Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Closeness   Listen
noun
Closeness  n.  The state of being close. "Half stifled by the closeness of the room." "We rise not against the piercing judgment of Augustus, nor the extreme caution or closeness of Tiberius." "An affectation of closeness and covetousness."
Synonyms: Narrowness; oppressiveness; strictness; secrecy; compactness; conciseness; nearness; intimacy; tightness; stinginess; literalness.






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 |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Closeness" Quotes from Famous Books



... "it is all one to me, for I am at home in these woods and wastes, I and my shafts. Tell me of the deeds when thou wilt." But indeed he longed to know the deed, and fretted him because of Simon's surliness and closeness. Then he said: "Well, Squire Simon, let us to the road; for thou shalt know that to-night we must needs house us under the naked heaven; in nowise can we come to the ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris

... known to politicians and men of commercial influence. One of the members was Malthus, who is said, and the assertion is credible enough, to have been generally worsted by Mill in the discussions at the club. Mill was an awkward antagonist, and Malthus certainly not conspicuous for closeness of logic. The circle of Mill's friends naturally extended as his position in the India House enabled him to live more at his ease and brought him into contact with men of political position. His old school-fellow ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... below. But in the upper-air currents, it would have been dangerous to drive at a pace slow enough to keep level with the automobile, and so the aeroplane soon dashed on ahead. From time to time, however, it made circles and swoops, which brought it sometimes in seemingly dangerous closeness to ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... time to time, took refuge in them, and may have remained within them for a considerable period. Such at least is the story, which we see no reason to question, in regard to several of the early Popes. But no large number of persons could have existed within them. The closeness of the air would very soon have rendered life insupportable; and supposing any considerable number had collected near the outlet, where a supply of fresh air could have reached them, the difficulty of obtaining food and of concealing their place of retreat would have been in most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... The closeness of his walk with God is shown in his unbounded faith, in the implicit reliance he has in the power of prayer. Though to the world he attacks the problems confronting him with shrewd, practical business sense, behind and underneath this, ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... incomes to its recreants. It was the fashion to baptize converted Jews in batches—for the greater glory—procuring them from without when home-made catechumens were scarce, sometimes serving them up with a proselyte Turk. But in view of the importance of the accession, and likewise of the closeness of Epiphany, it was resolved to give Joseph ben Manasseh the honor of a solitary baptism. The intervening days he passed in a monastery, studying his new faith, unable to communicate with his parents or his fellow Jews, even had he or they wished. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... the cautionary towns should be squeezed out of this general contingent. The States, on the contrary, were determined to screw these garrisons out of her grip, as an additional subsidy. Each party complained with reason of the other's closeness. No doubt the states were shrewd bargainers, but it would have been difficult for the sharpest Hollander that ever sent a cargo of herrings to Cadiz, to force open Elizabeth's beautiful hand when she chose to shut it close. Walsingham ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of man's position in the animate world is an indispensable preliminary to the proper understanding of his relations to the universe—and this again resolves itself, in the long run, into an inquiry into the nature and the closeness of the ties which connect him with those singular creatures whose history* has been sketched in the preceding pages. ([Footnote] * It will be understood that, in the preceding Essay, I have selected for notice from the vast mass of papers which have been written upon the man-like Apes, only ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... attempted without a distinct intention of submission on the part of the writer. The couplet transgressed against, trespassed upon, shaken off, is like a law outstripped, defied—to the dignity neither of the rebel nor of the rule. To Letters do we look now for the guidance and direction which the very closeness of the emotion taking us by the heart makes necessary. Shall not the Thing more and more, as we compose ourselves to literature, assume the honour, the hesitation, the leisure, the ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... depreciate in value, or the banks go down, but gold is gold everywhere, and I have tried so hard to earn or save the interest, denying myself many things which I should have enjoyed as well as most women, and getting for myself the reputation of closeness and even stinginess, which I did not deserve. I had to be economical with myself to meet my payments, which increased as the years went on, until they are so large that sometimes I have not been able ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... that this book has neither the fullness of personal narrative, nor the closeness of scientific analysis, which its too comprehensive title might lead the reader to expect. A word of explanation is therefore needed. I thought little at first of the general public, when I began to weave together in narrative form the facts, letters, and journals ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... from sifting through. Wildbore, rattinet, merino, and bombazette are named as proper materials for cartridge-bags; of these the thinnest stuff, not twilled, but having the requisite strength and closeness ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... is, of course, a necessary and provoking, though tacit, assumption of superiority in the display of greater cleanliness than other people show, just as there is in coming into a room and finding fault with the closeness of the air in which other people are sitting comfortably. It is tantamount to saying that what is good enough for them is not good enough for you, and they always either ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... crept a step forward, and she dared to look towards a time when Mildred Caniper would be dead and she at Halkett's Farm. The larch-lined hollow would half suffocate her, she believed, but she would grow accustomed to its closeness as she would grow used to George and George to her. Soon he would completely trust her. He would learn to ask her counsel, and, at night, she would sit and sew and listen to his talk of crops and cattle, and the doings ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... him was that advancing years had developed his natural closeness into the stingiest avariciousness. But my notion is he was impelled by the fear of exciting envy, by the fear of assassination—the fear that made his eyes roam restlessly whenever strangers were near him, and so dried up the inside of his body that his dry tongue was constantly sliding ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... in Mr Carker's life and habits that began to take place at this time, none was more remarkable than the extraordinary diligence with which he applied himself to business, and the closeness with which he investigated every detail that the affairs of the House laid open to him. Always active and penetrating in such matters, his lynx-eyed vigilance now increased twenty-fold. Not only did his weary watch keep pace with every present point that every day presented to him in some new ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... than anything else, but it was extraordinarily useful to the professional classes. When met with it should be encouraged by warmth of reception. Mrs. Fisher was not warm. She accepted—from which he deduced that with her wealth went closeness—but she accepted grudgingly. Presents were presents, and one did not look them in this manner in the mouth, he felt; and if Lady Caroline found her pleasure in presenting his wife and Mrs. Fisher with their entire food for ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... English verse.[2] As a young man, he disparaged Virgil ("We talked a great deal of nonsense in those days," he said when taken to task for it later in life); at fifty-nine he translated three books of the Aeneid, in emulation of Dryden, though falling far short of him in everything but closeness, as he seems, after a few years, to have been convinced. Keats was the first resolute and wilful heretic, the true founder of the modern school, which admits no cis-Elizabethan authority save Milton, whose ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... toys which represent objects of natural history or of different trades and arts; the pictures which teach through the quick eye of the child what no dry descriptions could ever convey; and the games which develope closeness of observation and habits of order. A genial French physician has happily said, 'Every time I see a toy based on the reproduction of a scientific fact or of an industrial process, and which pleases while it enlightens, I feel a sentiment of ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... that as these lectures go on, the concreteness and closeness to facts of the pragmatism which they advocate may be what approves itself to you as its most satisfactory peculiarity. It only follows here the example of the sister-sciences, interpreting the unobserved by the observed. ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... the writer dwelt on her love of him with a whimper of the voice of love. That was previous to her perjury by little, by a day-eighteen hours. How lurid a satire was flung on events by the proximity of the dates! But the closeness of the time between this love-crooning and the denying of him pointed to a tyrannous intervention. One could detect it. Full surely the poor craven was being tyrannized and tutored to deny him! though she was a puss of the fields too, as the mounted sportsman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Joan said adieu to her old home, and set her face steadily forward towards Guildford. The chill freshness of the November air was pleasant after the long period of oppressive warmth and closeness which had gone before, and now that the leaves had really fallen from the trees, there was less of the heavy humidity in the air that seemed to hold the germs of distemper and transmit them alike to ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... certain loss of balance is caused by the overweight of the head in the Virgin as compared with the slightness of her frame. The features are the old ones of the 13th century; only softened, as regards the expression of the eye, by an exaggeration of elliptical form in the iris, and closeness of the curves of the lids. In the angels the absence of all true notions of composition may be considered striking; yet their movements are more natural and pleasing than hitherto. One indeed, to the spectator's right of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... more money he tried to save it in other ways. He skimped on his table, until even Aunt Samantha, used as she was to "closeness," objected. Then Mr. Larabee announced a cut in wages at his factory, ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... dead and heavy closeness of the air, the huge piles of clouds which assembled in the western horizon, and glowed like a furnace under the influence of the setting sun—that awful stillness in which nature seems to expect the thunder-burst, as a condemned soldier waits for the platoon fire which is to stretch him on ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... figuring was all right. We went over it several times. What was wrong was the observations we had taken. To take a correct observation requires practice and skill, and especially so on a small craft like the Snark. The violently moving boat and the closeness of the observer's eye to the surface of the water are to blame. A big wave that lifts up a mile off is liable ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... science of evolution. He says, for instance (1807): "When we compare plants and animals in their most rudimentary forms, it is almost impossible to distinguish between them. But we may say that the plants and animals, beginning with an almost inseparable closeness, gradually advance along two divergent lines, until the plant at last grows in the solid, enduring tree and the animal attains in man to the highest degree of mobility and freedom." That Goethe was not merely speaking ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... second line to fill the intervals in the first, and the Romans advanced with equal steadiness to the conflict; but the much greater closeness of the Carthaginian formation served them in good stead. They moved like a solid wall, their shields locked closely together, and pressed steadily forward in spite of the desperate efforts of the Roman centre in its more open order to resist ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... when Laura's maid happened to be in her mistress's room, I took occasion to refer to the closeness of the night, with a view to ascertaining next how the servants had been passing ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... ratiocination and description. To reason in verse, is allowed to be difficult; but Blackmore not only reasons in verse, but very often reasons poetically; and finds the art of uniting ornament with strength, and ease with closeness. This is a skill which Pope might have condescended to learn from him, when he needed it so ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... our chairs again (for the music was supreme, Wagner passed first) my demonstration ought pretty well to have given him the limit of the criticism he had to fear. I myself indeed, while the opera blazed, was only too afraid he might divine in our silent closeness the very moral of my optimism, which was simply the comfort I had gathered from seeing that if our companion's beauty lived again her vanity partook of its life. I had hit on the right note—that was what eased me off: it drew all pain for the next half-hour from the sense of the deep darkness ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... celebrated only over itself? how could it be so keen a participator in the satisfaction of a pure spirit having consciousness of itself, if in the end it could not attach itself to the pure spirit with such closeness that it is not possible even to intellectual analysis to separate ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... in women's clothes, was noting the long, firm folds of her skirt. Vernon had turned from the window to approve the loving closeness of those violets against her hair. Lady St. Craye in her graceful attitude of conscious unconsciousness was the focus of ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... peculiarities—the effort required and the slowness of the process. Of course, there is a profound and beautiful use to be made of the prophet's action in laying himself upon the dead child, mouth to mouth, and hand to hand, if we regard it as symbolic of that closeness of approach to our nature, dead in sins, which the Lord of life makes in His incarnation and in His continual drawing near. It is His own life which Jesus imparts, and it is imparted because He comes ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... It would be superfluous for me to advance any proof of the fact that for one reason or another Sher Ali did during the latter part of his reign fall away from us and incline towards an alliance with Russia. But I think the closeness of the connection between Russia and Kabul, and the extent of the Amir's hostility towards ourselves, has not hitherto been fully recognized. Yakub Khan's statements throw some light upon this question, and they are confirmed by various ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... lips with timid care, gave her his arm, and with a new strange sense of closeness, walked out of the church. He did not believe, he could not believe, that it was true. It was only when their wondering and timid eyes met that he believed in it, because he felt that they ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... considerably in one direction; and the hyperbolic curve, that never returns into itself at all, but has, on the other hand, a course which sets outwards each way for ever. The parabolic curve, as it is called, is a line partaking of the closeness of the ellipse on the one hand, and the openness of the hyperbola on the other. A parabola is an ellipse passing into a hyperbola; or, in other words, it is a part of an ellipse whose length, compared with its breadth, is too great to be estimated, and is ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... tenderness, since she did not think of love as something measured and exhaustible but as a treasure perpetually renewed. What she questioned was her right to introduce into her life any interests and duties which might rob Effie of a part of her time, or lessen the closeness of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... these rides became frequent, and despite the fact that they seldom spoke, they unconsciously grew into a closeness of companionship which saved her from the ennui of unwonted domestic environment. The intense vitality of the young foreman attracted her, and she began to have a friendly sympathy for him, and even to feel a tranquil satisfaction in his reposeful silence. At times she was sorely tempted to ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... to learn, start in with one or two about as high as your knee. Of course, you could take them standing, and it is not a bad exercise, but learn to take them at a moderate run. When you can do this with ease, increase the number or the closeness of the hurdles and add to the length ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... President, that our mission is of the gravest importance. These gentlemen have brought such startling reports from their several states as to the bitterness and closeness of the fight, that they have ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... Bishop Tomline, "were higher expectations formed of any person upon his first coming into Parliament, and never were expectations more completely answered. They were, indeed, much more than answered; such were the fluency and accuracy of language, such the perspicuity of arrangement, and such the closeness of reasoning, and manly and dignified elocution,—generally, even in a much less degree, the fruits of long habit and experience,—that it could scarcely be believed to be the first speech of a young man ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... augment this work, but died before he had completed his design. The reformed work as he left it, and the additions which he had made, are very properly retained in the late collection. He seems to have somewhat contracted his diffusion; but I know not whether he has gained in closeness what he has lost in splendour. In the additional book the "Tale of Solon" is too long. One great defect of this poem is very properly censured by Mr. Walker, unless it may be said in his defence that what he has omitted was not properly in his plan. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... the amount of several thousand pounds, had been taken in the packet and Hiram was examined with an almost inquisitorial closeness and strictness as to whether he had or had not knowledge of ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... "authority". The "authority," in the scientific sense of any set of men who agree upon a doctrine, varies directly as their independence of each other. Their "authority" in the legal sense varies as the closeness of their mutual dependence. As the consent loses its value logically, it gains in power of coercion. And therefore it is easy to substitute drilling for arguing, and to take up a belief as you accept admission to a society, as a matter of taste and feeling, with which abstract logic ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... of the guitar he took high rank with those who believed in advancing its performance to the most elevated standards. He found but few pupils, however, that were willing to give the instrument that closeness of study, or who were possessed with that spirit of patience, so necessary to render them remarkable performers. At the almost marvellously skilful manipulations of the strings by their teacher, they listened with the utmost delight; but some of them, regarding him as one ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... to it next morning after breakfast; for as we lived in a close part of the town, fresh air was necessary to our health; and though, before I had this airy lodging, I breathed very well in town, yet indulging in the fresh air, I was soon sensible of all the stench and closeness of the metropolis; and I must own I began to relish a glass of wine after dinner as well when alone as when in company: I did not find myself the worse in circumstances for this lodging; but I did not find I grew richer, and we had no money ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various

... which had themselves undergone the same classical impulse. Italy was the source most regarded during the more strictly Elizabethan period; whence its lyrical poetry and the dramatic in a less degree, are coloured much less by pure and severe classicalism with its closeness to reality, than by the allegorical and elaborate style, fancy and fact curiously blended, which had been generated in Italy under the peculiar and local circumstances of her pilgrimage in literature and art from the age of Dante onwards. Whilst that influence lasted, such brilliant ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... not analyze all this with much closeness in his thoughts, but the impressions of it were distinct enough to him. He rather enjoyed these impressions than otherwise. Women had not often interested him consecutively to any large degree, either in detail or as a whole. He ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... the man that fell became an impediment to him that was next to him, as did the danger of going farther make them less zealous in their attempts; and for those that had run under the darts some of them were terrified by the good order and closeness of the enemies' ranks before they came to a close fight, and others were pricked with their spears and turned back again. At length they reproached one another for their cowardice, and retired without doing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... concealed him from the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw the door—even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the street sounded natural and ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... all heard much of the closeness, or rather the meanness, of this remarkable man. Truth compels us to admit, as we have before intimated, that he was not generous, except to his own kindred. His liberality began and ended in his own family. Very seldom during his lifetime did he willingly do a generous act outside ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... ordered that it might agree with the breadth of the house; and it had twelve cubits in latitude, and its height was raised as high as a hundred and twenty cubits. He also built round about the temple thirty small rooms, which might include the whole temple, by their closeness one to another, and by their number and outward position round it. He also made passages through them, that they might come into on through another. Every one of these rooms had five cubits in breadth, [7] and the same in length, but in height twenty. Above these there were ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... Violet's was unheard of, it made the more terrific splash, a splash that covered the whole family. The Ransomes, to be sure, stood more in the center, they were more deplorably bespattered, and more, much more intimately tainted. But, by the very closeness of their family attachment, the mud of Violet's plungings would adhere largely to the Randalls, too. The taint would hang for years around him, John Randall, in his shop. He had hardly entered his sister's room before he had calculated about how long ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... one growled about the closeness of the night air, when we were told, to our surprise, that the minimum thermometer marked 36 deg. as the lowest night temperature. Certain it is, the out-of-door-life changes one's feelings about what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... still brilliant and fierce black eyes. She was in no wise a clever woman, nor was our dear Harriet a clever girl. Garrow on the other hand and his daughter were both very markedly clever, and this produced a closeness of companionship and alliance between the father and daughter which painfully excited the jealousy of the wife and mother. But it was totally impossible for her to cabal with her daughter against ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... yet be lingering. It was Jasmin, poetic Jasmin, who, in giving Gaston the book he now carried ever ready to hand, had done him perhaps the best of services, for it had proved the key to a new world of seemingly boundless intellectual resources, and yet with a special closeness to visible or sensuous things;—the scent and colour of the field-flowers, the amorous business of the birds, the flush and re-fledging of the black earth itself in that fervent springtide, which was therefore ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... infer from Theophrastus—in Greece, has almost wholly disappeared from the latter country, and seems to be dying out in Germany. The wood of the yew surpasses that of almost any other European tree in closeness and fineness of grain, and it is well known for the elasticity which of old made it so great a favorite with the English archer. It is much in request among wood carvers and turners, and the demand for it explains, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... looked around me. Oh, how still and sullenly gloomy was everything around me—no, not gloomy even, but dumb, cold, and menacing at the same time! My heart sank. At that instant, at that spot, I had a sense of death breathing upon me, I felt I almost touched its perpetual closeness. If only one sound had vibrated, one momentary rustle had arisen, in the engulfing stillness of the pine-forest that hemmed me in on all sides! I let my head sink again, almost in terror; it was as though I had looked in, where no man ought to ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... caterpillar with wings, and not yet a butterfly. In the poet's mind, the fact has gone quite over into the new element of thought, and has lost all that is exuvial. This generosity bides with Shakspeare. We say, from the truth and closeness of his pictures, that he knows the lesson by heart. Yet there is not a trace ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... he produced upwards of forty distinct works. In 1829 came his last and greatest work, 'Guillaume Tell,' which was written for the Grand Opera in Paris. The libretto was the work of many hands, and Rossini's own share in it was not a small one. It follows Schiller with tolerable closeness. In the first act Tell saves the life of Leuthold, who is being pursued by Gessler's soldiers; and Melchthal, the patriarch of the village, is put to death on a charge of insubordination. His son Arnold loves Matilda, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... invincibly ambitious. He would end by making a sufficient fortune, and by being a town councillor and a J.P. But beyond Woodhouse he did not exist. Why then should Alvina be attracted by him? Perhaps because of his "closeness," and ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... she murmured inwardly, "that his study would be a little bare. I cannot think how he can stand such closeness, so much furniture." She sighed as ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... the blue of its exquisite clarity, and reduced the sun to a shapeless blazing; mass that could be gazed at without bringing tears to the eyes, although there was thus far no appreciable alleviation of the scorching heat of the rays that he showered down upon us. But there was an added quality of closeness in the air that caused one literally to gasp for breath occasionally, while the slightest exertion—even that of moving from one part of the deck to another—induced instant profuse perspiration. So hot, indeed, was it that with one accord we decided ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... at Ree and the latter nodded for him to go ahead. In another minute then, a match, the closeness and desperation of which delighted the savages beyond measure, ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... During the next half-hour there was constant aurora, chiefly in bands across or near the zenith, or lower in the southern sky. The observation ended about 10.38. The intensity was then 2, the aurora diffused over the southern sky. There were cumulus clouds of varying closeness all the time. They came up in the southeast at the beginning of the observation, and disappeared towards the end of it; they were closest about 10 minutes past 10. At the time that the broad shining arch through the zenith was at its highest intensity ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... coronetted blinkers tossing on the other side of the railing. A kind little note of welcome was put into Rachel's hand as she was seated in the luxurious open carriage, and Alick had never felt better pleased with his sister than when he found his wife thus spared the closeness of the cramping fly, or the dusty old rectory phaeton. Hospitality is never more welcome than at the station, and Bessie's letter was complacently accepted. Rachel would, she knew, be too much tired to see her on that day, and on the next ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... tired throughout every muscle of his body. He set down his rifle, tossed his hat aside, and slumped down by the fire. Coming in from the storm-cleansed open he sniffed at the closeness of the cave. It was not alone the smell of smoke; his first thought was that Gloria had been cooking something. Then he noted the sardine-can. With a stick he raked it out of the coals. And now Gloria could read his expression well enough ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... "From the closeness with which they tally to that newspaper account, even down to the renegade Indian, we are, I think, justified in assuming that they ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... cautiously beginning to surround and envelop her, she did not recognise the reason of her happiness or of his devotion. She considered him the avowed lover of another woman, with whose youth and loveliness she would not have dreamed of competing; and she regarded this closeness of intimacy between herself and Garth as a development of a friendship more beautiful than she ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... excitement which usually attends the contests between great political parties whose members espouse and advocate with earnest faith their respective creeds. The circumstances were, perhaps, in no respect extraordinary save in the closeness and the ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... one more commonly found in the prose than in the verse of his time—a quaint and florid obscurity, rigid with elaborate rhetoric and tortuous with labyrinthine illustration; not dark only to the rapid reader through closeness and subtlety of thought, like Donne, whose miscalled obscurity is so often "all glorious within," but thick and slab as a witch's gruel with forced and barbarous eccentricities of articulation. As his language in the higher forms of comedy ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... flowers from the garden. To the dead, in fact, was conceded in such places a somewhat closer neighbourhood to the old homes they were thought still to protect, than is usual with us, or was usual in Rome itself—a closeness which the living welcomed, so diverse are the ways of our human sentiment, and in which the more wealthy, at least in the country, might indulge themselves. All this Marius followed with a devout ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... been on deck perhaps half-an-hour, when a delicious coolness and freshness began by almost insensible degrees to pervade the hitherto intolerable closeness of the hot and enervating atmosphere, and, looking away to the westward, we saw, by the quick, flickering illumination of the lightning, a few transient cat's-paws playing here and there upon the surface of the water. Gradually and erratically these evanescent movements in the inert air stole down ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... and I admire as never before the fine artistry of fate. Our cousin's guardian, the natural and the legal, was his aunt, his only one, who was the cousin of our mother and our own aunt, virtually our only one, so far as a felt and adopted closeness of kinship went; and the three, daughters of two sole and much-united sisters, had been so brought up together as to have quite all the signs and accents of the same strain and the same nest. The cousin Helen of our ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... conviction is that Jesus had that Old Testament scene in His mind. For if you will turn again to that last night's talk you will find a striking repetition of the steps or peculiarities of that wilderness experience. Though here the whole experience is on a much higher, finer plane. There is a closeness of personal regard, a depth of that deepest of all loves, friendship love, that is not found in the Old Testament story, except perhaps between Moses ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... corner of the island, I was surprised to find that I could see nothing of the hippo; but I soon realised that I was looking too far ahead, for on lowering my eyes there he was, not twenty-five yards away, lying down in the shallow water, only half covered and practically facing us. His closeness to us made me rather anxious for our safety, more especially as just then he rose to his feet and gave forth the peculiar challenge or call which we had already heard so often during the night. All the same, as he raised his head, I fired at it. He whirled round, ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson

... aching intensely—my own being, in common parlance, "ready to split," not an inapt simile, by the way, as I often experienced in the south. Towards evening, the sultriness increased to a great degree, and respiration became painful, from the closeness of the atmosphere. A suspicious lull soon after succeeded, and we momentarily expected the storm to overtake us. It was not, however, one that was to be relieved by an ordinary discharge of thunder, lightning, and rain—deeper causes being ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... Heraclius, one of the chief officers of the state, also received the shocking tidings with indignation. He was determined that the imperial purple should not be usurped by an obscure centurion of disgusting aspect. "The person of this Phocas was diminutive and deformed; the closeness of his shaggy eyebrows, his red hair, his beardless chin, were in keeping with his cheek, disfigured and discolored by a formidable scar. Ignorant of letters, of laws, and even of arms, he indulged in an ample privilege of lust and drunkenness." At first Heraclius refused tribute ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... sea, like a copper shield, smooth and glowing, seething like a boiling caldron, with its level foam, for the long, low-rolling billows lifted themselves but lazily from Ocean's breast, and assumed no distinctness of form or motion. Not the faintest breeze came to relieve the stifling closeness of the atmosphere, or lift the collapsed sail, or furled flag, that clung around our mast. The air shimmered visibly around us, as though undergoing some transformation from the heat, some culinary ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... the process of making a new beginning much in the way of superfluous preliminary has to be gone through. Had these been leaves of trees they would have duly dropped off. Unfortunately, leaves of books continue to stick fast even when they are no longer wanted. The feature of these poems was the closeness of attention devoted even to trifling things. Pictures and Songs seized every opportunity of giving value to these by colouring them with feelings ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... in our language, I think, a new mode of history, which tells all that is wanted, and, I suppose, all that is known, without laboured splendour of language, or affected subtilty of conjecture. The exactness of his dates raises my wonder. He seems to have the closeness of Henault[1137] ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... non-active, all-pervading, and different in each body. Being incapable of change and non-active, it can neither be an agent nor an enjoyer; but although this is so, men in their confusion of mind, due to the closeness to each other of Prakriti and the soul, erroneously attribute to Prakriti the intelligence of the soul, and to the soul the activity of Prakriti—just as the redness of the rose superimposes itself on the crystal ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... The closeness of this union or communion with God in Christ is expressed more fully by the figure of the body and its members. The Saints together form the Body of Christ. "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge

... and a quarter the garafon! I find myself suddenly whirled round by one of my uninvited visitors. I would not have selected such a partner, but I have no choice. Smoke is said to be a disinfectant; so I smoke as I dance. For the closeness of the atmosphere, and the muskiness of mulatto girls, are not congenial to one's olfactory and respiratory organs. At last the final drop of aguardiente is drained, the music ceases, and my friends, and my friends' friends, and ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... Opinion, because, to my knowledge, he hath sent far and near, for the most able Doctors in the Kingdom, to be feed for him, which were great folly, if he intended not to answer. He is extreamly commended for his closeness and secrecy by the major part of our Auditors (the He and She Good-fellows of the Town,) and though he refuseth to be a Confessor, yet he is sure to dye a Martyr, and most of the Ladies in Town will worship at his Shrine. The Lady Hatton, some nine days since was at Stoke, with the good Knight ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville

... antidote to our vaulting human egotism, we should think often upon the closeness of mental contact between the highest animals and the lowest men. In drawing a parallel between those two groups, there are no single factors more valuable than the home, and the family food supply. These hark back to the most primitive instincts of the vertebrates. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... I have already tired your Lordship. I shall only add one circumstance, That on his death-bed he declared himself a Nonconformist, and had a fanatick preacher to be his spiritual guide. After half an hour's conversation I took my leave, being half stifled by the closeness of the room. I imagine he could not hold out long, and therefore withdrew to a little coffee-house hard by, leaving a servant at the house with orders to come immediately, and tell me, as near as he could, the minute when Partridge should expire, which was not above two ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift

... seeking for a place to cross, while the British rode furiously after them, spraying them with shrapnel at every opportunity. Darkness and a violent storm gave De Wet his opportunity to cross, but the closeness of the pursuit compelled him to abandon two of his guns, one of them a Krupp and the other one of the British twelve-pounders of Sanna's Post, which, to the delight of the gunners, was regained by that very U battery to ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... discourse the tranter and his wife might have been observed standing in an unobtrusive corner, in mysterious closeness to each other, a just perceptible current of intelligence passing from each to each, which had apparently no relation whatever to the conversation of their guests, but much to their sustenance. A conclusion ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... child! It is only the closeness after a storm; not the fire. That is far away, and still smothered between walls in the hold. It may never break out, if they can get at it before it burns through to the air. They are working manfully, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... constantly imparted to us, that life will prevail within us. That life is absolutely sinless, as incapable of defilement as the sunbeam which has its fount and origin in the sun. In proportion to the closeness of our abiding in him will be the completeness of our deliverance from sinning. And we doubt not that there are Christians who have yielded themselves to God in such absolute surrender, and who through the upholding power ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... glowing in the full blaze of the glory from the central orb. So in our revolution, the measure of the distance from the farthest point of our darkest earthly sorrow, to the throne, may help us to the measure of the closeness of the bright, perfect, perpetual glory above, when we are on the throne: for if so be that we are sons, we must suffer with Him; if so be that we suffer, we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... Savoy was suddenly attacked by apoplexy and expired towards the close of January. He was succeeded by Victor Amedee his elder son, who was the husband of Madame Christine de France, the sister of the French King; and it was anticipated that the closeness of this alliance would at once terminate all aggressive measures on the part of France, and that the new Duke would be suffered to take peaceful possession of his inheritance. Such, however, was not the policy of the Cardinal, and accordingly the operations ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... submitted peaceably to the necessity; put her arm over the doctor's shoulder to support herself and laid her head down; though not to sleep. She watched everything that was going on now. What a roomful of weary and impatient people they were! packed like cattle in a pen, for closeness; and how the rain poured and beat outside the house! The shelter was something to be thankful for, and yet how unthankful everybody looked. Some of the gentlemen shewed calm fortitude under their trials; but the poor ladies' chagrined faces ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... again into Ophiuchus, and find immediately the very interesting double, lambda, whose components are of magnitudes four and six, distance 1", p. 55 deg.. This is a long-period binary, and notwithstanding the closeness of its stars, our four-inch should separate them when the seeing is fine. We shall do better, however, to try with the five-inch. Sigma 2166 consists of two stars of magnitudes six and seven and a half, distance 27", p. 280 deg.. Sigma ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... It has a pair of rollers about the size of broomsticks, close together and turning in different directions, which pinch and draw the fibre through, while the seeds are prevented from passing by the closeness of the rollers. Whitney's invention of the saw-gin in 1794 revolutionized the business and changed the whole domestic aspect of our Southern States. In it the fibre is picked from the seed by means of saw-teeth projecting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... some cases the husk is apparently wanting, or takes some unrecognizable form. But in far the plurality of instances the two parts of the plant's treasury are easily distinguishable, and must be separately studied, whatever their apparent closeness of relation, or, (as in all natural things,) the equivocation sometimes taking place between the one and the other. To me, the especially curious point in this matter is that, while I find the most elaborate accounts given by botanists ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... he though?' replied Jonas, with a shake of the head which expressed the closeness of his dutiful observation. 'Ecod, you don't know how tough he is. He ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... arrangements may be surmounted. The causes of this unhealthiness are chiefly the swampy state of the ground on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus (which the Canal itself, acting as a drain upon the surrounding country, will greatly tend to remove), and the malaria engendered by the closeness of the woods, and by the accumulation of decayed vegetable substances, which the opening of the country, incidental to the formation of the Canal now proposed, and the road afterwards adverted to, will tend to alleviate; and after all, those ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill

... productions, several other grades of difference are requisite, as we have seen with pigeons. The origin of the existence of groups subordinate to groups, is the same with varieties as with species, namely, closeness of descent with various degrees of modification. Nearly the same rules are followed in classifying varieties, as with species. Authors have insisted on the necessity of classing varieties on a natural instead of an artificial system; ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... or temporal, is justified only by the personal fitness of their occupants. With such levelling doctrine, the Socialism of popular preachers like John Balle might seem to coincide with sufficient closeness; and since worthiness was not to be found in the holders of either spiritual or temporal authority, of either ecclesiastical or lay wealth, the time had palpably come for the poor man to enjoy his own again. Then, the advent of a weak government, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... we can account at once for the delay of the ephors, since the ten days which passed without reply to the ambassadors exactly correspond in number with the ten days dedicated to public mourning. [98] But whatever the cause of the Spartan delay —and the rigid closeness of that oligarchic government kept, in yet more important matters, its motives and its policy no less a secret to contemporaneous nations than to modern inquirers—the delay itself highly incensed the Athenian envoys: they even threatened to treat with Mardonius, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... being of much higher temperature, the excessive heat carbonates the iron to a depth of one-eighth to three-sixteenths of an inch, forming a zone of mild steel between the hard steel and soft iron. The mould is placed in a vertical position to insure closeness of structure and the forcing of gases out of the steel. After solidifying, the whole plate is pressed, and passed through the rolls to obtain thorough welding. It is then bent, planed, fitted, tempered, and annealed to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... This closeness of touch between Parliament and People has evident advantages, but it also has at least one serious drawback. In times of great public excitement it might lead to hasty legislation, unless the House of Lords should be able to interpose and procure the further ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... his visit to Hatboro', and without using names or persons contrived to give a vivid impression of the situation and the local feeling. He aimed at the historical attitude, and with some imitation of Taino's method and manner, he achieved it. His whole account of the defalcation had a closeness of texture which involved every significant detail, from the first chance suspicion of the defaulter's honesty, to the final opinions and conjectures of his fate. At the same time the right relation and proportion ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... in June I left home with my resentment burning fiercely within me. I had not cared for the things we had for breakfast, for I was half-ill with fretting and with the closeness of the day, but my lack of appetite had been passed by with the remark that any one was likely not to have an appetite on such a close day. But I was so languid, and so averse to taking up the usual round of things, that I begged mother to let ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie

... Stephen wouldn't have kept any secret all these years from the folks he's lived amongst. It isn't likely. He must leave it all to his wife, except a hundred or so, perhaps, to mother Tadman; and it was nothing but his natural closeness that made him want ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... and settling upon the overgrown shrubbery in the pretty village yards, or on white curtains hanging motionless at the windows of large, old-fashioned frame houses. Even the shade was hot with a sort of closeness unknown in the open air, yet as it dwindled to noontide proportions some alleviation seemed withdrawn; and though the mercury marked no change, all the senses welcomed the post-meridian lengthening of the images of bough and bole beneath the trees, and the fantastic architecture ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... stitch sometimes goes by the name of double back stitch. It is useful in many ways, making a light stitch for stems, leaves, or flowers; it can be sometimes found in Eastern work used for an entire embroidery. When used for flowers or leaves the width and the closeness of the stitch are varied to suit the shape to be filled. An example of its use as a flower filling is shown in the carnation at fig. 64, which is carried out in four shades of colour. Considerable use is made of this stitch in embroidered curtain shown ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... glimpse of the social force of which Fanny de Malrive had spoken. All these amiably chatting visitors, who mostly bore the stamp of personal insignificance on their mildly sloping or aristocratically beaked faces, hung together in a visible closeness of tradition, dress, attitude and manner, as different as possible from the loose aggregation of a roomful of his own countrymen. Durham felt, as he observed them, that he had never before known what "society" meant; nor understood that, in an organized and inherited system, it exists full-fledged ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton

... his State who were present. When the result was announced it showed a majority of three for General Harrison. A veteran campaigner begged me to announce it as fifty, but I refused. "No," I said, "the closeness of the vote when there is every opportunity for manipulation ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... knowledge that it should be deficient in "exactness," in precision of statement, and closeness of logical concatenation. We must not look for a mathematics of conduct. The subject-matter of Human Conduct is not governed by necessary and uniform laws. But this does not mean that it is subject to no laws. There are general ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... for ships, fine cloth, which when dyed resembles silk. The wood is the best that can be found for making charcoal, and it yields wine, odoriferous water, sugar, and oil. The boughs or leaves serve to cover houses, instead of tiles or thatch, as, by reason of their closeness and substance, they keep out the rain admirably. One tree will produce about two hundred large nuts. The outer rhind of these nuts is removed, and thrown into the fire, where it burns quickly and with a strong flame. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may, with greater propriety, be said not to have lost the faculty than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... arrival at the prison, found the wife of Mazin in great distress from the cruelty of her sisters. Her children were playing about her, but very pallid, from the closeness of their confinement. On the entrance of the nurse she stood up, made her obeisance, and began to weep, saying, "My dear nurse, I have been long in this dungeon, and know not what in the end may be my fate." The old woman kissed her cheeks, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... that he was without some acquaintance with it when he first went to Rome, and he certainly afterwards became well read in the literature of Rome. In some cases he has followed Livy's narrative with a closeness which proves that he must have been acquainted with that author either in the original or in a translation, and the latter alternative is, of the two, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... overlaid with twaddle, so unmercifully protracted and spun out as to be almost unreadable to the present generation. But to complete Richardson, we must inoculate him with the propensities of another school: we must give him a liberal share of the feminine sensitiveness and closeness of observation of which Miss Austen is the great example. And perhaps, to fill in the last details, he ought, in addition, to have a dash of the more unctuous and offensive variety of the dissenting preacher—for we know not where else to look for the astonishing and often ungrammatical fluency ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... Charles was again to interview the Pope, and imperialists in Italy predicted that his presence would be as decisive in Catherine's favour as it had been three years before. But Henry and Francis had, in October, exhibited to the world the closeness of their friendship by a personal interview at Boulogne.[816] No pomp or ceremony, like that of the Field of Cloth of Gold, dazzled men's eyes; but the union between the two Kings was never more real. Neither Queen was present; Henry ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... therefore, among the commonest fruits of the savage imagination. As those legends have been produced to meet the same want by persons in a very similar mental condition, it inevitably follows that they all resemble each other with considerable closeness. We need not conclude that all the myths we are about to examine came from a single original source, or were handed about—with flint arrow-heads, seeds, shells, beads, and weapons—in the course of savage commerce. Borrowing of this sort may—or, rather, must—explain many ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... in our imagination, in our thought of ourselves. Blessed are they who are as poor in spirit as they actually are in everything else. They recognize that they are wholly dependent on some One else, and so they live the dependent life, with its blessed closeness of touch with the gracious Provider. In certain institutions are placed those who imagine themselves to be in high social and official rank, and in possessions what they are not, who imagine it to such a degree that it is best that they be kept apart from others. It would seem like an ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... as to keep him from peering around into it in the way he had. For that reason, perhaps, he did not try to do so. He answered, seriously: "I believe you are partly right. I'm afraid I haven't seemed quite fair. Couldn't you attribute my closeness to something besides my slipperiness?" He began to laugh again. "Can't you imagine my being interested in your opinions so much more than my own that I didn't care to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... arts, a kind of gesture, a method of dancing on paper." Sculpture, drawing, all the arts save music are imitative; so was the dance from which they sprang. But imitation is not all, or even first. "The dance may be mimetic; but the beauty and verve of the performance, not closeness of the imitation impresses; and tame additions of truth will encumber and not convince. The dance must control the pantomime." Art, that ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... kind of reasoning depends upon the closeness of the connection between the effect and the assigned cause. In testing argument from sign, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... more real than the touch of earthly hands that grasp each other closest. There is ever some film of atmosphere between the palms. But 'he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit,' and he that clasps Christ's outstretched hand of help with his outstretched hand of weakness, holds Him with a closeness to which all unions of earth are gaping gulfs of separation. You remember how Mary cast herself at Christ's feet on the resurrection morning, and would have flung her arms round them in the passion ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... merely, but a hateful depravity of manners. Whether the unexampled depravation of the modern Italians has been caused by their passionate devotion to music, or their passionate devotion to music by their monstrous depravity shall not be discussed in this place. But the closeness of the connexion between the two things, no matter which may be the cause or which the effect, will serve as ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... glance of my grandmother I did not turn away again from Richard Dawson, much as I detested his closeness and his breath upon my cheek. I thought the dinner would never be over. As it went on I could not but feel that he was making himself and me conspicuous. He drank a good deal of wine, and the more he drank the more he leant to me and tried ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan

... was known about the movements of the pack the difficulties of making a choice may very easily be imagined, and, in spite of disappointments, Scott's opinion that the 178 W. was the best meridian did not change. 'The situation of the main bodies of pack,' he says, 'and the closeness with which the floes are packed depend almost entirely on the prevailing winds. One cannot tell what winds have prevailed before one's arrival; therefore one cannot know much about the situation or ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... benefit, there are many practical fruits of friendship to the individual. These may be classified and subdivided almost endlessly, and indeed in every special friendship the fruits of it will differ according to the character and closeness of the tie, and according to the particular gifts of each of the partners. One man can give to his friend some quality of sympathy, or some kind of help, or can supply some social need which is lacking in his character or circumstances. Perhaps it is not possible to get a better ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black

... painters—but even then I doubt if any real harm to art has resulted. For the situation in aesthetics differs from the situation in ethics and politics where the retarding effect of convention is undeniable. In art there can never be the same closeness of alliance between convention and vested interests that is so repressive a force in the "world." It is probably true indeed that, as Plato said, "when the modes of music change, so do constitutions ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... directionally analyzed. Therefore the other children were no longer a means by which he might be trapped. So their communicators had been taken away from them for the second time, and now they were watched with an unceasing closeness. Every glance, every word, every ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... acquaintance very deliberately coiled up the tube of his hookah, and produced from behind a curtain a very long befrogged topcoat with Astrakhan collar and cuffs. This he buttoned tightly up, in spite of the extreme closeness of the night, and finished his attire by putting on a rabbit-skin cap with hanging lappets which covered the ears, so that no part of him was visible save his mobile and peaky face. "My health is somewhat fragile," he remarked, as he led the way down the passage. "I am compelled ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Egyptian and partly from Asiatic sources. That Egyptian influences had affected this early art is further proved by a fragment of carved and painted ornament on a ceiling in Orchomenos, imitating with remarkable closeness certain ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... Lombard-street itself affords a truer illustration of the sentiment, than this town of mud and money, contrasted with its beautiful environs. The distant view of Lyons is imposing from most points; but the interior presents but few objects to repay the traveller for its closeness, stench, and bustle (not even good silk stockings). Its two noble rivers have had no apparent effect in purifying it, nor the easterly winds from the Alps, which stand in full sight, in ventilating its narrow smoky streets: and though usually considered ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... anything of the sort. Her letters fluctuated very much in tone, but at times they were as detached and guarded as a schoolgirl writing to a cousin. Then it seemed to Benham an extraordinary fraud on her part that she should presume to come into his dream with an entirely deceptive closeness and confidence. She began to sound him in these latter letters upon the possibility of divorce. This, which he had been quite disposed to concede in London, now struck him as an outrageous suggestion. He wrote to ask her why, and she responded exasperatingly that she thought it was "better." ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells



Words linked to "Closeness" :   familiarity, propinquity, quality, togetherness, unsociableness, unsociability, stuffiness, niggardness, miserliness, niggardliness, stealthiness, secretiveness, minginess, parsimoniousness, tightness, openness, stinginess, smallness, intimacy, littleness, meanness, proximity, close, belonging, tightfistedness, contiguousness, adjacency, furtiveness, sneakiness



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com