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More "Directness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prescribed medicines; gave advice; suggested plain, common-sense remedies for every variety of dilemma. Nevertheless she wasted no words about it. She had no time to fool away, she let it be known. Whatever she did had to be done with pitiless directness. Often her council was delivered through a crack in the door or even given through the door itself; and there were instances when it was shouted through the keyhole. But no matter where the words came from they were always helpful and friendly and the neighbors ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... doesn't send us something pretty solid, I'm going into this thing lame," said Kent, dubiously. "Of course, what Boston can send us will be only corroborative; unfortunately we can't wire affidavits. But it will help. What we have secured here lacks directness." ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... to find few other guests, and to fall into the hands of one of those simple, strawberry-like English housemaids, who gives him a cozy, snug little parlor all to himself, as was the luck of Irving also; who answers his every summons, and looks into his eyes with the simplicity and directness of a child; who could step from no page but that of Scott or the divine William himself; who puts the "coals" on your grate with her own hands, and, when you ask for a lunch, spreads the cloth on one end of the table while you sit reading or writing at the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... not often caught sentimentalising. Then, with the directness which characterised her, she said: "I was wondering whether one might not perhaps find a soul ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... When I finished, he had me read it over a second time, and a third. We fell into discussion—philosophy, science, evolution, religion. He betrayed the inaccuracies of the self-read man, and, it must be granted, the sureness and directness of the primitive mind. The very simplicity of his reasoning was its strength, and his materialism was far more compelling than the subtly complex materialism of Charley Furuseth. Not that I—a confirmed and, as Furuseth phrased it, a temperamental idealist—was to be compelled; but that Wolf ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... echo in the ears of Scottish children, and to him, in view of his experience, must have found a special directness of address. But if he had no fine sense of poetry in letters, he felt with a deep joy the poetry of life. You should have heard him speak of what he loved; of the tent pitched beside the talking water; of the stars overhead at night; of the blest return of morning, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a, blunt directness in Ralph's questions that seemed to disconcert the man who had expected to meet a rather shy, immature lad—-certainly not one who bore himself with an air of calm self-possession and who wasted ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... have, of the first thirty years of Nelson's life, no such daily informal record as that which illustrates the comparatively brief but teeming period of his active fighting career, from 1793 to 1805, when he at once, with inevitable directness and singular rapidity, rose to prominence, and established intimate relations with numbers of his contemporaries. A few anecdotes, more or less characteristic, have been preserved concerning his boyhood and youth. In his early manhood we have his own account, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... out of our rapid and complex industrial development is more important than that of the employment of women and children. The presence of women in industry reacts with extreme directness upon the character of the home and upon family life, and the conditions surrounding the employment of children bear a vital relation to our future citizenship. Our legislation in those areas under the control of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... policy, the text upon which all his splendid sermons of Indian administration were preached, is to be found in one single sentence of the famous speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts. In that single sentence the whole of Burke's theory of government is summed up with the directness of an epigram and with the authority of a law. "Fraud, injustice, oppression, peculation, engendered in India, are crimes of the same blood, family, and caste, with those that are born and bred in England." Outside the noble simplicity of that ethical doctrine Burke could ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... any other language than his own. The air is temperate, though so near the equator, and the soil, though often unfertile, is admirably adapted to the rearing of sheep and cattle. The adjoining islands offer the finest opportunities for the commercial enterprise of the Englishman; and its directness of navigation to India or China, across an ocean that scarcely knows a storm, give it the promise of being the great eastern depot of the world. Van Diemen's Land, about the size, with more than the fertility of Ireland, is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... conviction that she should never meet any one quite like him again. He was true to his promise to help her; (he never made a promise that he did not honestly try to keep;) and he applied himself to the by no means thankless task with the good-humored directness and energy that characterized all his actions. There was quite a number of young girls in his parish, more proportionately than in the others. Bell Masters and Amy Duckworth had long been hovering on its borders, and the advent of so young and prepossessing a rector had ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... painters. You can guess from his works his partiality for the old masters—Perugino, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Memling, Holbein—who, though not the masters in fashion, will always be masters in vigor of outline, directness, in simple grace, and genuine feeling. He has copied in oils, water-colors, pen, or pencil, nearly all the pictures of these masters in the Louvre, in Germany, in Holland, and especially in Italy, where he lived for many years. With ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... at this time, but in the full flower of her physical perfection. Lithe, full-bosomed, and ruddy, she radiated a powerful and subtle charm. She had the face of a child—happy-tempered and pure—but every movement of her body appealed with dangerous directness to the sickly young Englishman who had never known an hour of the abounding joy of life which had been hers from the cradle. Enslaved to her at the first glance, he resolved to ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... She ran along the path for some distance, then turned abruptly at a point where an abandoned lot filled with stumps joined the area by the brook. She made her swift way among these stumps, Anthony following, his hope rising as he noted the directness of his wife's aim. At the biggest stump she came to a standstill, carefully swung out-ward like a door a great slab of bark, and disclosed a hollow. The sunlight streamed in upon a little heap of blue, and a tangled brown mass of hair. Anthony Robeson, Junior, lay fast asleep in his cunningly ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... directness about courtship in Hughson's class,—it puts the dots upon the i's; but Sadie must have preferred them dotless, for she said, "My name ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... should we be forever trying to force it into prominence? When Charlotte Bronte advised her friend Ellen Nussey to read none of Shakespeare's comedies, she was not beguiled for a moment into regarding them as serious and melancholy lessons of life; but with uncompromising directness put them down as mere improper plays, the amusing qualities of which were insufficient to excuse their coarseness, and which were manifestly unfit ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... a directness that shamed him. "Because I do not want people to talk about Lutie. That is one reason. Another is that I wanted to do my share in looking after George." Suddenly her eyes narrowed. "You—you ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... failure. He realized this fully, but he also knew that to go on would simply be to increase the number of defective batteries in circulation, which would ultimately result in a permanent closure and real failure. Hence he took the course which one would expect of Edison's common sense and directness of action. He was not satisfied that the battery was a complete success, so he shut down and went ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... increases, as the months roll by. The call for men to join our fighting forces, which is our primary need, has been and is being nobly responded to here at home and throughout the empire. That call, we say with all plainness and directness, was never more urgent or more imperious than today. For this is a war not only of men but of material. To take only one illustration, the expenditure upon ammunition on both sides has been on a scale and at a rate which is not only without all precedent but is far in excess ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... crime, to be dealt with by the ordinary processes of law. It is a murderous and fatal assault upon a woman of our race,—upon our race in the person of its womanhood, its crown and flower. If such crimes are not punished with swift and terrible directness, the whole white womanhood of the South ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... crimsoned under the ordeal. Her expression was full of an unfathomable insight, a sorrow beyond the reach of words. How often have I recalled it since! But the son, even while he reddened, relaxed no whit the stern directness of his gaze at her, and it was clear enough that she felt obliged to avert her own eyes lest they should rouse him to defiant anger. Here, in sharp antithesis to one another, the two divergent tendencies and contrasted characteristics of ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... grave wonder, and then said with her old directness: "But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I should have told you." She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color. "I mean," she said hesitatingly, "of course you have acted nobly, generously, kindly, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... that. Mustering up all the remaining strength of his lungs, he sent pealing afar through the forest wilds the old familiar battle-cry, "I yi, you dogs!" at the same moment fetching the dam a poke of unusual vigor and directness, which brought her for once sprawling upon her back. But in the act, while yet his whole weight was thrown upon his right foot, one of the cubs, more sturdy than the rest, caught up his left foot by the top of the moccasin and continued to hold it up ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... the way religious authority has employed the secular power to obstruct the progress of knowledge and crush out the spirit of investigation. While there is not in his book a word of disrespect for things sacred, he writes with a directness of speech, and a vividness of characterization and an unflinching fidelity to the facts, which show him to be in thorough earnest with his work. The 'History of the Conflict between Religion and Science' is a fitting sequel to the ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... Murray, who flattered his weaknesses and assumed an air of deference to his opinions. Lord George Murray, on the other hand, was but too prone to give offence. He was haughty and overbearing in manner, expressed his opinions with a directness and bluntness which were very displeasing to the prince, and, conscious of his own military genius and experience, put aside with open contempt the suggestions of those who were in truth ignorant of military matters. Loyal, straightforward, and upright, ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... at a given rendezvous for a common purpose were not seldom marvellous, effected as they often were by rides of extraordinary speed and directness by night, when the men had to feel with their hands for the goat and Kaffir tracks if astray, but rarely astray, even in the most tangled maze of kopjes, or, still more wonderful, on the broadest savannah ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... philosophy are characterized by remarkable directness, patience, and inventiveness, absolute candor in seeking the truth, and a powerful scientific imagination. What has been usually considered his first discovery was the now familiar fact that northeast storms on the Atlantic coast begin to leeward. The Pennsylvania fireplace ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... quite take the baby. That would be but a pale indication of the speed, directness and outraged determination with which she acted. She snatched the baby away, with the precision of a brisk woodpecker after an escaping worm; and she hugged it until it howled for mercy—and she hushed it—and she crooned endearment—and she ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... thought I had once more "got upon" her nerves with my rude directness. How eagerly sensitive our nerves are to bad impressions of one we don't like, and how coarsely insensible to bad impressions of ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... thoroughly at home in regard to the technical subjects he has set himself to elucidate, from the mechanical rather than the artistic point of view, although the matter of correctness of taste is by no means ignored. Mr. Brown's style is directness itself, and there is no tyro in the painting trade, however mentally ungifted, who could fail to carry away a clearer grasp of the details of the subject after going over ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... and practical young lady, this midget schoolma'am, with her uncompromising directness of speech and her clear eyes—a merry, mirthful, frank, dainty, altogether delightful ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... originality; that is just what I can't see. What he has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of touch—marvellous! ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... in Paula as conceived by Mr. Pinero becomes a real human being, a human being with a soul, in the Paula conceived by Duse. Paula as played by Duse is sad and sincere, where the Englishwoman is only irritable; she has the Italian simplicity and directness in place of that terrible English capacity for uncertainty in emotion and huffiness in manner. She brings profound tragedy, the tragedy of a soul which has sinned and suffered, and tries vainly to free itself from the consequences of ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... mademoiselle." To bring just such a trinity into her life, Love which worketh Faith, and the Peace which is born of both, was the one supreme good which the world could offer out of all the gifts in its treasure-house. But, as he said of his question, the time had not yet come, so he changed the blunt directness to the more oblique "Not to France alone," and was rewarded by seeing the serious wistfulness shift into a gay smile, as she curtsied mockingly with a "Merci, monsieur!" very different from the same words of the previous night. Then ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... house can be. To Morton, once he was aware of the fly, and once he had combined the knowledge of it with what these two people most lacked, it was a simple thing. They lacked, as you have already guessed, courage and directness. On Morton's side was all the dunder-headism of an aristocracy, all its romanticism, all its gross materialism, all its confusion of ideals. But you mustn't think that he, Morton, was cold or objective in all this: ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... what plans, please,' said Gladys, with that simple directness which made evasion of any question impossible to her, or to any conversing ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... signs of labor that appeared in Julia's pricked fingers made the serenity of her happy face more charming to her father-in-law. She had Jewel's own directness and simplicity, her appreciation and enjoyment of all beauty, the child's own atmosphere of unexacting love and gratitude. Every half hour that Mr. Evringham spent with her lessened his regret at having ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... of strong crabbed sense, retentive memory, acute observation, great fidelity of description and keeping in character, a power of working out an idea so as to make it painfully true and oppressive, and with great honesty and manliness of feeling, as well as directness of understanding: but with all this, he wanted, to my thinking, that genial spirit of enjoyment and finer fancy, which constitute the essence of poetry and wit.... There was nothing spontaneous, no impulse or ease about his genius: it was all forced, up-hill work, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... watched him until he turned out of Main Street into Fourth, and so toward the river, aver—marvelling duly at his powers of resistance—that the head of Potts was erect, his gaze bent aloft, and his gait one of perfect directness save that he stepped ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... you were near when I called your name," she said. "It was entirely instinctive on my part; and I believe," she added, musingly, looking with a child's directness into his eyes, "that one's instincts ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... want a word with you," he said, with his customary directness, and laid a somewhat peremptory hand ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... religion of the slave. It is a trait which the slave encountered in the religion of his master. But in the Negro's conception of religion it received a peculiar emphasis. In fact, these ecstatic visions of the next world, which the Negro slave songs portrayed with a directness and simplicity that is at once quaint and pathetic, are the most significant features of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... but few are thinkers or readers, a congregation is not to be addressed as such; but, their modes of life being remembered, constant regard must be had to their need of external attraction. This is most easily done by the familiarity and directness of extemporaneous address; for which reason this mode of preaching has peculiar advantages, in its adaptation ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... king's chapel, his frescos, though dimmed by the dust of five hundred years, blackened by the smoke of incense, abused by restorers, still show a power of imagination, a spirituality and tenderness of feeling, a simplicity and directness of treatment, which give them place among the most sacred and precious works that Art has yet produced. That quiet, solitary chapel of the Arena at Padua is one of the places most worthy of reverence in Italy; for in the pictures ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the camp of the White Beard he was immediately ushered into his tent, and there found the old warrior seated cross-legged on a rich carpet, and gravely stroking his beard. "Look here, Shah Sowar," said he with soldierly directness, "it is no good lying to me. That is a sahib you have with you. I have been to Bushire, and I know an ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... Buelow has revealed the same aims and is imbued with the same political philosophy as Bismarck, he has tried to attain his end by very different means. He has none of the cynical sincerity of his master. Bismarck carried into diplomacy the directness and brutality of the soldier. Buelow introduced into politics the tortuous practices of Italy. He reminds one of Cavour much more than of the master-builder of German unity. Whilst Bismarck won his spurs in the embassies of Germany and Russia, Buelow received ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... they went on, to lose its character. Whether from weakness or uncertainty Blood's steps had become wandering, and they noticed that he paid less attention to directness, but shunned every obstacle that called for climbing, struggling great distances around rough places to avoid them. They knew it meant that he was husbanding failing strength and was striving to avoid ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... formation, limestone, about 1600 feet high. The canyon was surprisingly beautiful and romantic. The river seemed to change its mood here, and began to flow with an impetus it had exhibited nowhere above. It swept on with a directness and a concentration of purpose that had about it something ominous. And just here, at the foot of the right hand wall which was perpendicular for 800 feet, with the left more sloping, and clothed with cedar shrubs, we beheld our first real rapid, ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... On the contrary, we would be inclined to disbelief. But when all ornament save that of simplicity is disclaimed—when we are attacked by precision of language, by perfect accuracy of expression, by directness and singleness of thought, and above all by a logic the most rigorously close and consequential—it is hardly a matter for wonder that nine of us out of ten are content to rest in the gratification thus received as in the gratification ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... shepherd. But after all, was he not to some degree in error in his judgment of his people? Had he not, perhaps, misunderstood the spirit that moved them? He had come to Corinth from his school with the thought fixed in his mind that the church was all right. Had he not, by the unexpected and brutal directness of his experience, been swung to the other extreme, conceiving conditions as ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... authoritatively, with sisterly directness. "I'm quite able to look after my own affairs. Mr. Farwell is sorry. You be white enough to ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... come into my art also, no less than into my life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and directness of impulse. Not width but intensity is the true aim of modern art. We are no longer in art concerned with the type. It is with the exception that we have to do. I cannot put my sufferings into any form they took, I need ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... understand? Again he found himself brought up abruptly against his incredible ignorance of her nature. The fact that he knew well enough how she would behave in the ordinary emergencies of life, that he could count, in such contingencies, on the kind of high courage and directness he had always divined in her, made him the more hopeless of her entering into the torturous psychology of an act that he himself could no longer explain or understand. It would have been easier had she ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... "but I imagine that you soon became quite reconciled to my view of the case. The relation would surely prove embarrassing to you. Haven't you since thought that it might?" she asked, with sweet directness. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... almost in excess a quality in which every current poet was lacking,—I mean the faculty of being in entire sympathy with actual nature, and the objects; and shows of nature, and of rude, abysmal man; and appalling directness of utterance therefrom, at first hand, without any intermediate ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... of shelter from rain and cold, the cabin possessed but little advantage over the simple savagery of surrounding nature. It had all the practical directness of the habitation of some animal, without its comfort or picturesque quality; the very birds that haunted it for food must have felt their own superiority as architects. It was inconceivably dirty, even with its scant capacity for accretion; it was singularly ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... by directness of treatment, by the selection, so far as possible, of the most interesting and practical matter, and by the omission ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... care cost me the place," he answered with brutal directness; "old Simmons did it; him and his ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the upper shore of Plover Lake, taking to the railroad track, whose directness and dryness make it the natural highway for pedestrians on the plains. She stepped from tie to tie, in long strides. At each road-crossing she had to crawl over a cattle-guard of sharpened timbers. She walked the rails, balancing with arms extended, cautious heel before toe. As ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... With the directness which marked her action when once her mind was made up, she waylaid Irechester as he came into the drawing-room; her resolute approach sufficed to detach Naylor from him; he found himself for the moment isolated from ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... come....He maneuvered the President into a position where he had to give him what he wanted. Then he came here and maneuvered me into a position where I had to give him what he wanted. Always his 'game!' No sincerity or directness anywhere in him, and very little real courage." Here she stopped short in the full swing of pharisaism, smiled at herself in dismal self- mockery. "And what am I doing? Playing MY 'game.' I'm on ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... the most beautiful pair of eyes that I ever saw in my life. I stared straight up into them and I stared straight down into them. They were as deep as a well and as gray as a cloud and as cold as ice. And they had lashes—" For a moment the quiet directness of Billy's narrative was disturbed by a whiff of inner tumult. "Whew! what eyelashes! Honey, did you ever come across a lonely mountain lake with high reeds growing around the edge? You know how pure and unspoiled and virginal it seems. That was her eyes. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... redeeming fact of his career and character. Both were anomalous in our history. In an era remarkable for patriotic self-sacrifice, he became infamous for treasonable ambition; among a phalanx of statesmen illustrious for directness and integrity, he pursued the tortuous path of perfidious intrigue; in a community where the sanctities of domestic life were unusually revered, he bore the stigma of unscrupulous libertinism. With the blood of his gallant adversary and his country's idol on his hands, the penalties ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... the Avenue MacMahon, the shadow which she had seen at the corner of the Rue Galilee came near her with a directness that was unmistakable. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... together of so many individuals, with every will merged into one that strives with gigantic effort toward a common end, and the consequent simplicity and directness of all purpose, seem to release and unhinge all the primitive, aboriginal forces stored in the human soul, and tend to create the indescribable atmosphere of exultation which envelopes everything and everybody as ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... boyish directness, but in the same low tone. "Mother and father have spent a week with us. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... shapely head. His hands, thin, long, and restless, alone betrayed the excitement which the coming of this Master of the Germ engendered in him. He was eager to question, but he waited for his visitor to begin, which he did with manly directness. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... sure that such a revelation would come as a thunderbolt to him. Hyde's principles were those of the older generation. The intrigue would be hateful to him no less as treason to the Crown than as a trespass upon the good name and dignity of his own family. That ideal of simplicity and directness which he regarded as the very essence of domestic morality had been blurred and marred within his own home by the taint of that poison which he believed to threaten the perversion of English life. From its encroachments he would fain have kept his own household free; but it ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... think the people would be shy," answered Griffin, with a little hesitation of manner, and yet with the directness and simplicity of a truly brave man. "We must let them get over the last brush before they are depended on much for any new ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was becoming embarrassing to the intruder. At the apparition of the woman, the unaffected and simple directness he had previously shown in his equally abrupt contact with Bradley had fled utterly; confused by the awkwardness of his arrival, and shocked at the idea of overhearing a private conversation, he stepped hurriedly ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... by the cold directness of his speech, by the suggestion of strange things to come. The mask of their late gaiety had fallen away. Lady Caroom, grave and sad-eyed, was listening with an anxiety wholly unconcealed. Under the shaded lamplight their faces, dominated by that cold masterly figure at the head of the table, ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... appealing but to one class and a small one, were fated to remain unheard, even by the Student of Poetry, until the process of regeneration had run its course, and, we may say, the Poetic Revival gone to seed again: seeing that the virtues of simplicity and directness the new poets began by bringing once more into the foreground, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... handsome," observed Coronado, with an air of thinking aloud, which disguised the coarse directness of the flattery. In fact, he was so dazzled by her brilliant color, the sunlight in her disordered curls, and the joyous sparkling of her hazel eyes, that he ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... poems will save them from death; the splendid qualities of direct narration, constructive skill, dignity and poetical power will always make Homer a name to love. Those who know no Greek and therefore fear that they may lose some of the directness of the Homeric appeal might recall the famous sonnet written by Keats who had had no opportunity to learn the great language. His words are no doubt familiar enough; that they have become inseparable from Homer must be our apology for inserting ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... to do? You'll be arrested, you know." She stood straight and slim as a boy, and the frank directness of her gaze had ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... sermon, and as one which heralded a movement in New England theology which has never stopped from that day to this, deserves some special notice. The sermon is in no sense "Emersonian" except in its directness, its sweet temper, and outspoken honesty. He argues from his comparison of texts in a perfectly sober, old-fashioned way, as his ancestor Peter Bulkeley might have done. It happened to that worthy forefather of Emerson that upon his ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... or Iberian brilliance was balanced by a classical delicacy and precision of feature. He had the brow, the nose, the upper lip, the finely-moulded chin, which belong to the more severe and spiritual Greek type. Certainly of Greek blitheness and directness there was no trace. The eye was wavering and profoundly melancholy; all the movements of the tall, finely-built frame were hesitating and doubtful. It was as though the man were suffering from paralysis of some moral muscle or other; ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she said. "In what are termed my escapades I am alone. You appealed to me," with a directness which amazed me, "because of your handsome face, your elegant form, your bright eyes. You are a man who loves adventure which has the spice of danger in it. My countrymen——." She crooked one of her bare shoulders, which shone like yellow ivory in the subdued light. This ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... is conscious of such a thing as purity, delicacy, directness, or strength of style, he has been acted upon unconsciously, so that when the period of conscious choice comes, he is either attracted or repelled by what is good, according to his training. Children are fond of vivacity and color, ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... But satire Cooper could not write. The power of vigorous invective he had in a marked degree. But the wit which plays while it wounds, which while saying one thing means another, which deals in far-off suggestion and remote allusion, this was something entirely unsuited to the directness and energy of his intellect. Moreover, some of his most marked literary defects were seen here exaggerated and unrelieved. In many of his novels there is prolixity in the introduction. Still in ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... "Vigour and directness," "transparent honesty and complete fearlessness," are the qualities that impress this able editor as he reads the letters of the man who, in his opinion, "was less tainted with the sordid commercialism and ever-increasing ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for the ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... her at length standing before a buffet, and entertaining a very thin and angular woman, dressed in black, with scarlet flowers growing out of her toilet in various unexpected places. Miss Fleet welcomed Charmian with her usual unimpassioned directness, and introduced her quietly to Miss Gretch, as her companion was ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... to offer such directness. This child was frequently disconcerting. Prudence attacked ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... repeat these observations, these limits should be observed and the old adage about "the early bird catching the worm," etc. Some may object to this directness of report, and say that we should report all the forms of life seen. To this I would say that the position I occupy is much different from yours, which is that of discoverer. When a detective is sent out to catch a rogue, he tumbles himself but little with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... comprehension of pigment made him ever restless, and it might be possible to maintain that each of these pictures presented us with a differing strategy to enforce pigment, to subserve the purposes of a draughtsman. Still this would seem to imply a greater sacrifice of ease and directness than those brilliant masterpieces can be charged with. They none of them lack beauty of colour, of surface, or of handling, though each so unlike the other. In this portrait of his father, Duerer ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... and that if Cecil wanted to get rid of him, there, in that thick forest, he had ample opportunity. To refuse the pellets might be even more dangerous than to accept them. Besides, there was a certain atmosphere of directness in Cecil, conspirator though the boy knew him to be, which forbade belief in so low-grade a manner of action ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Innes had received it, there had been nothing further from his mind than to bury himself in the moors with Archie; but not even the most acute political heads are guided through the steps of life with unerring directness. That would require a gift of prophecy which has been denied to man. For instance, who could have imagined that, not a month after he had received the letter, and turned it into mockery, and put off ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... under a promise of secrecy, reveal a part of his story. He had heard many anecdotes of his goodness of heart and generous tolerance of all things, but with this was joined—so said contemporaneous history—a flippancy of speech and a brutality of directness from which Clarence's sensibility shrank. Would he see anything in his wife but a common spy on his army; would he see anything in him but the weak victim, like many others, of a scheming woman? Stories current ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... talked on in a fashion of perfect simplicity and directness. She told her that her friends would all welcome her and be glad that an Englishwoman should really see their country, and find it was not at all the grotesque place which ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... simple, manly directness that he "was dam'd if he was. See?" Mr. Lewes began to discuss The Drama with Robert. Mrs. de Vere Carter raised ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... has qualities of simplicity, directness, and warm human feeling which link it to the less ornate forms of carol literature. Its first verse is adapted from a secular song; its melody may, perhaps, have been composed by Luther himself. There is another Christmas ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... evoke comment. He lit a cigarette and smoked in a silence she did not know how to break, and a cold wave of chill foreboding passed over her as she waited with nervous constraint for him to speak. He turned to her at last with a certain deliberation and spoke with blunt directness. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... reason in this matter perhaps from the lesser relations of our daily life. What manner of man do we most trust among those whom we meet? Surely, the honest man, the plain man, the one whose directness and integrity we do not doubt. Truly you may witness the nature of such a man in the manner of his speech, in his mien, in his conduct. Therefore, my Lords and gentlemen, it seems to me plain that we shall best gain confidence for ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... thing like you?" resumed he, after a moment's more contemplation, which, spite of its directness, had in it a certain element of unsophisticatedness that ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... than sense can give. You and I can see Christ more really than these men who stood round Him, and to whom His flesh was 'a veil'—as the Epistle to the Hebrews calls it—hiding His true divinity and work. They who thus behold by faith lack nothing either of the directness or of the certitude that belong to vision. 'Seeing is believing,' says the cynical proverb. The Christian version inverts its terms, 'Believing is seeing.' 'Whom having not seen ye love, in whom though now ye see Him not, yet ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... to hear her addressing me by name, and then calmly begging me to resume my seat on the bench under the arbor. She sat down also, her flame-coloured hair and bare shoulders gleaming in the darkness. She was the soul of directness and candour, and after a thoughtful, searching look into my face she came to the point at once. She wanted to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... work on the same Spirit as spoke through them. But, however difficult it may be to define it, I am one of those who believe that there is a difference, and that it is a great difference. The mind and will of God expressed themselves through the prophets and apostles with a directness and authority which we cannot claim. But the difference is not such as to remove them beyond our imitation. Although in some, or even many, respects they may be beyond us, this is no reason why we may not in others imitate them with the greatest ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... — N. straightness, rectilinearity^, directness; inflexibility &c (stiffness) 323; straight line, right line, direct line; short cut. V. be straight &c adj.; have no turning; not incline to either side, not bend to either side, not turn to either side, not deviate to either side; go straight; steer for &c (directions) 278. render ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale—young clergyman, who had come from one of the great English universities, bringing all the learning of the age into our wild forest land. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be drawn from a poet's earliest lispings there are instances enough to prove. Shakespeare's first poems, though brimful of vigor and youth and picturesqueness, give but a very faint promise of the directness, condensation and overflowing moral of his maturer works. Perhaps, however, Shakespeare is hardly a case in point, his "Venus and Adonis" having been published, we believe, in his twenty-sixth year. Milton's Latin verses show tenderness, a fine eye for nature, and a delicate ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was of vital importance that these questions should be submitted to a searching examination, and that the doctrine of the Catholic Church should be formulated in such a way as to make cavilling and misunderstanding impossible. This work was done with admirable lucidity and directness in the fifth and sixth sessions of the Council of Trent, but nevertheless these decrees of the Council did not prevent the theories of Luther and Calvin being propagated vigorously, and from exercising a certain amount of influence even on some Catholic theologians ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... looking into his eyes with such intensity, with such directness, that he knew he was going to tell her everything. It seemed as if she must read ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... art of the period an affectation of simplicity covers and reveals by turns a great thirst for ingenuity. Swift's prose is a fair example; in the "Tale of a Tub" and even in "Gulliver" at first sight there seems to appear only an honest and simple directness; but pry beneath the surface statements, or allow yourself to be dazzled by their coruscations of meaning, and you immediately see you are watching a stylistic prestidigitator. The later, more orderly dignity of Dr. Johnson's exquisitely ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... to him at once and gave him her hand. She was very simple, her appeal like a child's for directness. ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... was suddenly bereft of all power of speech. Three men were standing just outside the long bronze caging that enclosed the bookkeeping-department, and they were looking at him with a directness that was even more pronounced than the stare of utter dismay with which he favoured them. There could be no mistake: they were discussing him—Thomas Bingle! And they were discussing him with unquestionable seriousness. His heart flopped down to his heels and his poor ears burned with ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... upon broken stones roused her suddenly; a man's firm tread close beside her. She looked round slowly as it stood still, and with the ache and the question lingering in her face, found herself looking into blue eyes of a disconcerting directness—the eyes of ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... at her in utter bewilderment. He passed his hand over his forehead; he leaned against the wall like a man about to faint. Then his tongue was loosed, and he overwhelmed the girl with torrents of abuse. Such fire, such directness, such a choice of ungentlemanly language, none had ever before suspected Morris to possess; and the girl trembled and shrank before ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she studied his face openly and with such a directness that he flushed in confusion, then turned her ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... personal freedom rests on precisely the same grounds as the knowledge of our personal existence. The same "immediate consciousness" which attests that I exist, attests also, with equal distinctness and directness, that ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... downright directness of Cecil, Hawkins, and the other parties in the matter. There is no wrapping up their intentions in fine phrases, no parade of justification. They went straight to their point. It was very characteristic ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... them for ye, I would ask?" demanded Mrs Forsyth with scathing directness. "I've the shop to mind, and the dinner to cook; it's not likely I can be out picking fruit at the same time, and there's not anither soul in the house forbye mysel! I'm thinking you'll have to wait, ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... exertion; but she appeared to feel justified in generalizing—in deciding that the conditions of action on this provincial continent were not favorable to really superior women. The elder world was, after all, their natural field. The unembarrassed directness with which she proceeded to apply these intelligent conclusions appeared to the little circle of spectators who have figured in our narrative but the supreme exhibition of a character to which the experience ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... this order. Aunt Maria was the active partner of their establishment. She was a clever, vigorous, well-educated, inartistic, kindly, managing woman. She was not exactly "meddling," but when she thought it her duty to interfere in a matter, no delicacy of scruples, and no nervousness baulked the directness of her proceedings. When she was most sweeping or uncompromising, Uncle Ascott would say, "My dear Maria!" But it was generally from a spasm of nervous cowardice, and not from any deliberate wish to interrupt Aunt Maria's course of action. He ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... not destroyed. In so far as his published words remained open to censure, I may also, without indelicacy, urge one more plea in his behalf. That which to the merely sympathetic observer appeared a subject for disapprobation, perhaps disgust, had affected him with the directness of a sharp physical blow. He spoke of it, and for hours, even days, was known to feel it, as such. The events of that distant past, which he had lived down, though never forgotten, had flashed upon him from the words which ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... little turn for speculation, and in the religious changes of the day we find him constantly lagging behind his brother-reformers. But he had the moral earnestness of a Jewish prophet, and his denunciations of wrong had a prophetic directness and fire. "Have pity on your soul," he cried to Henry, "and think that the day is even at hand when you shall give an account of your office, and of the blood that hath been ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Halloway, and she was soon of the settled conviction that she should never meet any one quite like him again. He was true to his promise to help her; (he never made a promise that he did not honestly try to keep;) and he applied himself to the by no means thankless task with the good-humored directness and energy that characterized all his actions. There was quite a number of young girls in his parish, more proportionately than in the others. Bell Masters and Amy Duckworth had long been hovering on its borders, and the advent of so young and ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... me frostily when I went to visit her a few days after the conversation with my father, and suffered me to kiss both her cheeks in turn without evincing a sign of being mollified. Remembering that she was fond of directness, I opened fire at once by observing that I was invited to a ball at Mrs. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Felix got more than they bargained for. Paul was not now the prisoner, but the preacher; and his topics were not wanting in directness and plainness. He 'reasoned of righteousness' to one of the worst of unrighteous governors; of 'temperance' to the guilty couple who, in calling themselves husband and wife, were showing themselves ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... of stone and iron,"—equipped for his work by nature as Sallust describes Catiline as being. "He had a directness of action never before combined with such comprehension. Here was a man who in each moment and emergency knew what to do next. He saw only the object; the obstacle ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... "there is a quality in the English character which to me is very praiseworthy. It is a certain directness of purpose. You know what you wish to do, and you proceed calmly to do it, without stopping to consider what your neighbours may think of it. Now with the Gallic races—for I take this virtue of straightforwardness as Teutonic—and in my own country especially, men seek to gain their ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... began to laugh at his own discomfiture; and she, elbow on the gunwale, small hand cupping her chin, watched him with an expressionless directness that very soon extinguished his amusement and left him awkward in ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... find few other guests, and to fall into the hands of one of those simple, strawberry-like English housemaids, who gives him a cozy, snug little parlor all to himself, as was the luck of Irving also; who answers his every summons, and looks into his eyes with the simplicity and directness of a child; who could step from no page but that of Scott or the divine William himself; who puts the "coals" on your grate with her own hands, and, when you ask for a lunch, spreads the cloth on one end of the table while you sit reading or writing at ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... child is conscious of such a thing as purity, delicacy, directness, or strength of style, he has been acted upon unconsciously, so that when the period of conscious choice comes, he is either attracted or repelled by what is good, according to his training. Children are fond of vivacity and color, and love a bit of word painting ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... means to be at the ball. Expect trouble if you do not give him the diamond,' or something to that effect. But why was it passed up to her unfinished? Was the haste too great? I hardly think so. I believe in another explanation, which points with startling directness to the possibility that the person referred to in this broken communication was not Mr. Durand, but one whom I need not name; and that the reason you have failed to find the messenger, of whose appearance ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... close of the second song, he leaned his elbow on the top of the instrument, and stood so, searching her face with such discomposing directness that a burning wave of colour submerged her, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... because I ran off with Clarence," said Joy with remorseful directness, and her usual child-likeness. "I was cross because you ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... perception recognized the sincerity in the ring of the pleasant young voice, and he was quite won by the boyish directness. An instinctive confidence moved him to extend the right hand ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... the letter and looked expectantly at the Secretary of State, who returned the look with one of utter dismay. Never in all his career had the diplomat been so completely dumbfounded as he was now by the simple directness of the man of action. In himself Dom Miguel Forjas was both shrewd and honest. He was shrewd enough to apprehend to the full the military genius of the British Commander-in-Chief, fruits of which he had already witnessed. He knew that the withdrawal of Junot's ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... with his whole nature, and so collectedly because reason, in him, is not in conflict with passion, but passion's ally. His senses speak with unparalleled directness, as in those elegies which must remain the model in English of masculine sensual sobriety. He distinguishes the true end of such loving in ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... doctrine that men are formed by the laws, but insists that moralists and statesmen have always led us wrong by legislating and prescribing conduct on the false theory that man is bad, whereas he is in truth a creature endowed with natural probity. Then he strikes to the root of society with a directness that Rousseau could not imitate, by the position that "these laws by establishing a monstrous division of the products of nature, and even of their very elements—by dividing what ought to have remained entire, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... his strength, his gaunt, awkward figure under the uncertain torches, his wide, impassioned gestures, with the carpenter's nail claw always before his hearers, made him a strange kind of specter in the night. Yet the simplicity of his manner and the directness of his appeal went to the hearts of his hearers. The first part of his message was one of peace. He told the workers that every inch they gained they lost when they tried to overcome cunning with force. "The dynamiter tears the ground from ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... coaxing and pulling got him into the kitchen, and Puss tumbled over herself to set out coffee and rolls. He showed himself ravenously hungry, and ate with a simple directness that speedily accounted for everything in sight. "You have saved my life. Now I am going, and thank you a thousand times. There, by Heaven, I've forgotten Wickwire! He is with me—waiting down in the cottonwoods at the fork. Could Puss put up a lunch I could take to him? He hasn't had a scrap for ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... political usefulness, and to the same effect was the general talk of the town. The common suspicion that the writer was doing the work of the hated Puseyites grew darker and spread further. Then in April came Macaulay's article in the Edinburgh, setting out with his own incomparable directness, pungency, and effect, all the arguments on the side of that popular antagonism which was rooted far less in specific reasoning than in a general anti-sacerdotal instinct that lies deep in the hearts of Englishmen. John Sterling ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... insinuate, Victor?" she said, lightly, but with pointed directness. "That I have been in love with two men at the same time? No; nothing of my own will nor my own action stands between us. Forgive, forsooth!" and she gave ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... French empire exemplified. Hatred to England, her name, race, and institutions, seems to have amounted to a monomania with him; yet he was not himself of Celtic lineage. His intolerance of opinion and rashness of action would have been utterly unendurable, were it not for the directness of his aims, the sincerity of his motives, the disinterestedness of his spirit, and the suavity of his disposition. The only other member of the Young Ireland party deserving notice as a chief was Charles Gavin Duffy, the editor and proprietor of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... full forehead, and an intensely black silky beard and mustache framed the lower portion of his face most fittingly. His eyes were soft and womanly, though there was a patient boldness about their great brown pupils and a directness of gaze which suited well the bearded face beneath. The lines of suffering were deeply cut upon the thoughtful brow and around the liquid eyes, and showed in the mobile workings of the broad mouth, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... made with all the swiftness and directness of one who seeks the shortest distance between two points, little remains in memory except a few moving pictures, vivid and half-real, as ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... golden pen's or lip's persuasion, But a fine sense of right, And Truth's directness, meeting each occasion Straight as a ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... IMAGINATION, AND RELATED QUALITIES. Another main question in judging any book concerns the union which it shows: (1) of the Intellectual faculty, that which enables the author to understand and control his material and present it with directness and clearness; and (2) of the Emotion, which gives warmth, enthusiasm, and appealing human power. The relative proportions of these two faculties vary greatly in books of different sorts. Exposition (as in most essays) cannot as a rule be permeated with so much emotion ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... degree of accomplishment. The landscapes he painted were very fresh and pleasing, delicately coloured, with lots of air in them, and a dreamy, suggestive sentiment. His brother sculptors declared that his statuettes were modelled with exceeding dash and directness; they were certainly fanciful and amusing. I remember one that I used to like immensely—Titania driving to a tryst with Bottom, her chariot a lily, daisies for wheels, and for steeds a pair of mettlesome field-mice. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... have hitherto led. You and Seward should be among the foremost to brandish the lance and shout for joy."[612] To this the famous editor, giving a succinct view of his policy, replied with his usual directness. "I have not dreamed of anything inconsistent with Republican duty. We owe our existence as a party to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. But for the ever blind spirit of slavery, Buchanan would have taken away our ammunition and spiked our guns. The continued ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of woman's attack on man's life, apart from the essential soundness of the impulse which drove her to make it, lay then in its directness and practicality. She began by asking to be educated in the same way that man educated himself. Preferably she would enter his classroom, or if that was denied her, she would follow the "just-as-good" curriculum of the college founded for her. In the last sixty or ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... pp. 10-50, and the end is abrupt. The treatment of the "Novel" contrasts curiously with that of the Chavis MS. which forms my text, and whose directness and simplicity give it a European and even classical character. It is an excellent study of the liberties allowed to themselves by Eastern editors and scribes. In the Cotheal MS. the tone is distinctly literary, abounding in verse (sometimes repeated from other portions ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... she opened the door, and answered the mortgage jobber's somewhat embarrassed greeting with a frigid stare. Having some experience of Sally's uncompromising directness, he was inclined to fancy that the game was up, but he said nothing further, and she fixed her eyes ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... enough of them to cancel her one miserable debt! But the man behind them grew increasingly repugnant in the light of Selden's expected coming. The contrast was too grotesque: she could scarcely suppress the smile it provoked. She decided that directness would ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... deceased wife, irreproachable woman as she had been; but the suddenness of her death had shaken his nerves, and Mr. Woodwell's address on the uncertainty of life involved considerations of conduct on earth that bore with singular directness upon Havill's unprincipled manoeuvre for victory in the castle competition. He wished he had not been so inadvertent as to take his customary chair in the chapel. People who saw Havill's agitation did not know that ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... ever wrote. He himself speaks of it as very puerile and silly—a verdict which Chambers endorses, but in which I cannot agree. Simple and artless it no doubt is, but with a touch of that grace which bespeaks the true poet. Here is one verse which, for directness of feeling and felicity of language, he hardly ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... protruding from the bandage; or explaining how the legend of Lord KITCHENER'S survival arose from a trivial error that caused the news of the Hampshire disaster to reach Berlin a few minutes before it was published in London, he always writes with directness and verve. Admiral BROWNRIGG tells a good deal about the censorship, and illustrates his theme with some excellent reproductions of naval photographs before and after the Censor had "re-touched" them. He tells us even more about his work in a less ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... low wages; the closest scrutiny revealed no strikes or internal clamorings about wrongs; and I unconsciously relaxed and breathed more deeply at the thought of this nature world, moving so smoothly, with directness and simplicity as apparently ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... The want of directness, the absence of candor, the non-recognition of truth in its broad and deep sense, is, indeed, a characteristic phase of life, of expression, and of manners in France. A lover of his nation confesses that even in "galantes aventures l'esprit prenait la place du coeur, la fantaisie ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... remorseless logic as that of logarithms. It will produce a habit of definiteness, directness, and concentration invaluable to you. The young gallants of a century ago used to practise fencing for an hour each morning. Why should not you do the same thing in intellectual fencing—you, the devotee of the noblest ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Lesley looked after him helplessly, with a mingled feeling of offence and relief. She did not see him again, but was conveyed to her room by Miss Brooke, who spoke to her kindly indeed, but with a matter-of-fact directness which seemed hard and cold to the convent-bred girl, whose teachers and guardians had vied with one another in sugared sweetness and a tutored amiability ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... carboniferous formation, limestone, about 1600 feet high. The canyon was surprisingly beautiful and romantic. The river seemed to change its mood here, and began to flow with an impetus it had exhibited nowhere above. It swept on with a directness and a concentration of purpose that had about it something ominous. And just here, at the foot of the right hand wall which was perpendicular for 800 feet, with the left more sloping, and clothed with cedar shrubs, we beheld ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... able to give you a fairly good dinner," she said with a simple directness that pleased me. "My husband went fishing yesterday and I have some very good pan fish and some oysters. If you are very hungry I can give you the oysters almost at once, and it will not take very long to broil the fish. Then, ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the fatal resemblance between the two daughters of one father, the conspiracy of which Anne had been the innocent instrument and Laura the innocent victim could never have been planned. With what unerring and terrible directness the long chain of circumstances led down from the thoughtless wrong committed by the father to the heartless injury ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... had taken lodgings in Duke Street, and Emily knew the quarter thoroughly. Walderhurst watched her being nice, through his fixed eyeglass, and he decided that she had really a very good manner. Its goodness consisted largely in its directness. While she never brought forth unnecessarily recollections of the days when she had done other people's shopping and had purchased for herself articles at sales marked 11-3/4d, she was interestingly free from any embarrassment in connection ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... What a great directness of purpose may be traced in the career of Pitt, who lived—ay, and died—for the sake of political supremacy. From a child, the idea was drilled into him that he must accomplish a public career worthy of his illustrious father. Even from boyhood he ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... was Mr. Ballard, a man self raised from the ranks of labour but indebted for the eminence which he ultimately attained to Mr. Brassey's discrimination in selecting him for the arduous undertaking. He has borne interesting testimony to his superior's comprehensiveness and rapidity of view, the directness with which he went to the important point, disregarding secondary matters and economizing his time ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the entrance of the United States into the World War and the suffragists consecrated time, strength, life itself if necessary to its demands. The call to the annual convention held in Waco in May, 1917, indicated with what directness and intelligence the women approached their added responsibilities. It was "a call to the colors," to work for the war. War and Woman's Service; What can we do? Our Need of the Ballot to do it; True Americanism, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... obsequious attempts to curry favor with Captain Wirz, who took him outside several times for purposes that were not well explained. Finally, some hours after one of Poll Parrot's visits outside, a Rebel officer came in with a guard, and, proceeding with suspicious directness to a tent which was the mouth of a large tunnel that a hundred men or more had been quietly pushing forward, broke the tunnel in, and took the occupants of the tent outside for punishment. The question that demanded immediate solution ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the influence of the wily and unscrupulous Murray, who flattered his weaknesses and assumed an air of deference to his opinions. Lord George Murray, on the other hand, was but too prone to give offence. He was haughty and overbearing in manner, expressed his opinions with a directness and bluntness which were very displeasing to the prince, and, conscious of his own military genius and experience, put aside with open contempt the suggestions of those who were in truth ignorant of military matters. Loyal, straightforward, ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... Bellafront's morning reception at the opening of the second act of the first part. But here we may assert with fair confidence that the first and the last scenes of the play bear the indisputable sign-manual of William Rowley. His vigorous and vivid genius, his somewhat hard and curt directness of style and manner, his clear and trenchant power of straightforward presentation or exposition, may be traced in every line as plainly as the hand of Middleton must be recognized in the main part of ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... principle was called for the discord existed confessedly, and the one course had been the palinode of the other. But such a theory is quite inadmissible to our minds; it tallies neither with the long-headed and comprehensive sagacity of Sir Robert Peel, nor with the spirit of simplicity, directness, and determination in the Duke of Wellington. Next came an evening paper, of high character for Conservative honesty and ability, which (having all along justified the past policy of vigilant neutrality) could not be supposed to acknowledge any fickleness in ministers: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... broadside ballad commemorating that splendid fight has a fine disregard for the more pedantic rules of making verse, and the metre is a good example of what is called 'rugged'; but those who are superior to such details will appreciate the directness and air of enjoyment that are very appropriate to the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... childhood, while he lived among the peasants, he became familiar with their mode of thought and speech, and it entered into his being, and became his own natural mode of expression. There is in his daily conversation a certain grim directness, and a laconic weightiness, which give an air of importance and authority even to his simplest utterances. This tendency to compression frequently has the effect of obscurity, not because his thought is obscure, but rather because energetic brevity of expression ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... sparks," and, even in their boyhood and school days, earn a reputation for being bons camarades (though with it all they come in for some hard knocks) for the reason that their faces evince an element of frankness, directness, and enterprise which enables them soon to make friends, and, almost before you have had time to look around, to start addressing you in the second person singular. Yet, while cementing such friendships for all eternity, almost always they begin quarrelling ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Even the method and style of the book are, contrary to general opinion, much more distinctly English than German. I do not forget his Hegelian dialectic with its un-English subtleties, but against that must be placed the directness, vigor, and pointedness of style, and the cogent reasoning, with its wealth of concrete illustrations, which are as characteristically English. Marx belongs to the school of Petty, Smith, and Ricardo, and their work is the background of his. ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... similar." Felicia's cool voice corrected him. She had an exasperating directness of manner! "Whenever you are counting how vairee much money you did have from 'The Juggler' do you not sometimes think that the girl who wrote the play ought to have ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... girl drew back. The directness of his challenge was startling, and roused in her a belated defensiveness. Going away? It sounded suddenly terrible to her, and thrilled her with a rush of fear which set her shivering. And yet she knew that ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... not apt to be labored, 'to smell of the lamp;' and they are, therefore, in general, his best specimens. In letter writing there will be found a facility, a freedom from constraint, a simplicity, and a directness, which are the capital traits of a good style. Of Shakspeare it is said, in the preface to the first edition of his works: 'His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered with that easiness, that we ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... thing, we ought immediately to do it. And if the love of God were in our hearts; if we were inwardly "conformed unto" the Divine law; if there were nothing lacking in our religious character; we should obey with the same directness and alacrity with which Peter and Andrew, and James and John, left their nets and their fishing-boat, their earthly avocations, their fathers and their fathers' households, and followed Christ to the end of their days. In the present ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... Yes, I'll come. I can come now. But are you sure she will like it?" Dinah's bright eyes met his with frank directness. "I don't want to intrude on her, ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... drew his chair a little nearer to her. His eyes were fixed upon her with a yet more intent gaze as he said, with directness and decision: ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... him with her childlike directness as she had done at the bazaar, and said, "I want to tell you everything." But her eyes filled fast with tears as she said it, and all the pent-up excitement of her humiliating walk would have its vent ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... flee from simpers; they put down presumption. If married, they laugh heartily with their wives over any letter or episode that is comical or sentimental. If not married, they get out of things the best way they know how, with a sort of plain, manly directness. If a minister would arrogate to himself his free-born privilege of being a thorough-going man, many ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... who had not unmixed delight in it. She had a certain shamefacedness about going through the streets in such a fashion. She avoided looking at the people whom she met, and kept her head slightly bent and averted, instead of carrying it with the proud directness which was her habit. She felt vaguely that this was the element of purely personal vanity which degrades a triumph, and the weakness of delight and gloating in the faces of her relatives irritated her. It was a sort of unveiling ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Aeneas, beside quite recent things felt or done—stories which, floating to us on the light current of to-day's conversation, leave the soul in a flutter! At best, poetry of the past could move one with no more directness than the beautiful faces of antiquity which are not here for us to see and unaffectedly love them. Gaston's demand (his youth only conforming to pattern therein) was for a poetry, as veritable, as intimately near, as corporeal, as the new faces of the hour, the flowers of the actual ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... that will be widely read and much discussed. A powerful sketch of an adventuress who has much of the Becky Sharpe in her. The story is crisply written and told with directness and insight into the ways of social and political life. The characters are strong types of the class ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Grand Duke Nicholas, the eldest son of Alexander II,—a young man of gentle characteristics, greatly resembling his father,—died upon the Riviera, the next heir to the throne was his brother Alexander, a stalwart, taciturn guardsman, respected by all who knew him for honesty and directness, but who, having never looked forward to the throne, had been brought up simply as a soldier, with few of the gifts and graces traditional among the heirs of the Russian monarchy ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... practical question that is distressing me: on that I think I see my way. But I am terribly worried for fear you should be angry or sorry about all this. I am only kept in hope by the remembrance that I had the same fear when I told you of my engagement and that you dispelled it with a directness and generosity that I shall not forget. I think, my dear Mother, that we have always understood each other really. We are neither of us very demonstrative: we come of some queer stock that can always say least when it means most. But I do think ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Bernard Shaw, who like Mark Twain have achieved comprehensive international reputations, have succeeded in preserving the early vigour and telling directness acquired in journalistic apprenticeship. It was by the crude, almost barbaric, cry of his journalese that Rudyard Kipling awoke the world with a start. That trenchant and forthright style which imparts ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... indeed, seemed to lack elements of attraction and interest; and the readers to whom the same man will tell even new things are apt to grow weary of his mode of saying, even though that mode have improved in directness and force; the tide of his small repute had already begun to take the other direction. Those who understood and prized his work, still holding by him, and declaring that they found in him what they found in no other writer, remained stanch ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... sharing her deepest moods with any one, and the world in which she lived with Denis was too bright and spacious to admit of any sense of constraint. Her smile was in truth a tribute to that clear-eyed directness of his which was so often a refuge ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... sled standing outside now, with twenty fiftypound sacks of flour on it," Matthewson went on with brutal directness; "so don't let ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... him as at a deep mystery, but with the searching directness characteristic of her, a fearlessness so absolute that it embarrassed ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... commenced to speak, made it unnecessary to put the story into words. Samson told how his mother had turned pallid, and stretched out her arm gropingly for support against the door-jamb. Then the man had found his voice with clumsy directness. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... one there now," said Rushbrook, with practical directness; "come and take a look at it." She complied without hesitation, walking by his side, tall, easy, and self-possessed, apparently accepting without self-consciousness his half paternal, half comrade-like informality. The boudoir was ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... he must yield—yield by a long way—to Dryden in strength and easy command of whatsoever craft he tried, to Coleridge in depth and range and philosophical grasp, yet he has his revenges. Beside his delicacy and his cosmopolitan accomplishment, Dryden is blunt and unscholarly; beside his directness of aim, if not always of achievement, his clearness of vision, his almost business-like adjustment of effort to result, the vagueness and desultoriness of Coleridge look looser and, in the literary sense, more disreputable than ever. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... I was entirely unused to the amenities of society. I used no subterfuges, and made no attempt to disguise my interest in Cynthia, or to pretend to other interests. I dare say my directness was smiled upon, as part of the eccentricity of these literary people; one of Ernest's friends, quite a recluse, and so forth. I gathered as much a little ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... that I see what's been wrong with me from the start. You've tried to say it yourself at times, only I couldn't take it in. Do you remember the day in my office when you came to tell me that"—he nerved himself to approach the subject with the simple directness he knew she desired—"that ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... to greatness as possible, if it be not actually destined to rank among world-renowned masterpieces. It is fresh and new, while in harmony with the established canons of art; and though apparently labored and over-developed in places, speaks with the force and directness of genius." ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... here in this anxiety up-stairs, down in the garden I could hear not the words, but the tones of our children as they spoke together. Charles's voice sounded first for a long time, with an air of calmness and directness; and Peggy answered him at intervals of listening, answered apparently less with surprise at what he told her than in a quiet acceptance, with a little throb of control, and then in accord with him. Then it was as though ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... hitherto understood and felt it. Through them we feel the breath of another air than that which he had breathed when he strained his invention to make poetic compliments to Kaethchen Schoenkopf. In the intensity and directness of passion which they express we may trace all the new poetic influences which he had come under in Strassburg—Shakespeare, Ossian, the popular ballad, the inspiration of Herder. What is remarkable in these ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... grew weary of the diplomacy which he had advocated; after all it had turned out to be Lady Evenswood's, not his, which may have had something to do with his change of mood toward it. He took up the task with a brisk directness. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... faithfulness; a courageous sense of justice which impelled him to fight valiantly for a cause that he deemed right, however unimportant or hopeless the cause might be; a reformer's contempt for hypocrisy and shams, and a blunt directness in freeing his mind about wrong of every kind. He had the faults of his virtues, likewise. Sure of himself and of the right of his position, he had the impatience of an unimaginative man with any other point of ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... nervous tension under which modern, especially modern urban, life is lived. These include what are commonly called the hysterical or over-emotional, or "temperamental" types. In a civilization where most professions demand regularity, restraint, punctuality, and directness, unstability and excess emotionalism are necessarily at a discount. There are the vagabond types who, like young Georges, Jean-qhristophe's protege, regard a profession as a prison house, in which most of one's capacities are cruelly confined. There ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... hoch" has qualities of simplicity, directness, and warm human feeling which link it to the less ornate forms of carol literature. Its first verse is adapted from a secular song; its melody may, perhaps, have been composed by Luther himself. There is another Christmas hymn of Luther's, too—"Vom Himmel kam der Engel Schar"—written ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... There was still another interval before she spoke, and then, with calm directness, ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... nor gesture did she manifest the least consciousness of, or concern for, the inanimate form visible in the adjoining room. With sudden directness, and ignoring the implied threat in her ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Boys were quick to recognize the sincerity of the man. He was often impetuous but he was always candid. His decisions were firm, but he never shirked an argument. His sermons in Chapel were not steeped in oratory but the directness of his appeal, the persistent summons to the standard of Duty and the obvious depth of his emotion gave them power. Largeness of numbers never appealed to him, and he did not in any way strive to call the attention of the world to the School. He wished for success in ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... direct course so as to hunt for Brindle, that Fred had seen, but she was not found. To their delight, however, they saw her footprints on the edge of the creek, proving that she had gone home with the directness of one who felt remorse for wandering from the straight path. She had swum the stream, and was doubtless before the MacClaskey ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... in his mouth when the scout dashed forward like a catapult and struck a tremendous blow, driven with such directness and swiftness that it could not have been parried. At the very instant Hardynge made the charge, Lone Wolf did the same, and the two similar blows, aimed at the same moment, encountered half way with such terrible violence ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... superstition of the Greco-Roman world in the third century, he will find no vagueness at all in Dr. Jacks's interpretation of the teaching of Jesus. He may perhaps find in that interpretation a simplicity, a clarity, and a directness which are not wholly convenient to his idea of a God Who repents, is angry, and ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... the adventures of innocence have so often been the material of fiction? Yes," Voyt replied; "that's exactly what the bored reader complains of. He has asked for bread and been given a stone. What is it but, with absolute directness, a question of interest or, as people say, of the story? What's a situation undeveloped but a subject lost? If a relation stops, where's the story? If it doesn't stop, where's the innocence? It seems to me ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... 1831, he began the publication of the Unitarian Essayist, a small monthly pamphlet, in which the leading theological questions were discussed. In a few months Mr. Peabody went to Cincinnati; and the Essayist was continued by Mr. Huidekoper, who wrote with vigor and directness on the subjects he ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... account has a dignity, a clearness and cogency of statement, worthy of Blackstone or Marshall. It is in marked contrast to the evasive reply of Secretary Cass, both for its fine English and for the directness of its logic. It is published at length in Julian Hawthorne's biography of his father, and is unique for the insight which it affords as to Hawthorne's mental ability in this direction. We may infer from it that if he had made a study of jurisprudence, he might have risen to the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... desired, you should not, as my Mother said, 'lose any time in seeking for it, but ask God to guide you to it'. In many junctures of life this is precisely what, in sober fact, they did. I will not dwell here on their theories, which my Mother put forth, with unflinching directness, in her published writings. But I found that a difference was made between my privileges in this matter and theirs, and this led to many discussions. My parents said: 'Whatever you need, tell Him and He will grant it, if it is His will.' Very well; I had ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... scrawled, "neither Dorothy nor anyone else." With succinct directness he covered the whole story—explained, elucidated. Through every word the golden thread of his deep devotion glowed steadily. Would the letter ever reach her? Would her eyes ever see the reassuring lines? He refused to ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... the Celtic or Iberian brilliance was balanced by a classical delicacy and precision of feature. He had the brow, the nose, the upper lip, the finely-moulded chin, which belong to the more severe and spiritual Greek type. Certainly of Greek blitheness and directness there was no trace. The eye was wavering and profoundly melancholy; all the movements of the tall, finely-built frame were hesitating and doubtful. It was as though the man were suffering from paralysis of some moral muscle or other; as ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Weisheit (1550), a collection of forty-nine fables in which Alberus embodies his views on the relations of Church and State. His satire is incisive, but in a scholarly and humanistic way; it does not appeal to popular passions with the fierce directness which enabled the master of Catholic satire, Thomas Murner, to inflict such telling blows. Several of Alberus's hymns, all of which show the influence of his master Luther, have been retained in the German Protestant hymnal. After Luther's ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of a Thief' is not only stranger but far more interesting than much of the present day fiction. The autobiography of 'Light-fingered Jim' is absorbing, in many pages startling, in its graphicness.... In spite of its naturalness, daring and directness, the work has a marked literary style—a finish that could not have been given by an unexperienced hand. But this adds to rather than detracts from the charm of the ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... straight to the root of the evil, and made no admissions and no compromises. Slavery for him was conceived in greed, born in sin, cradled in shame, and worthy of utter and relentless condemnation. He had the quality of directness and simplicity. When Collins would have turned the abolition influence to the support of a communistic scheme, Douglass opposed it vehemently. Slavery was the evil they were fighting, and their cause would be rendered still more unpopular if they ran after ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... said Will, parenthetically, walking along with his eyes on the ground; she, on the contrary, looked at him often, with frank directness. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... follows in general the traditional arrangement. But in those subjects where his own inventiveness is given free play, as in the series of frescoes illustrating the life of St. Francis, he reveals an extraordinary faculty of design and a dramatic sense which is matched by a directness ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... at an understanding?" she asked, with a grave directness which Bernard thought the most beautiful thing he ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... noted for the qualities which have since made her famous, and is one of the best known among a group of women etchers. Her work, exhibited at the New York Etching Club, is conspicuous on account of its strength, directness, and firmness, allied ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... H. FIELDING-HALL Fiction Short stories dealing with the spirit of England at war. "Admirably written without one superfluous word to mar the directness of their appeal."—New ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... Their quarry had found safety beyond water, or in a lake, and the muhekuns were on a fresh trail. By this time not more than a quarter of a mile of the forest separated Baree from the lone wolf, but the lone wolf was also an old wolf, and with the directness and precision of long experience, he swerved in the direction of the hunters, compassing his trail so that he was heading for a point half or three-quarters of a mile in ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... about the strangers, until they had made a half circuit, keeping the latter in constant expectation of an assault. Then, perfectly secure of their object, the Tetons raised a loud shout, and darted across the prairie in a line for the distant rock, with the directness and nearly with the velocity of the arrow, that has just been ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... pastorate of four and one-half years in the Pilgrim Congregational Church in New Haven, that was applicable only to that church, but possibly some statements have more or less general application. At any rate, it is an interesting case and the sermon was remarkable for its almost brutal directness, its cutting satire, its searching exposition of the wholesale spirit of charity mixed with kindly humour which ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... at him with grave wonder, and then said with her old directness: "But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I should have told you." She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color. "I mean," she said hesitatingly, "of course you have acted nobly, generously, kindly, wisely—but ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... conversational interchange and lights where Mary Nellen excitedly arrayed them. Alston Choate had come to call, and following him appeared an elderly lady whom Jeffrey greeted with more outward warmth than he had even shown his father. Alston Choate had walked in with a simple directness as though he were there daily, and Anne impulsively went forward to him. She felt she knew him very well. They were quite friends. Alston, smiling at her and taking her hand on the way to the colonel and ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... the University, but also by those qualifications which had made him so long a leader in the Faculties of the University. An unusually dignified presence and somewhat judicial manner only conceal a rare simplicity, directness, and kindliness revealed to every one with whom he comes into personal contact. He has the rare qualification of a real and sincere interest in the affairs of those with whom he is dealing, and the kindly ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... so utterly matter-of-fact and there was about his remark so simple an air of directness and of finality that there was no escaping his sincerity, unduly interested though ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... allegro giocoso (giocoso primarily means jokingly), opens with full orchestra. This movement takes the place of a scherzo. It is earnest, vigorous, and free; at times, as Mr. Apthorp says, "almost fierce"; and for straightforward directness stands in manly contrast to ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... was almost embarrassing in his directness, though she acquitted him of any crude intention of ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... put into concise and eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and liked to have someone to listen to him. His most usual and natural listener was his brother. And so in spite of the friendliness and directness of their relations, Konstantin felt an awkwardness in leaving him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch liked to stretch himself on the grass in the sun, and to lie so, basking ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... marriage, to be in the least satisfactory, must be based on love; and that love worth the name is an essentially two-sided business. Indirectly the girl had learnt much on this difficult subject from her great-aunt; and with characteristic directness had agreed with herself to wait till her heart was touched, if she waited a lifetime—though of exactly in what either her heart, or the touching of it, consisted she was deliciously innocent ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of present or future advantage, the rank and fortune of those around, the taunts and censures, or the praise, of those who were hostile to him, had no influence whatever over his actions, and apparently none over his thoughts. It is difficult even to express the simplicity and directness of purpose that adorned him. Some few might be found in the history of mankind, and some one at least among his own friends, equally disinterested and scornful, even to severe personal sacrifices, of every baser motive. But no one, I believe, ever joined this noble but passive virtue to equal active ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... become so inextricably intermingled, that it is very often extremely difficult for us to make out any meaning at all. Then many of his thoughts are so subtle and so profound that they cannot easily be drawn up from the depths in which they lie. No man can write with greater directness, greater lyric vigour, fire, and impulse, than Browning when he chooses— write more clearly and forcibly about such subjects as love and war; but it is very seldom that he does choose. The infinite complexity of human life and its manifold experiences have seized and imprisoned ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... heard anyone speak with the crystal directness of Dom Corria. Each word chipped away some part of the fence which he had deliberately erected around his own intelligence. Certain facts had found crevices in the barrier already; Dom Corria broke ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... at the King's theatre. There were also Handel performances at Covent Garden. Such effects as that of the throbbing mass of vocal tone in the chorus from Joshua, "The people shall tremble," must have overwhelmed him, and the swift directness and colossal climaxes of the "Hallelujah" from the Messiah certainly impressed him. However great the revelation of Handel's supreme might, Haydn never imitated Handel's style or devices for getting ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... essayist on account of the elegance with which they were urged. On the contrary, we would be inclined to disbelief. But when all ornament save that of simplicity is disclaimed—when we are attacked by precision of language, by perfect accuracy of expression, by directness and singleness of thought, and above all by a logic the most rigorously close and consequential—it is hardly a matter for wonder that nine of us out of ten are content to rest in the gratification thus received as in the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... left hand, picked up a pencil, and began to write. She headed the petition: "To all who know and love the mountains," and she told the story with the simpleness of one speaking from the heart, and the directness of one who speaks to those sure to understand. "And so I found her here by the Denver paper," she said, after she had stated the tragic facts, "because it was the closest she could come to the mountains. Her heart is not breaking because she is going blind. It is breaking because ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... bodily needs. She went to the fire, and began to pour out some nourishing soup, which she always had there in readiness,—and while she was thus engaged, Thelma's brain cleared more and more,—till with touching directness, and a new hope flushing her face, she asked softly and beseechingly for her child. "I forgot!" she said simply and sweetly. "Of course I am not alone any more. Do give me my baby—I am much better—nearly well—and I should ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... to each other as they groped about in the road, and either making jokes at the expense of the new Electricity Department, or frankly cursing it with true Five Towns directness of speech. And as Mr Blackshaw went down the hill into the town his heart was as black as the street itself with rage and disappointment. He had ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... from hers, but, to his annoyance, they met at Couthie's corner. He would have passed her with a distant bow, but she would have none of that. "You have followed me," said Grizel, with the hateful directness that was no ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... to come over this morning," he began with that directness which always amazed his Turkey Track neighbours and put them all astray as to the man, his real meaning ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... Thou, lowering his eyes, unwilling to give importance to his resolution by the directness ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... occupants of high and responsible stations. The next English sovereign will be pretty much what he was made by his father; and it is no light thing to have had the formation of a mind that may be made to act, with more or less directness, on the condition of two hundred ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... at her, and the playful, companionable directness of her answering gaze thrilled him through and through. He studied her face in silence while she turned and twisted, feeling, but scarcely understanding, the deep import ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... Darwin's place in literature, that is due supereminently to his thoughts. In his expression of them he had the saving quality of directness, and usually wrote with simplicity. Incisive he was not ordinarily; caution of his type harmonises ill with incisiveness. But what he lost thereby he gained in solidity and in permanence. Sometimes, as we have pointed out, his imagination carried him beyond his ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... flickering life that alone was left to me with pungent salt breezes and stinging baptisms of spray, but I had liked that little pretty well. I did not think her so silly as Laura did: she seemed to me so purely simple, that I sometimes wondered if her honest directness and want of guile were folly or not. But I liked to see her, as she cantered past my door on her pony, the gold tendrils thick clustered about her throat and under the brim of her black hat, and her bright blue eyes sparkling with the keen air, and a real wild-rose bloom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... Riviere's world would have cloaked their curiosity under some conventional, indirect form of question. Her frank directness struck him as refreshing, and he answered readily: "The lady you saw in the Cote d'Azur Rapide was my sister-in-law, Mrs Matheson. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... at it again, as I thought, with a directness that left nothing to her intelligence. I told her what I meant was that he couldn't do ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... obscure the significance of words. To disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the 'Discoveries', is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in the subtler graces ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... some excellences lost to the later work. Gareth and Lynette, however, by its fluency and simplicity, and by not being overcharged with meaning, seems to part company with some of this overweighted later performance, and to attempt a recovery of the directness and spring of the start. It is, however, far behind all of them in a momentous particular; for in narrating them, the poet, while able to keep up his immediate connection with the source of tradition, and to narrate with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... from artifice immediately coalesce, as metals that are perfectly pure can be readily cemented together. Mr. Palmer and Mr. Walsingham were intimate in half an hour. There was an air of openness and sincerity about Mr. Walsingham; a freedom and directness in his conversation, which ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... possibility of evil, observe, attaches to knowledge pursued for the noblest ends, if it be pursued imprudently. I have assumed, in speaking of its effect both on men generally and on the artist especially, that it was sought in the true love of it, and with all honesty and directness of purpose. But this is granting far too much in its favor. Of knowledge in general, and without qualification, it is said by the Apostle that "it puffeth up;" and the father of all modern science, writing directly in its praise, yet asserts this danger even in more absolute ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... these days, Letitia," said Billy, with the greatest innocence of mien and expression, a manner he always uses in speaking to Letitia's rather literal directness and in which he delights greatly. "They undress. You are unclothed enough as to ankles and if you roll the sleeves of your tennis shirt to your shoulders, take off your collar and tuck in the flaps, it will be enough to satisfy our cravings for fashionable ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... European tools of the 17th and 18th centuries obscured technical improvement. By contrast, in England and America, tools gained distinction through the directness of their design. Following English patterns, tools of American make were straightforward. Only later, in new tool types, did they imitate the rococo flourish of their European predecessors. In America, as in England, the baroque for things functional seemingly had little ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... that indicate these qualities. What admirable characteristics does the whole selection exhibit? Simplicity, directness, and eloquence of language, noble emotion, loftiness of character, and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... more, force of will, firmness of conviction, energy of character are conducive to strength. Where these exist there will be directness of aim, and the style will be clear, unwavering, and strong. There will be positiveness of statement, and sometimes intolerant dogmatism. Carlyle and Macaulay are among our strongest writers, the former being rugged, and the latter more polished ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... no effort to instruct the congregation, but speaks with simplicity and directness, to ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... the Hellenic instinct for simplicity and grace and directness. They delighted in deep symbolism and parable, in thunder and lightning of diction and imagery, in pomp and state and grandeur. They felt no scruples about going beyond the golden mean. With them all ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... evading any brutal directness of reply, "I have been very much interested with his energy; he is the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... obligatory. Rigid discipline must deal with errors in spelling, grammar, the choice of words and phrases. Previous college training in composition must in general be revised and made over to secure directness and simplicity. At the end, the utmost that can be gained for nineteen out of twenty is some facility, a little sense of style and diction, and copy that will be above the average of the newspaper and not much above that. Examine the writing in the newspapers ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... supposing," he asked with a directness he had learnt from her own methods, "that by that time I may have fallen ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
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