searchingness

They would hardly answer a normal appetite; and any stomach that can steadily withstand the searchingness of soda and tartaric acid seems ready to go out to pasture and eat the fences.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 Various

He eyed them carelessly enough to all appearance, yet with an inward searchingness which seemed to find what it feared.

A Prince of Sinners 1906

Subsequently he committed me to the care of one of his younger disciples, a pale, seemingly timid, but, as was soon manifest, very strong-willed, ambitious young priest, who scrutinized me with well-nigh impertinent searchingness, like a doctor his patient.

The Bride of Dreams Frederik van Eeden 1896

It was a priestly face, saw Monsignor, with all the power and searchingness of one who can deal with living souls; but the face of a fallen priest.

Dawn of All Robert Hugh Benson 1892

What grandeur, what tenderness, what pathos, what heart-searchingness in the swells and cadences of its 'Andante

Starr King in California William Day Simonds 1887

I am button-holed at every corner, and put through a cross-examination, to which Holt's or Bingham's had no searchingness: "How did Mrs. Suratt die?"

Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, and His Romaunt Abroad During the War George Alfred Townsend 1877

A gentleman hearing her might forget his duty to his friend, she thought, for she had been strangely swayed by Clara: ideas of Sir Willoughby that she had never before imagined herself to entertain had been sown in her, she thought; not asking herself whether the searchingness of the young lady had struck them and bidden them rise from where they lay imbedded.

Complete Project Gutenberg Works of George Meredith George Meredith 1868

A gentleman hearing her might forget his duty to his friend, she thought, for she had been strangely swayed by Clara: ideas of Sir Willoughby that she had never before imagined herself to entertain had been sown in her, she thought; not asking herself whether the searchingness of the young lady had struck them and bidden them rise from where they lay imbedded.

The Egoist George Meredith 1868

A people untrained to bear the burden of heavy taxes not only devotes to the public service sums gathered by private subscription that in any other country would be deemed fabulous, but by sheer force of public opinion compels its legislators to the utmost ingenuity and searchingness of taxation.

The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V Political Essays James Russell Lowell 1855

I'd get kicked in the butt for saying so - by all those lacking the intellectual searchingness that makes logic something more than verbal decoupage.

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