docilely with the rest, could not forget the incident—words in any case had a way of sticking to her memory—and what Miss Hicks had said often came back to her, in the days that followed. And then, all of a sudden, just ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... glorification of masculinity. Hand in hand with this depreciation of the female sex go other characteristics which point to Hellenic influences: lack of commercial morality, of veracity, of seriousness in religious matters; a persistent, light-hearted inquisitiveness; a levity (or sprightliness, if you prefer it) of mind. The people are fetichistic, amulet-loving, rather than devout. We may certainly suspect Greek or Saracen strains wherever women are held in low estimation; wherever, as the god Apollo himself said, "the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... and she spoke with the precision and slight accent of a well-educated foreigner. Her eyes seemed to be wandering all over me and my possessions, yet her interest, if it amounted to that, never even suggested curiosity or inquisitiveness. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... be no doubt as to the prima facie evidence of the hostile intentions of the destroyed American steamer, with respect to the disaffected on Navy Island, as, from the acknowledged inquisitiveness of the gentler sex, there can be no doubt that Caroline would have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... learned not to ask questions. Diplomacy in such matters was partly what the clerk was paid for. A good fellow to work for was Bill Talpers if no one got too curiously inclined. One or two clerks had been disciplined on account of inquisitiveness, and they would not be as beautiful after the Talpers methods had been applied, but they had gained vastly in experience. Some day he would do even more for this young Indian agent. Bill's cracked lips were stretched in a grin of satisfaction at the ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... other company than his own, for there was in him something of the sensitiveness of a dreamer who is easily jarred. He had said to himself that the all-knowing one would only preach again about the evils of solitude and worry his head off in favour of some forlornly useless protege of his. Also the inquisitiveness of the Editor had irritated him and had closed his lips in ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the unconscious pair who were now about two furlongs distant. The shorter of the two still loitered behind his companion, and inspected the ground with particular interest. The leader of the band, who went by the name of Black Will, muttered a curse upon his inquisitiveness. The others assented all but one, a huge fellow whom the others addressed as Jem. "Nonsense," said Jem, "dozens pass this way and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... these English people, who, being poor, were yet gentle, and spoke French with a grace and accent which was to the French-Canadian patois as Shakespeare's English is to that of Seven Dials. Pierre's methods of inquisitiveness were not strictly dishonest. He did not open letters, he did not besiege dispatch-boxes, he did not ask impudent questions; he watched and listened. In his own way he found out that the man had been a soldier in the ranks, and that he had served in India. They were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and there she made my lady's acquaintance. How it was that they came to take a fancy to each other, I cannot say. My lady was of the old nobility,—grand, compose, gentle, and stately in her ways. Miss Galindo must always have been hurried in her manner, and her energy must have shown itself in inquisitiveness and oddness even in her youth. But I don't pretend to account for things: I only narrate them. And the fact was this:—that the elegant, fastidious countess was attracted to the country girl, who ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that over the countenance of Prince Zaleski there grew little by little a singular fixed aspect. His small, keen features distorted themselves into an expression of what I can only describe as an abnormal inquisitiveness —an inquisitiveness most impatient, arrogant, in its intensity. His pupils, contracted each to a dot, became the central puncta of two rings of fiery light; his little sharp teeth seemed to gnash. Once before I had seen him look thus greedily, when, grasping ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... her fingers quiver under his grasp, but the next moment he had turned away, and her companions noticed there was a faint pink tinge in her cheeks when she rejoined them. But being wise young women, they restrained their natural inquisitiveness, and asked ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... at Shanghai their hearts were gladdened by seeing "on the quay a French custom-house official, with his kepi over his ear, his rattan in his hand, dressed in a dark-green tunic, and full of the inquisitiveness of the customs inspector—as martial and as authoritative as in his native land." The appearance of the population here struck our travelers as different from that of the native Chinese farther south. Those were yellow, copper-colored, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... as it was known, or guessed, and to gloat upon all that drama, and cup of trembling, and pouring out of the vials of the wrath of God, which must have preceded the actual advent of the end of Time. This inquisitiveness had, at every town which I reached, made the search for newspapers uppermost in my mind; but, by bad luck, I had found only four, all of them ante-dated to the one which I had read at Dover, though their dates gave me some idea of the period ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... and Italian, and reads me pieces of manuscript poetry, in several of the modern tongues (for he speaks them all); explains to me every thing I understand not; delights to answer all my questions, and to encourage my inquisitiveness and curiosity, tries to give me a notion of pictures and medals, and reads me lectures upon them, for he has a fine collection of both; and every now and then will have it, that he has been improved by ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... of inquisitiveness loose upon Jack Benson, first of all. He may be easy game. As for the third, Hal Hastings, I hear that he is a silent fellow, who says little, and generally waits five minutes, to think his answer over, before ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... answer at my own time, in my own way, through my customary channel of communication with the public. I hope I shall not be misunderstood as implying any reproach against the inquirers who, in order to get at facts which ought to be known, apply to all whom they can reach for information. Their inquisitiveness is not always agreeable or welcome, but we ought to be glad that there are mousing fact-hunters to worry us with queries to which, for the sake of the public, we are bound to give our attention. Let me ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pause the secretary fidgeted inwardly but had the wisdom to refrain from showing further inquisitiveness. He could see that strong passions were working in Victor: a hand, extended upon the table, unclosed and closed with a peculiar clutching action; the muscles contracted round mouth and eyes, moulding the face into ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... watching, you mysterious loon?" McQueen demanded, curiously; but of course Tommy would not divulge so big a secret. Now the one weakness of this large-hearted old bachelor (perhaps it is a professional virtue) was a devouring inquisitiveness, and he would be troubled until he discovered who was the stranger standing in such obvious emotion by the side of an old grave. "Well, you must come back with me to the surgery, for I want you to run an errand for me," he said testily, hoping to pump the boy by ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... when he had to meet his teacher after some of his occasional mischiefs. With these and other agreeable memories relishing my time in that office, I heard a loud applause in the store and the words "Father is here," aroused my inquisitiveness and before I could leave my chair, there was at the door of the office standing the man whom I wanted to see. Sturdy and resolute with two slow steps he now extends a welcome hand to me and as he called me by my childish nickname in response said, I, my teacher! ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... find these Netherfield gravestones," he remarked, with good-humoured inquisitiveness. "And so, apparently, does another man. Now, I've been in these parts a good many years, and I've never heard of 'em; never even heard ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... notion in his head, he tried to find out whether David had any money with him; he wanted to be paid something on account. The old man's inquisitiveness roused his son's distrust; David remained close ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... more remarkable for inquisitiveness than for correct breeding—one of those who, devoid of delicacy and reckless of rebuffs, pry into every thing—took the liberty to question M. Dumas rather closely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... with the Devil. [Laughter.] The race might have been saved much tribulation if Eden had been located in some calm and tranquil land—like Ireland. There would at least have been no snakes there to get into the garden. Now woman in her thirst after knowledge, showed her true female inquisitiveness in her cross-examination of the serpent, and, in commemoration of that circumstance, the serpent seems to have been curled up and used in nearly all languages as a sign of interrogation. Soon the domestic troubles of our first parents began. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... domestic, whose tears betrayed her unwillingness to come forward, deepened the interest still further; everybody leaned forward towards the centre of the court, intent on hearing what the girl had to tell. She, however, paid no attention to these manifestations of inquisitiveness; standing in the witness-box, a tear-soaked handkerchief in her hands, half-sullen, half-resentful of mouth and eye, she looked at nobody but the Coroner; her whole expression was that of a defenceless animal, pinned in a corner and watchful of ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... stump of candle in a china candlestick; the two charred ends of matches at its base were only an irritating discovery, however—evidence that real matches had been the mode in Number 9, at some remote date. Disgusted and oppressed by cumulative inquisitiveness, he took the candle-end back to the hall; he would have given much for the time and means to make a more detailed investigation into the secret of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... asked him of the green letter from China, that came with autumn, and what the letter contained. He read to her all the rules of the Inland Revenue, he told her he did not know, that it was not right that he should know, he lectured her on the sin of inquisitiveness, he quoted Parson, and in the end she said that she must know. They argued concerning this for many days, days of the ending of summer, of shortening evenings, and as they argued autumn grew nearer and nearer and ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... expense...The boys have hitherto learned to read and write, especially parts of the Scriptures, and to keep accounts. We may now be able to introduce some other useful branches of knowledge among them...I trust these schools may tend to promote curiosity and inquisitiveness among the rising generation; qualities which are seldom found in the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... confounded, as the reader may suppose, yet not with an irrecoverable confusion; being conscious that it was from no emotion of incautious admiration, nor yet in a spirit of unjustifiable inquisitiveness, that I had incurred this reproof. I might have cleared myself on the spot, but would not. I did not speak. I was not in the habit of speaking to him. Suffering him, then, to think what he chose and accuse me of what he would, I resumed some work I ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... by a crowd of runners, eager out of pure inquisitiveness to see the matter through. They passed Government House, turned into dusty Macleod Road, and in five or six minutes reached the Custom House, where, turning to the left for a short distance along the Napier Mole, the driver pulled up at ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... the opinion that the original inquisitiveness about the sexual secret is abnormally transformed into morbid over subtlety; and yet can still furnish an impulsive power for legitimate ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... some young lady, in a confidential undertone, that one of these days she would tell her something,—and then there would come a wink of her blue eyes and a fluttering of the pink ribbons in her cap quite stimulating to youthful inquisitiveness, though we have never been able to learn by any of our antiquarian researches that the expectations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... that Mrs. Folliot's inquisitiveness had been aroused, and that her tongue would not be idle: Mrs. Folliot, left to herself, had the gift of creating an atmosphere, and if she once got it into her head that there was some mysterious connection between Dr. Ransford and the dead man, she would never rest until ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... drawing round him an auditory as a means of subsistence, instead of instructing a congregation in their duty to God. So there would be endless dispute, nice sifting of abstract ideas, and censorious inquisitiveness into the spiritual state of our neighbours, but little humility, charity, or true piety; which consist in grateful adoration of, and sincere obedience to our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, and not in speculations on the incomprehensible nature and unfathomable purposes ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... seamed with small-pox. But his sweet and candid expression, his gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... as ananusandhana or the absence of inquisitiveness or curiosity. By pratibha is meant inquiry after improper things or things that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... school in the little town of Orland, on a certain day in December some years ago, he was at a decided loss to understand what caused such an excitement among them before they had walked the short length of the playground. The deacon had a very large bump of inquisitiveness on his bald head, which, perhaps, accounted for his great desire to know why nearly all the boys and girls had stopped beside the tiny brook that scolded and fretted all the long summer days away, but which was now closely encased in ice, and why they were apparently ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... vast yet specific field of scientific industry the colored man has, contrary to the belief of many, made his entry, and has brought to his work in it that same degree of patient inquisitiveness, plodding industry and painstaking experiment that has so richly rewarded others in the same line of endeavor, namely, the endeavor both to create new things and to effect such new combinations of ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... as an unplucked berry. It pleased him still more when she began to talk to him, in a voice whose fresh, unsullied ring stirred his senses like the trill of birds on a glowing summer morning. Then she took to questioning him, with bashful inquisitiveness, upon the details of his approaching marriage. Her thoughts about engagements and honeymooning, not openly expressed, but evident enough from the tenor of her eager inquiries, seemed to him so charming ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... to native women; and he had not the dry inquisitiveness of his predecessor, Aubrey Laking, which might induce him to buy and keep a woman for whom he felt no affection. The love which can exchange no thoughts in speech was altogether too crude for him. It was his emotions, rather than his senses, which were always craving for amorous excitement. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... a thorough acquaintance with the capabilities of the law. I saw honest Tom Wealdon about a fortnight ago—grown stouter and somewhat more phlegmatic by time, but still the same in good nature and inquisitiveness. From him I learned that Jos. Larkin is likely to figure once more in the courts about some very ugly defalcations in the cash of the Penningstal Mining Company, and that this time the persecutions of that eminent Christian are likely to take a different turn, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a relief to that large class of persons who by sealed envelope are roused to inquisitiveness. As such a closed letter lies on the mantel-piece unopened, they wonder whom it is from, and what is in it, and they hold it up between them and the light to see what are the indications, and stand close ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... who seemed in an admirable humor, stepped just outside the tent to look at the fish, and in that little interval his assistant, seized with inquisitiveness, stole up to his table, and picked up the tiny object lying there ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... My old inquisitiveness now returned. There was NO servant—THAT was a settled point. I looked, therefore, for the extra baggage. After some delay, a cart arrived at the wharf, with an oblong pine box, which was every thing that seemed to be expected. Immediately upon its arrival we made sail, and in a short time ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... had known you ten minutes," laughed Lucien, "and I am not afraid. Shall I tell you why? I have not deceived you, nor have I any intention of doing so. This Latour is too inquisitive, and inquisitiveness is always asking for a lie. Latour got it and is quite satisfied. Mademoiselle Pauline Vaison is a woman, a woman in love, and just because she is so, is suspicious. All women in love are. So I have not told her all my plans. To complete ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... shells, not a single Indian was killed. We must except one buck who started in to investigate an unexploded shell. That buck was going to "get 'um powder and lead out" with file and hatchet, and was scattered out over the rocks for his inquisitiveness. But the other Indians were nowhere to be seen. They had passed out under the line of troops as ants would pass through a sponge. The troops took possession of the lava beds, the stronghold, but the Indians were gone. It yet remained for Gen. ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... evidently betrayed by my apparent lack of inquisitiveness into a relation of the details ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... SHEBA came to Jerusalem, with a train and presents suited to his dignity and her own. Although the sovereigns of neighbouring nations paid similar visits of ceremony and of curiosity, yet this illustrious woman is particularly noticed in the sacred page, on account perhaps of her sex, her inquisitiveness, the remoteness of her situation, the magnificence of her equipage and offerings; but especially the piety of her views, and the impressive ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... the chief distinction between superior and inferior minds was not this very disposition to inquire and investigate; as if, indeed, that which distinguishes the barbarous from the civilized, were not this very inquisitiveness and curiosity; the savage being satisfied with himself and averse to inquiry; the civilized ever on the alert, in proportion to his intelligence, and, like the Athenians, always on the look-out for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... intoned aloud all Mr. Prohack's dimensions. And all the time Mr. Prohack was asking in his heart: "How much will these clothes cost?" And he, once the Terror of the departments, who would have held up the war to satisfy his official inquisitiveness on a question of price,—he dared not ask how much the clothes would cost. He felt that in that unique establishment money was simply not mentioned,—it could never be more than the subject ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... for, and even then she had to sign a paper. Very unpleasant, I call it, to be obliged to let a chemist know that your mother has a toothache. But there it was, tell him she had to, or go away without any laudanum. I don't know whether Mr Doubleday wasn't asking more than he should, just out of inquisitiveness, for I don't see what business it is of his. I know what I should have said: 'Oh, Mr Doubleday, I want it to make laudanum tartlets, we are all so fond of laudanum tartlets.' Something sharp and sarcastic like that, to show him his place. But I expect it did Mrs Antrobus good, for ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... the bold dissent and creative self-assertion of the earliest emigrants to Massachusetts; from the statesmen who made, and the philosophers who expounded, the revolution of England; from the liberal spirit and analyzing inquisitiveness of the eighteenth century; from the cloud of witnesses of all the ages to the reality and the rightfulness of human freedom. All the centuries bowed themselves from the recesses of the past to cheer in their sacrifice ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... quotation is rather hackneyed to begin with?' suggested Drake with a perfectly serious inquisitiveness. The reporter looked at ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... "Pardon my inquisitiveness, madam, but I am in search of a friend, who, I was told, was sent here nearly three years ago, being at that time the unfortunate ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Newburgh, indeed, the best historian of these reigns, wrote in a small Yorkshire monastery, but Roger of Hoveden and Ralph de Diceto pursued their historical work under the influence of the court. Still more striking is the universality of the intellectual inquisitiveness of Walter Map. On the one hand, in his De Nugis Curialium he chattered over the manners of his contemporaries, and in his satirical poems scourged the greed and vices of the clergy, whilst on the other hand he took ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... had a terrible time of it, Mr. McGaw," stated Mayo, avoiding the mate's inquisitiveness. "I am going to take these folks on board and ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... biographer, as Mr Froude found out for a commentary on all this, is placed between a Scylla and Charybdis, between what is due to the subject, and what is expected by the public. If something is left out of the portrait, the likeness will be imperfect; if the anxiety or the inquisitiveness of readers to know private details is left ungratified, the writer will be met by the current cant that the public has a right to know. The line is not easily drawn, and few subjects for the biographer can ever desire to be ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... mind, is guilty of this same braggadocio in an opposite direction, when he calls the "present with its political disorders simply an intermediate state,—the transmission of the natural or unconscious wisdom of the fathers, through the inquisitiveness of their children to the rational acknowledgment of that wisdom by their grandsons." (Theorie des Geldes, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... best known to myself, Ewart," he snapped; for he never approved of inquisitiveness when forming ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... on, gazing at the walls, till the young man said: 'I fear I may be making some mistake: but I am sure you will pardon my inquisitiveness this ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... legitimate business, mushroom-growing, one of the simplest and most remunerative of industries, is almost unknown. The market grower already engaged in growing mushrooms appreciates his situation and zealously guards his methods of cultivation from the public. This only incites interest and inquisitiveness, and the people are becoming alive to the fact that there is money in mushrooms and an earnest demand has been created ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... he nodded his head quickly. If he could find Curley, or Haines, or even Patsy Marles, the clerk who worked in the liquor store—which might possibly still be open for another hour or so yet—it should not, after all, and without even any undue inquisitiveness on the part of Smarlinghue, prove very difficult to obtain the necessary information, for, if Curley had been in a deal involving fifteen thousand dollars, he was much more likely to be boastful than reticent about it. It resolved itself then after ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... certainly it is rich in strange curiosities, like those mystic stones which were fingered and arrayed by the pupils in that allegory of Novalis. I am not likely to regret the accident which brought me up on fairy tales, and the inquisitiveness which led me to examine the other fragments of antiquity. But the poetry and the significance of them are apt to be hidden by the enormous crowd of details. Only late we find the true meaning of what ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... fox might have saved his life by doing so; yet quickwitted as he is, this obvious device never seems to have occurred to Reynard. Among slightly teachable mammals, however, there is one group more teachable than the rest. Monkeys, with their greater power of handling things, have also more inquisitiveness and more capacity for sustained attention than any other mammals; and the higher apes are fertile in varied resources. The orang-outang and gorilla are for this reason dreaded by other animals, and roam the undisputed lords of their native forests. ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... whole country around her was inhabited by a rich and respectable people, principally from New-England, as much distinguished for their spirit of inquisitiveness as for their habits of industry and honesty, who had all heard from one source and another a part of her life in detached pieces, and had obtained an idea that the whole taken in connection would afford instruction ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... employed in smuggling; had a partner-accomplice in the Customs House, and perfect arrangements aboard a certain ship. By these last double advantages, he came aboard with twenty trunks, if he so pleased, without risking anything from the inquisitiveness or loquacity of the officers of the ship; and later debarked at New York with the certainty of going scatheless through the customs as rapidly as his Inspector partner could chalk scrawlingly "O.K." upon ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... to anything which is labelled "Private," he is sure to be the more curious to ascertain what is within. He is restless and dissatisfied until he knows. He pauses—he resumes his interrogations—he circumlocutes—he apologizes, it may be, but make the discovery he will if possible. His inquisitiveness is mostly in regard to matters of comparatively minor importance in themselves, but which, at the same time, you do not care for him to know. Your pedigree—your relations—your antecedents—your ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... Boswell:—'I have endeavoured to do you some justice in the first paragraph [of the Journey].' The day before he started for Scotland he wrote to Dr. Taylor:—'Mr. Boswell, an active lively fellow, is to conduct me round the country.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 422. 'His inquisitiveness,' he said, 'is seconded by great activity.' Works, ix. 8. On Oct. 7 he wrote from Skye:—'Boswell will praise my resolution and perseverance; and I shall in return celebrate his good humour and perpetual ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... hold of the watch, that he would be equally as eager for a share of the gold, and Mr. Brown and myself were both aware that he deserved a handsome reward for the dangers through which he had passed to free us from the inquisitiveness of the bushrangers. Therefore, the more backward Day appeared the more firmly did we insist upon doing justice ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... it is in the works of Keats; its place is taken by sympathy for humanity and an extraordinary sympathy for animals. He is as far from the religious passion of Francis Thompson as he is from the sociological inquisitiveness of Mr. Gibson. To him each bird, each flower appears as a form of worship. Men and women appeal to him not because they are poor or downtrodden, but simply because they are men and women. He is neither an optimist ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... with a notion of death; or to an unreflecting acquiescence in what had been instilled into him! Has such an unfolder of the mysteries of nature, though he may have forgotten his former self, ever noticed the early, obstinate, and unappeasable inquisitiveness of children upon the subject of origination? This single fact proves outwardly the monstrousness of those suppositions: for, if we had no direct external testimony that the minds of very young children meditate feelingly upon death and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... there was no chance for a situation on board. Captain Slowly was one of those mahogany-faced, moderate, slow-moving, slow-speaking, slow-eating people, that one occasionally meets with in New England, who are the very reverse of Yankee inquisitiveness, and never answer the most ordinary question, not even "What o'clock is it?" in less than half an hour; men who, in short, as they never ask any questions themselves, think it not worth their while to answer any. We have been several ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... in the middle walks of life, and were much esteemed for their integrity and piety. When he was seven or eight years old, he removed with his father's family to Wilmington, Vt., where he worked upon a farm till he was about eighteen. From his early childhood he evinced great inquisitiveness of mind, and an uncommon thirst for knowledge; in consequence of which, his parents consented to aid him in acquiring a collegiate education. Having prosecuted his preparatory studies at an academy in ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... having the intelligence of a much older child than three years (now five years), but his height, dentition, and general appearance indicate the truthfulness of the age assigned. An evidence of his symmetrical mental development appears in his extreme inquisitiveness. He wants to understand the meaning of what he is taught, and some kind of an explanation must be given him for what he learns. Were his memory alone abnormally great and other faculties defective, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a want of confidence among the Brethren themselves; those who had not been present wished to know what he had said, while those who had, gave evasive answers. There was much inquisitiveness and a great desire both among friends and foes to learn if there was really anything against so respected and well-known ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the pearl merchants with their palms full of the little desirable jewels; the silversmiths hammering; the tailors cross-legged; the whole Arabian Nights pageant. All the shops seem to be overstaffed, unless an element of detached inquisitiveness is essential to business in the East. No transaction is complete without a few watchful spectators, usually youths, who apparently are employed by the establishment for the sole purpose ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... Mr. Halle naturally concluded that Chopin could not have studied the works of Beethoven thoroughly. This conjecture is confirmed by what we learn from Lenz, who in 1842 saw a good deal of Chopin, and thanks to his Boswellian inquisitiveness, persistence, and forwardness, made himself acquainted with a number of interesting facts. Lenz and Chopin spoke a great deal about Beethoven after that visit to the Russian ladies mentioned in a foregoing part of this chapter. They had never spoken of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... engaged in the trade, and as I had, with the inquisitiveness of youth, observed the process, I ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... from the table and gazed across the flowers at me fixedly, with just a sudden inquisitiveness shown by her slightly knit brows. Then, suddenly starting, as though realizing she was looking at a stranger, she dropped her eyes again, and replied to some question her father had ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... contemporaries is of the very first value, and to the present writer Caleb Williams (1794) has never seemed a very interesting book. It is impossible to sympathise with a hero who is actuated by the very lowest of human motives, sheer inquisitiveness: and my sense of natural justice (which is different from Godwin's) demands not that he shall escape, but that he shall be broken on the wheel, or burnt at a slow fire, or made to read Political Justice after the novelty of its colossal ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... gratify their curiosity by a sight of the man whose name and exploits had already been the theme of many a conversation among them. If ever Yankee, or American, (which is the more appropriate term, we will not attempt to decide) inquisitiveness was exhibited, it certainly could be then seen at Fort Laramie. The large majority of those who were thus anxious to see the famous guide, were led astray by the descriptions which they had heard and read, and picked out some powerfully ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... quite recognize you with your—er—decoration." His eyes dwelt in frank inquisitiveness upon the ragged red bruise across Young Denny's chin. "You're the member who stood near the door last night, aren't you—the one who didn't join to any marked degree ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... to execute a work, whether it be "to build a tower," or drain a field, "sitteth down first and counteth the cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it." There is good sense and discretion in the inquisitiveness which suggests so often the inquiry, "How much does it cost to drain an acre?" or, "How much does it cost a rod to lay drains?" These questions cannot be answered so briefly as they are ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... as she expected, had now all the benefit of these jokes, and in the eldest of them they raised a curiosity to know the name of the gentleman alluded to, which, though often impertinently expressed, was perfectly of a piece with her general inquisitiveness into the concerns of their family. But Sir John did not sport long with the curiosity which he delighted to raise, for he had at least as much pleasure in telling the name, as Miss ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... is again in a good situation, I believe?' said Manston, imitating that inquisitiveness into the private affairs of the natives which passes for ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
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