"Single-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... redeemed. He believed that the world neither held, nor had held, his wife's equal in character and nobility of mind. He worshipped an image of his own creation in the shape of Cleopatra Dearman, and the image he had conceived was a credit to the single-minded, simple-hearted gentleman. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... [Perfectly single-minded and entirely taken in.] But I would have come even if ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... suddenly in conversation, he had no longer the manner and the voice of a man of the world. There was a simplicity, earnestness, gravity in his look and in his words, which one could not forget. It seemed to me to speak of a loving desire to please God, a single-minded preference for His service over every service of man, a resolve to approach Him by the ways which He had appointed. It was no taking for granted that to follow one's own best opinion was all one with obeying His will; no easy persuasion that a vague, obscure sincerity in our ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... temper Scott was most gentle and loveable, and to his friends he was loyal almost to a fault. He was quite without ambition to 'get on' in the world; he had no low or mean motives; and than John Scott, Natural Science probably had no more earnest and single-minded devotee." -correspondence with. -criticism on the "Origin" by. -letters to. -on Natural Selection. -on a red cowslip. -confirms Darwin's work, also points out error. -Darwin assists financially. -Darwin's opinion of. -Darwin offers to present books ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years after, to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write. I must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in your character. You were also,—I use the past tense with a view to the time when you shall read rather than to that when I am writing,—a ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... in love with her and single-minded in his desire to aid her, to defend her, but the door had hardly closed behind him when his questionings, his suspicions began to file back, stealthily, silently, along the underways of his brain. Her distress began to seem a little too theatric, her troubles self-induced—all ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... inducted), the meetings may sometimes resolve themselves into a ribaldry, sometimes into a truthful pursuit of Beauty, sometimes into a mere logomachy. But in these symposiums, unmarred by the crude claim of duty, the Club does with single-minded resolve pursue the only lasting satisfaction allowed to humanity, to wit, the sympathetic ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Whitgift, her Archbishop of Canterbury, set about putting their house in order in earnest, they were met with a mixture of humble loyalty and immovable resistance which would have perplexed any potentates less single-minded. But Elizabeth and Whitgift were not of the sort that sets its hand to the plow and then turns back; they went earnestly on with their banishments and executions, paying particular attention to the Separatists, but keeping plenty in hand for the Puritans also.—The ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... on a great mountain-peak, with none to bear him company. Who have I for a friend? Whom can I rely upon? Some are for the Church; some are for their families; most are for themselves. But who of them all is single-minded? You are my better self, Francoise; you are my guardian angel. What the good father says is true, and the nearer I am to you the further am I from all that is evil. Tell me, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... away. To the school of course I came as usual, but not upstairs. I don't know what I told Dalton—it did not signify what you told him, he always had a theory of his own, and was persuaded of its truth—a very single-minded man, sir. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to me that Tommy had seen all the furniture unpacked, and much of it set up, by lurking around in the silent, shrinking, bright-eyed fashion that he has. Tommy Gregg is so single-minded in his investigations that I can easily imagine that he might seem as impersonal as an observant ray of sunlight in the window. Anyway, he had evidently seen everything, and nobody had tried to ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the persuasion he had already confessed to Dr. Martineau that there was not a single member of the Fuel Commission but had a considerable drive towards doing the right thing about fuel, and not one who had a single-minded, unencumbered drive towards the right thing. "That," said Sir Richmond, "is what makes life so interesting and, in spite of a thousand tragic disappointments, so hopeful. Every man is a bad man, every man is a feeble man and every man is a good man. My motives come and go. Yours ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... the strong objectionable facts that he had just revealed, hope had begun to steal upon the wishes of the young man, as he listened to the consoling words of the single-minded and affectionate Adelheid. It would scarcely have been possible for a youth so endowed by nature, and one so inevitably conscious of his own value, though so modest in its exhibition, not to feel encouraged by her ingenuous and frank admission, as ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... trace. Ambition he had none—none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during which I have known him. As for vanity, I never saw a man so entirely devoid of it. His modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always underestimated his personal influence. A man less single-minded, vainer, more ambitious of success, might with the same gifts have achieved more for Ireland in thrusting towards a personal triumph. A man with more love for the homage of crowds might have kept himself in closer touch with the mass of ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... an instant against a moonlit haze. Trent was not close to him in the launch, and yet somehow he felt the thrill of joyous relief which shot through the younger man's body at the signal, and envied it. But all was different with George; he could afford to be single-minded. Roger knew very well that George was in love with Madeleine Dalahaide, and that there was nothing he would not sacrifice for the happiness of giving her ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... single-minded, drove uptown with her thoughts in a state of chaos. She wished to think only about her newly begun head of Satan fallen, since nothing else seemed to her at the moment of any importance, but the face, hands, and voice of the young secret-service ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... and diligent plying of the paddle. The river was in such a hurry for the sea! Every drop of water ran in a panic, like as many people in a frightened crowd. But what crowd was ever so numerous, or so single-minded? All the objects of sight went by at a dance measure; the eyesight raced with the racing river; the exigencies of every moment kept the pegs screwed so tight, that our being quivered like a well-tuned instrument; ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... painful expressions that were seen flitting over his disturbed countenance, as he now returned to the sleigh, plainly told how effectually, and with what punished feelings, his enmity had been silenced. But not so with his single-minded and quickly and justly appreciating daughter. She had no prejudices to combat, no pride to conquer; and she, therefore, witnessed each new act of her deliverer with as much pleasure as gratitude—feelings ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... new and surprised respect for his host. He could forecast the kind of small city newspaper that Smith would make; careful, conscientious, regular in politics, loyal to what it deemed the best interests of the community, single-minded in its devotion to the Smith family and its properties; colorless, characterless, and without vision or leadership in all that a newspaper should, according to Banneker's opinion, stand for. So he talked with the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... has always been distasteful to him. The custom of espionage has made him suspect that others are as watchful as himself. He has been described erroneously as a master of complicated villainy. He is, for evil or for good, the most single-minded man alive. He looks for a profit in all things. Even his devotion to the Sunday-school is of a piece with the test. "Put something in," says he, speaking of the work, "and according as you put something in, the greater will be ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... There is a mass of sophistry current in the world which sickens me. People talk of Robespierre and St. Just, two of the most virtuous men that ever lived—and of Dominic and Torquemada, two of the most single-minded—as if they were cruel and bloodthirsty, whereas they were ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... that of the lady's inclinations, it appears. Well, I've warned you. I've done it with the best intentions. I suppose even you won't deny that I'm single-minded? I'm not on the side of your solicitor." That ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... will prove a rose without a thorn," Madge added, laughing, while under Mr. Muir's eye her face paled perceptibly. "There will never be anything problematical in her single-minded devotion. She has been well and discreetly brought up, and finished by the best society, while poor me!—I had to fly in the face of fate like a virago, and scramble up the best I could in Western wilds. Oh, well, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... "Hoppy," as we called him, was one of the few men I ever met whom the word "single-minded" described. His sense of honour was only equalled by his sense of humour; and a more original, tender, truthful, uncynical, real being never existed. He was a fine sportsman and had won the Grand Military when he was in the Grenadiers, riding ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... prayer, begging him to consult the Lord on the subject of his doubt, and to let him know the result. He made a similar application to Clare, recommending her to put the same question to her sisters, and particularly to the one who should appear to her to be the most pure and most single-minded. The venerable priest and the consecrated virgin gave similar answers, and pronounced that it was the will of God that Francis ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... have seen, what I have thought since yesterday has distressed me dreadfully," she said. "I have tried to include all the world in a broader pity, a broader, higher, and less selfish love than the jealous, single-minded love ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... the great Conservatives of history. Perhaps the only Englishman with whom in this respect he may be compared, is Sir Thomas More,—that virtuous and eloquent reactionist of the sixteenth century. More abounded in light, in intellectual interests, in single-minded care for the common weal. He was as anxious as any man of his time for the improved ordering of the Church, but he could not endure that reformation should be bought at the price of breaking up the ancient spiritual unity of Europe. He was willing to slay and be slain rather ...
— Burke • John Morley
... they set about dividing the booty. In this respect the Paris Conference—the world was assured in the beginning—towered aloft above its historic predecessor. Men who knew the facts declared repeatedly that the delegates to the Quai d'Orsay were just as unanimous, disinterested, and single-minded during the armistice as they were through the war. Probably ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... he was gone from the settlement. There could be nothing more annoying; if the labour took to running away, the fishery was wrecked. There are sixty miles of this island, you see, all in length like the Queen's highway; the idea of pursuit in such a place was a piece of single-minded childishness, which one did not entertain. Two days later, I made a discovery; it came in upon me with a flash that Sullens had been unjustly punished from beginning to end, and the real culprit throughout had been Obsequiousness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is without blemish physically or morally. The husband is faithful with a single-minded fidelity in thought, word and deed that looks (and, I am assured by equally innocent victims, is) positively deadly. The friend "frits and flutters" about in a distinctly casual, not to say polygamous, mood, but has one sacred place in his untidy heart in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... of his father, Monsieur Ballanche left Lyons, and passed the rest of his life in the society of her whom he worshipped with so single-minded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I came into touch with was that of Dr. Elsie Inglis. She was then the leading spirit in our movement in Edinburgh, and when I went to speak there, or in the neighbourhood, she always used to put me up. I have never met anyone who seemed to me more absolutely single-minded and single-hearted in her devotion to a cause which appealed to her. She was eminently a feminist, and to her feminism she subordinated everything else. No consideration for her health, for her position, for her practice, ever stood in the ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... not I the type of heroism, of magnanimity? Well, compelling me, the heroic, the magnanimous, now to stand here upon my hind-legs, and now to crouch quietly down, like a pet kitten over-fed with new milk,—any state roguery is passed off as the greatest piece of single-minded honesty upon the mere strength of my character—if I may so say it, upon my legendary reputation. Now, as for you, though you are a lie, you are nevertheless not a bad-looking lie. You have a nice head, clean legs, and—though I think it a little impertinent that you should wear that tuft at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... further observation of the actions of their own representative on this planet has convinced us that they are a clever, ruthless people, living in a society which would have put Machiavelli to shame. They are single-minded of purpose, and welded into a tight group whose major purpose in life is the service of the state in its major purpose, which, by all indications, is that ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... however, had several objects in view, and permitted itself to be distracted from the single-minded prosecution of one great undertaking to other subsidiary operations, not always concentric. Whether the control of the line of the Hudson and Lake Champlain ought to have been sought through operations beginning at both ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... the day and realised the obvious dangers. I could only hope that either Bob Evers or his guides had shown the one kind of courage required by the occasion, the moral courage of turning back. But I was not at all sure of Bob. His stimulus was not that of the single-minded, level-headed mountaineer; in his romantic exaltation he was capable of hailing the very perils as so many more means of grace in the sight of Mrs. Lascelles; yet without doubt he would have repudiated any such incentive, and ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... possibility of escape from the Flying Heart was cut off, the young man felt agonizing regret that he had not yielded to his trainer's earlier importunities and taken refuge in flight while there was yet time. It would have been undignified, perhaps; but once away from these single-minded cattle-men, his life would have been safe at least, and he could have trusted his ingenuity to reinstate him in Miss Blake's good graces. Everything was too late now. Even if he made a clean breast of the whole affair ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... influence for good upon Adelaide and Arthur at that critical time, was this object lesson Simeon gave—Simeon with his single-hearted sorrow and single-minded love. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... which he mastered as he went along; to Austria, where he gained great skill as an oculist; to France, Italy, England—absorbing the languages and literature of these countries, doing some fine sculpture by way of diversion. But in all this he was single-minded; he never lost the voice of his call; he felt more and more keenly the contrast between the hard lot of his country and the freedom of these lands, and he bore it ill that no one of them even knew ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... constitutional habit, the outstanding trait in his character, when, on the day of that talk in the office with Nona, he had spoken of his disastrous inability—disastrous from the point of view of being satisfactory to single-minded persons, or of pulling out that big booming stuff called success—to see a thing, whatever it might be, from a single point of view and go all out for it from that point of view. "Convictions," he had said, and often in the welter of antagonistic convictions of 1913 thought ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision—to speed the time when there would be for all the people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... grace. To approach Poussin and his younger contemporary Claude rightly, the traveller will do well to free his mind from Ruskin's partial and prejudiced depreciation of these two supreme masters, in order to effect an equally partial appreciation of Turner.[216] The story of Poussin's single-minded and stubborn application to his art cannot here be told. After a life of poverty at Paris and two unsuccessful attempts to work his way to Rome, he at length reached that Mecca of French artists, where a commission ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... know the gipsies will understand me when I say that this suspicious and wary race of wanderers—suspicious and wary from an instinct transmitted through ages of dire persecutions from the Children of the Roof—will readily fraternize with a blunt, single-minded, and shy eccentric like Borrow, while perhaps the skilful man of the world may find all his tact and savoir faire useless and, indeed, in the way. And the reason of this is not far to seek, perhaps. What a gipsy most dislikes is the feeling that his “gorgio” interlocutor is thinking about him; ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... at the house for a few minutes, trying to realize that there a great poet had gone on living and working, in single-minded devotion to his art and his people, for full fifty years—there in that green, out-of-the-way corner of the world. The idea of a life so rooted in contentment, so continuously happy in the lifelong prosecution of ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... on the scorching western plains, which resulted in the capture of two waggon-loads of burghers, their rations, ammunition, and Mausers—a most satisfying haul. He placed before the leader of the British Force intercepted telegrams which threw invaluable light on Dutch moves. No more single-minded, ingenuous, and patriotic British South African ever drew breath than Mr. Van Busch, of Johannesburg. And verily he reaped his reward, in an officially countersigned railway pass, which would enable the patriot to render some further services to British arms, and a great ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... revealed to his startled senses the creeping, crawling things beneath the surface; partyism rampant, tyrannous and corrupt; a self-willed soldier in the White House; a Blaine, a Butler and a Garfield leading the Representatives, a Cameron and a Conkling leading the Senate; single-minded disinterestedness, pure ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... artists, merely engaged in satisfying their vanity or in the exercise of a profession like any other; for Tchehov is a standard by which modern literary effort must be measured, and the writer of prose or poetry who is not sufficiently single-minded to apply the standard to himself ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... was never a mystery to myself. I was ever hot-tempered, single-minded, and given to women. From these cardinal tendencies there proceeded truculence of temper, wrangling, obstinacy, rudeness of carriage, anger, and an inordinate desire, or rather a headstrong passion, for revenge ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... then, with the capacity for suffering of his single-minded type, had fallen the mantle of trouble. It puzzled him. He did not exactly know what to do about it. And it hurt. It ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the enterprise count for rather more than they once did, as qualifications for the work of teaching. This applies especially in those sciences that have most to do with the everyday facts of life, and it is particularly true of schools in the economically single-minded communities. This partial substitution of pecuniary for sacerdotal efficiency is a concomitant of the modern transition from conspicuous leisure to conspicuous consumption, as the chief means of reputability. The correlation ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... will be realized only as it is more than matched by a continuing growth in the spiritual strength of the nation. Our dedication to moral values must be complete in our dealings abroad and in our relationships among ourselves. We have single-minded devotion to the common good of America. Never must we forget that this means the well-being, the prosperity, the security of all Americans in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... rocky coast, high surf, and in the face of forty pieces of cannon, though we were not successful, will show what an Englishman is equal to." His conduct affords for all time an example of superb courage in the face of extraordinary and unexpected difficulty and danger, and especially of single-minded energy in carrying through one's own share of an enterprise, without misplaced concern about consequences, or worry as to whether the other parties were prospering or not. Had Nelson reached the square he would have found Troubridge there, and that was the one thing about which the latter ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... silver or send a Frenchman or two to purgatory, what worse am I doing than His Majesty's troops in Flanders, or your black frigates that lie off Port Royal? If I've a clear conscience I can more easily take order with those that are less single-minded. But maybe the chief reason is that I've some little skill of arms, so that the lad that questions me is apt ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... tended directly to injure the interests of Mr. Jefferson, and to promote the slender possibility of a second election of Mr. Adams." And, to be sure, the United-States Gazette followed up the thing with a good, single-minded party malice which cannot be surpassed in these present days, ending in such altitudes of sublime coolness as the following: "The insurrection of the negroes in the Southern States, which appears to be organized on the true French plan, must be decisive, with every reflecting man in those States, ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... spite of his air of importance and his inflated phraseology, a simple, single-minded, humble soul. When the rector visited him on his death-bed, he greeted Mr. Young with as much serenity of manner as if he had been only going on a journey to a far country for which he had long been preparing. "Well, reverend and dear sir. Here we are, you see! come to the nightcap ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... The plot of Laxdla is repeated in the story of Gunnlaug and Helga, even to a repetition of the course of events by which Kjartan is defrauded. The true lover is left in Norway and comes back too late; the second lover, the dull, persistent man, contrasted with a more brilliant but less single-minded hero, keeps to his wooing and spreads false reports, and wins his bride without her goodwill. Compared with the story of Kjartan and Gudrun, the story of Gunnlaug and Helga is shallow and sentimental; the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... sorrow, for I fear it sometimes reached that intensity of feeling, my excellent and indefatigable ancestor appeared to have no suspicion. He pursued his ordinary occupations with his ordinary single-minded devotion, and the last thing that would have crossed his brain was the suspicion that he had not punctiliously done his duty by his ward. Had he acted otherwise, none surely would have suffered more by his delinquency ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of heathen priests[85] is contrasted with the uprightness and single-minded devotion of Daniel. His God moreover delivers him, but their gods do not deliver them. The Bel of this history is as dumb as the Baal of I. Kings xviii.; their ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... to shrink, and, with a sincerity it was impossible to doubt, disclaimed as ignoble so poor a motive as a thirst for fame. His was one of those calm laborious minds, seldom found but among the Teutonic race, that—pursuing day by day with single-minded energy some special object—live in a noble obscurity, and die at last content with the consciousness of having added one other stone to that tower of knowledge men are building up toward heaven, even though the world should ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... this time her love for the stage had been single-minded. No man had touched her heart with sufficient fire to disturb her serenity, but now she was not merely following where he led, she was questioning the value ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... fifty-six. Sometimes, as she noted in her mirror the sharp lines of a fatigue that was almost bitterness, she experienced a certain unnerving uncertainty, a total lack of zest for what she so eagerly struggled to attain, and she envied her mother's single-minded satisfaction ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... to stand with his feet upon the earth and proclaim—'I am for France and my own people, and my own people only, and I will make them great through all the centuries by seeing the truth and leading them towards it, single-purposed, single-minded.' ... But these things are not to be disposed of so readily as this wonderful Berncastler—I beg its pardon, Berncastler Doctor—of our host. For to-night I have said my say. I have whims, perhaps, but with me serious affairs are finished for the night. I go to the Sporting Club. Mademoiselle keeps ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... You see, I come down with the very fever I'd faked and almost died of it, while the man who could have cured me easy wouldn't do nothing but perfume the landscape with the help of a gang of anaerobic bacteria. Stubborn single-minded cuss!" ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... real is the scene and the more amazing the achievement. I do not say that one is ever moved as one can be in the presence of great simplicity; one is aware in all Tintoretto's work of a hint of the self-conscious entrepreneur; but never, one feels, was the great man so single-minded as here; never was his desire to impress so deep and genuine. In the mass the picture is overpowering; in detail, to which one comes later, its interest is inexhaustible. As an example of the painter's minute thought, one writer has pointed out that ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... would have picked for great stamina and courage, yet playing one of the leading roles in this crisis; the merchant Truett, towering above all the rest; Farwell, direct, uncompromising, inspired with tremendous single-minded earnestness; James Dows, of the rough and ready, humorous, blasphemous, horse-sense type; Hossefross, of the Committee of '51; Dr. Beverly Cole, high-spirited, distinguished-looking, and courtly; Isaac Bluxome, whose signature of "33 Secretary" was to become terrible, and who also had served well ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... dress actually worn in the Holy Land, and deliberately draped Christ and the Apostles as Greek sages and Roman senators. I believe in so doing he was on the whole wise, his motive being to remove his characters from the sphere of common life; even for him, the most single-minded of men, art was a compromise: but while borrowing thus largely both in figure and costume from the Classic, it were vain to contend that his creations had an exclusively Christian origin. I may add that I do not think the controversy lies so much between religions ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... Reclamation Service was established to carry it on, under the direction of Mr. Newell, to whom the inception of the plan was due. Roosevelt paid a fine and well-deserved tribute to the man who originated and carried through this great national achievement when he said that "Newell's single-minded devotion to this great task, the constructive imagination which enabled him to conceive it, and the executive power and high character through which he and his assistant, Arthur P. Davis, built up a model service—all these made him a model servant. The final proof ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... was indescribably taunting, and of a sudden Buck saw red. Dominated by the single-minded impulse of primeval man to use the weapons nature gave him, he forgot momentarily that he carried a gun. When the two men entered, he had been bending over, rolling his blankets. Since then, save to raise his head, he had ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... themselves, a new foundation was in demand for an enduring and stanch affection—a sympathetic interdependence, wherein mutual weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive alliance. Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-minded confidence and truth out of which alone such a second union could spring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that she now watched ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... be more exact—Dr. Mortimer lunched with us. He has been excavating a barrow at Long Down, and has got a prehistoric skull which fills him with great joy. Never was there such a single-minded enthusiast as he! The Stapletons came in afterwards, and the good doctor took us all to the Yew Alley, at Sir Henry's request, to show us exactly how everything occurred upon that fatal night. It is a long, dismal ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... The single-minded poet produced from near his heart a very large letter with much sealing-wax endorsed, and the fervent admirer of his ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... finished, Bridgenorth summoned them to unite with him in prayer; and on a slight change of arrangements amongst the company, which took place as they were about to kneel down, Julian found his place next to the single-minded and beautiful object of his affection, as she knelt, in her loveliness, to adore her Creator. A short time was permitted for mental devotion; during which Peveril could hear her half-breathed petition for the promised ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... did not overtake them. We are beings of mixed composition, and I doubt if mine was a single-minded pursuit. I knew that honour required me to pursue, and I had a vivid impression of having just been down in the dust with a very wiry and active and dirty little antagonist of disagreeable odour and incredible and incalculable unscrupulousness, kneeling on me and gripping my arm and neck. I wanted ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... observing her did so with a strange mixture of softness and repulsion. If Gertrude Marvell loved anybody, she loved Delia—the captive of her own bow and spear, and until now the most loyal, the most single-minded of disciples. But as she saw Delia walk away to a further reach of the garden, the mind of the elder woman bitterly accused the younger. Delia's refusal to join the militant forces in London, at this most critical ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... told me yesterday that one of his sisters was a waiting-maid in the Rocher de Caucale. He is about the sincerest man I ever knew, never pretending to feelings that are not in him,—never flattering. His feelings do not seem to be warm, though they are kindly. He is so single-minded that he cannot understand badinage, but takes it all as if meant in earnest,—a German trait. Revalues himself greatly on being a Frenchman, though all his most valuable qualities come from Germany. His temperament is cool and pure, and he is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... merely ended in disaster for Italy, disease for Europe, and the spreading of the very Renaissance spirit which he had toiled to destroy. But, when all is said as to his tragedy, personal and political, there remains this magnificent isolated figure, single-minded, austere and self-sacrificing, in an ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... a genius of a different order, more robust, more varied, but less single-minded than Luini. His style reveals the influences of a many-sided, ill-assimilated education; blending the manners of Bramantino, Lionardo, and Raphael without proper fusion. Though Ferrari travelled much, and learned his art in several schools, he, like Luini, can only be studied in ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... stood him in even greater stead at later proceedings. On going into Committee of Supply, HOPE of Sheffield moved reduction of his salary on account of alleged failure to take necessary steps to maintain high standard of single-minded disinterestedness in public service. Though nominally concerned with the PREMIER and the public service HOPE told a flattering tale which was a thinly veiled attack on that meek personage the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... something infinitely stronger than these in fighting the economic ruin of Russia, which, if it is too strong, too powerful to be arrested by the Communists, would make short work of those who are without any such fanatic single-minded and perfectly ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... other hand the book reveals an extraordinary intellectual ideal. It holds up a standard for the student which is profoundly impressive; and I know no other book which displays in a more single-minded and sincere way the passionate desire of the savant for wide, deep, and perfect knowledge, which is to be untainted by any admixture of personal ambition. Indeed, Pattison speaks of literary ambition ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Egypt. The heads are full of character, with great variety of expression: on every countenance may be traced the history of its life. Grave old men stand before us, each one differing from the other; one is firm and strong, another more feeble; one cheerful and single-minded, another less open. Some inspired fanatics wildly raise their heads, whilst others with a simple and almost humorous expression walk by their side, and others again are still struggling with their earthly nature. ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... seems to date from about 47-6—reveals the young philosopher, if it is Vergil, in a serious mood of single-minded devotion to his new pursuit. But as may be inferred from the fifth Catalepton he was not sure of not backsliding. To the influence of Catullus, plainly visible all through these brief poems, there was added the example of Philodemus who wrote epigrams ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... my side before Old Plod, that thus far, in his single-minded attention to his oats, had seemingly forgotten her presence; but, as he lifted his head from the manger and saw her, he took a step forward, and reached his great brown nose toward her, rather than for the clover. In brief, he said, in his poor ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... "On a single-minded loom," sang Ev into a snifter. "Who would have thought that my great gift to the world would be put to such a perverse use right ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... when the catastrophe matches the natural obscurity of our fate that even the best representative of the race is liable to lose his detachment. It is very obvious that on the arrival of the gentlemanly Mr. Jones, the single-minded Ricardo, and the faithful Pedro, Heyst, the man of universal detachment, loses his mental self-possession, that fine attitude before the universally irremediable which wears the name of stoicism. It is all a matter of proportion. There should have been a remedy ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... was clever at carrying out her own will, that countess-dowager; more than a match for the single-minded young man. She wrote an urgent letter to Dr. Ashton, setting forth her own and her daughter's danger if her nephew, as she styled him, was received at the Rectory; and she ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... yet she had caught herself looking at him with bated breath as at a great actor on a darkened stage in some simple and tremendous drama. He extorted from her a response to the forces that seemed to tear at his single-minded brain, at his guileless breast. He shook her with his own struggles, he possessed her with his emotions and imposed his personality as if its tragedy were the only thing worth considering in this matter. And yet what had she to do with all those ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the Hostel had no special privileges and at the close of his Headmastership the six years had witnessed a steady growth in the effectiveness of the School. No one ever forgot that he was Headmaster but at the same time he never failed to encourage others to act for themselves. He had a single-minded desire for the good of the School and he inspired others with it. His contempt for outworn conventions, his sincerity, his generosity of heart, even his impetuous nature impressed all alike with the feeling that they were dealing with one, who was essentially ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... patriot friends, he had neither private business nor private profession to fall back upon when public affairs grew tame, his only business being, as one might say, the public business, his only profession the definition and defense of popular rights. In this profession, by dint of single-minded devotion to it through a course of years, he had indeed become wonderfully expert and had already achieved for himself the enviable position of known and named leader in every movement of opposition to royal or magisterial prerogative. In this connection no exploit had brought him so ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... supreme duty of every American, regardless of birth, of sympathies and of political views. The American of German descent who, in this time of test and trial, does not serve the land of his adoption with the utmost measure of single-minded devotion and with every ounce of his power, perjured himself when he took his oath of allegiance and proves ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... peace—men who arrogate to themselves the divine right of inculcating truth, and who, if any, should be free from the corruption that taints the social atmosphere,—such men come before mankind already sick with warfare, widening the breaches, subdividing our divisions. Are these men pure and single-minded? Are these men free from the grasping itch that distinguishes our age? Is there no such thing as trafficking with souls? Are chapels bought and sold only with a spiritual view, or sometimes as men bargain for their theatres? Are these men really messengers of peace, living in amity and union, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... both; and when such cooks and cobbling shifters shall be removed and weeded out of the ministry, I doubt not but our patrons will prove better men, and be reformed whether they will or not, or else the single-minded bishops shall see the living bestowed upon such as do deserve it. When the Pragmatic Sanction took place first in France, it was supposed that these enormities should utterly have ceased; but when the ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... recognise my excellent old friend again. But I tell you: for a time I had very serious suspicions of you ... Now you ought to know this, however. Frankly, I'm not as bad as I sometimes pretend to be, not by any means. I have always honoured you, you and your sincere, single-minded efforts. And I'm the last man to fail to attach weight to certain demands of the exploited, oppressed masses, demands which are, most unfortunately, only too well justified.—Oh, you may smile. I'll go further and confess that ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... know why, in the years between 1691 and 1694, Echard turned his attentions to the art of translation. The venture is a curious deviation from his otherwise single-minded devotion to history and to journalistic enterprises (the only other translation he is known to have done is the brief "Auction of the Philosophers" in The Works of Lucian [1710-11]). The connection of Dr. John Eachard ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... not knowing whether to be glad or sorry that his recital had not roused within her the faintest suspicion of disaster. How he envied her that single-minded power of not seeing further than was absolutely needful! And suddenly he thought: 'She really is wonderful! With her love of church, how it must hurt her that we none of us go, not even John! And yet she never says a word. There really is width about her; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... remote from the lofty Platonic ideal of Dialectic—[Greek: tou didonai kai dechesthai logon] (the giving and receiving of reasons)—competent alike to examine others or to be examined by them in philosophy. When to this we add a strenuous character, earnest convictions, and single-minded devotion to truth, with an utter disdain of mere paradox, it may be conceived that such a man exercised powerful intellectual ascendancy over youthful minds,' etc.—Minor Works of ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... but a historical statement, which applies, in its degree to every man and woman who has been a follower of Christ: for He was, as St. Paul has said, "the eldest in a vast family of brothers." The same single-minded effort and attainment meet us in other great faiths; though these may lack a historic ideal of perfect holiness and love. And by a paradox repeated again and again in human history, it is this utter devotion to the spiritual and eternal which is seen to bring forth the most abundant fruits in the ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... extended to the Jews? They complain, and apparently not without reason, that they are subject to certain disabilities and exposed to persecution in Russia. Thereby hangs a tale! Peter the Great would not allow Jews to settle in his dominions on the ground that his single-minded, ignorant subjects could not compete with a naturally clever race endowed with a marvelous talent for money-making. Under his successors, by the annexation of Poland, several millions of Polish Jews became Russian subjects; but the policy of exclusion, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... not only a man but a single-minded man, with a high and clear sense of obligation. You are a trustee, bound by honor to protect the interests of a certain woman and a certain child. The lady, under influence, wishes to borrow her son's money, and risk it on rotten security. You decline, and the lady's ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... autocrat with the Jacobinism of all Europe, which would have issued in the substitution of an all-powerful Russia for an all-powerful France. At the congress of Vienna Alexander's attitude accentuated this distrust. Castlereagh, whose single-minded aim was the restoration of "a just equilibrium'' in Europe, reproached the tsar to his face for a "conscience'' which suffered him to imperil the concert of the powers by keeping his hold on Poland in violation ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a true sentiment in politics, and he was able also to see practical issues clearly; but his mind was analytical rather than constructive, and his restlessness of life was indicative of a certain instability of temper which kept him uneasily employed about many things rather than steadfast and single-minded. It would be too much to say that he failed as a political writer, and fell back on his philological and school-master studies; yet it is very likely that, in the various excursions which he made into politics and general literature, he discovered by successive ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... to his father discoursing in this fashion on the fundamental principles of life, and always with a divided mind. He admired immensely his father's talents and the single-minded energy with which he improved them. But in the paternal philosophy there was something that disquieted and oppressed the young man, and made him gasp inwardly for fresh air ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... with nervous prostration—fear has been expressed that the dearest of all holidays in Christian lands would have to go again under a sort of Puritan protest, or into a retreat for rest and purification. We are enabled to announce for the encouragement of the single-minded in this best of all days, at the close of a year which it is best not to characterize, that those who stand upon the social watch-towers in Europe and America begin to see a light—or, it would be better to say, to perceive a spirit—in society which is likely to change many things, and; among ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... oceans. I believe that so far as he was of any political tradition, he was of the old Boston Whig tradition; but when I met him at Venice he was in the glow of a generous pride in our war as a war against slavery. He spoke of the negroes and their simple-hearted, single-minded devotion to the Union cause in terms that an original abolitionist might have used, at a time when original abolitionists were not so many as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... keen, single-minded, of unsullied commercial honor, admired his son's determination, and did ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... every inch a butler, every fibre in him the dignified and self-respecting, old-time servant, who added his dignity to that of the house he had served so long and well. The latter picture was masterly, recalling Gandara's earlier simplicity and Whistler's single-minded concentration without that gentleman's rickety drawing and harmonious arrangements ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the father called the family into the little living room where Brown had so often sat among them. And during the hour while the tragedy was enacted in Virginia, the family sat silent with bowed heads doing reverence to the memory of this man who with single-minded earnestness went forward so fearlessly when others held back, to strike the ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... world the Schrees were sent on our trail, and they found us. They were too many. Our only hope was in safe hiding, and they found us out. We did not know they could find us, or we would never have built. We thought pursuit had long been abandoned, but they are driven by single-minded hate, not by logic. It has been a lifetime of wandering they have followed us. It has been all my lifetime, making this home here, thinking ourselves safe—and then they came and destroyed all ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... hostilities reports reached Berlin and Vienna that the revolution was already beginning. But the declaration of war against Germany purified the air, absorbed the redundant energies of the people, and fused all classes and parties into a whole-hearted, single-minded nation, giving Russia a degree of union which she had not enjoyed since Napoleon's invasion. But, separated from her allies, she went her own way without much reference to theirs. Her plans had been drafted by her ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... flatterer of Richard and (by the simple expedient of a revised second edition of his magnum opus) a flatterer of Henry, offers better testimony than Chaucer to the conservatism of the upper classes of his age, and to the single-minded anxiety for the good ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Phoebe was too single-minded, too single-willed, at once to understand this, till Miss Charlecote whispered a reference to St. Paul's words of deep experience, 'To will ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to surpass the real of their own day. The result was Bandinelli and Montorsoli, whose world was inhabited by pompous fictions. They neither attained the high character of the great classical artists nor the single-minded purpose of Donatello. Their ideal was based on ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... single-minded landscape-painter never once perceived from her conversation that it was only Trewe she wanted, and not himself. He made the best of his visit, seeming to enjoy the society of Ella's husband, who also took a great fancy to him, and ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... with the meek, pious, and single-minded Ghita; though one was e'en a Roman Catholic, and the other a Protestant, and that, too, of the Puritan school. Our heroine had little of this world left to live for. She continued, however, to reside with her uncle, until his days were ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... truth-telling letter. Not that she, to herself, gave it praise for those virtues; but that it imbued her unconsciously with a thorough belief. She was apt to suspect deceit in other people;—but it did not occur to her that Mr Brehgert had written a single word with an attempt to deceive her. But the single-minded genuine honesty of the letter was altogether thrown away upon her. She never said to herself, as she read it, that she might safely trust herself to this man, though he were a Jew, though greasy and like a butcher, though over fifty and with a family, because he was ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... transcend the vulgar judgment of his fellows. His judgment may be saner than theirs; and as his intellectual creations are great and unique, so may his sense of their truth be full and unique. Wagner led the musical world by his single-minded devotion to the ideas of Wagner; and Darwin had to be true to his sense of truth and to the formulations of his thought, though no man accorded him the right to instruct his generation either in the one or in the other. To ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... to either singly, and with a strong probability of being able to deal with one before the other could come up. This was due to able action all round on the part of the English authorities; but above all other factors in the result stands Nelson's single-minded pursuit of "his fleet." ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... his schemes.] Such, in outline, was the grand scheme of Caius Gracchus. If he was less single-minded in his aims than his brother, he could hardly help being so; and, having to reconcile so many conflicting interests, he may have swerved from what would have been his own ideal. But that his main purpose was ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... the elementary qualities of social efficiency" are expected to acquire them under the chastening hands of those races which, through "strength and energy of character, humanity, probity, and integrity, and a single-minded devotion to conceptions of duty," are developing "the resources of the richest regions of the earth" over their heads, or whether this ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... himself contemplated by a lovely maiden and a gigantic wolf-hound, the adventure dashes from thrill to thrill unpausing. One protest however I must utter. The conduct of the young and lovely heroine (as above) and her single-minded devotion to her lover may be true to nature, but somewhat alienated my own sympathies, already given to the first-person-singular English lad who also adored her, and whom both she and her chosen mate treated abominably. To my thinking, unrequited devotion has no business in a tale ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... resigning his chance to go into camp, he devoted himself to Drew day and night. He became one of the family at the bungalow and a jocose familiarity was as much a part of Jock's liking for a person, as were his tireless patience and capacity for single-minded service. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... period, too. I always tell her that she belongs among the later eighteen sixties. But she insists that she wasn't even born then. Marion is tremendously single-minded." ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... Mary Fortune to invite him to stay. To be sure, she knew him—he was the man with the gun, the man of whom McBain was afraid—but that was all the more reason, to a reasoning woman, why she should keep silent and let him depart. But there was a business-like brevity about him, a single-minded directness, that struck her as really unique. Quite apart from the fact that it might save McBain, she wanted him to stay there and talk. At least so she explained it, the evening afterwards, to her censorious other-self. What she did was spontaneous, ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... ranks of the agitators with whom Captain Anthony is identified contain no one more indiscreet, more reckless or more honest. We have no sort of sympathy with the object to which the fair captain is now devoting her life; but we know no person before the country more single-minded, sincere and unselfish and, for these reasons, more honestly entitled to the regard of a public which will always appreciate ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... and talked for a short time about their project. It is curious to observe that though they were such devoted friends they looked on their joint purpose with very different eyes. The young woman, with her beauty, her spirit, and her talents, was absolutely sincere and single-minded, and was going to London with the sole purpose of living a free, secluded life, without ambition, without thought of any manner of success. The poor little old maid had her head already filled with wild dreams of fame to be found in London, of a distinguished ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... his point of view. It is more single-minded, perhaps, than that of a follower of any other calling. From the high, swaying seat of his hansom he looks upon his fellow-men as nomadic particles, of no account except when possessed of migratory desires. He is Jehu, and you are goods in transit. Be you President or vagabond, ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... sound-hearted sailor. On board ship he evidently assumed the hardness of deportment and sternness of demeanor which many deem essential to naval service. Throughout the whole of the expedition, however, he showed himself loyal, single-minded, straightforward, and fearless; and if the fate of his vessel may be charged to his harshness and imprudence, we should recollect that he paid for his error ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... India has won for you our respectful admiration; while your prowess in the battlefield, and your wisdom in Council during the eventful period of your supreme command of Her Majesty's Indian Forces, have inspired us with confidence in your great military talents and your single-minded and earnest devotion to duty. In many a battle you have led the British Army to victory, and the brilliant success which has invariably attended the British Arms under Your Excellency's command has added to the glory of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... it, Valerie. Men are almost never single-minded; women are—almost always. You see what chance for happiness we have? But it's the truth, and the world has been made that way. It's a man's world, Valerie. I don't think there's much use for us to fight against ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... student, with a demeanour to all of perfect if somewhat chilly courtesy, by temperament a theorist, able with the ability of the field marshal or the scholar in the study, not with that of the reader and master of men, the hardest of workers, devoted, honourable, single-minded, a figure on which a fierce light has beaten, a man not perfect, not always just, nor always wise, bound in the toils of his own personality, but yet an able man who suffered and gave all, believed in himself, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... surrender here of consent sufficient to be inconsistent with his general outlook. For at the back of each governmental act, there is, in his own mind, an active citizen body occupied in judging it with single-minded reference to the law of nature and their own natural rights. There is thus a standard of right and wrong superior to all powers within the State. "A government," as he says, "is not free to do as it ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... perhaps he was; but it is difficult somewhat to reconcile his covetousness with his piety. But what is to be said of his Royal mistress whose crown and realm were saved to her by free sacrifices of blood and life on the part of thousands of single-minded men, whom the Royal Lady calmly allowed, after they had secured her safety and that of England, to starve in peace on Margate Sands? Times have changed. Were such reward to be meted to the sailors of to-day after ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... matter of fact the lion did roar, but no faintest echo reached the Sierras. For the first time Simeon Wright and the influence Simeon Wright could bring to bear failed of their accustomed effect at Washington. An honest, fearless, and single-minded Chief, backed by an enthusiastic Service, saw justice rather than expediency. California John received back his recommendation ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... have been single-minded and honourable in our entry upon and our waging of the War; when it is over we are to be just the same in our use of the fruits of the War. Victory will not come to us simply for our own sakes and that it may be selfishly exploited for our own needs. No, assuredly not: it will come for the mutual ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... that maiden presently knew that he had great love unto her. Many days after that came Mimi to hold discourse with them, and they had joy of his coming, for in sooth he was of fair countenance and sweet address, and the fisherman, being a single-minded and a simple man, had no suspicion of the love between Mimi and Liliokani. But once Mimi said to Liliokani in such a voice as the sea-wind hath to the maiden palm-trees: "Brown maiden mine, let thy door be unlatched this night, and I will ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... whisper that in her ear, my youthful friend; for Eve Effingham fancies herself as much American in character as in birth. Single-minded and totally without management,—devoted to her duties,—- religious without cant,—a warm friend of liberal institutions, without the slightest approach to the impracticable, in heart and soul a woman, you will find it hard to persuade her, that with all her ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... dependent on the older man right now, and did not want to anger him unnecessarily. Hawkes was wealthy; it might take money to build a hyperdrive ship, when the time came. Alan was flatly cold-blooded about it, and the concept surprised and amused him when he realized just how single-minded he had become ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... a party for support in his administration. He had made up his cabinet with what he very justly considered the strongest material. He believed that a breaking up of the cabinet or a change in its membership would be an injury to the cause of good government, and he was so entirely single-minded in his own views and wishes, that, with all his knowledge of human nature, he found it difficult to understand how any one could differ from him materially. Moreover, having started with the firm intention of governing ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... like Joe, what do you want to lick him for?" said the single-minded musician, with a surprise in his manner, which was ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... entirely inexcusable to hint at the presence of a sinner in their midst, at the very board now covered with the home-made dainties cooked and sent in by the ladies of Hawthorne. In itself perhaps the prayer, though trite and redundant (Ringfield was not in his best vein, no longer single-minded), was eloquent and pointed, and the reference to the snows and rivers of the country extremely poetic and suggestive, yet it was not in accordance with the best taste, although prompted by the best feeling. The ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... but has on the contrary been spurred on its greater efforts in his explanation of the invisible. The mysterious movements of life are not to remain for him inscrutable and indecipherable for all times: but his untiring and single-minded pursuit will someday reveal to him the secret that lies behind the ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... by the Jerusalem Church; he is absolutely indifferent whether his mission will cost him his life, or only involve a continuation of almost intolerable hardship. It is this indomitable courage, complete self-sacrifice, and single-minded devotion to a magnificently audacious but not impracticable idea, which constitute the greatness of St. Paul's character. He was, with all this, a warm-hearted and affectionate man, as he proves abundantly by the tone of his letters. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... with which he himself conquered in Vendemiaire. He thought that the defence ought to have been victorious. I do not suppose he seriously resented the blunder to which he owed so much. Roederer was a clever man, and there is some reason to doubt whether he was single-minded in desiring to prevent the uncertain conflict. The queen was eager to fight, and spoke brave words to every one. Afterwards, when she heard the cannonade from her refuge in the reporter's box, she said to ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... sancta simplicitas. He has at times flashes of by no means orthodox sentiment, and seems to have fought, and perhaps hardly won, many a battle against the army of the doubters. But when it comes to the Pope, he is as single-minded an enthusiast as John Bunyan himself, whom, by the way, he resembles in more than one point. The attitude was, of course, common enough among his contemporaries; indeed any man who has reached middle ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... have had the courage to alter the law allowing absolute exemption rather than stretch it beyond the breaking point. But I emphatically dispute his assumption that the matter was a simple one. It was not the saintly, single-minded and sweet-natured C.O.'s of Christopher Sterling's type that made the chief difficulty. There were few of this literal interpretation and heroic texture. The real difficulty was created by men of a very different character and in much greater ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... of much patience and fidelity. He had an idea that no woman, pure and true as he believed this woman to be, could shut her heart against an honest man's love, if he were only patient and faithful, single-minded and unselfish ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Sir Lancelot, tell him that I will make peace with him and that I will receive back my queen. And do thou, good Geraint, fare south again. I thank thee from my heart for what thou hast done. Would to Heaven that all my knights were as clean-souled and as single-minded in devotion unto me as thou art. Do thou go and fulfil thy great office. Watch thou the coasts as hitherto thou hast watched them; and soon I will follow to aid thee, should the foul and savage pagans strive again to break into ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... he moulded anew, when the old church had confessedly failed in its mission. And while the Scottish nation continues to retain these institutions, and to bear this impress, it will continue the grandest, as it is the most telling, monument to the memory of its noble-hearted and single-minded reformer. ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... about it,—ever since she was a little girl, fifteen years old and first saw the inside of a hospital. That's just Judith,—so splendid and purposeful, and single-minded. I wish to goodness I knew what I want to do with myself half so ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield |
