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More "Abruptness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the young fellow who stood in it should have seemed so foreign to the business in hand; perhaps the carriage of his tall figure, the military abruptness of his movements, the way he swung the door far back against the wall and halted there, looking us over. But I do know that no sooner had Worth Gilbert, lately home from France, crossed the threshold, meeting Whipple's outstretched hand, nodding carelessly to the others, than suddenly ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... acquainted with his brother's character than Newton, took no notice of the abruptness of his remarks, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... conversation was as haphazard and casual as the luncheon, until the pretty countess lighted a cigarette and tasted her tiny glass of Port—the latter a gift from Querida. "Do you think it odd of me to call on you uninvited?" she asked, with that smiling abruptness which sometimes ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... vocal sound. In the Fut. Neg. the voice rests on an articulation, or is cut short by a forcible aspiration. Supposing these Tenses to be used by a speaker in reply to a command or a request; by their very structure, the former expresses the softness of compliance; and the latter, the abruptness of a refusal. If a command or a request be expressed by such verbs as these, tog sin, gabh sin, ith sin, the compliant answer is expressed by togaidh, gabhaidh, ithidh; the refusal, by the cha tog, cha ghabh, cha n-ith. May not this peculiar variety ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... back to his men, deeply wounded in love and pride. He tried to excuse Marcia for her treatment of him, on the score of her youth and of youth's thoughtlessness; he blamed himself for his abruptness and his lack of knowledge of women—failings that had perhaps turned an impending victory into the defeat that now oppressed him. Worst of all, there was no hope to remedy his or her fault. A dangerous campaign lay before him, and the omens—but pshaw! ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... an horseman shriking sore and rashing wildly home,— A mediaeval horseman with ye usual flecks of foame; And he did brast into ye ring, wherein his horse did drop, Upon ye which ye rider did with like abruptness stop, And with fatigue and fearfulness continued in a swound Ye space of half an hour or more before a leech was founde. "Now tell me straight," quod Launcelot, "what varlet knyght you be, Ere that I chine you with my sworde and cleave your harte ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... he laughed. All the mystery was gone with the abruptness of a mist under the first glare of the sun. He saw how neatly he had been duped. He still carried the note. This he gave to the leader of ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... covert, while the grey pony scuttled after him as nimbly as a rabbit. The colt seemed to realise the stress of the occasion, and jumped steadily enough; but the last fence on to the road was too much for his nerves, and, having swerved from it with discomposing abruptness, he fell to his wonted ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... biographer, says, he had not yet really begun to think. When he began to think, he did so with the rapidity, the intensity, the impatient fervid vehemence which lay all along at the bottom of his character. His Evangelical views appear to have snapped to pieces and dissolved with a violence and sudden abruptness entirely unaccounted for by anything which these volumes show us. He read Carlyle; but so did many other people. He found the religious world at Cheltenham not so pure as he had imagined it; but this is what must have happened anywhere, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... only son! Obviously, however, she could not advance this argument, so they stood, the man and the girl, looking at one another, helpless, irresolute, while the clock opposite ticked remorselessly on. Then, with an abruptness which lent added weight to his words, Erskine ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... put her out of countenance. I often tell you abruptness is your fault; remember, too, that to you she is a stranger, and does not know ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... disturbing her (nor yourself) with a word about human passion; but, for my humble part, I beg to say I always share Tannhaeuser's impatience and am glad when it is over. As soon as Tannhaeuser gets up the mighty spirit of Wagner begins to work. With a dramatic abruptness that startles one, a fragment of a Venusberg theme shoots up; then a few chords, and Tannhaeuser begins praise of the thing he understands by love. His strains are impassioned—too much so for another of the troubadours, Walther, who follows somewhat ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... warm bed into a cold bedroom. The matter has been considered from that angle. 'I have been warm all night,' wrote Leigh Hunt, 'and find myself in a state perfectly suited to a warm-blooded animal. To get out of this state into the cold, besides the inharmonious and uncritical abruptness of the transition, is so unnatural to such a creature that the poets, refining upon the tortures of the damned, make one of their greatest agonies consist in being suddenly transported from heat to cold—from fire to ice. They are "haled" out of their "beds," says Milton, by "harpy-footed ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... well? Do you dare deny my will? By the eternal, I'll show you, old as you are, that you have still a father! Get to your room! Out of my sight!" He took two steps forward, and so his eye fell on Ned Trent. He uttered a scream of rage, and reached for the pistol. Fortunately the abruptness of his movement when he arose had knocked it to the floor, so now in the blindness of a red anger he could not see it. He shrieked out an epithet and jumped forward, his arm drawn to strike. Ned Trent leaped back ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... first and last appearance on the suffrage platform of Miss Kate Field, who was introduced by Miss Anthony with her characteristic abruptness: "Now, friends, here is Kate Field, who has been talking all these years against woman suffrage. She wants to tell you of the faith that is in her." Miss ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... and clambered fully eighteen miles, and had attained an elevation of eighteen hundred feet. The lake itself was not visible until they stood upon its shores, as it lies bosomed in a deep hollow, among lofty and precipitous mountains which descend with startling abruptness to the very brink of its dark, deep waters. To cross the lake it is necessary to put one's trust in one's swimming powers, or in a curiously frail kind of boat, which the natives prepare with equal rapidity and skill. Madame Pfeiffer, however, was nothing if not adventurous. Whatever there ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... With characteristic abruptness Liane Delorme announced that she was sleepy, it had been for her a most fatiguing day. Captain Monk rang for the stewardess and gallantly escorted the lady to her door. Lanyard got up with Phinuit to bow her out, but instead of following her suit helped ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... quotation shall be from the veritable Browning—of one of those poetical audacities none ever dared but the Danton of modern poetry. Audacious in its familiar realism, in its total disregard of poetical environment, in its rugged abruptness: but supremely successful, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... probably been among the number of those pious Jews who had prayerfully waited for the "consolation of Israel," and who had lived to see their fondest wishes and hopes realised. The Evangelist gives no information regarding their previous history. The narrative all at once, with an abruptness of surpassing beauty, leaves us in no doubt that the Divine Redeemer had been for long a well-known guest in that sunlit home, and that, when the calls and duties of His public ministry were suspended, many an hour was spent in the enjoyment of ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... she with the abruptness of extreme embarrassment, "did you know that Lady Cayley ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... the Canadian, as running midway between the town and Hog Island, derived its source far within the forest, and formed the bed of one of those wild, dark, and thickly wooded ravines so common in America. As it neared the Detroit, however, the abruptness of its banks was so considerably lessened, as to render the approach to it on the town side over an almost imperceptible slope. Within a few yards of its mouth, as we have already observed in our introductory chapter, a rude but strong wooden bridge, over which lay the high road, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... to the superior the deadly nature of the animal, and my fear that he would have put his handkerchief in the pocket of his robe before I had time to prevent him, and begged him to excuse my seeming abruptness. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... Hence the coffee. When breakout came, the overdrive field must collapse and the Duhanne cells down near the small ship's keel absorb the energy which maintained it. Then Esclipus Twenty would appear in the normal universe of suns and stars with the abruptness of an explosion. She should be somewhere near the sun Tallien. She should then swim toward that sol-type sun and approach Tallien's third planet out at the less-than-light-speed rate necessary ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the wagon. "Thar's a shakedown in the wagon bed; you kin lie there." Nevertheless he hesitated, and, with the inconsequence and abruptness of a shy man, continued the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... certain abruptness which reminded her of the change in his manner she had noticed once or twice during recent days, and quitted the bridge. She sighed, and was sorry for him, knowing that he ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... life in these deserts, Paul replied eagerly, and his manner softened and became almost winning. Thou'lt forgive, he said, any abruptness there may have been in my speech, I am speaking differently from my wont, but to-morrow I shall be in health and able to follow thee and to listen with interest to thy tales of shepherding among these hills of which thou must know a goodly number. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... said Mr. Bellingham, remembering that he had missed one engagement, and was on the point of missing another. He suddenly felt that he must send Claudius away, and he held out his hand. There was nothing rough in his abruptness. He would have liked to talk with Claudius for an hour longer had his time permitted. Claudius understood perfectly. He put the letters in his pocket, and with a parting shake of the hand he bade ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... swelled within me, so that I was utterly unable to sit still, for sheer joy; and my soul began as it were to dance in such excitement, that I could hardly refrain from shouting, resembling one intoxicated by the abruptness of a sudden change from certain death to the very apex of life's sweetness. And I said to myself: Sunset! So, then, beyond a doubt, she has either forgiven me, or is willing to forgive. And who knows? For if she has forgiven once, she may forgive again: when again, it may be, she will allow me to ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... ceases, with equal abruptness. There is no blending, in the constant alternation, until the earlier (lamenting) motive conquers and rises to a new height where a culminating chorale sounds a big triumph, while the sighing phrase merely spurs a new ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... happens to me from now on, I'll have the comfort of knowing that for a few hours I have been absolutely happy." Then, with the abruptness that marked her changes of mood, she became the slangy, pert, feather-headed Marion Rose whom Jack had met first; and remained so until she left him after breakfast to go home to Kate, who would be ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... he said, "you will excuse the abruptness of my manner in our late interview. I was so little prepared for the communication you had to make, that I was, perhaps, unsuitably discomposed. Will you allow me to ask whether you were requested by any of the parties to communicate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Edith Bartlett's great-granddaughter in my arms, I had not, till this moment, so illogical are some of our feelings, distinctly realized that but for that marriage I could not have done so. The absurdity of this frame of mind could only be equalled by the abruptness with which it dissolved as Edith's roguish query cleared the fog from my perceptions. I laughed ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... and many's the time he told his mother that if the mills were to pay it would be necessary to start business on a large scale. He was an impracticable lad and even now he couldn't help smiling when he thought of the abruptness with which he would go down to the river-side to seek a new argument wherewith to confute his mother, to return happy when he had found one, and sit watching for an opportunity ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... much used to walking. Besides, I have had a great loss to-day. My man, Bela—" Then with his former abruptness: "Have you no idea who this Mrs. Averill is, or why she broke into ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... abruptness, her mind plainly wandering to another matter; and Mary perceived that she had come upon a definite errand. Moreover, a tensing of Sibyl's eyelids, in that moment of abstraction as she looked aside from her hostess, indicated ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... in awe-struck wonder at the Miss Smiths as they moved with conscious grace and certainty through the various figures of the dance, now curtsying haughtily to each other, now with sudden abruptness turning their backs and pirouetting down the room on the very tips of their toes; now advancing, now retreating, now on the very point of reconciliation, and now bounding apart as though nothing were further from their thoughts. Finally, after the spectators for ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... His abruptness and hoarseness were expressive, but she felt that there was something lacking and she answered with a flippancy ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... coffee. Mrs. Van Zandt had a weak spot in her heart for Marc Scott—most women and children had. One did not at first see why. He was not good looking, except that he was well made and well kept; not particularly pleasing in his manner, being given to an abruptness of speech which most people found disconcerting; and he liked his own way more than is conducive to ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... Susan went back to her work abruptly. With stern efficiency she shook out a heavy sheet and hung it up. Stooping, she picked up another one. But she did not shake out this. With the same curious abruptness that had characterized her movements a few moments before, she dropped the sheet back into the basket and came close to the fence again. "Mis' McGuire, won't you please let me take a copy of them two women's ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... to the point at last with startling abruptness, so much so that for a moment or two his listeners sat almost petrified by the bad news, and unable to say a word. The lawyer finished what he had to ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... with what seems temperamental abruptness: "Sit down. One can always think better sitting down." She catches a chair under her with a deft movement of her heel, and Miss Garnett sinks provisionally into her seat. "And I think it ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... extremely doubtful about my story of the auto. Most likely, said they, it was a late Store delivery van. I had imagined so much. They paid detestable tribute to my imaginative powers. Married people are like this. With disconcerting abruptness, they wheel round together and go off at some incalculable tangent, serenely unconscious of any need for explanation. They made matters worse by harping on my imagination. And they capped all by declaring that I was a bad man and hoped ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the surprise came. She was anticipating commiseration—commiseration for the awful hell she had undergone. She little guessed the struggle that was taking place beneath her husband's seemingly calm exterior. The revelation came with an abruptness that staggered her. "Woman!" he cried, "you are a murderess. Sooner than have sacrificed your children you should have suffered three deaths yourself—that is the elementary instinct of all mothers, human ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... for the moment disconcerted by the abruptness of his entrance. Dot sprang to her feet with burning cheeks. It was her evident intention to escape, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... to relieve her feelings, and she sat down before the machine, which clicked and rattled for several minutes under her stubby fingers. Then the clicking ceased with sudden abruptness, and she prodded the mechanism viciously with a hairpin. As this appeared unavailing she used her forefinger, and when at length the carriage slid along the rod with a clash there was a smear of grimy oil upon her cheek and her somewhat tilted nose. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... with the deference which all the Clan of Good Fellows give to hotel clerks. Now he said with snarling abruptness: ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... almost immediately verified by the appearance of two riders. A moment later Thorne and California John dismounted at the hitching rail, some distance removed among the azaleas, and came up afoot. The younger man had dropped all his dry, official precision, his incisive abruptness, his reticence. Clad in the high, laced cruisers, the khaki and gray flannel, the broad, felt hat and gay neckerchief of what might be called the professional class of out-of-door man, his face glowing with health and enthusiasm, he seemed a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... records, taken down from the very lips of the red people as they sat around her fire and opened their hearts to her kindness. She has even caught their tone, and her language will be found to have something of an Ossianic simplicity and abruptness, well suited to the theme. Sympathy,—feminine and religious,—breathes through these pages, and the unaffected desire of the writer to awaken a kindly interest in the poor souls who have so twined themselves about her own best feelings, may ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... "Galatai is the same word as Keltici," which indicates that the Gauls were Kelts. It is supposed that St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians soon after his visit to the country of their origin. "Its abruptness and severity, and the sadness of its tone, are caused by their sudden perversion from the doctrine which the Apostle had taught them, and which at first they had received so willingly. It is no fancy, if we see in this fickleness ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... appalled. His face had gone red and white with such abruptness as to startle her. He was patently very angry. She sipped the last of her coffee, ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... (again of set purpose, it is evident) overlap one another without an end-pause where in Italian it is almost universal, namely, after the sixth line. The result of the innovation is far from successful: it destroys the flow of the verse and gives it an air of abruptness. Of the liveliness, vivacity and pungency of the tale, no idea can be given by quotation: two of the stanzas in which the moral is enforced, the two finest, perhaps, in the poem, are, however, severable ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the strong servant and fore runner (verses 4-8). The abruptness with which the curtain is drawn, and the gaunt figure of the desert-loving ascetic shown us, is very striking. It is like the way in which Elijah, his prototype, leaps, as it were, full-armed, into the arena. The parallel passage in Matthew links his appearance ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... and connected it with some new notions about the "Pioneer;" but when he was shown into Mr. Bulstrode's private room, he was struck with the painfully worn look on the banker's face, and was going to say, "Are you ill?" when, checking himself in that abruptness, he only inquired after Mrs. Bulstrode, and her satisfaction with ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... unceremonious abruptness and singularity of the question into a spontaneous tribute paid to her costly ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... he said gravely, "we will not be able to overtake them if we do not start immediately. Pardon my abruptness, but I cannot rest while there are two of my party prisoners in the hands of this ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... my Lord Bishop—you hear," said he, when Benedetta had concluded; and turning to the Bishop, whose departure the narrative had delayed—"you hear to what outrage the citizens of Rome are subjected. My hat and sword! instantly! My Lord, forgive my abruptness." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... you, then, disapprove my suit, madam, or the abruptness of my introducing it? If the latter, my peculiar situation, being obliged to leave the city in a few days, will, I hope, be my excuse; if the former, I will retire, for I am sure I would not give a moment's inquietude to her whom I could devote my life to please. I ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... several ponds and marshes, with an intervening brook about six feet wide, and rather difficult of passage, from the abruptness of its banks, to a small brook, the outlet of a small and partially ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... kingdom in intestine commotion, and was content to await the progress of events.[65] It is probable that he was the more readily induced to exert this forbearance from the extreme generosity of the Queen, who, remembering the abruptness with which he had been deprived, on the occasion of his marriage, of the many lucrative appointments bestowed upon him, hastened to present him with a pension of two hundred thousand livres; to which she added the Hotel de Conti in the Faubourg St. Germain, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... myself a little too lyrically," he said with an amicable abruptness. "My philosophy has its higher ecstasies, but perhaps you are hardly worked up to them yet. Let us confine ourselves to the unquestioned. You have found your way, gentlemen, by a beautiful accident, to the house ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... a polite voice, and stopped abruptly. It seemed to Wogan behind the curtain that his heart stopped at the same moment and with no less abruptness. There was no evidence of Clementina's flight to justify that sudden silence. Then he grew faint, as it occurred to him that he had made Lady Featherstone's mistake,—that his boot protruded into the room. He clenched his teeth, ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... and the beginning of an intimacy which caused no end of wonder among their acquaintances. Had its real nature been suspected, that wonder would have been vastly increased. For whereas they supposed it to be an entirely ordinary love affair, except in the abruptness of its development, it was, in fact, a quite extraordinary variation on the usual social relations ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... and its court, "placed herself on the top of the staircase to greet him with the formality of a courtly reception. Napoleon started when he beheld her, Qui etes vous? he exclaimed with characteristic abruptness. Je suis la Duchesse de Weimar. Je vous plains, he retorted fiercely, J'ecraserai votre mari; he then added, 'I shall dine in my apartment,' and rushed by her. The night was spent on the part of the soldiery in all the horrid excesses of rapine. In the morning the duchess sent to inquire concerning ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... witnessed a falling off. Though always promptly on hand at the serving out of rations, Mr. O'Rourke did not even make a pretence of working in the garden. He would disappear mysteriously immediately after breakfast, and reappear with supernatural abruptness at dinner. Nobody knew what he did with himself in the interval, until one day he was observed to fall out of an apple-tree near the stable. His retreat discovered, he took to the wharves and the alleys ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... saddle flapping. Buck held his rope ready, and when the animal was about a hundred feet away he spurred suddenly to the right, whirling the widening loop above his head. As it fell accurately about the horse's neck the animal stopped short with the mechanical abruptness of the well-trained range mount ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... attractive and desirable woman, and was quite aware of it, as was her elder sister, Lady Georgina, who spent her silent life in alternately admiring and despising the younger. Lady Georgina was short, thin, and nearly white-haired. She had a deep voice, which she used with a harsh abruptness, startling to the newcomer. But she used it very little. Cynthia's friends, were used to see her sitting absolutely silent behind the tea-urn at breakfast or tea, filling the cups while Cynthia handed them and Cynthia talked; and they had learned ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I well remember the fine view from the upper room—that looking down the steep hill, by the side of which runs the road you describe—that path was always my preferred walk, for its shortness (abruptness) and the fine old wall to your left (from the Villa) which is overgrown with weeds and wild flowers—violets and ground-ivy, I remember. Oh, me! to find myself some late sunshiny Sunday afternoon, with my face turned ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... This Poem was intended to be the concluding poem of a series of pastorals, the scene of which was laid among the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland. I mention this to apologise for the abruptness ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... abrupt termination of this was succeeded at two hundred miles by what is now so well known as Sturt's Stony Desert, to which frequent allusion is made by Mr. Stuart in his journals. After thirty miles more, this stony desert ceased with equal abruptness, and was followed by a vast plain of dried mud, which Captain Sturt describes as "a boundless ploughed field, on which floods had settled and subsided." After advancing two hundred miles beyond the Stony Desert, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... same sort, for the almost complete absence of editorial explanation or introduction. They have no visible sponsor; only a few insignificant lines of preface and the scantiest possible supply of notes. Such as the book is, in spite of its abruptness, we are thankful for it; in spite, too, of our bad conscience. What we mean by our bad conscience is the feeling with which we see the last remnant of charm, of the graceful and the agreeable, removed from Balzac's literary physiognomy. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... was sinking rapidly. The night had come, already. A minute it seemed, and the moon fell those remaining fathoms of dark sky. Another minute, or so, and the Eastward sky glowed with the coming dawn. The sun leapt upon me with a frightening abruptness, and soared ever more swiftly toward the zenith. Then, suddenly, a fresh thing came to my sight. A black thundercloud rushed up out of the South, and seemed to leap all the arc of the sky, in a single instant. As it came, I saw that its advancing edge flapped, like a monstrous black ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... at the abruptness and tone of this question, and he answered very quietly, 'My father was busy last night, and I could not ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... an abruptness in the question which for the moment struck Harry dumb. How was he to say what he thought about Mountjoy Scarborough, even though he should have no feeling to prevent him from expressing the truth? He knew, or thought that he knew, Mountjoy Scarborough to be a thorough blackguard; ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... thoroughly good natured despite his abruptness. "At least, that's my plan. I'm certain Withers had nothing to ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... once he put on the cynic's cloak, and went to the other extreme. Still in spite of an abrupt and cynical tone he kept much of his old art of elaborate fine speeches, and particularly in his relations with women.[222] Of his abruptness, he tells a most displeasing tale. "One day Rousseau told us with an air of triumph, that as he was coming out of the opera where he had been seeing the first representation of the Village Soothsayer, the Duke of Zweibruecken had approached him with much politeness, saying, 'Will you allow ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Rhetoric is a thing inbred in them. They are quite unconscious of it. It is as natural to them as breathing. And, while they talk on, they really do believe that they are a quick, businesslike people, by whom things are "put through" with an almost brutal abruptness. This notion of theirs is rather confusing to the patient ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... been pointed out that force depends upon the amount of energy. The above examples show that stress or the location of force depends upon the kind of mental energy, or the attitude of mind, whether it be that of abruptness, of ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... sisterhood. Saint Dominic had just brought his friars to the dilapidated house then known as San Sisto, had caused rapid repairs to be made, and in his fervor had created round himself a nucleus of ardent reformers. The Gordian knot was referred to him, and with characteristic abruptness he promised to cut it at once. He came alone to the gates of the convent, presented no credentials from pope or cardinal, and asked an interview with the abbess. He spoke of the holiness of an austere life, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... of rising wind passed through the house like a sucked breath of triumph. Windows and doors drew in and out against their frames with a rattling crash, then hung still with unnatural abruptness. Absolute stillness succeeded. I felt a very slight shock, as if the ground at ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... irrepressible, a man who, because of his deficiency in breadth, scope of intelligence, and strong moral convictions, invariably formed his opinions in public matter on his personal feelings. He was a man of moods, admirably suited withal for a command in the field where bluntness and abruptness of manner could cause him to rise to an emergency, but wholly unfitted for this reason for a diplomatic office where the utmost delicacy of tact and nicety of ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... although they are in a minority; and the play is concluded by the precipitate marriage of his daughter with Colonel Promise. Mr. Fustian, the Tragic Author, who, with Mr. Sneerwell the Critic, is one of the spectators of the rehearsal, demurs to the abruptness with which this ingenious catastrophe is brought about, and inquires where the preliminary action, of which there is not the slightest evidence in the piece itself, has taken place. Thereupon Trapwit, the Comic Author, replies as follows, in ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... of the head that Cranston just passed you, Mr. Wade, I gather that he failed to find any trace of the envelope that's missing," said Kendrick quietly. He smiled at the abruptness with which the President of the C.L.S. took hold of his arm and walked him away from ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... story entitled, "The Man Out of Work," is very brief, but apparently not the effort of a tyro. It would probably hold the attention even if it were much longer and we are almost inclined to regret its extreme abruptness. Nevertheless, it is complete as it stands and an artistic whole. "Still At It," by Mr. Lindquist, gives us interesting information regarding the editor and also some sound advice as to finding congenial employment. Mr. Lindquist seems to be a philosopher whose practise will bear ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... direct and brutal allusion which his interlocutor had made to the war of 1859. It is always a thorn in the flesh of those of our neighbors from beyond the Alps who do not love us. The pride of the Garibaldian was not far behind the generosity of the former zouave. With an abruptness equal to that of Montfanon, he took up the volume and grumbled as he turned it over and over in his ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... with an abruptness that startled her, and in a tone of anger which was just a little bit affected—"Natalie, what is the meaning of ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Beeches—Nevil excepted—the crash came with startling abruptness; dwarfing all personal problems, heart-searchings and high decisions. Even Lady Roscoe forgot Family Herald heroics, and 'crossed the threshold' without comment from Nevil or herself. The weightiest matters became suddenly trivial beside the tremendous questions ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of expounding his hand puts him in mind of the action in which the palm is shewn, by raising it to lay it on the book, in judicial attestations. Well, says he, if any man in Italy have a fairer table, that doth offer to swear upon a book——Here he stops with an abruptness very common, and proceeds ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... on the sidewalk in front of Jackson's cigar-store, Mr. Crow directed his slowing footsteps toward it. He flopped down with an abruptness that almost dismembered it. He was fanning himself with his ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... service Haydn was sent for by the choirmaster, who, after expressing his regret for his former abruptness, asked him to stay with them until the following day. Poor starving Haydn was only too glad to accept the invitation, and when the morrow arrived he was told that he might extend his stay for several days longer. When, therefore, he finally ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... level space are seen the signs of culture and human habitation, fields green with the early grain, or yellow with the harvest. The roads now wind through forests of constant shade, even under the burning sun of the equator; now they turn with gentle windings, or with steep abruptness, while below spread bright and beautiful lands, and interesting the more because associated with the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... cheerfully. "We seem to be out of luck this evening." Then, with searching abruptness: "Do you call yourself Ford's friend, ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Harrington, you loved my wife before I married her," he said, with rude abruptness, that made his auditor rise from his ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... Bob hurtled backward off the rock where he had been standing and landed in a snow-drift; while Van, much to his astonishment, sat down with abruptness in the wettest of ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... the fiend; and I thought that after a while he endeavoured to drag Aurore from me. A struggle followed, and then the scene ended with confused abruptness. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... invalid relapsed into thoughtful silence. Then, rousing himself as if with an effort, he took a few sips of a cooling drink that stood by his side, and began with a startling abruptness. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... railway-station is a splendid building, with fountains and broad nights of stone terrace leading up to it from the street behind. Our drosky-driver rattles up to the foot of these terraced approaches at 8 a.m., and draws up a steed with an abruptness peculiar to the half-wild Jehus of the Caucasus. The same employee of the Hotel de Londres who had mysteriously hailed us by name from the platform as our train glided in from Baku the morning before, accompanies us to the depot now. All English travellers ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... might just steel her heart against any appeal, and make her rest satisfied with what another was doing for the man whom she had vowed to love in sickness as well as in health. He knew that his scrap of a letter must prove startling by its abruptness; but he had no wish that it should be otherwise. These startling words might rouse her to a sense of her duty; if they did not, he ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... shoul, Mr. Francis Ardry, you enter with considerable abruptness, sir," said one of two men who were seated smoking at a common deal table, in a large ruinous apartment in which we now found ourselves. "You enter with considerable abruptness sir," he repeated; "do you know on ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... merrily forward, and they along with her. Almost immediately, however, Peony pulled away his little fist, and began to rub it as if the fingers were tingling with cold; while Violet also released herself, though with less abruptness, gravely remarking that it was better not to take hold of hands. The white-robed damsel said not a word, but danced about, just as merrily as before. If Violet and Peony did not choose to play with her, she could make just as ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Elizabeth's hand and fell to the floor; the smile with which she had welcomed her father faded from her lips; she gazed at him with pale face and wide eyes. The general instantly regretted that he had spoken with such cruel abruptness. ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... four miles were passed at a rattling gait, and the boy was sitting on the front of his wagon, dreamily watching the play of the huge engine, when it suddenly paused, and with such abruptness that he was thrown forward from his seat, with violence, falling directly between the legs of the monster, which seemed to stand perfectly motionless, like the intelligent elephant that is fearful of stirring a limb, lest he might crush ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... "We hereby reaffirm the resolve of the great Ulster Convention of 1892: 'We will not have Home Rule.'" These words became so familiar that the laconic phrase "We won't have it," was on everybody's lips as the Alpha and Omega of Ulster's attitude, and was sometimes heard with unexpected abruptness in no very precise context. A ticket-collector, when clipping the tickets of the party who were starting from Belfast in a saloon for Enniskillen, made no remark and no sign of recognition till he reached Carson, when he said almost in a whisper and without a glimmer of a smile, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... time to the calculated abruptness of my manner, it no longer discomposed or surprised her, and she answered with only so much of hesitation as was rendered inevitable by the difficulty she experienced in improvising the translation of her thoughts from ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... meeting, at which some one read a fragment aloud. At these meetings he criticised little himself, but devoted his attention to our criticisms. He would not allow harshness or abruptness in what we said. "We don't want your conclusions or your impressions—we want your reasons." Or he would say: "That is a fair criticism, but unsympathetic. It is in the spirit of a reviewer who wants to smash a man. We don't want Stephen to be stoned here, we want him confuted." I ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the book is admirable. It is brief almost to abruptness. The words are few, and are crammed with all the meaning they can hold. There is not a page which does not show that the writer is an economist of expression, and desirous of conveying his matter with the slightest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... relief to dine at home"—and Brookenham faced about. "Would you mind finding out?" he asked with some abruptness. ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... account of the exploring parties which Leif sent out, some of which he joined, while at other times he remained behind to guard the house. Here occurs, with curious abruptness, this graphic bit of characterization: "Leif was a large and powerful man, and of most imposing bearing, a man of sagacity, and a very ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... time, he placed a small case about nine inches square in the hands of Gerard Douw, who was as much amazed at its weight as at the strange abruptness with which it was handed to him. In accordance with the wishes of the stranger, he delivered it into the hands of Schalken, and repeating his direction, despatched him ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... really seemed unpremeditated,—something he had been surprised into saying in spite of himself, as where he finishes a picture of Moses on Mount Nebo, after a fashion both startling and effective in its abruptness, and yet altogether ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... met him she had teased him about it, asking who it was he took after, and such-like questions; and Tony had replied with an abruptness which was so unusual in him that she had at first felt amused, until it began to rankle. Then she resented it, and when they met again, she was equally abrupt to him as he had been to her, and had, moreover, given a great deal of attention to what Dickson, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... from the road and with immense leaps descended into the depths of a rocky ravine. His clothes blew out with the speed and abruptness of his course, and his hands were extended upwards as though he would fly. Lo! now he crept along an abrupt declivity, and suddenly rolled down in a grey ball, rubbing off his skin against the stones; then he jumped up and angrily threatened the ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... celebrated for its abruptness, and plunging into the subject all at once[1184]. But such arts as these have no merit, unless when they are original. We admire them only once; and this abruptness has nothing new in it. We have had it often before. Nay, we have it in the old ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Brusasorci—Caliari dared combinations of colour the most trenchant in their brilliancy as well as the subtlest and most unfamiliar. Unlike his predecessors, however, he preserved the stimulating charm while abolishing the abruptness of sheer contrast. This he did mainly by balancing and tempering his dazzling hues with huge architectural masses of a vibrant grey and large depths of cool dark shadow—brown shot through with silver. No other Venetian ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... memory," he said thickly. "She will recall what I spoke of you when she gave it me. You have been leal and true to me indeed, and many a black hour have you tided me over since this war' began. Do you know how she may be directed to?" he concluded, with abruptness. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... example, in his Grundriss der Psychiatrie, Theil ii., Leipzig, 1896) have explained "paranoiac" conditions by a laming of the association-organ. But the higher mystical flights, with their positiveness and abruptness, are surely products of no such merely negative condition. It seems far more reasonable to ascribe them to inroads from the subconscious life, of the cerebral activity correlative to which ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the city came with startling abruptness. Suddenly he stood blinking, all about him men halted dazzled, and the world was incandescent. The light found him already upon the outskirts of the excited crowds that choked the Ways near the wind-vane offices, and the sense ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... grip, and the next instant the latter's education, in the true sense of the word, so long postponed, had begun; and with it that avalanche of sound which, rolling down into the drawing-room, hurled Mrs. Pett so violently and with such abruptness from the society ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... pencilled mist of smoke from chimneys, a fringe of thready masts around the farthest point. In front slid ceaselessly away the vast sweep of levelled water, and still it came undiminished on. The opposing shore was a mile distant, its rocky front gradually gaining abruptness and height until lost round the northern curve. But directly opposite Helwyse's promontory, the stony wall was for some way especially precipitous and high, its lofty brink serried with ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... contrary to the laws of romantic chivalry (which you reverence so much) for me to introduce to you my friend Mr. Pepler, who is a very nice man indeed though a social idealist, and who has, I believe, something of a practical sort to ask of you. Please excuse abruptness in this letter of introduction; we are moving into the country and every piece of furniture I begin to write at is taken away ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... one or two of his intimates that in due course of events he would of course marry his employer's daughter. As she faced him across the table, the pink light of the candle-shade adding to the glow of health in her pretty cheeks, she caused him to start by the abruptness with which she said:— ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Amelia's love, by Kotzebue, is indelicately blunt, and yet void of mirth or sadness: I have endeavoured to attach the attention and sympathy of the audience by whimsical insinuations, rather than coarse abruptness—the same woman, I conceive, whom the author drew, with the self-same sentiments, but with manners adapted to the English rather than the German taste; and if the favour in which this character is held by the audience, together with every ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... waste, of destruction and desolation, must have sunk deep into the heart of the sick child, and produced the condition shown by this entry when she was a few years older: 'When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry and told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the Abruptness of the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some signs of dejection and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she burst into an amazing cry which caus'd all the family to cry too. Her mother ask'd the Reason, she gave none; at last said she was afraid she should ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... "Well, well!" with emotional abruptness. "I took this girl for her sake. Her short life was not wasted if another's is built upon it. That's one of my fantastic fancies, ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had taught her to regard him as a possible lover; and now that he was an actual lover, a declared lover standing before her, waiting for an answer, she was so astonished that she did not know how to speak. All her ideas too, as to love,—such ideas as she had ever formed, were confounded by his abruptness. She would have thought, had she brought herself absolutely to think upon it, that all speech of love should be very delicate; that love should grow slowly, and then be whispered softly, doubtingly, and with infinite care. Even had she loved him, or had ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Cadiere would soon see through all this. She made some demur about taking her in. Anon, with some abruptness, she entirely changed her cue. In a charming letter, all the more flattering as sent so unexpectedly from such a lady to so young a girl, she expressed a hope of her leaving the ghostly guidance of Father Girard. The girl was not, of course, to be transferred to her Observantines, who were far ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... mean?" asked the Colonel, advancing toward the minister, and showing his irritation by his frown, his flush, and the abruptness of his speech usually ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... luxurious, and that our relations were by now different, or perhaps that intense grief had already set its mark upon her; she did not strike me as so elegant and well dressed as before. Her figure seemed smaller; there was an abruptness and excessive nervousness about her as though she were in a hurry, and there was not the same softness even in her smile. I was dressed in an expensive suit which I had bought during the day. She looked ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the nature of which he had since learned entirely to comprehend; controversies with white-waistcoated proprietors of hotels and voluble tradespeople, generally followed by a severance of hastily-cemented friendships, and a departure of apparently unpremeditated abruptness. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... begin," he replied, yet smiling at the characteristic abruptness of her question. The modulations of her voice revealed again the searching, inquisitive spirit within her, and his responded to the intensity of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Sixteenth from la jeune France of the present day, when the usual greeting between the young men would be a nod of the head, "Bon jour, ca va bien?" adieu, and away, which is tantamount to "How do, quite well, good bye," and off; with a lady the abruptness would be a little softened, but any politeness that gives much trouble is quite at a discount with such young men of the present day in France. A solitary workman, a sentinel, and an old soldier, if near the Hospital of the Invalids, are probably the only persons you will usually ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... the scenery of the opposite bank, and this you lose by water; and the bank you travel on is much more grand from its towering above you, and also from the sharp angles and turns which so suddenly change the scenery. Abruptness greatly assists the picturesque: the Rhine loses half its beauty viewed from a steam-boat. I have ascended it in both ways, and I should recommend all travellers to go up by land. The inconveniences in a steam-boat are many. You arrive late and find the hotel ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... drifted silent and awe-stricken beneath the shadows of the mighty cliffs, which, in their tremendous height and abruptness, seemed to overhang at the top, the Indians gazing intently, as if they, too, were impressed with the strange, awe-inspiring grandeur that shut them in, one of them at length broke the silence by saying, "This must be a good place for woodchucks; I ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... The abruptness of the first part of this speech might have shocked her exhausted spirits to insensibility, had not the extraordinary assertion at its end, and Sir Robert's audible ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... conversation. He perceived that he had made a terrible blunder; and, as it was not his business at that moment to vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous abruptness. Catching at the arm which Mr. Avenel had withdrawn from ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... caverns and holes, then along a ledge till Jones, being a taller man than Prof., got up and pulled Prof. after him with his revolver belt. They obtained a remarkable view. Buttes, ridges, mountains stood all round, with the river so completely lost in the abruptness of its chasm that a mile from the brink the whole region was apparently solid, and the existence of the gorge with a river at bottom would not even be suspected. They could trace the line of Grand River by tower-like buttes and long ridges, and just at the gap formed by the junction with the Green ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... into a yawn. He realized with the abruptness which comes to a man who stands alone with nature in the small hours that he was very sleepy. The excitement which had sustained him till now had begun to ebb. The free life of the bearded farmer seemed suddenly less attractive. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... common dress, than any masquerade habit could have made her. The novelty of the scene, however, joined to the general air of gaiety diffused throughout the company, shortly lessened her embarrassment; and, after being somewhat familiarized to the abruptness with which the masks approached her, and the freedom with which they looked at or addressed her, the first confusion of her situation subsided, and in her curiosity to watch others, she ceased to observe how ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... blushing scarlet with alarm at the abruptness of the question. "Yes, I am. T-Twitter is my name. You're the man that gave him the Bible, are you not, whom he turned out of his house for tryin' to speak to him about ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... suddenly in his chair one day, and said: "Parbleu, God bless me!" (he loved to mix his native language with English) got up and went over to Secord's office, adjusted his glasses, looked at Secord closely, caught his hand with both of his own, shook it with shy abruptness, came back to his shop, sat down, and said: "God ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... resembled some ancient crater scooped out of the mountain, that on all sides swept upward around it. The sides of this mountain, trending up from the level of the plain, rose not with a gentle acclivity, but with precipitous abruptness. At no point, however, did it assume the character of a cliff. It might have been scaled with difficulty by a man on foot, especially should he avail himself of the assistance of the trees—pines and trailing ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... as typhoid fever, or a sharp local lung-trouble like pneumonia, really do make these minute changes approximate in abruptness to death. You weigh, let us say, one hundred and eighty pounds, and you drop in three weeks of a fever to one hundred and thirty pounds. The rest of you is dead. You have lost, as men say, fifty pounds, but your debt to disease, or to the blunders ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... were, small fish making shift to live precariously with other small fish in a pool where big fish swam lazily. If one small fish now and then disappeared with mysterious abruptness, the other small fish would perhaps scurry here and there for a time, but few would leave the pool for the safe ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... of the neighbourhood. Then he specified, as the guests invited, Lady Augustus and her daughter and Mr. Gotobed,— omitting the honourable Mrs. Morton of whose sojourn in the county he might have been ignorant. His Lordship went on to say that he trusted the abruptness of the invitation might be excused on account of the nearness of their neighbourhood and the old friendship which had existed between their families. He had had, he said, the pleasure of being acquainted with Lady Augustus and her daughter in London and would be proud to see Mr. Gotobed at his ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... height where he stood, to the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian,[231] in their hideous blackness and ruin; and then he wrote down for himself such a warning entry as this, significant and terrible in its abruptness:— ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... expression of her face veiled, but there seemed no response, no softening in the rigid attitude of her figure. She did not care; was only interested in his immediate departure. The change had occurred with such abruptness, West was unable as yet to realize its full significance, but, with no attempt to combat her decision, left the room, closing the door behind him. In that moment his mood changed. The dismissal had been so curt, his pride rose in rebellion. Finding Sexton ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... suddenly the railway and the steamship, the former opening with extraordinary abruptness a series of vast through-routes for trade, the latter enormously increasing the security and economy of the traffic on the old water routes. For a time neither of these inventions was applied to the needs of intra-urban transit at all. For ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... of the manifold brightness of the divine nature is introduced in this psalm with singular abruptness. It is set side by side with a vivid picture of an evildoer, a man who mutters in his own heart his godlessness, and with obstinate determination plans and plots in forgetfulness of God. Without a word ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is probable that the first hymn (Te Deum ... Paraclitum Spiritum), lines 1 to 13 of Te Deum are older than the second part, which was written probably as a sequel to the early hymn. The rhythm of the hymn is very beautiful, being free from abruptness and monotony. Students of poetry may note that seven lines have the exact hexameter ending, if scanned accentually, as voce proclamant; Deus sabbaoth, etc. Seven have two dactyls, as laudabilis numerus, laudat exercitus; one ends with spondees, apostolorum chorus. The other six lines ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... provide for, so take everything you can get, and don't worry about me, for I am all right now that Andrew is safe. This letter has been written by instalments, as I have been interrupted so many times, so pardon the abruptness of it, and please send it to Germantown, as I have too much to do now. My hands and heart are both full. Milk is as scarce as wine, as the pasturage was all on the other side, and cows were lost, and bread is as scarce ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... answered with intentional abruptness; "then the servants' room—you won't make a noise, will you? or you'll wake them up. Bathroom, spare room, my own room, smoking-room. No, the limits of my unconventionality are soon reached; ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... line is far more improbable than that the unaccented syllable before 'twelve' is purposely omitted by the poet; and few readers will not acknowledge the solemn effect of such a verse. As another example with a contrary effect, of impulsive abruptness, we may take a line in Measure ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... the surmise—'twas lusty young Jack Bluff that uttered it before me—I persuaded the youth of his error, which, upon rising, he admitted, as did they all of that group, upon my request, forgiving me, too, I think, the cruel abruptness of my argument, being men of feeling, every one. The maid was not gone with John Cather, she was not on the hills of Twin Islands; she was then fled to Topmast Harbor for self-support, that larger settlement, whence many Labradormen put ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... THE abruptness with which we were compelled to conclude this history, may render it necessary to make a few explanations. Indeed, we fancy we ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the inevitable reaction which followed the subsidence of anxiety about the girl, after her own resolution had set that anxiety at rest. She threw open the door and made one of her sudden appearances at the boudoir. Even in the fervent outpouring of her affection, there was still the inherent abruptness of manner which so strongly marked Lady Lydiard's character in all ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... you suppose we would?" she queried, rather incoherently. "Do you think I'm doing this for fun?" Then she abruptly disappeared from sight again. The abruptness was caused by the terrible fear that if she stood looking at that sour old visage another moment she would have to spoil everything ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... accompany O'Take and O'Haru from Toemon's in Honjo[u]. A pretty business is in preparation there." Said the embarrassed and enraged Cho[u]bei—"Wh-what does this rude entrance of Taki mean? Is not the master of the metal shop present? Is such language, such abruptness, to be used in his presence?"—"The Danna of the doguya is certainly present," coolly replied the woman. "It would be better if he was at home.... Honoured Sir, pray betake yourself there. This Cho[u]bei has business with Toemon Sama of Honjo[u], the brothel keeper and chief of ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... few long reaches of sand where one may saunter, or meadows, save the brown and purple meadows of the sea, overgrown with slippery kelp, swashed and swirled in the restless breakers. The abruptness of the shore allows the massive waves that have come from far over the broad Pacific to get close to the bluffs ere they break, and the thundering shock shakes the rocks to their foundations. No calm comes to these shores. Even in the finest weather, when ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... miraculous feeding of the five thousand is introduced into John's Gospel with singular abruptness. We read in the first verse of the chapter: 'After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee,' i.e. from the western to the eastern side. But the Evangelist does not tell us how or when He got to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Gumbinnen, he reviewed several of his armies; conversing with the soldiers in a gay, frank, and often abrupt style; well aware that, with such unsophisticated and hardy characters, abruptness is looked upon as frankness, rudeness as force, haughtiness as true nobility; and that the delicacy and graces which some officers bring with them from the salons are in their eyes no better than weakness and pusillanimity; that these appear to them like a foreign language, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... devils alive when it comes to trading wives and fighting," said Philip, a little ashamed of the suddenness with which he had jumped back from the window. "Excuse my abruptness, dear. But I'd recognize that death-thing on the other side of the earth. I've seen them throw it like an arrow for a hundred yards—and I have a ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... started at my sudden and strange abruptness: he looked at me astonished. "Oh, that is nothing yet," I muttered within. "I don't mean to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part; I'm prepared to go to considerable lengths." I continued, "You observed it closely and distinctly; but I have ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... answer to her look of surprise, I explained that I had begun to speak of Beasley at Mrs. Apperthwaite's, and described the abruptness with which Dowden had changed ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... does it all mean?" asked the Colonel, advancing toward the minister, and showing his irritation by his frown, his flush, and the abruptness of his ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... of a rifle shot split the air with significant abruptness. The sound banished the last of her half-angry causing. The moment had come. She raised herself up for no other ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... caprice, just now, that it is well for your wife's cousin to make the most of her opportunities while they last. She is very popular now; but next season—" Seeing that Bradley remained silent, she did not finish the sentence, but said with her usual abruptness, "Do you know a Miss Araminta ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... next, the strong servant and fore runner (verses 4-8). The abruptness with which the curtain is drawn, and the gaunt figure of the desert-loving ascetic shown us, is very striking. It is like the way in which Elijah, his prototype, leaps, as it were, full-armed, into the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... brisk yet graceful abruptness, to the two ladies still seated before the low fire. With a charming outburst of enthusiasm she ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... blunder; and, as it was not his business at that moment to vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous abruptness. Catching at the arm which Mr. Avenel had withdrawn from him, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... horseman shriking sore and rashing wildly home,— A mediaeval horseman with ye usual flecks of foame; And he did brast into ye ring, wherein his horse did drop, Upon ye which ye rider did with like abruptness stop, And with fatigue and fearfulness continued in a swound Ye space of half an hour or more before a leech was founde. "Now tell me straight," quod Launcelot, "what varlet knyght you be, Ere that I chine you with my sworde and cleave your harte in three!" ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... pressed Baedeker to her bosom, and sat down, with some abruptness. "I shall have to stop here," she panted, "all the rest of my life, and have my meals and my night things sent up. I'm very sorry. But I'm certain I shall never ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... silent and awe-stricken beneath the shadows of the mighty cliffs, which, in their tremendous height and abruptness, seemed to overhang at the top, the Indians gazing intently, as if they, too, were impressed with the strange, awe-inspiring grandeur that shut them in, one of them at length broke the silence by saying, "This must be a good place for woodchucks; ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... little fluttering smile about her lips and a curious intelligence in her eyes. She admitted that she was tired, but had not been ill, and her father told me that long train journeys produced the same effect on her as a sea journey. She spoke with a pretty abruptness, and went away suddenly, I thought for good, but she returned half an hour afterwards looking a little faint, I thought, green about the mouth, and smiling less frequently. One cannot remember everything, and I have forgotten at what station these people got out; they bade me a kindly farewell, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... of physical endurance, and he was only too glad of relief for his smarting skin and aching muscles. Fishing was a miserable business, and he wanted no part of it; on that he was fully decided. But even if a job is unpleasant, a man would rather resign than be discharged. Jim's abruptness hurt his pride; ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... have changed somewhat," Lynde broke in. "Dr. Pendegrast, I am in a very strange position here. It is imperative you should be perfectly frank with me. You will have to overlook my abruptness. Mr. Denham may return any instant, and what I have to say cannot be said in his presence. I know that Miss Denham has been under your charge as a patient. I want to know more ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... falling off. Though always promptly on hand at the serving out of rations, Mr. O'Rourke did not even make a pretence of working in the garden. He would disappear mysteriously immediately after breakfast, and reappear with supernatural abruptness at dinner. Nobody knew what he did with himself in the interval, until one day he was observed to fall out of an apple-tree near the stable. His retreat discovered, he took to the wharves and the alleys in the distant part of the town. ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... immediately verified by the appearance of two riders. A moment later Thorne and California John dismounted at the hitching rail, some distance removed among the azaleas, and came up afoot. The younger man had dropped all his dry, official precision, his incisive abruptness, his reticence. Clad in the high, laced cruisers, the khaki and gray flannel, the broad, felt hat and gay neckerchief of what might be called the professional class of out-of-door man, his face glowing with health and enthusiasm, he seemed a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... known for many weeks, and for Randal she was indeed tenderly grieved; but the other man, with his abruptness, his humour, and his lurking intensity, she had first seen the day before yesterday; and although she knew nothing of Mr. Richard Bellamy's opinion of herself, and admitted in regard to her own future no more than that she found him interesting, she was too well aware to deny, even to herself, that ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... minutes longer the conversation moved on at this desultory pace, and then Mr. Ramy, who had been obviously nerving himself for the difficult act of departure, took his leave with an abruptness which would have startled anyone used to the subtler gradations of intercourse. But to Ann Eliza and her sister there was nothing surprising in his abrupt retreat. The long-drawn agonies of preparing to leave, and the subsequent dumb plunge ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... face, and, finally, the large thumb in the little book of ——, Monsieur the Preceptor, who had years ago exchanged his old position for a parochial cure. He strode up to the gaoler (whose head came a little above the priest's elbow), and, drawing him aside, asked, with his old abruptness, "Who is this?" ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and lazy breakfast next morning, Roger ascended to his father's room. He found the old man lying tranquil if weak, his temperature fallen to normal with that curious abruptness characteristic of typhoid. The nurse, very fresh in a clean apron and cap, was putting the room to rights. She smiled at Roger, who was no longer a stranger, for the two had had a long talk over their coffee the evening before, and later, with Miss Clifford, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... recalled his eyes from the waste into which they had been staring, and fell back a step or so under the abruptness, and perhaps the chance ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... believe, if youth once depart from the right way, render them more vicious characters than common. This arises from the abruptness or suddenness of transition. For having been shut up within narrow boundaries for a part of their lives, they go greater lengths, when once let loose, than others, who have not been ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... aspect and organization, else how could it be that, proceeding from the same stock, all shades of complexion in the skin, and variety in the form of the skull, should have arisen? Experience assures us that these are changes assumed only by slow degrees, and not with abruptness; they come as a cumulative effect. They plainly enforce the doctrine that national type is not to be regarded as a definite or final thing, a seeming immobility in this particular being due to the attainment of a correspondence ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... life too easy. We'll jus' nacherally bust him all to pieces; we'll learn him the big lesson of life; we'll make a man out'n him yet. An' when that's done, Guy Little, when that time comes— Go send Blenham here," he broke off with sharp abruptness. ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... made an inexplicable noise like an animal; in his shadowed face the eyes were shining queerly. A new and shrewd thought exploded silently in the other's mind. Was there another meaning in Saradine's blend of brilliancy and abruptness? Was the prince—Was he perfectly sane? He was repeating, "The wrong person—the wrong person," many more times than was natural in ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... He turned with abruptness and started back the way they had come. But impulsively Billie ran to him, calling to him to stop. Yet when he did stop and turned to look at her she had not the slightest idea in the world what she had intended to say—if indeed ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... these mid-oceanic islands to stand with slopes varying from the perpendicular to a smaller extent than if they were sub-aerial; and it is on this account that we find them rising with such extraordinary abruptness from the ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... talking. There was no end to his questions as to what had passed at Wadi Halfa during the last eight weeks, no limit to his enthusiasm over the journey from which he had just returned. Finally, however, he stopped with a remarkable abruptness, and said, with some suspicion, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... the gaping hole opposite me. At first I could make out nothing—nothing but jagged walls and roof, and empty darkness; then there suddenly appeared in the very innermost recesses of the cave a faint glow of crimson light which grew and grew, until with startling abruptness it resolved itself into two huge eyes, red and menacing. The sight was so unexpected, and, by reason of its intense malignity, so appalling, that I was simply dumbfounded. I could do nothing but stare ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... swiftly in the drooping form of the girl. Her muscles tensed. She stood suddenly erect, in the vigor of her youth again. Her face lost in the same second its bleakness of pallor. The eyes opened widely, with startling abruptness, and looked straight into those of the man who ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... the soft abruptness of one who has approached it noiselessly by design. Dredlinton stood upon the threshold, blinking a little as he gazed into the room. He recognized Wingate with a start ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... articulation, or is cut short by a forcible aspiration. Supposing these Tenses to be used by a speaker in reply to a command or a request; by their very structure, the former expresses the softness of compliance; and the latter, the abruptness of a refusal. If a command or a request be expressed by such verbs as these, tog sin, gabh sin, ith sin, the compliant answer is expressed by togaidh, gabhaidh, ithidh; the refusal, by the cha tog, cha ghabh, cha n-ith. May not this peculiar ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... day. To these were added, in this representation of them by these French appreciators of their attractions, a mode of speech in which the most ludicrous French, in the most barbarous accent, was uttered in alternate bursts of loud abruptness and languishing drawl. Sudden, grotesque playfulness was succeeded by equally sudden and grotesque bashfulness; now an eager intrepidity of wild enthusiasm, defying all decorum, and then a sour, severe reserve, full of angry and terrified suspicion of imaginary improprieties. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... rendered it contrary to the laws of romantic chivalry (which you reverence so much) for me to introduce to you my friend Mr. Pepler, who is a very nice man indeed though a social idealist, and who has, I believe, something of a practical sort to ask of you. Please excuse abruptness in this letter of introduction; we are moving into the country and every piece of furniture I begin to write at is taken away and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... action in which the palm is shewn, by raising it to lay it on the book, in judicial attestations. Well, says he, if any man in Italy have a fairer table, that doth offer to swear upon a book——Here he stops with an abruptness very common, and ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... refined graceful dignity that remained to her from the leading station she had occupied. Her gracious respect towards her clergyman was a contrast as much to the deferential coquetry of his admirers as to the abruptness of his foe, and her indifference to parish details had even its charm in a world of fussiness; he did not know himself how far a wish of hers would have led him, and she was the last person to guess. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of anticipation that surged and swelled within me, so that I was utterly unable to sit still, for sheer joy; and my soul began as it were to dance in such excitement, that I could hardly refrain from shouting, resembling one intoxicated by the abruptness of a sudden change from certain death to the very apex of life's sweetness. And I said to myself: Sunset! So, then, beyond a doubt, she has either forgiven me, or is willing to forgive. And who knows? For if she has forgiven once, she may forgive again: when again, it may be, she ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... mention about the inclination of the strata being greater round the circumference than in the middle of the island; do you suppose the elevation has had the form of a flat dome? I remember in the Cordillera being OFTEN struck with the greater abruptness of the strata in the LOW EXTREME outermost ranges, compared with the great mass of inner mountains. I dare say you will have thought of measuring exactly the width of any dikes at the top and bottom of any great cliff (which ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... had bathed his wounds, made much of him, idealised him. She had done what any uneducated street woman would have done for "her man." And now she had suddenly come to feel as if there had always been an emptiness in her life, as if Fritz never had, never could fill it. The abruptness of the onset of this new feeling confused her. She did not know that a woman could be subject to a change of this kind. She did not understand it, realise what it portended, what would result from it. But she felt that, for the moment, at any rate, she could not get up any ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... though still with the inimitable deference of manner which I have called 'chivalrous,' yet not without a certain abruptness of tone which, as addressed to the weaker sex, Sir Philip Sydney might have termed 'rustic,' "Why do you never come to see us?" While I was deliberating on the right answer to give to this unlooked-for question, Taee said quickly and sternly, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... or difficulty, its advance or retrocession, its home coming or its wandering, its hesitation or its surety, its conflicts and its contrasts, its force or its weakness, its swiftness or slowness, its abruptness or smoothness, its excitement or repose, its success or failure, its seriousness or play. Then, in addition, as we shall see, all modes of emotion that are congruous with this abstract form may by association be poured into its mold, so that ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... to the best of my ability. He listened attentively enough, but thereafter he had not another word for me, and presently he went into the next car. I took his manner to be the Western abruptness that I had heard of, and presently forgot him in the scenery along the line. At Albuquerque I got off for a trip to a lunch-counter, and happened to take a ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... of the rocking-chairs. Dolly sank into the other. By keeping the same rhythm, there was space for both to swing at the same time. Dolly swayed back and forth three times, and then burst into tears. "He has left me, Auntie; Goosie is gone; ooh-ooh!" The aunt's chair ceased rocking with an abruptness that made their knees bump. Dolly's chair stopped; she looked at her aunt in astonishment. Aunt Hester was sitting up very straight. "Do you mean to say," she began, and then paused as though unable to believe the ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... is a thing inbred in them. They are quite unconscious of it. It is as natural to them as breathing. And, while they talk on, they really do believe that they are a quick, businesslike people, by whom things are "put through" with an almost brutal abruptness. This notion of theirs is rather confusing ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... moon was sinking rapidly. The night had come, already. A minute it seemed, and the moon fell those remaining fathoms of dark sky. Another minute, or so, and the Eastward sky glowed with the coming dawn. The sun leapt upon me with a frightening abruptness, and soared ever more swiftly toward the zenith. Then, suddenly, a fresh thing came to my sight. A black thundercloud rushed up out of the South, and seemed to leap all the arc of the sky, in a single instant. As it came, I saw ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... authority that seemed to prelude something more epoch-making than an assent to one of Frederica's industrious platitudes; he snuffled and fidgeted, eating scarcely at all, and repelling the reverential assiduities of the servants with shattering abruptness. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... To the great delight of Mrs. Hill and Conrad, Mrs. Hamilton scarcely addressed a word to Ben at the supper table. When she did speak, it was with an abruptness and coldness quite unusual for the warm-hearted woman. Ben looked depressed, fixed his eyes on his plate, and took very little part in the conversation. Mrs. Hill and Conrad, on the other hand, seemed in very good spirits. ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... endurance than Marian had ever dared to put before him. She was more pleased than she had been for a long time, when as they were walking together in the plantations, after evening service, he said with some abruptness and yet with some hesitation, "Marian, didn't you once read something with Gerald in ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... gulf, iridescent under a zenith sun and framed as far as the eye could reach with a slant of parched beach; the sides of the vast concavity were formed by the verdant mat of jungled slopes that rose with ever increasing abruptness to ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... terminus a quo of this flight, and the terminus ad quem, are equally magnificent; the mightiest of Christian thrones being the one, the mightiest of Pagan the other. And the grandeur of these two terminal objects, is harmoniously supported by the romantic circumstances of the flight. In the abruptness of its commencement, and the fierce velocity of its execution, we read an expression of the wild barbaric character of the agents. In the unity of purpose connecting this myriad of wills, and in the blind but unerring aim at a mark so remote, there is something which recalls ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... tears rising, and she left Miss Betty with an abruptness that made her ashamed of herself as she recalled it. After the exertion of climbing the hill she stopped to rest on the rustic seat just inside her own gate. "I wonder," she asked herself, "if there is anything much harder to ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... listened for hours to this most pertinacious pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a fortune), while sitting on the rail of the old Duke of S- (she's dead, poor thing! a violent death on the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by the monotony, the regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, and so exasperated at the absurd spell, that I wished the fellow would choke himself to death with a mouthful of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... smiles or tears: Amelia's love, by Kotzebue, is indelicately blunt, and yet void of mirth or sadness: I have endeavoured to attach the attention and sympathy of the audience by whimsical insinuations, rather than coarse abruptness—the same woman, I conceive, whom the author drew, with the self-same sentiments, but with manners adapted to the English rather than the German taste; and if the favour in which this character is held by the audience, together with every ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... separated the final words brought a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach, and the discomfort of a fencer, dueling in the dark—a swordsman who recognizes that his cleverness is outmatched. His question came with a staccato abruptness. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... and abruptness of Henchard increased Farfrae's suspicion that this was a ruse to decoy him on to the next wood, where might be effectually compassed what, from policy or want of nerve, Henchard had failed to do earlier in the day. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... laden with bales of goods, and pushed along at a reckless rate of speed by mahogany-complexioned men; dashing coaches, impelled by drivers hallooing when close upon you with distracting loudness and abruptness; mules coming onward with the blundering obtuseness peculiar to their tribe, or with their heads fastened to doorways, and their flanks extending across the street, affording just space enough for the passenger to slide behind their heels; a busy, jostling crowd of people hurrying to and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... clearness that petrified my very soul, the banging and clanging of sword scabbards, and the panting and gasping of men, sore pressed in a wild and desperate race. And then the meaning of it all came to me with hideous abruptness—it was a case of pursued and pursuing—the race was for—LIFE. Outside my door the fugitive halted, and from the noise he made in trying to draw his breath, I knew he was dead beat. His antagonist, however, gave him but scant time for recovery. Bounding at him with prodigious leaps, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... his absurd self-consciousness he was glad that her last suggestion had relieved him of a sense of reckless compliance. He assented eagerly, when with a wave of her hand, a flash of her white teeth, and the same abruptness she had shown at their last parting, she caught Lucy by the arm and darted away in a romping race to her dwelling. Jarman started after her. He had not wanted to go to her father's house particularly, but why was SHE evidently ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... mists suddenly cleared like the tearing away of a mighty curtain, and with startling abruptness Powell found himself again in a solid world of material things. For a moment as he gazed dazedly about him he thought that the roseate glow of the projector must still be playing tricks with his eyesight, for the landscape around him was completely ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... Naturally the country is fat. The trees are thick and round—a world of leaves; the hills are round; the forms are all blunt; and the grass is so deep as to have almost the effect of snow in smoothing off all points and curving away all abruptness. England is almost as blunt as a machine-made moulding or a piece of Early-Victorian cast-iron work. And on all this we have, of set purpose, improved by our invention of the country park. There all is curves and masses. A little more is ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... unhappy protegee, and that their union had been duly accredited; but that I had lost no opportunity of attempting to undermine his happiness, and to maintain an unwholesome influence over her. That I had at last left the place myself, with a most uncivil abruptness; during the interval of absence my occupations were believed to have been of the most dubious character: it was more than suspected, indeed, that I had penetrated to places, the very name of which could hardly be mentioned without shame and consternation. That my associates had been persons ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... aware of it, as was her elder sister, Lady Georgina, who spent her silent life in alternately admiring and despising the younger. Lady Georgina was short, thin, and nearly white-haired. She had a deep voice, which she used with a harsh abruptness, startling to the newcomer. But she used it very little. Cynthia's friends, were used to see her sitting absolutely silent behind the tea-urn at breakfast or tea, filling the cups while Cynthia handed them and Cynthia talked; and they ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... up acquaintance in an irregular way, to be sure; but Cleer hadn't happened to be close by when her father uttered those strange words to his wife, "It was he who did it; it was he who killed our boy"; nor did she notice particularly the marked abruptness of Tyrrel's departure on that unfortunate occasion. So she had no such objection to meeting the two young men as Trevennack himself not unnaturally displayed; she regarded his evident avoidance of Walter Tyrrel as merely one of "Papa's fancies." ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... clouds rose ponderously upon the hilltops, blacking out the twilight with an abruptness which must have held deep significance for men less occupied. But the dominant overcast of their minds was the coming of the sheriff. For many of them it was far more ominous ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... suitable, if we had not had that little joke about the piano snobile between us. As it was, she was not wholly displeased. These Kings Port old ladies grew, I suspect, very slowly and guardedly accustomed to any outsider; they allowed themselves very seldom to suffer any form of abruptness from him, or from any one, for that matter. But, once they were reassured as to him, then they might sometimes allow the privileged person certain departures from their own rule of deportment, because his conventions ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... head between his knees, evidently in a brown study. Bessie was sorry to disturb him, but it was too late to draw back, for Mac had already seen her, and had roused his master by his uneasy efforts to get free, and Mr. Sefton rose, with the awkward abruptness that seemed natural to him, and ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... too, and in the bureaucracy, he had no inconsiderable strength; for Lumley never contracted the habits of personal abruptness and discourtesy common to men in power who wish to keep applicants aloof. He was bland and conciliating to all men of ranks; his intellect and self-complacency raised him far above the petty jealousies that great ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... remembering the manners due one lady from another. "But I thought it must be. I expect," she added, with loud, inconsequent laughter, "there's not many in Canaan ain't heard you've come back." She paused, laughed again, nervously, and again, less loudly, to take off the edge of her abruptness: gradually tittering herself down to a pause, to fill which she put forth: "Right nice ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... and spirally-terminating rock, in particular, kept constantly in view before us, on the right; of which the base and centre were wholly feathered with fir. It rose with an extraordinary degree of abruptness, and seemed to be twice as high as the spire of Strasbourg cathedral. To the left, ran sparkling rivulets, as branches of the three lakes just mentioned. An endless variety of picturesque beauty—of trees, rocks, greenswards, wooded heights, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... any such account from himself might just steel her heart against any appeal, and make her rest satisfied with what another was doing for the man whom she had vowed to love in sickness as well as in health. He knew that his scrap of a letter must prove startling by its abruptness; but he had no wish that it should be otherwise. These startling words might rouse her to a sense of her duty; if they did not, he ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... to the naming of Malcolm, for which there has been no preparation, is extremely sudden; and the matter, considering its importance, is disposed of very briefly. But the abruptness and brevity of the sentence in which Duncan invites himself to Macbeth's castle are still more striking. For not a word has yet been said on the subject; nor is it possible to suppose that Duncan had conveyed his intention ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... would tell me what you really mean by that Greek idea of yours," he said with the abruptness of confusion. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... — N. instantaneity, instantaneousness, immediacy; suddenness, abruptness. moment, instant, second, minute; twinkling, trice, flash, breath, crack, jiffy, coup, burst, flash of lightning, stroke of time. epoch, time; time of day, time of night; hour, minute; very minute &c, very time, very hour; present time, right time, true ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... are in this/Reliev'd, but not betray'd] [W: Bereav'd, but] I do not think the emendation necessary, since the sense is not made better by it, and the abruptness in Cleopatra's answer is more forcible in the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... the purchase had not been an easy matter. Abroad, to her amazement, money had its mighty value, but only as a superstructure. There must be firmer stuff for the foundation—family. Her family was traced too easily—for the tracing was too brief. It ended with abruptness which was startling, two generations back, in a far western mining camp. Beyond that all the cutest experts in false genealogies had failed ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... latitude. On every level space are seen the signs of culture and human habitation, fields green with the early grain, or yellow with the harvest. The roads now wind through forests of constant shade, even under the burning sun of the equator; now they turn with gentle windings, or with steep abruptness, while below spread bright and beautiful lands, and interesting the more because associated with the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... 273. Notice the abruptness with which the leper is here introduced, just as before at the beginning of the story. The vision of "a sunnier clime" is quickly swept away. The shock of surprise now has a very different ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... drink, and for this spring they started a little while before sundown, Henry carrying his rifle on his shoulder, and his heart fluttering. He felt his years increase suddenly and his figure expand with equal abruptness. He had become a man and he was going forth to slay big game. Yet despite his new manhood the blood would run to his head and he felt his nerves trembling. He grasped his precious rifle more firmly and stole a look out of ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... produced by the working of the democratic spirit within the aristocratic constitution of society and taste may without exaggeration be described as prodigious. At first sight, indeed, there seems to be a certain abruptness in the transition from the highly organized society represented in Boswell's "Life of Johnson," to the philosophical retirement of Wordsworth and Coleridge. It is only when we look beneath the surface that we see the old traditions still upheld by ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... for its abruptness, and plunging into the subject all at once[1184]. But such arts as these have no merit, unless when they are original. We admire them only once; and this abruptness has nothing new in it. We have had it often before. Nay, we have it in the old ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... exhibit their full stature, their commanding puissance, with such majesty as in the gates of Italy; and of all those gates I think there is none to compare with Maloja, none certainly to rival it in abruptness of initiation into the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano we pass already into the violets and blues of Titian's landscape. Then come the purple boulders among chestnut trees; then the double dolomite-like peak of Pitz Badin ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... came suddenly the railway and the steamship, the former opening with extraordinary abruptness a series of vast through-routes for trade, the latter enormously increasing the security and economy of the traffic on the old water routes. For a time neither of these inventions was applied to the needs of intra-urban transit at all. For a time they were purely ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... made d'Alcacer start by its abruptness which revealed the woman's possession of that man's mind. "She is with Don Martin, who is better but feels very weak. If we are to be given up, he will have to be carried out to his fate. I can depict to myself the scene. Don Martin carried shoulder high surrounded by those ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... similar hymn. It is probable that the first hymn (Te Deum ... Paraclitum Spiritum), lines 1 to 13 of Te Deum are older than the second part, which was written probably as a sequel to the early hymn. The rhythm of the hymn is very beautiful, being free from abruptness and monotony. Students of poetry may note that seven lines have the exact hexameter ending, if scanned accentually, as voce proclamant; Deus sabbaoth, etc. Seven have two dactyls, as laudabilis numerus, laudat exercitus; one ends with ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... on his glasses and looked at the photograph for some time. Yes, he said, he did remember that he had given the keys of a cottage in October, 1894, to a man of Holmes' appearance, and he recollected the man the more distinctly for the uncivil abruptness with which he had asked for the keys; "I felt," he said, "he should have had more ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... idealisation of our misery. The excitement increased rather than diminished as we entered the village. Our motley escort gesticulated, ran to and fro, and shouted unintelligible orders in the most frantic manner; heads appeared and disappeared with startling kaleidoscopic abruptness at the windows of the houses; and three hundred dogs contributed to the general confusion by breaking out into an infernal canine peace jubilee which fairly made the air quiver with sound. At last we stopped in front of a large one-story log ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... of her he said a few words to the lawyer in a somewhat different key, and descended from his vehicle. As she came up to them Mr. Dain saluted her with bashful abruptness, and her proud face broke as if by the loosing of a spell into a generous and captivating smile; Mr. Dain blushed, the vision was too much for his composure; he moved his horse forward a yard or two, and then jerked it back again, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... all that she had got to say, and changed her position as silently as she had occupied it. There was no abruptness of motion, and yet Lord George saw her talking to her husband at the other side of the room, almost while his own words were still sounding in his own ears. Then he watched her for the next few minutes. Certainly, she was very beautiful. There was no room for comparison, they were so ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... too great for them, not even the dizziest conceivable to a young person so subtle. The dizziest seemed indeed attained when, after another moment, she came as near as she was to come to an apology for her abruptness. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Madam," he said, "you will excuse the abruptness of my manner in our late interview. I was so little prepared for the communication you had to make, that I was, perhaps, unsuitably discomposed. Will you allow me to ask whether you were requested by any of the parties to communicate to me what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... my dear," said Miss Rogers, with harsh abruptness, "I am afraid I am living in this house ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... All at once he put on the cynic's cloak, and went to the other extreme. Still in spite of an abrupt and cynical tone he kept much of his old art of elaborate fine speeches, and particularly in his relations with women.[222] Of his abruptness, he tells a most displeasing tale. "One day Rousseau told us with an air of triumph, that as he was coming out of the opera where he had been seeing the first representation of the Village Soothsayer, the Duke of Zweibruecken had approached him with ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... fish making shift to live precariously with other small fish in a pool where big fish swam lazily. If one small fish now and then disappeared with mysterious abruptness, the other small fish would perhaps scurry here and there for a time, but few would leave the pool ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... lighting another match, 'I want to see you again—soon.' He paused, astonished at his own abruptness, and an awkward smile expanded until it crinkled the very pinnacle ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Adam's own apartment and the door was shut McIver's manner changed with startling abruptness. With all the masterful power of his strong-willed nature he faced his trembling host, and his heavy voice was charged with the ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... her feelings, and she sat down before the machine, which clicked and rattled for several minutes under her stubby fingers. Then the clicking ceased with sudden abruptness, and she prodded the mechanism viciously with a hairpin. As this appeared unavailing she used her forefinger, and when at length the carriage slid along the rod with a clash there was a smear of grimy oil upon her cheek and her somewhat tilted nose. The machine, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... he asked her questions and took no more notice of her answers than if she had been a born fool. That might have been his north-country manners and probably he couldn't help them. But there was no necessity that Ally could see for his brutal abruptness, and the callous and repellent look he had when she bared her breast to the stethescope that sent all her poor secrets flying through the long tubes that attached her heart to his abominable ears. Neither (when he had disentangled himself from the stethescope) ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... no time, or indeed any opportunity of continuing his unpleasant execution, for the enraged Lord Mayor had seized the wide ends of the sailor's trousers and had dragged him down with such abruptness and goodwill that the over-venturesome son of Neptune, dropping his knife, lay upon the ground volunteering expressions which at least had the merit of showing that his travels must have been indeed varied and extensive to have left him ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
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