"Incisive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woman, who looked older than her years on account of that low curve of the hair over the ears, and that fulness of bodice and skirt which Mr. Gibson has either initiated or imitated. The whisk of those skirts, and the frank incisive voice and pleasant, catching laugh were familiar and welcome sounds on board of the Korosko. Even the rigid Colonel softened into geniality, and the Oxford-bred diplomatist forgot to be unnatural with Miss Sadie ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... forensic masterpiece. He took the message of the commander-in-chief of the German eastern front and hurled it at Lenine's head, figuratively speaking, showing how Lenine's reasoning was paralleled in the German propaganda. With merciless logic and incisive phrase he showed how the Bolsheviki were using the formula, "the self-determination of nationalities," as the basis of a propaganda to bring about the dismemberment of Russia and its reduction to a chaotic medley of small, helpless states. To Lenine's statements ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... not as steady as usual this evening, Barby;" and somehow the sharp incisive tone cut so keenly that, to Phillis's alarm, Miss Mewlstone became very pale, and then ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... there, stealing glances at myself, I became conscious that my little blond man was studying me. Other men had looked at me, but never with such a cold, calculating gaze—and when he spoke to me, I nearly jumped out of my shoes—his voice was crisp, incisive. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... of their conduct and of his own, to the commander of the escort, Captain Muffet remained at department head-quarters long enough to impress the officials thereat on duty with his version of the riot at Bluff Siding,—its inciting cause and its incisive cure. Then he went back to the cavalry depot and presumably improved on his initial effort. The story of Muffet's wild ride with the raw recruits and Muffet's method of quelling a mob was often told that summer at the rear long after Lieutenant Davies and the recruits in question had ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... whom I met in London was Joseph Chamberlain. When I first met him he was one of Mr. Gladstone's trusted lieutenants. He was a capital speaker, a close and incisive debater, and a shrewd politician. When he broke with Mr. Gladstone, he retained his hold on his constituency and continued to be a ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... represent a great variety of moods, impulses, and suggestions. While some of them betray signs of youth and remind us of the apprentice workman of Loves Labour's Lost, others display in their depth of thought, intensity of feeling, and superb power of incisive and concentrated expression, the full maturity of the man and the artist. Hardly in the great tragedies themselves is there clearer proof of Shakespeare's supremacy ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... life she did? Then he chanced upon Kipling's poems, and was swept away by the lilt and swing and glamour with which familiar things had been invested. He was amazed at the man's sympathy with life and at his incisive psychology. Psychology was a new word in Martin's vocabulary. He had bought a dictionary, which deed had decreased his supply of money and brought nearer the day on which he must sail in search of more. Also, it incensed Mr. Higginbotham, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... structure was we shall see (once for all) in examining some of the later compositions, the only difference observable in the later works being, on the whole, an increased richness and greater breadth of scheme. They are nearly always brilliant, often incisive; there are most lovely melodies; and there are numerous specimens of Purcell's power of writing music, endless in its variety of outline and colour and changing sentiment, on a ground-bass—i.e., a bass passage repeated over and over again until the piece is finished. ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... without a scrap of color in it, and her eyes were of too light a blue to redeem the general insipidity of her appearance; but when she spoke that insipidity vanished, for her lips were very firm, and were apt to utter incisive words, and at such moments her pale blue eyes would flash with a light fire which was full of sarcasm, and might even rise ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... her ears the surging as of an ocean tide, drowned the accents of the magistrate. At first the words were as meaningless as some Sanskrit formula, but gradually her attention grasped and comprehended. In a strident incisive voice he read from a paper on the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... their intellectual equipment than by their physical peculiarities. Thus the Semites were supposed to be characterised, among other things, by an inborn aptitude for historical narrative and an utter lack of the mental suppleness, ingenuity, and sharp incisive vision indispensable for the study of the problems of philosophy; while their neighbours, the Aryans, devoid of historical talent, were held to be richly endowed with all the essential qualities of mind needed for ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... taken his opening with his customary incisive shrewdness. The mention of Bacon had settled it, to his mind. Only one imaginable character of manuscript from the philosopher scholar-politician could have value enough to tempt a thief of Enderby's calibre. Enderby's expression told that the shot was a true one. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... blackmailing old Jervaise. And in half a dozen words she had exposed the lack of real wit in my attempts at playwriting. I was humbled before her superior intelligence. Her speech had still a faint flavour of the uneducated, but her judgments were brilliantly incisive; despite her inferentially limited experience, she had a clearer sight of humanity ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... in clear, incisive tones. "A positively infallible recipe for the invasion of England: Wait until the Channel freezes ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... her now, that old breeding ground of great, incisive sons, that nest of passions so strong that only a grip of granite—like her sea line—could master them (do you fancy, O languorous, faded South, do you bellow, O strident, bustling West, that because she neither ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... evolution and adaptation. He has subjected all the proposed theories to a severe criticism both on the ground of facts and on that of their innate possibility and logical value. He decides in favor of the mutation theory. His arguments are incisive and complete and wholly adapted to the comprehension of all intelligent readers, so that his book relieves me entirely of the necessity of discussing these general questions, as it could not be done in a better or in a ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... then, with quick deeds, incisive words, he separated the immediate combatants, and ordered the other dogs ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... point Newmark broke into the discussion. "Have you a pack of cards?" he asked in his dry, incisive manner. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... smile crossing his features. Then, looking me straight between the eyes and using the sharp, incisive language of a German official, ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... wealth like water, and to coin his heart's blood, drop by drop, in this virtuous but almost desperate cause. He felt that of a man to whom so much had been entrusted, much was to be asked. God had endowed him with an incisive and comprehensive genius, unfaltering fortitude, and with the rank and fortune which enable a man to employ his faculties, to the injury or the happiness of his fellows, on the widest scale. The Prince felt the responsibility, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Kate in London had spoken of Milly as in commerce with, and whose renewed intervention at such a distance, just announced to him, required some accounting for. He had a vision of great London surgeons—if this one was a surgeon—as incisive all round; so that he should perhaps after all not wholly escape the ironic attention of his own sex. The most he might be able to do was not to care; while he was trying not to he could take that in. It was a train, however, that brought up the vision of Lord Mark as well. Lord Mark had caught him ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... voices grew louder overhead. It stopped suddenly, and she could only hear Sobrenski's slow, incisive tones. No doubt they were listening to him as to one inspired while he preached his gospel of destruction. Arithelli shivered, pressing her hands over her ears that she might shut out the sound of that hated voice that had ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... been justified of his reasonings had there existed no flaw in his premises. The San Reve was far from being gifted with that cold, incisive wisdom which he ascribed to her. Given a situation wherein the San Reve had no concern, and she would be sound enough; her speculations would defend themselves, her advice be worth a following. Endow the San Reve with a personal interest, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... sympathy with nature and with ordinary life, and its unaffected devotional accent. But Cowper is now appreciated more for his incomparably delightful epistles to his friends than for his poetry. Few letters in our language can compare with these for incisive but kindly and gentle irony; innocent but genuine fun; keen and striking acumen, and tender melancholy. Cowper ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the dark, blurred doorway in the wall of the washhouse there emerged a dark figure which went flitting away among the trees, while after it someone called in a sharp, incisive whisper: ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... the floor, overcome by sickness and the responsibilities he had carried for twelve years. Storrow, in a different way, was fully as indispensable as Smith. It was he who built up the superstructure of the Bell defence. He was a master of details. His brain was keen and incisive; and some of his briefs will be studied as long as the art of telephony exists. He might fairly have been compared, in action, to a rapid-firing Gatling gun; while Smith was a hundred-ton cannon, and Lockwood was the maker of ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... that promised well. The infusion would do for me without the vegetable fibre. You understand me; I would have a person whose sole business should be to read day and night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I would have: a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive fellow; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in new costume; can ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Ewing of Ohio, selected to organize the Department of the Interior, just then authorized by law, was a man of intellectual power, a lawyer of the first rank, possessing a stainless character, great moral courage, unbending will, an incisive style, both with tongue and pen, and a breadth of reading and wealth of information never surpassed by any public man in America. Jacob Collamer of Vermont, Postmaster-general, was an able, wise, just, and firm man, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... he had never appreciated the strength of the personality so clearly. The Cardinal was no orator in the ordinary sense; there was no thunder or pathos or drama in his manner. But his complete assurance and the long, gentle, incisive sentences, moving like rollers in a calm sea, were more affecting than any passion could be. . . . It seemed to him now the very incarnation of that spirit of the Church that at once attracted and repelled him—in its serenity, its gentleness, ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... he said. Then, almost curtly, in a quick, incisive way, as the keen, alert brain began to delve and probe: "You say this man Clarke never returned to the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... hearthrug. Beside him stood a very young man, whom I understood to be Wilder, the private secretary. He was small, nervous, alert with intelligent light-blue eyes and mobile features. It was he who at once, in an incisive and positive tone, opened ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... note that the French popular airs are those most calculated to strike the imagination, the best-modulated melodies are taken over by the people; clearness of thought, the intellectual simplicity of an idea attracts them; they like the incisive sayings that hold the greatest number of ideas. France is the one country in the world where a little phrase may bring about a great revolution. Whenever the masses have risen, it has been to bring men, affairs, and principles into agreement. No nation ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... incisive comment on politics to-day is indifference. When men and women begin to feel that elections and legislatures do not matter very much, that politics is a rather distant and unimportant exercise, the reformer might as well put to himself a few searching doubts. Indifference is a criticism that cuts ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... task of retranslating his Greek Testament, Jose often read to Carmen portions from the various books of the Bible, or told her the old sacred stories that children so love to hear. But Carmen's incisive thought cut deep into them, and Jose generally found himself hanging upon the naive interpretations of this young girl. When, after reading aloud the two opposing accounts of the Creation, as given ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and incisive. He was holding up one hand to impose silence on his companions. Walter Perkins' face grew pale, the fat boy's eyes were large and frightened. Professor Zepplin halted his pony sharply and turning in his saddle glanced ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... at her with the keen, incisive eye of his profession, and pressed his ear once more to her heart, listening to the irregular ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... psychological spring and basis of it, the whole fabric of weakness, habit and aberration underlying it. The one achieved an agreeable romance, and an agreeable romance only. The other achieves an extraordinarily brilliant and incisive study of the Latin-American temperament—a full length exposure of the perverse passions and incomprehensible ideals which provoke presumably sane men to pursue one another like wolves, and of the reactions of that incessant pursuit upon ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... the office with alert eyes, which took in everything, and said, in a brisk, incisive voice: "I am the Duke of Charmerace. I am here on behalf of M. Gournay-Martin. Last evening he received a letter from Arsene Lupin saying he was going to break into his Paris ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... usual subdued gossip about the door, and while Gifford waited for his aunts, who had something to say to the rector, he listened to Mrs. Dale, who said in her incisive voice, "Isn't it too bad Helen isn't here? I should think, whether she wanted to or not, she'd come for her husband's sake." Even the apology of death had not made Mrs. Dale pardon ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... exponent of ideas, moods, visions of its own; in this interest it plays fast and loose with those data, rejecting some and isolating others, and always combining them anew. To him, as to Dante, the scene, the colour, the outward image or gesture, comes with all its incisive and importunate reality; but awakes in him, moreover, by some subtle law of his own structure, a mood which it awakes in no one else, of which it is the double or repetition, and which it clothes, that all may ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Gray led the way without a word through the driveway, and finding the street clear, hurried on rapidly. Her mind, strangely stimulated, was working in quick, incisive flashes. Her work was not yet done. The Sparrow was safe, as far as his life was concerned; but her possession of even the necklace would not save the Sparrow from the law. There was the money that was gone from the safe. She could not recover ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... himself. He took his role very seriously, as was his custom in all things. He became the young wife's director in all matters of conscience. The letters which he wrote to her have been preserved, and we know them by the extracts and the analysis that Monsieur Rocheblave has given us and by his incisive commentaries of them.(4) They are letters of guidance, spiritual letters. The laic confessor endeavours, before all things, to calm the impatience of this soul which is more and more ardent and more and ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... Between 'Love's Comedy' and the 'League of Youth' he put forth his two great dramatic poems, 'Brand' (1866) and 'Peer Gynt' (1867); and even after the 'League of Youth' (1869) had opened the series of modern social dramas, he published 'Emperor and Galilean' (1873) before resuming his incisive study of the life that lay ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... four strings, also tuned in fifths, thus . The viola looks exactly like the violin at a little distance, and is really only a larger sized violin, having a range a fifth lower. Its tone is not so incisive as that of the violin, being rather heavier—"more gloomy," as it is often described. The viola is not so useful as the violin as a solo instrument because it is not capable of producing so many varieties of color, nevertheless it is invaluable for certain effects. ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... congenial task. Thus the commendation bestowed by Lucullus on the way in which the probabile had been handled appertains to Catulus. The exposition of the sceptical criticism would naturally be reserved for the most brilliant and incisive orator of the party—Cicero himself. These conjectures have the advantage of establishing an intimate connection between the prooemium, the speech of Catulus, and the succeeding one of Hortensius. In the prooemium ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... themselves, the familiar earth disappeared, and we were "pinnacled in mid-heaven" in unutterable isolation, blank forgotten units, in a white, wonderful, illuminated world, without permanence or solidity. Our voices sounded thin in the upper air. The keen, incisive wind that swept the summit, had no kinship with the soft breezes which were rustling the tasselled cane in the green fields of earth which had lately gleamed through the drift. It was a new world and without sympathy, a solitude which could be ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Jr., would get the whole, she thought. If there was a will already in the house, in that old davenport, what then? Would Shapless get the money? She grew keen in speculation. To leave her in the lurch, to give it all to that greasy Shapless, would be the most natural trick in the world for an incisive ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... at a given moment in his life. In the case of Luther there is a more than ordinary necessity for adopting this equitable method; for Luther has declared hundreds of times that his stirring utterances and incisive deeds were not the result of long premeditation, or the sudden outbursts of uncontrolled passion,—though neither he nor we would have any interest in denying that he could be angry and did become angry,—but the answer to crying needs of the times. This answer was on ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... in her throat as she said on the lowest, most incisive note: "Yes,—I, too, want to see you, Sir Basil. I am so lonely;—you are the only one who cares, who understands, who is near me. There must be real truth between us. This morning—he has prevented that. But ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... nonchalantly. Once more the mask of indifference had fallen over him, veiling the keen, incisive interest he had shown ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... up!" She threw herself upon her knees and laid her face in the bed. In a few minutes there came a tap at the door, and her Aunt Frances's voice was heard, "Maimie, your father has gone down; we must not delay." The tone was incisive and matter-of-fact. It said to Maimie, "Now let's have no nonsense. Be a sensible woman of the world." Maimie rose from her knees. Hastily removing all traces of tears from her face, and glancing in the glass, she touched ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... multiply his pin-pricks in "the vast and luminous balloon of transformism (evolution), in order to empty it and expose it in all its inanity." (9/12.) By no means the least original feature of his work is this passionate and incisive argument, in which, with a remarkable power of dialectic, and at times in a tone of lively banter, he endeavoured to remove "this comfortable pillow from those who have not the courage to inquire into its fundamental nature." He attacked these "adventurous syntheses, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... of that most pure and tender of all stories. In doing so he has given us a new creation in Ailie Noble. Not a line can be effectively added to that ideal narrative of a true history, not a word can be pushed from its place. The whole treatment is at once delicate, incisive, tender, reserved, and dramatic. And after reading it,—with or without tears, according to your capacity for dogged resistance to a distended lachrymal duct,—you will be conscious of bearing away a sweet and subduing impression, like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... a peculiar warning expression, as evident as a wink, and the expression was evanescent as a breath. I caught on, and made my face agreeable and subservient. Immediately her own reassumed a harsh, proud set, her voice became even more incisive and cold. ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... word from Mr. Pulitzer the secretary began to read in a clear, incisive voice some historical work, novel or play. After a few minutes Mr. Pulitzer would say "Softly," and the secretary's voice was lowered until, though it was still audible, it assumed a monotonous and soothing quality. After ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... The year 1520 saw him at the most advanced point he ever attained. It was then that he produced, with marvellous fecundity, a series of pamphlets unequalled by him and unexcelled anywhere, both in the incisive power of their attack on existing institutions and in the popular ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the story told by the showman, and Bucky's incisive questions were unable to shake any portion of it. As to the missing locket, the man explained that it had been broken off by accident and lost. When he discovered that only half the secret was contained on the map ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... long beautiful groundstrokes, forehand, or backhand, his incisive crisp volleys and fine, generalship based on young experience, is a notable figure in ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... 1897), Chaps. 1, 9; and S. Low, The Governance of England (London, 1904), Chap. 1. A suggestive characterization is in the Introduction of W. Bagehot, The English Constitution (new ed., Boston, 1873). A more extended and very incisive analysis is Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, especially the Introduction and Chaps. ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... front room upstairs at one side of the hall two people were speaking, and presently through the open window Burns was heard to say with incisive sternness: "I'll give you exactly ten minutes to pack your bag and go—and I'll take you—to make sure ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... on the right, invited an attack as fierce as that upon the center, the defense was led by a warrior named Grom, who seemed no less redoubtable than the Chief himself. He, too, like the Chief, fought in grim silence, saving his breath, except for an occasional incisive cry of command or encouragement to those about him. And his club also, like that of the Chief, kept a zone of death ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the big man's tone sounded keenly incisive in the stillness of the dark night. Jim started, and hot blood mounted to his head. He had been through so much that day that his nerves ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... applied for the first time in America a thoroughgoing scrutiny and able, fearless criticism to contemporary literature, undoubtedly with good effect. His attacks on didacticism were especially valuable. His strength as a critic lay in his artistic temperament and in the incisive intellect that enabled him to analyze the effects produced in his own creations and in those of others. His weaknesses were extravagance; a mania for harping on plagiarism; lack of spiritual insight, broad sympathies, and profound ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... while the old men tell again the exploits and the tricks of former times, all the ancient tales of nights in the mountains; they speak a variety of Basque different from that of Etchezar, the village where the language is preserved more clearly articulated, more incisive, more pure, perhaps. Ramuntcho and Arrochkoa are surprised by this accent of the high land, which softens the words and which chants them; those white-haired story tellers seem to them almost strangers, whose talk is a series of monotonous stanzas, repeated infinitely as in the antique ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... the front door was flung suddenly open and a sharp, incisive, dominant voice rang ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... command came sharp and incisive. A rattle of tin dishes followed. Pails and pans were raised to the rail as five figures stood up suddenly. "Stand by to repel boarders!" was the second command. Five pans and pails of water were tilted, sending ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... inflame &c (render violent) 173; wind up &c (strengthen) 159. strike home, into home, hard home; make an impression. Adj. strong, energetic, forcible, active; intense, deep-dyed, severe, keen, vivid, sharp, acute, incisive, trenchant, brisk. rousing, irritation; poignant; virulent, caustic, corrosive, mordant, harsh, stringent; double-edged, double-shotted^, double- distilled; drastic, escharotic^; racy &c (pungent) 392. potent &c (powerful) 157; radioactive. Adv. strongly &c adj.; fortiter in re [Lat.]; with telling ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... their turn to get rations and water at a dump nearby. It was a war correspondent, young Valentine Williams, afterward a very gallant officer in the Irish Guards who gave the orders in fluent and incisive German. He began with a hoarse shout of "Achtung!" and that old word of command had an electrical effect on many of the men. Even those who had seemed asleep staggered to their feet and stood at attention. The habit of discipline was part of their very life, and men almost ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... think I am complaining, do you? I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Blunt in a ragged old jacket and a white tie and that incisive polite voice of his seemed strange and weird. It seemed as though he were inventing it all rather angrily. I had doubts as ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... surely one of the most strangely appealing incidents in the recent history of human confidence and human expectation! Another friend, Mr George Lynch, whose name occurred in one of his letters in a passage curiously characteristic of Steevens's drily incisive humour, writes about the days that must immediately have preceded his illness: "He was as fit and well as possible when I left Ladysmith last month." (The letter is dated from Durban, January 11.) "We were drawing rations ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... held at Tuskegee, January 20 and 21, 1915. A woman, the wife of a Negro farmer, was testifying when she said: "Our menfolks is foun' out dat they can't eat cotton." As the outburst of laughter which greeted this remark died down, Mr. Washington said in his incisive way: "What do you mean?" The woman replied: "I mean dat we womenfolks been tellin' our menfolks all de time dat they should ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... for you?" he asked gently as the boy sat quietly down; and made irritably incisive by the tendency of near-by men and women to listen as well as watch, he emphasized his expensive order of foods and wines, repeated each item loudly to cheapen the listeners, and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... experience of others!' She spoke coldly and her voice had an incisive ring in it that wounded him as a knife. He was too inexperienced to know what to do, and he instinctively assumed that look of injured superiority which it is the peculiar privilege of women to wear in such cases, and which, in a man, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... highest speed. The windows had been smashed by shrapnel, and bits of glass and things crunched under foot. The room was full of noises—the crackle of the telephones, the crooning of the woman, the croak of the wounded old man, the clear and incisive tones of the general and his brigade-major, the rattle of not too distant rifles, the booming of guns and occasionally the terrific, overwhelming crash of a shell ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... inspires us with as much hatred and scorn as his former earnestness commanded respect and sympathy. When, for instance, he tells us, "it would also argue ingratitude towards my genius if I were not to rejoice that to the faculty of an incisive, analytical criticism was added the innocent pleasure in artistic production," it may astonish him to hear that, in spite of this self-praise, there are still men who maintain exactly the reverse, and who say, not only that he has never possessed the gift of artistic production, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... said, in cold, incisive tones, "let's you and I have this out, and I want to tell you right here that I believe you're lying, and I've been suspecting it for some time. Now, make a clean breast of it. ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... advertising, except the theatre. It is, enormous, the space given in the newspapers to literary notes, literary announcements, reviews, interviews, personal paragraphs, biographies, and all the rest, not to mention the vigorous and incisive attacks made from time to time upon different authors for their opinions of romanticism, realism, capitalism, socialism, Catholicism, and Sandemanianism. I have sometimes doubted whether the public cared for so much of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... said Anania, lifting the latch, and intercepting a response from Haimet which might have been somewhat incisive. "I declare, I'm just killed ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... the strongest works of fiction of the present decade. The author is a philosopher and a philanthropist. Her clear, incisive reasoning, her large sympathies, combined with rare power of description, enable her to give the world a story which will hold in its thrall even the most shallow novel-reader who can ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... subscribers, the Whig Congressmen recommending the paper to their constituents. The Log Cabin was the foundation of the Tribune, and thenceforth until his death Mr. Greeley was well known at the National Capital. He was a man of intense convictions and indomitable industry, and he wielded an incisive, ready pen, which went straight to the point without circumlocution or needless use of words. Although he was a somewhat erratic champion of Fourierism, vegetarianism, temperance, anti-hanging, and abolition, there was a "method in his madness," and his heretical views were evidently the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... quite at ease on that score, I assure you," Lord Hurdly answered, in his cold, incisive tones. "He received the money, and has probably used it for the furtherance of these ridiculous and sentimental schemes of his. This should give you the gratifying assurance that he has been bettered, and not worsted, by reason of his ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... it, but her brother gave her such a terribly incisive look—a look so like a surgeon's lancet—that she was frightened at her courage. And he answered her in words that corresponded to the look: "It may not prevent me, either, from losing the ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... under his breath; he had been choking with the recollection of the dear one at Clos Jallanges. The doctor began his jerk and his 'just so,' but was cut short by the dry, incisive tones of Paul Astier. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... naming, the effect, that is, of saying that the labor groups C and M, but not X, are underpaid, instead of saying that Labor is Exploited, is incisive. Perceptions recover their identity, and the emotion they arouse is specific, since it is no longer reinforced by large and accidental connections with everything from Christmas to Moscow. The disentangled idea with a name of its own, and an emotion that ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Hilda, speaking very frigidly and with even more than her usual incisive clearness of articulation, "it's not your property. It's only yours for life. It's ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... say, the Act was put in operation against Talleyrand, nominally his adviser, and the champion of the Anglo-French entente. The ex-Bishop of Autun penned an eloquent protest, which apparently had some effect, for he was not expelled until March 1794.[168] Far more incisive was Chauvelin's complaint. We can imagine his feelings when Grenville curtly declined to receive it.[169] At the same time Grenville refused to discuss or explain the stoppage of certain cargoes of grain destined for French ports. His private correspondence with Auckland shows ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... was a boy at Eton, my excellent but very bluff and rough old tutor called upon us, and was so much taken up with being hearty, that he knocked over the coal-scuttle, and didn't let anyone get a word in; and when he went off in a sort of whirlwind, my old aunt, who was an incisive lady, said in a meditative tone: 'How strange it is that the only thing that the Eton masters seem able to teach their boys is the only ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... intuition either, because then it would be unattainable by a man of high intellectual gifts; and the peace that I speak of ought to be consistent with any and every constitution—physical, moral, mental. It must be consistent with physical weakness, with liability to strong temptations, with an incisive and penetrating intellectual quality; its essence would be a sort of vital faith, a unity of the individual heart with the heart of the world. It would rise like a rock above the sea, like a lighthouse, where a guarded flame would burn high and steady, however loudly the surges thundered ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... incisive tone whipped Greenleaf to closer attention. "You've an embezzler and murderer in your hands. He admits one crime; I've proved the other. The rest is up to you. Put the irons on him. Throw him into a cell! You'll be proud of it the rest of your life. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... entertained for him a peculiar affection. He specially admired Beauclerk's skill in the use of a more polished, if less vigorous, style of conversation than his own. He envied the ease with which Beauclerk brought out his sly incisive retorts. "No man," he said, "ever was so free when he was going to say a good thing, from a look that expressed that it was coming; or, when he had said it, from a look that expressed that it had come." When Beauclerk ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... these incisive, sharp tones in the midst of her own delightful reflections was anything but agreeable to Pauline. She felt, as she expressed it, like a cat rubbed the wrong way. She gave Miss Tredgold one of her most ungracious scowls ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... your solid, incisive style would rather go down with the masses. However, we shall see, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... That voice, so incisive and clear, was a woman's. Gore found himself looking into the little twin funnels of his own ray projector. They were filled with a milky light, and the odor of ozone was strong. The girl had only to press the trigger and a powerful current would leap along the path ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... the little hostess imposed an added restraint and formality upon the oddly assorted company of guests. Beatrice Egerton played with her rings, yawned without dissimulation, and wished she had stayed at home; Eleanor bravely parried Nettie Dwight's incisive questions about "her set"; and Betty, stirring and talking to the cousins and Dora, had time to admire Eleanor's self-control and to wonder pityingly if there were many girls in Harding College so completely "out of it" as these four seemed to be. And yet they ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... This incisive statement somewhat jarred the poet's self-sufficiency and he subsided for the moment, but jealousy is a cunning adversary and the rival awaited ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... of Mr. Lawson's tales photograph life at the diggings or in the bush with an incisive and remorseless reality that grips the imagination. He silhouettes a swagman in a couple of pages, and the ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... a few incisive words, with a cruel satisfaction revealed in her voice, she put before him the fearful picture of the pain and misery suffered by the unhappy little creature during the last few months. The account was infinitely more shocking ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... of the lonely widower. He met her once in a while, and said to himself that she was a good specimen of the grand style of woman; and then the image came back to him of a woman not quite so large, not quite so imperial in her port, not quite so incisive in her speech, not quite so judicial in her opinions, but with two or three more joints in her frame, and two or three soft inflections in her voice, which for some absurd reason or other drew him to her side and so bewitched him that he told her half his secrets and looked into her eyes ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Mr. Grady, who had for some purpose gone "back," resumed his seat at the author's side and, between incisive criticism shouted through his megaphone, suggested, in the contrast of a conversational tone, "Don't you ever look in your letter box? Here's mail ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... was a stolid Yorkshireman, who affected whatever measure of bluffness had not been natural to him from birth. He first looked at his visitor with obvious doubts of his sanity; and when this suspicion had been set at rest by Hugh's incisive explanation, with an equally obvious ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... faith that puts itself on the rack. By the side of them one finds smiling visions of the Holy Family, which recall Murillo. The thirty-four folk-songs are brilliant, restless, whimsical, and wonderfully varied in form. Each represents a different subject, a personality drawn with incisive strokes, and the whole collection overflows with life. It is said that the Spanisches-Liederbuch is to Wolf's work what Tristan ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... grief that had torn his soul was not of the kind which seeks its outlet in tears and wailing; it had turned and struck inward, and now his deliberate ferocity was icy and devilish. Only a glint in his eyes told of exultation, and his words were sharp and incisive; one could well imagine one heard the click of his teeth as they bit off the consonants: every letter was clear-cut, every syllable startling in ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... of University scholars, and all those who had assisted to fit him for his career in the Church, had expected great things of him. Some said he would be a Bishop before he was thirty; others considered that he would probably content himself with being the most intellectual and incisive preacher of his time. But he turned out to be neither one nor the other. A certain Henry Arthur Brent, his fellow student at College and five years his senior, had, with apparent ease, outstripped him in the race for honour, though lacking in all such exceptional slowly ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... lasted till the war, clung with singular tenacity to the establishment of principles. To this doubtless contributed much the personality of Madison, then Secretary of State; a man of the pen, clear-headed, logical, incisive, and delighting like all men in the exercise of conscious powers. The discussion of principles, the exposure of an adversary's weakness or inconsistencies, the weighty marshalling of uncounted words, were to him the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... him at the Jones House. A gentleman of large proportions, but of lively temperament, his frame knit in the North, I think, but ripened in Georgia, incisive, prompt but good-humored, wearing his broad-brimmed, steeple-crowned felt hat with the least possible tilt on one side,—a sure sign of exuberant vitality in a mature and dignified person like him, business-like in his ways, and not to be interrupted while occupied with another, but ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... feel sure that Addison's shyness was not feigned, for on the only occasion he ever attempted to speak ex-tempore in Parliament he muffed the subject, forgot his theme, and sat down in confusion. With all his incisive thought and fine command of language, Addison could not think on his feet. And as if aware of his limitations, in one of the "Spectator" essays he said, with more or less truth, "The fluent orator, ready ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... been possible in the following pages to reproduce the elegant and incisive style of a master of French prose, not even the inadequacies of a translation can obscure the force of his argument. The only introduction, therefore, that seems possible must take the form of a request ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... resumed, in the same quiet, incisive tone, "that my former suggestions have been unheeded. I fear that I must speak more plainly. You will please come with me for a ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... not recovered thoroughly as yet from that state of bewilderment brought about by the effort to follow Mr Vladimir's rapid incisive utterance. It had overcome his power of assimilation. It had made him angry. This anger was complicated by incredulity. And suddenly it dawned upon him that all this was an elaborate joke. Mr Vladimir exhibited his white teeth in a smile, with dimples on his round, full face posed with ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... commander-in-chief met us, shook hands, and murmured clearly and slowly, with incisive distinctness, the formal words of French greeting; he spoke no English. Instantly there was the suggestion of Kitchener, not of Kitchener as you see him in flesh, but in photographs, the same coldness, decision. The smile ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... were still far removed from the character of real historical writings. How scanty the contemporary record still was at the close of this period and how ample room is left for the caprice of subsequent annalists, is shown with incisive clearness by a comparison of the accounts as to the campaign of 456 in the annals and in the epitaph of the consul Scipio.(14) The later historians were evidently unable to construct a readable and in some measure connected narrative out ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... in the same calm, incisive way, that contrasted strongly with the coarse, whisky-thickened tone ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... founder; this is due to the fact that the insight and constructive genius of the founder have chosen out of the mass of the existing thought those broad principles that the times demanded and have presented them in incisive form and with freshness and enthusiasm.[2035] Buddha's followers quickly formed themselves into associations, the entrance into which was by free choice. As his doctrine of salvation was nontheistic, so his church was nontheistic, but ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... perhaps the best of his humorous stories. The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether (November, 1845, Graham's Magazine) may be rated higher, but it is not essentially a humorous story. Rather it is incisive satire, with too biting an undercurrent to pass muster in the company of the genial in literature. Poe's humorous stories as a whole have tended to belittle rather than increase his fame, many of them verging on ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... 'come!' and she ushered me without much ado into a den of discomfort where sat a man, with a great beard and such heavy overhanging eyebrows that I could hardly detect the twinkle of his eyes, keen and incisive as ...
— The Staircase At The Hearts Delight - 1894 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... would go down to the slope below, among the weird, stunted trees, and look once more upon the broken tables, and ponder upon the strange signs written by time thereon. The insistent fall of the rain, the incisive blasts of the wind, coming again and again, though the centuries went, were registered here in mystic runes. The surface had weathered to a whitish-gray, but still in tiny depressions its pristine dark color showed in rugose characters. A splintered fissure held delicate fucoid impressions ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Steve Chapman, seventeen years of age, a tall, well-built and nicely proportioned youth with black hair and eyes, a quick, determined manner and an incisive speech. Steve was Football Captain last Fall. Next him sits George Hanford. Han, as the boys call him, is eighteen, also a senior, and also a football player. He is big and rangey, good-natured and popular, and is president of the ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the employment of a knife-edged hardened steel instrument, so arranged as to be set at any required angle, and its edge caused to penetrate the surface of a cylindrical bar of soft steel or brass. This bar being revolved under the incisive action of the angularly placed knife-edged instrument, it thus received a continuous spiral groove cut into its surface. It was then in the condition of a rudimentary screw; the pitch, or interval between the threads, being determined by the greater or less angle of obliquity at which ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... history, it never for a moment crossed the minds of any of them to talk like the ladies of the ancien rgime or to imitate them in any sort or way. They were as natural and unsophisticated as they were incisive, intrepid, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... in!" he said, his words rushing over each other in a confused jumble utterly unlike his usual incisive speech. "You're safe in here. I'll shoot the brute if he dares to ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... Ball's Bluff into the Potomac, and was carried thence into the great sea of our conscience, tumultuous with pride, anger, and resolve. The drops feed the country's future, wherever they are caught first by our free convictions ere they sink into the beloved soil. Let us be instant, be incisive with our resolution, that peace may not be the mother of another war, and our own victory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... to quiet musing, to tenderness for tradition; they amuse, they entertain, they call a check to the feverishness of modern life; but they are rarely stimulating or suggestive. They are better adapted, it must be owned, to please the many than the critical few, who demand more incisive treatment and a deeper consideration of the problems of life. And it is very fortunate that a writer who can reach the great public and entertain it can also elevate and refine its tastes, set before it high ideas, instruct it agreeably, and all this in ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... the greatest men of his own or any age. Unique in some capacities, versatile and varied in arts and accomplishments, at once vindictive and forgiving, impetuous and politic, shrewd and impulsive, heroic and mean, of long memory for wrongs committed, of decisive act and incisive speech, relentless and magnanimous, strong and weak. A man whose influence has never died out among men, and who is to-day a vital force in the world of religion, of philanthropy, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... proud of his French; and if he would himself have acknowledged that it was perhaps here and there of doubtful idiom and of phonetic spelling, would he not have claimed for it that it was fluent, incisive, and ornate? ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... those foreign accents, incisive or stammering, glancing at those varying types of countenance, some uncivilized, passionate, unrefined, others over-civilized, faded, of the type that haunts the boulevards, over-ripe as it were, and observing the same varieties in the corps of servants, where "flunkeys," taken ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... beaten open with a sense of hurry, came back vividly, yet in fragments, all that she had gone through in relation to Grandcourt—the allurements, the vacillations, the resolve to accede, the final repulsion; the incisive face of that dark-eyed lady with the lovely boy: her own pledge (was it a pledge not to marry him?)—the new disbelief in the worth of men and things for which that scene of disclosure had become a symbol. That unalterable experience ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... are produced in the medium range and the ends of the scale are reserved for incisive duty. A series of gradations in which the grace and flow of line and tone are made to serve the forcible stroke which we see, presents a combination of subtlety and strength. Again the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... it, and why he could not bear to see its frequenters spending their wages on degrading themselves and making their homes miserable. In no mood for a temperance harangue, the men drowned, or would have drowned aught but his short incisive sentences, in clamours for their beer, and one big bully pushed forward to attack him. His left hand was still in the sling, but with the other he caught hold of the fellow by the collar, and swung him over the side of the stone steps as helpless as a puppy dog, shaking him till ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sex the years had seemed to have dried out of her personality, made a much better witness than her husband. She was acid and incisive, but her very forbidding aspect hinted of the "good woman" who never made mistakes. She described the stranger who had knocked at her door with a good deal of ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... answered, in his thin, incisive voice. 'You mentioned the fact before. On the other hand, you have taken six to my knowledge, M. de Berault. You have lived the life of a bully, a common bravo, a gamester. You, a man of family! For shame! Do you wonder that it has brought you to this! Yet on that one point I am willing ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... On the contrary, the audience took it very quietly, awaiting with some curiosity the interference of Henry Beauclerc. And it was at this point that the services of Mr. JOHN HARE in this character were invaluable. Never had his crisp incisive style produced more marked effect. It is a pity that in the Third Act, which being the weak point of the play requires all the strength of the actor to be seriously employed, Mr. HARE should have given a very light ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... coming, sir. That's mighty nice of you," he said, as they walked down Boylston Street together, and his father waited a moment and then spoke in his usual incisive tone. ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... looked up at the speaker with an air of surprise, which, after the first keen, incisive glance, gave place to ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... say out of the question, Mr. Harricutt. What do you say?" Mark's voice was cold, incisive, there was ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... to me in his keen, incisive way:—"No, Medoline, I cannot say that I have—not since boyhood, at least, when my mother, who loved the God whom Israel served so indifferently, endeavored to train my ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... would speak with him," and I bowed myself off with what grace I could muster, knowing naught of such matters. A brisk walk fetched me to Serigny's side. In a few words I communicated my mission. His quick, incisive glance took in every detail of my dress and appearance, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... different from what one usually reads on similar subjects! In your arguments, and in the intrinsic and extrinsic proofs you adduce, what weight—without heaviness, what solidity—without stiffness, of strong and wholesome criticism—without pedantry! Ideas are plentiful in this by turns incisive, brilliant, reflected, and spontaneous style, in which learning comes in to enhance and steady the flow of a lively and luxuriant imagination. To all the refinement and subtle divination common to Slavic genius, you ally the patient research ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... to M. Destournier was broken, and it was as if it had never been. She remembered he had once said he would relinquish her in that other country. She had simply been given to him in her sorrow, to care for a brief while. And how grandly he had done it. Rose was too just, perhaps with some of the incisive energy of youth, to cover up miladi's faults at once. If she had been grateful to him for his devotion she would have thought more tenderly of love. Yet she ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... frequently do not weigh above six or seven pounds; or a third less than the skeleton of an individual of the same size, recently stripped of the muscular flesh. The conformation of the skull has some slight resemblance to that of the white race of the ancient Egyptians; and the incisive teeth of the Guanches are blunted, like those of the mummies found on the banks of the Nile. But this form of teeth is the result of art; and on examining more carefully the physiognomy of the ancient Canarians, Blumenbach and other able ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... comment. He complained, querulously, like a half-aged boy, over the treacherous footing which the flooded alder brakes afforded. And once when he had felled a tree and narrowly missed being pinned beneath it, in spite of Steve's quick leap that dragged him aside, he plunged into an incisive diatribe concerning the perversity of inanimate things—a short discussion in many-syllabled words which would have awakened Steve's admiration by its very brilliance, had he not already been fully concerned with ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... raised his head and half turned back as if to speak, but thinking better of it, he resumed his chair and watched the approach of the detective with an angry frown. Clancy did not glance at Radnor, but gave his evidence in a quick incisive way which forced the breathless attention of every one in the room. He told without interruption the story of his arrival at Four-Pools and his conclusions in regard to the ha'nt and the theft; he omitted, however, all mention ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... the eldest daughter of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe, who held a valuable living in the diocese of Bath and Wells. Our family, a very large one, was noted for a sprightly and incisive wit, and came of a good old stock where beauty was an heirloom. In Christian grace of character we were unhappily deficient. From my earliest years I saw and deplored the defects of those relatives whose age and position should have enabled them to conquer my ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... like one accustomed to the duty, superintended the placement of the chairs; then, resting the point of a very bright crescent-shaped sword on the floor, he said, in a voice more incisive than the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... a man who is educated all over; whose nerves are brought to their acutest sensibility, whose brain is cultured, keen, incisive, penetrating, broad, liberal, deep; whose hands are deft; whose eyes are alert, sensitive, microscopic, whose heart is tender, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... his life, and the life in the great outer world, in which she was girlishly and eagerly interested. She asked him many questions about it—direct and incisive questions which showed that she had already formed decided opinions and views about it. Yet it was plain to be seen that she did not regard it as anything she might ever share herself. Hers was the dispassionate interest with which she might have listened to a tale of the land of ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Britain and Ireland, blackened and scarred by more burning antagonisms than those that once divided the larger island. The record of several consecutive centuries is graven deep in it by the brand and bayonet, and by the more incisive teeth-marks of hate. The slumbering antipathies of race and religion even now crop out here and there, over the unfused boundary, in hissing tongues of flame. The Briton and the Celt are still struggling for the precedence in the Irishman's breast; but it is not a war of extermination. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... time millionaires had lost their novelty for the girl. She had met some who were more distinguished in appearance than this man, but never one who seemed possessed of more nervous energy and virility. Jarvis Hammon had a bold, incisive manner that was compelling and stamped him as a big man in more ways than one. Playfully he pinched Lilas's cheek, then turned with a ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... organized The American Alliance for Labor and Democracy in order "to Americanize the labor movement." Its campaign at once became nation wide. Enthusiastic meetings were held in the great manufacturing centers, stimulated to enthusiasm by the incisive eloquence of Gompers. At the annual convention of the Federation held in Buffalo in November, 1917, full endorsement was given to the Alliance by a vote of 21,602 to 401. In its formal statement the Alliance ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... to The House of Eld is incisive writ out of true experience—phantasy there becomes solemn, if not, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... incisive intellect and conversational charm would have assured the success of any woman at a time when these things counted for so much. "At thirty-six," wrote Mme. du Deffand, "she was beautiful and fresh as a woman ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... must be read with the necessary allowances. These, however, will not detract from Madame de Hell's unquestioned merit as a close and exact observer, endowed with no ordinary faculty of polished and incisive expression, and a fine capacity for appreciating and describing the picturesque aspects of nature. She wields a skilful brush with force and freedom; her pictures are always accurate in composition and ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... the dissoluteness which disgraced the court. As he proceeds, a breathless silence falls on the crowd sitting, or hanging around him, their dresses in curious contrast to his severe garment of camel's hair, their nervous dread in as great contrast to his incisive and searching eloquence. Here were the people clothed in soft raiment, and accustomed to sumptuous fare, bending as reeds before the gusts of wind ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... deliberate movements an answer to his question. But he could not read anything, he could gather no hint of her thought. He tried to suppress his desire to shout, and after waiting awhile, said with incisive scorn: ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... e., neither as a fencing ground for propagandists nor for puling poets, this new Sudermann piece will please. It has triumphed in Berlin and Munich. Its people are portraits taken from fashionable West End Berlin, while the dialogue, witty, incisive, and also characteristic, is one of the consolations of a play that does not for a moment produce any illusion. There are plenty of striking episodes, but logic is lacking, not only the logic of life, but the logic of the theatre. No living playwright knows better how to arouse suspense than ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... that it was impossible to foresee what Walter Goddard might say in the course of another hour. He had often seen people in a delirium and knew how strangely that inarticulate murmuring sometimes breaks off into sudden incisive speech, astonishing every one who hears. The man had already betrayed that he knew Mary Goddard; at the next interval in his ravings he might betray that she was his wife. John was still standing ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... looked after him with a puzzled look, then summed up his opinion in one word, sharp, incisive, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... every detail, not only of notes, but of rhythm, tempo, phrasing, dynamics, instead of the slovenly muddling which then passed for breadth of style, and the substitution of the conductor's own subjectivity for that of the composer. It has been well expressed in a few incisive words by one of the greatest of the school: "The privilege of an interesting subjectivity is given to few, its expression will always give evidence of that instinctive logic which is a necessary condition of intelligibility."[6] Call ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... This man I now found to be excellent in such an emergency as the present; calm, cool, and collected; not hurrying anybody, yet, as it were, infusing his own energy and vitality into the men by the sharp, incisive tones of his voice, and putting quicksilver into them by—as it seemed—the mere exercise of his will. Under such masterful supervision the work progressed rapidly, and in something over half an hour we had the ship under her fore and main-topsails ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... "It is easy,"—says one of the keenest and most incisive of theologians,—"for any one in the cloisters of the schools to indulge himself in idle speculations on the merit of works to justify men; but when he comes into the presence of God, he must bid farewell ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... him at the Jones House. A gentleman of large proportions, but of lively temperament, his frame knit in the North, I think, but ripened in Georgia, incisive, prompt, but good-humored, wearing his broad-brimmed, steeple-crowned felt hat with the least possible tilt on one side,—a sure sign of exuberant vitality in a mature and dignified person like him,—business-like in his ways, and not to be interrupted while occupied ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... of incisive diction and of moving prose, conceived in the best Oxford manner, drew a terrible picture of what might occur in withdrawing troops from a foreshore in presence of a ferocious foe. Its polished periods portrayed ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... wonder then that his colleagues in the Senate, especially the younger members, are somewhat in fear of the incisive tongue, for he wields it frequently and contemptuously. When after his election, Mr. Harding went South with Senator Frelinghuysen, Senator Davis Elkins, and Senator Hale, the older Senators, not, perhaps, without a tinge of disappointment at having ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... certain of the incisive statements that came into Lincoln's seven debates. "A slave, says Judge Douglas (on the authority of Judge Taney), is a human being who is legally not a person but a thing." "I contend [says Lincoln] that slavery is founded on the selfishness of man's nature. Slavery is a violation ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... most distinguished, however, of the men who took the field against him was John Eck,[13] Professor of Theology and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ingolstadt. He was a man well versed in the Scriptures and in the writings of the Fathers, a ready speaker and an incisive writer, in every way qualified to meet such a versatile opponent. While on a visit with the Bishop of Eichstatt he was consulted about Luther's theses, and gave his opinion in the /Obelisks/ on the dangerous character of the teaching they contained. ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... to him too?" asked the queen annoyed, and ironically. She turned her back on the officer without any kind of courtesy, and turning again to the chamberlain she went on, in incisive tones, as if she were ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in the hard, incisive manner which I had heard him use in the lecture theatre, and it was evident enough that his design was to prepare Andrews for something which he contemplated. Facing the Scotsman where he sat hunched up in the big armchair, dully ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... establish the bond between it and the general history of mankind. This psychologic ability contributes vastly to the interest aroused by Mr. Dubnow's historical works outside of the limited circle of scholars. There is a passage in one of his books[1] in which, in his incisive manner, he expresses his views on the limits and tasks of historical writing. As the passage bears upon the methods employed in the present essay, and, at the same time, is a characteristic specimen of our author's style, I take the ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle |
