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More "Quickness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Well, anyhow, Badegast may look as splendid as you like, it makes no difference—he's no good. Ah, Margaret, with your brains you'll soon learn to distinguish real greatness from false. It's really incredible, the quickness with which you've already—what shall I say?—initiated yourself into all these things—it surpasses ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Syndic's matter-of-factness and the ease with which he ignored what had just passed staggered him. Perhaps after all Blondel had come for this, and had been startled while waiting at the door by the quickness of his approach. "I—I had overlooked it," he murmured, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... We realised that once down there would be no hope, for while the seals were more anxious to escape than to fight, we knew that their jaws were powerful. There was no time to pick and choose. We hit out with all the strength and quickness we possessed. It was like a bad dream, like struggling with an elusive hydra-headed monster, knee high, invulnerable. We hit, but without apparent effect. New heads rose, the press behind increased. We gave ground. We staggered, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... some eight feet apart, where they had been carelessly placed by the servant before leaving the count to the solitary enjoyment of his tobacco and vodki. As the professor spoke, he suddenly raised his hand and levelled the pistol with lightning quickness first at one decanter and then at the other. There was a sharp clink-clink, and the tops of the smashed stoppers fell upon the table all ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... shades of glistening blue, and another which is strikingly coloured in almost uniform verditer blue. In the very lowest valleys is found the beautiful paradise fly-catcher, with a long-pointed black crest, the rest of the plumage white with black shafts and the tail 14 inches in length. The quickness and agility this lovely bird displays as it darts and twists and turns in the pursuit of butterflies in their uneven dodging flight is one of ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Sandwich Montagu. "Lady Ashburton," says Charles Greville, writing on the occasion of her death in 1857, "was perhaps, on the whole, the most conspicuous woman in the society of the present day. She was undoubtedly very intelligent, with much quickness and vivacity in conversation, and by dint of a good deal of desultory reading and social intercourse with men more or less distinguished, she had improved her mind, and made herself a very agreeable woman, and had ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... to Judge Methuen, and it seemed to please him. "My friend," said he, "you have a particularly sensitive soul; I beg of you to exercise the greatest prudence in your treatment of it. It is the best type of the bibliomaniac soul, for the quickness of its apprehensions betokens that it is alert and keen and capable of instantaneous impressions and enthusiasms. What you have just told me convinces me that you are by nature qualified for rare exploits in the science and art of book-collecting. ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... hiding the proper nature of things from the eyes of men. Habit—the last word of his practical philosophy—indolent habit! what would this mean in the intellectual life, but just that sort of dead judgments which are most opposed to the essential freedom and quickness of the Spirit, because the mind, the eye, were no longer ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... of unmanly lamentations Roderic was with difficulty recovered by the assiduities of the attendants. At length incited by their expostulations to the collectedness of reflection and the fortitude of exertion, he determined, with that quickness of invention with which he had been endowed at his birth, upon a plan to elude, if possible, the perseverance of Edwin, and the menaces of his fate. Recollecting that his person was not unknown to the swain, he communicated his instructions to those who were about him, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... had one company of grenadiers, picked out for their size, strength, and steadiness, and one company of light infantry, picked out for their quickness and good marksmanship. Sometimes all the grenadier companies would be put together in a separate battalion. The same thing was often done with the light infantry companies, which were then led by Colonel Howe. Wolfe ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... generally best fit a man for the discharge of social duties. Swift remarks that "Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. This I once said to my Lord Bolingbroke, and desired he would observe, that the clerk in his office used a sort of ivory knife, with a blunt edge, to divide a sheet of paper, which never failed to cut it ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... with wonderful quickness. It was very exciting; but none of them, except Robert, could feel all the time that this was real deadly dangerous work. To the others, who had only seen the camp and the besiegers from a distance, the whole thing seemed half a game of make-believe, and half a splendidly distinct ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... during his journey abroad, had seen a good deal of Sir William White, the Ambassador at Constantinople, who wrote to me about him: "We became friends, and spoke naturally of you, our mutual friend. I could not help seeing Chamberlain's immense quickness of observation and talents. In foreign politics he appeared to me to be beginning his ABC, but disposed to learn...." The Ambassador went on to say that the intimacy between France and Russia was coming to the front ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... efficiency of the soldier presupposes physical vigour; in Caesar's levies more regard was had to the strength and activity of the recruits than to their means or their morals. But the serviceableness of an army, like that of any other machine, depends above all on the ease and quickness of its movements; the soldiers of Caesar attained a perfection rarely reached and probably never surpassed in their readiness for immediate departure at any time, and in the rapidity of their marching. Courage, of course, was valued above ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the men practised with many wrappings of wadding and cotton wound round the caestus, answering the purpose of the modern boxing glove. Beric himself was very partial to the exercise, and as it strengthened the muscles, and gave quickness and activity to the limbs, Scopus encouraged ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... clear in counsel, and foremost in fight. He seemed a plain man in those days, of a wonderful talent for business and hundred horse-power of industry, but least of everything affecting cleverness or quickness. 'Honest Brigham Young,' or 'hard-working Brigham Young,' was nearly as much as you would ever hear him called, though he was the almost universal executor and trustee of men's wills and trusteed estates, and a confidential manager of our ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... his honors were full. He had received from the government the highest rank known to our military establishment, and from the people unstinted gratitude and love. No word of mine can add to his fame. His death has followed in startling quickness that of the Admiral of the Navy; and it is a sad and notable incident that, when the department under which he served shall have put on the usual emblems of mourning, four of the eight executive departments will be simultaneously draped in black, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... whole, she decided it was useless to consider possible pitfalls. They did exist, but she must rely on her quickness and presence of mind, ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... commanding thought upon all their matter. This is the case, whether the form be that of the comprehensive, large, secure, and elaborate Njla; of Laxdla, with its dilatory introduction changing to the eagerness and quickness of the story of Gudrun; of Grettir and Gisli, giving shape in their several ways to the traditional accumulation of a hero's adventures; or, not less remarkable, the precision of Hrafnkels Saga and Bandamanna,[49] which appear to have discovered and fixed for themselves ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Thirty boys with boys' appetites made the home-cooked spread disappear with marvelous quickness. Each had brought something from home, and Mrs. Cahill, whom they had taken into their confidence two days before the Sparling Shows reached town, had furnished the rest. Everything was cold except the coffee, but the feasters ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... behaved as if she was certain of the complicity of the whole country; she arranged the slightest details of the expedition with astonishing quickness of mind. With her own hands she made large wallets of coarse cloth, to carry provisions for the party, and contain the money taken from the chests. She hastened to Falaise to ask Lefebre to receive Allain and Flierle while ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... Provost, "the barber only contrives mischief, which he leaves other men to execute; and for the Scot, he keeps the door when the deed is a-doing, which he hath not spirit or quickness sufficient to partake in more ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... or two Margaret did not speak, but stole anxious glances at the sad face of her new acquaintance, whose rapid changes of mood she found it exceedingly difficult to keep pace with. For Eleanor certainly passed with startling quickness from grave to gay, and now, after having dwelt only a few seconds back with obvious delight on the thought of her sojourn by the sea, she was plunged in the blackest depths of despair again. But the truth was that the thought of the glorious gift she so confidently believed ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... Dreadnaughts. They realize that the foreigner is useful not for what he can do, but for what he can teach—therefore they tolerate the missionary. This is virtually the national policy of China towards foreigners, a policy gaining the acceptance of the people with remarkable quickness. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... it, which would have destroyed our friends in a few moments, had not they involuntarily sprung back and clapped their handkerchiefs to their faces. However, they could not have lived more than half a minute, had not the Giant, with admirable presence of mind and surprising quickness, given the brazier such a tremendous kick with one of his heavy boots, that he sent it more than a mile and a half, into the midst of a distant herd of Yabouks, which were all instantly suffocated by the ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... of potash, oil of vitriol, sulphur, sulphuret of antimony, and haematite, no variation in the character of the brushes was obtained, except that (dependent upon their effect as better or worse conductors) of causing discharge with more or less readiness and quickness ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... friend, Clo Riley?" Miss Blackburne asked. "Could she possibly know anything? Mightn't she help with some suggestion? I thought hers one of the brightest, quickest minds I ever met. Indeed, I owe my life to its quickness." ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... quickness to descend, gracious lady. Come, come," Komatsu urged. "To jinriksha. Leave red devil-wagon. This place no ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... meaning, literally, "to write from a distance." But long since, and before Morse's invention, it had come to mean the giving of any information, by any means, from afar. The existence of telegraphs, not electric, is as old as the need of them. The idea of quickness, speedy delivery, is involved. If time is not an object, men may go or send. The means used in telegraphing, in ancient and modern times, have been sound and sight. Anything that can be expressed so as to be read at a distance, and that conveys a meaning, is a telegram. ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... who was the chairman of the magistrates, said, "very great praise is due to you for your quickness and decision; had it not been for this there can be no doubt that the riot would have led to results even more disastrous than those which have taken place. At the same time it is the feeling of the court that you are now trying to screen the accused, for it can hardly be, that passing ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... Coningsby Castle by storm, was not to be driven out of its drawing-room by the tactics even of a Lady St. Julians. Experience convinced her that all that was required was a little patience. Mrs. Guy had confidence in herself, her quickness, her ever ready accomplishments, and her practised powers of attraction. And she was right. She was always sure of an ally the moment the gentlemen appeared. The cavalier who had sat next to her at dinner was only too happy to meet her again. More than once, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... "patellar reflex", aroused by a blow on the patellar tendon just below the knee when the knee is bent and the lower leg hanging freely, is quicker still, taking about .03 second. The reason for this extreme quickness of the reflex will appear as we proceed. However, not every reflex is as quick as those mentioned, and some are slower than the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... has he to do with Susy's holidays?" said Mrs. Peyton, with uneasy quickness. "John, you surely cannot expect her ever to meet this common creature again, with his vulgar ways. His wretched associates like that Jim Hooker, and, as you yourself admit, the blood of an assassin, duelist, and—Heaven knows what ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... beautiful instrument to the problem of stellar parallax; and he began by considering carefully the kind of star for which success was most likely. Hitherto the brightest had been most attended to, but Bessel thought that quickness of proper motion would be a still better test of nearness. Not that either criterion is conclusive as to distance, but there was a presumption in favour of either a very bright or an obviously moving star ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... soon began to banish this, and the old lady was pleased that Ella seconded her efforts so readily. Bodine was a man and a straightforward soldier, honest in his views and actions, however mistaken they might be. He had not feminine quickness in outward self-recovery, and the waves of his strong feeling could only subside gradually. He soon began to congratulate himself, however, that his strong measures had led to a most fortunate escape, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... viscount. The hostess was shrewd, but not shrewd enough, and if Mr. Caryll's expression changed for an instant, it resumed its habitual half-scornful calm so swiftly that it would have needed eyes of an exceptional quickness to have ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... immediately by an unconscious but correct process of deduction. The combination of the two, when they are nicely adjusted, constitutes a kind of judgment which, though it be not always so correct in its conclusions, as that exercised by ordinary logic, has nevertheless the advantage of quickness combined with tolerable precision. For, in matters of love, it is ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... the smoke grew thicker and thicker, and presently flames burst out. Now they ran up the trees, now along the tall lank grass dried by the heat. They darted from tree to tree—the bush (as the forest is called) was on fire. The flames spread with fearful quickness. ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... shelter. This, as his companion suggested, had proved a wholesome discipline, since it had not soured him. Now, though he did not overvalue them, he rejoiced in his new surroundings, and the girl's comeliness and quickness of ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... of his legal attainments may have been it is difficult to say. It was not hard for a man of his powers to acquire that very moderate portion of technical knowledge which, when joined to quickness, tact, wit, ingenuity, eloquence, and knowledge of the world, is sufficient to raise an advocate to the highest professional eminence. The general opinion appears to have been that which was on one occasion expressed by Elizabeth. "Bacon," ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Admiral calculated the number of hours in the day and night, and from sunrise to sunset. He found that twenty half-hour glasses passed, though he says that here there may be a mistake, either because they were not turned with equal quickness, or because some sand may not have passed. He also observed with a quadrant, and found that he was 34 degrees from the ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... Pension Frensham struck her now as poignantly pathetic, in its quickness and its absence of ceremonial. Ten steps, and her career was finished, closed. Astonishing with what liquid tenderness she turned and looked back on that hard, fighting, exhausting life in Paris! For, even if she had unconsciously liked it, she had never enjoyed it. She had always ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... was—simply this: Our friend Tommy, though the truest Irishman in the world, is a man quite the opposite everyway of the character he has appeared to you. All that rich brogue of his is assumed. Though he's poor, as I told you, when he came here, his native quickness, and his marvelous resources, tact, judgment, business qualities—all have helped him to the equivalent of a liberal education. His love of the humorous and the ridiculous is unbounded; but he has serious moments, as well, and at such times is as dignified and refined in speech and manner as ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... and repressed the energies of "him who undoubtedly was the best officer that headed our troops throughout the war,"[130] was visible to the termination of the contest—a contest in which we are satisfied the result would have been very different, "if a man of military genius, courage, quickness, and decision, had held the supreme command."[131] Indeed, when we reflect upon the management of that eventful war, we are often forcibly reminded, in the fatal loss of Sir Isaac Brock, of the pathetic lament of the gallant ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... with which they could give the names, habits and uses of animals and plants in the jungle, and the traveller cannot but admire the general handiness and adaptability to changed circumstances and customs and quickness of understanding of the Malay coolies whom he engages to ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... load, some good-natured comrade adding it to his own. Thousands of bricks and as many loads of mortar were brought into the city by these industrious people every day, and their work was done quietly, thoroughly, and with wonderful quickness and precision. ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... think of it." He spoke casually and stepped forward, reaching for the package, which she was about to give up, when something prompted her to snatch it behind her back; and it was well she did, for his hand was but a few inches away. He was no match for her quickness, however, and she glided around the table, thrusting the papers into the front of her dress. The sudden contact with Cherry's revolver gave her a certain comfort. She spoke ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... of the planting of the Lombardy poplar, which may be taken as a type of the formal tree, and as an illustration of what I mean to express. Its chief merits to the average planter are the quickness of its growth and the readiness with which it multiplies by sprouts. But in the North it is likely to be a short-lived tree, it suffers from storms, and it has few really useful qualities. It may be used to some advantage in windbreaks for peach orchards and other short-lived plantations; ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... piece of news, so that it took me about three hours to go a distance of seven or eight miles. There was a light of intelligence in the boy's face that enabled me to comprehend him almost by instinct, and the quickness with which he caught at my half-formed words, and gathered my meaning when I told him of the wonders of California, were really surprising. This boy was a natural genius. He will leave his mountain home some day or other and make ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... closer to me, gradually increasing in quickness and volume with an irresistibly definite progression. When it was quite near the sound began to move in my nerves and blood, and to urge ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... Of this his first entry into the gay world there are little but generalities to record; but, inaccurate as Murphy is in some matters of fact, there seems no reason to doubt the truth of the engaging picture which he draws of the young man's debut upon the Town. We read of the gaiety and quickness of his fancy; the wild flow of his spirits; the brilliancy of his wit; the activity of his mind, eager to know the world. To the possession of genius allied to the happiest temper, a temper "for the most part overflowing into wit, mirth, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... and he took a seat in another carriage. I changed places boldly with Mr. Gordon in order to drive, and we had not gone a hundred yards before I had let the horses make for a chemist's shop along the quay and got the coach itself up on to the footpath, so that if it had not been for the quickness and energy of Mr. Gordon we should all have been killed. On arriving at the hotel I went to bed, and stayed there until it was time for the theatre in the evening. We played Hernani that night ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... course, as soon as she came, with her quickness, where we all were. She didn't need each of us to go, by appointment, to her room at night, or take her out into the fields, for our palpitating tale. No doubt even ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... his bearing were threatening. He advanced as if to seize her in his great hands, and only her quickness saved her. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the minister was lang in coming," Waster Lunny told me afterward, "but Elspeth noticed it, and with a quickness that baffles me she saw I was thinking o' other things. So she let out her foot at me. I gae a low cough to let her ken I wasna sleeping, but in a minute out goes her foot again. Ay, syne I thocht I micht hae dropped my hanky into Snecky Hobart's ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... no preachers nor writers upon spiritual topics, whether in Europe or America, that have the depth of insight, the quickness of religious apperception, combined with the intellectual honesty and scientific clearness ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... no information; for the king and his men live on top of the hill, for greater safety. But, being desirous of enjoying trade and commerce with other kingdoms, they had built that city. Between it and us was the river. Seeing that this matter was one of quickness and determination, they immediately crossed the river, part in boats, but the majority in water up to their waists. They attacked the settlement, and although the Joloans tried to resist, they were ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... her feet,—sipping her Sangaree as daintily as you please. She was the most ignorant old creature that ever was known, could neither read nor write, and made a sad jumble of the King's English when she spoke; yet, by mere natural quickness and rule-of-thumb, she could calculate to a Joe how much a Shipmaster's Washing-Bill came to. And when she had settled that according to her Scale of Charges, which were of the most Exorbitant Kind, she would Grin and say, "He dam ship, good consignee;" or, "He dam ship, dam rich owner; ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... be sulky intractable fellows, contrasting unpleasantly with the Lepchas; wanting in quickness, frankness, and desire to please, and obtrusively independent in manner; nevertheless we had a head man who was very much the reverse of this, and whom we had never any cause to blame. Their language is, I believe, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... well, before we left Green River, but had never gone over any large rapids. While he was not nearly so large or heavy as I,—weighing no more than 130 pounds, while I weighed 170 pounds,—he made up for his lighter weight by a quickness and strength that often surprised me. He was always neat and clever in his method of handling his boat, taking a great deal of pride in keeping it free from marks, and avoiding rocks when making a landing. I had done very little rowing before leaving Green River, so little that I had difficulty ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... father's unhappy youth; his paternal grandmother; his father's position; comparison of father and son; the father's use of grotesque rhymes in teaching him; qualities he inherited from his mother; weak points in regard to health throughout his life; characteristics in early childhood; great quickness in learning; an amusing prank; passion for his mother; fondness for animals; his collections; experiences of school life; extensive reading in his father's library; early acquaintance with old books; his early attempts in verse; spurious poems in circulation; 'Incondita', the production of the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and gentry, my daughter, when they are the real thing, has, like the real Romans, a quickness to catch your meaning, and a politeness of manner which you doesn't meet with among such people as the keeper of a small shop or the master of a workhouse. The Duke was a very old man, with bent shoulders and the slow step of age, and I thinks he did not see ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... like a thorough "glutton,"[19] and honestly enjoys a telling facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three-in-the-morning Cockshot, says a victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities by which he lives. Athelred,[20] on the other hand, presents you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He is the most unready man I ever knew ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who was decent and orderly. The occasions of life, however, are often reasons for men going quicker or slower; but in the incorruptible nature of the stars, it is not possible that any cause can be alleged of quickness or slowness." It is seeking an argument of analogy very far, to suppose that the stars must observe the rules of decorum in gait and carriage prescribed for themselves by the long-bearded philosophers ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... having thrown the enemy's camp into greater confusion by the boldness of his language than anybody has ever done, because nobody has ever before dared to mention those whom he dragged forward. To the ignorant majority of the world he appears a man of great promise, of boldness, quickness, and decision, and the uproar that is made about him cannot fail to impress others as well as himself with a high notion ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... hurried below again as fast as they had come up. Needham's first impulse was to rush back to Long Tom, with which he began to pepper the retreating slaver as rapidly as the gun could be loaded, while the two carronades were worked with equal quickness. ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... turned the eyes of all Gaul upon the conqueror. Many tribes then asked his aid against Ariovistus, a German chief who came from across the river Rhine and with his yellow haired followers, clad in the skins of animals, was plundering the Gaulish province. Caesar, with the quickness that always won him success in battle, advanced against Ariovistus and completely defeated him, driving his men in confusion back across the Rhine to the lands they had ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... water, there must have been many males amongst them. They swim, dive, rise, and blow, much like other whales, throwing up their tails when scared, or when intending to take a deep dive, in the same manner, but exhibiting far greater quickness in foreseeing and avoiding the approach of enemies. No satisfactory use has been assigned for the horn that arms the male narwal, nor should any reason be conjectured for its presence that involves its possessor's mode of procuring food, since ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... belt, which seems, in some cases at least, to have had metal edges; but muscularly they were well developed, and the pictures suggest litheness and agility in a high degree. 'One would say a small-boned race, relying more on quickness of limb and brain than on weight and size.' The hair of the men was worn in a somewhat elaborate fashion, being done up in three coils on the top of the head, while the ends of it fell in three long curls upon the shoulders. On the other hand, their dress ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... attention exclusively to the dialogue because he knows there will be no change in the scene. In the story the reader may need to be constantly alert, as when his hero takes a long and perilous journey the scenes may change with the quickness of a kaleidoscope, and yet all be important to the narrative. The more complex the story, the greater the variety in scene, and consequently the greater the opportunities for study. It is interesting work for children to pick out the scenes, to count ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... with the quickness of lightning, to Mrs. Willoughby, whom he startled with his energy, as ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... would have marched against the foe with the stoutest of his father's men-at-arms, and doubtless have acquitted himself as well as any; for what the lads lacked in strength they made up in their marvellous quickness and agility. ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... is your home!" murmured the detective with an uncontrolled quickness which wakened Audrey's old suspicions afresh—and which created a new suspicion, the suspicion that the fellow was simply playing with her. "I assure you I came here to recover; I'd heard it was the finest climate ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... me with his customary quickness; "but I want you to remember as well as to hear. When I have filled this leaf, I shall beg you to keep it about you, and to refer to it ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... skilfully up on the beach and grounded her. Harry Underwood stepped forward to assist me ashore, but Dr. Pettit, with unobtrusive quickness, ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... hands, strength; in the voice, clearness; in the tongue, a distinct articulation of words. The excellences of the mind they considered those which were suitable to the comprehension of virtue by the disposition. And those they divided under the separate heads of nature and morals. Quickness in learning and memory they attributed to nature; each of which was described as a property of the mind and genius. Under the head of "morals" they classed our studies, and, I may say, our habits, which they formed, partly ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... dressed and appeared to be a gentleman, recovered himself with surprising quickness, and ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... I have said, a second lover appeared on the field in this same year, 1839, and the quickness of his wooing is a remarkable testimony to the peculiar fascination which ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... he with quickness, "should I once think that way—" then rising and striking his forehead, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... through a future of familiar possession as it had served in the supreme moment of conquest? I could not go through life, as I had once said, forever pushing a wheel up a hill, and the strength of a shoulder might prove, after all, less effective in the freedom of daily intercourse than the quickness or delicacy of a manner. Would she begin to regret presently, I wondered, the lack in the man she loved of those smaller virtues which in the first rosy glow of romance had seemed to her insignificant ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... grief of mine. It is the death of Mr. Winnington,(1196) whom you only knew as One Of the first men in England, from his parts and from his employment. But I was familiarly acquainted with him, loved and admired him, for he had great good-nature, and a quickness of wit most peculiar to himself: and for his public talents he has left nobody equal to him, as before, nobody was superior to him but my father. The history of his death is a cruel tragedy, but what, to indulge me who am full of it, and want to vent the narration, you must hear. He was ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... toward the assailants, who fled back to the Cherokee towns. Thither Sevier followed them, and went entirely through the Cherokee country to the land of the Creeks, burning the towns and destroying the stores of provisions. He marched with his usual quickness, and the Indians were never able to get together in sufficient numbers to oppose him. When he crossed High Tower River there was a skirmish, but he soon routed the Indians, killing several of their warriors, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... dozen henchmen in linen tunics brought in the steaming dishes fresh from the kitchens. The carver set to and attacked with long sharp knife the gigantic capons which one of the bearers had placed before him. He carved with quickness and dexterity, placing well-chosen morsels on the plates of massive gold which young waiting-maids then ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... know I was troubled how to make it clear to him, and he so different from the other. I seemed to stand midway between the two, and to understand both. Half of me seemed to spring up in joy at the voice of the young foreigner; his lightness, his quickness, the very way he moved his hands, seemed a part of my own nature that I had not learned to use, and now saw reflected in another. I am not sure if I make myself clear, my child; it was a singular feeling. But when I would ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... informant, a white squaw-man, with whom I afterward did some trading, was travelling. One of them in the excitement of the pursuit rode across the end of the thicket; as he did so the great beast sprang at him with wonderful quickness, rising on its hind legs, and knocking over the horse and rider with a single sweep of its terrible fore-paws. It then turned on the fallen man and tore him open, and though the other Indians came promptly to his rescue and slew his assailant, they were not in ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... arms, which are terminated by the hands, and which bear a perfect symmetry one with another. The arms are knit with the shoulders in such a manner that they have a free motion, in that joint. They are besides divided at the elbow and at the wrist that they may fold, bend, and turn with quickness. The arms are of a just length to reach all the parts of the body. They are nervous and full of muscles, that they may, as well as the back, be often in action and sustain the greatest fatigue of all ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... dirty blue, can hardly be distinguished from the surrounding surface. When frightened, it attempts to avoid discovery by feigning death, with outstretched legs, depressed body, and closed eyes: if further molested, it buries itself with great quickness in the loose sand. This lizard, from its flattened body and ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... began, but at this instant she heard a step, which, by its quickness, she knew to be Cecilia's, coming along the passage. "If you love me, Louisa," said Leonora, ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... paused with a companion, as she went by the place, to chat with him—'try and pick up a husband on the way and we'll keep the wedding feast here!' 'Ah bah!' the damsel rejoined in a merry voice, 'more marryers come your way than ours. Tie up the first one that comes and keep him for me!' This quickness to catch and return the ball certainly shows a greater natural or acquired alertness of mind among these Picard peasants than is commonly found in people of the same condition ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... more dead than alive, was conveyed to her home in the Avenue Louise, there to recover her strength with astonishing quickness. This vastly purposeful, indomitable woman, before many hours had passed, was calmly listening to plans for the capture of her daring abductors and the release of her daughter. Friends, overcome with the horror of the hour, ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... solely with a view of relieving himself from his debts, that Mr. Byron paid his addresses to her. A circumstance related, as having taken place before the marriage of this lady, not only shows the extreme quickness and vehemence of her feelings, but, if it be true that she had never at the time seen Captain Byron, is not a little striking. Being at the Edinburgh theatre one night when the character of Isabella was performed by Mrs. Siddons, so affected was ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... to his feet with such remarkable quickness as to overturn the tray of oranges on the stand beside him, and they went rolling over the carpet in all directions, while he clapped his hands and roared again and again with convulsing laughter. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... "The Principles of Geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface by reference to causes now in operation." The essence of Lyell's doctrine is here written so that those who run may read; and it has nothing to do with the quickness or slowness of the past changes of the earth's surface; except in so far as existing analogous changes may go on slowly, and therefore create a presumption in favour of ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... "and although, as he says himself, he has lost some of his quickness of reposte, there are, Monsieur Dessin says, few fencers who could even now treat ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... bound Bucky was at Scottie Deane's side. He looked down at his manacled hands and at the woman who was clasping them in her own, and then he whirled on Billy with the quickness of a cat. ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... and might soon have made a large fortune in London, had he not held fast to his home attachments. He was extremely skilful and clever, with a boyish character that seemed as if it could never grow older; ardent, sensitive, and heedless, with a quickness of sympathy and tenderness of heart that was increased, rather than blunted, by exercise in scenes ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... which obeyed the drawing of a cord and tassel hanging at one side, and thus they could readily be closed with a touch by any one standing in the vestibule as they opened out into the hall on which side was the latch and bolt. I recalled this quaint arrangement with a quickness born of emergency, as one that might serve me now, and speadily possessed myself of the tassel at the extremity of the controlling cord. Thus armed, and praying inwardly for strength and courage, and wherewith to carry out my scheme successfully, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... reproduce itself in others. Children are very delicately sensitive to these influences, they respond unconsciously to what is expected of them, and instinctively they imitate the models set before them. They catch a tone, a gesture, a trick of manner with a quickness that is startling. The influence of mind and thought on mind and thought cannot be so quickly recognized, but tells with as much certainty, and enters more deeply into the character for life. The consideration of this is a great incentive to the acquirement ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... entered not into every part of the administration; that the instances of a high exerted prerogative were not so frequent as to render property sensibly insecure, or reduce the people to a total servitude; that the freedom from faction, the quickness of execution, and the promptitude of those measures which could be taken for offence or defence, made some compensation for the want of a legal and determinate liberty; that as the prince commanded no mercenary army, there was a tacit check on him, which maintained the government ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... by the water, and jump when I give the word. All may depend on your quickness—only be bold, my dear. I will ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... painful illness, and resulted in her present helplessness. But above those little idle, powerless limbs, that lay curled under the long, soft skirt she wore, like a baby's robe, were a beauty and a brightness, a quickness of all possible motion, a dexterous use of hands, and a face of gentle peace and sometimes glory, that were like a benediction on the place that she was in; like the very Holy Ghost in tender form like a dove, resting upon it, and abiding ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the Roman army were mentioned in chap. 77, and those auxiliaries were no doubt of great service to the Romans in this war, since they were accustomed to climbing, ascending heights, and other hardships, from their own mountainous country. Livy, too, praises the quickness, perseverance, and adroitness of the Ligurians in the petty warfare in which they were engaged for many years against the Romans. [508] Egressus est, the same as escendit or evasit, 'he got up.' [509] 'The desire to accomplish difficult things changed his ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... instinctively,—as instinctively as she disliked pain. Her moral nerves shrank from it, just as nerves of the body shrink from suffering; and she recoiled from the suggestion of such a thing with the same involuntary quickness with which we put up the hand to ward off a falling blow, or drop the eyelid to protect an endangered eye. Physicians tell us that there are in men and women such enormous differences in this matter of sensitiveness to physical pain that one person may ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... hasty expressions. After a perusal of the despatches, announcing the king's, or rather the queen's, pleasure that he should speedily repair to the Isle of Man, where an invasion was apprehended from the Scots,—speaking to the Lady Derby with more than ordinary quickness, he said, "My heart, my enemies have now their will, having prevailed with his Majesty to order me to the Isle of Man, as a softer banishment from his presence ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... nourishment. This philosophy is referred to the plagues here mentioned. First, the cause is in the air by means of the darts or beams of Apollo; second, the mules and dogs are said to die sooner than the men, partly from their natural quickness of smell, and partly from their feeding so near the earth whence the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... thinking over again of what we had seen at the Belleclaire Sanatorium. Somehow or other, I could not get out of my mind the recollection of the man rolled in the blanket and trussed up as helpless as a mummy. I wondered whether that alone was sufficient to account for the quickness with which he had been pacified. Then I recalled Mrs. Cranston's remark about her mental alertness and physical weakness. Had it anything to ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... of the spine is another disease originating from the innutrition or softness of the bones. I once saw a child about six years old with palpitation of heart, and quickness of respiration, which began to have a curvature of the spine; I then doubted, whether the palpitation and quick respiration were the cause or consequence of the curvature of the spine; suspecting either that nature had bent the spine outwards to give room to the enlarged heart; or that ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... may sometimes suffer. With respect to what is related, I considered it my duty to 'extenuate nothing, nor set down aught in malice[1152];' and with those lighter strokes of Dr. Johnson's satire, proceeding from a warmth and quickness of imagination, not from any malevolence of heart, and which, on account of their excellence, could not be omitted, I trust that they who are the subject of them have good sense and good temper enough not to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... bearing a shield with the words 'Sans joy' written across it, stopped suddenly in front of the knight's page, then snatched from his arm a shield like his own, bearing the name 'Sansfoy.' The page, overcome by the quickness of the action, did not resist, but a blow on the helmet from the Red Cross Knight made Sansjoy stagger where ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... Dreda made wonderful progress in her studies. Her native quickness of wits stood her in good stead; she learnt easily, and seized nimbly on salient points, so that, though her knowledge was superficial, she was always ready with an answer, and could enlarge so cleverly on what she did know, that the gaps of ignorance ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... into the river, of which the waters, swollen by the rains, carried it away with the quickness of a torrent. The corpse, which floated only for an instant, was swiftly borne off ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... time, in the fall of 1902, the oldest and best workers were Irish girls, with all the wit and quickness of their race. Especially was Maggie Condon a favorite and a leader. She was an extremely quick worker. With the temperament of an idealist, she took a pride in her work, liked to do it well, and was especially successful in turning out a great amount of work. Quicker and quicker she became ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... his life exists in some detail, and may be given in epitome. As a child he was distinguished for his respect to older people, his gentleness, modesty, and quickness of intellect. At nineteen he married and was made a mandarin, being appointed superintendent of the markets, and afterwards placed in charge of the public fields, the sheep and cattle. His industry was remarkable, and so great were his improvements in agriculture that the whole ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... personal ambition, it becomes a sort of Paladin contempt for danger; sometimes a crazy furor. When accompanied by powerful intellect, and strengthened by concentration on a purpose, it makes a great commander—great for the quickness of his comprehension, the suddenness of his resolutions, the rapidity of their execution. When humanized by love, and quickened by religious zeal, it is purified of every selfish thought, and produces the chivalrous missionary, whom neither fire nor flood, neither desert nor pathless wilderness, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... man, and will be the father of coarse children. The lack of the social element in the farmer's life is doubtless a cause of some of its most repulsive characteristics. Men are constituted in such a manner, that constant social contact is necessary to the healthfulness of their sympathies, the quickness of their intellects, and the symmetrical development of their powers. It matters little whether a family be placed in the depths of a Western forest, or upon the top of a New England hill; the result of solitude will be the same in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... was astounded at her quickness and understanding and said to Ibrahim, 'Put off thy clothes.' So he rose and said, 'I call all who are present in this assembly to witness that she is more learned than I and all the learned men.' And he put off his clothes and gave them to her, saying, 'Take ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... "Your quickness saved my life all the same, Ruth. I had not noticed him till you cried out, and then it would have been too late. We have been anxious for you also, Ruth. We hoped that you might be with Mysa, but none saw ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... Follet, delighted with Steve's quickness, "that's the idee. Then I unload it in my barn and ship it as I please to these dry towns. I'm in for the law as a general thing," he added quickly, "but I believe ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... nursed him devotedly. Mary was quite splendid. In her loving quickness she forestalled all Jamie's wants, so that they were satisfied almost before he had realised them. She was always bright and good-tempered and fresh; she performed with constant cheerfulness the little revolting services ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... his eyes; he bowed his head and went back to his business, his prosperity, and his solitude. These experiments were repeated at times. Moreover, Bartley had the tact never to write to him on business without telling him something about his girl, her clever sayings, her pretty ways, her quickness at learning from all her teachers, and so on. When she was eight years old a foreign agent was required in Bartley's business, and Hope agreed to start this agency and keep it going till some more ordinary person could ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... none has ever been erected under merrier circumstances. As there was an abundant supply of food and drink, the workmen never left their work; and amidst their continuous laughter the four walls were run up with incredible quickness, until one day Krespel cried, "Stop!" Then the workmen, laying down trowel and hammer, came down from the scaffoldings and gathered round Krespel in a circle, whilst every laughing face was asking, "Well, and what now?" "Make ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... jaw. In character he is a man of cold persistence and of fiery energy, cautious and yet audacious, weighing his actions well, but carrying them out with the dash which befits a mounted leader. He is remarkable for the quickness of his decision—'can think at a gallop,' as an admirer expressed it. Such was the man, alert, resourceful, and determined, to whom was entrusted the holding back of ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the word "friends" that enlightened the bewildered nobleman, even though quickness in taking a hint was not his most conspicuous attribute. That the voice of gossip had reached the fair American was only too evident; but though considerably annoyed, he could not help feeling at the same time flattered to see the concern he ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... however, very little provision is made for the acquirement of a facility in silent reading; this, it is thought, will result as a by-product of the regular training in oral reading. Almost the reverse of this is true. Ease and flexibility of articulation, quickness in catching the drift of ideas, and readiness in varying the tones of the voice in the utterance of words so as impressively to portray their latent sentiment,—all this is possible with those alone to whom difficult word-forms, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... was right. The sailors had honest countenances, but they looked horribly stupid. Could men with such vacuous grins, such an air of imbecile good-nature, be capable of acting wisely in any terrible crisis?—could they have nerve and readiness, quickness, decision, all those grand qualites which are needed by the seaman who has to contend with the fury of ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... were two or three "workers"—men of power and ability in their several vocations; indeed, there was the general over-proportion of intellect, characteristic of such Scotch gatherings, and often in excess of minor social qualities. There was the usual foreigner, with Latin quickness, eagerness, and misapprehending adaptability. And there was the solitary Englishman—perhaps less generously equipped than the others—whom everybody differed from, ridiculed, and then looked up to and imitated. There were the half-dozen smartly frocked ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... center can have the benefit of expert instruction at small cost. I might work with a pupil for several months in the ordinary way—without the records—and not be able to teach him even with half the accuracy and quickness obtainable by ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... right. He was not wanting in courage; but no man from the moon could have been more an alien on those sidewalks. He was naturally diligent, active, quick-witted, and of good, though maybe a little too scholarly address; quick of temper, it is true, and uniting his quickness of temper with a certain bashfulness,—an unlucky combination, since, as a consequence, nobody had to get out of its way; but he was generous in fact and in speech, and never held malice a moment. But, besides the heavy odds which his small secret seemed to be against him, stopping him from ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... long interval; there is therefore a whole world of events which we cannot see. Owing to this limit, in our unit of time perception, we also cannot perceive events which are taking place beyond a certain quickness, they become blurred and give the impression of continuity, and constitute another world of events lost to us. For the same reason there is a whole world of sensation lost to us by our limited unit of sound perception; we cannot follow separate sound-events ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... and snatched up the unconscious girl just as the stag's antlers made the first savage rip at her riding-dress. The whole deed was done in the twinkling of an eye, and done single-handed. Morgan's quickness and cool daring had proved easily equal to the crisis, and loud cries of "Well done, Johnnie!" greeted the popular hero. For the nonce the quarry was left to the dogs, and Windybank, glancing round, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... as we were tracking up the last part of the Boiler Rapid, Billy at the bow, Rob on the shore, the line broke, and we were only saved from another dreadful disaster by Billy's nerve and quickness; for he fearlessly leaped overboard, had the luck to find bottom, and held the canoe's head with all his strength. The rope was mended and a safe way was found. That time I realized the force of an Indian reply to a trader who sought to sell him a cheap ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Marcos' mind that he must live at all costs. There was no one to care for Juanita in the troubled times that were coming. Juanita was his only thought. And he fought for his life with skill and that quickness of perception which is the real secret of ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... animals: Nor if it had, would it, in that state and incapacity of transferring itself from one place to another, be bettered by them. What good would sight and hearing do to a creature that cannot move itself to or from the object, wherein at a distance it perceives good or evil? And would not quickness of sensation be an inconvenience to an animal that must be still where chance has once placed it, and there receive the afflux of colder or warmer, clean or foul water, as it ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... and a yellow feather to trail across his shoulder, for he bears a jaunty dignity. His is a careless grace—the swagger of a pleasant vagabond—a bravado that snaps its fingers at danger. His body has the quickness of a cat, his eye a flash of humor—kindly, unless necessity sharpens it. As poets were thick in those golden days we suspect that the roar of the ocean sets rhymes jingling in his heart. He is, however, almost ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... temperament and conditions with which he came into immediate contact proved to him that there was great dissatisfaction with that idea. People did not cleave to each other until death; and in thousands of cases where they did, they did not want to. Quickness of mind, subtlety of idea, fortuitousness of opportunity, made it possible for some people to right their matrimonial and social infelicities; whereas for others, because of dullness of wit, thickness of comprehension, poverty, and lack of charm, there was no escape from the slough of their ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... suddenly he lifts his head as one does who is listening to a longed-for voice, and in himself he finds the phrases that he longs for. Something within has set itself, so it seems, the task of bringing the right associations into consciousness. What we call quickness of mind, energy of mind, is largely ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... shepherd, or one considered under that character. The form of this imitation is dramatic or narrative, or mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners not too polite nor too rustic; the thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and passion, but that short and flowing; the expression humble, yet as pure as the language will afford; neat but not ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... finally enjoyed conversing with her on the most serious matters of State. Sir Archibald Alison, in describing an evening with her and Prince Albert, says: "The Queen took her full share in the conversation, and I could easily see, from her quickness of apprehension. And the questions she put to those around her, that she possessed uncommon talent, a great desire for information, and, in particular, great rapidity of thought—a faculty often possessed by persons of her rank, and arising not merely from natural ability, but from the habit of conversing ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... with aid; a woman with a temper, but a friend to tie to in time of stress. She has the education of a good school, and what is infinitely better, the cultivation of an observing mind. She is quick with tongue and pen, but her quickness is so tempered by unquestioned friendliness that it fastens people to her as with a cord. She overflows with interests of every description, but she is never too busy to listen sympathetically to a child or a friend. She is the ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... those affairs had become entirely latent. He was of a very firm, not to say obstinate disposition, but there was no brute-like rebellion or recklessness in his nature; the human sensibilities predominated, and he was anxious to acquire Mr. Stelling's approbation by showing some quickness at his lessons, if he had known how ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... he immediately undeceived. The stir and speed of the journey, and the restlessness that goes to bed with him as he tries to sleep between two days of noisy progress, fever him, and stimulate his dull nerves into something of their old quickness and sensibility. And so he can enjoy the faint autumnal splendour of the landscape, as he sees hill and plain, vineyard and forest, clad in one wonderful glory of fairy gold, which the first great winds of ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... emotional misinterpretation. It has been observed that, while contemning Robespierre, he has extenuated the guilt of Danton as one of the main authors of the September massacres, and, more generally, that "his quickness and brilliancy made him impatient of systematic thought." But his histories remain the best illuminations of fact in our language. The French Revolution is a series of flame-pictures; every page is on fire; we ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Although weary with that awful battle, I was still the younger and stronger man, though at first he well-nigh mastered me by his skill and quickness. At least we parted friends. Look, he gave me this," and he showed her the great emerald badge which the ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... happy words, he could tell a story, or etch out a character, or condense an argument or statement. Beyond all men I have ever known, he had the gift of seizing rapidly in every question the central argument, the essential fact or distinction; and of all his mental characteristics, quickness and soundness of judgment seemed to me the most conspicuous. I have never met with anyone with whom it was so possible to discuss with profit many great questions in a short time. No one, too, could know him intimately ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Garrison. He had drawn his revolver with a quickness that was startling. "Up with ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... on Patrickmas day (March 17), 1777, and early gave tokens of extraordinary quickness and intelligence. He had also his full share of ambition; and of his strong sense and forethought there is a proof in the fact, that, knowing that his father could afford him no pecuniary aid, and that he must depend upon his own exertions, he opened a public school ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... moment in sending to all the inns in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the Hague, but in vain—he could find no trace of them. He began to despair of success, when the idea struck him that a young French page of his, remarkable for his quickness and intelligence, might be employed with advantage. He promised to reward him handsomely if he succeeded in finding the young woman, who was the cause of so much anxiety, and gave him the description of her person. The page visited all the public places ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... There is a quickness of perception in some, a nicety in the discernment of character, a natural penetration, in short, which no experience in others can equal, and Lady Russell had been less gifted in this part of understanding than her young friend. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... felt that I was as much in the midst of something new and startling, as if I had been instantaneously transported to a distant and unknown country." He then speaks of the "quiet, good-natured, inoffensive" character of these copper-coloured natives, and of their quickness of hand and skill, and continues: "Their figures are generally superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest statue as at these living illustrations of the beauty of the human form." ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... intelligence in the player is required, which the majority do not as a general rule possess; but to excel in base running such mental qualifications are required as only a small minority are found to possess. Presence of mind, prompt action on the spur of the moment; quickness of perception, and coolness and nerve are among the requisites of a successful base runner. Players habitually accustomed to hesitate to do this, that or the other, in attending to the varied points of a game, can never become ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... Never before had he faced such a galaxy of foes. His one chance lay in quickness: to prevent the swarming crew getting their hold till at least he had ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... perhaps-like her!—dismissing the chariot and hiring a yacht for a voyage round the coast and up the Thames. She had an extraordinary love of the sea, yet she preferred soldiers to sailors. A woman? Never one of them more a woman! But it came of her quickness to take the colour and share the tastes of the man to whom ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Goodson, et al., many of whom are intellectual giants. Most all are exceedingly regular in their habits, and at least two are strong temperance advocates. Intellectually, pianists of this class represent a very remarkable kind of mentality. One is impressed with the surprising quickness with which their brains operate even in ordinary conversation. Speaking in alien languages, they find comparatively little difficulty in expressing themselves with rapidity and fluency. Very few great ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... taut as a violin string—due to his acute physical senses and his thin, sensitive skin—plus his instantaneous quickness make the Thoracic what is ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... foresight.] This rapidity of growth has entailed some important consequences. In the first place it obliges the city to make great outlays of money in order to get immediate results. Public works must be undertaken with a view to quickness rather than thoroughness. Pavements, sewers, and reservoirs of some sort must be had at once, even if inadequately planned and imperfectly constructed; and so, before a great while, the work must be done over ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... environment,—retaining only that indescribable something which to an experienced eye tells of hereditary refinement of habit and of mind:—a natural grace, a thorough-bred ease and elegance of movement, a quickness ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... Bill, with great respect. Every man heard the title, stopped his tongue and his knife-blade, and raised his eyes; a few smiled—Hence Sturgill grinned. Mayhall stared, and Bill's left eye closed and opened with lightning quickness in a most portentous wink. Mayhall straightened his shoulders—seeing the game, as did the crowd at once: Flitter Bill was impressing that messenger in case he had some dangerous card ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... proceeded Imlac, "originally intended that I should have no other education than such as might qualify me for commerce; and discovering in me great strength of memory and quickness of apprehension, often declared his hope that I should be some time ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... of such vivacity and wonderful quickness," replied Abou Hassan, "that you scarcely give me time to explain my design. Have but a little patience, and you shall find that you will be ready enough to die such a death as I intend; for surely ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... a few arpeggios and scales, or a brilliant etude will put the hand in condition. After one has rested, or had a vacation, some foundational exercises and finger movements may be necessary, to limber up the muscles and regain control and quickness. One may often have to review first principles, but technical facility is soon regained if it has once been thoroughly acquired. If one has stopped practise for quite a period, the return is slower, and needs to be ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... miserable wight! And at the same time I dropped a piece of gold into his grotesque cap, which he had taken off in his begging. I then trotted on; but he screamed after me, and suddenly with inconceivable quickness was at my side. I urged my horse into a gallop; the imp ran too, making at the same time strange contortions with his body, half-ridiculous, half-horrible, and holding up the gold-piece, he cried, at every leap, 'False money!, false coin!, false ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... mind that he must live at all costs. There was no one to care for Juanita in the troubled times that were coming. Juanita was his only thought. And he fought for his life with skill and that quickness of perception which is the real secret of ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... a scene of violence beyond the power of words to express. A great roar, which shook the very heavens, went up from the cavernous throat, and well it was for Sigurd that he darted aside with the quickness of light. The huge coils unwound and contracted again in the monster's agony, and the furious lashing of his enormous tail utterly destroyed the surrounding vegetation, while his cruel talons, all powerless now to do aught else, ploughed deep furrows in the hard and ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... becoming aware that the gods were approaching, threw his net into the fire, and ran to conceal himself in the river. When the gods entered the house, Kvasir, who was the most distinguished among them all for his quickness and penetration, traced out in the hot embers the vestiges of the net which had been burnt, and told Odin that it must be an invention to catch fish. Whereupon they set to work and wove a net after the model they saw imprinted in the ashes. This net, when finished, ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... amiable as sheep—regarded her with a reserved curiosity; and the moose calves, the strangeness of her form and color once worn off, treated her with great respect. Though she was so much smaller and lighter than they, her quickness on her feet and her extremely handy way of butting made her easily master of them all. Even the supercilious young cow who had been so disagreeable to her at first grew indifferently friendly, and all was peace around the secluded ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... respecting Johnson and others, was indeed an intellectual treat of no ordinary description. Mr. Cradock and Mr. Nichols possessed a similarity in taste and judgment. They were both endowed with peculiar quickness of comprehension, and with powers and accuracy of memory rarely equalled." One may say of the liberal minded Mr. Nichols, what Mr. Murphy said of Dr. Johnson, that his love of literature was a passion that stuck to his last stand. The works of ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... question of his father this time. Perhaps he had seen, with a child's quickness, that it had already made his father uncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as if it was quite an old one to him, and had ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... adjusted to him, he performs it as a matter of routine. There are, however, stations which are more or less provocative of tact and ready-wittedness, and which require those qualities which schoolmasters cannot give nor Civil Service examiners take away; such as tact, promptitude, quickness in emergency, good-natured ease, patience, and pluck above all. These, I say, are great gifts, and it would be well if we knew how to find them. Let us take, by way of illustration, the Messenger Service. These Foreign Office Mercuries, who travel the whole globe at a pace only short of the telegraph, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... so daintily, hung upon Cambridge so beseechingly, imploring her to prepare a cool mash for Mistress Dulcie's finger points, the moment they were all gone—that Dulcie could have cried for his tenderness of heart, and quickness and keenness ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... short tour to Negroponte, in which his noble friend was unable to accompany him, Mr. Hobhouse expresses strongly the deficiency of which he is sensible, from the absence, on this occasion, of "a companion, who, to quickness of observation and ingenuity of remark, united that gay good-humour which keeps alive the attention under the pressure of fatigue, and softens the aspect of every difficulty and danger." In some lines, too, of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... fixed for an altitude test," he said dazedly; "this ship was to be used, and he was to find her ceiling. He saw what the others were getting, and he flew himself through on a jet of pure oxygen—" He stopped in utter admiration of the quickness of thought that could outwit death in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... driven by a Numidian who was crowned with a diadem of plumes. He hurled javelins with frightful quickness, giving at intervals a long shrill whistle. The great beasts, docile as dogs, kept an eye on ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... ripens faster, into deep and serious subjects: and that her range of literature should be, not more, but less frivolous; calculated to add the qualities of patience and seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought and quickness of wit; and also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. I enter not now into any question of choice of books; only let us be sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap as they fall out of the package of the circulating library, wet with the last and lightest spray ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... physical and mental power which were afterwards to render him dangerous to the integrity of the colony itself. In a temperate climate such a change would have been so gradual as to escape observation for a long period; —in the tropics it was effected with a quickness that astounds by its revelation of the natural ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... And it was their great effort to keep him busy enough to prevent a real appreciation of his isolated life. Their plans were made skilfully and carried out to the letter. Wherefore the fact that their end was not actually accomplished, could be charged only to the merciless quickness of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... and Pastorellas come down. One of these two is excessively in pain, that the ugly being called Time will make wrinkles in spite of the lead forehead-cloth; and therefore hides, with the gaiety of her air, the volubility of her tongue, and quickness of her motion, the injuries which it has done her. The other lady is but two years behind her in life, and dreads as much being laid aside as the former, and consequently has taken the necessary ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... alteration. So that, though the mind and attention are now given almost exclusively to the things of God, yet when the things of the world have to be dealt with, this is accomplished with extraordinary efficiency and quickness, though very distasteful to ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... have been born with a pencil in his hand, and by constant practice, added to a natural quickness, he acquired that extraordinary facility of hand which, while in his subsequent career, it tended to corrupt art, materially aided his fame and success. He was also indefatigable in his application. Bellori says, "he made twelve different ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... dexterity. It is wonderful to see them manage their bark canoes, which are extremely light. These little boats are narrow at both ends, a little wider in the middle, and generally about nine or ten feet long. They move with surprising quickness in the midst of the angry waves. Two persons are sufficient to propel them, and it can be done by one. When fishing eels they stand at the end of their canoes and spear the eels with a long stick, to the end of which is fastened a sharp ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... to carry on his back. Several joined us from the two English stations on the river, and we then amounted to a very large party; all in high spirits, and anxious to proceed on our journey. When our natives had distributed the luggage, they loaded themselves, which they did with both skill and quickness; for a New Zealander is never at a loss for cords or ropes. Their plan is to gather a few handfuls of flax, which they soon twist into a very good substitute: with this material they formed slings, with which they ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... less than medium height, thin and agile. In all his actions he showed quickness and alertness. He had large, black, piercing eyes, his eyebrows were curved and thick; his nose straight and long; his cheeks somewhat sunken; his mouth, not particularly well formed but expressive and graceful. From early youth ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... behind her; "you are much too good a girl for other people's plagues to visit you." Then, as he saddled his pleasant old nose with the tranquil span of spectacles, the smile on his lips and the sigh of his breast arrived at a quiet little compromise. He was proud of his daughter, her quickness and power to get the upper turn of words with him; but he grieved at her not having any deep impressions, even after his very best sermons. But her mother always told him not to be in any hurry, for even she herself had felt no very profound impressions until she married ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... he, laughing. "Verily thou hast come at my meaning with a commendable quickness. Well, and if thou wert the wife o' a ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... a consequence of this physical sensibility; indeed, wit is nothing more than the facility which some beings, of the human species possess, of seizing with promptitude, of developing with quickness, a whole, with its different relations to other objects. Genius, is the facility with which some men comprehend this whole, and its various relations when they are difficult to be known, but useful to forward great and mighty ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... of his system. But it was the arsenic that saved his life. He had at last to come and lie down beside me. We heard the sound of rapid firing in the distance; and suddenly two men entered our enclosure, with revolvers in each hand, and shot down our defenders with an extraordinary quickness of aim. They were Harris ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... fox. Now was the time for the fox to show his boasted wit, for his position was one of danger. That rash-headed Duke of Burgundy was never the man to be played with, and in his rage was as perilous as dynamite. It was, in truth, an occasion fitted to draw out all the quickness and shrewdness of mind of Louis, those faculties on which he prided himself! To gain friends in the castle he bribed the household of the duke. As for himself he remained quiet and apparently easy and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... position; comparison of father and son; the father's use of grotesque rhymes in teaching him; qualities he inherited from his mother; weak points in regard to health throughout his life; characteristics in early childhood; great quickness in learning; an amusing prank; passion for his mother; fondness for animals; his collections; experiences of school life; extensive reading in his father's library; early acquaintance with old books; his early attempts in verse; spurious poems in circulation; 'Incondita', the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... meant everlasting slaughter, and the fiercest races of fighters would be just the ones to survive and perpetuate their kind. Those most successful primitive men, from whom civilized peoples are descended, must have excelled in treachery and cruelty, as in quickness of wit and strength of will. That moral sense which makes it seem wicked to steal and murder was scarcely more developed in them than in tigers or wolves. But to all this there was one exception. The family supplied motives ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... as he was bid, and then Viola, who of course knew perfectly well that she had left no ring behind her, saw with a woman's quickness that Olivia loved her. Then she went back to the Duke, very sad at heart for her lover, and ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... Locke, who asserts that "Wit lies in an assemblage of ideas, and putting them together with quickness and vivacity, whenever can be found any resemblance and congruity whereby to make up pleasant pictures ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... was slow to come, but she did not seem disturbed by that. The hands of the clock above her seemed to move with the unbelievable quickness characteristic of clock hands when there is no other activity in the room, and she observed them calmly. Soon they pointed to the quarter hour, they passed it. She looked faintly worried then. The telephone rang again; she pressed ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... Curiously she watched the loop open with beautiful precision, as the coils were loosed and the long, thin line lengthened through the air. It seemed to move so slowly—those wickedly lowered horns were so near! Then she saw the rider's right hand move with flashlike quickness to the saddle horn, as he threw his weight back, and the horse, with legs braced and hoofs plowing the ground, stopped in half his own length, and set his weight against the weight of the steer. The flexible riata straightened as a rod of iron, the steer's head jerked sideways; his horns ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... buttoning his vest as he caressed her and that his eyes wandered to the clock with a wary alertness. "Perhaps you'd better wait and tell me at the table," he went on briskly. "I'm all ready to go down." He pulled his coat on with his astonishing quickness, and ran downstairs. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... as she ceased, and with her usual quickness of motion, jumped out of bed to get a handkerchief. Turning on the electric light, she went to the chair over which hung the dotted dress. She remembered having slipped a clean handkerchief into its pocket before going ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... the most prominent men in France. His gigantic physique, half-broken by disease and imprisonment, his shaggy eyebrows, his heavy head, gave him an impressive, though sinister, appearance. And for quickness in perceiving at once a problem and its solution, as well as for gifts of reverberating oratory, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... a magnificent show of strength, quickness and accuracy. The sparks hissed and crackled from the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... me, gradually increasing in quickness and volume with an irresistibly definite progression. When it was quite near the sound began to move in my nerves and blood, and to urge me ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... becoming an expert in the line had chosen for his calling. On the other hand Jack began to believe that he was a little too slow-witted ever to make a shining success as a fighting aviator, where skill must be backed by astonishing quickness of mind and body, as well as something else within the heart ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... changed its place to somewhere else?" asked the lawyer, speaking with more than usual quickness, and turning over ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... among the works of the British poets. There is not a year in which hundreds of verses as good as any that he ever wrote are not sent in for the Newdigate prize at Oxford and for the Chancellor's medal at Cambridge. His mind had indeed great quickness and vigour, but not that kind of quickness and vigour which produces great dramas or odes; and it is most unjust to him that his loan of Honour and his Epistle on the Battle of the Boyne should be placed side by side with Comus and Alexander's Feast. Other eminent statesmen and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... like the rush of a cobra's head past his temple, nipping his hat and striking the opposite wall with force enough to kill two or three men. It was the yataghan of Mustad, who had drawn and hurled it with inconceivable quickness and with an aim so unerring that it would have brained the unsuspecting American but for ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... across the pond, and then decided that it was time to go home, and began making their parting thanks accordingly; so that in a few moments every one was gone but Dr. Barnett and his sister; and that sister, with feminine quickness, understood that this moment might be the very one her brother wanted, so she engaged Kittie and Kat in a lively conversation, and together they all went up stairs for ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... execution is simplicity. The more unpretending, quiet, and retiring the means, the more impressive their effect. Any ostentation, brilliancy, or pretension of touch,—any exhibition of power or quickness, merely as such, above all, any attempt to render lines attractive at the expense of their ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... moons before he could swing by his hands and hunt for his food in the tree-tops? He might have learned after awhile where the wild paw-paws hang thickest, and where the sweetest, plumpest bananas grow; but when would he ever have mastered all the wood-lore of the forest folk,—or gained the quickness of eye and ear and nose that belongs to all the wise, wild creatures? Oh, how I longed to see him at the mercy of our old enemies, the Snake-people! One of those pythons, for instance, "who could slip along the branches as quietly as moss grows." That would have given him a worse ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... not love Buonaparte, she feels no repugnance. But can she meet his wishes or fulfil his desires? "I admire the general's courage; the extent of his information about all manner of things, concerning which he talks equally well; the quickness of his intelligence, which makes him catch the thought of another even before it is expressed: but I confess I am afraid of the power he seems anxious to wield over all about him. His piercing scrutiny has in it something strange and inexplicable, that ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... law. The only outsiders who saw the shooting were friends of Hagan's; there was bad blood between us. They'd sworn to do for me. And they would. I shot Hagan with his own gun. He pulled it on me, and I turned it into him, by the greatest piece of quickness and good luck that ever I had. And somehow—somehow—I couldn't see myself swinging for that, or going to prison for life. And I saw my chance and took it. I told the whole thing to the minister that married us; he believed me, and so would any one that knew me then—except Hagan's ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... down with a loud "whish-sh-sh!" He dropped almost perpendicularly, grazing the squirrel so closely, that all three looked for it in his talons as he flew off again. Not so, however. The squirrel had been upon his guard; and, as the hawk swooped down, had doubled around the tree with the quickness of a flash of lightning. By the guidance of his rudder-like tail the hawk soon turned, and flew round to that side of the tree on which the squirrel had now settled. A few strokes of his powerful wings soon enabled ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... give any direct answer, saying they were making fun of him. Pat was then introduced, and the question being propounded to him: "What should I be like?" says he; "why, like to get could, to be sure, your honours." "This," says he, "they call mother wit; and the most illiterate have a quickness in parrying the effect of a question by an evasive answer. I recollect hearing Sir John Fielding giving an instance of this, in the case of an Irish fellow who was brought before him when sitting as a magistrate at Bow ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... the prince asked when Ned had concluded his story. "It seems to me that this lad has shown a courage, a presence of mind, and a quickness of decision that would be an honour to older men. The manner in which he escaped from the hands of Von Aert, one of the craftiest as well as of the most cruel of the Council of Blood, was excellent; and had he then, after obtaining ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... Situation of the Parts, the Retention of the Body, and the regular Motion of the Wrist: The Situation requires this advantageous Point of all the Parts, to communicate Freedom and Vigour to the Action, that they may act with Quickness. In order to retain the Body, it is necessary that it be always in it's perfect Situation, during the Motions previous to the Thrust; and if the Thrust consist of one Time only, the Wrist ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... which the Phœnicians and Egyptians followed him. They have more vitality, more spiritual force, than any other creature; of a fiery nature, shown by the rapidity of their motions, without the limbs of other animals. They assume many shapes and attitudes, and dart with extraordinary quickness and force. When they have reached old age, they throw off that age and are young again, and increase in size and strength, for a ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... falls in love with a plough-boy at first-sight, which she certainly would not have done, but that some preternatural agent whispered to her, he was a young man of birth. But whether this magical information came from the palpitation of her heart, or the quickness of her eye, she has not said.—A reader will, however, gladly impute the cause of her sudden passion to magic, rather than to the want ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... would you collect the vessels you have mentioned, and in the manner you have named, if you do not deem my inquiry indiscreet?" demanded the baronet, with quickness. ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he came again, bowed politely, fetched a bit of paper out of his waistcoat-pocket and sat down on a chair by the stove. This visit annoyed her: with the quickness with which small-minded people weigh and think over a matter, her eyes went to the window to see if anybody had observed him come in and was likely to set evil tongues a-clacking. It was almost bound ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... Aunt Maria, who was a compassionate woman at heart, and who only lacked somewhat in quickness of sympathy, perhaps by reason ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... receiving even his food until the meanest white had satisfied his appetite, submissive, unrepining, laborious and obedient—the highest eulogium that all these patient and unobtrusive qualities could obtain, was a reluctant acknowledgment that he had "no sa'ce." His quickness and courage saved the John, nevertheless; and I have always said it, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... well dressed and appeared to be a gentleman, recovered himself with surprising quickness, ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... uncle himself isn't here." Meantime, covered dishes were brought in for the feast. Then the stranger saw what nobody else could perceive, that the good food was abstracted from the dishes with wonderful quickness, and worse put in its place. It went just the same with the jugs and bottles. Then the stranger asked for the master of the house, greeted him politely, and said, "Don't be offended that I have come to the feast as an uninvited stranger." "You are welcome," ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... pointing out that so old a creature would probably not have such a fine set of teeth, and Michelangelo, taking the hint, in a moment had not only knocked out a tooth or two but—and here his observation told—hollowed the gums and cheeks a little in sympathy. Lorenzo was so pleased with his quickness and skill that he received him into his house as the companion of his three sons: of Piero, who was so soon and so disastrously to succeed his father, but was now a high-spirited youth; of Giovanni, who, as Pope Leo X many years after, was to give Michelangelo the commission ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... poets, who allege that all vain and deceitful dreams lie hid and in covert under the leaves which are spread on the ground—by reason that the leaves fall from the trees in the autumnal quarter. For the natural fervour which, abounding in ripe, fresh, recent fruits, cometh by the quickness of its ebullition to be with ease evaporated into the animal parts of the dreaming person—the experiment is obvious in most—is a pretty while before it be expired, dissolved, and evanished. As for your drink, you are to have it of the fair, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... escape. It is notorious, that he was never known to have a dollar in his life; to swear an oath, or drink a drop of spirits. As to his ignorance, he certainly never had the advantages of education, but he can read and write, (it was taught him by his parents,) and for natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension, is surpassed by few men I have ever seen. As to his being a coward, his reason as given for not resisting Mr. Phipps, shews the decision of his character. When he saw Mr. Phipps present his gun, he said he knew it was impossible for him to escape as the woods ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... in the Governor—to judge from the only picture of him which remains—was unmistakable. Delicate features, small, beautifully shaped hands and feet, were accompanied in my mother by a French vivacity and quickness, an overflowing energy, which never forsook her through all her trials and misfortunes. In the Governor, the same physical characteristics make a rather decadent and foppish impression—as of an old stock run to seed. The stock had been reinvigorated in my mother, and one ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... necessary for the operator worked with uncanny quickness of hand. One fleeting glance at the scroll, a lightning adjustment of dials in the torpedo, a touch upon a tiny button, and a messenger was upon its way. But quick as he was, Seaton's flying fingers kept up ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... this: that death had come far too soon, putting an end to his plans to live, to act, to succeed, to make a great and a good place for himself in this world before he should leave it for another. Out of this a second idea now liberated itself with incredible quickness and spread through him like a living flame: it was his lifelong attitude of victory, his lifelong determination that no matter what opposed him he must conquer. Young as he was, this triumphant habit had already yielded him its due result that growth of character ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... of the Duke of Marlborough's finances, he could not possibly lay out any such sum on Blenheim. Monsieur Bertrand would not give up the point, but repeated his assertion. On which Buonaparte said, with quickness, "Bah! c'est impossible." "Oh!" said Bertrand, much offended, "if you are to reply in that manner, there is an end of all argument;" and for some time would not converse with him. Buonaparte, so far from taking umbrage, did all he could to soothe him and restore him to good-humour, which ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... got to the end in time to see the really remarkable feat of Abernethy jumping on to the wolf, thrusting his gloved hand into its mouth, and mastering it then and there. He never used a knife or a rope in taking these wolves, seizing them by sheer quickness and address and thrusting his hand into the wolf's mouth in such a way that it lost all power to bite. You would have loved Tom Burnett, the son of the big cattle man. He is a splendid fellow, about thirty years old, and just the ideal of what a ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... be wanted for recovery. When, therefore, the servant in livery opened the door, which he did, as Frank thought somewhat suddenly, she was able to be standing on her legs before she was caught. The quickness with which she sprung from her position, and the facility with which she composed not her face only, but the loose lock of her hair and all her person, for the reception of the coming visitor, was ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... For over and above the natural ease and dignity which accompanies physical beauty, and the modesty, self-restraint, and deep earnestness which he had acquired under the discipline of the Laura, his Greek character was developing itself in all its quickness, subtlety, and versatility, until he seemed to Hypatia some young Titan, by the side of the flippant, hasty, and insincere talkers who made ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... prowling about, asking the boys what they thought of it, and whether I was like to be killed, because of my mother's trouble. But finding now that I had foughten three-score fights already, he came up to me woefully, in the quickness of my breathing, while I sat on the knee of my second, with a piece of spongious coralline to ease me of my bloodshed, and he says in my ears, as if he was clapping spurs ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... good boys, about noon like men, and in the afternoon like devils.[314] In the spring of 1757 he sailed for England, and was for a time at Falmouth; whence Colonel Matthew Sewell, fearing that he might see and learn too much, wrote to the Earl of Holdernesse: "The Baron has great penetration and quickness of apprehension. His long service under Marshal Saxe renders him a man of real consequence, to be cautiously observed. His circumstances deserve compassion, for indeed they are very melancholy, and I much doubt of his being ever perfectly cured." He was afterwards a long time at Bath, for the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... passengers who were enjoying the battle immensely. At this moment he put his fingers to his teeth and uttered a long, sharp whistle. "Ho! Lawyer Ed!" he shouted. The man on the bridge started. His angry face, with the quickness of lightning, ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... first two years was routine and devoid of excitement, except for occasional strenuous experiences the result of Mr. Derham's brusqueness and quickness to resent anything that he deemed an attempt to take advantage of, or put a slight upon him. He was the sort of man that makes a steadfast friend or a bitter enemy, with no room for anything ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... child led and Van Landing followed. In and out of stores they went with quickness and decision, and soon on the seat and on the floor of the cab boxes and bundles of many shapes and sizes were piled, and then Carmencita said there should be ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... turn, I received my bucket of sand at the mouth of the tunnel, and walked slowly away with it. The most disagreeable part was in turning my back to the guard. Could I have faced him, I had sufficient confidence in my quickness of perception, and talents as a dodger, to imagine that I could make it difficult for him to hit me. But in walling with my back to him I was wholly at his mercy. Fortune, however, favored us, and we were allowed to go on with our work—night ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... whom I am writing lived on there quietly; things without thus ministering to him, as he sat daily at the window with the birdcage hanging below it, and his mother taught him to read, wondering at the ease with which he learned, and at the quickness of his memory. The perfume of the little flowers of the lime-tree fell through the air upon them like rain; while time seemed to move ever more slowly to the murmur of the bees in it, till it almost stood still on June afternoons. How insignificant, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the old books of natural history, you will find they say that when the mongoose fights the snake and happens to get bitten, he runs off and eats some herb that cures him. That is not true. The victory is only a matter of quickness of eye and quickness of foot,—snake's blow against mongoose's jump,—and as no eye can follow the motion of a snake's head when it strikes, that makes things much more wonderful than any magic herb. Rikki-tikki knew he was a young mongoose, and ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... have heard Captain Clements say he as a boy heard as many as seven or eight old men each giving the particulars of what he saw then. One saw a shipload of horses hauled up to the quay, and the horses walked out all harnessed, and the quickness with which each man knew his horse and mounted it surprised them. Another old man said: "I helped to get on shore the horses that were thrown overboard, and swam on shore guided by only a single rope running from the ship to the shore"; and another would describe the rigging ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... presently flames burst out. Now they ran up the trees, now along the tall lank grass dried by the heat. They darted from tree to tree—the bush (as the forest is called) was on fire. The flames spread with fearful quickness. ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... all day. If I had been pleased with what I saw of the Officers before, I was more so to-day. Their eagerness to hear, and quickness to understand, the readiness with which they assented to every call and everything laid before them, was delightful. No body of men more simple or apparently ready for action ever sat ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... of health, fell into a galloping consumption. As soon as she apprehended the danger with which her life was threatened, she prepared every thing for her removal to London; but as she did not expect ever to return, this took more time than the quickness of her decay could well allow. The hasty approach of her dissolution affected her extremely on the account of her little niece, and she often expressed her concern in terms intelligible to her who was the occasion of it, who gathered ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... in awe of him. He was not as heavy as of old, but there was more firmness in his face and figure. Perhaps it was his clothes that had given him a strange new grace, for in the old days he was a ponderous, slow-moving fellow. Now there was a lightness in his step and quickness in his every motion. Had I not known him, I should have seen in the scrupulous part in his hair a suggestion of the foppish. But I knew him, and while I liked him best with his old tousled head, and tanned face, and homely hickory shirt, ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... any emergency, and keep out of an undignified scuffle, the means are most easily afforded him by the art, which Pythagoras founded. Apart from this, boxing exercises every muscle in the body, and gives a wonderful quickness to eye and hand. These same remarks apply, though in a minor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... approached that bull among car-warriors, viz., Vasusena, when they beheld the latter deeply afflicted with the shafts of that foremost hero of Sini's race. That force, however, vast as the ocean, assailed by foes possessed of great quickness viz., the Pandava warriors headed by the sons of Drupada, fled away from the field. At that time a great carnage occurred of men and cars and steeds and elephants. Then those two foremost of men, viz., Arjuna ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... last quarter of an hour had here and there been piercing the greyness, made fitful streaks across the convent wall, causing some awe-stricken spectators to start timidly. But soon there was a wider parting, and with a gentle quickness, like a smile, a stream of brightness poured itself on the crystal vase, and then spread itself over Savonarola's ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... eyes as it saw David and Jonathan walking together across the fields that afternoon. The Den, with native quickness of perception, instantly snuffed a battle in the air, and dogged the heels of the champions ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... horizontally, forming a smooth bottom or interior. In external form it is a shapeless ball about 8 or 10 inches in diameter, and has an unfinished opening at the side. The birds build with astonishing quickness, picking up the leaves one after another from the ground just beneath the nest. When fresh the eggs are fleshy white, becoming pure white when emptied; they are large for the size of the bird, rather stumpy ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... momentary danger of losing his life, if he relaxed in the least his vigilance and caution, because a wild steer is naturally ferocious. Even in cutting them out of the round up I have known them to get mad and attack the cowboys who only saved themselves by the quickness of their horses, or the friendly intervention of a comrade who happened to be near to rope the maddened long horn, and thus divert his attention to other things. But in the case of the 7 Y-L steer such intervention is against the rules, and the cowboy who ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... false reasoning with more quickness; but unluckily he called in Wit at the exposure; and Wit, I am sorry to say, held the lowest place in his household. He sadly mistook the qualities of his mind in attempting the facetious; or, rather, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... regarded and practiced chiefly as means of opening the opponent's guard; hence, a thrust must immediately follow each parry. 5. The foot movements shown in the old manual are useful only to promote quickness and steadiness. They should, therefore, be practiced in combination with the points and butt blows, and so combined can be executed in the oblique directions as well as at right angles. The left foot moves in the ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... Westminster in 1640, and of the Assembly of Massachusetts or of New York as late as 1770. The final flash of a long unconscious train of thought or intent is ever a surprise and a shock. It is a mistake to set these swift changes down to political levity; they were due rather to quickness of political intuition. It was the King's attempt at flight in the summer of 1791 that first created a republican party. It was that unhappy exploit, and no theoretical preferences, that awoke France to the necessity of choosing ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... the lonely figure of the man in tattered deerskin jacket and shapeless hat somehow fitted. His attire matched the gray-white coloring of rock and boulder; his spare form and agile movements, together with the intentness of his bronzed face and the steadiness of his eyes, hinted at the quickness of observation, the stubborn endurance, and the tireless activity, by which alone life can be maintained in the savage North. He had the alertness of the wild creatures of the ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... bringing the man back to life. Then he was carried off, expression so unlike that of a human being that the less hardened shuddered. Said Homma—"No confession yet?" He raised his hand to make a sign. Iemon knew the quickness of response. He almost screamed his appeal for further respite. The Law had triumphed. As Iemon put his thumb seal to the confession of guilt to insolence (futodoki) the magistrates rose and disappeared. "Futodoki"—they and he knew that it meant ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... forgotten them,' she said, looking up with eager quickness; 'I do not regret his attempt because it was wrong!—O no! on that point I am armed—but because it was impossible it ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... ground, sheltered among the thickets which are scattered over the dry and sterile hills. With its tail erect, and stilt-like legs, it may be seen every now and then popping from one bush to another with uncommon quickness. It really requires little imagination to believe that the bird is ashamed of itself, and is aware of its most ridiculous figure. On first seeing it, one is tempted to exclaim, "A vilely stuffed specimen has escaped from some museum, and has ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... on the Hill are singularly homogeneous, and thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the place. In the chapter on "The Ideals of the New Quakerism," I have commented on Irish acquisition of a character like that of the Quakers. The gentleness of manner, the quickness of social sympathy and the industrious quietness of the Quakers have come to be theirs. Yet they are loyal Catholics, and with very few exceptions support their Church in the village regularly. Many of them who have not conveyances have for years employed a stage-driver to transport them ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... your tongue, Chalamel. I know nothing about it; but what is sure is, that, when he recovered his Senses, it was another song. He knit his brows in a terrible manner, and said to me, with quickness, without giving me time to answer, 'What did you come here for?—have you been a long time here?—can I not be alone in my own house without being surrounded by spies?—what have I said?—what have you heard? Answer, answer.' He looked so wicked that I replied, 'I have ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... and the accuracy with which they could give the names, habits and uses of animals and plants in the jungle, and the traveller cannot but admire the general handiness and adaptability to changed circumstances and customs and quickness of understanding of the Malay coolies whom he engages to ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... Greek in its readiness, its symmetry, and its point! But it was not the intellectual merit of the answer that pleased the Master. Cleverness is cheap. It is the faith he praises, [Footnote 5: Far more precious than any show of the intellect, even in regard of the intellect itself. The quickness of her answer was the scintillation of her intellect under the glow of her affection. Love is the quickening nurse of the whole nature. Faith in God will do more for the intellect at length than all the training of the schools. It will make the best that can be made of the whole man.] which was ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
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