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Brute   Listen
verb
Brute  v. t.  To report; to bruit. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Brute" Quotes from Famous Books



... it was a dark, misty night, and cars waiting for club members stand in a narrow side turning. Mareno is a surly brute, and he might have waited an hour without speaking to a soul. Unless another chauffeur happened to notice and recognize the car ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... arrived on the heights of Montmartre in 1814 (pardon me, gentlemen, for recalling a day unfortunate for France), Sacken (a rough brute), remarked, 'Now we will set Paris alight!' —'Take very good care that you don't,' said Blucher. 'France will die of that, nothing else can kill her,' and he waved his hand over the glowing, seething city, that lay like a huge canker in the valley of the Seine.—There are no journalists in our ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... to your cabin," cries Ballantrae, "and come on deck again when you are sober. Do you think we are going to hang for you, you black-faced, half-witted, drunken brute and butcher? Go down!" And he stamped his foot at him with such a sudden smartness that Teach fairly ran for it to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Court of King's Bench were tractable. But Coke was made of different stuff. Pedant, bigot, and brute as he was, he had qualities which bore a strong, though a very disagreeable resemblance to some of the highest virtues which a public man can possess. He was an exception to a maxim which we believe to be generally true, that those who trample on the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... moment's pause, as though the men were waiting to learn if she had more to tell, and then the King threw back his head and laughed softly. He saw Erhaupt's face above his shoulder, filled with the amazement and indignation of a man who as a duellist and as a soldier had shown a certain brute courage, ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis

... was, even with sinking to its shoulders at every plunge, the big brute was slowly distancing the boy. Fred determined on a long shot, for he was a fair marksman. Taking as good aim as he could in the excitement of the ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster

... a fool but a brute," he said in a lower voice. "Forgive me. I have given you pain,—you, for whom I would ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... have been trying to find courage to ask pardon for that unpardonable conduct, but when I looked in your dear mother's face, I felt myself such a brute that I was only fit to hold my tongue. And I believed," he added, after a pause, "that she would forgive me too. She was always better to me ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... bright, bewitch the mob, float far, And cost the blower little. The watery sphere looks like a world, a star, And when it bursts, being exceeding brittle, Where it explodes (as at the rainbow's foot) There's hidden treasure—for the clever brute Who knows that gulls are the great wealth-bestowers, Bubbles mean ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various

... neck submissively before oppression. Abuse, cruelty, outrage, accumulated on the heads of the poor Aleuts. They had reached the fine point where it is better for the weak to die trying to overthrow strength, than to live under the iron heel of brute oppression. ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... that impended over him. At length he came abreast, and about eighty yards off, only the flat crown of his head, and the partly serrated ridge along his back, appearing in sight. It was a moment of deep excitement for us all, and everyone held his breath in suspense as I pointed my gun at the brute's head. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... spiritual or mental qualities, rather than by physical beauty, and feel strongly that the latter alone would never cause me to desire coitus. Unless there was an attraction other than that of the flesh, I should feel that I was following simply a brute instinct, and it would jar with my higher nature and cause revulsion. This was not the case in my earlier years to the same extent. I have often wondered whether the sexual impulse was strong in me or not, but if not, there is nothing in my physical state or family history to account ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... had one great superiority—he gave her a great deal to eat and, to do him full justice, when Kashtanka sat facing the table and looking wistfully at him, he did not once hit or kick her, and did not once shout: "Go away, damned brute!" ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... of a woman shall forfeit one hundred panas; but, two hundred, one who brings a false charge against [a woman]. Whoso has carnal knowledge of a brute animal shall forfeit one hundred panas; if of a lowest cast woman[370] or of ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya

... to pass her days with him; to accept him as her lord; to be satisfied with the burnt-out, shriveled forces of manhood left; to sacrifice her purity that he may be redeemed, and to respect in a husband what she would despise in the brute. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... hired carriage coming down the hill at full speed cut short his monologue. He had scarcely time to jump upon the sidewalk with a "Take care, you brute!" when his cry of anger was changed to one of stupefaction: "Ques aco!.. ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... her lips set, her eyes blazing, but Fagin, assured of her helplessness, laughed, and stepped forward. From what hidden concealment it came I know not, but there was the flash of a polished barrel, a sharp report, the whirl of smoke, and the brute went backward over a chair, crashing to the floor, with hands flung high over his head. I was aware of the swift rush of a body past me, of steps going up the stairs, and then, with a yell, my men poured out from ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish

... boy says, that you'd find a dog useful, but I wouldn't have a brute of a cur like that, if I was you. Now I could give you as pretty a pup to bring up to the business as you could wish to see. A real game un. Death to anything reasonable he'd be in a year's time. Them nasty mongrels ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton

... been remarked, that curiosity, or the desire of knowledge, is that which most distinguishes man from the brute, and the greater the mind is, the more insatiable is that passion: we may, without flattery, say no man had a more boundless one than our hero; for, not satisfied with the observations he had made in England and Wales, (which we are well assured were many more ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... know anon," King Charles replied; "but this much will I say: I do hold it but a coward's part to fight the poor brute with fire-arms. Give the fellow a chance for his life, say I, and a fair fight in open field—and then let ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... you like her?" he called, as he passed, managing a shift of the reins and an uplifted hat. He smiled at her quite as if he had nothing in the world against her, though he was feeling at the moment that the brute creation are not the only things which need ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... creation in teaching his dependents to torture, mangle, and destroy each other for his own amusement—the cruelties of the greedy and savage task-master towards the dumb labourer whose strength has decayed in his service—or the sufferings of the helpless brute that drags with pain and difficulty its maimed carcass to Smithfield—what reasonable being that has witnessed all or any of this, will venture to affirm that interference is officious and uncalled for? Yet it is certain that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various

... written the following sentences contained in his reply. After expressing his ignorance of the duke's intentions, and advising the Catholics to make much of him, to avoid provoking him or any other member of the government by personalities, to trust to the legislature, and to avoid brute force, he remarked:—"I differ from the opinion of the duke, that an attempt should be made to bury in oblivion the question for a short time; first, because the thing is utterly impossible; and next, if it were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... taunts me with being a coward and a brute, a thief and a cut-throat; dares to strike me in the face when I've given him a living so long he's forgotten who did it. I'm done with him. But he don't ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... thing I had to do, as you may suppose, to make me fit to look at her, was to wipe my eyes. I put my hand in my pocket; then my first hand in the breast pocket; then the other hand in the other pocket; and the slow-dawning awful truth became apparent, that here was a great brute of a curate, who had been crying like a baby, and had no handkerchief. A moment of keen despair followed—chased away by a vision of hope, in the shape of a little white cloud between me and the green grass. This cloud floated over a lady's hand, and was in fact a delicate ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... myself in front of the man, and besought him to leave the poor fellow in peace. I could scarcely recognise my friend, for this handsome, fair-haired man, so polite, rather a snob, but very charming, seemed to have turned into a brute. Leaning towards the unfortunate man, his under-jaw protruded, he was muttering under his teeth some inarticulate words; his clenched hand seemed to be grasping his anger, just as one does an anonymous letter before ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... too far, and the man would break to pieces,—or else the mind of the man. Sir Marmaduke, during his journey in the cab, had resolved that, old as he was, he would take this sinner by the throat, this brute who had striven to stain his daughter's name,—and would make him there and then acknowledge his own brutality. But it was now very manifest to Sir Marmaduke that there could be no taking by the throat in this case. He could not have brought ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... body ought not to be without defence, while the forepart is duly fenced with teeth, which a man cannot only use to chew, but also to defend himself against those things that offend him. Thus, by the testimony and astipulation of the brute beasts, she drew all the witless herd and mob of fools into her opinion, and was admired by all ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... made several trading voyages. I sailed early in September, from Baltimore, for the Havana, in a fleet of about forty sail, most of which were captured, and we among the rest, by the British frigate, Ceres, Captain Hawkins, a man in every sense of the word a perfect brute. ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... of the aristocrats. However much you fatten human cattle, giving them straw as high as their bellies, and even gilding their stable, they will remain brutes, no matter what one says. All the advance that one can hope for, is to make the brute a little less wicked. But as for elevating the ideas of the mass, giving it a larger and therefore a less human conception of God, I ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... announced, "the brute was undoubtedly venomous. Note the heart-like shape of the head, the heads of all venomous snakes are shaped more or less like that. And see here," he added, compressing the neck just behind the jaws in such a way as to force the mouth open, "do you observe ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... horribly, but his word was his bond, and Timandra accompanied him to his cavern, where at first she suffered much inconvenience from the roughness of the accommodation. But Timon, though a misanthrope, was not a brute; and when in process of time Timandra's health required special care, rugs and pillows were provided for her, and also for Timon; for he saw that he could no longer pass for a churl if he made his wife more comfortable than himself. And, though he counted ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... atrocious woman over there with the paradise plume would keep her hat out of the way. Ah, that is better! How lovely she looks to-night! What an exquisite pose of head! And what are those two damned foreigners saying to her, I wonder. Underbred brute, the American, Herryman Hoggenwater! What a name! She is laughing—she evidently finds him amusing. Abominably cattish of the widow not to ask me. I wonder if she has seen me yet. I want to make her bow to me. Ah!" For just then magnetism was too strong for Theodora, ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... they immolating a stowaway cat down there?" murmured Laurence, with a little shudder. "It would have been more humane to have put the misguided brute to ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... them, and throwing down such as opposed him, till he saw Brutus among the conspirators, who, coming up, struck his dagger into his thigh. 12. Caesar, from that moment, thought no more of defending himself; but, looking upon Brutus, cried out, "Et tu Brute!"—And you too, O Brutus! Then covering his head, and spreading his robe before him, in order to fall with decency, he sunk down at the base of Pompey's statue: after having received three and twenty wounds, from ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... of policy did not change the opinion of the Southerners, who, notwithstanding the use which the Confederate Government was making of the negro, still regarded him, in the United States uniform, as a vicious brute, to be shot at sight. I prefer, in closing this chapter, to give the Southern opinion of the negro, in the words of a distinguished native of that section. Mr. George W. Cable, in his "Silent ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... massacres. Sir Richmond recalled those phases now, and how, as they had followed one another, man's idea of woman and woman's idea of man had changed with them, until nowadays in the minds of civilized men brute desire and possession and a limitless jealousy had become almost completely overlaid by the desire for fellowship and a free mutual loyalty. "Overlaid," he said. "The older passions are still there like the fires in an engine." He invented a saying for Dr. Martineau that the Man ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... painful; you have spoken a true word in jest. I felt a brute, I tell you. But, as I pointed out to you, something of the ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson

... and in the inn door by this time, and the coach was brought to a dead standstill. My lord jumped as briskly as a boy out of the door on his side of the coach, squeezing little Harry behind it; had hold of the potato-thrower's collar in an instant, and the next moment the brute's heels were in the air, and he fell on the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the stupidity of this fellow,—I should rather say, of this brute beast. For thus he spoke:—"Marcus Brutus, whom I name to do him honour, holding aloft his bloody dagger, called upon Cicero, from which it must be understood that he was privy to the action." Am I then called ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... only wolf which ever crossed my path was a haggard mangy-looking specimen, which, at first sight, I took for a half-starved dog. We met in a lonely wood near Krasnoyarsk in Western Siberia, but, as soon as he caught sight of me, the brute turned and ran ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... developing itself on the return voyage. The captain had to be imprisoned in his own state-room, where he committed suicide in a terrible manner by tearing his throat open with the point of a candlestick or sconce. The second mate, who was as coarse a brute as a common sailor could be, took command, and as he at once got drunk, and kept so, the passengers rose, confined him, and gave the command to the third, who ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... himself, the all-comprehending good, fully adequate to the highest and most enlarged reasonable desires. But the contemperation of our faculties to the holy, blissful object, is so necessary to our satisfying fruition, that without this we are no more capable thereof, than a brute of the festivities of a quaint oration, or a stone of the relishes of the most pleasant meats and drinks." HOWE: Heaven ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... and evidently meaning to overtake her, was a savage-looking dog; and it required no effort on Frank's part to understand that the intention of the brute was ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy

... helped to haul my sled nearly ten thousand miles, broke through a snow bridge and, the belly-band parting, slipped out of his collar and fell some twenty feet below to a ledge in a crevasse. Walter was let down and rescued the poor brute, trembling but uninjured. Without the dogs we should have been much delayed and could hardly, one judges, have moved the wood forward at all. The work on the glacier was the beginning of the ceaseless grind which the ascent ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck

... have said it before, I know, but I want to say it now once for all that I'll never touch another drop as long as I live. Why, confound my old hide, don't I know exactly what it will do for me; and do you think I'll deliberately make a brute of myself? I won't, that's all. It's all right to bring the past back, that is, for a man who can do it, but it isn't for me, I tell you that. And I don't want to see those home guards any more. Why, ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... necessary before one can become a star pitcher is the ability to throw a ball with speed. The rules, which at present govern the pitching, place a premium on brute strength, and unless one has a fair share of this he will never become a leading pitcher. There are a few so-called good professional players whose sole conception of the position is to drive the ball through with all possible speed, while ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward

... her lip quivered with emotion. "Manuel do you think me a brute? There is nobody to love Inez but her father and you. I ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... fight. But ever since he found his way into that closet where the fairy presents lie, everything has been made too easy for him. It is a royal road to glory, or giant-slaying made easy. In his Cap of Darkness a poor brute of a dragon can't see him. In his Shoes of Swiftness the giants can't catch him. His Sword of Sharpness would cut any ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... races of man. There is the myriad race which loses all, through (not bestiality, for the brute world is clean and sane) perverted animalism; and there is the myriad race which denounces humanity, and pins all its faith and joy to a life the very conditions of whose existence are incompatible with the law to which we are subject; the sole law, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... with tears in his eyes,—for he loved the poor brute, bekase they wor the two last ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... winna laist a day. The moment I lea' her, she'll be as ill's ever," said the youth. "She has a kin' a likin' to me, 'cause I gi'e her sugar, an' she canna cast me; but she's no a bit better i' the hert o' her yet. She's an oonsanctifeed brute. I cudna think o' sellin' ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... answer was lacking in precision, for at that moment he was being as tender as only an awful brute ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... has come from sources opposed to democracy. Where democracy has been overthrown, the spirit of free worship has disappeared. And where religion and democracy have vanished, good faith and reason in international affairs have given way to strident ambition and brute force. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... of great men did not belong to the ranks of the clever. Blessed are the meek, He said. I understand those words. He is meek, whose soul is open, clear and pure as a mirror, and the greatest philosophers, the noblest minds I have met in life and history were also meek. The brute is clever; wisdom is the cleverness of the noble-minded. We must all follow the Saviour, and he among us, who unites wisdom to meekness, will ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... moral sense which distinguishes civilized man from the brute; it is the regulator of the movements of the soul and the faithful indicator of the ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi

... foes?" I am not sure, but I hope, for I believe something in the heart of a people when fairly awakened. I have also a lurking confidence in what our fathers spoke of so constantly, a providential order of things, by which brute force and selfish enterprise are sometimes set at naught by aid which seems to descend from a higher sphere. Even old pagans believed in that, you know; and I was born in America, Christianized by the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... ambrosial odour, and the huge earth laughed." The poets seemed scarcely to have advanced beyond such a bold similitude, and we may conclude that while they saw in laughter something above the powers of the brute creation, they did not consider that it necessarily expressed the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... was striking again and again at the white throat with a broad-bladed knife. The thing was screeching and clawing at the man's arm. Its razored tail was lashing forward—and the man was dodging it as he kept backing in a circle and thrusting the head upward and backwards. Both brute and man were streaming blood. The man made no sound other than an occasional savage grunt as his blade struck deep through the horny hide of the thing. The Saurian became wilder with ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... on the Driscoll fight again—gave us some extraordinary details. The man's a thundering brute, but he's full of observation and humour. Then, after Bowen joined you, he told me about a new deal he's gone into—rather a promising scheme, but on the same Titanic scale. It's just possible, by the way, that we may be able to do something for him: part of the property he's after ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... you brute!" he cried, angrily, at the same time throwing one of his shoes at the musician, which hit him on the shin and caused him a moment's ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... missed; there's a murrain of strikes Where a paper can take any side that it likes; We are done with denouncing the filth of the Bosch, But we still have our own dirty linen to wash; Though we trade with the brute as a man and a brother, Our Warriors still ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various

... about me; I shan't go far. I think we are safe until two gentlemen have met in Washington, discussed their affairs, and come down into the mountains again. The large brute we caught the other night is undoubtedly on watch near by; but he is harmless. Only a few days more and we shall perform a real service in the world, Sergeant,—I feel it ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... To convict a man of that lack is to strike him with one blow to a level with the beasts of the field—to kick him, once and for all, outside the human pale. What is it that mainly distinguishes us from the brute creation? That we walk erect? Some brutes are bipeds. That we do not slay one another? We do. That we build houses? So do they. That we remember and reason? So, again, do they. That we converse? They are chatterboxes, whose lingo we are not sharp enough to master. On no possible ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... unfolded themselves naturally. In three years these dogmas installed the crocodile on the purple carpet insides the sanctuary behind the golden veil. He was selected for the place on account of the energy of his jaws and the capacity of his stomach; he became a god through his qualities as a destructive brute and man-eater.—Comprehending this, the rites which consecrate him and the pomp which surrounds him need not give us any further concern.—We can observe him, like any ordinary animal, and study his various attitudes, as he lies in wait for his prey, springs ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... your hurt. Ah! a cut on the ear, no more, and thank your natal star that it is so, for another inch and the great vein of the neck would have been severed. Prince, if you are able, draw out your sword from the carcase of that brute, for I have tried and cannot loosen the blade. Then perhaps this lady will guide us to the city before his fellows come to seek him, seeing that for one night I have had a stomach ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... and agitated imagination, returned not again; and he found his horse sweating and terrified, as if experiencing that agony of fear with which the presence of a supernatural being is supposed to agitate the brute creation. The Master mounted, and rode slowly forward, soothing his steed from time to time, while the animal seemed internally to shrink and shudder, as if expecting some new object of fear at the opening of every glade. The rider, after a moment's consideration, resolved to ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... the brute!" I cried with clenched hands. "Oh Holmes, I shall never forgive myself for having left him ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... sighed, "what a brute I must seem to you and how difficult it is for me to try and tell you all that ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... character has never, that I know of, been wrought out in literature; and something quite good, funny, and philosophical, as well as poetic, might very likely be educed from them. . . . . The faun is a natural and delightful link betwixt human and brute life, with something of ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... climate] "as are recorded in the mammaliferous drift, shows man the same reasoning, tentative, and inventive mechanician, as clearly distinguished then from the highest orders of contemporary life of the Elephantine or Cave periods, as he is now from the most intelligent of the brute creation.... The oldest art-traces of the paleotechnic men of central France not only surpass those of many savage races, but they indicate an intellectual aptitude in no degree inferior to the average Frenchman of the nineteenth ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... forward to consider the diseases of volition, that superior faculty of the sensorium, which gives us the power of reason, and by its facility of action distinguishes mankind from brute animals; which has effected all that is great in the world, and superimposed the works of art on ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... excesses brought in their train. These made her very sullen, and, at the same time, very irritable. There were times, as I well knew, when she had no other means of obtaining drink, but yet did obtain it, from that misguided woman—her mother, whose craving she inherited, without a tithe of the brute strength which apparently enabled the older woman ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... would leave a home like this," said Mademoiselle, "and a distinguished family. Position. Wealth. For a brute who beats her. And ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... they may make reflecting on the aggressors are received with great indignation by the wretched sufferers. They positively will not hear a single word against the cowardly ruffians. 'Sometimes,' said a nurse to me, 'when I have told a woman that her husband is a brute, she has drawn herself up and replied: "You mind your own business, miss. We find the rates and taxes, and the likes of you are paid out of 'em to wait on us."'" (Montagu ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Master Peter you would not be pleased, m'lady,' said the nurse, who seemed to have taken a positive dislike to me, 'but he would bring the nasty brute home.' ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... that country who wouldn't stake two fellers to a waggon ride wherever they wanted to go, and be pleasant about it, I'd have sure seen that the man got paid, even if Aggy forgot it, but the man that drove us was the surliest brute that ever growled. When you'd speak to him, he'd say, 'Unh'—a style of thing that didn't go well in that part of the country. I kept my mouth shut, as knowing that I didn't have the come-up-with weighed on my spirits; but Aggy gave him the jolly. He only meant it in fun, and there was plenty of ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... hear that Estan Medina was shot," he said after a pause. "Even in the interests of the Cause it was absolutely unjustifiable. The man could do no harm; indeed, he served to divert suspicion from others. Only crass stupidity would resort to brute violence in the effort to further ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... should say that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage—a sort of Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... and tugged with all his might. The terrified creature was not yet too wild with fear to fail to answer to the pull on the bit, and swung round to the left. In this way the scout managed to jam the frightened brute's head into the tall bank, and thus pulled it up. In dashed Dick and seized the other rein, and between them the scouts held the horse until the baker ran up and helped ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... earth, for ugliness. Men have enormous stature and mighty strength, and stride with fierce and lordly steps. Their faces have great noses between deep-set eyes, and protruding brows, and ponderous jaws like animals— symbols of brute force which needs but to be seen to frighten children in the dark. We are the gentler race, and we feel instinctively the dominating power of these men from over the seas, who all, American, Russian, German, English, seem to be cast in the same brutal ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... a wolf; but I'll give a good account of the brute if he makes his appearance," answered my father; "hand ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... body was the outstanding fact of life. The fight may give us our chance, however, to aid him to a sense of the greatness of life's conflict, to a sense of the qualities that make the true fighter. It may leave him open to the appeal of true heroism. We must make light of the victory of brute strength, just as we may make light of his wounds and scars, and glorify the victory ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... prove conclusively that although "magnetic" personalities have remarkably well-disciplined and highly trained physical energies, it is rarely or never a huge gigantic physique with large, unsightly muscles that exerts this force. No, it is decidely something other than mere physical energy and brute strength. A light, active, vigorous physique is desirable and any one can have it. Again, the principle value of a non-flesh diet lies in the fact that fruits, nuts, corn and vegetables are possessed of rhythmic qualities and go to build up a fine, ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji

... been, when we were thrown together again,' he pursued. 'There was no explanation, but it was far worse to bear than if there had been. I felt myself a perfect brute.' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... him unread, handled it tenderly, struggled to read the delicate pointed writing to himself, but soon deferred the attempt, observing, 'There, there, I can't stand it now! But you see, Mark,' he added after an interval, 'I was not altogether the heartless brute ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to say which was less agreeable to the chief-to have his stag called a brute, or be ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... I was conscious of this, but it did not trouble me. I was panting for relief. I could not rest till I knew the nature of the doubt in this man's mind. If these words, or any words I could use, would serve to surprise his secret, then welcome the lie or suggestion of a lie. "It was a brute's act," I went on, bungling with my sentences in anxiety to see if my conclusions fitted in with his own. "Who was the brute? Do ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... fair face of their stepmother without crying aloud for fear; and how at last he discovered, to his horror and dismay, that he had wedded a fearful creature, half wolf, half woman, combining the seductions of the syren with the cruel voracity of the brute. There was something about Maud Bruce to remind one of that horrible myth, even now, now at her gentlest and softest, while she clung round a sorrowing father, by the death-bed of one, whom, in their different ways, both had ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... marry you; she will be a faithful wife, and float you to the end; but if you wish to be her love, her hero, her ideal, her delight, her spontaneity, her utter rest and ultimatum, you must attune your soul to fine issues,—you must bring out the angel in you, and keep the brute under. It is not that you shall stop making shoes, and begin to write poetry. That is just as much discrimination as you have. Tell you to be gentle, and you think we want you to dissolve into milk-and-water; tell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... exhibited. The development of Mind has from the outset been associated with the development of Matter. And to-day, though none of us has any knowledge of the end of psychical phenomena in his own case, yet from all the marks by which we recognize such phenomena in our fellow-creatures, whether brute or human, we are taught that when certain material processes have been gradually or suddenly brought to an end, psychical phenomena are no longer manifested. From first to last, therefore, our ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the mongrel-looking brute was in full pursuit, snarling and uttering a low ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... formation of a language." But what a tremendous step! An ape-like animal that "thought" of imitating a beast must certainly have been "unusually wise." In bridging the chasm which rational speech interposes between man and the brute creation, the Darwinian is forced to assume that the whole essential modification is included in the first step. Then he conceals the assumption by parcelling out the accidental modification in a supposed series of transitional stages. He endeavors to veil his inability to explain ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... injudiciously hung up near the water. The alligator made a snap at his prize; but startled at this frightful interruption of his slumbers, the man dexterously extricated himself out of his blanket, which the unwieldy brute, doubtless enraged at his disappointment, carried off in triumph. For some time this story was not believed, but when afterwards the huge reptile, on a similar excursion, was shot, a portion of the blanket was found in his stomach with the paw of a favourite ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... merits of the Buddhas, and the effects of a life-invigorating rain, and which sank into chaos again when the old stock of merit, accumulated in the previous period, was exhausted. The creatures of each period, too, whether brute or human, were animated by but the souls of former creatures embodied anew. In the centre of each of the three worlds of which a system or sackwala consists, there is a vast mountain, more than forty ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... that does the great wrong to women is, depend upon it, Eusebius, the "brute of a husband," called, by courtesy, in higher life, "Sir John Brute." Horace says wittily, that Venus puts together discordant persons and minds with a bitter joke, "saevo mittere cum joco;" it begins a jest, and ends a crying evil. We name the thing that should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... was in the bow. 'E said the New Yorker didn't seem to take it in at first, but that 'e suddenly gave a yell, jumped on one of the thwarts, and grabbed the boat-'ook. The fish was an ugly-lookin' brute, from what I 'ear, and a spotted moray over six feet long is as nasty a thing to face as anything ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... an extreme horror of bulls, especially red bulls, and this one was not merely red, but looked savage, to boot. Mr. Fogo peered again round the corner of his umbrella. The brute luckily had not spied him, but neither did it seem in any hurry to move. For twenty minutes Mr. Fogo waited behind his shelter, and still the ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... scorpions dim in the dark; If you'd seen them rebound with a horrible sound, and spitefully spitting a spark; If you'd watched IT with dread, as it hissed by your bed, that thing with the feelers that crawls— You'd have settled the brute that attempted to shoot electricity ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... "power over nature" is currently postulated as the characteristic fact of industrial productivity. This industrial power over nature is taken to include man's power over the life of the beasts and over all the elemental forces. A line is in this way drawn between mankind and brute creation. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... trotting past. Having a blunt arrow on the bowstring, he shot across the twenty-five yards of bank, and quite unexpectedly cracked the animal on the foreleg, breaking the bone. A jet of blood spurted out with astonishing force, and the brute staggered for a space of time. This gave Ferguson a moment to nock a second shaft, a broad-head, and with that accuracy known to come in excitement, he drove it completely through the animal's body, killing ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... holding out his hand, rejoiced by her tears, for he longed to think that she was offended by his rudeness in the dusky room, "Lina, forgive me. I was a brute to wound you with ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... her check and paid it, and tipped the waiter and rose. She smiled wretchedly at him as he rose with her. She left the dining-car, and he sat down and cursed himself for a brute and ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... with certainty. There is, also, the faculty of taking notice, of becoming consciously aware of the impressions received by the senses. This faculty man shares with the animals below him in the scale of being, and, in both man and brute, it is susceptible to cultivation. Training the faculty of observation develops the habit of paying attention, and this habit, though less efficient than the inborn gift, may be so confirmed as to ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears

... if it had been possible, the Christian name. The faith increased under axes, and the blood of martyrs was a fruitful seed, which multiplied {610} the Church over all nations. The experience how weak and ineffectual a means brute force was to this purpose, moved the emperor Julian, the most implacable, the most crafty, and the most dangerous instrument which the devil ever employed in that design, to shift his ground, and change his artillery and manner of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... fact that the capitalistic world believes human nature cannot be changed, though cannibalism and slavery and polygamy have all been extirpated in the so-called Christian countries, and these things were once human nature, which is always changing, while brute nature remains the same. Now and then they touch very guardedly on that slavery, worse than war, worse than any sin or shame conceivable to the Altrurians, in which uncounted myriads of women are held and bought and sold, and they have to note that in this the capitalistic world ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... hand, if need be, could crush her life out at a blow. Why not, however, a highly polished gentleman, critical, keen of speech, deeply read, brilliant in conversation, at once man of the world and scholar? Might not that type have power over her? In a degree, but not so decidedly as the intellectual brute. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... say he never spares an enemy, and that he eats the flesh of those he kills. May the gods grant that my masters shall wean him to-night from the love of such hideous, barbaric fare!"—and yet, with all her horror, Marcia almost smiled to note how the girl looked upon this brute with more of woman's feeling for man than she bestowed upon any of his better favoured and more ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... the bear from whom they expected an attack. Recollecting Jacques' propensity to practical joking, I lay quiet; and I heard my uncle come back soon afterwards, growling almost as much as the supposed bear, and observing that the brute had got off, though it must have been close to the camp. I said nothing, though I suspected who had performed the part of the bear. The next morning I looked about, but could discover no traces of such an animal. Jacques, if he had represented it, kept ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... the fun and trickishness of the more common sorts of ape. They are all delicate and difficult to rear, and invariably die of over-eating, or rather eating what is unwholesome for them, if they have a chance. It seems as if, in approaching the form of man, they lost the instinct of the brute. It was a great addition to the pleasures of life in Sarawak that there were no wild beasts to be feared in the jungles. When we were once staying at Malacca, and, for the sake of a natural hot spring, inhabited a little bungalow ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... them; so that any strong motive is sufficient to overpower the sense of it. Man only has a natural function for expanding on an illimitable sensorium, the illimitable growths of space. Man, coming to the precipice, reads his danger; the brute perishes: man is saved; and the horse is saved ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... distinctly named in scientific books, but well known to our country-folks under the name "Yallah dog." They do not use this expression as they would say black dog or white dog, but with almost as definite a meaning as when they speak of a terrier or a spaniel. A "yallah dog" is a large canine brute, of a dingy old-flannel color, of no particular breed except his own, who hangs round a tavern or a butcher's shop, or trots alongside of a team, looking as if he were disgusted with the world, and the world with him. Our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... her the grieved look of a man who suffers mutely the most unkindest cut of all. Et tu, Brute! was ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... whistling, followed the groom into the stable, as if he had been at an inn, only, instead of taking off his hat, pulling its broad brim over his eyes, for a compliment. In she went in a pet, as she says, saying to the countess, "A surly brute he always was! My uncle! He's more of an ostler than a gentleman; I'm resolved I'll not stir to meet him again. And yet the wretch loves respect from others, though he never practises common ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... spirit, to tread down tyrants?" The venerable patriarch replied, "He was always a noble boy. In infancy, he became the defender of every child he saw oppressed by boys of greater power; he was even the champion of the brute creation, and no poor animal was ever attempted to be tortured near him. The old looked on him for comfort, the young for protection. From infancy to manhood, he has been a benefactor; and though the cruelty of our enemies have widowed his youthful years-though he should go childless to the grave, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... Susan slid from her perch, feeling a sudden apathy, not only as from a tension snapped, but as the result of a backwash of disillusion. David was no longer the proud conqueror, the driver of man and brute. The ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... of the shaggy, soft-coated, ugly-coloured brute with large hound ears and big full eyes, we have now a very handsome creature, possessing all the points that go to make a really first-class terrier of taking colour, symmetrical build, full of character and "go," amply justifying—in looks, at any rate—its existence ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... to obey his mistress any more, and went and sat on the floor in the corner of the stage. Then Lola, with a glance of contempt at him for his poltroonery and a glance of confidence at the audience, opened the cage door and dragged the gigantic and malevolent brute out by the scruff of its neck and held it up like a rabbit, as she ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... ill-conditioned brute," one of the officers remarked. "The only thing to be said for him is that he is not deficient in personal courage. He has fought several duels, into which he brought himself by his ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... with the dazed look of one who performs in delirium the customary movements of every day, she fell back, holding her apron deprecatingly aside while he brushed past her. And in her eyes as she gazed after him there dawned the simple wonder of the brute that asks of Life why ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... she said, "he's a mean, old brute, but don't you fret! I got a hunch how to make him cancel my contract in a perfectly refined an' ladylike manner. Right now I start in bantin' and dietin' in the scientific-est manner an' the way I can lose three or four hundred pounds when I set ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... will work for you. I will work until they let me have you. I don't mean that I shall ever be good enough for you—because I shall not be. I shall always be a brute beside you—but if you will wait I will win ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... flash my captor set me down, toppled me over (in plain words) into the thick herbage, and, turning, rushed bellowing, undeviating towards their leaders, till it seemed he must inevitably be borne down beneath their brute weight, and so—farewell to summer. But almost at the impact, the baffled creatures reared, neighing fearfully in consort, and at the gibberish hurled back on them by their flamed-eyed master, broke ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... of the forest giants had evidently attracted him to them. A dozen times he scrambled up the trunks like a huge cat only to fall back to the ground once more, and with each failure he cast a horrified glance over his shoulder at the oncoming brute, simultaneously emitting terror-stricken shrieks that awoke the ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Further investigation convinced me that the thief was no other than Lionel Dacre, the only one of the six in pressing need of money at this time. I caused Dacre to be shadowed, and during one of his absences made the acquaintance of his man Hopper, a surly, impolite brute, who accepted my golden sovereign quickly enough, but gave me little in exchange for it. While I conversed with him, there arrived in the passage where we were talking together a huge case of champagne, bearing one of the best-known names in the trade, and branded as being of the vintage ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... Beauharnais, De Luynea (a ci-devant duke, known under the name of Le Gros Cochon), nature never destined but to figure among those half-idiots and half-imbeciles who are, as it were, intermedial between the brute and human creation. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... A penniless young woman brought up amid the standards of very common people marries for money, and comes to face the collapse of her dreams. She realises that she is tied to a man for whom she cares nothing. Also he is a brute, a typical bad egg of a husband from the extensive though rather monotonous stock of this article dealt in by our women novelists. Is it right for this young woman to throw away the chances of her whole life for happiness—and so ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... lady mother, if you knew what a pleasure it is to find something untamable where everything is so confoundedly slow you would not wonder at my fondness for the brute. As to your anxiety, that is ridiculous. A Hildreth has too much sense to be conquered by a horse and make a spectacle of himself into the bargain. Au revoir. Better take a dose of lavender to calm your nerves," ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... typical. The officers commanding in these districts either disregard the "mot d'ordre" given in Brussels or do not think it worth their while to keep up the sinister comedy played in the large towns. Here "Kultur" throws off her mask and the brute appears. We know at least where we stand. The conflict is cleared of all false pretence and paltry excuses. The councillors of Tournai appeal to some law, divine or human, which forbids a brother ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts

... of Legrand; for myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have enabled me to get the wanderer home. The noise was at length very effectually silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a dogged air of deliberation, tied the brute's mouth up with one of his suspenders, and then returned, with a grave ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... the death of Brutus, while following as the consequence of his murder of Caesar, is yet as much distinguished in character from that death, as the character of Brutus is different from that of Caesar. Caesar's last words were Et tu Brute? Brutus, when resolved to lay violent hands on himself, takes leave of his friends ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... scarcely heed that he (to stay her steps) has dropped the cub in her path, but, casting at it a glance of recognition, bounds with a wilder howl after the robber, the incident is purely bestial, an exhibition of sheer brute fury, and as such repulsive and most unpoetical. But let her, instantly drawing her fiery eye from the robber, stop, and for the infuriated roar utter a growl of leonine tenderness over her recovered cub, and our sympathy leaps towards her. Through the red glare of rage there ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert



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