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Purposeful   /pˈərpəsfəl/   Listen
Purposeful

adjective
1.
Serving as or indicating the existence of a purpose or goal.
2.
Having meaning through having an aim.



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"Purposeful" Quotes from Famous Books



... she had that morning presented the last of the milk to a sandy cat with a purposeful eye which had dropped in through the window to take breakfast with her, when her regrets for this thriftless hospitality were ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... of walking slap into a waiting Danger. I stood a few seconds, waiting, and nothing happened, and the empty room showed bare from corner to corner. And then, you know, I realized that the room was full of an abominable silence; can you understand that? A sort of purposeful silence, just as sickening as any of the filthy noises the Things have power to make. Do you remember what I told you about that 'Silent Garden' business? Well, this room had just that same malevolent silence—the beastly quietness of a thing ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson

... made! But we can get into the road again this way. Indeed, we must get into the road soon because it is hungry work out in the air, and two inches to the north-west is written a word full of meaning—the most purposeful word that can be written upon a map. "Inn," So now for a steady climb. We have dropped down to "200" by the farmhouse, and the inn is marked "500." But it is only two miles—well, ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... rare occasions when there is any wind, any movement of the air at all, there enters another and a different feeling. Into the menace of a power, irresistible, inflexible, but yet insentient, there seems to enter a purposeful, vengeful evil. It pursues. The cold itself becomes merely a condition; the wind a deadly weapon which uses that condition to deprive its victim of all defence. The warmth which active exercise stores up, the buckler of the traveller, is borne away. His reserves are invaded, depleted, destroyed. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... expecting him to speak. Every second her hesitation seemed more purposeful. Julien, however, with an effort which was almost savage, set his teeth and walked on. She looked after him for a moment and began to laugh softly to herself. Julien walked steadily on till he had reached the corner of the street. Then he turned away abruptly and without glancing ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... out of the station and the small, purposeful figure had vanished from sight she sat back and tried to collect her thoughts to review the situation. She was feeling tired and desperately unhappy. They had let her see, even these dear people whom of all others in the ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... deserted streets under the glare of electricity, I with my leaden shuffle, he with the purposeful forward stoop and swinging arms that always marked ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... has, of course, been a contributing influence to our success. Purposeful reading is taking the place of miscellaneous dabbling in literature, and the Modern Library is being daily recommended by notable educators as a representative library of modern thought. Many of our titles are being placed on college lists for supplementary reading and they are being ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... how the vital process—cell-multiplication—may be induced to go on and on, blindly, aimlessly, for an almost indefinite time. The cells multiply, but they do not organize themselves into a constructive community and build an organ or any purposeful part. They may be likened to a lot of blind masons piling up brick and mortar without any architect to direct their work or furnish them a plan. A living body of the higher type is not merely an association of cells; it is an ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... state of disordered consciousness, with analgesia; the patient's ideas are confused, the special senses are disturbed, and though the application of stimuli to the skin causes no mental impression, yet in response to them there may be what look like purposeful ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... this afternoon that I had no chance to thank you, but the echoes of that discharge penetrated as far as my library. Also, I have viewed the debris. What on earth did you do to poor Sterry? Watching the purposeful set of your shoulders as you strode toward the carriage house, I was filled with sudden compunction. I did not want the man murdered, merely reasoned with. I am afraid you were a ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... casual wandering thought upon it, causing it to burst into a cloud of rapidly-moving, evanescent forms, has already been described; we have now to note how it is affected when the human mind formulates a definite, purposeful thought or wish. The effect produced is of the most striking nature. The thought seizes upon the plastic essence, and moulds it instantly into a living being of appropriate form—a being which when once thus created is in no way under the control of its creator, but lives out a life ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... arms about his neck and laid her head against his shoulder. They stood thus motionless while the pine whispered above them. And in the intensity of that embrace all the griefs of Lydia's life were hallowed and made purposeful. ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... marriage, she began to recover in another and more perfect form. Wholesome consideration of the realities of life now took the place of fanciful dreams. Her mind, wonderfully fertilised, teemed again—not with vain imaginings, however, as heretofore, but with something more substantial. Purposeful thought was where the mere froth of sensuous seeing had been; and it was thought that now clamoured for expression instead of the verses and stories—fireworks of the brain, pleasant, transient, futile distractions with nothing more ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... wind, a life in the open air. This color gave peculiar emphasis to the yellow hair and mustache. His face was not handsome, if one accept the Greek profile as a model of manly beauty, but it was cleanly and boldly cut, healthful, strong and purposeful, based on determined jaws and a chin which would have been obstinate but for the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... neighboring hill. His appearance seemed to puzzle her momentarily. His attire was that of Brazil, but neither his manner nor horsemanship was typical of the Brasileiro. In walking, he moved with an air of purposeful concentration that differed singularly from the languorous stroll of the average Brazilian officer, while his seat in the saddle, though confident enough, could not be mistaken for that of a man who never walks a yard if there is ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... out of college,—just out, in fact, of the most high-minded of all the colleges for women;—that founded by Andrew Rogers in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-one. There is probably a greater percentage of purposeful young women graduated from Rogers College every year, than from any other one of the communities of learning devoted to the education of women; and of all the purposeful classes turned out from that admirable institution, Beulah's class could ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... and the scientist, the minister and the reformer, were all combined in this one purposeful man. The people believed him to be a wizard, and even credited him with power to raise the dead. Heathen, sick and curious, crowded about his wagon, but not an article was stolen. One day the chief of a savage tribe said: "I ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... worn, was stained with earth and the green of grass, and was splashed, here and there, with a darker stain; pale was he, and hollow-cheeked, but with eyes that gleamed 'neath black brows and with chin long and purposeful. Now at sight of him, fierce-eyed Walkyn cried aloud and flung aside his axe and, falling on his knees, caught the friar's threadbare ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... were swarms, literally, of fresh-faced, purposeful youths and maidens, an astonishingly large number of whom were meeting after the manner of friends long separated. Later Kate discovered how great a proportion of that enthusiasm took itself out in mere gesture and vociferation; but ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... at supper when she came, and without quitting the table bade them usher her into his presence. He found her very white, but singularly calm and purposeful ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... which physical force plays in life is necessarily incomplete. Just as formerly the irresponsible and meaningless use of political power created the need of special religious associations, independent of the state, so now the responsible, the purposeful, and the efficient use of physical force, characteristic of modern nations, has in its turn made such independence less necessary, and tends to attach a different function to the church. A basis of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... succession of ideas which flow through my mind as I write or speak is only explicable by reference to an end—an end which I am striving to bring into actual being. In such voluntarily concentrated purposeful successions of thought I am immediately exercising causality: and this causality does further influence the order of events in physical nature. My pen or my tongue moves in consequence of this striving of mine, though no doubt for such efforts to take place other ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall

... to stagger on; I have seen a sergeant with a great fragment of common shell through his lungs run forward for several hundred yards vomiting blood, but still encouraging his men, who, truth to tell, were as eager as he. It is impossible to describe or even conceive the purposeful and aching desire to get to close quarters regardless of all losses and of all consequences. The Bulgarians, in committing those obscene atrocities, not only damned themselves forever in the eyes of humanity, but they doubled, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... Frenchman, and removed his pipe from his mouth. He trimmed the bowl fastidiously with his thumb, smiling the while. Of a sudden he looked up, and the smile was gone. He gave Mills back a look as purposeful ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... P for Purposeful. Yes, early hi life you should form a purpose. Two questions will help you gain that purpose. 1st—What is it that I want to do? 2nd—What is it that ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright

... destructive hatred in the mind of the unknown. It lay scattered, in splintered shards, upon the grass. Holmes picked up several of them and examined them carefully. I was convinced, from his intent face and his purposeful manner, that at last he was ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... in that which his owner really cares about; still more, if he fails in the economical administration of the funds allowed for the building, will he fail in that which the owner most cares about. Less beauty, less success in producing a novel, an original, a thoughtful, a purposeful design will hurt him but little, but insufficient care as to the circulation of hot-water ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... it fight in their faces, and laughed as she saw it strike home. A howl of rage greeted the taunt, and, listening to the wild, fierce yell—so different from the noisy bravado of a few minutes before, I shuddered; there was something so stern and purposeful ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... took him so near the back of the car that he had to turn out, a step or so, to avoid collision with it. He accompanied this turning-out maneuver by another which was less ostentatious, but more purposeful. Timing his steps, so as to pass by the rear of the car just as the Master was busy helping his wife to descend, the youth thrust an arm over the side of the tonneau, with the speed of a striking snake. His hand closed on the handle of a traveling bag, among the heap of luggage. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... different!" he declared; and even his voice was altered. There was a determined, purposeful ring about it which was altogether unlike his usual ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... ceased, Rollo had secured without difficulty the companionship of Miss Fisher for a walk; and Miss Fisher never knew how peculiar a walk it was, nor imagined that her cavalier was following a very fixed and definite purpose of his own. Nothing seemed less purposeful than the course they took; it was no course; from one path diverging into another, changing from one direction to another; a hunted hare would scarce make more doublings, or anything else, except the dog in chase of the hare. Kitty only knew that she was very well amused; her companion never left ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... arm from his clasp and, without lifting her eyes to him, went forward with a swift, purposeful step. He watched her a few moments, and then with a dark countenance turned homeward. "This is Elizabeth's doing," he muttered. "Elizabeth is too, too detestably respectable for anything. I saw and felt her sugared patronage of Denas through all her ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... (Case 2) lost her resistiveness as she became more accessible, although the inactivity and apathy persisted. This tendency, which is quite common, suggests that muscular resistiveness represents a lower level of expression of opposition which patients put into words or purposeful actions when there is other evidence of some contact with the environment. Sometimes one observes both general resistiveness and specific acts. For instance, Mary G., who said, "Leave me alone," and covered her head ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... in Rip but in the number and rapidity of the changes that American life underwent during the twenty years that serve as background to the story. George William Curtis calls Rip "the constant and unconscious satirist of American life," but surely Irving would have smiled at finding so purposeful a mission laid upon the stooping shoulders of his vagabond ne'er-do-well hero. Rip is no satirist, conscious or unconscious. He is a provincial Dutch type, such as Irving had seen a hundred times; but he is so lovable and is sketched ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... about them. Abrief comparison of the two sets of translations suggests that the critic was striving merely for accuracy in correcting the errors of Zckert, and that Bode in his formal translation shows a riper and more certain feeling for the choice of words; the effect of purposeful reflection is unmistakable. Of course this in no way proves Bode to have been the reviewer, but the indications at ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... Jennings School was a perfect microcosm, as the scientists would say, of the human race—the serious very few, toiling more or less successfully toward a definite goal; the many, compelled to do something, and imagining themselves serious and purposeful as they toiled along toward nothing in particular but the next lesson—that is, the next day's appointed task; the utterly idle, fancying themselves busy and important when in truth they were simply a fraud and ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... mass at first and then an arc of one ominous color advancing in a fast, purposeful drive, already overrunning the pickets with only a lone shot here and there in defiance. They rode up confidently, dismounted, and charged—to be thrown back once. But there were too many of them, and they moved with ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... independence, handicapping our industries as they were in the first year or two of the great war! This is not a mere possibility created by the imagination, for our economic history contains instance after instance of the purposeful undermining and destruction of our industries in finer chemicals, dyes and drugs by foreign interests bent on preserving their monopoly. If one recalls that through control, for instance, of dyes by a competing nation, control is in fact also established ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... chair, but sat still in her chariot as if waiting for his coming, and the little crowd of juvenals about her fluttered aside before his resolute advance, and I thought even then how strong his young face looked, and how purposeful, for all his youth, that grim nose of his and the steady eyes above it, in contrast with the pink-and-white prettiness of the many slim lads that were the Queen of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... at a steady, purposeful pace, with cheery countenance and eyes that gave sign of pleasure as often as they turned to the sun-smitten clouds, he struck across Kensington Gardens, and then on towards Fulham, where he crossed the Thames to Putney. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... People and places became visualized as Joan spoke. Sylvia Reed with her strong, purposeful face and eyes of a young prophet; the new nest of genius where the brave creature, believing in herself, waited for another in whom she trusted and for whom she held a deep-founded affection. Doris felt her way in silence—relinquishing, loving, fearing, but never blinded. She knew ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... March residence. One was Garnet, one was Ravenel, two others John and his father, and two were strangers in Dixie. One of these was a very refined-looking man, gray, slender, and with a reticent, purposeful mouth. His traveling suit was too warm for the latitude, and his silk hat slightly neglected. The other was fat and large, and stayed in the carryall in which Garnet had driven them up from Rosemont. He was of looser stuff than his senior. He called the West his ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... met him in the hall; she had heard his quick steps and guessed that he was going out. Now clearly, though she was frightened, she was delighted with him. He had never thrilled her like this before. She had never guessed that Pollock Hampton could be so stern-faced, so purposeful. She whispered an entreaty that he be careful, then as he went out, ran back to ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... shown itself so strongly in his elation. But this was different, so different that she had a queer feeling of sitting opposite an utter stranger. It was not dislike, resentment, fear; it was rather a sly but savage vindictiveness, a purposeful malice that would stop at nothing. In the unguarded moment Sprudell's passion for revenge was stamped upon his face like a brand. Helen had thought of him contemptuously as a bounder, a conceited ignoramus—he was more than these things, he was ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... other dots, larger and more clearly defined as horsemen. From mere objects that stood higher than any animal and moved with a purposeful directness, they presently became men who rode with the easy swing of habit which has become a second nature. They must have seen her sitting still upon her horse in the midst of that high, sunny plateau, for they turned and rode up ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... the other a crazy, incoherent, irrational, futile place, yet embodying very accurately a certain aspect of the civic attitude toward the insanity of vice and crime of the day. There is nothing intelligent, purposeful, trenchant or radical about it; it is planted in ignorance and ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... from the table, went upstairs, purposeful decision in every line of her substantial body, determination in every sound of her footfall. Bride though she be, Kate would have meted out to her just dues this time. Company and a lover and the nearness of the wedding hour were things not to be trifled ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... especially those who showed talents to which they were unable, through stress of circumstances, to give expression—that he died practically a poor man. He was a high-souled, generous idealist. All his work is purposeful, conveying to his readers a moral lesson. He had the keenest appreciation of the feelings of others and understood the immense significance of the little things of life—a fact evidenced by his vivid descriptions of ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... persecution and the stimulus of migration, the mass of the first settlers doubtless caught something of the spiritual exaltation which inspired the leaders. But it was not for the many to live on that high level of purposeful resolution and enduring courage. It is a significant fact that of those who came over with Winthrop and Dudley two hundred returned in the ships that brought them out; and of those who remained who shall say how many met the stern realities ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... This, then, is the attitude of repose in which we may enjoy all the beauties of science, literature and art or may peacefully commune with the spirit of nature without the aid of any third mind to act as its interpreter, which is still a purposeful attitude although not directed to a specific object: we have not allowed the will to relax its control, but have merely altered its direction; so that for action and repose alike we find that our strength lies in our recognition of the unity ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... adjoining it were a number of workshops. It was quite dark now, and no one was about; but Smith clearly had no intention of putting his machine up for the night. As soon as he came to the ground he hurried off on foot in one direction, Rodier on a bicycle in another, their purposeful movements betokening a course of action arranged during the few minutes' ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... her hospital life. She came in with her accustomed eager, purposeful walk. She sat down on the nearest chair, and began to talk cheerfully to the children ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade

... for quite half an hour. Sometimes Madame turned to the right, sometimes to the left. The maze seemed to be endless. Once or twice I wondered whether she had lost her way, and was merely seeking to return. But her steady, purposeful gait, her measured pace, forbade the idea. I noticed, too, that she seldom looked behind her—rarely to right or left. Once the ride down which she passed was carpeted not with green, but with the silvery, sheeny leaves ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... took ten men and six dogs to haul the beast home after he had been finally dispatched. The man fired several shots at him, but did not hit a vital spot. One bullet only remained to him, and the bear was coming at him in a very purposeful manner. "Now or never," thought the fisherman, and fired. The creature fell dead almost at his feet. When they skinned him they found bullets in his legs and flank, but searched and searched in vain for the fatal one which had been the end of him. There was no mark on the skin in any vital ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... of youth in those overgrown, awkward cities that are only now beginning to be self-conscious and seriously purposeful in doing more than the things conventionally and for the most part selfishly done by cities generally. In the conjugation of their busy, noisy life they do not often use the past tense, never the past-perfect, ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... conversation as they lay in their blankets with the tang of the night breeze in their nostrils, gazing up at the splendor of the flaming stars; until they knew each other man to man—and Curly Bill began to feel something like devotion to his purposeful young companion. Thenceforth he talked freely of his deeds ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... the sensory surface of consciousness devoted to the Forec. is rendered less excitable by sleep than that directed to the P-systems. The giving up of interest for the nocturnal mental processes is indeed purposeful. Nothing is to disturb the mind; the Forec. wants to sleep. But once the dream becomes a perception, it is then capable of exciting consciousness through the qualities thus gained. The sensory stimulus accomplishes what it was really destined for, namely, it directs ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... itself out of the Gare de Lyons. For a few minutes the lights of outer Paris twinkled past its windows and then with a spring it reached the open night. The jolts and lurches merged into one regular purposeful throb, the shrieks of the wheels, the clatter of the coaches, into one continuous hum. And already in the upper berth of her compartment Mrs. Thesiger was asleep. The noise of a train had no unrest for ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... me through the glare of a sudden release from some emergency in which she stood. One thing was sure; if that was the way I must go, I had at least been taught how to tread it; and all through the dizzy, blurred day that followed, I saw, as I sat at my work, repeated visions of that stealthy, purposeful figure stealing down the stairs and entering with uplifted pistol into the unconscious presence of my employer. I even found myself a dozen times that day turning my eyes upon the door through which it was to come, wondering how long ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... be offensive. The game of Squash Tennis has known many so-called "great getters," but they invariably have succumbed to "purposeful power" and the aggressively angled shots of players with the burning desire to win, "the killer instinct" that spurs the great players to go ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires

... man, slowly, on a reliable cob or sturdy pony—bandages visible, or one arm in a sling. A few people sat about, or leaned on the fences, watching; but there was nothing to attract a crowd. Every one looked business-like, purposeful; clothes were plain and useful, with little frippery. The old glitter and splendour of the Row was gone: the London that used to watch it was a London that had forgotten ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce

... slipped from her. Life became rich and purposeful. He needed her always, and she was always there and always able to meet his need. "Are you content, my beloved?" she asked over and over; and Garth's joyous voice, with the ring of perpetual youth in it, always answered: "Perfectly content." And Jane smiled into the ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... it. "You are never to say that—or anything like it—again," she said severely. "If—if you weren't so dreadfully tired, I believe I'd be really angry. As it is—" she reached the ground and stood there before him, a small, purposeful figure clad in the great apron that wrapped ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... monotony of daily life; a view over shining plains, with lofty mountains against the cold blue sky, and lands covered by ice-sheets of inconceivable extent; a vision of long-vanished glacial times; the triumph of the living over the stiffened realm of death. There is a ring of steeled, purposeful human will — through icy frosts, snowstorms, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... never been such conscientious, intelligent, and purposeful work done for children as in the last ten years; and if an overwhelming flood of trash has been poured into our laps along with the better things, we must accept the inevitable. The legends, myths, and fables of the world, as well as its history and romance, are being brought within ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... and machine tender, he was down to ten hours a week of work. Many others in the luxury-gorged economy had even smaller shares of the purposeful activities that remained. At night he dreamed of the slagger moving from house to house as it burned, melted and then evaporated each group of junked labor-blocking devices. He even had glorious daydreams about it. Walking down the park side of his home block, he was liable to lose all contact ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner

... life. The act of raising the head, which is attempted about the fourth month in healthy children, is volitional, requiring not so much added strength of muscle as power of coordination. As volition develops the power of coordination gradually increases, and the child learns to perform voluntary or purposeful acts. Voluntary grasping is done after the fourth month. As the child learns to balance its head, it attempts to sit up. This act is not successfully accomplished until about the fortieth week; the child sits firmly alone when ten or eleven ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... and clamorous vitality of New York City, that mood rose to its quintessence. And once it came to me, as I shall tell, on Dover cliffs. And a hundred times when I have thought of England as our country might be, with no wretched poor, no wretched rich, a nation armed and ordered, trained and purposeful amidst its vales and rivers, that emotion of collective ends and collective purposes has returned to me. I felt as great as humanity. For a brief moment I was humanity, looking at the world I had made and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... actually Stover!" said The Roman. "Well, well! How you have grown—shouldn't have known you. Had a pleasant vacation? Yes? Glad to have you in the Kennedy. It's a good House—good boys—manly, self-reliant, purposeful. You'll like 'em." ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... of effort, or will. It was especially pointed out above, that the purposeful consciousness always implies a straining or focusing of consciousness in order to attain a fuller control of the experience. This element of exertion manifest in consciousness may appear as a directing of attention, as the making ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... display of purposeful portraiture that helps one to realise the effect which Theotokopoulos produced upon his watchful contemporaries, and to understand why the Cretan continued to walk alone on his way. If some insist on finding modern El ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various

... that youth is full of enthusiasm and ideals, and that these gradually disappear with age, until a man is left with few or none. But it seems to me that enthusiasm, if real, should not die out, and leave cynicism behind, but rather should become stronger and more purposeful with age. The young children coming straight out of the heaven-world have brought with them a feeling of unity, and this feeling should be strengthened in them, so that it may last on through life. Anger and irritability belong only to the separated self, and they ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti

... of Elizabeth, the English nation became more and more a people of one book, and that book the Bible. As, deeply dyed with Calvinism, they read over and over its sacred pages, they became a serious, sombre, purposeful—and almost fanatic people. The faults and extravagances of the Puritan party and of the later Commonwealth do not at this time concern us. It is with their purposefulness, their determination to make the church a home of vigorous and visible ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... concern they saw strikes breaking out in their own constituencies, and riot becoming the normal accompaniment of the industrial demand for better conditions. Three strike leaders were in prison under sentence of death for having killed by purposeful accident a few over-zealous policemen; and from great working centers over a hundred miles away thousands of men were marching to demand remittance of ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... friend, lying so helpless. The sternness of Mr. Trelawny's face had not relaxed in sleep; but somehow it made the helplessness more marked. It would not have troubled one to see a weak or an ordinary face under such conditions; but this purposeful, masterful man, lying before us wrapped in impenetrable sleep, had all the pathos of a great ruin. The sight was not a new one to us; but I could see that Miss Trelawny, like myself, was moved afresh by it in the presence of the stranger. Mr. Corbeck's face grew stern. All ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... worse, in sketching. Remember always what a sketch is for. Don't be beguiled into trying to make a picture of it, nor a study of it. Above all, don't try to make a clever thing of it. Make something sincere and purposeful of it, and have it as concise, as terse, as direct, and as expressive of one thing as ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... recall of the appropriate response in a given situation. It differs from habit in that the responses referred to are more often mental rather than motor; in that it is less automatic, more purposeful. The fact that the elements involved are so largely mental makes it true that the given fact is usually found to have several connections and the given situation to be connected with many facts. Which particular one will be "appropriate" ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... no effort to draw away when Alcatraz sprinted up beside her. She gave him not so much as a toss of the head or a swish of the tail but kept her gaze on the far Western mountains for she was still sick with the scent of blood; and she maintained a purposeful, steady, lope. It was far other with the stallion. He kept at her side with his gliding canter but he was not thinking of the peace and the shelter from man which they might find in the blue valleys of yonder mountains. ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... often utterances of devotion, for the minister's wife,—I am afraid I cannot give you a just impression of it. For Diana's face had come curiously near the expression on the face of her own little child. Innocent, tender, pure,—something like that. Grave, but with no clouds at all; strong and purposeful, yet with an utter absence of self-will or self-consciousness. It had always been, to a certain degree, innocent and pure, but that was negative; and this was positive,—the refined gold that had been through the fire. And no baby's ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... fact remains that volition is the fundamental characteristic of Spirit. We may speak of conscious, or subconscious or super-conscious action; but in whatever way we may picture to ourselves the condition of the agent as contemplating his own action, a general purposeful lifeward tendency becomes abundantly evident on any enlarged view of Nature, whether seen from without or from within, and we may call this by the general name of volition. But the error we have to avoid is that of supposing ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... serious it may be. One of the most hopeful factors in the situation is the presence of individuals and organized groups who are able to diagnose present conditions, and who are working definitely for their improvement. Much of modern progress is conscious and purposeful, where formerly men lived blindly, subject, as they believed, to the caprice of the gods. We know much about natural law, and lately we have learned something about social law; with this knowledge we can plan intelligently for the future. There is less excuse ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... deeper into the city the crowds thickened, so that when he arrived in the virile, purposeful commercial streets, the sidewalks could no longer contain the mass. They are broad and efficient streets, striking through the town arrow-straight, and giving to the eye superb vistas. But broad though they were, they could not accommodate sightseeing ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... up process is intelligent, purposeful, to a wonderful degree. Man with his boasted intellect cannot explain the real "thingness" of the process. A leading scientist who placed the egg of a small lizard under microscopical examination and then watched it slowly develop has ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... soldier immediately after he has been put in charge of his important captive. He walks with the purposeful stride of one who knows his task and who is setting seriously about doing it. He seems to appreciate the honor that has been conferred upon him. He seems also to have a sense of the serious responsibilities involved. ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... Orient and mellowed by the glamour of Old Spain. San Francisco! A score of tongues clamoured in her streets and in her byways a score of races lurked austerely. She suckled at her breast the children of the old grey nations and gave them of her spirit, that swift purposeful spirit so proud of past achievement and so ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... vision there rose a home filled with happy work, with laughter and companionship, with playing children who turned their faces to their mother as do flowers to the light. Sensing the girl's dreams as the music filled his ears, he realized as never before in his busy, purposeful life how beautiful a home with the right woman could be. No thought of love for Dorothy entered his mind, for he knew that the love existing between her and his friend was of the kind that nothing could alter, but he felt that she had unwittingly ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... inside of him doses of what is denied to his external bat-resembling vision, but with the sharp brevity of a rotifer astir in that curative compartment of a homoeopathic globule—so I, humorously purposeful in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various

... the power conferred by wealth also affords a motive to accumulation. That propensity for purposeful activity and that repugnance to all futility of effort which belong to man by virtue of his character as an agent do not desert him when he emerges from the naive communal culture where the dominant note ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... transgressed, and they are laid low on their own foundations and wells abandoned and high-builded palaces!" Mr. Lane observes that the words are either misunderstood or purposely misapplied by the author of the tale. Purposeful perversions of Holy Writ are very popular amongst Moslems and form part of their rhetoric; but such is not the case here. According to Von Hammer (Trebutien ii. 154), "Eastern geographers place the Bir al-Mu'utallal (Ruined ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... bear to the life which is within our command,—to our deliberate, purposeful, self-ordered life? First, in that life we cultivate the two traits which fit us for the vision, though they do not command it,—sensitiveness ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life. It exists and has power to create spiritual atmosphere; and from this inner standpoint one judges whether it is a good work of art or a bad one. If ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky

... accentuated the enormous silence without. Suddenly in the midst of them a real sound fell upon her ear—very low, but different, not like the fragmentary inadvertent murmur of the hut; a small, purposeful, stealthy, sound, aware of itself. She listened, as she had listened before, without moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the wainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole's thin hand in the soil. It continued. Then it stopped. ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... awning for nearly an hour, smoking and drinking their whiskey-and-soda, and talking freely together. Bruce—much the oldest man of the three—was aware that both his companions were devoted to Brabant, and knew him far better than himself, and so, being a straightforward, purposeful man, he said what he had to say about Mrs. Brabant in ...
— The Trader's Wife - 1901 • Louis Becke

... then, advisable to devote several minutes every day to breathing exercises, not merely automatic, but purposeful and ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke

... the most distinguished German writers on Botany, in his Natural History of Plants, speaking of the chemical explanation, says: "It does not explain the purposeful sequence of different operations in the same protoplasm without any change in the external stimuli; the thorough use made of external advantages; the resistance to injurious influences; the avoidance or encompassing of insuperable obstacles; the punctuality with ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson

... street has got a purposeful determined air, and even the horses, many of them without blinkers, have it, too, I wonder if we shall catch it before we leave. Nobody appears English—I mean of origin, even if their name is Smith or Brown; every other nation, with the strong stamp of "American" dominating whatever country they ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... purposeful on her port, scarcely realised by him. She sought for means of escape, to bring their conversation down to the level where alone safety lay. She moved her chair a little farther back into the scented chamber, as though she found ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... does the organizing, he makes and imparts the plans, he carries his own theories and beliefs into execution, he is the intrusted agent, the advanced executive. He can act for himself. He can influence others to significant and purposeful action. The advantages that come to men who can think upon their feet, who can express extempore a carefully considered proposition, who can adapt their conversation or arguments to every changing condition, cannot be ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... his face; nevertheless, his jaws remained firmly set; his glance was purposeful, his big hands were gripped tightly over the arms of his chair. There was something superb, something ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... caught distinct surface lights, denoting the presence of unmeasured animal spirits, and perhaps, too, the surprising health and vitality of the engine of his life. They were keen eyes, alert, fiery with a zealot's fire: evidently the eyes of a steadfast, headstrong, purposeful man. Some complexity of lines about them, hard to trace, indicated a recklessness, too; a willingness to risk all that he had for ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... Colonel George Washington was marching out of Alexandria for points west "to the Ohio" to fight the Indians and the French, to build forts, and to defend the possessions of His Majesty. The commander of the purposeful outfit was twenty-two years old, and the ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... with flashing eyes and purposeful energy, while with her strong brown arms she threw open the wide casement of the sitting-room I had taken, and bade me view her orchard. It was a fresh green strip of verdure and foliage—about eight acres of good land, planted entirely ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... that was a challenge to Trent's penetration; an habitual expression, as he took it to be, of meditating and weighing things not present to their sight. It was a look too intelligent, too steady and purposeful, to be called dreamy. Trent thought he had seen such a look before somewhere. He went on to say: "It is a terrible business for all of you. I fear it has ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... but a faint impression of the spirit in which Gholson spoke; it went away beyond a mere backbiting mood and became a temper so vindictive and so venomously purposeful that I was startled; his condition seemed so fearfully like that of the old paralytic when he whined "That's ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... voice or sound, but he means by it the entire range of intelligent expression through tone and melody, music and speech, everything in the world, in fact, that gives joy and beauty through purposeful utterance. He even widens his category of "sound" to include colours and smells and tastes, in short, all the sense-qualities by which the world gets revealed in its richness of beauty and harmony to our perception. He widens it, too, to include deeper ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... the job, and Kosnovia is already becoming a myth in my mind. I am rejoicing in my new name, Alexander Talbot. I hope you like it. My mother tells me that my father was one of the strong men of the West. I am called after him, it seems, and although my own name sounds strange to me I like the purposeful ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... nodded her head and a feeling of admiration swept over her. "This is as it should be," she thought. "This boy is not a boy at all, but a strong, purposeful man." Certain vague desires that had been invading her body were swept away and she sat up very straight on the bench. The thunder continued to rumble and flashes of heat lightning lit up the eastern sky. The garden that had ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... his kingship over the universe, of his power to grapple with the world outside of himself, and of his rightful dominance over both the life without and the grander life within. Instead, we find men weak where they should be most purposeful and brave. We find him the slave of the body who should be able to make the body the servant of his soul. We find hands untrained to practical uses, minds unequal to grasping the common wants of existence, hearts in which the high ideals of character and strong impulses toward true usefulness ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... would not encourage them in their vulgarity; they should have nothing from him that was not literature. Still Dickens was literature after all; not literature of a high order, of course, not thoughtful or purposeful literature, but literature quite fitted for charwomen ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... was significant, almost purposeful. She unwound the veil from her motoring turban, took it off altogether and attached it to the cushions of the car ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the best of everything; they were blundering, blustering, noisy, careless, buccaneering owners of the world, and to her—as all the roystering swarm to any individual worker bee—to her, negligible. She was a worker bee, busy, purposeful. ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... other coughs developed. Amusing, these sudden, purposeful efforts should one happen to think of them in that way. But ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... into cold water or let it be subject to any bodily discomfort and at once the crying reflex takes place. The simple, direct responses to stimuli such as sneezing, coughing, wrinkling, crying, response to tickling, etc., are termed reflexes. The more complex responses which are purposeful and are designed to aid or protect the organism, such as sucking, clinging, fear, anger, etc., are called instincts. Besides the movements which are the direct result of stimulation, other movements more or less spasmodic and uncoordinated take ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... of carpet covering the floor of what must have once been a very handsome guest chamber and was now a very handsome private office. One had to respect the simple and solid magnificence of the mahogany furnishings, the leather-covered chairs, the big purposeful desk. Above the old-fashioned marble mantel hung a life-sized portrait in oils of Inglesby himself. The artist had done his sitter stern justice—one might call the result retribution; and one wondered if Inglesby realized how ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... rested upon this presentment of the great Emperor, which seemed to raise such frantic and destructive hatred in the mind of the unknown. It lay scattered in splintered shards upon the grass. Holmes picked up several of them and examined them carefully. I was convinced from his intent face and his purposeful manner that at last ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... forward, curving toward him a little, as she had seen the other women do, but holding back sufficiently to let it be visible to the house that she was conversing with no less a person than Mr. Peter Van Degen. Mr. Popple's talk was certainly more brilliant and purposeful, and she saw him cast longing glances at her from behind Mrs. Lipscomb's shoulder; but she remembered how lightly he had been treated at the Fairford dinner, and she wanted—oh, how she wanted!—to have Ralph Marvell see her talking to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... could see from his window a number of workmen arrive at the distillery, followed an hour later by a clerical staff. After them came Archer, passing from his car to the building with his purposeful stride. Almost immediately he appeared in his office, sat down at his desk, ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... box again, tripped downstairs, and out into the street. She had not been out for a whole month now, and the fresh, frosty air, even coming to her through the musty gauze, was very refreshing. She walked quickly. She had an object in view. Very purposeful was her careworn little face as she stepped briskly along. She had a problem to solve. It was too weighty for her young shoulders; she must get the advice of another. She meant to consult Father John—not by words; no, ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... weakness, indetermination, too great susceptibility, a minimum acuteness, false constructiveness, untrained capacity for inference; in the same way, again, the most cruel hardness depends on properties which, taken in themselves, are good: determination, energy, purposeful action, clear conception of one's fellows, healthy egotism, etc. Every man is the result of his nature and nurture, i. e. of countless individual conditions, and every one of his expressions, again, is the result ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... to group like a purposeful humming-bird, but did not lack the supreme gift of a hostess—that of leaving her guests reasonably alone. All the women were inclined to hover about Byrd, who, with Gunther, represented the most attractive male element. As the women were sufficiently pretty and intelligent, Stefan enjoyed ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... Private Secretary had intended him to act, driving first to the Lexicographer's house, where he was greeted by a suspiciously new "TO LET" board, and thence to the Official Receiver's flat, where a typewritten card informed him that this bell was out of order. Embarrassed but purposeful, he directed his four-wheeler to Eaton Square, but the blinds were down, and a semblance of mourning draped the Iron King's house. In Park Lane a twenty-yard expanse of straw, nine inches thick, prayed silence for the Millionaire's ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... sail, nothing heeding her proffered aid; then shipping the tiller, I put our little vessel before the wind. And now, from a log pitching and rolling at mercy of the waves, this boat became, as it were, alive and purposeful, lifting to the seas with joyous motion, shaking the water from her bows in flashing brine that sparkled jewel-like in the early sun, her every timber thrilling to the buffets of the waters that rushed bubbling astern ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... daylight of Sunday, November 1st—a dawn of rare perfection, with the spacious Sound unruffled by any stray breeze, the wide blue heaven unbroken by any cloud—saw that purposeful activity among the ships which immediately precedes putting to sea. Smoke drifted upwards from many funnels, some ships were busy clearing their anchors, while others manoeuvred out of tight corners. First came the men-o'-war, sweeping majestically past the ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... to her, he advanced rather hurriedly to the bedside. He had not taken off his gloves, and a certain air of purposeful gravity replaced ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... biologist calls the natural environment of an animal is from a physical point of view a rather rigid combination of definite forces. It is obvious that by a purposeful and systematic variation of these and by the application of other forces in the laboratory, results must be obtainable which do not appear in the natural environment. This is the reasoning underlying the modern development of the study of the effects of environment upon animal life. It ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... different nerve centers governing the muscles? As Prof. Ladd says, our ignorance on this point is almost complete. There resides in the central nervous mechanism governing the muscles something which for lack of a better name may be called an instinct. When a purposeful movement of any part of the body is willed, the mental picture of the movement is translated by the central nervous mechanism into a succession of nerve impulses; these impulses are transmitted through the lower centers to the muscles. The instinct informing the central ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor

... opinion. It was exactly what he wanted. For he meant to help the County who, he was sure, would never accept a cent from him save under a pretext like that of the sale of the Faun. He loved old Caloveglia. There was something clean and purposeful about him. His friendship with such a man filled up what he knew to be a void in his own equipment as citizen of the world. And the count was working—was lying—for a worthy purpose: a daughter's dowry. For that reason alone he was deserving ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... the monstrosities of the witch trials. Once more the simple hallucination of a dead person's appearance in his house demanded an explanation. This was easily given by evolving a legend that he was a spirit, escaped from purgatory or the grave, to fulfil a definite purpose. The rarity of such purposeful ghosts in an age like ours, so rich in ghost stories, must have a cause. That cause is, probably, a ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... of friendly faces. He had nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company. A man of twenty-five, a young and lusty animal of abounding vitality, needs more than his own reflections to fill his days. Denied the outlet of purposeful work in which to release pent-up energy, MacRae brooded over shadows, suffered periods of unaccountable depression. Nature had not designed him for either a hermit or a celibate. Something in him cried out for affection, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... the Norfolk parsonage. The representatives of the French people had imparted to the original movement of their nation,—which aimed only at internal reforms, however radical,—a new direction, of avowed purposeful aggression upon all political institutions exterior to, and differing from, their own. This became the one characteristic common to the successive forms of government, which culminated in the pure military despotism ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... her room and sank into a chair. She had been upheld during the scene by the excitement and the strain; she had been strong and purposeful a few minutes ago; but now the reaction had set in and she felt weak and exhausted. It was difficult to realize that the thing was real; it was the first time in her life that anything dramatic, tragical, had ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... evils of idleness is obviously to find some useful work which will inspire real interest and enthusiasm. There are few things more necessary to a normal healthy life than to have purposeful work. A great dream or ambition in life often obviates personal ailments and nullifies their potency. Work, when done with zest, is a wonderful tonic. Exertion of any kind is usually pleasurable at first, and becomes drudgery only when too ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... activity in the world lies no longer with necessities but with their elaboration, decoration, and refinement. There has been an evident change in the quality of this making during recent years. It becomes more purposeful than it was, losing something of its first elegance and prettiness and gaining in intensity; but that is a change rather of hue than of nature. That comes with a deepening philosophy and a sounder education. For the first joyous exercises of fancy we perceive now the deliberation ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... fair hair swung below the girl's waist and on her cheeks a warm red showed through the golden tan. Her slim straight figure was eloquent of suppleness and strength and her movements, quick, purposeful, showed decision and activity of mind. They were as characteristic as her ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... fist and hauled off to knock him away. But Bill had some remainder of the skill, as well as the ferocity, of the fighting dog in him. He snapped sideways in a purposeful silence, met the swinging fist adroitly, and sank his fine teeth cruelly ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... new and purposeful path had been blazed through the tangled complexities of life for him, yet he could make no move to take advantage of it. It meant that the door of his delivery had been swung wide, with its mockery ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... were in requisition all over the country; became principal engineer on many of the new railways; bought the country-seat of Tapton, near Chesterfield, to which he retired for much-needed rest; a man of character, gentle and simple in his affections, strong and purposeful in his labours, who, as he himself says, "fought for the locomotive single-handed for nearly 20 years," and "put up with every rebuff, determined not ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. it does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... point at which a new element comes in: muscular action. With the onset of muscular action, which is mainly involuntary, even when it affects the voluntary muscles, detumescence proper begins to take place. Henceforward purposeful psychic action, except by an effort, is virtually abolished. The individual, as a separate person, tends to disappear. He has become one with another person, as nearly one as the conditions of existence ever permit; he and she are now merely an instrument in the hands ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Reverend Mother approved of him. There could not have been a happier girl for five or six years. For it was only at the end of that time that clouds began, as the saying is, to arise. She was then about twenty-three, and her purposeful efficiency made her perhaps have a desire for mastery. She began to perceive that Edward was extravagant in his largesses. His parents died just about that time, and Edward, though they both decided that he should continue ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... flamed. "Reluctant! Don't you believe it? He hates Father like poison." A flash of inspiration came to her. She rose, slim and tall and purposeful. "Cass Fendrick is the man you want, and he is the man I want. He robbed the express company, and he has killed my father or abducted him. I ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... letter mechanically, without opening it. His gaze was riveted, as though by a magnetism too powerful for him to resist, upon her purposeful countenance. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... greatness seethed in the cauldron wherein fermented Mr. Evans' brew of news. His rook-like eye sparkled, his movements, even that walk for whose disabilities it may be remembered that the pantry boy had thanked his God, were alert and purposeful. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... Euralia show remarkably close resemblances to the species of Amauris, which are found flying in the same region, and it is supposed that by "mimicking" the unpalatable forms they impose upon their enemies and thereby acquire immunity from attack. The point at issue is the way in which this seemingly purposeful resemblance ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett

... It was impossible to judge of the effect of the shots, but both knew that the accuracy of their shooting was falling off. Clench his teeth as he would, hold his breath as steadfastly as he might, Alfred could not accomplish that steady, purposeful, unblinking pressure on the trigger so necessary to accuracy. In spite of himself, the rifle jerked ever so little to the right during the fall of the hammer. Soon he adopted the expedient of pulling it suddenly which is brilliant but uncertain. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... and then glancing up at the clock on the tower as if she belonged to the purposeful minority which was making its way to the grey porch. Not that she had started out with any intention of going to the service, but her girl friend had come across an admirer at the church corner, and so it became necessary to do something in self-defence. ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... the boy over the threshold of vital and purposeful religion is the favorable influence of his group or "gang." The disposition to move together which is so pronounced in every other field must not be ignored here. The ideal club will be bringing the boy toward the altar ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... temperate zone—can be consistently idle and remain happy. The born idler is almost as rare as the born poet. Most men, and, it must be added, most women, are happier working. If holidays were the rule and work the exception the world would be a much less cheerful place than it is even to-day. Purposeful activity is as natural to man as playing is to a kitten. From a purely natural point of view, no one has ever given a better definition of happiness than Aristotle when he defined it as an activity of the soul in the direction of excellence in an unhampered ...
— Progress and History • Various

... Beginning there was a void of Nothingness. A Timeless, Spaceless Nothingness. And in it came a Thought. A purposeful Thought—all pervading, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... looking at the bronze and Ernestine looked from one face to another, trying to understand why it moved none of them as it had her. Karl's face was very purposeful tonight, reflecting the stimulus of his talk with his friend. Filled with enthusiasm for this fight he was making, he had no eye in this hour for the triumph of ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... been easy to fill many pages with script illustrations, but experience shows that a much greater impression is made upon the memory by the hand forming the outlines described than if they were provided in pictorial form. In other words, the student should supply this purposeful omission by himself constructing the illustrations from the description. The trifling extra time and trouble thus demanded will be amply repaid by the ease and rapidity with which the various points will be fixed in the memory. ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn

... with surprise, that that was true. And Graver, in contrast to Dalon's agitation, had the calm, purposeful air of a man who had pondered deeply upon an unpleasant future and had taken steps to ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin

... contracts were under consideration, but he dismissed them from his thoughts and centered his forces upon this particular job. Once he had taken a definite scent his early trepidations vanished. He became obsessed by a joyous, purposeful, unceasing energy that ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... They were full of patches of wet earth and of sunshine; of dark pine, looking suddenly worn, and of fresh green shoots of needles, looking deliciously springlike. This was the contrast everywhere—stern, earnest, purposeful winter, and gay, laughing, careless spring. It was impossible not to draw in fresh ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... objects—rocks, hills, rivers, lakes—are matters of chance, since they serve no purpose: any other form would be as fit; but the forms of living things are always purposeful. Is it possible to believe that the human body, with all its complicated mechanism, its many wonderful organs of secretion and excretion and assimilation, is any more matter of chance than a watch or a phonograph is? Though what agent ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... of testifying must be to tell what I have seen and what I have thought during this extraordinary experience. It has been my natural disposition to see this war as something purposeful and epic, as it is great, as an epoch, as "the War that will end War"—but of that last, more anon. I do not think I am alone in this inclination to a dramatic and logical interpretation. The caricatures in the French shops show civilisation ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... country. They lived on that road, drifting along its length here and there, according to the inexplicable impulses of their monstrous darkness. They were an offence to the sunshine, a reproach to empty heaven, a blight on the concentrated and purposeful vigour of the wild landscape. In time the story of their parents shaped itself before me out of the listless answers to my questions, out of the indifferent words heard in wayside inns or on the ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... his face shone with sudden enthusiasm. He looked purposeful and aggressive, with a certain sternness that sat well upon his young ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... great mistake to rule these purposeful individuals out of our psychology. We wish to understand busy people as well as idlers. What makes a man busy is some inner purpose or motive. He still responds to present stimuli—otherwise he would be in a dream or trance ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... period of hard, purposeful work, during which he supported himself by editing The Pennsylvania Freeman and by writing for the magazines. In 1848, his banner year, he published his best volume of Poems, Sir Launfal, A Fable for Critics and the first series of The Biglow Papers. It ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... when a grasshopper went by like an airplane, zooming in a twenty-foot leap. A bee sagged along heavily in an irregular zig-zag, and a caterpillar, more agile and purposeful than any caterpillar they had ever seen, staggered swiftly across ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... the preceding period is still in evidence, more and more activity is becoming purposeful and willed. While the child continues to love activity for itself, he is more interested in what it will accomplish than formerly, but an end is not yet sufficiently attractive in itself to hold him ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux

... and was soon out of sight round a turn of the hill. And with that the landscape framed in the doorway began to waver and dislimn. The road was still there, white and purposeful, but the environs were changing.... She was puzzled, but with a pleasant confusion. Her mind was not on the landscape, but on the people, for she was assured that others would soon appear ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... harshness are not likely to cause baby to overcome very much of the fear of a tub bath. Patience, perseverance, and purposeful diversion of mind will bring ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... into the dream of his manhood, or, as he would have expressed it, a fulfillment. His heart had been fallow when he had first known her. It had not been subjected to subsequent conquest and now its predisposed allegiance was ready to grow with tropical swiftness into a purposeful and fiery ardor. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... a girl done to earn her immunity from self-defendings and the petty anxieties? Nothing, Elinor decided; at least, nothing more purposeful than the swimmer does when he lets himself drift with the current. None the less, the immunity was hers, undeniably, palpably. For the first time in her life Miss Brentwood found herself looking, with a little shudder ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... something reassuring in those quick and purposeful words of command, but they only served to bring the horror of the situation closer home to me. They brought before me more graphically than ever the thought that I'd been trying to get out of my head, the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... have died sword in hand in a final desperate charge. Tidings of the massacre were carried with great speed to Massy's outposts in the Kuram valley. The news reached Simla by telegraph early on the morning of the 5th. The authorities there rallied from the shock with fine purposeful promptitude, and within a few hours a telegram was on its way to General Massy's headquarters at Ali Khel instructing him to occupy the crest of the Shutargurdan Pass with two infantry regiments and a mountain battery, which force ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes



Words linked to "Purposeful" :   purpose-made, meaningful, goal-directed, purposive, earnest, resolute, purposeless, businesslike, purpose-built



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