"Single-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... esteem. As Froude says, and it is the final word, Carlyle's "extraordinary talents were devoted, with an equally extraordinary purity of purpose, to his Maker's service, so far as he could see and understand that Maker's will." He led "a life of single-minded effort to do right and only that of constant truthfulness in ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... finished, Bridgenorth summoned them to unite with him in prayer; and on a slight change of arrangements amongst the company, which took place as they were about to kneel down, Julian found his place next to the single-minded and beautiful object of his affection, as she knelt, in her loveliness, to adore her Creator. A short time was permitted for mental devotion; during which Peveril could hear her half-breathed petition for the promised blessings of peace on ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the scorching western plains, which resulted in the capture of two waggon-loads of burghers, their rations, ammunition, and Mausers—a most satisfying haul. He placed before the leader of the British Force intercepted telegrams which threw invaluable light on Dutch moves. No more single-minded, ingenuous, and patriotic British South African ever drew breath than Mr. Van Busch, of Johannesburg. And verily he reaped his reward, in an officially countersigned railway pass, which would enable the patriot to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... touched at that, and he would not give me time to see one-tenth of the beauties and interesting objects of Rome. He wanted to get me home, he said, to have me all to himself, and to see me safely installed as the mistress of Grassdale Manor, just as single-minded, as naive, and piquante as I was; and as if I had been some frail butterfly, he expressed himself fearful of rubbing the silver off my wings by bringing me into contact with society, especially that of Paris and Rome; and, more-over, he did not scruple to tell me that there were ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... four o'clock in the morning is no time for a man to try to be single-minded and decisive—I wavered. I had intended to tear the thing in pieces without a glance, and fling it into the wastepaper-basket. But I took ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... from the settlement. There could be nothing more annoying; if the labour took to running away, the fishery was wrecked. There are sixty miles of this island, you see, all in length like the Queen's Highway; the idea of pursuit in such a place was a piece of single-minded childishness, which one did not entertain. Two days later, I made a discovery; it came in upon me with a flash that Sullens had been unjustly punished from beginning to end, and the real culprit throughout had been ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of the lady's inclinations, it appears. Well, I've warned you. I've done it with the best intentions. I suppose even you won't deny that I'm single-minded? I'm not on the side of your solicitor." That made Urquhart ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... The single-minded poet produced from near his heart a very large letter with much sealing-wax endorsed, and the fervent ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... when each one of you is privileged to illumine these drab days of peace with a show of patriotism no less brilliant than that which lit up the dark years of war. The task that is demanded is a simple one, and no heavy price is exacted; all that is required is a single-minded concentration upon the one essential need ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... single-minded, drove uptown with her thoughts in a state of chaos. She wished to think only about her newly begun head of Satan fallen, since nothing else seemed to her at the moment of any importance, but the face, hands, and voice of the young secret-service agent ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... not knowing whether to be glad or sorry that his recital had not roused within her the faintest suspicion of disaster. How he envied her that single-minded power of not seeing further than was absolutely needful! And suddenly he thought: 'She really is wonderful! With her love of church, how it must hurt her that we none of us go, not even John! And yet she never says a word. There really is width about her; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... very different with the meek, pious, and single-minded Ghita; though one was e'en a Roman Catholic, and the other a Protestant, and that, too, of the Puritan school. Our heroine had little of this world left to live for. She continued, however, to reside with her uncle, until his days were numbered; and then she retired to a convent, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... proportion to the requirement of sense; the illustrative thoughts apt and new; the humour quaint and relishing? Finally, is not in many cases that which is spoken of as something extraneous, dragged in aforethought, for the purpose of singularity, the result more truly of a most earnest and single-minded labor after the utmost rendering of idiomatic conversational truth; the rejection of all stop-gap words; about the most literal transcript of fact compatible with the ends of poetry and true feeling for Art? This a point worthy note, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... censurable habit does not seem to proceed from anything cynical in the author's own nature, but rather from inexperience, and from a personal directness which moves only in straight lines. It seems as if she were so single-minded in her good intents as to assume all bad people equally single-minded in evil; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... government, however, had several objects in view, and permitted itself to be distracted from the single-minded prosecution of one great undertaking to other subsidiary operations, not always concentric. Whether the control of the line of the Hudson and Lake Champlain ought to have been sought through operations beginning at both ends, is open to argument; the facts that the Americans ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... not. He's so direct, so single-minded, that the shock would be terrible. But I'm not to blame. How could I help it? Oh, all that cackle about being ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... literally true. It was not in Borrow's case a case of sancta simplicitas. He has at times flashes of by no means orthodox sentiment, and seems to have fought, and perhaps hardly won, many a battle against the army of the doubters. But when it comes to the Pope, he is as single-minded an enthusiast as John Bunyan himself, whom, by the way, he resembles in more than one point. The attitude was, of course, common enough among his contemporaries; indeed any man who has reached middle life must remember numerous examples among his own friends and kindred. But in literature, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... unaffected, naive; sincere, frank; open, open as day; candid, ingenuous, guileless; unsuspicious, honest &c 939; innocent &c 946; Arcadian^; undesigning, straightforward, unreserved, aboveboard; simple-minded, single-minded; frank-hearted, open-hearted, single-hearted, simple-hearted. free-spoken, plain-spoken, outspoken; blunt, downright, direct, matter of fact, unpoetical^; unflattering. Adv. in plain words, in plain English; without mincing the matter; not to mince the matter &c (affirmation) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the term "Herbal Simple" has been applied to any homely curative remedy consisting of one ingredient only, and that of a vegetable nature. Many such a native medicine found favour and success with our single-minded forefathers, this being the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... logical and consistent. There is a mass of sophistry current in the world which sickens me. People talk of Robespierre and St. Just, two of the most virtuous men that ever lived—and of Dominic and Torquemada, two of the most single-minded—as if they were cruel and bloodthirsty, whereas they ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Simple and single-minded, her soul had never been contaminated by the idea, much less the utterance, of falsehood. Even to Constantia, the fulness of her worth and fidelity was unknown; although the bare contemplation of Barbara's ever parting from her was one ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... to fame and single-minded concentration on the business of flying on the part of the Wrights was in fact of the utmost value to aviation as an art and a science. They were pioneers and successful ones. Their example was heeded by others in the business. In every way they sought to discourage ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... privileges of that splendid confederation of knights of the best blood in Europe over which he had been called upon to preside at the mature age of sixty-three. There is no instance in history of any man more absolutely single-minded than La Valette; that in which he believed he cherished with an ardour almost incredible in these days, and that the sword of the Lord had been confided into his hand for the utter extermination and extirpation of the Moslem heresy was the leading feature in his creed. That he ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... which makes the world form itself into a stage, and gathers various and scattered agencies into the symmetry and compactness of a drama. This tendency, though it often produces effects that appear artificially theatrical, is not uncommon with persons the most genuine and single-minded. It is, indeed, the natural inclination of quick energies springing from warm emotions. Hence the very history of nations in their fresh, vigorous, half-civilized youth always shapes itself into dramatic forms; while, as the exercise of sober reason expands ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sisters was a waiting-maid in the Rocher de Caucale. He is about the sincerest man I ever knew, never pretending to feelings that are not in him,—never flattering. His feelings do not seem to be warm, though they are kindly. He is so single-minded that he cannot understand badinage, but takes it all as if meant in earnest,—a German trait. Revalues himself greatly on being a Frenchman, though all his most valuable qualities come from Germany. His temperament is cool and pure, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... It is just as important for a government school as for a mission school to be in harmony with its environment, to adapt itself to the needs of the people it designs to serve; and that harmony and adaptation may only be secured by a single-minded study of the situation and of the habits and character, the occupations and resources ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... himself. He repeated the persuasion he had already confessed to Dr. Martineau that there was not a single member of the Fuel Commission but had a considerable drive towards doing the right thing about fuel, and not one who had a single-minded, unencumbered drive towards the right thing. "That," said Sir Richmond, "is what makes life so interesting and, in spite of a thousand tragic disappointments, so hopeful. Every man is a bad man, every ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Willie was a simple, single-minded soul and now that Janoah and his malicious influence had been removed, he dropped comfortably back into a tranquillity from which, when viewed in perspective, his former suspicions seemed both unjust and ridiculous. ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... sort. Ask Reineke for the principles of his life, and if it suited his purpose to tell you, he could do so with the greatest exactness. There would be no discrepancy between the profession and the practice. He is most truly single-minded, and therefore stable in his ways, and therefore, as the world goes, and in the world's sense, successful. Whether really successful is a question we do not care here to enter on; but only to say this—that of all unsuccessful men in every ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of splendid imagery, serious, enthusiastic, courageous, a noble writer. How is it, then, that he has not more reputation? Because he is too pure; because he is too uniformly ecstatic, fantastic, inspired—a mood which soon palls on Frenchmen. Because he is too single-minded, candid, theoretical, and speculative, too ready to believe in the power of words and of ideas, too expansive and confiding; while at the same time he is lacking in the qualities which amuse clever people—in sarcasm, irony, cunning and finesse. He is an idealist reveling ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... appears both in what he says and in what he keeps silent about. His defence of Swift against the charge of misanthropy is a defence with which we find ourselves largely in agreement. But Mr. Whibley is too single-minded a party politician to be able to defend the Dean without clubbing a number of his own pet antipathies in the process. He seems to think that the only alternative to the attitude of Dean Swift towards humanity is the attitude of persons who, "feigning a bland and general love of abtract humanity ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... at last; and the history of Massachusetts Bay in the seventeenth century is the story of the vain and pathetic effort of single-minded men to identify the temporal and the spiritual commonwealths. The compromise presently made was the first step in the final surrender. The one hundred and nine petitioners were admitted; but it was shortly voted, in plain ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... marriage. His fiancee greatly admired the fiery orator and fighter at barricades, and told him so, in enthusiastic speeches and letters. The father, however, had no sympathy with reactionaries, and soon conceived a violent antipathy for his future single-minded son-in-law. As long as the democratic party held the upperhand, he kept his feelings in the background, making nevertheless endless pretexts for delaying the marriage. The party of reactionaries broke up, however, and ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... plot here at the side of the house by the river, we can see under an arbored porch the kitchen itself, open to the world. The old woman is at work within, as we can also see, at the needful culinary incantations; and assisting her with single-minded but safely-controlled zeal is her husband the landlord, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... revealed to his startled senses the creeping, crawling things beneath the surface; partyism rampant, tyrannous and corrupt; a self-willed soldier in the White House; a Blaine, a Butler and a Garfield leading the Representatives, a Cameron and a Conkling leading the Senate; single-minded disinterestedness, pure unadulterated ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... to be more exact—Dr. Mortimer lunched with us. He has been excavating a barrow at Long Down, and has got a prehistoric skull which fills him with great joy. Never was there such a single-minded enthusiast as he! The Stapletons came in afterwards, and the good doctor took us all to the Yew Alley, at Sir Henry's request, to show us exactly how everything occurred upon that fatal night. It is a long, ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... disallowed, because the man gained something for himself during the act of drawing it. His intention was not single-minded ...
— Hebrew Literature
... the real of their own day. The result was Bandinelli and Montorsoli, whose world was inhabited by pompous fictions. They neither attained the high character of the great classical artists nor the single-minded purpose of Donatello. Their ideal was based on the unrealities of ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... intent, like the early Arab armies, on offering to Asia first and Europe second the choice of apostasy or death, absorbed or annihilated almost all the previous populations, and swept forward into the Balkans as single-minded apostles of Islam. If the composition and the aims of the Osmanlis had been these, it would pass all understanding how they contrived, within a century of their appearance on the western scene, to establish in North-west Asia and South-east Europe the most civilized ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... have been broken, a genius less mighty stifled in this evil tangle of stupidity, incompetence and malignity that sprang up and flourished about him can every hand. A man less single-minded must have succumbed to exasperation, thrown up his command and taken ship for home, inviting some of his innumerable critics to take his place at the head of the troops, and give free rein to the military genius that inspired ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... simplicity—Philip, a thoroughly single-minded girl never wrote that letter. You can't feel such a thing as I do. A man couldn't. You can paint the character of women, and you do it wonderfully—but, after all, you can't know ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for Mary Fortune to invite him to stay. To be sure, she knew him—he was the man with the gun, the man of whom McBain was afraid—but that was all the more reason, to a reasoning woman, why she should keep silent and let him depart. But there was a business-like brevity about him, a single-minded directness, that struck her as really unique. Quite apart from the fact that it might save McBain, she wanted him to stay there and talk. At least so she explained it, the evening afterwards, to her censorious other-self. What she did was spontaneous, on the impulse of the ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... thing never dreamed of by the Jerusalem Church; he is absolutely indifferent whether his mission will cost him his life, or only involve a continuation of almost intolerable hardship. It is this indomitable courage, complete self-sacrifice, and single-minded devotion to a magnificently audacious but not impracticable idea, which constitute the greatness of St. Paul's character. He was, with all this, a warm-hearted and affectionate man, as he proves abundantly by the tone of his letters. His personal religion ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... room one would have picked for great stamina and courage, yet playing one of the leading roles in this crisis; the merchant Truett, towering above all the rest; Farwell, direct, uncompromising, inspired with tremendous single-minded earnestness; James Dows, of the rough and ready, humorous, blasphemous, horse-sense type; Hossefross, of the Committee of '51; Dr. Beverly Cole, high-spirited, distinguished-looking, and courtly; Isaac Bluxome, whose signature of "33 Secretary" ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... Blessed Lady was, indeed, as might have been expected from one so single-minded and sincere as he, eminently practical, From his earliest youth he sought her protection and aid in all difficulties and temptations. When he was pursuing his studies while at college in Paris, the evil spirit was permitted by God to insinuate into his mind ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... probably have hugged such a story to himself. He would have resorted to covert probing and excuse in extracting information. But then it is doubtful if, under such circumstances, his purpose would have been so strong, so absolutely invincible as Scipio's. As it was, with single-minded simplicity, Scipio saw no reason for subterfuge, he saw no reason for disguising the tragedy which had befallen him. And so he shed his story broadcast amongst the settlers of the district until, by means of that wonderful prairie telegraphy, which needs no instruments to operate, it flew before ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... danger and was fast losing hope, his mind was equally divided between thoughts of his family and of his work. The following lines, almost the last intelligible ones he wrote, are deeply touching in their simple, single-minded earnestness:—"Not so well. If Doctor present, I should recover, but he has not come, very doubtful case; if fatal farewell to ... My work has been entirely for the science I study.... There is a large field of study in my collection. I intended to work it out, but desire now ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... his point of view. It is more single-minded, perhaps, than that of a follower of any other calling. From the high, swaying seat of his hansom he looks upon his fellow-men as nomadic particles, of no account except when possessed of migratory desires. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... human as the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand for an enduring and stanch affection—a sympathetic interdependence, wherein mutual weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive alliance. Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-minded confidence and truth out of which alone such a second union could spring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that she now ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... friend again. But I tell you: for a time I had very serious suspicions of you ... Now you ought to know this, however. Frankly, I'm not as bad as I sometimes pretend to be, not by any means. I have always honoured you, you and your sincere, single-minded efforts. And I'm the last man to fail to attach weight to certain demands of the exploited, oppressed masses, demands which are, most unfortunately, only too well justified.—Oh, you may smile. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... influence for good upon Adelaide and Arthur at that critical time, was this object lesson Simeon gave—Simeon with his single-hearted sorrow and single-minded love. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... half-stifled whines. It was her first experience of ownership, of responsibility for a living creature that was dependent on her and for which she was answerable. And it was likely to prove an arduous responsibility. He was single-minded and jealous in his allegiance; Miss Craven he tolerated indifferently, of Craven he was openly suspicious. He followed Gillian like a shadow and moped in her absence, yielding to Yoshio, who had charge of ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... repeated in the story of Gunnlaug and Helga, even to a repetition of the course of events by which Kjartan is defrauded. The true lover is left in Norway and comes back too late; the second lover, the dull, persistent man, contrasted with a more brilliant but less single-minded hero, keeps to his wooing and spreads false reports, and wins his bride without her goodwill. Compared with the story of Kjartan and Gudrun, the story of Gunnlaug and Helga is shallow and sentimental; the likeness to ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... by far the abler man. He was not as well known outside Labour circles in Dublin as he has come to be since his death, but to anyone who has given any thought or study to his life and writings he must appear a person of single-minded purpose, great ability, ordered methods of thought and a fine Nationalism, which was rooted in the principles of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen. Connolly preached the gospel of social democracy with a ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... respectful admiration; while your prowess in the battlefield, and your wisdom in Council during the eventful period of your supreme command of Her Majesty's Indian Forces, have inspired us with confidence in your great military talents and your single-minded and earnest devotion to duty. In many a battle you have led the British Army to victory, and the brilliant success which has invariably attended the British Arms under Your Excellency's command has added to the glory of the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... early days of the crisis of August, 1914, was conditioned by several major causes easily discernible. For almost a generation, Germany has been sedulously cultivating Turkish friendship. With that single-minded purposefulness so conspicuous in her diplomacy, Germany found it easy, especially under the regime of the former Sultan Abdul Hamid II to outmaneuver the easy-going diplomacy of France, Russia, and England. Indeed, she found ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of self-distrust which belongs to naive youth, whether he dare offer himself to one so pure and good and beautiful. And his hesitation was justified; for our sordid England has not brought forth many such serene and single-minded souls as ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... to his father discoursing in this fashion on the fundamental principles of life, and always with a divided mind. He admired immensely his father's talents and the single-minded energy with which he improved them. But in the paternal philosophy there was something that disquieted and oppressed the young man, and made him gasp inwardly for fresh air and ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... John, one of the mouths of the far-famed and mysterious Niger. Captain Tucker had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the coast, as well as with the modes of proceeding of the slave-dealers and of the slavers, and he was thus enabled to capture a very large number of vessels, though, with single-minded purpose, as his object was to stop the slave trade, he endeavoured to take them before they got their slaves on board. Soon after the brig had brought up, about four miles from the shore, Captain Tucker ordered the boats to be hoisted out, and to be fitted for service during ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... the house for a few minutes, trying to realize that there a great poet had gone on living and working, in single-minded devotion to his art and his people, for full fifty years—there in that green, out-of-the-way corner of the world. The idea of a life so rooted in contentment, so continuously happy in the lifelong prosecution of a task set to itself in boyhood, and so independent of change, is ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... with a shrug, convinced that Possy was getting all excited over nothing, "I admit it seems strange—and highly single-minded for so young a boy. But don't you imagine it's some word he ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... Potomac. Such a disaster must have tended directly to injure the interests of Mr. Jefferson, and to promote the slender possibility of a second election of Mr. Adams." And, to be sure, the "United States Gazette" followed up the thing with a good, single-minded party malice which cannot be surpassed in these present days, ending in such altitudes of sublime coolness as the following:—"The insurrection of the negroes in the Southern States, which appears to be organized on the true French plan, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... none—none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during which I have known him. As for vanity, I never saw a man so entirely devoid of it. His modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always underestimated his personal influence. A man less single-minded, vainer, more ambitious of success, might with the same gifts have achieved more for Ireland in thrusting towards a personal triumph. A man with more love for the homage of crowds might have kept himself in closer touch with the mass ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... The obtuse and single-minded landscape-painter never once perceived from her conversation that it was only Trewe she wanted, and not himself. He made the best of his visit, seeming to enjoy the society of Ella's husband, who ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... did, its vital importance to the nation and the fact that as regards much of it he was practically breaking new ground, and taking into account also his tireless energy and activity, his fearlessness, his complete disinterestedness, his single-minded devotion to the interests of the plain people, and his extraordinary efficiency, I believe it is but just to say that among the many, many public officials who under my administration rendered literally invaluable service to the people of the United States, he, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveller Burton says of it—"Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded. . . . In the desert, spirituous liquors excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal existence." They who have been travelling long on the steppes of Tartary say: "On reentering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the more amazing the achievement. I do not say that one is ever moved as one can be in the presence of great simplicity; one is aware in all Tintoretto's work of a hint of the self-conscious entrepreneur; but never, one feels, was the great man so single-minded as here; never was his desire to impress so deep and genuine. In the mass the picture is overpowering; in detail, to which one comes later, its interest is inexhaustible. As an example of the painter's minute thought, one writer has pointed out that ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... known and valued, as one who had gone through such a terrible life with a brave and faithful heart.' And that clearly Mrs. Gaskell succeeded in doing. It is quite certain that Charlotte Bronte would not stand on so splendid a pedestal to-day but for the single-minded devotion of ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... to any other feelings on the part of his brother than those which he verbally expressed. That Charlie delighted in his presence there could be no doubt, but as to those other things, well, a close observer might well have been forgiven had he felt sorry for the bigger man's single-minded generosity. To the end Bill felt confident, and ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... above all, a devout man. Pure in heart, he earned the promised blessing and saw God throughout his days on earth. The fatherhood of God and the imminence of the Kingdom of Heaven were no empty words for him. But, though he was so single-minded a follower of Christ and His teachings, he was no Pharisee of the New Dispensation; the sacerdotalism of the Christian Churches was as hateful to him as the sacerdotalism of the Jews was to Christ. He was concerned with the living spirit, not with ritual, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... hid an uncle who lived with him, a very eccentric, single-minded man, who was greatly distressed about the affair, and who became a messenger bent on making peace. He begged me to desist for Lowrie's sake, that I might not drive him to cover himself with shame, and bring lasting regret. He insisted ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... destiny, and so perhaps he was; but it is difficult somewhat to reconcile his covetousness with his piety. But what is to be said of his Royal mistress whose crown and realm were saved to her by free sacrifices of blood and life on the part of thousands of single-minded men, whom the Royal Lady calmly allowed, after they had secured her safety and that of England, to starve in peace on Margate Sands? Times have changed. Were such reward to be meted to the sailors of to-day after some great period of storm, stress and national peril had been passed through ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... sentiment in his own favour. How little they knew him! If he had chosen to resort to those arts with which his assailants were so familiar he might have won the support of many tongues and pens. He preferred, then as always in his public career, to devote himself with a single-minded purpose to the performance of his duty, leaving the consequences to take care of themselves. It was in this way that it came to pass that his only defender in the Press in those dark and troublous days was a little-known journalist ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... them. We are beings of mixed composition, and I doubt if mine was a single-minded pursuit. I knew that honour required me to pursue, and I had a vivid impression of having just been down in the dust with a very wiry and active and dirty little antagonist of disagreeable odour and incredible and incalculable unscrupulousness, kneeling ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... parties. An author that wrote from principle had a very hard task in those dangerous times. If he ventured on the dangerous precipice of telling unbiassed truth, he must expect martyrdom from both sides. This resignation of the simple single-minded patriot to the pains and penalties of honesty, naturally added to the rage of the party with whose factious proceedings he would have nothing to do; and yet it has always been thought an extraordinary instance of party spite that the Whigs should have instituted a prosecution ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... I have thought since yesterday has distressed me dreadfully," she said. "I have tried to include all the world in a broader pity, a broader, higher, and less selfish love than the jealous, single-minded ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... wards off Death from those that are devoted to him); He that always casts a kind eye on His worshippers; (or, He that sees all things in the universe); He that destroys all things; (or, He that drenches with nectar all those that worship Him with single-minded devotion); He that is the Ordainer of all ordainers; (or, He that unites all persons with the consequences of their acts); He that himself enjoys and endures the fruits of all acts, (or, He that assumed the form of Rama, the son of Dasaratha, and going into exile at ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... which did not touch her. And she, too, had other thoughts at times, dreams of her young lover, spasms of regret, a wild revolt of heart, a cry out of the darkness which had suddenly whelmed her. So that of the three only La Tribe was single-minded. ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... war is the one and supreme duty of every American, regardless of birth, of sympathies and of political views. The American of German descent who, in this time of test and trial, does not serve the land of his adoption with the utmost measure of single-minded devotion and with every ounce of his power, perjured himself when he took his oath of allegiance and proves ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... is to reconcile both science and theology with sincerity and good breeding, to make our experts understand that they are nothing if they are not single-minded and urbane. Get them to understand this, and there will be no difficulty about ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... as she noted in her mirror the sharp lines of a fatigue that was almost bitterness, she experienced a certain unnerving uncertainty, a total lack of zest for what she so eagerly struggled to attain, and she envied her mother's single-minded satisfaction in ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... spite of his air of importance and his inflated phraseology, a simple, single-minded, humble soul. When the rector visited him on his death-bed, he greeted Mr. Young with as much serenity of manner as if he had been only going on a journey to a far country for which he had long been preparing. "Well, reverend and dear sir. Here we are, you see! come to ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... realized only as it is more than matched by a continuing growth in the spiritual strength of the nation. Our dedication to moral values must be complete in our dealings abroad and in our relationships among ourselves. We have single-minded devotion to the common good of America. Never must we forget that this means the well-being, the prosperity, the security of all Americans in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury. To him, as to other single-minded men in every age and race, from Diogenes to the brothers of Saint Francis, from the Montanists to the Shakers, the love of possessions has appeared a snare, and the burdens of a complex society a source ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... flatterer of Richard and (by the simple expedient of a revised second edition of his magnum opus) a flatterer of Henry, offers better testimony than Chaucer to the conservatism of the upper classes of his age, and to the single-minded anxiety ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... kai dechesthai logon] (the giving and receiving of reasons)—competent alike to examine others or to be examined by them in philosophy. When to this we add a strenuous character, earnest convictions, and single-minded devotion to truth, with an utter disdain of mere paradox, it may be conceived that such a man exercised powerful intellectual ascendancy over youthful minds,' etc.—Minor Works ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... well known to all the women and girls of the place, as it was to his shipmates. Success in taking the whale was a thing that made itself felt in every fibre of the prosperity of the town; and it was just as natural that the single-minded population of that part of Suffolk should regard the bold and skilful harpooner, or lancer, with favour, as it is for the belle at a watering-place to bestow her smiles on one of the young heroes of Contreras or Churubusco. His peculiar merit, whether with the oar, lance, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... he gained great skill as an oculist; to France, Italy, England—absorbing the languages and literature of these countries, doing some fine sculpture by way of diversion. But in all this he was single-minded; he never lost the voice of his call; he felt more and more keenly the contrast between the hard lot of his country and the freedom of these lands, and he bore it ill that no one of them even knew about her, and the cancer ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... time, for the sake of mutual help and friendship. All the citizens of a state should be known to one another; for where men are in the dark about each other's characters, there can be no justice or right administration. Every man should be true and single-minded, and should not allow himself to be ...
— Laws • Plato
... and apparently not without reason, that they are subject to certain disabilities and exposed to persecution in Russia. Thereby hangs a tale! Peter the Great would not allow Jews to settle in his dominions on the ground that his single-minded, ignorant subjects could not compete with a naturally clever race endowed with a marvelous talent for money-making. Under his successors, by the annexation of Poland, several millions of Polish Jews became Russian subjects; but the policy of exclusion, so far as Russia proper ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... all simultaneously. It was like one of those great race movements of the Middle Ages. Men and women of widely differing views on religion, art, politics, and almost every other subject; on this one point the intellectuals of Great Britain were single-minded, that there was easy money to be picked up on the lecture platforms of America and that they might just as well grab it as ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... commonwealth between the oceans. I believe that so far as he was of any political tradition, he was of the old Boston Whig tradition; but when I met him at Venice he was in the glow of a generous pride in our war as a war against slavery. He spoke of the negroes and their simple-hearted, single-minded devotion to the Union cause in terms that an original abolitionist might have used, at a time when original abolitionists were not so many as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... this time her love for the stage had been single-minded. No man had touched her heart with sufficient fire to disturb her serenity, but now she was not merely following where he led, she was questioning the value and morality of ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... carry his measures for the reform of the judicia, which were, that the Senate should be increased from 300 to 600 by the addition of an equal number of Equites, and that the Judices should be taken from the Senate thus doubled in numbers. Drusus seems to have been actuated by a single-minded desire to do justice to all, but the measure was acceptable to neither party. The Senators viewed with dislike the elevation to their own rank of 300 Equites, while the Equites had no desire to transfer to a select few of ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... however, he seemed almost to shrink, and, with a sincerity it was impossible to doubt, disclaimed as ignoble so poor a motive as a thirst for fame. His was one of those calm laborious minds, seldom found but among the Teutonic race, that—pursuing day by day with single-minded energy some special object—live in a noble obscurity, and die at last content with the consciousness of having added one other stone to that tower of knowledge men are building up toward heaven, even though the world should ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... would be more conscientious, if they were allowed a larger discretion. But, after all, juries cannot be better than the mass out of which they are taken. And if juries are not honest and single-minded, they are the worst, because the least responsible, instruments of judicial or ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... "I am the loneliest man in all this world, like one who lives on a great mountain-peak, with none to bear him company. Who have I for a friend? Whom can I rely upon? Some are for the Church; some are for their families; most are for themselves. But who of them all is single-minded? You are my better self, Francoise; you are my guardian angel. What the good father says is true, and the nearer I am to you the further am I from all that is evil. Tell me, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Dionysius says (Eccl. Hier. vi), speaking of religious: "Some call them therapeutai," i.e. servants, "on account of their rendering pure service and homage to God; others call them monachoi" [*i.e. solitaries; whence the English word 'monk'], "on account of the indivisible and single-minded life which by their being wrapped in," i.e. contemplating, "indivisible things, unites them in a Godlike union and a perfection beloved of God" [*Cf. Q. 180, A. 6]. Moreover, the obligation in both cases is undertaken with a certain ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... and unobtrusive sorrow, for I fear it sometimes reached that intensity of feeling, my excellent and indefatigable ancestor appeared to have no suspicion. He pursued his ordinary occupations with his ordinary single-minded devotion, and the last thing that would have crossed his brain was the suspicion that he had not punctiliously done his duty by his ward. Had he acted otherwise, none surely would have suffered more by his delinquency than her husband, and none would have a better right to complain. Now, as her ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Jasmin was loyal, single-minded, self-reliant, patient, temperate, and utterly unselfish. He made all manner of sacrifices during his efforts in the cause of charity. Nothing was allowed to stand in the way of his missions on behalf of the poor. In his journey of fifty days in 1854, he went from Orthez—the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... course, for one so single-minded himself, to follow altogether the doublings of such a mind as Rupert's; but through the melancholy relief of this sudden resolution, Adrian was distinctly conscious of the underlying duplicity, the unworthy motives which had ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... he looked—the most single-minded person I have ever come across. And when I say single-minded, I mean just that, and no more. He had an End to attain—the advancement of science, and he went straight towards the End, looking neither to the right nor to the left ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... is arrayed usurpation; against modest, single-minded, righteous, and brave resistance to encroachment is arrayed boastful, double-tongued, selfish, and treacherous ambition to possess. God defend ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... arguments are often adduced by those who are not unskilful in discussions, and who, in this question, have all the greater weight of authority, because, when we inquire, Who is a good man?—understanding by that term a frank and single-minded man—we have little need of captious casuists, quibblers, and slanderers. For those men assert that the wise man does not seek virtue because of the personal gratification which the practice of justice ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... either an ill man or hath an ill patron, or both; and when such cooks and cobbling shifters shall be removed and weeded out of the ministry, I doubt not but our patrons will prove better men, and be reformed whether they will or not, or else the single-minded bishops shall see the living bestowed upon such as do deserve it. When the Pragmatic Sanction took place first in France, it was supposed that these enormities should utterly have ceased; but when the elections of bishops came once into the hands of the canons and spiritual ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... Ussher had been absolutely single-minded, she would not have invited Mrs. Almar to this party; but though a warm friend to Christine Fenimer, Laura was not a fanatic, and the piratical ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... surf, and in the face of forty pieces of cannon, though we were not successful, will show what an Englishman is equal to." His conduct affords for all time an example of superb courage in the face of extraordinary and unexpected difficulty and danger, and especially of single-minded energy in carrying through one's own share of an enterprise, without misplaced concern about consequences, or worry as to whether the other parties were prospering or not. Had Nelson reached the square he would have found Troubridge there, and that was the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... in the dread convulsion of that awakening. Soon this would pass, and the sane, ideal government of her dreams would follow—must follow, since among the people's elected representatives was a goodly number of unselfish, single-minded men of her father's class of life; men of breeding and education, impelled by a lofty altruistic patriotism; men who gradually came to form a party presently to ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... will make peace with him and that I will receive back my queen. And do thou, good Geraint, fare south again. I thank thee from my heart for what thou hast done. Would to Heaven that all my knights were as clean-souled and as single-minded in devotion unto me as thou art. Do thou go and fulfil thy great office. Watch thou the coasts as hitherto thou hast watched them; and soon I will follow to aid thee, should the foul and savage pagans strive again to break into ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... the Holy Land, and deliberately draped Christ and the Apostles as Greek sages and Roman senators. I believe in so doing he was on the whole wise, his motive being to remove his characters from the sphere of common life; even for him, the most single-minded of men, art was a compromise: but while borrowing thus largely both in figure and costume from the Classic, it were vain to contend that his creations had an exclusively Christian origin. I may add that I do not think the controversy lies so much between ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... on. And from what follows the mother has evidently told the story before to her son. This dialogue may very well express the contrast between husband and wife and their attitudes towards their younger son. Borrow very eloquently addresses his father as "a noble specimen of those strong single-minded Englishmen, who, without making a parade either of religion or loyalty, feared God and honoured their king, and were not particularly friendly to the French," and as a pugilist who almost vanquished the famous Ben Bryan; but he does not conceal the fact ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... came at last; and nearly at the same moment came the murder of a man whose modesty, integrity, firmness, single-minded persistency, unresentfulness, and substantial truth of judgment have been invested by his fate with an almost sacred depth of interest and significance,—President Lincoln. Amid the many momentous bearings of these events, it is for me to note only one of comparative unimportance,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... money he had earned as builder, resigning his chance to go into camp, he devoted himself to Drew day and night. He became one of the family at the bungalow and a jocose familiarity was as much a part of Jock's liking for a person, as were his tireless patience and capacity for single-minded service. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Rosendal, mother, and the jewel of Hardy Place," said Hardy to his mother, on his unpunctual return to lunch. "She is so good and single-minded that it is impossible to invent ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... fields wider than were offered to human activity in any other age of the world's history. Now at last the full fruits of sixteenth-century discovery were to be reaped. It was possible for Gordon, by the personal ascendancy which he owed to his single-minded faith, to create legends and to work miracles in Asia and in Africa; for Richard Burton to gain an intimate knowledge of Islam in its holiest shrines; for Livingstone, Hannington, and other martyrs ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... moment he was in love with her and single-minded in his desire to aid her, to defend her, but the door had hardly closed behind him when his questionings, his suspicions began to file back, stealthily, silently, along the underways of his brain. Her distress began to seem a little too ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... schemes.] Such, in outline, was the grand scheme of Caius Gracchus. If he was less single-minded in his aims than his brother, he could hardly help being so; and, having to reconcile so many conflicting interests, he may have swerved from what would have been his own ideal. But that his main purpose was to break down a rotten system, and establish a sound one on its ruins, and ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... individual is conscious of himself, while before, under the predominating influence of Prince Bismarck, individualities shrank and were kept down. Now they are all swollen like sponges placed in water. That has its advantages, but also its dangers. The single-minded will ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... it imbued her unconsciously with a thorough belief. She was apt to suspect deceit in other people;—but it did not occur to her that Mr Brehgert had written a single word with an attempt to deceive her. But the single-minded genuine honesty of the letter was altogether thrown away upon her. She never said to herself, as she read it, that she might safely trust herself to this man, though he were a Jew, though greasy and like a butcher, though over fifty and with a family, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... less utilitarian than those of an earlier era, Borrow must have been an interesting man of letters had he not written his four great books. Single-minded devotion to the less commercially remunerative languages has now become respectable and even estimable. Students of the Scandinavian languages, and of the Celtic, abound in our midst. Borrow was a forerunner ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... other people whose history is to be credited. Whatever might have been the weaknesses of the original colonists, their virtues have rarely been disputed. If they were superstitious, they were sincerely pious, and, consequently, honest. The descendants of these simple and single-minded provincials have been content to reject the ordinary and artificial means by which honours have been perpetuated in families, and have substituted a standard which brings the individual himself to the ordeal of ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... between them, and till he could claim her for his wife by right of much patience and fidelity. He had an idea that no woman, pure and true as he believed this woman to be, could shut her heart against an honest man's love, if he were only patient and faithful, single-minded and ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... in his preface, and, further, that the Government ought to have had the courage to alter the law allowing absolute exemption rather than stretch it beyond the breaking point. But I emphatically dispute his assumption that the matter was a simple one. It was not the saintly, single-minded and sweet-natured C.O.'s of Christopher Sterling's type that made the chief difficulty. There were few of this literal interpretation and heroic texture. The real difficulty was created by men of a very different character and in much greater numbers, sincere in varying ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... infinitely stronger than these in fighting the economic ruin of Russia, which, if it is too strong, too powerful to be arrested by the Communists, would make short work of those who are without any such fanatic single-minded and perfectly disciplined organization. ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... shows its single-minded love of perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its attitude towards all this machinery, even while it insists that it is machinery. ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... didacticism. It was part of the game.... In the present collection there is, I think, no example either of condescension or showing-off—the two principal faults of books for children. All the authors seem to me to be simple and single-minded: they wished above all to ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... beautiful in body and beautifully clad, went here and there among the outcasts of the First Ward. She like all women was waiting for an opportunity of which she did not talk even to herself. She was something for the single-minded and primitive McGregor to approach ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... Claude rightly, the traveller will do well to free his mind from Ruskin's partial and prejudiced depreciation of these two supreme masters, in order to effect an equally partial appreciation of Turner.[216] The story of Poussin's single-minded and stubborn application to his art cannot here be told. After a life of poverty at Paris and two unsuccessful attempts to work his way to Rome, he at length reached that Mecca of French artists, where a commission to paint two pictures, now at Vienna, for Cardinal Barbarini, established ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... deterred by his limitations but has on the contrary been spurred on its greater efforts in his explanation of the invisible. The mysterious movements of life are not to remain for him inscrutable and indecipherable for all times: but his untiring and single-minded pursuit will someday reveal to him the secret that lies ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... scientific habit of mind. The religion, of which Fetishism, Hinduism and Heathendom; Judism, Christianity and Islamism are mere fractions, may, methinks, be accepted by the Philosopher: it worships with single-minded devotion the Holy Cause of Truth, of Truth for its own sake, not for the goods it may bring; and this belief is equally acceptable to honest ignorance, and to the highest attainments ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... those who knew him by his character. He was not a good pilot, and was almost famous for his crashes. He was not a popular officer. He was not what would be called a clever man. But he was single-minded, and utterly brave and determined, careless alike of danger and of ridicule. There is often granted to singleness of purpose a kind of second sight which is denied to mere intelligence. Major Burke (to give him his earlier ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... no vacations, pies and doughnuts, ugliness of physical surroundings, and squeaky feminine voices. Public opinion justified making all the money one could, provided it was not spent in rendering life ornate or beautiful. So lived our fathers and mothers, our up-right, vigorous, single-minded, ascetic predecessors; and in our day their precepts were still held in reverence. Yet even then there were indications of a change. The newly created species took it into her head to look around her, especially in ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... nature in sooth was never a mystery to myself. I was ever hot-tempered, single-minded, and given to women. From these cardinal tendencies there proceeded truculence of temper, wrangling, obstinacy, rudeness of carriage, anger, and an inordinate desire, or rather a headstrong passion, for revenge in respect to any wrong done to me; so that this inclination, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... doubt, and to let him know the result. He made a similar application to Clare, recommending her to put the same question to her sisters, and particularly to the one who should appear to her to be the most pure and most single-minded. The venerable priest and the consecrated virgin gave similar answers, and pronounced that it was the will of God that Francis should ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... from declaring more particulars now. He felt that, single-minded and self-sacrificing as his parents were, there yet existed certain latent prejudices of theirs, as middle-class people, which it would require some tact to overcome. For though legally at liberty to do as he chose, and though ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... easy. But I may say that the friendly ironies began for us as soon as we were out of the more single-minded keeping of the ship's stewards, who had brought our hand-baggage ashore, and, after extracting the last shilling of tip from us, had delivered us over to the keeping of the customs officers. It began with the joking tone of the inspectors, who surmised that ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... of the Lord, as did David his father." Sometimes on a heap of corruption, which we are glad to hurry past with abhorrence, God plants a beautiful and fragrant flower, as if in defiance of man's neglect; and thus Asa appeared in the family, and in the court of Ahijah, his father—a God-fearing, single-minded lad, with ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... Barnabas Bidwell, who had been Attorney General of Massachusetts but had fled to Canada in 1810 when accused of misappropriating public money, and his son, Marshall Spring Bidwell, one of the ablest and most single-minded men who ever entered Canadian public life. From Ireland came Dr. William Warren Baldwin, whose son Robert, born in Canada, was less surpassingly able than the younger Bidwell but equally moderate and equally beyond ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... onward, singing over his work, without bluster or self-gratulation, for very joy at having work to do. There is a keen practical insight about him, rarely combined, in these days, with his single-minded determination to do good in his generation. His eye is single, and his whole ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... held that he loved. He was the Arab bound for the well for which he thirsted, single-minded as to that, and without much present consciousness of tarnish or sin.... But what might arise in his mind when his thirst was quenched? Ian did not care, in these blissful days, ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... Germany were produced; and though they showed no evidence of fraud, the archbishop was remanded to his prison to await the further disposition of his case. Never was greater injustice done a worthy man. There was not a scintilla of evidence against him. He was a generous, kindly, single-minded prelate, and the only reason for this cruelty was that he had no sympathy with the methods of the king. After some months in prison he was released upon the pretext of an embassy to Poland. Nobody could be ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... physically or morally. The husband is faithful with a single-minded fidelity in thought, word and deed that looks (and, I am assured by equally innocent victims, is) positively deadly. The friend "frits and flutters" about in a distinctly casual, not to say polygamous, mood, but has one sacred ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... nervously as he made the bold request. Anne felt at once that she would go. There was nobody in the world whose care she would more readily be under than the trumpet-major's in a case like the present. He was their nearest neighbour's son, and she had liked his single-minded ingenuousness from the first moment ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... hardest thing in the world for a woman to be single-minded, in the limited sense of concentration, I mean. Focus your wits on Siddle to-day. I don't suggest any plan. I leave that to your own intelligence. Vex him, and ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... it, Mr. Holmes," she said. "I have not shut an eye since the tragedy, thinking, thinking, thinking, night and day, what the true meaning of it can be. Arthur was the most single-minded, chivalrous, patriotic man upon earth. He would have cut his right hand off before he would sell a State secret confided to his keeping. It is absurd, impossible, preposterous to anyone ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... well expressed his constitutional habit, the outstanding trait in his character, when, on the day of that talk in the office with Nona, he had spoken of his disastrous inability—disastrous from the point of view of being satisfactory to single-minded persons, or of pulling out that big booming stuff called success—to see a thing, whatever it might be, from a single point of view and go all out for it from that point of view. "Convictions," he had said, and often in ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Elizabeth and Whitgift, her Archbishop of Canterbury, set about putting their house in order in earnest, they were met with a mixture of humble loyalty and immovable resistance which would have perplexed any potentates less single-minded. But Elizabeth and Whitgift were not of the sort that sets its hand to the plow and then turns back; they went earnestly on with their banishments and executions, paying particular attention to the Separatists, but keeping plenty ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... to bar out such weather," said Mordacks, who read the farmer's thoughts like print, "Don't relax your rules, sir, until the weather changes. Ah, that was a very sad thing about the captain. As gallant an officer, and as single-minded, as ever killed a Frenchman in the best days ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... know I should be here?' Her voice was now not only quiet but sweet. Without thinking, Harold blundered on. His intention was so single-minded, and his ignorance of woman so complete, that he did not ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker |
