Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Openness   Listen
noun
Openness  n.  The quality or state of being open.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Openness" Quotes from Famous Books



... have been the guardian, not the slanderer of my reputation,—who, as a woman, ought to have respected the delicacy of female honour, and, as a relation, should have protected mine! But, to utter falsehoods on so nice a subject—to repay the openness, and, I may say with honest pride, the propriety of my conduct, with slanders—required a depravity of heart, such as I could scarcely have believed existed, such as I weep to find in a relation. O! what a contrast does her ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... that they are fighting for the very life and existence of their Empire, a war of desperate self-defense against deliberate aggression. Nothing could be more grossly or wantonly false, and we must seek by the utmost openness and candor as to our real aims to convince them of its falseness. We are in fact fighting for their emancipation from fear, along with our own,—from the fear as well as from the fact of unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after world empire. ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... by Swedes, French, and Germans; and the deadly communist period (1917-91) in which Russia dominated an immense Soviet Union. General Secretary Mikhail GORBACHEV, in charge during 1985-91, introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in an attempt to modernize communism, but also inadvertently released forces that shattered the USSR into 15 independent republics in December 1991. Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... did; for we may understand it; and if he giveth us not leave to understand it so, he saith nothing to the purpose neither, for it will be objected by some-But can he fetch me off, though I have done as David, as Solomon, as Peter, or the like? It must be answered, Yes. The openness of the terms ANY MAN, the indefiniteness of the word SIN, doth naturally allow us to take him in the largest sense; besides, he brings in this saying as the chief, most apt, and fittest to relieve one crushed down to death and hell by the guilt ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... man, reviving early memory, bringing to his remembrance all things of other days, deepening impressions, bringing old facts into new perspective, giving clearer vision, mellowing and maturing both mind and heart into fresh plastic openness to further truth. And so we have this little book with its Hebrew soul ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... openness is better between us," Porfiry Petrovitch went on, turning his head away and dropping his eyes, as though unwilling to disconcert his former victim and as though disdaining his former wiles. "Yes, such suspicions ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... not only were they fully sensible of it themselves, but it was obvious to all —even to the least observant of the garrison, and many were there, both among the soldiers and their wives—by all of whom the young ensign was liked for his openness and manliness of character—who expressed a fervent hope that the beautiful and amiable Miss Heywood would soon become the bride of their favorite officer. This it was, which had led the men of the fishing-party to express in their way, their sorrow for ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... it as unusual—the concealment of its mechanism and the brevity of its title. For while the remainder of the exhibits located around it varied in the simplicity or complexity of their design, they were alike in the openness of their construction and detailed explanation of plan and purpose. The great steel box, however, bore merely two words and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... the dignity of his conduct.—The other day, in the cause of humanity, he made use of a degree of address, which I admire—and mean to point out to you, as one of the few instances of address which do credit to the abilities of the man, without taking away from that confidence in his openness of heart, which is the true basis of ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... innocent eyes of hers and smiles;—why does Lady Winsleigh shrink from that frank and childlike openness of regard? Why does she, for one brief moment, hate herself?—why does she so suddenly feel herself to be vile and beneath contempt? God only knows!—but the first genuine blush that has tinged her ladyship's cheek for many a long day, suddenly spreads a hot and embarrassing tide of crimson ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries, and indeed of every other century, from the time of Hammurabi onward, were equally genial and equally frank. The only century in which customs were not characterised by the same cheerful openness was the nineteenth, of blessed memory. It was the astonishing exception. And yet, with what one must suppose was a deliberate disregard of history, it looked upon its horribly pregnant silences as normal and natural and right; the frankness of the previous fifteen or twenty thousand ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... distance in advance of us. They were moving with more speed than we, and for a time we had the notion that they might be survivors, like ourselves, of Argile's clan. But at last this fancy was set at flight by the openness of their march, as well as by their stoppage at several houses by the way, from which they seemed to be joined by other men, who swelled their numbers so that after a time there would be over a score of them on the mission, whatever ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... the commixture of nations, confluence of ambassadors, and the relation which the affairs of our kingdoms have had towards the business and interests of foreign states have caused, during our regiment (government) a greater openness and liberty of discourse, even concerning MATTERS OF STATE (which are no themes or subjects fit for vulgar persons or common meetings), than hath been in former times used or permitted; and although in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... quite, eh? Well, you suit me uncommonly well, and it is a comfort to have an honest outspoken child. What with Ermengarde's disobedience, and Basil's disgraceful want of openness, I scarcely know ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... incompatible with athletics. For instance, the English are supposed to rule the natives of India in virtue of their superior hardiness, superior activity, superior health of body and mind. The Hindus are supposed to be our subjects because they are less fond of action, less fond of openness and the open air. In a word, less fond of cricket. And, substantially, this is probably true, that the Indians are less fond of cricket. All the same, if you ask among Englishmen for the very best ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... old times they had their shut-up convents for just such folks," said Mrs. Todd, as if she and her friend had disagreed about Joanna once, and were now in happy harmony. She seemed to speak with new openness and freedom. "Oh yes, I was only too pleased when the Reverend Mr. Dimmick invited me to go out with him. He hadn't been very long in the place when Joanna left home and friends. 'Twas one day that next summer after she went, and I had been married early in the spring. He felt that ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... irrestrainable outpouring of contentment and gratitude. Mr. Bintrey, on the other hand, a cautious man, with twinkling beads of eyes in a large overhanging bald head, who inwardly but intensely enjoyed the comicality of openness of speech, or ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... the windows of the chancel there is some of recent date, and from fragments of veritable antique. The effect of the whole interior is grand, expansive, and both ponderous and airy; not dim, mysterious, and involved, as Gothic interiors often are, the roundness and openness of the arches being ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... criminal crowds are precisely the same as those we have met with in all crowds: openness to suggestion, credulity, mobility, the exaggeration of the sentiments good or bad, the manifestation of ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... that the dnouement is, in some degree, anticipated in the exposition. The history of the loves of Ferdinand and Miranda, developed in a few short scenes, is enchantingly beautiful: an affecting union of chivalrous magnanimity on the one part, and on the other of the virgin openness of a heart which, brought up far from the world on an uninhabited island, has never learned to disguise its innocent movements. The wisdom of the princely hermit Prospero has a magical and mysterious air; ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... the newspapers; he sometimes wrote them himself and gave them to the reporters. And yet nothing is surer than that he shaped his life and did his work absolutely indifferent to either praise or blame; in fact, that he deliberately did that which he knew would bring him dispraise. The candor and openness of the man's nature would not allow him to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature, and should ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... beginning to respond to the excitement. Did she have some message to convey to him that she could not trust to the openness of the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... annoyed with his untimely jest, he always won by his manly openness and uniform kindliness of nature. He cherished love for all that was around him, both animate and lifeless. Soul and Nature therefore rendered back to him their ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... frank openness of her pure nature, she sprung forward to meet him, with both her fair hands extended, and the ingenuous blood rising faintly ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... misunderstanding all around, which could not be cleared away by speech, unless Dorothy should ask him about it—which he was very certain she would not do. "She ought to trust me," he said to himself, resentfully, forgetting the absolute openness of thought and deed upon which a woman's trust is founded. "I'll read her the book to-night," he thought, happily, "and that will ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... lines, notwithstanding they evinced a sovereign contempt for orthography and versification, discover a deep knowledge of diplomacy. I say this for the reason that her diction could be construed to mean anything but what she intended; albeit there was such an openness about it generally that any clever gentleman might walk in at the back door. I thought it highly creditable in Betty to attempt a thing so mighty as the conquest of Bolt's heart—indeed there was an admirable heroism about it; but it caused a great flutter in ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... pronounced a glowing panegyric on the French Academy as a high court of letters, and a rallying-point for educated opinion, as asserting the authority of a master in matters of tone and taste. To it he attributes in a great measure that thoroughness, that openness of mind, that absence of vulgarity which he finds everywhere in French literature; and to the want of a similar institution in England he traces that eccentricity, that provincial spirit, that coarseness which, as he thinks, are barely compensated by English ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... about the middle of July. At that time there was practically nothing happening at the front, but the sickness was great. Amara, by reason of its openness, was a little fresher than Basra, but the temperature was high. It was 125 degrees in the shade on the ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne

... one of my youth thou wast, Of my merry youth, And I see, Tearfully, All the fair and sunny past, All its openness and truth, Ever fresh and green in thee As the moss is in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the ordinance of secession had been passed, Farragut went as usual to the place of meeting, and saw, immediately upon entering, by the faces of those there, that a great change had passed over the relations between them. He spoke with his usual openness, and expressed his deliberate convictions. He did not believe that the action of the convention represented the sober judgment of the people. The State had been, as he phrased it, "dragooned" out of the Union; and President Lincoln was perfectly justified in calling for troops after the ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... think of Oudenaarde as I last saw it—the huge black door of the church yawning like a gaping chasm, the square partly filled with devout peasants in holiday attire for the church fete, whatever it was. Part of the procession had passed beyond the gloom of the vast aisles into the frank openness of daylight. Between the walls of the small houses at either hand a long line of figures was marching with many silken banners. There seemed to be an interminable line of young girls—first communicants, ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... same letter written within a year of his death, are a striking proof of the candour and openness of mind which he preserved so well to the end, in ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... first resolution in relation to his own course, was to proceed with the company, leaving his horse to be sent after him, when recovered. He was loath, however, to leave the highly-prized and long-tried charger behind; and Colonel Bruce, taking advantage of the feeling, and representing the openness and safety of the road, the shortness of the day's journey (for the next Station at which the exiles intended lodging was scarce twenty miles distant), and above all, promising, if he remained, to escort him thither with a band of his young men, to whom the excursion would be but an agreeable ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... into which she was falling. In that short moment she had time to perceive and acknowledge it; and with intense contrition she confessed to her director the false humility which had beguiled her into a dangerous reserve, with perfect openness revealed to him the whole of God's past and present dealings with her soul, and explained to him the meaning of what had just taken place. Don Antonio listened with astonishment and gratitude, and thus addressed her: "You have just escaped from a great danger, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... LYKKE. 'Tis well;—and it may be that this openness has already in part reconciled us. Ay—my hope is yet bolder. The time may yet come when you will think of the stranger knight without hate or bitterness in your soul. Nay,—mistake me not! I mean not now— but some time, in the days to come. And that this may be the less hard for you—and ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen

... down from a physical point of view even though they may not show such a high per cent of soluble nitrogenous products. They have an excellent texture, generally solid and firm, free from all tendency to openness; and, moreover, their flavor is clean and entirely devoid of the sharp, undesirable tang that so frequently appears in old cheese. The keeping quality of such cheese is much superior to the ordinary product. The introduction of this new system of cheese-curing promises much from a ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... chief sources of unhappiness in married life is the strife arising from the vexed question of home and personal expenses. In the first place, the husband frequently fails in regard to openness with regard to his business concerns and profits; thus the wife, entirely ignorant as to what amount she may safely spend, errs too often on the side of extravagance, finding too late, when a storm of reproach descends upon her innocent head, where ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... character, and their proper intermixture produces a light fertile loam, each tempering the peculiar properties of the other. Indeed, their mixture is manifestly essential, for sand alone contains little or none of the essential ingredients of plants; and if present in large quantity, the openness of the soil is excessive, water flows through it with rapidity, manures are rapidly wasted, and on the accession of drought, the plants growing upon it soon languish and die. Clay, on the other hand, is by itself equally objectionable; the closeness of its texture prevents the spreading of ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... striking characteristic of Lincoln's character was his honesty. Some men are naturally secretive: Lincoln was naturally open as sunshine. The exact fact, truth in the hidden parts, openness, these were the innermost fibre of his being. Machiavelli laid out the diplomat's career on the line of deceit, and concealing the cards. Lincoln would have made a poor diplomat,—he spread all his cards out on the table. He won from his opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... the greatest reluctance, but a fixed determination, not to come any nearer to it himself than he could possibly help. He has shown nothing like courage, nothing like confidence in the goodness of his cause, nothing like openness, candor, or generosity; nothing but craft and cunning. He has never fought like a soldier, but dodged like an assassin. Honorable men give up a cause that can't be honorably maintained. For myself, ye are witnesses, I came out openly, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... fortune to find a place among the members of that remarkable confraternity of antagonists, long since deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Metaphysical Society. Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were -ists of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... when the publications I have spoken of had produced their effect, I received one day a visit from M. Manuel. We had occasionally met at the houses of mutual friends, and lived on terms of good understanding without positive intimacy. He evidently came to propose closer acquaintanceship, with an openness in which perhaps the somewhat restricted character of his mind was as much displayed as the firmness of his temperament; he passed at once from compliments to confidence, and, after congratulating me on my opposition, opened to me the full bearing ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... shrub, like produces like. He who sows wheat reaps wheat, not tares. He who plants a grape receives a purple cluster, not a bunch of thorns or thistles. He who sows honor shall reap confidence. He who sows frankness shall reap openness. No Peabody sowing industry and thrift reaps the harvest of indolence and idleness. Theodore Parker, loving knowledge and for it denying himself sleep and exercise, reaped wisdom, and also wan and hollow cheeks, while the iron frame and ruddy cheek are for the child of the woods who loves exercise ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... approval of Government, is another thing, and demands wholly different qualities. These are moral, not intellectual; practical, not special gifts—gifts of a very plain and almost universal order. Such are, firstly, social sympathies and sense of justice; then openness and plainness of character; lastly, habits of action, and a practical knowledge of social misery. These are the qualities which fit men to be the arbiters or ultimate source (though certainly not the instruments) of political power. These qualities the best working men possess in a far higher degree ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... moments, looking at him with a thoughtful openness that, he felt, was almost marital in ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... but of all the families of the state, who saw, in the day which brought happiness to others, the anniversary of their own. Imagine the strong bond of brotherhood thus sanctified among them, and consider also the effect on the minds of the youth of the state; the greater deliberation and openness necessarily given to the contemplation of marriage, to which all the people were solemnly to bear testimony; the more lofty and unselfish tone which it would give to all their thoughts. It was the exact contrary of stolen marriage. It was marriage to which God and man were taken ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... added the German, "I trust the openness of my remarks has given you no offence, sir. If it has, then I beg you to accept my most sincere apologies. You are an officer and serve your country. I, too, am an officer of reserve and ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... so much merit, could be blind to it in another, I never thought possible. I mean not, therefore, to solicit any account or explanation, but merely to beg your patience while I talk to you myself, and your permission to speak to you with openness and truth." ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... that if he gets well his oath of repentance is not to stand good. But it looks as if he were to be taken at the worse side of his word, and he falls into a swoon which is mistaken for death. The Queen laments him with perfect openness; but the excellent Noble is a philosophic husband as well as a good king, and sets about the funeral ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... discussion, but no bickering. Vanity was not engaged, for the speakers were also the audience. They would talk over their work among themselves and take counsel of each other with the delightful openness of youth. If the matter in hand was serious, the opponent would leave his own position to enter into his friend's point of view; and being an impartial judge in a matter outside his own sphere, would prove the better helper; ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... though I fought the enemy with perpetual vigour and perpetual variety, he was not to be put to flight by a stripling; and I went to the university as far from being a conqueror as ever. At Oxford I found the superabundance of this great gift acknowledged with an openness worthy of English candour, and combated with the dexterity of an experience five hundred years old. Port-drinking, flirtation, lounging, the invention of new ties to cravats, and new tricks on proctors; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various

... island Trinidad, on the north point of the mouth of the river. I asked Friday a thousand questions about the country, the inhabitants, the sea, the coast, and what nations were near: he told me all he knew, with the greatest openness imaginable. I asked him the names of the several nations of his sort of people, but could get no other name than Caribs: from whence I easily understood, that these were the Caribbees, which our maps place on the part of America which reaches from the mouth of the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe

... principal scandals of the Legislative session of 1907 was the openness with which machine lobbyists invaded Senate and Assembly chamber. They went so far as to move from member to member during roll-calls, giving Senator or Assemblyman, as the case might be, a proprietary tap on the shoulder, to ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... thoughts better clothed; either way (in prose or verse) such poetry must be welcome to me. I love them as I love the Confessions of Rousseau, and for the same reason: the same frankness, the same openness of heart, the same disclosure of all the most hidden and delicate affections of the mind: they make me proud to be thus esteemed worthy of the place of friend-confessor, brother-confessor, to a man like Coleridge. This last is, I acknowledge, language too high for friendship; but ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... accustomed to accuracy in all his statements, and to speak of his faults and omissions without prevarication or disguise. Hence arose that noble openness of soul, and contempt of deceit in others, which ever distinguished him. Once, by an inadvertence of his youth, considerable loss had been incurred, and of such a nature as to interfere with the plans of his mother. He came to her, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... recoil was far greater than the first movement. Paul Sabatier wrote (in 1913) that until 1870 Protestantism had enjoyed the esteem of thoughtful {738} men on account of its good sense, domestic and civic virtues and its openness to science and literary criticism. This high opinion, strengthened by the prestige of German thought, was shattered, says our authority, by the results of the Franco-Prussian war, its train of horrors, and the consequences to the victors, who raved ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... undisguised refusal, this hard, unfeeling reprimand, I made no attempt to reply or follow. The flushings of Olivia's face indeed were continual; but what were they more than indignant repellings of her aunt's broad surmises? Had they been favourable to me why did she not declare them with the openness of which she had so striking an example? She curtsied as she went; but it was a half-souled compliment, that while I attempted to return ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... striking example of the fact that a man's openness to Nature increases with his general inner growth. No one doubts that uneducated sailors, like other unlettered people, are vividly impressed by fine scenery, especially when it is new to them, if they possess a spark of mental ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... same period, if I remember aright, that, in an altercation of violence with him, in which he was more than usually thrown off his guard, and spoke and acted with an openness of demeanor rather foreign to his nature, I discovered, or fancied I discovered, in his accent, his air, and general appearance, a something which first startled, and then deeply interested me, by bringing to mind dim visions of my earliest ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... he made his summer excursion in the Tyrol, Fritz was a stout blond youth of two and twenty. His round, sleek face was not badly modelled, but it had neither the rough openness, characteristic of a peasant, nor yet that indefinable finish which only culture can give. In spite of his jaunty, fashionable attire, you would have put him down at once as belonging to what in the Old World is ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... 'that has subsisted between us—the free development of soul, and openness of sentiment—is touching to think of. We have been more like sisters than ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... dignity, he stood up in the box, and applauded as loudly as any of them. Between each feat of horsemanship, the governess leant across to ma, and retailed the clever remarks of the children on that which had preceded: and ma, in the openness of her heart, offered the governess an acidulated drop, and the governess, gratified to be taken notice of, retired behind her pillar again with a brighter countenance: and the whole party seemed quite ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... nine months and a sharp fine. It scarce seemed she had any gratitude to him; she came out of gaol herself, and plunged immediately deeper in conventicles, resetting recusants, and all her old, expensive folly, only with greater vigour and openness, because Montroymont was safe in the Tolbooth and she had no witness to consider. When he was liberated and came back, with his fingers singed, in December 1680, and late in the black night, my lady was from home. He came into the house at his alighting, with a riding-rod yet in his hand; and, on ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... carbon." He knew how to crystallise it—"zat was all ze secret." The men of science examined the pots and pans carefully. Then he put in a certain number of raw materials, and went to work with ostentatious openness. There were three distinct processes, and he made two stones by each simultaneously. The remarkable part of his methods, he said, was their rapidity and their cheapness. In three-quarters of an hour (and he smiled sardonically) he could produce a diamond worth at current prices two hundred pounds ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... offered no advantages, as the canoe would have given his foes the greatest facilities for overtaking him; else would he have found it no difficult task to swim as far as the castle. As he walked about the point, he even examined the spot to ascertain if it offered no place of concealment, but its openness, its size, and the hundred watchful glances that were turned towards him, even while those who made them affected not to see him, prevented any such expedient from succeeding. The dread and disgrace of failure had no influence on Deerslayer, who deemed it even a point of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... embarrassed or restricted at all by his presence, or even relieved of any portion of your solicitude. But I determined to tell you all about it as soon as it was over, and I was fondly imagining that you would praise me for my sagacity in managing the business as I did, and also especially for my openness and honesty in explaining all to you at last. But instead of that, it seems you think I did wrong; so that where I expected compliments and praise, I get only censure and condemnation; and I do not know what I ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott

... English attitude to the foreigners tended to confound good and bad alike in a general condemnation. Even the Savoyards were by no means as evil as the English thought them, and Henry in welcoming his kinsmen was not merely moved by selfish and unworthy motives; he believed that he was showing his openness to ideas and his welcome to all good things from whencesoever they came. There were, in fact, two tendencies, antagonistic yet closely related, which were operative, not only in England but all over western Europe, during ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... with which he threw himself into every subject which fairly engaged his attention or affections, without feeling drawn with all the cords of the heart to the noble boy. There was such a thorough openness and freedom in all that he did and said, yet without recklessness and without indifference to the feelings of others. And when, through thoughtlessness or forgetfulness, as was not unfrequently the case, he happened to find ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... are fighting for very life and existence of their empire, a war of desperate self-defense against deliberate aggression. Nothing could be more grossly or wantonly false, and we must seek, by the utmost openness and candor as to our real aims, to convince them of its falseness. We are, in fact, fighting for their emancipation from fear, along with our own, from the fear as well as from the fact of unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after world ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... his feet, and bowed and bowed, sweeping his cap to the ground. Some women who were washing around a roofed pool left their paddles, and ran, wiping suds from their arms; and houses discharged their inmates, babies in children's arms, wives, old men, the simplicity of their lives and the openness of their labor manifest. They surrounded the carriage. Eagle stood Paul upon his feet that they might worship him, and his mouth corners curled upward, his blue-eyed fearless look traveled from face to face, while her gloved hand was kissed, and God was praised that ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... intricate task of teaching to which you and I are devoting our lives, there is too much at stake to permit us for a moment to be dogmatic,—to permit us for a moment to hold ourselves in any other attitude save one of openness and reception to the truth when the truth shall have been demonstrated. Neither your ideas nor mine, nor those of any man or group of men, living or dead, are important enough to stand in the way of the best possible accomplishment of that great ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... keeping up an outside appearance of devotion, and interlarding the most common discourse with phrases of Gospel usage:—if this is religion, then are the disciples of Methodism pious beyond compare. But in real humility of heart, in mildness of temper, in liberality of mind, in purity of thought, in openness and uprightness of conduct in private life, in those practical virtues which are the vital substance of Christianity,—in these are they superior? No. Public observation is against the fact, and the conclusion to ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... uncertainty about the outcome of the conflict and because of increased government harassment and restrictions. The war has intensified the impact of such basic problems as an uncertain legal framework, corruption, raging inflation, and lack of openness in government economic policy and financial operations. A number of IMF and World Bank missions have met with the government to help it develop a coherent economic plan but ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the courage to say to you, sir, what in full openness I ought to have said when you first talked with me on this subject. It is not easy to say, and I have been withheld by a fear of its seeming ridiculous, which is very strong upon me down to this last moment, and might, but for my sister, prevent my being quite open with you even now.—I admire ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... recognition of the truth, against which all seekers sooner or later stumble, that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us indeed to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or wishes ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... its mace, and no better officer than its serjeant-at-arms, which it can command of its own proper authority. A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and judicial magistracy; an anxious care of public money; an openness, approaching towards facility, to public complaint: these seem to be the true characteristics of a House of Commons. But an addressing House of Commons, and a petitioning nation; a House of Commons full of confidence, when the nation is plunged in despair; in the utmost ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... standing will corroborate our statement as to the openness of the field of legal advocacy. How often has he seen cause after cause "set down," "reserved," or "put off," because counsel are engaged elsewhere? How often has he heard the same advocate in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... of this play impress themselves so strongly upon the attention of the reader, that they can draw no aid from critical illustration. The fiery openness of Othello, magnanimous, artless, and credulous, boundless in his confidence, ardent in his affection, inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his revenge; the cool malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... where he had left me, with my eyes fixed upon him, vainly endeavouring to find out some means of appeasing him. Nothing but openness and frankness could reinstate me in his favour: and how could I be open and frank? What could I tell him that would justify my intimacy with Henry? or account for the agitation which his words had caused me? Nothing; nothing short of the truth; and that—oh! how wearied I was ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... that affair: and now that he has so openly and audaciously invited enquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why he should not be plainly told so by the voice of his countrymen.' How far the 'openness' of an anonymous poem, and the 'audacity' of an imaginary character, which the writer supposes to be meant for Lady B. may be deemed to merit this formidable denunciation from their 'most sweet voices,' I neither know nor care; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... things. He has thrown a calcium light upon one spot, revealing some defects, and many eyes are for a time drawn towards it. His feint has created a sensation, and brought an important subject up to a grade of familiarity and openness where it can be talked of and examined, and I closed the book with a great sense of obligation on ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... himself into, had given him notice. The entertainment he found amongst them deserved a better return than he made them; for, having smoothly wrought himself into their good opinion, and cunningly drawn some of them into an unwary openness and freedom of conversation with him upon the unpleasing subject of the severity of those times, he most villainously impeached one of them, whose name was —- Headach, a man well reputed amongst his neighbours, of having spoken treasonable words, and thereby brought the man in ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... to-day are false, are bound up with concealments or with an equally untruthful openness. It does not, however, follow from this that mere destruction of the conventions will be enough; that everyone's unguided ignorance will lead to success and freedom. The laissez faire system is as false in the realm of marriage as ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... and of her experiment. Inevitably the hostility of his future mother-in-law and of Fanny brought out the worst side of Quisante's manners; in the effort to conciliate he almost fawned. May had to find consolation in a growth of openness and simplicity towards herself. And she had one notable triumph which more than anything else brought her through the trial with her purpose unshaken and her faith even a little strengthened. It was not a complete triumph, and in trying to push it too far she suffered a slight rebuff; but there ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... Civilities (received from You in a private Capacity) which I have no other Way to acknowledge, will, I hope, excuse this Presumption; but the Justice I, as a Spectator, owe your Character, places me above the want of an Excuse. Candor and Openness of Heart, which shine in all your Words and Actions, exacts the highest Esteem from all who have the Honour to know You, and a winning Condescention to all subordinate to You, made Business a Pleasure to those who executed ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... Great War was generally believed to be the product. The Paris Conference appeared to offer an inviting opportunity to turn the page and to begin a new and better chapter in the annals of international intercourse. To do this required a fixed purpose to abandon the old methods, to insist on openness and candor, to refuse to be drawn into whispered agreements. The choice between the old and the new ways had to be definite and final. It had to be made at the very beginning of the negotiations. It was made. Secrecy was adopted. Thus diplomacy, ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... being told it in so many words, that she was ashamed of the poverty of her home, and, boylike, they felt a dumb sympathy for her that she should be denied what so many girls had. But for all her sidewalk flirtations, she kept herself aloof from any touch of scandal; the very openness of her gaddings protected her from that. Besides, she seemed instinctively to know that if she meant to make the best possible bargain for herself in life she must keep herself unblemished—must give of her charms but not give too freely. Town gossips might ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... The other was a thoroughly ordinary woman, neither pretty nor ugly, of a type which is plentiful all the world over. The countess looked like a Madonna; her features had something angelic about them in their dignity and openness. She came from Lodi, and had only been married two years. The three sisters were very young, very noble, and very poor. While we were at dinner Count Ambrose told me that he had married a poor woman because he thought more of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... with her accustomed openness of her affairs, and the interest which Cecilia involuntarily took in them, contributed to lessen her vexation in thinking of her own. "The generous friend of my brother," said she, "who, though but a new acquaintance to him, has courted him in all his sorrows, when every body else forsook him, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... curiosity mingled with admiration and respect. There was in him a likeness to the sinistrous countenanced ogre behind her; yet he was a rather handsome young fellow; and as the wind, caused by their rapid course, blew backward his long, curly hair, he exhibited a cast of honesty and openness in his aspect. The other seemed to be impatient at his lingering, and growled: "Don't hang glowering here; forwards, and warn me if any one approaches, that I may cover up this toy." And whilst the monster ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... as you are aware, is by her father's will left perfectly free in her choice of marriage; and she has chosen. But since, under certain circumstances, I wish to act with perfect openness, I came to tell you, as her cousin and the executor of this will, that she is about ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... superstitions of his people, Dmitri prepared for his downfall by his trustfulness and clemency. He dismissed the spies with whom former czars had surrounded themselves, and laid himself freely open to treachery. The result of his acts and his openness was a conspiracy, which was fortunately discovered. Shuiski, its leader, was condemned to be executed. Yet as he knelt with the axe lifted above him, he was respited and banished to Siberia; and on his way thither a courier overtook ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... opinion, and since I suppose your arguments contain all that can be said by those of the party who would be thought to judge coolly and act reasonably at this juncture, I shall, with the freedom and openness of a friend, consider them as they lye before me in yours; and if I am forced to exceed the limits of a letter, you may blame yourself, who drew me in. You tell me you are ready to believe; I agree in opinion with you, that as ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... mind rather than to store it with learning; and the great educational problem has been, and is, how to give to the soul purity of intention, to the conscience steadfastness, and to the mind force, pliability, and openness to light; or in other words, how to bring philosophy and religion to the aid of the will so that the better self shall prevail and each generation introduce its successor to a ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... seeing this cheerful countenance, this openness of manner, this freedom of speech, this unrestrained good-nature, even those who had been warned, could not help saying: "Well indeed! this Cure ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... individual who, if he had been born to an estate of five thousand a year, would have been the most accomplished gentleman of the age. He would have been the delight and envy of the circle in which he moved—would have graced by his manners the liberality flowing from the openness of his heart, would have laughed with the women, have argued with the men, have said good things and written agreeable ones, have taken a hand at piquet or the lead at the harpsichord, and have set and sung his own verses—nugae ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... understanding, or showing character. She found that Mr. Salisbury appeared to her quite a different person when conversing with Lord Colambre. Lord Colambre, with that ardent thirst for knowledge which it is always agreeable to gratify, had an air of openness and generosity, a frankness, a warmth of manner, which, with good breeding, but with something beyond it and superior to its established forms, irresistibly won the confidence and attracted the affection of those with whom he conversed. His manners ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... faith, too, it was supremely necessary to be careful; for unguarded words might arouse suspicions of heresy, to be followed by the frightful penalties with which heresy was extirpated. On great questions, therefore, men must have kept their tongues and thoughts in a strict reserve: candour and openness, those valuable solvents of social humours, can only have ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... more minute information with regard to this remarkable man, perhaps the following page or two from a traveller's journal may prove acceptable to the public. The absolutely total obscurity of the subject in America, may also, it is hoped, serve as an apology for the openness of detail and apparent breach of etiquette in ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... mortification. I had not even whispered to myself that I loved Diana Vernon; yet no sooner did I hear Rashleigh talk of her as a prize which he might stoop to carry off, or neglect, at his pleasure, than every step which the poor girl had taken, in the innocence and openness of her heart, to form a sort of friendship with me, seemed in my eyes the most insulting coquetry.—"Soh! she would secure me as a pis aller, I suppose, in case Mr. Rashleigh Osbaldistone should not take compassion upon her! But I will satisfy her that I am not a person to be trepanned ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... and as to there being no test for its discovery. Lamson therefore had made the poisoning of this boy a careful and particular study. He was not such a clumsy operator as to administer it in the way suggested. The openness of that proceeding was to blind the eyes of detectives and lawyers alike; the aconitine was conveyed to the lad's stomach by means of a raisin in the piece of Dundee cake which Lamson cut with his penknife and handed to him. He ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... been trying to phrase, they give illustrations of all the historic occasions, kinds, and modes of adaptation; in lacking the exactness of the mathematical and physical sciences they furnish precisely the degree of uncertainty and openness of opportunity and of mental state which the act of living itself demands. In other words the science of life is, if properly presented, the most normal possible introduction to the very practical art of living. Because of the parallel meaning of education and life in securing ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... Baxter, too," said the old hunter. "Wumble kin tell ye how we come nigh to makin' him do a dance on nuthin' onct. I'll take your part agin him every time, hear me!" And his openness showed that he meant what ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield

... with equal frequency and nearly as much openness, the reverse or diuretic side of the fact. (How our self-consciousness would writhe! We should all turn to stone!) Indeed, the ceaseless deglutition of mankind in this part of the world is equaled only by the answering and enormous activity of the human male ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... courteous, and generally liked by men, to whom he was genial and good-natured. Though he was not himself aware of the fact, he was very dear to his father, who in his own silent way almost admired and certainly liked the openness and guileless freedom of a character which was very opposite to his own. The father, though he had never said a word to flatter the son, did in truth give his offspring credit for greater talent than he possessed, and, even when appearing ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... could there be to the instinctive consciousness that concealment is debauching, and openness our only cure, than the world-old conviction of the virtue of confession for the soul, and that the uttermost exposing of one's worst and foulest is the first step toward moral health? The wickedest man, if he could but somehow attain to writhe himself ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... Connecticut, a silk handkerchief or some such trinket. Judge Sewall offered a silver cup, and again a silver-headed pike; since he was an uncommonly poor shot himself, his generosity shows out all the more plainly. With barbaric openness of cruel intent, a figure stuffed to represent a human form was often the target, and it was a matter of grave decision whether a shot in the head or bowels were the fatal one. Sometimes the day was enlivened by a form of amusement ever beloved of the colonists—by public ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... hope all for the best. I have not yet seen Sir Hyde, but I purpose going this morning; for no attention shall be wanting on my part." The next day he reports the result of the interview to his friend Davison: "I staid an hour, and ground out something, but there was not that degree of openness which I should have shown to my second in command." The fleet advanced deliberately, a frigate being sent ahead to land the British envoy, Mr. Vansittart, whose instructions were that only forty-eight hours were ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... of the French character, connected with the preceding, is the openness, and even eagerness, with which they communicate all their thoughts and feelings to each other, and even to strangers. All Frenchmen seem anxious to make the most in conversation, not only of whatever intellectual ability they possess, but ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... intermarriage, so that they are much more akin to their fellow-countrymen in mind and manner than they are to any other people, they still retain habits, beliefs and traditions from which they will not part. They form a class economically powerful. They have openness and energy of character, great organizing power and a mastery over materials, all qualities invaluable in an Irish State. In North-East Ulster, where they are most homogeneous they conduct the affairs of their cities with great efficiency, carrying on an international trade not only with Great ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... remains. It is not that the vines are wanting. The Bordelais, except in the sandy and pine-covered region of the landes, has again become one immense vineyard; but whether it be from the struggle to live, or the lust of prosperity, the people fail to impress the traveller with that communicative openness and joyousness of soul which he would like to find in them, if only that he might not have the vexation of convicting himself of laying up for his own fancy ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker



Words linked to "Openness" :   willingness, nakedness, receptiveness, patency, spacing, spatial arrangement, receptivity, open, sociableness



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com