14 uses
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Definition
to be better at noticing or realizing things than most people
- His lips held the hint of a smile, but his eyes were still, earnest and, for an instant, disturbingly perceptive.1.5 Part 1 Chapter 5 — The Climax of the D'Anconias (99% in)
- His was the only face that had the carefree look and the brilliant smile proper to the enjoyment of a party; but his eyes seemed intentionally expressionless, holding no trace of gaiety, showing-like a warning signal-nothing but the activity of a heightened perceptiveness.2.2 Part 2 Chapter 2 — The Aristocracy of Pull (71% in)
- It was a face that had nothing to hide or to escape, a face with no fear of being seen, or of seeing, so that the first thing she grasped about him was the intense perceptiveness of his eyes-he looked as if his faculty of sight were his best-loved tool and its exercise were a limitless, joyous adventure, as if his eyes imparted a superlative value to himself and to the world-to himself for his ability to see, to the world for being a place so eagerly worth seeing.3.1 Part 3 Chapter 1 — Atlantis (1% in)
- She was looking at the tall figure with the sun-streaked hair, with the suppressed smile in the mercilessly perceptive eyes-she was seeing the struggle to build her Line and the summer day of the first train's run-she was thinking that if a human figure could be fashioned as an emblem of that Line, this was the figure.3.1 Part 3 Chapter 1 — Atlantis (17% in)
- His glance had changed; it was watchful, unmoving, implacably perceptive.3.2 Part 3 Chapter 2 — The Utopia of Greed (18% in)
- ...struggling to grasp what was missing from his happiness, struggling down the brittle scaffold of a lie over the abyss of the discovery that he was not the man she loved, but only a resented substitute, half-charity-patient, half-crutch, his perceptiveness becoming his danger and only his surrender to lethargic stupidity protecting the shoddy structure of his joy, struggling and giving up and settling into the dreary routine of the conviction that fulfillment is impossible to man-the...3.2 Part 3 Chapter 2 — The Utopia of Greed (73% in)
- His face was as it had been in the sunlight of the moment when she had seen it for the first time: a face of merciless serenity and unflinching perceptiveness, without pain or fear or guilt.3.2 Part 3 Chapter 2 — The Utopia of Greed (94% in)
- He chuckled suddenly, with a glance of astonishing perceptiveness.3.4 Part 3 Chapter 4 — Anti-Life (72% in)
- She glanced at him: the statement was so oddly perceptive and so incongruously irrelevant.3.5 Part 3 Chapter 5 — Their Brothers' Keepers (12% in)
- It was his eyes and hair that she saw first-the ruthlessly perceptive eyes, the streaks of hair shaded from gold to copper that seemed to reflect the glow of sunlight in the murk of the underground-she saw John Galt among the chain gang of the mindless, John Galt in greasy overalls and rolled shirt sleeves, she saw his weightless way of standing, his face held lifted, his eyes looking at her as if he had seen this moment many moments ago.3.5 Part 3 Chapter 5 — Their Brothers' Keepers (84% in)
- ...deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness become the enemies you have to dread and flee-that you do not care to live as a dependent, least of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in fooling-that honesty is...3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (27% in)
- Dagny, whoever among them had any remnant of human perceptiveness would know that you're not one of them, that you're their last link to me, and would not let you out of his sight-or the sight of his spies.3.8 Part 3 Chapter 8 — The Egoist (37% in)
- He looked as if his perceptive eyes were studying the men outside this room, the men who were seeing him across the country; one could not tell whether he was listening: no reaction altered the composure of his face.3.8 Part 3 Chapter 8 — The Egoist (96% in)
- Galt was watching them; his glance was too austerely perceptive.3.9 Part 3 Chapter 9 — The Generator (99% in)
There are no more uses of "perceptive" in Atlas Shrugged.
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