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Intentness   Listen
noun
Intentness  n.  The state or quality of being intent; close application; attention. "Extreme solicitude or intentness upon business."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Intentness" Quotes from Famous Books



... heavily on one of the chairs, he stared with a passionate intentness. "Grimshaw?" he ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts First at one and then its fellow, Just as light and just as yellow: There are many now—now one, Now they stop, and there are none. What intentness of desire In her upward eye of fire! With a tiger-leap halfway Now she meets the coming prey, Lets it go as fast, and then Has it in her power again: Now she works with three or four. Like an Indian conjuror: Quick as he in feats of art, Far beyond in joy of heart. Were her antics ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... vibration died away into silence, and still he stood motionless, now listening with a new and sudden intentness, for, even as the clock rang the last stroke, he heard soft, heavy footsteps, moving slowly and cautiously along the pathway before the house and directly below the open window. A few seconds more and he heard the creaking of rusty hinges. The mysterious ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... the equally restless motion of his eyes made his a remarkable countenance. Montgomery Blair was a plain-looking man, as "lean as a racer," and evidently as eager for the work before him, though his manner was very quiet, and his bearing had none of the keen intentness that characterized his associates. The trio carried General Belknap safely through his troubles. The evidence was very remarkable and gave a curious picture of "Vanity Fair." The bargain made by Marsh with the first wife; the huckstering and business matters growing out of it, talked about and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... day waned and the sun went down. Naomi seemed to know when this occurred, for she could scent the cool air. Then, with a fresh intentness, she listened to the footsteps outside, and, having listened, her trouble increased. What did Naomi hear? The black women could hear nothing save the common sounds of the streets—the shouts of children at play, the calls of women, the ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... instant. Attractive names caught his eye: Torreon, Tampico, Vera Cruz, the City, Durango. They were all waiting for him, the old towns. There was the old work to be done, the old life to resume.... Yes, but there was Sylvia. Sylvia, who had said with the intentness of a child, "I love you," and again, "I love you." She did not want Runyon. She wanted him, Harboro. And he wanted her—good God, how he wanted her! Had he been mad to wander away from her? His problem lay with ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... the fire, his eyes half shut, and his forehead a maze of puckers and wrinkles, and he seemed not to have heard in the intentness of his watching ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... which made them both instantly rigid. It was a long, thin, wavering cry that died off with indescribable melancholy in its cadence. The lynx crouched, with eyes dilating, and listened with terrible intentness. The carcajou, equally interested but not terrified, stood erect, ears, eyes and nose alike directed to finding out more about that ominous voice. Again and again it was repeated, swiftly coming nearer; and presently it resolved itself ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... a little pallid. But they were all such tender faces, so soft in outline, so fresh and delicate in texture and colour. They had soft credulous mouths. Some glanced sideways at one another; some listened with a forced intentness. The expression of one good-looking boy, sitting in a corner scat, struck the bishop as being curiously defiant. He stood very erect, he blinked his eyes as though they smarted, his lips were compressed bitterly. And then it seemed to the bishop that ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... was suddenly conscious of the man who had been talking to Madame Selarne. He had drawn a little on one side and he was watching the young soldier with a curious intentness. She turned back to her nephew and ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... at him wildly, her adorable little chin quivering, the tears brimming in her narrow blue eyes. Then her glance took on a certain intentness, and she peered curiously into his face, saying ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... something of the sort, I believe." He was suddenly possessed by the curious notion that he was being "pumped" by his fair companion. Indeed, a certain insistent note had crept into her voice and her eyes were searching his with an intentness that had not appeared ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... often depicted as celestial. The sun sought into her face, revealing nothing but great purity of line and a clear pallor except where below the wide light blue eyes two ethereal shadows brushed themselves. Under the intentness of their gaze she made as if she would pass out without speaking; and the tender curves of her limbs, as she wavered, could not have been matched out of mediaeval stained glass. But her courage, or her conviction, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... be any real community of spirit between forces that produced symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards; the Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards. If we follow that clue steadily we shall find some ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... buoyed him up as the hours crept slowly by. Now and then he lifted his head and listened with painful intentness. He felt stiff in every muscle, and yet he had a dread of making an effort to change his constrained position. He might lose control of his rigid limbs, and fall into those ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... corrected, "I do not know who took it. If I did, I should not be here. That is, I do not know the exact person. Only——" Here he again eyed me with his former singular intentness, and, observing that I was nettled, made a fresh beginning. "When I came here I brought with me a case of rarities chosen from my various collections. In looking over them preparatory to making a present ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... preventing her from differentiating the human species beyond the broad classification of those likely to be run over and those in no such danger. Her color was high, and her face despite a grim intentness indicated keen satisfaction. A handsome boy sat beside her, and Justin had a confused impression of a number of other children in charge of a buxom girl on the back seat. He stood motionless gazing after the flying car and oblivious ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... identity, hesitated, and looked at the woman with secret intentness. She was conscious of a great and pardonable curiosity, of a frank out-reaching for fuller knowledge. This creature, so like, so different; old as the oldest race, and young as the last rose-tinted babe; flung far as the farthermost fires of men, and eternal ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... some old letters and reading a number of mine, it seemed to me that his spirit almost recognised my presence in the words which came to his lips, "It seems like yesterday!" I then became blessedly aware that I was actually helping him, and that the very intentness of my own thought ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... against an overarching palm-tree stood a young man watching the pair with a strange intentness; a dark, vindictive smile hovered about the corners of his mouth, hidden by his black mustache, and there was a cruel gleam in the dark, wicked eyes scanning the face of the young girl ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... realized. The exquisitely shaped oval face; the large eyes of dark blue, through which the loving little heart looked out at him, and in which, though generally sparkling with fun and merriment, there was sometimes a dreamy intentness, as if they beheld a world more beautiful than any which his art or imagination created; the perfectly formed nose and mouth; the arched forehead, shaded with golden brown hair; the delicate complexion; and the witching charm of the graceful little figure, were a perpetual ...
— The Boy Artist. - A Tale for the Young • F.M. S.

... discovered that if she walked with such apparent aimlessness, some men looked at her with calculating eyes. She quickened her step, frightened. As a protection, she adopted a demeanor of intentness as if ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane

... believe you are not conscientious," she said, with a frown of intentness. "When a man of talent ceases to be true, he loses half ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... and a white shirt with a fine diamond in the front of it, while there was a keen intentness behind the half-ironical smile in his somewhat colorless face. The whiteness of his long nervous fingers and the quickness of his gestures would also have stamped his as a being of different order from ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... memorial of the world of men below. From that too the colour vanished, and those other lights began to shine which to some are the only lights of day. The skies dropped close upon the mountains and the silver seas, like a vast face brooding with intentness; there was enchantment, mystery, and a living motion in its depths, the presence of all-pervading Zeus enfolding his starry children with the dark radiance ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... or were not, attractive though it was to a young man who knew nothing of the subject, was checked by the success of Bill Kirby's cast ahead. Half way across the big field, the hounds, who had been industriously spreading themselves, and examining blades of grass and fronds of bracken with the intentness of botanists, came, with a sudden rush, to a deep note from old Bellman, and, as suddenly, broke into full-cry, with the unanimity of an orchestra when the baton comes down. They headed for "Carmody's bounds," and were over that solid barrier, and running hard across the succeeding ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... flocks and herds. The whole purpose of the sacrifices which occupy so much of their time and thought is to obtain these good things. The sacrifice and the sacrificer come between gods and men. On the man's side is faith, munificence, a compelling force of prayer and of intentness of will. The sacrifice invigorates the gods to do the will of the sacrificer; it is supposed to be mystically celebrated in heaven as well as on earth—the gods are always sacrificing. Often (as when rain is wanted) the sacrifice imitates the end ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... that, fumbling while watching Ekstrom with unremitting intentness, hoping against hope that his enemy might make one false move, one only, by some infatuate endeavour to turn ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... kept time with his racing heart. He watched every motion of the buccaneer with a fierce intentness that missed no detail. Daggs had been quiet for a full two minutes, a crafty gloating smile playing over his thin lips. Now once more he touched a place upon the sheet before him. "Right there, she'll be," he muttered. Then, after slowly rolling up the paper, he replaced ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... again towards the place where the dead woman lay. Seeing this movement, his anxious father wiped the moisture from his forehead. Silas Van Burnam had been silent up to this moment and seemed inclined to continue so, but he watched his younger son with painful intentness. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... head, Aubrey gazed at me with a long, searching intentness of eye; his lips moved, but ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... thin sleeves a little tumbled by the weight of her jacket, he would like her even better, feel her nearer, dearer, more desirable, than in all the splendours she might put on for him. In the light of this discovery she studied her face with a new intentness, seeing its defects as she had never seen them, yet seeing them through a kind of radiance, as though love were a luminous medium into which ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... attempt to lift it or to place it on the larger box. Clearly the usually neglected smaller box had become associated with the satisfaction of obtaining the banana. The same method was carried out on April 20. As I placed the boxes in position beneath the banana, Julius watched with unusual intentness, and when it came his turn to try to obtain the food by the use of the boxes, he began at once to work with the smaller box, but as on April 19, he soon abandoned it and turned to the other. While I was making note of this particular feature of his behavior, he suddenly seized the smaller ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... she related with particular fulness. For a while Dieppe watched her. Then he happened to glance towards the Countess. He found that lady's eyes set on him with an intentness full of meaning. The Count's attention was engrossed by Lucia. Emilia gave a slight but emphatic nod. A slow smile dawned ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope

... the door, but there he turned, and for the first time since Cunningham had taken the yacht Cleigh looked directly, with grim intentness, into his ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... and her white ruffling, that she was daintily hemstitching, fell to her lap, as she looked, still with a certain wide intentness in her eyes, upon the pleasant window, and the bright, fresh things it framed. Not the least bright and fresh among them was the human creature in her early girlhood, tender and pleasant in its beautiful leafage, but waiting, like any other young and growing ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... youth whose character he had done so much to form. He did not even raise his hand at once in the customary salutation or blessing, but fixed his eyes upon Raymond's face, now lifted to his in questioning surprise; and not until he had studied that face with great intentness for many long minutes did he lay his hand upon the lad's head and say, in a low, deep voice, "Peace be with ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... stood silent, considering, while Yussuf looked up with glistening-eyed intentness like an eager dog ready for the ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... fury the apotheosis of the guillotine. While the events in France were shaking every European State, including England, to its centre, it was hard for the public mind to keep itself fixed with any degree of intentness upon the trial of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Nancy asked faintly, shrinking a little beneath the intentness of his look. "How—how do you account ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... Uel noticed with what intentness Syama watched the master's lips while he was speaking, and the gratification that beamed from his face in answer to the compliment; and he thought, "Verily this must be a good man to be ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... nothing of the wraith, or phantom, however, in the broad-shouldered figure in a wide-brimmed Stetson sitting in the office watching Sprudell's approach with ominous intentness. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... asked himself. "What do they matter—these boots and shirts and books?" He caught a few pictures from the wall and stuffed them into his pockets, and was about to plunge out into the dusk when Fan entered the room and stood looking at him with ominous intentness. ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... amusement or pleasure. Not a day passed without her showing in many ways that he made a large part of her life, was really a central interest in it. Even to us who knew the sad truth, and who looked on with intentness and anxiety hardly less than those with which we had watched her sick-bed weeks before—even to us it seemed many times as if all must be right. No stranger but would believe them lovers; not a servant in the house ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... at him with a keen, set, impersonal intentness in her gaze which he could not understand. "Then you are sure she does not care enough for you to marry you? She threw you over because she ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... sky had continued to clear; it was almost light in the forest. We made our way out of the ravine at last. "Wait here," the forester whispered to me, bent over, and raising his gun aloft, vanished among the bushes. I began to listen with strained intentness. Athwart the constant noise of the wind, I thought I discerned faint sounds not far away: an axe was cautiously chopping on ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... meeting her eyes, walked to one of the windows, where he stood with his back turned and looked out on the great greenness. She watched him a moment and she might well have been wishing, while he appeared to gaze with intentness, that it would come to him with the same force as it had come to herself—very often before, but during these last days more than ever—that the level lands of Harsh, stretching away before the window, the French garden with its symmetry, its screens and its statues, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... for the young to learn in Africa," remarked Professor Wiseman coldly and gazing at Billy with squashing intentness; "the young do not believe many things merely because ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... Narcissus had no bone-distances, as artists say, and his hair was in crisp curls, good for the sculptor. No one ever needed to get a pair of scissors to snip it. But though anyone might have marvelled at Adrian Torrens's seeming Narcissus-like intentness on his own manifold image, he could never have surmised that cruel blindness was its apology. He could never have guessed, from anything in their seeming, that the long perspective of gazing orbs, vanishing into nothingness, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... angry intentness. Had he been so mistaken in the man? Could he so calmly leave the woman he loved to bear her terrible trial alone, or did he think his mother's sympathy sufficient for her? And, although there were many admirable qualities in Fred Lawrence, the two had ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... I had been talking for a long time, and we had put up our books, and were preparing to leave, he stood for some time by the window, gazing with a drooping intentness, as if he really saw something more than the dark court, ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... had been called, had now come down to the beach; and, with his hands shading his eyes from the spray, sheets of which the wind carried along with blinding force, he gazed at the ship and the sea, with a steady intentness. ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... together, turned at the sounds of the young man's steps. One of them, revealed by a near-by shop-light, had straggly gray whiskers, vacant eyes, and a bad foolish mouth. Both of them stared at Varney with marked intentness. He had to go quite out of his ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... throat as they dashed onward. A quick glance behind showed there had been but one pursuer, and the man in the robes of holiness chuckled exultantly. But, if Dorothy Garrison believed him to be the priest his robes declared, the moonlight told the fallen Turk the truth. Indeed, it was the intentness with which the little ex-burglar gazed upon the white face of Courant that prevented him from seeing the ledge as he dashed up ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... a tremendous impression upon me," he observed, watching the father with intentness as he let ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... master behaved with so intrepid an air, and was so cheerful and complaisant to me, that he did credit to his kind choice, instead of shewing as if he was ashamed of it: And as I was resolved to busy my mind entirely with the duties of the day, my intentness on that occasion, and my thankfulness to God, for his unspeakable mercies to me, so took up my thoughts, that I was much less concerned, than I should otherwise have been, at the gazings and whisperings of the ladies and gentlemen, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... friend of yours?" gasped the Lay Reader. Already, if Flame could only have seen it, his head was cocked with sudden intentness towards the parlor door. "There is certainly something very strange about all this," he whispered a bit hectically. "I could almost have sworn that I heard a faint scuffle,—the horrid sound ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... both," returned the girl, a smile struggling about her beautiful mouth, in spite of the singular and engrossing intentness which caused her cheeks to flush and lighted her eyes with a brilliancy that was almost dazzling—"I have observed both, and have thought the last remarkable for a man of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... the passage and paused at the entrance of the reception room. The man was white-haired, dignified and distinguished in appearance. Hat in hand, he stood as if undecided while Alora bounded from her seat and came to him, her eyes, big and pleading, reading his face with dramatic intentness. ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... his fixed gaze, which is inconceivably difficult to bear. He never once removes his eye from you till you are quite past his range; and you feel it all the same, although you do not meet his glance. He is perfectly respectful; but the intentness and directness of his silent appeal is far worse than any impudence. In fact, it is the very flower of impudence. I would rather go a mile about than pass before his battery. I feel wronged by him, and yet unutterably ashamed. There must be great force in the man to produce such an effect. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... those simple days. It needed some adjustment; he stepped closer to the window, and held the pointed end of the case up to the light, while screwing the lower end; he was very fastidious in these mechanical details of his vocation. Hilda watched him from behind, with an intentness ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... features were at that moment transformed. His mouth was strained and quivering, his eyes were lit with something very much like horror. Some words certainly left his lips, but they did not carry to the hearing of any one of those three people. He looked at Maraton with the fierce, terrified intentness of one who looks ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... endeavouring to make his tale appear in the last degree natural and convincing. Up till now he had told nothing but the truth, but as he was about to enter on the path of perjury he became embarrassed by the intentness of her gaze. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... approached him he spoke. Baroni dropped into his former position, Fakredeen fell upon his knees, Eva alone was visible when the eyes of Tancred met hers. His vision was not unconscious of her presence; he stared at her with intentness. The change in her dress, however, would, in all probability, have prevented his recognising her even under indifferent circumstances. She was habited as a Bedouin girl; a leathern girdle encircled her blue robe, a few ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... very remarkable. She had a way of lowering her head and looking at you with a strange intentness—gravely—kindly and quietly. At her husband she looked a world of love, of faith, of undying devotion. She was fond of me, although I was told she disliked women generally and had been brought up to think all actresses children of Satan. Obedience to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... you were completely beyond the range of his battery of one immense rifled cannon. This was his mode of soliciting alms; and he reminded me of the old beggar who appealed so touchingly to the charitable sympathies of Gil Blas, taking aim at him from the roadside with a long-barrelled musket. The intentness and directness of his silent appeal, his close and unrelenting attack upon your individuality, respectful as it seemed, was the very flower of insolence; or, if you give it a possibly truer interpretation, it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... were rescued by the interposition of the gentleman opposite, whose small twinkling eyes had been taking me in with intentness. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... found, that's all," announced Ripley, with deadly intentness. "I don't know what it means. There is no explanation. The whole thing is inconceivable. Sit down and I will tell you ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... climax, and silence was golden. Throughout the eloquent appeal of the chief, Deerfoot stood with his hands idly folded behind him, his eyes fixed upon the face of Taggarak, whose pose gave a good view of his features, and listening in the very intentness of his soul. When the chief had uttered his last word he gathered his blanket about his shoulders and strode out of the Big Lodge, looking neither to the right nor left, and again failing to notice his wife and little boy, who sat on the ground and whom he brushed as he passed into ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... in," a smooth voice replied from the speaker. Alexander X. M. Alexander, President of Outsold Enterprises—a lean, dark, wolfish man in his early sixties—eyed Kennon with a flat predatory intentness that was oddly disquieting. His stare combined the analytical inspection of the pathologist, the probing curiosity of the psychiatrist, and the weighing appraisal of the butcher. Kennon's thoughts about Alexander's youth vanished that instant. Those ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... young to hold the post of house-keeper to a barrister of the Inner Temple, for she was not yet thirteen; but there was an uncommonly capable intentness in her deep blue eyes as she watched the bacon, sizzling on the grill, for the right moment to turn the rashers. She never missed it. Now and again those deep blue eyes sparkled at the thought that the Honourable John Ruffin would presently give ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... be of the same opinion, Miss Cushing," said Holmes, taking a seat beside her. "I think that it is more than probable—" He paused, and I was surprised, on glancing round to see that he was staring with singular intentness at the lady's profile. Surprise and satisfaction were both for an instant to be read upon his eager face, though when she glanced round to find out the cause of his silence he had become as demure as ever. I stared hard myself at her flat, grizzled hair, her trim cap, her ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle

... youngster within an inch of his life," said the master of the house, with a deadly sort of intentness. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... answered Fleda, abstractedly, stroking into order some old man in her drawing with great intentness. "King! you rascal keep ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... long, talon-like finger extended. A low moaning, as of the dead, greeted this, and the people cowered with shaking knees as the dread finger passed them slowly by. For death went with it, and life remained with those who watched it go; and being rejected, they watched with eager intentness. ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... details most earnestly. "You're crazy, boy," was the only reply he got. He grew angry and hurt. "Now, Tom Reese," he demanded, "have I ever failed you when you wanted my help?" Tom apologized and began to study Edwin with intentness. "Look here, Edwin Horton," he said, "if there is any such girl at Druid lake as you describe, she's a 'fake' and she's got you strung mightily." Edwin swallowed this dig at his intelligence peacefully. ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump

... unworthy in any proceeding or adversary, his severity was in his argument and rhetoric rather than in the feeling of his soul. Without a sweet disposition no man could have had such a smile. Without some grandeur of design no man ever displayed such a countenance and port, handsome and sublime. In his intentness and earnestness, he did not suspect the liability of his expressions to the charge of a vindictiveness he was unconscious of in his own breast. It was like a philippic of Demosthenes; it was a Ciceronian oration against some Catiline, real or ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol

... went up to Tai-y, and taking a seat next to her, continued to look at her again with all intentness for a good ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... a reply to the west. His heart stood still for a moment. He knew that they were the whoops of the savages and he felt that they signified a discovery. Perhaps chance had disclosed their trail. He listened with great intentness, but the shouts did not come again. ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... gradually transforming the gloom of the high altar into a blaze of light. With a strange sense of completion I took my place next to the chair by which Lorimer, with bowed head, was kneeling, his eyes fixed with a strange intentness on the screen which separated the outer worshippers from the chapel or gallery which was set apart for the nuns. His lips moved from time to time spasmodically, in prayer or ejaculation: then as the jubilant organ burst out, and the officiating priest in his dalmatic ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al

... ever they could, just to show us that they were not afraid—that they did not care, not they, pooh! After these came a small detachment of guarda, with arms, who watched the Yankee soldiers with bovine intentness while they came to a halt and ordered arms in front of ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris

... newly arrived ship as an evident destination; and the brig had barely swung to the current when the hoarse voice of the mate was heard ordering the ladder over the side. The preparation to receive the boat drew the attention of the crowd, and they stared at its occupants with an intentness which implied some deeper interest than mere curiosity; low words were exchanged, and some of the poor frightened creatures seemed to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... Upon the attic floor a map was roughly drawn in chalks of different colours, with mountains, rivers, towns, bridges, and roads of two classes. Here we would play by the hour, with tingling fingers and stiffening knees, and an intentness, zest, and excitement that I shall never forget. The mimic battalions marched and counter-marched, changed by measured evolutions from column formation into line, with cavalry screens in front and massed supports behind, in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the prince retreated a space and looked, with savage intentness, upon the beautiful girl, superb in her denunciation, enchanting in the rebellious dishevel of her hair, the ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... gesticulations produced upon her, although outwardly she kept a solemn appearance, and even from time to time shut her eyes to encourage him. Once, when she opened them again, it was to perceive that he was becoming very hot and exhausted, and that Jacob was watching him with such an unpleasant intentness that she re-closed her eyes that she ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... baffling intentness while his strange guest practiced strangely the telling of truth. He refuted nothing. He accepted everything that Kenny said with a corroborative, birdlike nod of politeness. With the megaphone upon the floor by Kenny's chair, he made no further pretense of deafness. He said nothing at all and ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... extremes who spoke, and he spoke quite sincerely. Christina, however, neither answered him nor heard. Her eyes were fixed with a strange intentness upon him; her breath came and went as if she had run a race, and in the silence ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... chair, and, impelled by curiosity to find out the cause of his stillness, she looked up at him at length, and saw his gaze fixed on the two who were near the piano. Osborne was saying something eagerly to Cynthia, whose grave eyes were upturned to him with soft intentness of expression, and her pretty mouth half-open, with a sort of impatience for him to cease ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... She moved and sighed. Then again she sat very still like one listening. After a while she lifted the book, glanced at it again, and then put it down, got up and went to the fireplace. She turned on the lights there, leaned forward and looked into the glass. Her face became stern with intentness when she did that. She put up a hand to her hair, turned her head a little to one side, smiled faintly, then a little more, and looked grave, then earnest. Finally she put both her hands on the mantelpiece, grasped it ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... closer; he put his hand down and gripped her arm. Her eloquence dried up before the intentness of his face, and she just stared ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... fail to observe the unconscious intentness with which Melville regarded him, and, for some reason, it did ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... in the scene been at this moment proportioned to intentness of feeling, the whole audience, regal and otherwise, would have faded into an indistinct mist of background, leaving as the sole emergent and telling figures Bob and Anne at one point, the trumpet-major on the left hand, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... mirror, then, when her expression was at its fiercest in intentness and concentration, she saw her daughter enter the room behind her, and for an instant a spasmodic frown ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... understand and interpret to others my inner and outer being, as this one, of such nobleness in her way of thinking, such great intellectual capacity, and so free from the theological perplexities that enveloped me?" Let any one peruse, with all intentness, the lineaments of this portrait, and he will be impressed with the fact, that it is possible for woman to fulfil her mission, and become a true helpmeet. This woman was not a copy. She was not a cipher. She was an original; and while she loved and honored ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton

... presence completely while he lighted a fire and fried bacon and made coffee, but the hard set of his jaw and the cold intentness of his eyes proved how conscious he was of Buck's presence. He tried to eat just to show how calm he was, but the bread and bacon choked him. He could feel every nerve in his body quiver with the hatred he felt for ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... while Sir Beverley's eyes returned to the wide oak staircase, watching it ceaselessly, with vulture-like intentness. Then after the passage of minutes, there came the sound of feet that literally scampered along the corridor above, and in a moment, with meteor-like ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... now. They were safely before the house, with the colt lying a little apart from his mother—regarding her with curious intentness—and with Felipe bustling about the team and now and again bursting out in song of questionable melody and rhythm. Felipe was preparing the horses for the corral at the rear of the house, and soon he flung aside the harness ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... we were thinking it out with some intentness. The Noble Seven were to have a great "blow-out" at the Hill brothers' ranch. The Duke had got home from his southern trip a little more weary-looking and a little more cynical in his smile. The "blow-out" was to be held on ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor

... Morgan, Dan's brother-in-arms, the General's seventeen-year-old brother—and there he stands leaning against a tree, full in the light of the fire, a handsome, gallant figure—a song like a seraph's pouring from his lips. One bearded soldier is gazing at him with curious intentness, and when the song ceases, lies down with a suddenly troubled face. He has seen the "death-look" in the boy's eyes—that prophetic death-look in which he has unshaken faith. The night deepens, figures roll up in blankets, quiet comes, and Dan ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... a variety of punch which they called "peach-honey." Others were seated around a card table while one of their number entertained the rest with what seemed to be almost magical tricks. These Edgar joined. His interest was immediately aroused and he fixed his eyes with intentness upon the juggler. The tricks were new to him, but he soon amazed the crowd by showing the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... what he had seen, and done, as soon as he dropped down beside his comrades of the Silver Fox Patrol. Immediately he had the attention of every one enlisted. Bumpus sat there, watching and listening with such intentness that you would hardly believe he breathed at all. Step Hen, too, was following every word spoken by the scout-master, as though trying to grasp the seriousness of the situation, and figure out a way to circumvent the danger that had arisen ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... his dinner, standing beside the table while he ate it, watching him with an intentness ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... of relations, and acquire odd habits from living much alone. She was a great source of interest to Beth, who would sit silently watching her by the hour together, her bright eyes steady and her countenance a blank. The intentness of her gaze fidgeted the old lady, who would look up suddenly every now and then and ask her what she was staring at. "Nothing, Aunt Victoria; I was only thinking," Beth always answered; and then she affected to occupy herself until the old lady ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... caused all eyes to focus upon the Montgomerys with a new intentness. Before her escapade they had been accepted as a matter of course; now that she had demonstrated that the Montgomerys were subject to the temptations that beset all mankind, every one became curious as to the further definition of the family weaknesses. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... evening he came again as he had said, and brought Juliet. Each in the other, Dorothy and she recognized suffering, and in a very few moments every thing was arranged between them. Juliet was charmed with the simplicity and intentness of Dorothy; in Juliet's manner and carriage, Dorothy at once recognized a breeding superior to her own, and at once laid hold of the excellence by acknowledging it. In a moment she made Juliet understand how things were, and Juliet saw as quickly that she must assent to the arrangement ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... looked beyond her; the blue eyes had narrowed, a strange expression of intentness showed in her face. "I have always tried not to," she said, "and yet I have always hated the Germans. I wish I was a man." She turned abruptly. "But come upstairs, child, your aunt had her couch moved close to the window this morning, she has lain ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... Frowning with intentness, he stopped before the house. Mother meekly halted beside him. She had not lost quite all of the training in self-dependence she had got from a business life, these last weeks, but she looked to him for leadership ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... that followed her words, Monck's hand left hers. He lay still looking at her, but with that steely intentness that told her nothing. She could not have said whether he were vitally interested in the matter or not when ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... an hour of utter stillness and darkness; the eight prisoners lying with clenched hands and set teeth, listening with terrible intentness. Finally, when Jim was beginning to feel that he must move, or go mad, a final signal came from the doorway. He heard Baylis say "Thank God!" under his breath, as they slipped out of bed in the darkness ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce

... on him quickly. "Done?" he cried. "Maybe nothin', maybe everythin'." He paused dramatically, unconscious of the fierce intentness of his gaze, the lithe aggressiveness of his posture. "But I warns you, now—you ain't our kind! Th' mountings ain't no place for you. The sooner you gits out of 'em, the better it'll be ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... girl with a hungry craving in her eyes over which the lids were drawn to a slit. There was a fierce intentness in the gaze: the look of the runner who has almost reached the goal but hears his ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... gna' Fraeulein. He might fall in love with the wrong woman." And the chamois hunter looked with half shamed intentness ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... it WAS his ears and not his tardiness. And, when he looked up again many minutes afterward, other officials of the bank were looking at him from various points of vantage, and all of them were staring with the most amazing intentness, quite as if they had never seen anything so strange as the man who had sat unnoticed in this very spot for fifteen years and more. Messengers took a peep at him as they circled from window to window; patrons of the bank sauntered past and squinted ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... did not endure long. During those intervals in which Barbara kept her gaze straight ahead on the trail, Harlan regarded her with a grave intentness that betrayed the soberness ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... which the Janequeo turned gradually to starboard until she came abreast of the harbour entrance, which was only about two hundred feet in width. He then stopped his engines altogether, and, when the torpedo-boat had come to a standstill, he proceeded to listen with all intentness for suspicious sounds. But everything was as still as the grave, and Douglas began to hug to himself the conviction that events seemed to be turning out fortunately. He could hear no sounds aboard the Peruvian warships; and there was no sign of any patrol launches being about. Having, ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... while the angry blood flashed from brow to throat. Her lover saw it, and for the moment a strange intentness was in his gaze. But immediately he smiled, as a man would at some horrible phantom of his own creating, and ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... Each of us will probably get out a lot of truth and a considerable amount of error; the truth will be the same and the errors will confute and disperse each other. But it is clear that there is no simple panacea in this matter, and that only by intentness and persistence shall we disentangle a general conception of the road the peace-desiring ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... the party, and Mr. Wasgatt, getting into the spirit of the thing, began to deliver the rounded periods sonorously. General Waymouth leaned slightly over the table, propping himself on the knuckles of his one hand. The light flowed down upon his silvery hair, his features were set in the intentness of listening. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... thrown off his rug, but her imperious gesture kept him seated. She was looking at him with an intentness which was ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... ladies gave him a preoccupied nod, a plain little woman whom he had talked with about books at a recent dinner smiled upon him encouragingly. But what specially impressed him at the moment was the seriousness of the function, the intentness upon the presentation, and the look of worry on the faces of the women in arranging trains ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... time he was already filled with a new idea; hearkening with a rapt intentness, his head on one side, his face puckered; and he struck me rudely, to make me hold my peace. Then he ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... enhanced her beauty or not. It was while this discussion was in progress, Leaver forcing himself to attend sufficiently to make intelligent replies, that Charlotte Ruston suddenly turned and looked at him. He looked straight back at her, a peculiar intentness growing ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... keep Benny from knowing," she said. She ate it, nearly all, then looked around, below her, with a strange intentness, as one who says good-bye. The bell tolled the hour. Unutterable pain was in its voice,—may-be dumb spirits like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... grizzled, curly hair and beard, and a torn fustian coat and immense nailed shoes. He was muttering prayers, kissing his rosary or medal at intervals, and slightly prostrating himself. But what struck me, and apparently others (for people approached and stared), was his extraordinary intentness and fervour. He was certainly conscious of no one and nothing save whatever his eyes were fixed upon—either the sacrament or the altar behind that railing, or merely some vision of his own. And he seemed not only different from everyone else, but separate, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee

... (not at his work, for the child had made him promise not to do so) and began to marvel at his absorption, his intentness, the evident facility with which he worked: the little figure leaning over the great dish on the bare board of the table, with the oval opening of the window and the blue sky beyond it, began to grow sacred to him with more ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... his words quite out of sight; yet more to something past than towards other things to come. So leaning her head on her hand she sat, and thenstill full of her thoughtlooked up at him, the same child's look of intentness, with words all ready ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... the intentness of her single eye, his every motion, her head swaying in unconscious sympathy. Although her body sat so stiff and awkward in the chimney-seat, her spirit, inspired with the grace of love, was dancing with Manetho's. But the body kept its place, knowing that erelong ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... yourself were not altogether submissive, perhaps, when the slow-built hope of life was destroyed by some chance, as you called it, no more controllable than this paltry burning of a mill. Yet, now that the great hope was gone on which his brain had worked with rigid, fierce intentness, now that his hands were powerless to redeem a perishing class, he had time to fall into careless, kindly habit: he thought it wasted time, remorsefully, of course. He was seized with a curiosity to know what plan in living these people had who crossed his way on the streets; if they were disappointed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... with strange intentness. His playfulness was extinguished, and his face looked all at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... is going to be a native race." Shann made a statement instead of a question and saw that the other was watching him with a new intentness, as if he had at last been recognized as a person instead of rank and file and very low rank ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... out loud, can't you?" said Stan. His smooth forehead wrinkled and a sudden cleft appeared between his eyebrows, witness of an unaccustomed intentness of thought. "Say, Pete; this partnership of ours isn't on the level. You put in half the work and ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... sightliness of the neatly kept hall. Then, nodding towards a maid whom she had placed on watch at the extreme end of the hall, she muttered some assurances as to this woman's faithfulness, and turned away with a cordial good night. Georgian watched her go with a strange and lingering intentness, or so it seemed to Ransom; then slowly entered her ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... is still in the physical body, he will be able (even while exercising the faculty) to hear and to speak, in so far as he can do this without any distraction of his attention. The moment that the intentness of his thought fails the whole vision is gone, and he will have to construct a fresh thought-form before he can resume it. Instances in which this kind of sight is possessed with any degree of perfection by untrained people ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... wrist-bag, she set her cloak on the back of a couch. It slipped off it, and fell to the ground at the feet of the Duke, who had not returned to his place beside Germaine. While she was groping in her bag for the key, and all eyes were on her, the Duke, who had watched her with a curious intentness ever since her entry into the room, stooped quietly down and picked up the cloak. His hand slipped into the pocket of it; his fingers touched a hard object wrapped in tissue-paper. They closed round ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... fascinated by the mediaeval air of the place, and especially by one old chest, known as Canynge's coffer, containing musty documents which had been preserved for three hundred years. With strange, uncanny intentness the child pored over these relics of the past, copying them instead of his writing book, until he could imitate not only the spelling and language but even the handwriting of the original. Soon after the "Ossian" forgeries appeared, Chatterton began to produce documents, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... jailer is a boon to such, a break in the ghastly solitude. But he was fast succumbing to a despair of reaching across the barrier of this critical silence and he was about to rise and leave when he happened to look about and see Sophie Carr standing within arm's length, gazing at him with a peculiar intentness, a mild look of surprise upon her vivid young face, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... repeated itself. What were they, those Beast-gods, and the others? At first, they had appeared to me just sculptured Monsters placed indiscriminately among the inaccessible peaks and precipices of the surrounding mountains. Now, as I scrutinized them with greater intentness, my mind began to reach out to fresh conclusions. There was something about them, an indescribable sort of silent vitality that suggested, to my broadening consciousness, a state of life-in-death—a something that was by no means life, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... reclining figure casually, but thought no more about the man, though his interest might have been aroused if he had chanced to turn quickly for the desperado had raised his head with the quickness of a rattlesnake and his beady eye was fixed with malevolent intentness on Jim's ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... instant, the telegraph clicked, and he pushed the damp, fresh paper away from him, and went immediately to the wires. The young man listened to the message with an expression of great intentness, and wrote rapidly. Moved by some unaccountable impulse, I softly rose and glanced over ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... them a quaint-looking old woman, in what appeared to be a white scalloped nightcap. She had a pan of corn in her hand, and was attended by a retinue that would have rejoiced an epicure's heart. Chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and Guinea fowls thronged around and after her with an intentness on the grain and a disregard of one another's rights and feelings that reminded one unpleasantly of political aspirants just after a Presidential election. Johnny made a dive for an old gobbler, and the great red-wattled bird dropped his wings and seemed ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... and then twenty. Margaret bent steadily over her work, listening with covert intentness for the click of the street gate. Likely enough Richard had been unable to find any one to take charge of his hand-baggage. Presently Mr. Slocum could not resist the impulse to look at his watch. It was half past eight. He nervously unfolded The Stillwater ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... took, however, but a few minutes, while they exchanged some conventionalities. Then Cliffe said, scrutinizing the face and form beside him with that intentness which, from him, was more generally taken as ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the sureness of French taste; but the two we visited happened to be Paris jewellers, for whom "artisan" was really too modest a pseudonym. Officers and men were evidently proud of their work, and as they stood hammering away in their cramped smithy, a red gleam lighting up the intentness of their faces, they seemed to be beating out the cheerful rhythm of "I too will something make, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... which is the power of story-telling, is to have a power of life gained through the experience of having lived; to have a power of emotion acquired through the exercise of daily affairs; a power of imagination won from having dwelt upon the things of life with intentness, a power of sympathy obtained from seeing the things of others as you meet them day by day; and a first-hand knowledge of the sights and sounds and beauties of Nature, a knowledge of bird and flower, tree and rock, their names and some ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... garden gate, and came in. When he came up near the seat where Henry and Rollo stood, he found the boys standing a step or two back from the flower-pot, both watching the hole with the utmost intentness. ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott

... spoke weakly and slowly, his opening words almost inaudible, so that the throng of people before him leaned forward in sympathetic intentness, and silence became absolute in the great hall except for the high quavering of his tones. But then came a miracle of reinvigoration. Little by little his voice swelled until it was full, sonorous, richly warm and compelling, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... of the dark place, boarded and hollow underfoot, with only desolation everywhere. Ursula had caught sight of the big, pallid, mystic letters 'OSTEND,' standing in the darkness. Everybody was hurrying with a blind, insect-like intentness through the dark grey air, porters were calling in un-English English, then trotting with heavy bags, their colourless blouses looking ghostly as they disappeared; Ursula stood at a long, low, zinc-covered barrier, along with hundreds of other spectral people, and all the way down the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence



Words linked to "Intentness" :   concentration, intent



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