"Eagerness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bid away bravely, and frequently in your eagerness advanced on yourself: at some sales you would have paid dearly for this; but here no advantage was taken, the mistake was explained, and the bidding declined in the most fair and honourable manner. I have often made considerable ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... was the one accomplishment she most longed to acquire, and she entered into the first lesson with an eagerness that made ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... now. How did you get over it?" The black eyes glistened with eagerness and the little face ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... grow up with an increasing pride. This great and busy man found time in New York to write her notes full of friendly affection. A few days before the Lusitania went down she received a note from him saying that he was soon to sail, and looked forward with eagerness to his usual stay ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... with much quiet excitement that he awaited the appearance of the evening edition. He had a strange eagerness to see his contribution in print; a manifestation, no doubt, of that peculiar trait in human nature which fills the editorial waste basket with unaccepted contributions. At last he found it, but it ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... may get them knocked off soon enough when the rush comes," went on the lieutenant, for in their eagerness to answer and be selected for the dangerous mission, some had partly raised ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... entering my cell I beheld my beautiful new garments—two complete suits, besides underwear: one, the most soberly colored, intended only for working hours; but the second, which was for the house, claimed my first attention. Trembling with eagerness, I flung off the old tweeds, the cracked boots, and other vestiges of a civilization which they had perhaps survived, and soon found that I had been measured with faultless accuracy; for everything, down to the shoes, fitted to perfection. Green was the prevailing or ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... of in that war; even the weakest party would always come out and fight (Dunbar fight, for instance); and they that were beaten to-day would fight again to-morrow, and seek one another out with such eagerness, as if they had been in haste to have their brains knocked out. Encampments, intrenchments, batteries, counter- marchings, fortifying of camps, and cannonadings were strange and almost unknown things; and whole campaigns were passed ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... exchanging secret, unobserved smiles with Mrs. Hand, whom he realized at once had married Hand for his money, and was bent, under a somewhat jealous espionage, to have a good time anyhow. There is a kind of eagerness that goes with those who are watched and wish to escape that gives them a gay, electric awareness and sparkle in the presence of an opportunity for release. Mrs. Hand had this. Cowperwood, a past master in this matter of femininity, studied her hands, her hair, her eyes, her smile. After some ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... rare piece of chance, since it was not in the main body of records and might easily have been missed—upon something which aroused my keenest eagerness, fitting in as it did with several of the queerest phases of the affair. It was the record of a lease, in 1697, of a small tract of ground to an Etienne Roulet and wife. At last the French element had appeared—that, and another deeper element of horror which the name conjured ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Ulick's eagerness in collecting every crumb of scholarship was a great bond of union; but there was still more in the bright, open, demonstrative nature of the youth, which had a great attraction for the reserved, serious Mr. Kendal, and scarcely a day had passed before they were on terms of intimacy, almost like ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the purport of it, my Lady: I have got the letter itself!" Angelique sprang up eagerly, as if to embrace Fanchon. "I happened, in my eagerness, to jar the door; the lady, imagining some one was coming, rose suddenly and left the room. In her haste she dropped the letter on the floor. I picked it up; I thought no harm, as I was determined to leave Dame Tremblay to-day. Would my Lady ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... With trembling eagerness, Woodburn seized the missive, and, with a glance at the well-known hand of the superscription, "To Captain Woodburn, or Mr. Allen, of the Council," opened ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... in the air, and I had a fire kindled in the parlor and in Daisy's room, for I remembered how she used to crouch on the rug before the grate and watch the blaze floating up the chimney with all the eagerness of a child. Then, although it hurt me sorely, I went to Simpson, who bought our carriage, and asked that it might be sent to the station so that Daisy should not feel the difference at once. And Jerry, ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... the psalm which preceded the sermon that Sanders Elshioner, who sat near the door, lowered his head until it was no higher than the pews, and in that attitude, looking almost like a four-footed animal, slipped out of the church. In their eagerness to be at the sermon, many of the congregation did not notice him, and those who did, put the matter by in their minds for future investigation. Sam'l, however, could not take it so coolly. From his seat in the gallery ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... friend's part to Nigel, he might lose Nigel as a friend. His clear insight would be antagonistic to Nigel's blind enthusiasm, his calm worldly knowledge would seem only frigid cruelty to Nigel's generosity and eagerness in pity. And, besides, Isaacson had a strong personal repulsion from Mrs. Chepstow, a ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... is one of relief at the close of a long and fatiguing exhibition, a legitimate eagerness to lay aside the administrative harness, the ceremonious costumes, to loosen the belts, the high collars and the stocks, to relax the features which, no less than the bodies, have ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... nothing so very unusual in it, for more than once when he was a sailor she had been wakened by the patter of pebbles on her window and had looked down through the darkness on the whitish oval of his face, marked like a mask with his eagerness to see her; and later, in southern countries, he had often walked quietly into the dark, cool room where she lay having her siesta, though she had thought him a hundred miles away, and it had seemed as if nothing ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... can make it, Allen?" she asked, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice. "You said something about a change in the management of the firm——" her ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... to man and beast upon extremely reasonable terms. In three or four days, if the weather be still and warm, the whole atmosphere will be literally filled with clouds of mosquitoes and from that time until the 10th of August they persecute every living thing with a bloodthirsty eagerness which knows no rest and feels no pity. Escape is impossible and defence useless; they follow their unhappy victims everywhere, and their untiring perseverance overcomes every obstacle which human ingenuity can throw in their way. Smoke of any ordinary density ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... CUMMING'S Five Years of a Hunter's Life in the last number of The New Monthly Magazine, from which it will be seen that the writer is a fierce, blood-thirsty Nimrod, whose highest ideal is found in the destruction of wild-beasts, and who relates his adventures with the same eagerness of passion which led him to expatriate himself from the charms of English society in the tangled depths of the African forest. Every page is redolent of gunpowder, and you almost hear the growl of the victim as he falls before the unerring ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... his own emotion, and Cecilia arose. "I see, madam," he cried, "your eagerness to be gone, and however at this moment I may lament it, I shall recollect it hereafter with advantage. But to conclude: I determined to avoid you, and, by avoiding, to endeavour to forget you: I determined, also, that ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... of abstraction or generalization, and consequently to all general names, instead of confining it to the names of attributes. The metaphysicians of the Condillac school—whose admiration of Locke, passing over the profoundest speculations of that truly original genius, usually fastens with peculiar eagerness upon his weakest points—have gone on imitating him in this abuse of language, until there is now some difficulty in restoring the word to its original signification. A more wanton alteration in the meaning of a word is rarely to be met with; for ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... The eagerness of subscribers was the same. The creditors passed whole days at the offices of the treasury to obtain their receipts, and there were some even who had their meals brought to them there, so that they might ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the whole true or overstrained. We who labour in our great cities, what say we? If one of the number may speak for the rest, we have to acknowledge that commercial prosperity and business cares, the eagerness after pleasure and the exigencies of political strife, diffused doubt and widespread artistic and literary culture, are eating the very life out of thousands in our churches, and lowering their fervour till, like molten iron cooling in the air, what was once all glowing with ruddy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... eagerness; "because it is just as papa says,—a sensible man, who has thought, and had experience, can't help having some ideas, even about women's affairs, that are worth attending to. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... a moment it is wise to show no surprise and no anxiety. All the burning eagerness must be covered up with coolness. But in the hour that intervened before the woman "at the gate" could be persuaded to come further, we quieted ourselves in the Lord our God and held on for the ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... terms Kazaguruma Cho[u]bei was a pimp for the Yoshiwara and kindred quarters. His other occupations were mere channels accessory to this main business. Hence his seasons of increase and decline. Just now he was in a period of decline. His eagerness in this Tamiya affair was sharpened. Pushing his way through the Kuramae of Asakusa suddenly a hopeful light came into his eye. Abruptly he made his way to the side of the roadway. Here boarding covered the ditch, removing the occupant of ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... engaging spontaneity of a schoolboy at a pantomime, and drawing up a chair sat on the edge of it and addressed himself with unaffected eagerness to the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Yet for once I withstood its glamour; for once I turned aside that luminous glance with front of steel. There was no need for Raffles to voice his plans. I read them all between the strong lines of his smiling, eager face. And I pushed back my chair in the equal eagerness of my ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... more example, from the additions to this poem, as a proof that his eagerness and facility in producing, was sometimes almost equalled by his anxious care in correcting. In the long passage just referred to, the six lines beginning "Blest as the Muezzin's strain," &c., having been despatched to the printer too ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... by the Bank of England, to assist in founding one of its branch establishments in Liverpool. He never indeed, personally, cared for money, except as a means of acquiring old, i.e. rare books, for which he had, as an acquaintance declared, the scent of a hound and the snap of a bulldog. His eagerness to possess such treasures was only matched by the generosity with which he parted with them; and his daughter well remembers the feeling of angry suspicion with which she and her brother noted the periodical arrival of a ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... six tickets for seats among the crowned heads across the table to me. His eagerness was ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... were all afield, Mrs. Wheeler now went every morning to the mailbox at the crossroads, a quarter of a mile away, to get yesterday's Omaha and Kansas City papers which the carrier left. In her eagerness she opened and began to read them as she turned homeward, and her feet, never too sure, took a wandering way among sunflowers and buffaloburrs. One morning, indeed, she sat down on a red grass bank ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... reader, at least) her masterpiece. The booksellers paid her what Scott, erroneously, calls "the unprecedented sum of 500 pounds" for the romance, and they must have made a profitable bargain. "The public," says Scott, "rushed upon it with all the eagerness of curiosity, and rose from it with unsated appetite." I arise with a thoroughly sated appetite from the "Mysteries of Udolpho." The book, as Sir Walter saw, is "The Romance of the Forest" raised to a higher power. We have a similar and similarly situated ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... eagerness both of attention and intention, exhibited in all the countenances, made them a most impressive sight. There was no carelessness, no languor, no idle curiosity; none of the many shades of indifference to be seen in all other assemblies, visible for ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... replied Jaspar, stopping suddenly in his perambulation of the room, and speaking with an eagerness which betrayed his anxiety to obtain more evidence. "Were any ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... urging his horse against Bud's in his eagerness and excitement, "maybe he was one of the cattle rustlers, Bud! He circled around and rode back after he found he couldn't get away with the steers, and that Babe was on his trail. ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... witness sudden death; but, oh! how much more awful it is to witness in a moment the moral fall of a fellow-creature! How tremendous is the quick succession of mastering passions! The firm, the terrifically firm, the madly resolute denial of guilt; that eagerness of protestation which is a sure sign of crime, then the agonising suspense before the threatened proof is produced, the hell of detection, the audible anguish of sorrow, the curses of remorse, the silence ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... unfavorable view of the progress made by the Chinese government in the paths of civilization, and to be ever skeptical even of its good faith. The main object with the foreign diplomatic representatives became not more to obtain justice for their countrymen than to restrain their eagerness, and to confine their pretensions to the rights conceded by the treaties. A clear distinction had to be drawn between undue coercion of the Chinese government on the one hand, and the effectual compulsion of the people to evince respect toward foreigners and to comply with the obligations ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... late. The woman was sleeping off a bout of intemperance somewhere below; and the boy, with the innocence and ignorance of his years in all that the solemn time foreboded, was bustling about the room with mighty eagerness, because he knew that he ought to ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... upon them and began a full sore battle; and presently the king's party prevailed, and drave the rebels from the hall and from the city, closing the gates behind them; and King Arthur brake his sword upon them in his eagerness and rage. ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... of us employs himself in some unoppressive labour. Some embroider, others apply themselves to painting, others cultivate flowers or fruits, others turn little implements for our use. Many of these little works are sold to the people, who purchase them with eagerness. The money arising from this sale forms a considerable part of our revenue. Our morning is thus devoted to the worship of God and to the exercise of the sense of Sight, which begins with the first rays of the sun. The ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... completed. The names of the various chieftains and the numbers of their ships are found in the famous catalogue, a document which the Greeks treasured as evidence of united action against a common foe. With equal eagerness the Trojans poured from their town commanded by Hector; their host too has received from Homer the glory of an everlasting memory in a ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... into Greek, to give the world some faint notion of the inestimable and incomparable original. They must have had much time on their hands. But at the Revival of Letters, as was to be expected, all works of the ancients, good and bad, were devoured alike with youthful eagerness by the Medicis and the Popes; and it was not, we shall see, for more than one century after, that men's taste got sufficiently matured to distinguish between Callimachus and the Homeric hymns, or between Plato and ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... ground before the arm-chair, with his back turned to the door, Julio began to work with apparent eagerness; and in order to assume a greater air of indifference, he sang snatches ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... her eagerness to plead, quite forgot (or perhaps she had never known) that with a certain order of men it is never wise to prefer a request immediately before dinner. She was eager, too, to speak at once; a fear, which ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... legally tendered. This, however, was a suggestion that did not tend to alleviate my anxiety; and my nervousness had mounted to a painful, almost to a disabling degree, by the time we reached the office. Already on our road thither some parties had passed us who were conversing with eagerness upon the case: so much we collected from the many and ardent expressions about 'the lady's beauty,' though the rest of such words as we could catch were ill calculated to relieve my suspense. This, then, at least, was certain—that my poor timid Agnes had already been exhibited before a tumultuous ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... broken by a step upon the stair, And the door is softly opened, and—my wife is standing there: Yet with eagerness and rapture all my visions I resign,— To greet the LIVING presence of ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... China, they carried letters with them. They were there four or five months, and might have remained there, but the governors did not agree to that. Because of their eagerness to see Limahon, the governors despatched a fleet of ten ships, and with it the fathers and Spaniards, on the pretext that, if it were necessary for the Chinese to assist in the war, the latter would lend their aid. They appointed Sinsay captain, ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... rose to a height of 80 feet from the surface of the ground, and they were provided with lift and force pumps for the convenience of the troops in garrison. It was a heavy job for the convicts, but they performed it with eagerness and alacrity. ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... revenged on our adversary, to ruin him and his. 'Tis all our study, practice, and business how to plot mischief, mine, countermine, defend and offend, ward ourselves, injure others, hurt all; as if we were born to do mischief, and that with such eagerness and bitterness, with such rancour, malice, rage, and fury, we prosecute our intended designs, that neither affinity or consanguinity, love or fear of God or men can contain us: no satisfaction, no composition will be accepted, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the end of the supper, and lit them and sternly struggled with them—in dreary silence, for hilarity died when the fell brand came into view and started around—but their fortitude held for a short time only; then they made excuses and filed out, treading on one another's heels with indecent eagerness; and in the morning when I went out to observe results the cigars lay all between the front door and the gate. All except one—that one lay in the plate of the man from whom I had cabbaged the lot. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for young people of the romantic story of Marie of Brabant, the young queen of Philip the Bold of France. Though the interest centres in a heroine rather than in a hero, the book has no lack of adventure, and will be read with no less eagerness by boys than by girls. To the latter it will give a fine example of patient, strong and noble woman-hood, to the former it will teach many lessons ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... impute it to the boundless influence of her charms; that every man who sees her does not declare his passion is entirely owing to the well-known severity of her morals and the dignity of her deportment. If she is amongst the first invited to my ball, that will be my eagerness to secure her: if the very last, it will be a mark of my friendship, and the easy footing we are upon. If not invited at all, then it will be jealousy. In short, the united strength of worlds would not shake that woman's good opinion of herself; and the intolerable part of it is there ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... word as to the distinguished gentleman at the head of the Embassy—a gentleman specially dear to the Press. Judging from the eagerness with which the position is sought, I am led to believe that the loftiest compliment which can be paid to a human being is, that he has once represented Boston in the National House of Representatives. After such a distinction as that, all other distinctions, however great, must still ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Goettingen, they called him the most brilliant American who had ever studied there, and he was by all odds the most popular fellow of his time. His very popularity increased the danger." As if he had been pleading his own cause, Thayer's voice was full of earnest eagerness. Even in the midst of her anxiety and pain, Miss Gannion felt the power of its flexible modulation; and her half-formulated ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... barrister deals with a man against whom he wishes to obtain a conviction, per fas aut nefas, and opens his case by endeavouring to create a prejudice against the prisoner in the minds of the jury. In his eagerness to carry out this laudable design, the Quarterly Reviewer cannot even state the history of the doctrine of natural selection without an oblique and entirely unjustifiable attempt to depreciate Mr. Darwin. "To Mr. Darwin," says he, "and (through Mr. Wallace's ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness, "I hope you will abolish them too. They are ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... contained the family jewels, and which for more than twenty-five years had held the old will executed by my father on his death-bed. I had seen it there less than forty-eight hours before, and in my desperation I now determined to destroy it. My very haste and eagerness delayed me, but at last the cover flew back, revealing the gleaming jewels, but—the will was not there! Unable to believe my own eyes, I drew my fingers carefully back and forth through the narrow receptacle where it had lain, and ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... with some eagerness, for she felt as if the English lady imputed to her more coldness than she was, in such ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... a moment by the door. His large hands were covered with black grease. She looked at him without seeing. In his place in her imagination stood a tall slender young man. Of the foreman she saw only the gray eyes that began to burn with a strange fire. The eyes expressed eagerness, a humble and devout eagerness. In the presence of a man with such eyes she felt she need not ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... morning at daybreak the ships got up their anchors and sailed up the channel, each commander vying with the rest in his eagerness to be first in the fray. They were soon hotly engaged with the enemy; the fort, men of war, and galleys opening a heavy fire upon them, to which, anchoring as close as they could get to the foe, the English ships hotly responded. The galleys were driven closer in under the shelter of the fire of ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... an assembly, issued an order that they should go out and meet Hannibal in a body, accompanied by their wives and children. This was done by all, not only with obedience, but with zeal, with the full agreement of the common people, and with eagerness to see a general rendered illustrious by so many victories. Decius Magius neither went out to meet him, nor kept himself in private, by which course he might seem to indicate fear from a consciousness of demerit, he promenaded in the forum with perfect ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... Clarion and Aeglamour, and her discovery was only prevented by a sudden mist called up by Maudlin. The witch then set about the recovery of her girdle, was tracked by the huntsmen as she wove her spells, but escaped by the help of her goblin and through the over-eagerness of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... points for our "bearings," a rock and a drop of the cliff bolder than the ordinary. If the rock opened from the cliff to eastward, we were lost; if it remained stationary, we were at least holding our own; if it opened out to westward, we were saved. We watched with a strained eagerness impossible to describe. At each momentary gain or rebuff we uttered ejaculations. The Nigger mumbled charms. Every once in a while one of us would snatch a glance to leeward at the cruel, white waters, the whirl of eddies where ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... pantry. When there is any dainty on the dinner-table, his greedy eyes are fixed on it from the moment he sits down till he is helped, and then he grudges every morsel that any one else puts in his mouth. In his eagerness to get more than his proper share, he crams great pieces into his mouth until he is almost choked and the tears are forced from his eyes. He will get slily into the store-room and steal honey, sugar, or raisins; ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... onslaught of the Markmen for the twinkling of an eye: but had the Romans had but the space to have spread themselves out there, so as to handle their shot-weapons, many a woman's son of us had fallen; for no man shielded himself in his eagerness, but let the swiftness of the Onset of point-and-edge shield him; which, sooth to say, is often a good shield, ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... for Vallombrosa, it was at four o'clock in the morning, Mrs. Browning being all eagerness and enthusiasm for this matutinal pilgrimage. Reaching Pelago, their route wound for five miles along a "via non rotabile," through the ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... favor, wondering at his unwonted animation, for never had she seen such eagerness in his countenance, such energy in his manner as he pressed through the crowd and won a place where they could freely witness one of those exhibitions of fashionable figurante which are nightly to be seen at such resorts. Many couples ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... know how long the chant continued. It rose and fell, a soft rhythmic murmur, and I prayed that it would never end. My ears sucked it in as if it was a life line to which my soul was clinging, and I dimly understood my eagerness to catch the sounds. My ability to do so seemed to be wanted as proof to convince my half-paralyzed body ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... their itch is rather for knowing, than for understanding or thinking. Some of them will learn to think, doubtless, and even to concentrate, but their eagerness to acquire those accomplishments will not be strong or insistent. Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity will enjoy the accumulating of facts, far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts. If they do not reflect on them, of course they'll be slow to find out about the ideas ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... that time living comfortably, when Guy, who had never liked the store, expressed his ardent desire to study law. He was rather surprised to find the readiness with which his mother consented, and the eagerness of his sisters. Speaking truthfully, they thought him far above his present business and much preferred that he should have a profession. So it was not long until he was in a lawyer's office. Then ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... he would have tried to dissuade you. He had left him by your father's will this valuable place and a million dollars. If money had been all he sought, that would have satisfied him, and he would have tried to get rid of you. That he did not—that his eyes burned with eagerness when you told him of your decision—proves that he loved you and ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... have in your hands. It will help us both." He stretched out his long, bird-like talons, trembling with eagerness. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... these schools—where corporal punishment is unknown—Truthfulness stands high. When the ship was first erected, the boys were forbidden to go aloft, until the nets, which are now always there, were stretched as a precaution against accidents. Certain boys, in their eagerness, disobeyed the injunction, got out of window in the early daylight, and climbed to the masthead. One boy unfortunately fell, and was killed. There was no clue to the others; but all the boys were assembled, and the chairman ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... telegraph lines, newspapers and post-offices are yet few, and whose average inhabitant has never been twenty miles from the village in which he was born. But some who did know realized that Japan had won by the aid of Western methods. An eagerness to acquire those methods resulted. Missionaries were besieged by Chinese who wished to learn English. Modern books were given a wide circulation. Several of the influential advisers of the Emperor became students of Occidental ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... longer lowered his head or bent his shoulders at the whistling of a bomb. It was genuine military blood that flowed in his veins, and he did not fear death; but life in the open air, absence from his wife, the state of excitement produced by the war, and this eagerness for pleasure common to all those who risk their lives, had suddenly awakened his licentious temperament. When his service allowed him to do so, he would go into Paris and spend twenty-four hours there, profiting by it ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 'Leonore' merely talks common sense, while Jeanne's voices gave information not normally acquired). But in Jeanne's case I have found no hint of temporary unconsciousness or 'dissociation.' When strung up to the most intense mental eagerness in court, she still heard her voices, though, because of the tumult of the assembly, she heard them indistinctly. Thus her experiences are not associated with insanity, partial unconsciousness, or any physical disturbance (as in some tales of second sight), while the sagacity ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... depths of the woods Jack made the other lie quiet for something like five minutes. This was to make doubly sure the stranger did not turn on his tracks, and come back again. It was hard for Jack to hold in, because he was quivering with eagerness to investigate, and see if he could find out what had interested ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... feelings, lasted only for the moment. No sooner had the dean explained why the marriage was desirable, recited what great connections and what great patronage it would confer upon their family, than William listened with eagerness, and both his love and his conscience were, if not wholly quieted, at least for ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... so much uplifts the sperit of the town it mor'n doubles the day's receipts at the Red Light. Also, two or three shady characters vamooses for fear of what a nacheral public eagerness to see that hearse in ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... little later, Isaac Jackson heard the story that made his eyes bulge with interest and his heart throb with eagerness. ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... foe's blue. With lips parting to cry out she strove to rise and fly, but his silent beseechings showed him too badly hurt below the knees to offer aid or hindrance, and as she gained her feet she let him plead with stifled eagerness for her succor from risks of a captivity which, in starving Vicksburg and in such plight, would ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... his vate vrom elsevere," said Jan Steenbock solemnly, hurrying after us, for Hiram and Tom seemed all eagerness to tackle the skipper at once, and I trotted close after them. "Ze sbirrit ob ze dreazure vill hoont him, and poonish him ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... that if they were looking for the doctor and his family they were also looking for the boat and the fugitives it contained. The low-lying shore, with no trees fringing the bank, was the worst place for him and his friends, and he was in a fever of eagerness to reach the protecting shadows along shore. The nerves of all were keyed to the tensest point, when they caught the dim outlines of the overhanging growth, with the leafage as exuberant as it always is in ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... perpetrators. Even Brederode, while, as Suzerain of his city of Viane, he ordered the images there to be quietly taken from the churches, characterized this popular insurrection as insensate and flagitious. Many of the leading confederates not only were offended with the proceedings, but, in their eagerness to chastise the iconoclasts and to escape from a league of which they were weary, began to take severe measures against the Ministers and Reformers, of whom they had constituted themselves in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... survey me. I felt a sinking at the heart. I interpreted her searching look as saying, "The nerve this snoozer has!" But I was mistaken. Her pinched, sallow face grew tense with excitement, and she said, with coy eagerness: "How can we tell if your plan amounts to anything? If you gave us an idea of how much ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... a very still day, and there were nearly three hours of daylight left. Without a word my silent companion, who had been scanning the whole country with hawk-eyed eagerness, took the trail, motioning me to follow. In a moment we entered the woods, breathing a sigh of relief as we did so; for while in the meadow we could never tell that the buffalo might not see us, if they happened to be lying in some ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... forward into the future we seem to feel the coming of a time when the armed millions of the present will have played out their part. A new Alexander will arise who, with a small body of well-equipped and skilled warriors, will drive the impotent hordes before him, when, in their eagerness to multiply, they shall have overstepped all proper bounds, have lost internal cohesion, and, like the green-banner army of China, have become transformed into a numberless but effete ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... man had been here thirty-five years! He knew the childish joy of bruising the flesh of orange-colored toadstools and wading amid long pine-cones which strew the ground like fairy corncobs. The white birches were dear to him, and he trembled with eagerness at the first pipe sign, or at the discovery of blue gentians where the eastern forest stoops to the strand. And he knew the echo, shaking like gigantic organ music from one side of ...
— The Blue Man - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... is a particularly steady chap—full of eagerness to follow a diplomatic career and that sort of thing. Why, he would sooner read a blue-book than ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... of Mars there was no man as big as Tolto. This one was, and he looked more formidable. Instead of Tolto's normally good-natured face, this one looked like an enraged terrestrial gorilla, although at the moment it was really expressing joy and eagerness. ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... Europe, he learned, and was looking forward with eagerness to another tour in the near future. They discovered a common liking for many of the ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... lifted the letter, and seemed to peruse it; and when she came to the signature she sighed: yet still I found she had not gathered its import, for, upon my desiring to hear her reply, she merely pointed to the name, and gazed at me with mournful and questioning eagerness. ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... lad's youth betrayed him into eagerness. "Have you been farther up the river just around the bend, where the giant cottonwoods are, and the bluffs with the pines above, and the willows along the shore? Oh, but it's fine ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... and seemliness and courtesy of the place. For the end of life is that we should do humble and common things in a fine and courteous manner, and mix with simple affairs, not condescendingly or disdainfully, but with all the eagerness and modesty of the ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... peep through the casements, a tap came to the dominie's door. He was awake, he had not even undressed, and, therefore, answered it at once. He knew the pale figure in the dressing gown. "Put on your pedestrian suit," she said with eagerness, "and bring your knapsack with you as quickly as possible." He put it on, although the arms of coat and shirt were ripped up for former surgical reasons, and he objected to the blood marks on the sleeves. Then he took up his knapsack, and went hastily to ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... eyes glowed, her lips were parted with eagerness. She turned towards Philippa, her expression, her whole attitude ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not understand this, my masters, if you have ridden only trained running horses or light hunters. They go about the business of a race with eagerness enough, but still as a servant goes about his task. Imagine, if you please, how a horse would run with you in the night if he was seventeen ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... present to be agitating as many pseudo-scientific minds as did that of perpetual motion not many years ago, or the philosopher's stone at a more remote period. It possesses perhaps a still stronger attraction in the danger connected with the experiments—the source, we suppose, of the eagerness shown by Professor Wise and his associates to fly to evils that they know not of. Perpetual motion received its quietus from the blasts of ridicule. Air-voyaging has a worse foe to encounter. It may survive the attacks of gayety, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... member of the Band of Mercy, of his Sunday School, which was a miniature society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. The badge was a small star, and Clarence wore this with as much pride as ever a policeman had in his shield. He displayed eagerness in the work, and grew somewhat unpopular with the other boys and girls by reason of his many rebukes for their harsh treatment of animals. But one morning his mother, on looking out of the window, observed to her ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... no one has yet seen, a beyond to every country and every refuge of the ideal that man has ever known, a world so overflowing with beauty, strangeness, doubt, terror and divinity, that both our curiosity and our lust of possession are frantic with eagerness." ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Primary Reader, Willson's Second Reader, and others of similar grade. Those who had enjoyed a briefer period of instruction were reading short sentences or learning the alphabet. In several of this schools a class was engaged on an elementary lesson in arithmetic, geography, or writing. The eagerness for knowledge and the facility of acquisition displayed in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the aspect of the coming which is prominent here. Not the kingly, nor the redemptive, but the judicial, is uppermost. With keen irony the Prophet contrasts the professed eagerness of the people for the appearance of Jehovah and their shrinking terror when He does come. He is 'the Lord whom ye seek'; the Messenger of the covenant is He 'whom ye delight in.' But all that superficial and partially insincere longing will ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... glasses to look forward. He swept the horizon with eagerness. Presently he fixed his ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of a little more than a year at Bath had but one memorable event, in its course, to me. I was looking one evening, at bedtime, over the banisters, from the upper story into the hall below, with tiptoe eagerness that caused me to overbalance myself and turn over the rail, to which I clung on the wrong side, suspended, like Victor Hugo's miserable priest to the gutter of Notre Dame, and then fell four stories down on the stone pavement of the hall. I ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... buried deep, do you?" inquired Colonel Ward, a flavor of satiric skepticism in his voice. He was gazing quizzically forward to where Mr. Bodge sat on the capstan's drumhead, his nose elevated with wistful eagerness, his whiskers flapping about his ears, his eyes ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... that were to elapse before starting on the trip, he could get an idea of the life histories of sea anemones, jellyfish, and the like, with which he would be working. His friend was both amused and pleased by the lad's eagerness. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... dwelt upon the Quadroon! Did she love me? This was the question, for whose answer my heart yearned with fond eagerness. She always attended upon Mademoiselle during her visits; but not a word dare I exchange with her, although my heart was longing to yield up its secret. I even feared that my burning glances might betray me. Oh! if Mademoiselle ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... had seen the little incident, ran forward, while the man who had been placing the ladder went to the horse, which was capering and trying to rear in his eagerness to ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to rise more! deservedly execrated by all honest men, lamented by none but those who profited by their being in office, by their hangers-on, and by such men as Mr. Waithman, the city patriot, who was looking out for a place with as much eagerness and anxiety as a cat would watch to pounce upon a mouse: a few such men as these were mortified and hurt at the fall of those to whom they were looking up for situations of profit, and for pensions, which were to be extorted from the pockets of the people; but ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... met by lecture courses and by the practice work of students in library training schools but listening to lectures, reading, and regulated student practice does not take the place of that spontaneous eagerness to see for one's self, the social activities of a neighborhood or town which makes a library in its town a place of living interest. Librarians, en masse, in relation to other institutions, stand in a similar position to that of the representative ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... his defence against a charge affecting his life, and to send him to his last account whilst suffering the pangs of laceration, was inexpressibly revolting. Those who desired to disgrace the government, embraced the opportunity—perhaps with the eagerness of faction: pictures were exhibited of the unfortunate man, illustrative of his melancholy fate. Surely no argument can be found, in the calmest exercise of the understanding to extenuate an administration of the law, which ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... excursions and made new expeditions; spending days of delight on the mountain sides, and days of enchantment in the mountain valleys; and still our party was of the same four. It is true that papa did not at all share mamma's eagerness to have Ransom go; but Ransom did not greatly care for papa's likings; and in the case of the others, I did not see ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... So great was my eagerness to learn from books, that I had given no thought to people. Madison, my first town, showed me that my clothes were homemade and tacky. Other girls wore store shoes and what seemed to me beautifully made dresses. I was a backwoods gawk. I hated ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... awkward one, for not only was the skipper of the opposition barge landed, and awaiting us with an uncomplimentary eagerness on the bank, but the driver, whip in hand, was standing beside him, and the dog, showing his teeth, ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... very much criticised, but also very much praised. Nearly all the criticisms referred to the neck of my old Breton woman, that neck on which I had worked with such eagerness. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... a prize would be hard enough," Mr. Wicker continued, "for it is well guarded. But there is a greater hazard." He rose from his chair to walk about in his nervousness and eagerness at what lay ahead. Then he ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... Richards's manner was tinged with a certain reserve on the subject of Cota which the editor attributed to the delicacy of a serious affection, but he was surprised also to find that his foreman's eagerness to discuss his unknown assailant had somewhat abated. Further discussion regarding it naturally dropped, and the editor was beginning to lose his curiosity when it was suddenly awakened by a ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... these reflections, our captain came down, and handed me a couple of New Orleans papers, which he had just received from the pilot. Here was a treat; and, feeling a little better, I began with eagerness to open one of them out. It was the New Orleans Bee of January 23; and, horresco referens, the first thing that caught my ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... tent men poured like seeds squirted from a squeezed lemon. They were all in a hurry and they jostled each other in their eagerness to get through the open flap. Straw boss, wood walkers, and ground men, they were all hungry. They ate swiftly and largely. The cook and ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... her friends struggled with Elfonzo for some time, and finally succeeded in arresting her from his hands. He dared not injure them, because they were matrons whose courage needed no spur; she was snatched from the arms of Elfonzo, with so much eagerness, and yet with such expressive signification, that he calmly withdrew from this lovely enterprise, with an ardent hope that he should be lulled to repose by the zephyrs which whispered peace to his soul. Several long days and night passed unmolested, all seemed to have ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... We became frantic with eagerness and continued disappointment. The thought of losing the finest lion we had seen on the whole trip was maddening, yet it seemed impossible to ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... by the eagerness with which the women received our beads, especially small white ones, as well as any other article of that kind, we might suppose them very fond of personal ornament. Yet of all that they obtained from us in this way at Winter Island, scarcely anything ever made its ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... enough, for his features were not wanting in amiability, but that amiability was a quality into which there entered too much of the sugary element, so that his every gesture, his every attitude, seemed to connote an excess of eagerness to curry favour and cultivate a closer acquaintance. On first speaking to the man, his ingratiating smile, his flaxen hair, and his blue eyes would lead one to say, "What a pleasant, good-tempered fellow he seems!" yet during the next moment or two one would ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol |
