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More "Downright" Quotes from Famous Books



... her own personal foibles. One can be daughter, sister, friend, without impeachment of one's sagacity or integrity; but it is such a dreadful indorsement of a man to marry him! Her own consciousness must be sufficiently grievous; pray do not irritate it into downright madness. Nay, what, after all, are the so heinous faults upon which you animadvert? She cannot earn a cent: that may be her misfortune, it need not be her fault. Perhaps Clement, like Albano, and all good husbands, "never loved to see the sweet form anywhere else than, like other butterflies, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... the parable we may detect a feeling of surprise creeping over our minds, that the Lord, who had the whole world and its history before him whence to select his examples, should have chosen a specimen of worldly wisdom, damaged by an admixture of downright falsehood, in order to stimulate thereby the spiritual zeal of his own disciples. The three following observations will, in my judgment, explain and completely remove the difficulty:—(1.) The Holy One, precisely ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... "'She's downright wasteful,' I went on. 'She fills every hour with information, and then throws on some more. It keeps coming. Your seams open, and then it's every hand to the pumps! Dora Perkins and Rebecca Ford are just as extravagant. They toss out gems of thought and chunks of knowledge as if ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller

... evidently been coming more and more urgently into the workday deliberations of the American administration. Of course, it is not spoken of in set terms to this effect in official utterances, perhaps not even within doors; that sort of thing is not done. But it can do no harm to use downright expressions in a scientific discussion of these phenomena, with a view to understanding the current drift of things in ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... heart-shaped and rather thin. She had large brown liquid eyes that could look, Malone imagined, appealing, loving, worshiping—or, like a minute ago, downright furious. Below these features she had a straight lovely nose and a pair of lips which Malone ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett

... me she keeps those toys to amuse the children who may come visiting with their mothers," explained Winnie. "Miss Clinton figured that if the children had something to play with they wouldn't be in a hurry to go home. Downright pathetic, I call it, to be so hungry for someone to talk to that you try to bribe people to stay ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... cannot believe that any man is a downright villain who is fortunate enough to have ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... downright glad, I can tell you! I'd have a good swim before they pulled me out,—aye, and a ride on one of those broad-backed black gentlemen tumbling ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick

... 'from yourself, and not from me'; nor did I say this, which you erroneously attribute to me, but you yourself, and what you said was very true. For indeed, my dear fellow, the design which you meditate of teaching what you do not know, and have not taken any pains to learn, is downright insanity. ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato

... "That was downright mean of you, Will Baldwin," chided Stella, with her usual motherly interest in the comfort of her boys. "You know the poor fellow will lose himself, sure, out in that wild Tailholt ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... Inn and stepped within The Bar and read the "Times;" And never such a treat, as—the epistle of one "Vetus,"[42] Had he found save in downright crimes: "Though I doubt if this drivelling encomiast of War Ever saw a field fought, or felt a scar, Yet his fame shall go farther than he can guess, For I'll keep him a place in my hottest Press; 130 And his works shall be bound in Morocco d'Enfer, And lettered ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... writer's own evident interest and sincerity about the real lives and characters of the various conspicuous people with whom she deals. It may be said that she has no subtle insight into the complexities of human nature, and that her philosophy of character is rather too little analytical, too downright, too content with averages of motive, and too external. This is so in a general way, but it does not spoil the charm of these sketches, because the personages concerned, though all of them conspicuous, were for the most part commonplace in motive, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley

... London. "Well?" Pray restrain yourself, reader; I am coming to the point in due season. During my metropolitan existence—although I am neither a tailor, nor any trade, nor anything exactly—I have never beheld a downright intellectual-looking blade of grass. I mean much by an intellectual blade of grass. The Londoners—poor conceited creatures!—have denominated sundry portions of their Babylon "fields." But—I ask it in all the honest pride of sheer ignorance—is there the ghost even of a bit of grass to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... you the truth I don't think I am," replied Elisabeth, with engaging frankness; "conceit is my besetting sin and I know it. Not stately, scornful, dignified pride, but downright, inflated, perky, puffed-up conceit. I have often remarked upon it to Christopher, and he ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... the drawl, the action, the readiness, and above all the downright courage of the little woman, had its effect. A roar of sympathetic applause followed the act. "Cut and run while you can," she whispered hurriedly over her one shoulder, without altering the other's attitude of pert and saucy defiance ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... are helping us now to secure advanced Labor legislation; they will help us later to secure land reform and other measures for all classes of wealth producers, and we need all the help they give us. But if they are threatened with a class war, then they will surely sulk and harden into downright Toryism. What gain will that be for Labor?" ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... given me a downright scolding, instead of larding his letter with sentences like this "In spite of all your good qualities it will come to this, that you will always be a cause of suffering and anxiety to those who love you." He brings it home with a vengeance. I have caused suffering to Aniela, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... hope of Gruenewald," cried Fritz. "He doesn't suit some of your high-and-dry, old, ancient ideas; but he's a downright modern man—a man of the new lights and the progress of the age. He does some things wrong; so they all do; but he has the people's interests next his heart; and you mark me—you, sir, who are a Liberal, and the enemy of all their governments, you please to mark my words—the day will ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... consists of German elements already resident in the Tsardom. It is a monument of Teuton audacity and Slav forbearance. One might ransack the history of European nations without finding another such instance of downright effrontery and disloyalty on the part of a privileged section of the community, and of easy-going toleration on the part of the State. The German elements of the provinces of Kurland and Livland, subjects of the Tsar though they are, resolved ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... cyclopean; ample; abundant; &c (enough) 639 full, intense, strong, sound, passing, heavy, plenary, deep, high; signal, at its height, in the zenith. world-wide, widespread, far-famed, extensive; wholesale; many &c 102. goodly, noble, precious, mighty; sad, grave, heavy, serious; far gone, arrant, downright; utter, uttermost; crass, gross, arch, profound, intense, consummate; rank, uninitiated, red-hot, desperate; glaring, flagrant, stark staring; thorough-paced, thoroughgoing; roaring, thumping; extraordinary.; important &c 642; unsurpassed &c (supreme) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... coast of Africa, which presages a severe storm. It appears at first in the form of an ox-eye, but soon overspreads the whole hemisphere, accompanied by a violent wind which scatters ships in all directions, and many are sunk downright. Also, a water-fowl. Also, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... to be sure they are, and smoking; and big fires they are making, too, for I saw red sparks coming out of one. Why, what's the matter, Miss Sarah? You must be getting downright nervous,' observed Naomi, for Sarah had started and given a little shiver ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... surprise us. And while we shall not make any vain attempt to whitewash a class of men who were lawless, reckless, and sometimes even brutal in their efforts, yet we shall not hesitate to give the fullest prominence to the great skill and downright cleverness of a singularly virile and unique kind of British manhood. In much the same way as a spectator looks on at a fine sporting contest between two able foes, we shall watch the clashing exploits of the King's men and the smugglers. Sometimes the one side wins, sometimes the other, ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... was dressed, That men shoulden serve with me, Thus at noon, and my meynie. Say him, it shall him nought avail, Though he for-bar us our vitail, Bread, wine, fish, flesh, salmon, and conger; Of us none shall die with hunger, While we may wenden to fight, And slay the Saracens downright, Wash the flesh, and roast the head. With OO [One] Saracen I may well feed Well a nine or a ten Of my good Christian men. King Richard shall warrant, There is no flesh so nourissant Unto an English man, Partridge, plover, heron, ne swan, Cow ne ox, sheep ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... rents, out of the town and neigbourhood of Mannhamilton, has, to the palpable evidence of the whole and next baronies, been making up, as the phrase goes, to Letty Murphy, for the last six months. This has been no case of Bardell v. Pickwick, but a real downright matter of love-making on the one side, and love made on the other. Letters, too have been written, and are now to be read in court, to the great edification of the unmarried jury, and amusement of the whole assemblage; and the deceitful culprit has gone so ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... opinion of a Christian statesman, to be concerned in supporting an impious thing in the world. The way that some may take to prove it impious, is, because it will tend highly to the interest of swearing.—But this I take to be plain downright sophistry, and playing upon words: If this be called the Swearing project, or the Oath-act, the increase of swearing will be very much for the benefit and interest of swearing, (i.e.) to the subscribers in the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... himself with a feeling of downright misery, was already down the drain. He'd been dipping into personal savings to keep up his front as a big spender, but that couldn't go on forever—even though he saved money on the front by gambling very ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Madame Sand." This is a mild way of expressing disapproval of conduct that shows, to say the least, an inhuman callousness to the susceptibilities of a fellow-being. And to speak of the irresistible prompting of genius in connection with one who had her faculties so well under her control is downright mockery. It would, however, be foolish to expect considerateness for others in one who needlessly detailed and proclaimed to the world not only the little foibles but also the drunkenness and consequent idiocy and madness of a brother whose family was still ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... and should she and he meet after many years, though their heads be gray and their cheeks wrinkled, there will still be a touch of the old passion as their hands meet for a moment. Methinks that love never dies, unless it be murdered by downright ill-usage. It may be so murdered, but even, ill-usage will more often fail than succeed in that enterprise. How, then, could Harry fail to love the woman whom he had loved first, when she returned to him still young, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... Laurie passes so quickly from hyper-loyalty to downright treason, that he is an insolvable problem. As wigs were once worn out of compliment to a monarch, so when the Queen expects a little heir, Sir Peter causes a gentleman, over whom he has an accidental influence, to have a little hair too. But oh ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various

... Littlejohn was stanch and strong, Upright and downright, scorning wrong; He gave good weight and paid his way, He thought for himself and said his say. Whenever a rascal strove to pass, 5 Instead of silver, a coin of brass, He took his hammer and said with a frown, "The coin ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... aloud to her in the middle of luncheon. Oh, there would be proof positive as to many of the men. But of the others it would be said that they died in trying to rescue their comrades. There would be all sorts of silly far-fetched theories, and downright lies that couldn't ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... exaltation—God hath highly exalted Him. We have the glory of His Kingdom,—that every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess Him. And in what connection? Is it a theological study? No. Is it a description of what Christ is? No; it is in connection with a simple, downright call to a life of humility in our intercourse with each other. Our life on earth is linked to all the eternal glory of the Godhead as revealed in the exaltation of Jesus. The very looking to Jesus, the very bowing of the knee to ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray

... demanded it; but Clavering, with his graceful insolence, ironical contempt of them, and thinly-veiled pride, was a type of all their democracy anathematized. More than one of them had winced under his soft laugh and lightly spoken jibes, which rankled more than a downright injury. ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... wondered why Mary Todd married Lincoln. He was still poor; so poor that after marriage they lived at the Globe Tavern on four dollars a week. And the lady had been sought by prosperous men! The lowliness of Lincoln's origin went ill with her high notions of her family's importance. She was downright, high-tempered, dogmatic, but social; he was devious, slow to wrath, tentative, solitary; his very appearance, then as afterward, was against him. Though not the hideous man he was later made out to be—the "gorilla" of enemy ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... Verschoyle—by suggestion—to marry a Mrs Slesinger, who was plain but almost as rich as himself, and in his distress he very nearly succumbed; but Clara swooped in to save him, and found that her position was made almost impossible by whispered tittle-tattle, cold looks, and downright rudeness. She was distinctly left out of picnic and boating parties, and almost in contempt she was partnered with Sir Henry who, after Lady Bracebridge's arrival, was no longer master in his own house.... When the Cabinet Ministers arrived the situation became impossible for they produced ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... was fifteen that Kathleen's aunt, a maiden lady from Dublin, who rejoiced in the truly Irish name of O'Flynn, came to see them, remarked on Kathleen's wild, unkempt appearance, declared that the girl would be a downright beauty when she was eighteen, said that no one would tolerate such a want of knowledge in the present day, and advised that she should go to school. Mrs. O'Hara took Miss O'Flynn's hint very much to ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... Max, unable to hide his annoyance, "that if I were to tell you it was not a joke at all, but that I spoke in downright earnest, you would ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... in the brown bark; it was Rose's face peeping. To our young lover's eye how divine it shone! None of the half tints of common flesh were there, but a thing all rose, lily, sapphire, and soul. His pencil dropped, his mouth opened, he was downright dazzled by the glowing, bewitching face, sparkling with fun, in the gaunt tree. Tell me, ladies, did she know, even at that age, the value of that sombre frame to her brightness? The moment she found herself detected, the gaunt old tree rang musical ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... the villa walls, beneath the over-crowding orange-boughs, straggled old Italy as well—but not in Boccaccio's velvet: a row of ragged and livid contadini, some simply stupid in their squalor, but some downright brigands of romance, or of reality, with matted locks ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... I crave pardon for great remissness—allow me to present my fellow-citizen, Brigadier Downright, a gentleman who is on his travels, like yourself; and as excellent a fellow as is to be found in the whole ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... dear. And that good-for-nothing Spanish piece racing and shrieking round the tennis court like a she tom-cat, the heartless hussy. Her and that simpering silly that's trotting round after her had ought to be put in a bag and shaken up, that they ought. It's downright scandalous to be carrying on like that ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... there, are downright turn-coats," I said, coming down from the stile. "Their red mantles are nothing but pearl-colored now, and presently they'll be russet-gray. That whippoorwill always brings the dew with him, too; so I must go home. Good-night, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... of the skeptic was sunk. This evasion was more disillusioning than downright confession. A moment the little boy regarded her, wholly in sorrow, with big eyes that blinked alarmingly. Then came his last shot; the final bullet which the besieged warrior will sometimes reserve for his own destruction. There could no longer be any ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... intentions in all, but deem it too dry and much too intellectual for popular digestion. The orthodox brand it as intolerably heretical and terribly unscriptural; the multitude of human beings;—like "Oyster Nan" who couldn't live without "running her vulgar rig"—consider it downright infidelity, the companion of rationalism, and the "stepping Stone to atheism." Still there are many good people who are Unitarians; many magnificent scholars who recognise its principles; and if "respectability" is any proof of correctness—this age, in the obliquity ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... other people since the time when it so puzzled and troubled me in Jenny. It marred the pleasure of the visit most miserably. I was continually fearing the displeasure of my father and the discomfort of my mother. The whole household were disturbed by what seemed to them downright rudeness. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... groans, and a very few motions of head and hands, make up the sum of its variety: but an excess of joy, a surprise of joy, has a thousand extravagances in it; there were some in tears, some raging and tearing themselves, as if they had been in the greatest agonies of sorrow; some stark raving and downright lunatic; some ran about the ship stamping with their feet, others wringing their hands; some were dancing, several singing, some laughing, more crying; many quite dumb, not able to speak a word; others sick and vomiting, several swooning, and ready to faint; and a few were crossing ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... since, and now Billings comes in fresh—never draws but he gets a full hand—and he scoops the deck. He has too much luck for a white man." The remark was one that, said by Ray himself in his whimsical and downright manner, was destitute of any hidden meaning, and Billings, who had not seen Ray for years, would never have misunderstood it, but when he first heard it six months afterwards, and while Ray and himself had yet ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... "It is downright wicked of me to deceive him. But what can I do? If I let him know I don't need his services ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... had shared its meagre and savorless pleasures. She had set herself a task, and she had rigidly performed it. She had conformed to the angular conditions of New England life, and she had had the tact and pluck to carry it off as if she liked them. Acton felt a more downright need than he had ever felt before to tell her that he admired her and that she struck him as a very superior woman. All along, hitherto, he had been on his guard with her; he had been cautious, observant, suspicious. But now a certain light tumult in his blood seemed to tell him that a finer degree ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... fancied it the case. He heard many allusions to former times and incidents, not knowing that as children they had been playmates. The gallant captain's present admiration was pretty plain; and the young lady was amused by it after the manner of her sex. Being very downright himself, Mr. Holt had no idea how much admiration is required to fill the measure of a proposal of marriage in a red-coat's resolve, or how much harmless coquetry lies dormant ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... resistance Trina had induced her husband to consent to such a move, bewildering him with a torrent of phrases and marvellous columns of figures by which she proved conclusively that they were in a condition but one remove from downright destitution. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... of the bell ringing every evening for prayer-meeting! It was too absurd! People must have a little time for recreation; these weeks just before the holidays were always by common consent the time for festivities of all sorts; it was downright folly to expect young people to give up their pleasures and go every evening ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... of the classic authors; sometimes, it is true, a manuscript of the last order is discovered possessing a very different reading in some particular passage; but these appear rather as futile emendations or interpolations of the scribe than as the result of a downright blunder, and are easily perceivable, for when the monkish churchmen tampered with ancient copies, it generally originated in a desire to smooth over the indecencies of the heathen authors, and so render them less liable to corrupt the holy contemplations of ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... murmured. "And Donal—told me." She did not say when he had told her but Dowie knew. And unearthly as the thing was, regarded from her standpoint, she was not frightened, because she said mentally to herself, what was happening was downright healthy and no harm could come of it. She felt safe and her mind was at ease even when Robin shut the little book and placed it on ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... else, and is as thoroughly scientific as any University professer. But the Government will never give him a vacant chair, for his pedagogical powers surpass even his scientific abilities, and they cannot spare such men in such places. To some aristocratic people his noble simple-mindedness is downright appalling; but when he goes about in dull, cold, wintry weather and visits the poor wretches in the slums, where nature and natural emotions and forms of speech are quite unconventional, he is duly appreciated. For he is not ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... the tariff is palpably unconstitutional, oppressive, and dangerous; but Pennsylvania, not to be behind her neighbors, and equally willing to strengthen her own faith by a confident asseveration, resolves also, and gives to every warm affirmative of South Carolina, a plain, downright, Pennsylvania negative. South Carolina, to show the strength and unity of her opinion, brings her assembly to a unanimity, within seven voices; Pennsylvania, not to be outdone in this respect any more than in others, reduces her dissentient fraction ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... pleased with flattery; the stupidest of 'all delusions to beg it. From You I should take it ill. We have known one another almost fifty years—to very little purpose, indeed, if any ceremony is necessary, or downright sincerity not established between us. tell me that you are recovered, and that I shall see you some time or other. I have finished the catalogue of my collection; but you shall never have it without fetching, nor, though a less punishment, the prints you desire. I propose ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... picture of whatever is opposite to it is formed upon the retina, and is thence by a nervous concatenation transmitted to the brain. Although, if the most consummate skill, in comparison with which that displayed in the fabrication of Mr. Newall's telescope were downright clumsiness, had striven to devise a seeing apparatus, capable of exact self-adjustment to all degrees of light, all gradations of distance, all varieties of refrangibility, it could not have adopted ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... right, you know. On the other hand, there may be a certain amount of tosh about the Salvation Army—I belong to the Established Church myself—but still you can't deny that it's religion; and you can't go against religion, can you? At least unless you're downright immoral, don't you know. ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... pursues the chief mate. "An' that's just why I an't up to it; the more, as there an't any downright needcessity. As I sayed to them above, I can see no good reason for sinking the ship. She'd sail right out, an' we'd never hear word o' her again. An' if them to be left 'board o' her shud get picked up, what matters that to us? We'll be out o' the way, long afore they could ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... different fashions from those which are suitable to them, and it will be quite hopeless to attempt to induce the general body of a purely artistic class to make louder and more fussy professions of virtue and religion than other people. In fact, it is a downright insult to the dramatic profession to exact or to expect any such thing. Equally objectionable, and equally impracticable, are the attempts of Quixotic "dramatic reformers" to exercise a sort of goody-goody ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... Melbourne, which take opposite sides on nearly every question which arises. They admit into their columns no facts and no arguments which tell against the position they have taken up; nay, more, they resort to downright misrepresentation to support it. It will be said that this is only a form of the party game, but the danger lies in the fact that they circulate in different classes, and therefore these classes see only one side of every question. Moreover, in their competition for the ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth

... is the first to arrive, perhaps for the reason that he is a downright suitor, who has left the city and business, in order to further the interests nearest his heart. He is a keen-eyed, strong-looking fellow, well equipped for success by knowledge of the world and society; resolute, also, in attaining his desired ends. His attentions ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... I thank you much! Then my reward may fall! (That is a downright fair discourse on Patmos and St. Paul!) So Brother Riggs, once more my voice shall ring in the old lists, Cheer up, sick heart, who would not die among ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... said the man, coolly; "I know pretty well every noise as is to be heard out here but that one, and it downright puzzles me. First time I heard it I was sitting by my fire cooking my dinner—a fat, young turkey I'd shot—and I ups and runs as hard as ever I could, and did not stop till I could go no further. Ah! I rec'lect it now, how hungry and faint I was, for I dursen't go back, and I dessay ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... Miss Pinkerton's attachment was, as may be supposed from the high position and eminent virtues of that lady, calm and dignified; but Miss Jemima had already whimpered several times at the idea of Amelia's departure; and, but for fear of her sister, would have gone off in downright hysterics, like the heiress (who paid double) of St. Kitt's. Such luxury of grief, however, is only allowed to parlour-boarders. Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing, and the mending, and the puddings, and the plate and crockery, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... represented as the sons of Atri. Atryahnamaskarta is Durvasas who was the son of Atri's wife, got by the lady through a boon of Mahadeva. Daksha's Sacrifice sought to fly away from Siva, but the latter pursued it and shot his arrow at it for destroying it downright. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... not deficient in "left-handed wisdom," was proved pretty clearly by most of his actions; for instance, when routed by the downright miller from the position which he had taken up of a near kinsman by the father's side, he, like an able tactician, wheeled about and called cousins with Mrs. Deborah's mother; and as that good lady happened to have borne the ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford

... asserted that she has been induced to give publicity to her sorrows—indeed, has occasioned them—by peevishness or imprudence, or by something worse; and thus, by an, unfair, sometimes an altogether false, issue being raised, the unhappy victim not merely of oppression, but of downright brutality, is shut off from justly merited sympathy. And women, too, who are more fortunately situated, in possessing somewhat kinder husbands, or in being possessed by them, shaping their views according to those entertained ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... this?" enquired the traveller. "Ninepence," replied the waiter. Anger, consternation, and incredulity were all depicted, by turns, on the visitor's cheek. "What!" he shouted, "ninepence. Why, I could buy a dozen bottles for half-a-crown. It's downright robbery to ask ninepence for one bottle. You've made a mistake." "I've made no mistake," said the waiter; "I was told to ask ninepence. But," (at this point he sidled up to the traveller and whispered, with terrible accents, in his ear) "it's a ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... what I have thought, and have been afraid to say. Downright, straightforward, he told the Emperor truths as to Rome, as to man, and as to his vices, which I have longed to tell him. He has done what I am afraid to do. He has dared this, which I have dallied with, and left undone. What is the mystery ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... I'm working for you. He broke me flat. It was downright robbery. I bought the wreck of the Cascade, down in Sydney, out of a first instalment ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... imperial institutions were going to the dogs, and that the Czar's sacred name was being taken in vain; and in proof he appended to the complaint a romance, in which the district chief of police is made to appear about once in every ten pages, and sometimes in a downright drunken condition. Therefore, in order to avoid all unpleasantness, it will be better to designate the department in question, ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... drug-store, for he had accomplished his mission. Once again, without recourse to violence, he had maintained his reputation as the worst man in San Pasqual, for his power lay, not in a clever bluff, but in his all-too-evident downright honesty of purpose. Had Doc Taylor presumed to fly in the face of Providence, after that warning, Mr. Hennage felt that the responsibility must very properly rest on the doctor, for the gambler would have killed him as surely as he had ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... aware that in giving you this story just as I was told it I shall incur the charge of downright and deliberate lying. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... to produce all together a well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will find that a little careless scratching about with your pen will bring you very near the same result without an effort; but that no scratching of pen, nor any fortunate chance, nor anything but downright skill and thought, will imitate so much as one leaf of Duerer's. Yet there is considerable intricacy and glittering confusion in the interstices of those vine leaves of his, as well as ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... omit to make very honourable mention of this noble gentleman, though I did not like his cause; but I never saw a man of a more pleasant, calm, courteous, downright, honest behaviour in my life; and for his courage and personal bravery in the field, that we had felt enough of. No man in the world had more fire and fury in him while in action, or more temper and softness out of it. In short, and I cannot ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe

... than Keeler. His affection for Cummins was well known. But his peculiarities might unfit him for the proposed mission. His Southern sense of chivalry unfitted him for detective work that might involve deceit and downright lying. He cared more for his honor than he did for money, and had been known to refuse very tempting offers. Finally, he was opposed to violence. He had refused to act as a watchman for a ditch company on the ground that he might be expected to shoot some one. It was a question ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... Glad to know you, downright glad!" And Jack Wumble nearly wrung Dick's hand off. Then Tom and Dick were introduced, and more handshaking followed, and the boys felt that they had found a ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield

... not answer his question. While the explanation might seem to be fairly plausible, he felt positive the man was telling a downright lie; and Max believed he knew an easy way ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... that all I needed was leisure—however, that's neither here nor there. Helen has arrived, and shall have the honor. Why, the editor who accepted that clever little lever de rideau of hers and brings it out in this month's issue of his magazine, was downright enthusiastic—can you imagine an editor having any enthusiasm left in him, Penn? I can't, for one. Must have a magnificent flow of gastric juice! However that may be, this chap has taken Helen up con amore, and written advice as ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... language, which had been used by some gentlemen towards others, who differed in opinion from them on a subject of so much difficulty as the present. He protested against a debate, in which he could trace nothing like reason; but, on the contrary, downright phrensy, raised perhaps by the most extraordinary eloquence. The abolition, as proposed, was impracticable. He denied the right of the legislature to pass a law for it. He warned the Chancellor of the Exchequer to beware of the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... Oakes was entitled to a certain amount of gloating, but there could be no doubt that his way of telling a story was downright infuriating. ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse

... head. She remembered the advice she had given her young brothers, "Don't pick a fight. Don't hit harder than you need to—but when trouble comes, be facing the right way." She would try to keep her face in the right direction. Here was prejudice, narrowness, suspicion, downright injustice and cruelty—of this she was sure—there were other elements, other complications of which she had no knowledge. Peter Neelands had told her the Government was watching her, but she had ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... very hard at me. "I more than once," said he, "have thought you a little cracked, but now I perceive you are mad—downright mad; don't be angry, I couldn't help saying so, and if you wish me to give you satisfaction, I shall most unwillingly ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... as he did later in court, that if that was high society he would rather be a burglar, and that we starved him, and that the women had to dress each other because they had no lady's maids, and that the whole lot of us were in love with one man, it was downright malicious. ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... wonderful in natural history, and their existence was unknown to the learned men of Europe till within the last sixty years. The most extraordinary of the two is the Ornithorhynchus, or, to translate the hard Greek word into English, the Duck-bill. Its mouth is a true duck's bill, a downright horny beak, and its short paws sprawling sideways with a membrane joining the toes together below, and coming a good deal beyond them in front, seem intermediate between the flippers of the seal and the webbed feet of a water-bird. The first ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... the orchards, near by, two men were employed trimming the trees. To these the captain next turned all his attention, just as he had encouraged the chaplain to persevere, by exclaiming, "out of all question, my dear sir"—though he was absolutely ignorant that the other had just advanced a downright scientific heresy. At this critical moment a cry from Little Smash, that almost equalled a downfall of crockery in its clamour, drew every eye in ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... father's will was satisfied by the gossip of the newspapers. And nothing amazed her more than the announcement that Dora Dundas, of all people in the world, was to inherit his millions. Thoughts of Dora sent cold shivers down her back. She knew the downright and straightforward nature so well that she could easily imagine the hot indignation flaming in the girl's breast for any wrong ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... grassy flat not far from the ranges; hope to find water early to-morrow, as our horses are too poor to go long without it. Was obliged to abandon police-horse Brick to-day, as he was completely done up. Nothing but downright poverty is the cause of his giving in; and the same in the case of Fame and Little Padbury, which we abandoned over a month ago. They were poor when they left, and have only had very dry grass ever since. It is a wonder to me they all do not give in, as many are mere skeletons. Poor old Brick ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest

... come to offer him battle. His men were becoming restless from inaction; and the example of the troublesome Independents had already begun to stir up discontent among them, which threatened, if not checked in season, to end in downright insubordination. As the surest remedy for these evils, Washington resolved to push forward with the road in the direction of Fort Duquesne, and carry the war into the enemy's own country. Requesting Capt. Mackay to guard the fort during his absence, he set out with his entire force ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... withstand a long siege. This was, practically, his sole achievement in the campaign. Outnumbered, outgeneralled, bankrupt in health as in reputation, he soon resigned his command, but not before he had given signs of "downright dotage."[54] He had, however, achieved immortality: his incapacity threw into brilliant relief the genius of his young antagonist, and therefore appreciably affected the fortunes of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... rectitude and unimpeachable propriety of conduct—unsullied by the breath of detraction—rendered her in a great measure impervious to downright ill-nature; but still she was open to teasing and bantering; and the more she was teased, and the more she was bantered, the more impenetrable she became. We endeavoured to find out from herself—but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... rage for the author among the generality of novel-readers. His intrinsic merits, in sober retrospect, seem very feeble. For all his concern with current questions, his accurate news instinct, he is fundamentally a romantic of the last century, with more than one plain touch of the downright operatic. ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... receive the apology as quite satisfactory? That he would not seems to show a lingering regard to real honour. A downright villain, like the king, would have pretended its thorough acceptance—especially as they were just going to fence like friends; but he, as regards his honour, will not accept it until justified in doing so by the opinion ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... of the moon put the army of Alexander the Great into such a consternation, some days before the battle of Arbela, that the soldiers, under the impression that heaven was against them, were very reluctant to advance; and their devotion turning to downright disobedience, Alexander commanded the Egyptian astrologers, who were the deepest versed in the mystery of the stars, to give their opinions of this eclipse in the presence of all the officers of his army. Without giving themselves much trouble to explain the physical cause which it was ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... of a corpse, nor of sick and outwearied flesh, but it should be the marble image of death or weariness. So the concomitants should be distinctly marble, severe and monumental in their lines, not shroud, not bedclothes, not actual armor nor brocade, not a real soft pillow, not a downright hard stuffed mattress, but the mere type and suggestion of these: a certain rudeness and incompletion of finish is very noble in all. Not that they are to be unnatural, such lines as are given should be pure and true, and clear ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... declared plainly that faith alone in Jesus could justify a man; on that point they dared not yield, though heaven and earth should fall. The mass he denounced as the greatest and most horrible abomination, inasmuch as it was 'downright destructive of the first article,' and as the chiefest of Papal idolatries; moreover, this dragon's tail had begotten many other kinds of vermin and abominations of idolatry. With regard to the Papacy ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... moment, with his familiar stiff gestures, and his restless eyes quivering behind his eye-glasses. I made my complaints to him. He answered me.... But why should I write down, even in a notebook which I am going to burn, my recollections of a downright scoundrel? He takes sides with Mademoiselle Prefere, whose intelligent mind and irreproachable character he has long appreciated. He does not feel himself in a position to decide the nature of the question at issue; but he must assure me that appearances have been greatly against ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... off; and in a little while longer no sound came from the deck of any sort whatever, and by that I knew that all the boats must have got away. And as I realized that I was forsaken, and felt sure from what I had heard that the ship would float for only a few minutes longer, I gave a cry of downright despair—and then I lost track of the whole bad business by tumbling to the floor in the darkness in ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... "you do not know me, nor the like of me. I've got no right to speak to you, but I couldn't help it. Oh! please believe me, I am not real downright bad. I'm Sally Johnson, daughter of a man whom they drove out of the town. My mother died when I was little, and I never had a show; and folks think because I live with my father, and he makes me know the crowd he travels with, that I must be in with them, and be of their sort. I never ...
— The Denver Express - From "Belgravia" for January, 1884 • A. A. Hayes

... never told a lie—that is to say, a downright lie—in all his life. It must be owned, however, that he would sometimes try to dodge the truth, by throwing out some remark quite foreign to the offense under consideration; an effective way of whipping the father of fibs around the stump, as many people who ought to know ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... was downright mean of Jack that he wouldn't tell me where his gold was. I know he had at least fifty thousand dollars' worth stowed away somewhere. He knew he couldn't take it with him, and it couldn't do him any good, and it would have been a very tidy sum for me. He couldn't have ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... nor can cancel the primeval, indefeasible, unalterable law of Nature and of nations; and if no magistracies control its exertions, those exertions must derive their limitation and direction either from the equity and moderation of the ruler, or from downright revolt on the part of the subject by rebellion, divested of all its criminal qualities. The moment a sovereign removes the idea of security and protection from his subjects, and declares that he is everything and they nothing, when he declares that no contract he makes with them ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the supreme court, is charged six guineas; and the clients pay down at once, without any questions, too glad to do so, provided they can get rid of their temporary difficulties. Litigation is short and quick. Conveyancing is downright profit; a deed, however short, conveying a piece of land, however trifling, costs five guineas. There are no stamps, and the work is done in an hour. More valuable properties are conveyed by a deed generally charged nine guineas. My friend —— has drawn twelve such deeds in his office in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... Our company, Mr. and Mrs. Porter, Mr. and Mrs. Coates, Mrs. Atkins, Mrs. Hicks, Mr. Piper and wife, Joseph Fuller and wife, Tho. Fuller and wife, Dame Durrant, myself and wife, and Mr. French's family. After supper our behaviour was far from that of serious, harmless mirth; it was downright obstreperious, mixed with a great deal of folly and stupidity. Our diversion was dancing or jumping about, without a violin or any musick, singing of foolish healths, and drinking all the time as fast as it could be well poured down; and the parson of ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... in conclusion, "if there is one thing nobler than another, it is an upright, downright, disinterested, honest man. Such I am proud and happy to declare my friend, your friend, the friend of all honest men, to be; and I call for three cheers ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... auditor frankly observes, 'I was interested.' She described her life in the Arab camps, and explained that her influence over the tribes was partly due to her long sight, a quality held in high esteem in the desert, and partly to a brusque, downright manner, which is always effective with Orientals. She professed to have fasted physically and mentally for years, living only on milk, and reading neither books nor newspapers. Her unholy claim to supremacy in the spiritual kingdom was based, in Kinglake's ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... I been in the service!" roared Sawbridge. "But he's mad—downright, stark, staring mad!" And the first lieutenant bounced out of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... apparently minded to test the matter by announcing his resolve to moot the problem of the freedom of the seas, but when admonished by the British government that it would not even brook its mention, he at once gave it up and, presumably drawing the obvious inference from this downright refusal, applied it to the Irish, Egyptian, and other issues, which were forthwith eliminated from the category of open or international problems. But France's insistent demand, on the other hand, for the Rhine frontier met with ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... benefit and a progress in its day, but that which was a benefit yesterday may it not become an evil to-morrow—a danger? That which is progress to-day, may it not one hundred years hence have become mere routine, and a downright trammel? Is not that the history of the world? And if you wish to know, Monsieur, by what sign we may recognize the fact that a social or political system has attained its end, I will tell you: it is when it is manifest only in its inconveniences and abuses. Then the machine ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... not from me'; nor did I say this, which you erroneously attribute to me, but you yourself, and what you said was very true. For indeed, my dear fellow, the design which you meditate of teaching what you do not know, and have not taken any pains to learn, is downright insanity. ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato

... apparently enjoying the complete confidence of the father. What, that would be effective, could one say, without proofs, without . . . This Mr. de Barral must be, Mrs. Fyne pronounced, either a very stupid or a downright bad man, to ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... straightforward simplicity! "Now," thought Lady Frances, "one of the court waiting-maids would have comprehended my meaning in a moment; and this wench, with ten times their zeal and real sense, thinks it downright wicked to pry into her lady's secrets. I wonder my women have not taught her the court fashions.—You may go to bed, Barbara; light my night lamp, and give me a book; I do not ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... vacant heart, 530 Whose every day was made of melody, Hears not the voice of mirth.—The shrill-tongued shrew, Meek as the turtle-dove, forgets her chiding. Here are the wise, the generous, and the brave; The just, the good, the worthless, the profane; The downright clown, and perfectly well-bred; The fool, the churl, the scoundrel, and the mean; The supple statesman, and the patriot stern; The wrecks of nations, and the spoils of time, With all the lumber of six thousand years. 540 Poor man!—how happy once in thy first state! When yet but ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... it downright good and dainty, and he never found it out. I bought the lard and the spices out of my six francs: I'm the mistress of my own money"; and she disappeared rapidly, fancying she ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... some little confusion, people wanting to get away, and people trying to come in, from downright curiosity (of all things the most hateful), and others making great to-do, and talking of their own time to come, telling their own age, and so on. But every one seemed to think, or feel, that I had a right to be there; because the women ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... Alvina, though in loyalty she adhered to her beloved Miss Frost, did not really mind the quiet suggestive power of Miss Pinnegar. For Miss Pinnegar was not vulgarly insinuating. On the contrary, the things she said were rather clumsy and downright. It was only that she seemed to weigh what she said, secretly, before she said it, and then she approached as if she would slip it into her hearer's consciousness without his being aware of it. She seemed to slide her speeches unnoticed into one's ears, so that one ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... in the correctness of this remark, but desires to inform the practitioner what a sad loss he has met with. He is sure the gentleman will scarcely believe his word when he tells him what it is. "I saw how ye felt downright affected when that nigger o' mine prayed with so much that seemed like honesty and christianity, last night," ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... dining-table, which was covered with a checked cloth in red and white. Her dress was of dark crimson; she wore a cameo brooch and a gold chain round her neck; over her shoulders was thrown a white knitted shawl, for the weather was extremely cold, the English climate being much more serious and downright at that day than it is now. She bent low to the task, holding her head slightly askew, putting the tip of her tongue between her lips, and expending all the energy of her soul and body in an intense effort to do what she was doing as well as it ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... was no Anglo-maniac, shot at us a look fierce as any bonassus; while he asked, abruptly, what we thought in England of one whom he styled the "Demosthenes of Ireland"—looked at us for an answer. As it would have been unsafe to have answered him in the downright, offhand manner, in which we like both to deal and to be dealt by, we professed that we knew but one Demosthenes, and he not an Irishman, but a Greek; which, by securing us his contempt, kept us safe from the danger of something ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... jolly!" was his first observation. "Downright handsome of Ruthven!" and then as the colour rose a little in his face, "Just the thing for you, Jock, home work, which is exactly what ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... which Sheridan puts forward (unconsciously, most likely), for those brilliant blackguards who are the chief characters of his comedies. Vice is never to be mistaken for virtue in Fielding's honest downright books; it goes by its name, and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... limbs, to eat; While others followed mysteries To which few folks, bind prentices, That want no stock but that of brass, And may set up without a cross,— As sharpers, parasites, pimps, players, Pickpockets, coiners, quacks, soothsayers, And all those that in enmity With downright working, cunningly Convert to their own use the labour Of their good-natured heedless neighbour. These were called knaves; but bar the name, The grave industrious were the same: All trades and places knew some cheat, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... looking a perfect gentleman, except that his face was rather yellow. Carrie, by way of encouragement said: "You do look nice, Lupin." Lupin replied: "Yes, it's a good make- up, isn't it? A regular-downright-respectable-funereal-first- ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... man who could propose, even playfully, to quench old McNab's thirst must have been a utopist, a pursuer of chimeras; for of downright irony Heyst was not prodigal. And, may be, this was the reason why he was generally liked. At that epoch in his life, in the fulness of his physical development, of a broad, martial presence, with his bald head and long moustaches, he resembled the portraits of Charles ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... only her pardon, but one of the hairs which I longed for, which I put through a shilling, with which I have on evenings after fairs, like this, frequently worked what seemed to those who looked on downright witchcraft, but which is nothing more than pleasant deception. And now, Mr. Romany Rye, to testify my regard for you, I give you the shilling and the hair. I think you have a kind of respect for Miss Berners; ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... seem to keer much now 'bout Isom," said the Brayton. "Folks say he tuk on so awful at fust that hit looked like he wus goin' crazy. He's gittin' downright peert again. Hello!" ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.

... in with this here wrack," (so he pronounced the word) "downright providential, Harry. Here we has, fust of all, the very great pleasure of being of sarvice to a most charming young 'oman; and next, we has a chance of filling up our stores and water—and not afore 'twas time, too, for I bethought me this morning of seeing ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... have it, certainly, with a downright brute. But he was not that. In an extremity of bitterness, he fished up a drowned old thought, of all his torments being due to the impulsive half-brute he was. And between the good and the bad in him, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... a fortune-teller among them, too," he continued. "Say, she's a shrewd one. Of course, she's one of the fakers, but she's downright smart—told me a lot of things about myself that were true. Suppose she looked me over sharp. Say, I tell you what I'll do; I'll get her to tell your fortunes. How'd you like to have your ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... or two could make, Like rockets druv by their own burnin', All leap an' light, to leave a wake Men's hearts an' faces skyward turnin'!— But, it strikes me, 't ain't jest the time Fer stringin' words with settisfaction: Wut's wanted now's the silent rhyme 'Twixt upright Will an' downright Action. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... for liberty, as was evinced by Lear Green, made the efforts of the most ardent friends, who were in the habit of aiding fugitives, seem feeble in the extreme. Of all the heroes in Canada, or out of it, who have purchased their liberty by downright bravery, through perils the most hazardous, none deserve more ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... instigation, to prove him a knave and myself an honest man; and touching the Duke of York, I will take my death, I never meant him any ill, nor the king, nor the queen;—and therefore, Peter, have at thee with a downright blow! ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... over to the French Government at a fancy rake-off—and then leave him with the bag to hold when the time for settlement and complaint comes. There is a strong Republican party in this State and they're keeping quiet, but year after next, when Bill Faulkner comes up for re-election, downright illegality will be alleged, and he will be defeated in dishonor and with dishonor to the State. I am his Secretary of State and I'm going to save him if I can. And you are going to help me, sir!" And as he spoke my Uncle, the General Robert, gave to me a distinguished shake of the ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... cause for jealousy. It was impossible for Mrs. Beauly to leave Scotland, after visiting at the houses of her cousin's neighbors, without also visiting at her cousin's house. To take any other course would have been an act of downright rudeness, and would have excited remark. She did not deny that Mr. Macallan had admired her in the days when they were both single people. But there was no further expression of that feeling when she had married another man, and when he had married another woman. ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... perrrarrrie country of North America; but to judge from his costume, he might have come from about anywhere. He wore the red fez of the Algerian troops, the tunic of his Britannic Majesty's fighting forces, the horizon-blue slicker of the Armee de France, but his underpinning, as well as his voice, was downright United States. Only the khaki trousers and canvas leggins identified him, in part, at least, as a member of ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces

... young male acquaintance of any damsel took a seat beside her, it would be certain to attract the papa or chaperon, to the spot, to see what was going on, as their most likely subject of conversation would have a strong leaning towards a flirtation, or downright love-making, at which nearly all the Spaniards are great adepts; the flowery expressions of their language being peculiarly suitable for ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... for not being explicit with her; for going away from her without one honest, manly, downright word; for sneaking off without telling her that she was more than life to me, and that if she cared for me as I cared for her I would go on with her to Venice, and meet her people ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... on, with an uneasy movement of his hands. "It's too bad to expect so much of you. You have more pride than most people, yet I behave to you as if you didn't know the meaning of the word. Do, I beg, believe me when I say that I am downright ashamed, and that I hardly know how to ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... fact was more significant than was then apparent. Cobbett, son of a labourer who had risen to be a small farmer, had in spite of all obstacles learned to read and write and become a great master of the vernacular. His earliest model had been Swift's Tale of a Tub, and in downright vigour of homely language he could scarcely be surpassed even by the author of the Drapier's Letters. He had enlisted as a soldier, and had afterwards drifted to America. There he had become conspicuous as a typical John ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... could not help it! he would get in the way! Things would have been much worse if he had not got first to his father! He would wait a bit, and see what would turn up! For the tutor-fellow, he must not quarrel with him downright! No good would come of that! In the end he would have his way! and that ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... another, power over your liberty! If you cannot pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your creditor! You will be in fear, when you speak to him! You will make poor pitiful sneaking excuses! and, by degrees, come to lose your veracity, and sink into base downright lying! For, as Poor RICHARD says, The second vice is Lying, the first is Running into Debt: and again, to the same purpose, Lying rides upon Debt's back. Whereas a free born Englishman ought not to be ashamed or afraid to see, or speak to any man living. But Poverty often deprives ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... place such teachers are disposed to bring the people into downright bondage and to bind their conscience by forcing laws upon them and teaching work-righteousness. The effect is that fear impels them to do what has been pounded into them, as if they were bond-slaves, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... to refuse anything, or to utter harsh words to a dog. I have not put the question in a way to be downright refused, Sergeant." ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... as she is told,—unless she can be made to be downright in love with some one like yourself. Why not ask her ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... summer came, with its terribly hot days, the woman's madness seemed to culminate in downright frenzy, for whole nights together she went shrieking through the village. The dogs crept forth from under the gates to meet her, and she sat down beside them, put her arms round their heads, and ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... if you just chucked a bucket of water over me and SAID you'd pulled me out," suggested the victim. "The other thing seems a downright LIE." ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... Nic—wooden guns, as we call quakers out at sea or in a fort. Strikes me, sir, as a real, downright, good, gen-u-wine trouble, such as losing all his money, would be the making of the Captain; and after that he'd be ready to laugh at losing a few salmon as he don't want. I say, Master Nic, you aren't offended at me for making ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn

... of the public ball-rooms, a stranger would be delighted with such a display of pretty faces and neat figures. I have hardly ever seen a really plain Canadian girl in her teens; and a downright ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... insane element is often cropping out in the shape of extravagances or irregularities in thought or action, which, according to the stand-point they are viewed from, are regarded either as gross eccentricity, or undisciplined powers, or downright insanity. For every manifestation of this kind they may show no lack of plausible reasons, calculated to mislead the superficial observer; but still the fact remains, that these traits, which are never witnessed in persons of well-balanced minds, are a part of their habitual character. When people ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... it came to downright combat, they must be overwhelmed. Carlsen's gun again assumed proper proportions. Lund might not be afraid of it, but Rainey was, very frankly. He should have snatched it from the cabin cushions. But Tamada? He could not dismiss Tamada as an important factor. There was no question ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... Paul by himself, as usual, in the writing-room. He had commenced work in downright earnest on the ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... innards like a human, ain't she?" He instantly beheld a vision of the man in the front of the almanac whose envelope is neatly drawn back to reveal his complicated structure in behalf of the zodiacal symbols. "It's downright gruesome," he added. But his guest was viewing the neat complexities of metal with real pleasure and with what seemed to the car's owner a ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... returned to the vomit. Alcuin returning from England, where he had stayed three years, in 793, wrote a tender moving letter to Felix, exhorting him sincerely to renounce his error. But the unhappy man, in a long answer, endeavored to establish his heresy so roundly as to fall into downright Nestorianism, which indeed is a consequence of his erroneous principle. For Christ as man cannot be called the adoptive Son of God, unless his human nature subsist by a distinct person from the divine.[5] By an order of Charlemagne, Alcuin and St. Paulinus solidly confuted ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... general's years, he evidently is a little vain of his person, and ambitious of conquests. I have observed him on Sunday in church, eyeing the country girls most suspiciously; and have seen him leer upon them with a downright amorous look, even when he has been gallanting Lady Lillycraft, with great ceremony, through the church-yard. The general, in fact, is a veteran in the service of Cupid, rather than of Mars, having signalized himself in all the garrison ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... thankful that they were never put into practice. The fiercest reformers grow calm, and are fain to put up with things as they are: the loudest Radical orators become dumb, quiescent placemen: the most fervent Liberals, when out of power, become humdrum Conservatives, or downright tyrants or despots in office. Look at Thiers, look at Guizot, in opposition and in place! Look at the Whigs appealing to the country, and the Whigs in power! Would you say that the conduct of these men is an act of treason, as the Radicals bawl—who would give way ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... not so far gone As you suppose: Two words t' a bargain: That may be done, and time enough, When you have given downright proof; And yet 'tis no fantastic pique 545 I have to love, nor coy dislike: 'Tis no implicit, nice aversion T' your conversation, mein, or person, But a just fear, lest you should prove False and perfidious in love:, 550 For ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... go I can't play checkers, an' it's downright mean. What do you care about little girls? ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... must weigh a ton, I think," Loubet went on. "This is fine music to march by!" And alluding to the sum he received as substitute: "I don't care what people say, but fifteen hundred 'balls' for a job like this is downright robbery. Just think of the pipes he'll smoke, sitting by his warm fire, the stingy old miser in whose place I'm going to get my ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... a camel in a bad temper, Mr. Jim," said Dave Boone darkly; he had put in a weary time in Egypt. "For downright wickedness them snake-headed beggars ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... author among the generality of novel-readers. His intrinsic merits, in sober retrospect, seem very feeble. For all his concern with current questions, his accurate news instinct, he is fundamentally a romantic of the last century, with more than one plain touch of the downright operatic. ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... a downright good fellow," said the Skeptic warmly. "The fuss and feathers of his wife's hospitality can't prevent his giving you the real thing. Even Philo likes to go there—particularly when Camellia is away. I presume ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond

... vein in weekly journalism, and for nearly forty years was the stormy petrel of Canadian politics. From England there came, among others, Dr. John Rolph, shrewd and politic, and Captain John Matthews, a half-pay artillery officer. Peter Perry, downright and rugged and of a homely eloquence, represented the Loyalists of the Bay of Quinte, which was the center of Canadian Methodism. Among the newer comers from the United States, the foremost were ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... took half a dozen over to the minister's wife this mornin', and she was so pleased! She said it was sich a blessin' to have fresh eggs again. She was gittin' sick o' them she's been buyin' at Billings'. She was downright thankful." ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... violent of those tenets which we have noticed, saw nothing but ruin to the general cause, if they were insisted on during this crisis, when unity was of so much consequence. Hence he disapproved, as we have seen, of the honest, downright, and ardent zeal of Macbriar, and was extremely desirous to receive the assistance of the moderate party of presbyterians in the immediate overthrow of the government, with the hope of being hereafter ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... at her. She had fairly fallen in love with this new cousin of hers; her beauty, and gracious ways, her foreign accent, and now her experiences of nuns and convents had come like a revelation to the little English girl in her downright, everyday life. With a comical incongruity, she could compare her in her own mind to nothing but an enchanted princess in some fairy tale; and she stood gazing first at her and then at the glass, where soft wavy brown hair and red and white daisies ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... pleasant quarters in Devonshire to the north-west of Ireland. The change at any time would have been unpleasant, but the service they were entering upon was particularly irksome and jarring to the feelings. Grumbling, in a military man, is, however, downright folly, and they soon made themselves tolerably at home in their new quarters. It is needless to dwell upon the disturbed and distracted state of the country, or on the military movements of the time. After the regiment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... more trouble in a community than downright mean ones," declared Hiram. "If I have any serious trouble with the Dickersons, like enough it will be because of the interference of the ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... Hampshire as broad as his wife's, "you will have your will. Not that Captain Henslowe believes a word of your ghosts—not he; but he took fire when he heard of queer sights about the castle. He sent for the chap who stood sentry, and was downright sharp on him for not reporting what he had seen, and he is ordering out a sergeant's party to open the vault, so you may come and see, if you have ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as well to take up the findings of the police. The police of course never entertained any suggestion of the occult. They are material; and were convinced from the start that the case had its origin in downright villainy. Man is complex; but being so, is oft overbalanced by evil Some genius had made ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... profit. At any rate, I bought a good many of them, conceiving that it might be the civillest way of requiting her for her instructive conversation and the trouble she took in showing me the house. It cost me a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a gentlemanly one) to offer a downright fee to the lady-like girl who had admitted me; but I swallowed my delicate scruples with some little difficulty, and she digested hers, so far as I could observe, with no difficulty at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... apothegms, and sometimes the subject changes on every second page. This fact constitutes one of the counts in the orthodox indictment of him: it is cited as proof that his capacity for consecutive thought was limited, and that he was thus deficient mentally, and perhaps a downright moron. The argument, it must be obvious, is fundamentally nonsensical. What deceives the professors is the traditional prolixity of philosophers. Because the average philosophical writer, when he essays to expose his ideas, makes such inordinate drafts upon the parts of speech that the dictionary ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... trench mortars and bombs to which the closeness of the opposing lines at Helles would have lent themselves well—in short, total lack of organization at home to provide even the most rudimentary and indispensable artillery requisites for daily consumption; not to speak of downright carelessness which resulted in wrong shells being sent to the wrong guns, and new types of fuses being sent without fuse keys and new types of howitzer shells without range tables. These serious faults provoked ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... honour, with a downright hanchor, but with sum'mat like a killog. But, that's no hanchor, a'ter all, but only ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... and qualmy to leave your cot,) you awake one morning, and find yourself snugly at anchor in the bay of Funchal; and the romantic, sun-bright mountains of Madeira, gorgeously crested with a mass of brilliant clouds, looking in at your cabin-window. It seems downright enchantment! You leap up as if there was a new soul in your body. You hurry ashore in the first boat. Your cough, lassitude, and qualmishness have altogether left you. Your step is elastic, and your spirits as buoyant as a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various

... colder century than was ours, my dears. Your art has tempered love and passion into sentiment, and hate you have learned to call aversion or dislike. But we of that simple-hearted elder time were more downright; and I have writ the word I mean in saying that my love was at the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... of this wise treatment was entirely ruined by the arrival of the doctor, who bore the sounding official designation of the Residency surgeon. This gentleman was wont to be sceptical in the matter of ailments, limiting his recognition only to honest, downright illness worthy of the attention of a medico whose name stood in front of a formidable array of honourable letters, too numerous for him to mention. But even really great people are not always strictly consistent, and occasionally make small lapses from the ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser

... not an active inaugurator, of a new era of taste in verse. He cannot remain the only practical asserter of the theory that it is better to steal good poetry than to write bad. Should his followers, however, shrink from downright theft, they might consent to shine as adapters. Some who are masters of English undefiled might help the cause by translating some of the best bits of Browning, Swinburne and Rossetti, to say nothing of Tennyson, who has gradually constructed a dialect of his own and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... profound, all-forgetting adoration which marked his whole air, gaze, and manner. Nor should I have been so wretchedly blind to what was the obvious feeling of discontent and disquiet in her bosom. Never did evenings seem to pass with more downright dullness to any one party in the world. If Edgerton spoke to her, which he did not frequently, his address was marked by a trepidation and hesitancy akin to fear—a manner which certainly indicated anything ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... Inn, I informed my companions, that there was at no great distance a large iron foundry, never seen to perfection but at night, and proposed our visiting it. Mr. Coleridge felt downright horror at the thought of being again moved; considering that he had had quite enough exercise for one day, and infinitely preferring the fire of his host to the forge of the Cyclops. The ladies also rather ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... fell again to listening to Erik. His word made an endless echo in her head.... "Perins a droll species. A sort of indomitable ass. Refuses to succumb to his intelligence. If you think he's in love with your Mary you're a downright imbecile. The man adjusts his passions to his phrases as neatly as a pretty woman pulling on her stockings...." She didn't like Erik to refer to pretty women pulling on their stockings. What an idiot! If Erik wanted to he could go out and help ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... persuasive gravity. "If you show off with your tempers, that will give a color to their notion that you have been badly brought up. You must do us and yourself what credit you can, going amongst strangers. I am not afraid for you, unless you set up your little back, and determine to be downright naughty and perverse." ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... say that I pay very much attention to sermons as a rule, but Pilcher gave us a regular downright, no-mistake-about-it, rouser at ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones

... course, when the ground was as heavy as Rotten Row in April,—how in the name of common sense can Jimjams be expected to show up against high-class yearlings like Ballarat and Tifftoff on the Goodwin Sands, T. Y. C.? The whole thing is only another instance of the hare-brained imbecility and downright puddling folly with which the cackling herd will follow any brazen-headed nincompoop who sets up to advise them on turf matters. Jimjams has just as much chance of winning this race as Mr. JEREMY has of being Archbishop of Canterbury. Verb. sap. At any rate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various

... loose-heel'd clogs, Pushed the brass-barr'd door of a public-house; The spring went hard against her; hand and knee Shoved their weak best. As the door poised ajar, Hullabaloo of talking men burst out, A pouring babble of inflamed palaver, And overriding it and shouted down High words, jeering or downright, broken like Crests that leap and stumble in rushing water. Just as the door went wide and she stepped in, 'She cannot do it!' one was bawling out: A glaring hulk of flesh with a bull's voice. He finger'd with his neckerchief, and stretched His throat to ease the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... cricket he had done so excellently that it was a grievance that he would not play regularly, and there was a sort of general idea that if he chose he could do most things well. After that fight he changed altogether. He took to cricket in downright earnest, and was soon acknowledged to be the best bat and best bowler in the school. Before that it had been regarded as certain that when the captain left I should be elected, but when the time came he got a majority of votes. I should not have ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... farming in good earnest, with success and profit, is not fun, but downright work. It is work, but no more persistent, constant, studious, or thoughtful than that which is demanded by any of the other callings in life, none of which has or can have such delightful compensations as this. Careful experiments should be made ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... tasteful, but chose every thing by its costliness and magnificence. Of course the milliner assured her that every thing she took a fancy to from its rarity, was becoming; and then, oh dear! how the Fairies were amused! for poor Julia looked downright ugly in some of the things she selected, and still went away as self satisfied as ever, on the old grounds that the costume was so expensive that none of her acquaintance could get one like it. This was still her chief comfort! Euphrosyne ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... ye suld hae been fashed wi' few o' mine," said the downright man of staves and hoops, "if I had only your gude-will to thank ye for: I suld e'en hae set the guse, and the wild deukes, adn the runlet of sack to balance that account. Gude-will, man, is a geizen'd tub, that hauds in nae liquor; but gude deed's like the cask, tight, round, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... hate her. I do indeed. It isn't love for me now so much as downright malice against Palliser, because he baulked her project before. She is a wicked old woman. Some of us fellows are wicked enough—you ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... grande maitresse, who is generally a widow of the first quality, always very old, and is at the same time groom of the stole, and mother of the maids. The dresses are not at all in the figure they pretend to in England, being looked upon no otherwise than as downright chambermaids. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... answer his question. While the explanation might seem to be fairly plausible, he felt positive the man was telling a downright lie; and Max believed he knew an easy way ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... first downright charge of an African elephant that I had seen, and instinctively I followed my old Ceylon plan of waiting for a close shot. She lowered her head when within about six yards, and I fired low for the centre of the forehead, exactly ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... stood to reason when folks talked serious-like they didn't always stop to measure what they said, and if a text or two o' Scripture sounded seemly, 'twas fitted in to help their speech out with, not to be pulled abroad to seek the downright meanin' o' each word. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... expression in Jim's eyes—a menace that she did not at all understand. She had seen the waste of broken middle age and the pity of blighted childhood. She had seen fear and, if she had stayed a few moments longer, she would have seen downright brutality. Her hand, ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster

... rough, so certain persons only took pains with my head, and left the rest of my body unfinished and unworked. Yet in this matter I have falsified the expectation, not only of the jealous, but also of the downright hostile, who formerly conceived a wrong opinion from the case of Quintus Metellus, son of Lucius—the most energetic and gallant man in the world, and in my opinion of surpassing courage and firmness—who, people ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... feel he is badly used because he is so honest. I sometimes wish that I could afford to be honest too and to tell somebody the downright truth. I should like to tell him the truth and I almost think I will. 'My dear fellow, I did for a time think I couldn't do better, and I'm not at all sure now that I can. But then you are so very dull, and I'm not certain that I should care to be Queen of the English ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... London who sits upon my left. But I do not think the charter gives him very much power over me; moreover, I shall soon come to an end of my examinership, and therefore I am not afraid, but shall go on to say what I was going to say, and that is, that in my belief it is a downright cruelty—I have no other word for it—to require from gentlemen who are engaged in medical studies, the pretence—for it is nothing else, and can be nothing else, than a pretence—of a knowledge of comparative anatomy as part of their medical curriculum. Make ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... spears and armour rang with a mighty din, and so fierce and bloody was their onset that in all that day there had been no such cruel press, and rage, and smiting. At that same moment rode fiercely into the thickest of the struggle King Arthur and Kings Ban and Bors, and slew downright on both hands right and left, until their horses went in ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles

... she reserved for males. Her voice was clear, loud, and rather high-pitched whenever she spoke to a person of her own sex; a comely English blonde, with pale eyelashes; a keen, sensible girl, and not a downright wicked one; only born artful. This was Fanny Dover; and the tall gentleman—whose relation she was, and whose wife she resolved to be in one year, three years, or ten, according to his power of resistance—was Harrington ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... other intelligent proposition ever offered. But these unintelligent propositions were offered; and the ultimate result was this rather important one: that the harshness of Utilitarianism began to turn into downright tyranny. That beautiful faith in human nature and in freedom which had made delicate the dry air of John Stuart Mill; that robust, romantic sense of justice which had redeemed even the injustices of Macaulay—all that seemed slowly and sadly to be drying up. Under the shock of Darwinism ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... Fuller, 'this girl has been busy a week fixing your rooms and planning for you. We could not hear of your going elsewhere. It would be downright ingratitude ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... the captive criss-cross-row is hers. 90 The Stagyrite, who rules from Nature drew, Opinions gave, but gave his reasons too. Our great Dictators take a shorter way— Who shall dispute what the Reviewers say? Their word's sufficient; and to ask a reason, In such a state as theirs, is downright treason. True judgment now with them alone can dwell; Like Church of Rome, they're grown infallible. Dull superstitious readers they deceive, Who pin their easy faith on critic's sleeve, 100 And ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... so well-fed and rosy, that a point of a rush would take a drop of blood out of his cheek.** Then he was the comeliest and best-looking young man in the parish, could tell lots of droll stories, and sing scores of merry songs that would make you split your sides with downright laughing; and when a wake or a dance would happen to be in the neighborhood, maybe there wouldn't be many a sly look from the purty girls for ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... them and know as fully as any Whig on the continent knows, that the king and ministry never had the least design of an accommodation with America, but an absolute, unconditional conquest. And the part which the Tories were to act, was, by downright lying, to endeavor to put the continent off its guard, and to divide and sow discontent in the minds of such Whigs as they might gain an influence over. In short, to keep up a distraction here, that the force sent from England might be able to conquer in "one campaign." They and the ministry were, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... dropped this,' I remarked, as quietly and drily as I could. (I thought it best to treat him so.) For some while he stood before me in downright terror, and seemed unable to understand. He then suddenly grabbed at his side-pocket, opened his mouth in alarm, and beat his forehead with ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... have worshipped foul devils, and rendered homage to dumb idols, and loved the pleasures of this vain world, and, like swine, wallowed in the mire of sinful lusts, and made their lives a headquarters for all wickedness, shall stand naked and laid bare, downright ashamed and downcast, pitiable in appearance and in fact, set forth for a reproach to all creation. All their life in word, deed and thought shall come before their faces. Then, after this bitter disgrace ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... long, sunny curls, and sweet, blue eyes, was taken away, you made a very touching application of her decease, to illustrate what all good people were to become in the unknown world. How did you get out of the scrape which followed the remark of your downright eldest, remembering also the departure of a good-natured, obese, elderly neighbor,—"Then I thpothe Mithter Thimmonth ith a big angel"? So he probably is; but Simmons's two hundred pounds of earthliness did not suit your sentimentality quite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... exclaimed. "It's downright pitiful the way that old man tries to do for himself and his poor old wife. It's surprising, though, how well he gets along with the housework and taking care of ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... was impossible to hop through Asia on one foot, you'd go and do it just to show it could be done,' retorted Dick 'You have a passion for doing things because they're difficult or dangerous, and, if they're downright impossible, you chortle ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... which he tried to pass, and searched long in vain for an opening through it. At last he found one, very straight and narrow, through which he struggled after desperate efforts. 'It showed him,' he said, 'that none could enter into life but those who were in downright earnest, and unless they left the wicked world behind them, for here was only room for body and soul, but not for body and soul and sin.' The vision brought him no comfort, for it passed away and left him still on the wrong side: a little comfortable self-conceit ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... nurse his self-righteous pride, must put on a grosser form, till he cannot choose but see himself as he is. The secret devil within must blaze out in a shape too palpable to be ignored. And so, as often happens where the subtleties of self-deceit are thus cherished, he at length proceeds a downright conscious hypocrite, this too of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... seems to say: "This matter is of importance to you and for me, but after all it does not concern the orbit of a planet and there is no use talking and acting as if it did." This sense of humour often saves the American in a situation in which the Englishman would have recourse to downright brutality; it unties the Gordian knot instead of cutting it. A too strong conviction of being in the right often leads to conflicts that would be avoided by a more humorous appreciation of the relative ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... of his own merits, which had been found out, and duly appreciated by these bon vivants, while he considered that the grave admonitions of his real friends proceeded from nothing in the world but downright envy ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... as too little," observed the fish dealer, while John went on placidly arranging his turnips and carrots. "What appears to me to be best religion for a working-man is to hold a kind of middle strip between faith and downright disbelievin'. Let yo' soul trust to the Lord's lookin' arter you, but never let yo' hands get so much as an inklin' that you're a-trustin'. Yes, the safest way is to believe in the Lord on Sunday, an' on Monday to go to work as if you wa'nt ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... constant fellows in the world, but as a general thing he was a little saturnine in temper. Any outward display of cheerfulness was rare with him, and such an outward sign of inward exultation as I read this morning was a downright astonishment. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... within ten yards of him; and if you are not in the field with himself, when you are hunting to tutor him about riding, he will kill all the horses you have in the stable in one month, for he hath killed downright, and lamed so that they will never be fit for use, no more than five horses since he has hunted my hounds, which is two years and upwards; he can talk no dog language to a hound; he hath no voice; speaks to a hound such as if his head were in a churn; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various

... Master Case. Even he was chary of showing himself, and turned up mostly by night; and pretty soon he began to table his cards and make up to Uma. I was still sore about Ioane, and when Case turned up in the same line of business I cut up downright rough. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... is simply odious!" she exclaimed. "I have no patience with him. Why can't he behave like an ordinary man just once in a way? Going off at sunrise, and never stopping to say good-bye! It is downright rudeness, and there is no reason why he should conclude he can be as rude as he likes with impunity. You don't seem to mind his bearishness, Meryl? but I hope you have spirit enough ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... amiability itself. Plain, perhaps, but gentleness is the compensating quality, a truer source of household wealth than beauty."—"Well spoken! Deign to keep it in heart, for the neighbours' tongues wag as to Iemon and O'Hana. Malice can cause as much unhappiness as downright wickedness. Besides, Kwaiba is no man to trifle with." Iemon was a little put out and alarmed at the directness of Kondo[u]'s reference. "Be sure there is nothing in such talk. A slight service, rendered in earlier days, makes O'Hana ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... earlier? Not only does it require no unusual genius to waste money, when you have it, in the channels of the drinking-shop, the gaming table, and elsewhere, to sponge for more on your mother and brother, to embezzle when they are squeezed dry, and to take to downright robbery when nothing else is left; but a person who, in the various circumstances and opportunities of Bridau, finds nothing better to do than these ordinary things, can hardly be a person of exceptional ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... to amuse herself by little machinations, was inventive and intriguing. One day she demanded that I should play the school children, small, white-haired boys and girls, all of whom we had long learnt to know, a downright trick. I was to write a real love-letter to a nine-year-old little girl named Ingeborg, from an eleven or twelve-year-old boy called Per, and then Henrietta would sew a fragrant little wreath of flowers round it. The letter was completed and delivered. But the only result ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... last closed the scene. Not that she died of one downright blow on the heart. That is not the way such cases proceed. I cannot detail all the symptoms, for I was not there to watch them, and aunt Z. was neither so faithful an observer or narrator as I have shown myself in the school-day passages; ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... stockings hanging from her hand, and fell again to listening to Erik. His word made an endless echo in her head.... "Perins a droll species. A sort of indomitable ass. Refuses to succumb to his intelligence. If you think he's in love with your Mary you're a downright imbecile. The man adjusts his passions to his phrases as neatly as a pretty woman pulling on her stockings...." She didn't like Erik to refer to pretty women pulling on their stockings. What an idiot! If Erik wanted to he could go out and help all the pretty women in New York ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... might-have-beens. We have to deal with facts. A conspiracy of silence is impossible about matters which have been vehemently discussed for centuries. We have to take sides; and we at least have agreed to take the side of the downright thinker, who will say nothing that he does not believe, and hide nothing that he does believe, and speak out his mind without reservation or economy and accommodation. Indeed, as things are, any other ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... at Etienne, struck him in a downright English fashion between the eyes, and knocked him down. The knife fell from his hand, and Wilfred seized it before the other youths could recover from their astonishment, and flung it into ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... start the water circulatin' in the mouth; There are pies that wear the flavor of the warm an' sunny south; Some with oriental spices spur the drowsy appetite An' just fill a fellow's being with a thrill o' real delight; But for downright solid goodness that comes drippin' from the sky There is nothing quite the equal of ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... which would have been unmannerly, and in his embarrassment did something that he instantly realised was even worse, approaching downright insolence in that it demanded confirmation of her word: he bent forward and glanced at the tag on ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... a long letter to P. Lentulus Spinther, written two years afterwards.[15] The gist of it is much the same as the remark to Atticus already quoted. "Pompey and Caesar were all-powerful, and could not be resisted without civil violence, if not downright civil war. The Optimates were feeble and shifty, had shewn ingratitude to Cicero himself, and had openly favoured his enemy Clodius. Public peace and safety must be the statesman's chief object, and almost any concession was to be preferred ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... found that admirable character was a downright theft from Dr. Johnson. Look at "The Rambler," and you will find Suspirius is the man, and that not merely the idea, but the particulars of the character, are ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... palace, all the court were astonished at the change. She, who had annoyed everybody by the impertinent, tasteless, or downright foolish things she uttered, now charmed everybody by her wit, her pleasantness, and her exceeding good sense. The king himself began to come to her apartment, and ask her advice in state affairs. Her mother, and indeed the whole ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... a trifling mauvaise humeur, Papa may worry o'er his own affairs, Or it, perchance, may be a downright "fumer," And judging from the countenance he wears He may be vexed with sundry business cares, A something he would not communicate, In which the happy household never shares, It is not wise it should, at any rate; At least till ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... false self again. What boots it, after all, to tell the truth? For those whom you protect are clad in armour, which is proof against the sharpest lance, and they can thus bid defiance to all the clumsy attacks of the merely honest and downright—for a time; but in the end their punishment comes, not always in the manner that their friends predict, but none the less inevitable in one manner or another. For they all fashion a ridiculous monster out of affectations, strivings and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various

... thought of the Almighty as he might of Consul Garman, as an exacting master, who was, however, forgiving and placable, if one only kept clear of deceit and downright wickedness. ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... slowly and as if in soliloquy, "it must be nice to have a gentleman say such things to you—in downright earnest." ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... measures. They would then knock the bottom out of the Home Rule agitation. The people are downright sick of the whole business. They expected to be well off before this. They find themselves ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... dexterity, her perfect harmony with the charming background she had so well arranged for herself. Yet, he thought, for such a young girl, only twenty-two, she was too complex, too civilised. Mrs Raymond, for instance, seemed much more downright and careless. He was growing somewhat bewildered between his analysis of her character and his admiration for her mouth, an admiration that was rather difficult to keep entirely cool and theoretical, and that he felt a strong inclination to show in some more practical manner.... With a sigh ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... added: "The question of striking out the word 'male' we, as an equal rights association, shall of course present as an intellectual theory, but not as a practical thing to be accomplished at this convention." Mr. Phillips also emphasized this point; but I repudiated this downright insolence, when for fifteen years I had canvassed the entire State, county by county, with petition in hand asking for woman suffrage! To think that those two men, among the most progressive of the nation, should dare look me in the face and speak of this great principle for which ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... a stranger in New France or you would not express such hasty, honest sentiments upon the Intendant's hospitality. It is not the fashion, except among plain-spoken habitans, who always talk downright Norman." Master Pothier looked approvingly at Colonel Philibert, who, listening with indignant ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... my lady," said Susan, colouring prettily. "It were Mr. Kenny. He has worked so 'ard. Him an' Georgie've been puttin' in bulbs no end these last few days, when he can spare an half-hour from his horses. It's downright pleasant to watch them do it, knowin' that the dead-lookin' things come forth in glory soon as ever this ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... 'Helen had light hair and eyes, a fat sort of face, and no pretence to be pretty—a downright sort of person, not what you would fancy John's taste. If any one else had compared you it would have been no compliment; but he told me you had reminded him of her from the first, and now your white cheeks and sick dress recalled her illness so much, that ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... at all points by such amplifications of the contracted version which holds the stage. The events are evolved with unsuspected naturalness. The hero's character gains by the expansion of its setting. One downright error which infects the standard abridgement is wholly avoided. Ophelia is dethroned. It is recognised that she is not entitled to share with Hamlet the triumphal honours of the action. Weak, insipid, destitute of all force ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... published in the "Life and Letters," II., page 390, Darwin wrote: "Does it not hurt your Yankee pride that we thrash you so confoundedly? I am sure Mrs. Gray will stick up for your own weeds. Ask her whether they are not more honest downright good sort ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... host himself could scarcely muster courage enough to utter the few necessary salutations and courtesies; and, indeed, such was the nervous terror which the presence of Vanderhausen inspired, that very little would have made all his entertainers fly in downright panic from the room. They had not so far lost all self-possession, however, as to fail to observe two strange peculiarities of their visitor. During his stay his eyelids did not once close, or, indeed, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... in a little upper room. She has a small, brisk, wide-awake figure, not ungraceful; frank, simple, straightforward, and downright. She had on a robe, I think, but I did not look so low, my attention being chiefly drawn to a sort of man's sack of purple or plum-colored broadcloth, into the side-pockets of which her hands were thrust as she came forward to greet us. She withdrew one hand, however, and presented it cordially ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... unnecessary handling. And in some people this feeling reaches such a pass that, if they are talking with anyone, and he exhibits, or does not sufficiently conceal, his intelligence and discernment, they look upon it as a downright insult; although for the moment they hide their ill will, and the unsuspecting author of it afterwards ruminates in vain upon their conduct, and racks his brain to discover what he could possibly have done to excite ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... dogedom, falls in love, after a half-hearted fashion, with the daughter of another house of somewhat less, but still old repute, and of fair, though much lesser wealth. By a good deal of "shepherding" on the part of her family and friends, and (one is bound to say) some rather "downright Dunstable" on her own, he is made to propose; but her family accepts the demand that the thing shall, for a time, be kept secret from his. Of course no such secrecy is long possible; and his people, especially a certain wicked cavaliere-colonel, with ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... Gorgibus must be a downright fool to allow himself to be deceived in that fashion (seeing Gorgibus). Ah! goodness, all is lost! well, here's a pretty upset for my doctorship! But I must try and ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere

... sheer modesty of the honor of being President of the United States. His is one of the truly Homeric figures in American history. By downright purity of motive, transparency of purpose, and the devotion of commanding powers to the public good, he won for himself the honor, the love and the unbounded confidence of all his fellows. It used to be said of him that he was ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... a strong confirmation of the truthfulness of Drury's Madagascar. He adds the following curious particulars anent our subject:—"Robin Drury," he says, "among those who knew him (and he was known to many, being a porter at the East India House), had the character of a downright honest man, without any appearance of fraud or imposture. He was known to a friend of mine (now living), who frequently called upon him at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which were not then enclosed. He tells me he has often seen him ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various

... just too downright jolly!" Roger exclaimed, as he looked at the sea and shore, and then brought his gaze back to the merry group on the veranda. "Haven't you any chaperon person? Or are we all ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... to argue is that the effect must be discernible in the cause, which is a different statement altogether. When he says that an effect cannot be greater than its cause, what he means is that an effect cannot be different from its cause, which is downright nonsense. He asks, How can that which has not life produce life? as though the question were on all fours with the necessity for a man to possess twenty shillings before he can give change ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... sent this present to the most glorious Padishah. It is a treasure which is worth nothing so long as it is in our possession; it only becomes precious when we pay our debts with it, but it is downright damaging if we let others pay their debts to us therewith. Say to the most puissant of Sultans that if he finds this one specimen too little, the Army is ready to send him a lot more, and then it will choose neither me nor thee ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... is not a downright fool he will straighten matters up yet," thought the woman as she put away the work-basket and began to plan work for the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... thing by its costliness and magnificence. Of course the milliner assured her that every thing she took a fancy to from its rarity, was becoming; and then, oh dear! how the Fairies were amused! for poor Julia looked downright ugly in some of the things she selected, and still went away as self satisfied as ever, on the old grounds that the costume was so expensive that none of her acquaintance could get one like it. This was still her chief comfort! Euphrosyne actually ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... preparation, certainly not sufficient, Lawrence chose for action a smooth sea, a royal breeze, an artillery duel, and a close range. "No manoeuvring, but downright fighting," as Nelson said of his most critical battle; critical, just because his opponents, though raw tyros compared to his own crews, had nothing to do but to work their guns. The American captain took the most promising method ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... daring, loyalty and independence, demanded no small amount of opposing qualities. But the Steingerdas and Gudrunas were generally equal to any emergency of fate or fortune, and slashed their way through the history of their time more after the manner of men than women; supplementing their downright blows by side thrusts of craftier cleverness when they had to meet power with skill, and were fain to overthrow brutality by fraud. The Norse women were certainly as largely framed as they were mentally energetic, and as crafty as either; but we know of no other women who unite the same ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... slender woman with rather quick, decided movements and that her voice is that of a refined person. He is sure she is a young woman, but he can furnish no better description of her than this. He claims he was very nervous at the time of their meeting. I figure he was downright excited, filled as he was with guilty apprehensions, and no doubt because of his excitement he took less notice of her than he otherwise might. Besides, you must remember that the place of rendezvous was a fairly dark spot on ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... are called upon to go through. But how can we help ourselves? The public will hear of nothing but rogues; and the only way in which poor authors, who must live, can act honestly by the public and themselves, is to paint such thieves as they are: not, dandy, poetical, rose-water thieves; but real downright scoundrels, leading scoundrelly lives, drunken, profligate, dissolute, low; as scoundrels will be. They don't quote Plato, like Eugene Aram; or live like gentlemen, and sing the pleasantest ballads in the world, like jolly Dick Turpin; or prate eternally ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... thousand a year easily when fully employed. But certainly the innkeeper's son was stealing away his sitters: even his good friends the Whigs. He chafed under this. He began to speak out. He denounced Lawrence's prudent abstinence from all political feeling as downright hypocrisy. He thought it cowardice "to side with neither faction, and be ready and willing to paint the faces of both." And then he commenced to talk disrespectfully of his rival's art. He claimed for his own portraits greater ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... of her daughter" says the old Dowager at Chelsea), is certainly not superficially obvious. Nor was it obvious to Lady Castlewood's children, "Mother's in love with you,—yes, I think mother's in love with you," says downright Frank Esmond; the only impediment in his eyes being the bar sinister, as yet unremoved. And Miss Beatrix herself, in vol. iii., is even more roundly explicit. "As for you," she tells Esmond, "you ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... Francis with dismay. This was the first time that easy-going priest had shown her how impressive he could be. She was downright frightened, and said she hoped she knew better than to defy her director; she laid her will at his feet, and would obey him like a child, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... in New York, and the same when we came aboard. I didn't care much one way or other while sea-sick, but when I got over it, there was the same taunting voice. At last I got downright angry and said, 'All right, I'm going right on and fill my mission, and go crazy!' From that moment I have ceased to be bothered, and ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson

... with beautiful head held high, heart throbbing from love, and blood pounding in her ears from downright rage. ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... end an article with the mystical hint, this occasions great speculation. They seem to have been ignorant of such engaging introductions as, we hear it is strongly reported; and of that ingenious, but thread-bare excuse for a downright lie, it wants confirmation.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Ariosto, is much better, resembling the trimeter of the ancients, but is still somewhat monotonous. It has been, however, but little cultivated. The Martellian verse, a bad imitation of the Alexandrine, is a downright torture to the ear. Chiari, and occasionally Goldoni, came at last to use it, and Gozzi by way of derision. It still remains therefore to the prejudice of a more elegant ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... except Mr. Tyrrwhit, received this assertion with loudly expressed applause. "Such a blackguard, dirty, thieving job never was up before in my time. I don't know 'ow to talk of it in language as a man isn't ashamed to commit himself to. It's downright robbery." ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... went on Max, unable to hide his annoyance, "that if I were to tell you it was not a joke at all, but that I spoke in downright earnest, you ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... checked cloth in red and white. Her dress was of dark crimson; she wore a cameo brooch and a gold chain round her neck; over her shoulders was thrown a white knitted shawl, for the weather was extremely cold, the English climate being much more serious and downright at that day than it is now. She bent low to the task, holding her head slightly askew, putting the tip of her tongue between her lips, and expending all the energy of her soul and body in an intense effort to do what she was doing ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... favourable to the besieged. By a chance ball from the enemy, one of the galleys which brought relief was sunk downright with 40 men and goods to the value of 40,000 ducats. But, next day, Ferdinand Tellez made a sally with 400 men, and gained a victory equal to that of Gonzalez de Camara, and brought away one piece of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... indeed the only real tobacco, came from the warm Devon land, but little of it reached so far, on account of the distance, the difficulties of intercourse, the rare occasions on which the merchant succeeded in escaping the vexatious interference, the downright robbery of the way. Intercourse was often entirely closed ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... as I've made Thinkright, too. I'd call it downright ungrateful if 't was anybody but him," went on Mrs. Lem, paying no further attention to her offspring than to give the small shoulder another warning shake. "I s'pose he thinks age is goin' to steal on him before long, and he'd better be provided with some sure caretaker, and I can't deny 't ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... struts and looks big upon the stage, he thinks himself a real prince in his masking habit, and deceives too all the foolish part of his spectators. He's a slave in Saturnalibus. The covetous man is a downright servant, a draught horse without bells or feathers; ad metalla damnatus, a man condemned to work in mines, which is the lowest and hardest condition of servitude; and, to increase his misery, a worker there for he knows not whom. He heapeth up riches and knows not who shall enjoy them; ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... as long as possible; and try upon him the effect of kindness and mild persuasion. He had one very annoying habit, and that was he would very seldom give a satisfactory answer if suddenly asked a direct question, and often his reply would be very absurd, sometimes bordering on downright impudence. The master noticed one afternoon, after calling the boys from their play at recess, that Ned had not entered the school-room with the others. Stepping to the door, he found him seated very composedly in the yard, working busily upon a toy ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell

... with their romaunts and ballads, which place all a man's praise in receiving and repaying hard blows. It is sad to tell, Catharine, how many of my sins that Blind Harry the Minstrel hath to answer for. When I hit a downright blow, it is not—so save me—to do any man injury, but only to strike as William ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... over to the minister's wife this mornin', and she was so pleased! She said it was sich a blessin' to have fresh eggs again. She was gittin' sick o' them she's been buyin' at Billings'. She was downright thankful." ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... chapter, Condy had finally come to know the enormous difficulties, the exasperating complications, the discouragements that begin anew with every paragraph, the obstacles that refuse to be surmounted, and all the pain, the labor, the downright mental travail and anguish that fall to the lot of the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... the next morning we found that we had all gone soundly to sleep, too tired to take the Taube seriously, all except our two chauffeurs, who were downright annoyed because no bomb had entered their bedroom. Then we all went out and looked at the little hole in the roof of the fish market, and the big hole in the hotel garden, and thought of bombs as curious natural phenomena that never had ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... the first downright cowardly thing I have ever known you to say!" she declared. "And I wish you to know, Mr. Thomas Jefferson Gordon, that Mr. Duxbury Farley and Mr. Vincent Farley and Miss Eva Farley are my guests and my friends!" ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... brow, lacking which no male person, unless bald, fulfilled his definition of a man of the world. But there ensued a period of vehemence and activity caused by a bent collar-button, which went on strike with a desperation that was downright savage. The day was warm and William was warmer; moisture bedewed him afresh. Belated victory no sooner arrived than he perceived a fatal dimpling of the new collar, and was forced to begin the operation of exchanging ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... accused you and the Abbe Coignard of being M. d'Anquetil's accomplices, and gave a faithful account of all the murder and bloodshed perpetrated in the course of that terrible night. Alas! her truthfulness was of no use; she was carried to the spittel. It's downright horrible to ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... words; for it stood to reason when folks talked serious-like they didn't always stop to measure what they said, and if a text or two o' Scripture sounded seemly, 'twas fitted in to help their speech out with, not to be pulled abroad to seek the downright meanin' o' each word. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... became much worse during the night and things were complicated for some of us by sea-sickness. I have lively recollections of being aloft for two hours in the morning watch on Friday and being sick at intervals all the time. For sheer downright misery give me a hurricane, not too warm, the yard of a sailing ship, a wet sail ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... what his own will really was and how he should use it, not knowing that of his elders and wisers. This, in turn, was the very thing to keep him but ill at ease with himself, and iller at ease, if not at downright loggerheads, with everybody else. ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady

... the man but's doatin' downright, so he is," observed the wife, "to go to fill the tired child's stomach wid plash. Can't you wait till he ates a thrifle o' some-thin' stout, to keep life in him, afther his hard journey? Does your feet feel themselves cool an' asy ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... received a musket shot through the right arm and lungs, of which he died in a few hours, having been carried off the field by the bravery of lieutenant-colonel Gage, another of his officers. When he dropped, the confusion of the few that remained turned it into a downright and very disorderly flight across a river which they had just passed, though no enemy appeared, or attempted to attack them. All the artillery, ammunition, and baggage of the army were left to the enemy, and, among the rest, the general's cabinet, with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... well scared out of them now, I'm thinking. My husband is coming round presently to the cart to help to get Jess's bed into it. Lucky it's big. We are such a tight fit in that waggon that I shall be downright glad to see the last of the dear girl; though, of course, you'll both come and take your meals ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... deficiencies of education, what more could he ask for his sister, as he pictured her to himself, with her hair hanging over her ears, and her mind running into seed over some trashy novel. But before he could reply, Violante's father came to add his own philosophical consolations to the squire's downright comfortings. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... power. Schools for the study of sacred books, rites, and traditions.] The Brahmanas are very poor, both in thought and expression. They have hardly their match in any literature for "pedantry and downright absurdity."[10] Poetical feeling and even religious feeling seem gone; all is dead and dry as dust. By this time the Sanskrit language had ceased to be generally understood. The original texts could hardly receive accessions; the most learned man could do little more than interpret, or perhaps ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... long association with him in his home has made this possible. If ever you meet him on some embassy you will then for the first time understand how unskilled an artist you have chosen for this commission; and I am downright afraid of your accusing me of jealousy or blindness, that out of so many excellences so few have been perceived by my poor sight or ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... only are endangered thereby, for the charms of that art ordinarily affect not those that are downright sots and naturally incapable of learning. Wherefore, when Simonides was asked why of all men he could not deceive the Thessalians, his answer was, Because they are not so well bred as to be capable of being cajoled by me. And Gorgias used to call tragical poems cheats, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... the beans an mug o' flip. Call it a thousand dollars, an fork over, but by gosh, I don' git caught that way again. It's downright robbery, that's wot it is. I say ain't ye got no cleaner bills ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... breeding. We picture him as austere, but, like Oliver Cromwell, whom in some respects he resembles, he was very human in his personal relations. He liked a glass of wine. He was fond of dancing and he went to the theater, even on Sunday. He was, too, something of a lady's man; "He can be downright impudent sometimes," wrote a Southern lady, "such impudence, Fanny, as you and I like." In old age he loved to have the young and gay about him. He could break into furious oaths and no one was a better master of what we may call honorable guile ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... had a downright quarrel. The particulars are as follows: Arthur had told me, at different intervals, the whole story of his intrigue with Lady F—, which I would not believe before. It was some consolation, however, to ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... you my honour, as a real gentleman, sir. Why, would you believe it, Captain Truck, the steward is a downright nigger, and he wears ear-rings, and a red flannel shirt, without the least edication. As for the cook, sir, he wouldn't pass an examination for Jemmy Ducks aboard here, and there is but one camboose, and one set ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... what you give and not what you get is wealth." Extraordinary! And where had Robin picked up these notions concerning the Mill people? And her House of What-did-she-call-it? There was considerable significance about it. Uncanny, downright uncanny, though, for a girl her age to have such a far-reaching vision. Probably the child didn't realize, herself. Well, there was Jeanne d'Arc, and others, too, he pondered, hazily. And this talented girl Robin had found—a most unusual ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott

... of it. Coal-trucks!"—with a debonair reference to the fact that Leigh pere was a wealthy coal-owner. "But, you see, when I was having my fling, which came to such an abrupt end at Monte, the governor got downright ratty with me—kicked up no end of a shine. Told me not to darken his doors again, and that I might take my own road to the devil for all he cared, and generally played the part of the outraged parent. I must say," ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... some dirty trick, he'd do it; and now he's done it. What's got into the man, all of a sudden? He's a skinflint—always closer than hair to a dog's back; but I don't believe I've ever known him do somethin' downright ugly, like this." ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... of books written for children of late so thoroughly bad, as void of invention as they are full of vulgarisms in thought and language, that it is a downright pleasure to meet with one so fresh and graceful as this of Aectaea's. We hope she will follow it with a series, for she has shown herself qualified to do for science what Hawthorne has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... next week," says the professor, troubled in somewise by the meaning in her eyes. What is it? Simple loneliness, or misery downright? How young she looks—what a child! That tragic air does not belong to her of right. She should be all laughter, ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford

... mentioned was putting down the brougham. Yet how he is to manage his more distant patients on foot, at his age, I cannot imagine," she broke off in helpless distress, clasping her hands tightly together, according to a way she had. "It seems downright madness to ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... broke into a gay laugh and the strained look passed in a moment from her eyes. "I was all that was beautiful a little while ago. You're quite right though. It is a foul book, and the man who wrote it is a downright beast. Take it away, and never let me ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... said concerning God fore-ordaining sin and misery, and how much he is pleased with the same, nay, how he is glorified thereby, far more than by holiness. From hence it is very evident, that absolute predestination is downright Popery. ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor

... darkness; and, turning, they found that the cloud had swept onward toward the sea, leaving the rocks on the nearest hillside all glittering wet in the brief burst of sunlight. It was but a glimmer. Heavier clouds came sweeping over; downright rain began to pour. But Ogilvie kept manfully to his work. He climbed over the stone walls, gripping on with his wet hands. He splashed through the boggy land, paying no attention to his footsteps. And at last ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... and earnest, or, in other words, all upright and downright ideas demand the straight, or upright ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... part, and even achieve distinction, while the insane element is often cropping out in the shape of extravagances or irregularities in thought or action, which, according to the stand-point they are viewed from, are regarded either as gross eccentricity, or undisciplined powers, or downright insanity. For every manifestation of this kind they may show no lack of plausible reasons, calculated to mislead the superficial observer; but still the fact remains, that these traits, which are never witnessed in persons of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... all threw themselves into the open jaws of destruction in the oblique order of Frederick the Great, and managed to ruin Hohenlohe's Army in a way that no Army was ever ruined, even on the field of battle, all this was done through a manner which had outlived its day, together with the most downright stupidity to which ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... to her beloved Miss Frost, did not really mind the quiet suggestive power of Miss Pinnegar. For Miss Pinnegar was not vulgarly insinuating. On the contrary, the things she said were rather clumsy and downright. It was only that she seemed to weigh what she said, secretly, before she said it, and then she approached as if she would slip it into her hearer's consciousness without his being aware of it. She seemed to slide ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... old Mr Neeld sat in the middle of the conflagration. How his record of evasion, nay, of downright falsehood, mounted up! False facts and fictitious reasons flowed from his lips. There was pathos in the valor with which he maintained his position; he was hard pressed, but he did not fall. There was a joy too in the fight. For he alone of all Blentmouth knew the great secret, and guessed that ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... Ady was a downright disbeliever. He defended Scot from the report "that he held an opinion that Witches are not, for it was neither his Tenent nor is it mine." Alas, Ady does not enlighten us as to just what was his opinion. Certainly his witches ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... rich are made to supply the honey, of which the demagogues keep the greater part themselves, giving a taste only to the mob. Their victims attempt to resist; they are driven mad by the stings of the drones, and so become downright oligarchs in self-defence. Then follow informations and convictions for treason. The people have some protector whom they nurse into greatness, and from this root the tree of tyranny springs. The nature of the change is indicated ...
— The Republic • Plato

... therefore the concern of the North to find some means of bringing home to the British Ministry the enormity of the offence in American eyes and the serious danger to good relations if such offences were to be continued. An immediate downright threat of war would have been impolitic and would have stirred British pride to the point of resentment. Yet American pride was aroused also and it was required of Seward that he gain the Northern object and yet make no such threat as would involve the two nations in war—a ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... the high position and eminent virtues of that lady, calm and dignified; but Miss Jemima had already whimpered several times at the idea of Amelia's departure; and, but for fear of her sister, would have gone off in downright hysterics, like the heiress (who paid double) of St. Kitt's. Such luxury of grief, however, is only allowed to parlour-boarders. Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing, and the mending, and the puddings, and the plate and crockery, and the servants to superintend. But why speak about her? ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... preserved the freshness and softness of her skin; her smile was charming, and her large blue eyes expressed both gentleness and goodness. Seen beside this smiling and serene countenance, the appearance of the stranger was downright repulsive, and Monsieur de Lamotte could hardly repress a start of disagreeable surprise at the pitiful and sordid aspect of this diminutive person, who stood apart, looking overwhelmed by conscious inferiority. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... nor nobody else. He wants some news of the man what done him the mischief. Dick's that soft. And—and, well, he is an angel. His father don't understand it, but Dick has really forgiven that man. He's downright anxious to hear how ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... that had curled itself into a ball earlier in the interview, when a small, soft voice just below his elbow said, quietly, plainly and quite unmistakably—not in any squeak or whine that had to be translated—but in downright common English— ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit

... deliberate respecting the awards. What a flutter there must be among the young things whose future destiny is now swaying in the balance, for success means fortune, and failure a disheartening postponement, and to the elder ones downright and disastrous ruin of all their hopes! Half an hour passes, and then, after what seems a weary period of suspense, the box-door is thrown open and the jury resume their seats. Ambroise Thomas, the president of the Conservatoire, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... in precisely the same circumstances as Ascanio Bellegra. I think the connection is clear enough. If his life is sad, so is yours." "For downright good logic commend me to my beloved father!" cried Giovanni, breaking into a ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... wonder how she could have given birth to so lovely a creature as her daughter. This woman was of course with the Colonel when Julia arrived, and the spice of the devil in her daughter's composition was most carefully nourished and fed by her. If Julia had been a flirt before, she was a downright jilt now; she set the whole cantonment by the ears; she made wives jealous and husbands miserable; she caused all those duels of which I have discoursed already, and yet such was the fascination of THE ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... past; and if Jack knew it, so also did Jocelyn. She knew that the imperturbable gentlemanliness of the Englishman had conveyed to the more passionate West Indian the simple, downright fact that in a lady's drawing-room there was to be no raised voice, no itching fingers, no flash ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... speak within bounds, I am chief person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother officers by the cool, steady, upright, downright, and impartial discharge of my business, and the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain; for all day long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... infernally sorry to have brought you out for nothing, for I find that I cannot marry you after all. Things have gone wrong with me of late, and it would be downright folly for me to think of matrimony under existing circumstances. I am leaving this place almost at once, so there is no chance of hearing from you again. I hope you will get on all right. Anyhow, you ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... do?" Grace breathed, wringing her hands. "They're real, downright burglars of the worst sort, and they're planning a robbery. It's getting late, too, and the girls will soon be going back. Oh, I must get out of here, but I won't try to go until I find out whose house they're going ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower

... principle which transforms and regenerates them, but there is no need for him to be incarnate. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son. He is sent to act, not to materialize himself. It is downright madness to maintain the contrary, thus falling into the heresies of the Gnostics and the Fratricelli, into the errors of Dulcin de Novare and his wife Marguerite, into the filth of abbe Beccarelli, and the abominations of Segarelli of Parma, who, on pretext of becoming ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... with him, for safety, that they might see the country. I was mightily against it for many reasons; but particularly I told him he knew the natives were but savages, and they were very treacherous, and I desired him that he would not go; and, had he gone on much farther, I believe I should have downright refused him, and commanded ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... weather-gall, seen on the coast of Africa, which presages a severe storm. It appears at first in the form of an ox-eye, but soon overspreads the whole hemisphere, accompanied by a violent wind which scatters ships in all directions, and many are sunk downright. Also, a water-fowl. Also, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... and he was expecting every moment when he would start off in a wildgoose-chase after the callant Latimer; Will Sampson, the horse-hirer in Candlemaker Row, had given him a hint that Alan had been looking for a good hack, to go to the country for a few days. And then to oppose him downright—he could not but think on the way his poor mother was removed. Would to Heaven he was yoked to some tight piece of business, no matter whether well or ill paid, but some job that would hamshackle him at least until the courts rose, if it were but ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... please, Mr. Moore. I have told you about all that I am able. I know this game, if you will permit me, a little, just a little better than you do, Mr. Moore. I know when fun stops and downright danger begins. The moment you put your foot in China, you are putting your foot in a trap from which you can never, never so long as you are permitted to live, extricate yourself. And, believe me, seriously, that will not be for long. A day? Perhaps. An hour? Very likely ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... ante-room. It was a way they had. They were all there. Grand fellows, too, most of them—tall, broad-shouldered, and silky-haired, and as good as gold. That gets tiresome after a time, but everything can be set right with one downright rascally villain—a villain, mind you, that poor, weak women, know nothing about. GAVOR was that kind of man. Of course that was why he was to break his neck, and get smashed up generally. But I am anticipating, and a man should never anticipate. EMILY, for instance, never did. EMILY—Captain EMILY, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various

... The cook was pottering around his stove, cleaning up his pots and pans. He looked up curiously as they came in, realizing that by now they should have been at work. The faint, careless surprise upon his face changed suddenly into downright bewilderment as he saw the dust-covered bodies, the cut lips, blood-streaked cheeks, and swelling eyes of the two men. The song which he had been humming died away into a little gasp, and with sagging lower jaw he stood ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... believe he is. So's Gray, and more of 'em too; but there's a difference between them and the downright murdhering Tory set. Poor Tom doesn't throuble the Church much; but you'll be all for Protesthants now, Martin, when you've your new brother-in-law. Barry used to be one of ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... must be something in this downright wisdom of childishness since Christ went (as we must believe) out of His way to lay such stress on it; and since our own hearts respond so readily when Vaughan or Wordsworth claim divinity for it. We cannot ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Mater, you know, is one of those simple, trusting natures that, if they once discover they have been taken in by a sham title, why, they kick up the row of a deuce! And, as for the Governor, he's the sort of old retiring chap that has a downright loathing of publicity, when it makes him ridiculous. If he came across you just now, there's really no saying what he mightn't do. He's such a devilishly ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... seeking to recover the stolen horse, he unintentionally stole another. In trying to restore the wrong horse to his rightful owner, he was himself arrested. After no end of comic and dolorous adventures, he surmounted all his misfortunes by downright pluck and genuine good feeling. It is a noble contribution ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... can think of things to say that will be the truth and yet not give the whole thing away!" sighed the downright Cynthia. "I wish I were as ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... soot's in the cooking-pot now, so to speak," proceeded Tom blandly, "and we're downright sad about it, we are, for as my missus was saying, you'd make a pretty pair. But, Lord, Master Godfrey, don't you take it too much to heart, for she's an upright young lady, she is, and steadfast. Or if she ain't, there's plenty of others; also one day follows another, as the saying goes, and the ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... all Scottish officers, pointing out that they were able to do much better service with their own claymores, than with weapons to which they were altogether unaccustomed; and that Scottish men were accustomed to fight with the edge, and to strike downright sweeping blows, whereas the swords here are fitted only for the point, which, although doubtless superior in a duel, is far less effective in ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... of the Civil List, in reply to a message from the King himself, Pulteney demanded an inquiry into the manner in which the money had been spent, and even made a fierce attack on the whole administration, and accused it of something very like downright corruption. He was dismissed from his office as Cofferer, and, even making allowance for his love of money, the wonder is that he should have held it long enough to be dismissed from it. He then went avowedly over into the ranks of the enemies of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... male acquaintance of any damsel took a seat beside her, it would be certain to attract the papa or chaperon, to the spot, to see what was going on, as their most likely subject of conversation would have a strong leaning towards a flirtation, or downright love-making, at which nearly all the Spaniards are great adepts; the flowery expressions of their language being peculiarly suitable for such ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... seem severe, but I cannot bear a noise. I am so worn out when I come from the office. It seems each day my head aches worse than it did the day before." Miss Dorcas sighed. "And if it isn't a downright ache when I come home, it begins to pound as soon as I look at this book—" she eyed the account-book open before her—"I hoped you could have some new shoes this month. Those are downright shabby. But there isn't any money for them. I don't see how I ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... very thing I complain of. You do degrade yourself. Your economy, my life, is downright parsimony: your vigilance is suspicion; your management is meanness; and you fidget your servants till you make them fretful, and then prudently discharge them because they will live with you no longer. Hey! ods life, I must sooth her: for if company comes, and finds her in this humour, my ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... any tramps over my way," he said, frowning. "These old lunatics your uncle left here are simply hipped; that's all. Mr. Bashford made a mistake in turning the place over to them; it was silly, downright silly. It's a wonder you didn't think of upsetting his will on the ground of mental unsoundness. It's not up to me to suggest such a thing, but I believe you could ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... The downright foolhardiness of the Douglas wrath held Tom's hand,—though of a truth that hand trembled and crept backward. Nor was Aleck Douglas nearsighted; he saw the movement and his bearded underlip met his shaven ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... seems very well in a story, where the lady goes into a picturesque cottage, half overgrown with honeysuckle, and finds an emaciated, but still beautiful woman propped up by pillows. But come to the downright matter of fact of poking about in all these vile, dirty alleys, and entering little dark rooms, amid troops of grinning children, and smelling codfish and onions, and nobody knows what—dear me, my benevolence always evaporates before I get through. I'd rather pay any body five ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... her words; for it stood to reason when folks talked serious-like they didn't always stop to measure what they said, and if a text or two o' Scripture sounded seemly, 'twas fitted in to help their speech out with, not to be pulled abroad to seek the downright meanin' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... strengthened the conviction with which he began it, and landed him in downright credulity in the end. I do not question his ability as an observer, but the enquiry needed a disciplined experimenter. This latter implies not mere ability to look at things as Nature offers them ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... sorry to have brought you out for nothing, for I find that I cannot marry you after all. Things have gone wrong with me of late, and it would be downright folly for me to think of matrimony under existing circumstances. I am leaving this place almost at once, so there is no chance of hearing from you again. I hope you will get on all right. Anyhow, you ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... with Don Blas Nasarre for the assertion, that Naharro first taught the Italians to write comedy, taxing him with downright mendacity; and he stoutly denies the probability of Naharro's comedies ever having been performed on the Italian boards. The critic seems to be in the right, as far as regards the influence of the Spanish dramatist; but ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... feeling of what is ahead—and to speak for your mother as well as myself. And more than that—much more than that—for the world has changed since she was here. God knows I've tried to be modern." A humorous glint came into his eyes, "Downright modern," he declared. "Have I asked you to give up your career? Not at all, I've asked you to marry Baird, and go right on with him in your work. And if you can't marry Allan Baird, after what he ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... not know how it hurt. How could she understand, for instance, what it meant to go back and face the deadly dull routine of a life from which all zest, all interest, had fled? A routine broken only by moments of downright torture. Yes, and the effort it would take to smile! God! If there were only some way to break his fetters, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... unpurchasable. He found his vein in weekly journalism, and for nearly forty years was the stormy petrel of Canadian politics. From England there came, among others, Dr. John Rolph, shrewd and politic, and Captain John Matthews, a half-pay artillery officer. Peter Perry, downright and rugged and of a homely eloquence, represented the Loyalists of the Bay of Quinte, which was the center of Canadian Methodism. Among the newer comers from the United States, the foremost were Barnabas Bidwell, who had been Attorney General of Massachusetts ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... eleven. 'Things matter SO much to me now,' she says, clasping her hands thisaway, 'and I'm sure that when I'm sixty they'll matter just five times as much to me.' Well, the way she looked and the way she spoke made me feel downright ashamed of myself because things had stopped mattering with me. But never mind all that. My miserable old feelings don't count for much. What come ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... everything human, and even superhuman, if beautiful; if it was only a case of dealing with ugly, wicked, and disagreeable people, he knew all about this, and could paint them if the occasion required it; but when it came to a downright unmitigated devil, he was powerless. He could never have done Tabachetti's serpent in the Adam and Eve Chapel, nor yet the plausible fair-spoken devil, as in the Temptation Chapel, ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... and words were reassuring, although I still felt there was something behind her light manner which intimately concerned me. But I had learned to count on her downright honesty, and her words, "Nothing that cannot be helped, my dear," steadied me, gave me hope that no matter what trouble she had to tell me, she had ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... Liza.' He was so contrite, he could not humble himself enough. 'I 'ad another bloomin' row with the missus ter-night, an' then when I didn't find you 'ere, an' I kept witin' an' witin'—well, I fair downright lost my 'air. An' I 'ad two or three pints of four 'alf, ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... with Clara. He would have been so delighted to welcome Owen as his brother-in-law. And as he strode along over the ground, and landed himself knowingly over the crabbed fences, he began to think how much pleasanter the country would be for him if he had a downright good fellow and crack sportsman as his fast friend at Castle Richmond. Sir Owen Fitzgerald of Castle Richmond! He would be the man to whom he would be delighted to ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... right way out of his perplexity was to marry a second wife without repudiating the first. And when the Landgrave Philip asked for leave to do the same thing, Luther gave it on condition that it was denied. He insisted on what he called a downright lie. The great fact which we have to recognise is that with all the intensity of his passion for authority he did more than any single man to make modern History the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... dominant idea with pianoforte-makers, and to this day, although less insisted upon, engrosses time and attention that might be more usefully directed. Some great players, from their point of view of touch, have been downright opposed to repetition actions. I will name Kalkbrenner, Chopin, and, in our own day, Dr. Hans von Blow. Yet the Erard's repetition, in the form of Hertz's reduction, is at present in greater favor in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... reasonably be thought capable of corrupting the public judgment for half a century, and require a twenty years war, campaign after campaign, in order to dethrone the usurper and re-establish the legitimate taste. But that a downright simpleness, under the affectation of simplicity, prosaic words in feeble metre, silly thoughts in childish phrases, and a preference of mean, degrading, or at best trivial associations and characters, should succeed in forming a school of imitators, a company of almost religious ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... woman had no right to set up her opinions against the experiences of those who knew so much better; that it was very wrong of her not to take the advice of people who had nothing at heart but her good; that it was next door to being downright ungrateful to conduct herself in that manner; that if she had no respect for herself she ought to have some for other women, all of whom she compromised by her meekness; and that if she had no respect for other women, the time would come when other ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... at me in a manner that was enough to provoke a saint, if it were not for the man's well known character. "It will do I see," said my friend, "depend upon it, it will do—dont mind his sayings; but when you come to business, be plain, downright and firm, and you'll have his heart." When W. returned, he again surveyed me from head to foot, and again grinned and tittered. I was almost as tall as I am now, and as thin perhaps as you ever saw any one of the same height. My face too ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... skill are two different things," he had said. "Without skill in the basic principles of diagnosis and treatment, medical judgment isn't much help, but skill without the judgment to know how and when to use it can be downright dangerous. You'll be judged both on the judgment you use in deciding the right thing to do, and on the skill you use in doing it." He had given Dal the box with the coveted collar and cuff. "The colors are pretty, but never forget what they stand for. Until you can convince the council ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse

... contempt of them, and thinly-veiled pride, was a type of all their democracy anathematized. More than one of them had winced under his soft laugh and lightly spoken jibes, which rankled more than a downright injury. ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... Gray knows about them. Billy and Gus are in our class at school." This from the girl who had joyfully greeted the Professor and the boys, yodeling a school yell from the hillside. Then she shot an aside at the slim youth: "You're a regular, downright simpleton, Thad, and forever looking for trouble. Don't listen to ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... she was fifteen that Kathleen's aunt, a maiden lady from Dublin, who rejoiced in the truly Irish name of O'Flynn, came to see them, remarked on Kathleen's wild, unkempt appearance, declared that the girl would be a downright beauty when she was eighteen, said that no one would tolerate such a want of knowledge in the present day, and advised that she should go to school. Mrs. O'Hara took Miss O'Flynn's hint very much to heart. Kathleen was consulted, and of course tabooed the entire ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... but this seems like downright stealing. Do you hear him walking up there, Ma'am? Back ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg

... castle! He would contrive! He was sorry he had hurt the old fellow, but he could not help it! he would get in the way! Things would have been much worse if he had not got first to his father! He would wait a bit, and see what would turn up! For the tutor-fellow, he must not quarrel with him downright! No good would come of that! In the end he would have his way! and that in spite ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... moulds as Dorothy and Irene should be so deficient in tact as to gush over the humiliation of another, and check the rhapsodies of successful candidates by such significant coughings and frownings as must have been obvious to the dullest faculties. Oh, for Tom's downright acceptance of a situation—her calm taking-for-granted that the sufferer was neither selfish nor cowardly enough to grudge success to others! Rhoda felt, as we have all felt in our time, that she had never thoroughly appreciated her friend until she had departed, and she was one ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... he be a downright coxcomb, will ever admit to one woman that another woman has loved him. To his wife—perhaps. But how much Fanny Meyrick cared for me I had never sought to know. After the dismal ending of that moonlight boat-row—I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... must own that, for downright brutal and bloody ferocity, the wars in Ireland rival ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... the Shepherds who 'watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground'. To see them at their best we must turn to the Wakefield (or Towneley) Miracle Play and read the pastoral scene (or, rather, two scenes) there. Here we come face to face with rustics pure and simple, downright moorland shepherds, homely, grumbling, coarsely clad, warm-hearted, abashed by a woman's tongue, rough in their sports. The real old Yorkshire stock of nearly six hundred years ago rises into ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... ignominious push from behind, which threw her out on her face in the middle of the floor. But Alec did catch sight of him in the very deed, was down upon him in a moment, and, having already proved that a box on the ear was of no lasting effect, gave him a downright good thrashing. He howled vigorously, partly from pain, partly in the hope that the same consequences as before would overtake Forbes; and therefore was still howling ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... doubtful tone. 'Perhaps I wouldn't. But it would only have been business if I had. It's not as if Bamberger and I had started a story on purpose about our quarrelling in order to make things go down. I draw the line there. That's downright dishonest, I call it. But if we'd just let things slide and taken advantage of what happened, it would only have been business after all. Except for that doubt about getting back to par,' he added, as an afterthought. ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... In the first paragraphs the design is sufficiently concealed to mislead an unwary reader into the belief that Philips is preferred to Pope; but the irony soon becomes transparent, and Philips's antiquated affectation is contrasted with the polish of Pope, who is said even to "deviate into downright poetry." Steele, it is said, was so far mystified as to ask Pope's permission to publish the criticism. Pope generously permitted, and accordingly Steele printed what he must soon have discovered to be a shrewd attack upon his old friend and ally. Some writers have found a difficulty ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... was it. A man who could propose, even playfully, to quench old McNab's thirst must have been a utopist, a pursuer of chimeras; for of downright irony Heyst was not prodigal. And, may be, this was the reason why he was generally liked. At that epoch in his life, in the fulness of his physical development, of a broad, martial presence, with his bald head ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... irresponsible a rascal he may have been, yet by his own lights he was a man of honour, incapable of falsehood, even though it were calculated to save his skin. I do not deny that Sir Thomas Picton has described him as a "thieving blackguard." But I am sure that this was merely the downright, rather extravagant manner, of censure peculiar to that distinguished general, and that those who have taken the expression at its purely literal value have been lacking at once in charity and in knowledge of the caustic, uncompromising terms of speech of General ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... ether for its display. Father Antonio could create the beautiful; he could warm, could elevate, could comfort; and when a stronger nature went before him, he could follow with an unquestioning tenderness of devotion: but he wanted the sharp, downright power of mind that could cut and cleave its way through the rubbish of the past, when its institutions, instead of a commodious dwelling, had come to be a loathsome prison. Besides, the true artist has ever an enchanted island of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... It is of recent date and consists of German elements already resident in the Tsardom. It is a monument of Teuton audacity and Slav forbearance. One might ransack the history of European nations without finding another such instance of downright effrontery and disloyalty on the part of a privileged section of the community, and of easy-going toleration on the part of the State. The German elements of the provinces of Kurland and Livland, subjects of the Tsar though ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... eternal? Feudalism, also, my dear sir, was a benefit and a progress in its day, but that which was a benefit yesterday may it not become an evil to-morrow—a danger? That which is progress to-day, may it not one hundred years hence have become mere routine, and a downright trammel? Is not that the history of the world? And if you wish to know, Monsieur, by what sign we may recognize the fact that a social or political system has attained its end, I will tell you: it is when it is manifest only in its inconveniences and abuses. Then the machine has finished its work, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... worshipped foul devils, and rendered homage to dumb idols, and loved the pleasures of this vain world, and, like swine, wallowed in the mire of sinful lusts, and made their lives a headquarters for all wickedness, shall stand naked and laid bare, downright ashamed and downcast, pitiable in appearance and in fact, set forth for a reproach to all creation. All their life in word, deed and thought shall come before their faces. Then, after this bitter disgrace and unbearable ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... I ever saw when it comes to downright luck, and that's the truth, Dick," said Mr. Winslow, as he stepped out and joined the other when banking hours were done; which on this day was not ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster

... idiot, an' not because I've shot one er two in my time. Nobody but an ass could be caught at it, an' that's why I feel so infernal guilty. Look here, Mr. Crow, ever' time you see a feller that's proved himself a downright ass, jest take him out an' lynch him. He deserves it, that's all I've got to say. The greatest crime in the world is criminal neglect.' Don't bother me now, Wick; I'm going to write that down an' ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... compared with the demands often made upon domestic architects, for it involves no downright contradictions. I am not asked to show how a house worth ten thousand dollars can be built for five, or to break the Golden Rule, or to change the multiplication table and the cardinal points of ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... fond of her that it's making me downright silly," she said to her mother; "but it seems as if I can't help it. I feel as if I'd like to know everything she does, and go over the ground to make sure of it before she goes anywhere. I'm so proud of her, mother; I'm just as proud as if I was some connection of ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... tramps over my way," he said, frowning. "These old lunatics your uncle left here are simply hipped; that's all. Mr. Bashford made a mistake in turning the place over to them; it was silly, downright silly. It's a wonder you didn't think of upsetting his will on the ground of mental unsoundness. It's not up to me to suggest such a thing, but I believe you ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... early; he had been restless and feverish all night, and now was chilly. If he lay till breakfast was ready, he would feel better, Jenny said; she could milk, to be sure, and do all the rest of the work, and so he was persuaded. But when the breakfast was ready the chilliness had become a downright chill, so that the blankets that were over him shook like leaves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... parfection ye're after?" Maggie was apt in any state of excitement to revert in her speech to the vernacular. "'Deed an' ye'll look till the end of yer days an' risk dyin' a downright old maid, if it's parfection ye're after marryin' in a man! An' I don't need a gell as has niver been married to tell me my Jim ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... ear to its lowings! or who can kill the kid as it sends forth cries like those of a child; or who can feed upon the bird to which he himself has given food. How much is there wanting in these instances for downright criminality? A {short} step {only} is ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... and cared for, but it was a hard task. And then there was the shock to all the dreams she had had of playing Lady Bountiful to another. For a few days she struggled and kept up, but a cold she had taken on the last day of her travel, aggravated by excitement, settled into a downright ailment. Very tenderly they coaxed her to stay within the blankets and among the soft pillows for the first few days, and then she stayed without coaxing. The District Nurse was at her side, and another was placed as ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... confess that would not mortify me. And I shall wish both the poem and the appointment at the place where pepper grows if you are to become pale and nervous on its account! Promise me now next post-day to be reasonable, and not to look like the waning moon, else I promise you that I shall be downright angry, and will keep ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... had obtained a written safe-conduct from the Emperor, who was then hunting in the environs. In the mean time a distinguished friend of Cajetan, one Urbanus of Serralonga, tried to persuade him, in a flippant and, as Luther thought, a downright Italian manner, to come forward and simply pronounce six letters—"Revoco" ("I retract"). Urbanus asked him with a smile if he thought his sovereign would risk his country for his sake. "God forbid!" answered Luther. "Where then do you mean to take ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... it was necessary to keep up and extend a practical acquaintance with the language which supplies all the religious and most of the metaphysical phraseology; and during my last year at Sindian Karachi (1849), I imported a Shaykh from Maskat. Then work began in downright earnest. Besides Erpenius' (D'Erp) "Grammatica Arabica," Richardson, De Sacy and Forbes, I read at least a dozen Perso-Arabic works (mostly of pamphlet form) on "Serf Wa Nahw"—Accidence and Syntax—and learned by heart one-fourth of the Koran. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... induced her husband to consent to such a move, bewildering him with a torrent of phrases and marvellous columns of figures by which she proved conclusively that they were in a condition but one remove from downright destitution. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... dressed as anybody, she concluded, except perhaps the ladies in the closed carriages whose dress could only be guessed at. As for good looks, there did not seem to be much of them in Paris. She called the Frenchwomen downright plain. They knew how to put on their clothes; there was style about them, she did not deny that; but she was prepared to maintain that there was hardly a decent ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... way, but it wasn't much of a way. She liked the fine clothes and the trinkets he gave her, but, after he went blind, she could hardly tolerate him. Lots of times, she would have been downright cruel to him if I hadn't ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... too sick and qualmy to leave your cot,) you awake one morning, and find yourself snugly at anchor in the bay of Funchal; and the romantic, sun-bright mountains of Madeira, gorgeously crested with a mass of brilliant clouds, looking in at your cabin-window. It seems downright enchantment! You leap up as if there was a new soul in your body. You hurry ashore in the first boat. Your cough, lassitude, and qualmishness have altogether left you. Your step is elastic, and your spirits as buoyant as a lark in spring. You luxuriate amidst beautiful gardens glowing with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various

... the lover for me!" says Kit, enthusiastically. "No giving in, no shilly-shallying, but downright determination. He's an honest man, and we all know what an honest man is,—'the noblest work of God.' I'm certain he will keep his word, and I do hope I shall be with you when next you meet him, as I should like ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... you please, Mr. Moore. I have told you about all that I am able. I know this game, if you will permit me, a little, just a little better than you do, Mr. Moore. I know when fun stops and downright danger begins. The moment you put your foot in China, you are putting your foot in a trap from which you can never, never so long as you are permitted to live, extricate yourself. And, believe me, seriously, that will not be for long. A day? Perhaps. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... resolve to moot the problem of the freedom of the seas, but when admonished by the British government that it would not even brook its mention, he at once gave it up and, presumably drawing the obvious inference from this downright refusal, applied it to the Irish, Egyptian, and other issues, which were forthwith eliminated from the category of open or international problems. But France's insistent demand, on the other hand, for the Rhine frontier met with ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... mistress; they were presented to her in years gone by, by members of our family on her birthdays and various festivals; her ladyship never wears anything made by people outside; yet to hoard these would be a downright pity! Indeed, she hasn't worn them even once. It was yesterday that she told me to get out two costumes and hand them to you to take along with you, either to give as presents, or to be worn by some one in your home; but don't make fun of us! In the box you'll find the flour-fruits, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... alarming personage." He was a young-looking man, in spite of his perplexities and his very gray hair, and his manner seemed quite natural. I use the word natural, in the sense of its being unaffected; there was something comic in his distraught way, as though it would have been downright ludicrous but for his own perception that it was very near being so. When he had talked with me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket, with a rather anxious contraction of his eyebrows, which were black and handsome, "Belinda, I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?" ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... was a grievance that he would not play regularly, and there was a sort of general idea that if he chose he could do most things well. After that fight he changed altogether. He took to cricket in downright earnest, and was soon acknowledged to be the best bat and best bowler in the school. Before that it had been regarded as certain that when the captain left I should be elected, but when the time came he got a majority of votes. I should not have minded ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... Welsh parson, from making him a laughing-stock. We too, whose moral judgment may have been seduced from the right by the fascinations of his intellectual playing, are brought to estimate more justly the natural honours and safeguards of downright integrity and innocence; and to see that the deepest shrewdness stands in not thinking to be shrewd at all. Thus our judgment of the man is set right in the very point where it was most liable to ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... dunno, sir. I'm not a quarrelsome chap, but I heard things as my brother Nat has said quite bad enough to make me want to go again him, for we two never did agree; and when it comes to your own brother telling downright out-and-out lies about the Manor vegetables and fruit, I think it's time to speak, ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... self-righteousness, so carefully touching up its toilet that it passed for saint rather than devil—especially in his own eyes, trained as they were in self-deception. For every action, mean or illiberal or tricky or downright cruel, he had a justificatory text; for his few defeats a constant salve in the thought that his vanquishers were carnal men, sons of Belial, and would find, themselves in hell some day. He was Dives or Lazarus as occasion served. If a plan miscarried, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... wicked fellow," she said with a snatch of the breath. "A real downright wicked fellow, like Marr. That's ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... dear little spinster of fifty, with endless interests and not a hobby to her name, the most downright, practical person I have ever known, and the most helpful to strangers and pilgrims in the city. It is quite incidental that she is uncommonly rich and uncommonly homely. Nobody ever stops to think ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... suspicions on the purity of their own minds. And young persons, who talk and think in this way, are in extreme danger of falling into sinful habits. As to the volumes before us, the authors have, in their fanatical panegyrics of virginity, made use of language downright profane.' ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... may think better of it. If you had a secret, the discovery of which would cause you to be kicked out of decent society, you would keep it pretty tight. And that through no fault of your own, mind you; but through downright cowardice and ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... way they had. They were all there. Grand fellows, too, most of them—tall, broad-shouldered, and silky-haired, and as good as gold. That gets tiresome after a time, but everything can be set right with one downright rascally villain—a villain, mind you, that poor, weak women, know nothing about. GAVOR was that kind of man. Of course that was why he was to break his neck, and get smashed up generally. But I am anticipating, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various

... aloof spirit informing the inanimate, and in such resentment thereof as properly rewarded a studied insolence—never before to-day had Sarah Manvers found the genius of the neighbourhood so unmitigatedly intolerable. It was with downright relief that presently she turned from the avenue eastward and accomplished in the span of one short cross-town block a transit of the most violent contrasts, from the dull dignity of the socially eligible, if somewhat passe, through a stratum of shabby ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... do you child? Wait till you hear. I call it a monstrous shame an' downright wicked. A mother sell her ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... ideal of chastity. The great Buffon refused to recognize chastity as an ideal and referred scornfully to "that kind of insanity which has turned a girl's virginity into a thing with a real existence," while William Morris, in his downright manner, once declared at a meeting of the Fellowship of the New Life, that asceticism is "the most disgusting vice that afflicted human nature." Blake, though he seems always to have been a strictly moral man in the most conventional sense, felt nothing but contempt for ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... had dedicated himself to the army; and was so far from thinking of any other line, that when Walpole, who first suggested the idea of appointing him secretary of state, proposed it to him, he flew into a furious rage, and was on the point of a downright quarrel, looking on himself' as totally unqualified for the post, and suspecting it for a plan of mocking him. He died in one of those tempestuous sallies, being pushed in the House of Lords on the explosion of the South Sea scheme. That iniquitous affair, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... bitterness). I wish all Niggers were put down by Act of Parliament, I do! Downright ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various

... secured me a horse, and together with Captain Orme, who was no less depressed, we formed the escort to the litter whereon lay the dying man. Doctor Craik came to us from time to time, but the general was far beyond human aid. I had never respected him so much as in this hour, for of his downright valor I had had every proof. If only his pride had been a little less, that his valor might have counted! It was while I was riding thus, absorbed in melancholy thought, that a horse cantered up beside me, and looking ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... Jerry's heels he had explained to them, before entering the woods, the mode of operation to be carried out. In order to pipe tunes as bullfinches so marvellously do, they have to go through a period of training, and downright severe training the hapless mites find it. But, as Jerry tersely put it to his hearers, one of whom winced secretly, what is training but 'keeping the body under subjection'—a period of toilsome effort that any degree of ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell

... much to delight and interest on the banks of the Rhine, always provided that he suits his mood to his environment, and takes but little of Rhine scenery at a time. For surely between Coblentz and Bingen there is an iteration as regards castles and ruins which is downright wearisome. Do we not between these points find Lahneck, Marksburg, Sterrenberg, Liebenstein, The Mouse, Rheinfels, The Cat, Schoenburg, Gutenfels, The Pfalz, Stahleck, Furstenberg, Hohneck, Sooneck, Falkenburg, ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson

... woman. "Why, ye 'most take my breath away. I declar', I'm downright sorry you're goin', I hev tuk sech a shine to ye. I kind o' think I'll ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.

... Schwarzenberg warmly; "that is putting himself in downright opposition to his Sovereign ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... Dulcie expressed it, "rather a dear, quaint thing." But she was more than that, I thought. She had such a pungent wit, her sayings were at times so downright—not to say acrid—that many stood in terror of her and positively dreaded her quick tongue. I rather liked Aunt Hannah myself, perhaps because, by the greatest of good luck, I happened not to have done anything so far to incur her displeasure, which she was never backward in expressing forcibly, ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... and with most of 'em it's a gambling fever or pure vagrancy. But Jasper Flight believes that the Almighty keeps the secret of the silver deposits in these hills, and gives it away to the deserving. He's a downright noble figure. Of course I'll stake him! As long as he can crawl out in the spring. He and that burro are a sight together. The beast is nearly as white as Jasper; must be ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... that first winter of rigid and unexplainable penuriousness, and of a secrecy which meant perilous skirtings of downright lying; for Eleanor occasionally asked why they had so little money to spend? He had requested a raise—and not mentioned to Eleanor the fact that he had got it. When she complained because his salary ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... more downright term may be seen from the following words. (These pairs are of course merely illustrative. With them might be grouped a few special pairs, like devilish-diabolical and church-ecclesiastical, of which the first members are classic in origin but of such early naturalization ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... they lived at the Globe Tavern on four dollars a week. And the lady had been sought by prosperous men! The lowliness of Lincoln's origin went ill with her high notions of her family's importance. She was downright, high-tempered, dogmatic, but social; he was devious, slow to wrath, tentative, solitary; his very appearance, then as afterward, was against him. Though not the hideous man he was later made out to be—the "gorilla" of enemy caricaturists—he was ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... relish the idea of sending their boys to the national school of the parish, let it be never so well supplied with teachers. There is another objection to it. It has a faint suspicion of the pauper. Now if there is anything a downright English yeoman abominates more than all the rest it is any approach to the "parish." This is a "parish" school. It is not a paupers' school—that is admitted—but it is a "parish" school, to which the children of men who have often received relief are sent. The yeoman's instinct revolts at ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... but far more desirous of commending himself to Euphra, Hugh began in downright earnest. That very evening, he felt that he had a little hold of the language. Harry was left to his own resources. Nor was there any harm in this in itself: Hugh had a right to part of every day for his own uses. But then, he had been with Harry almost every evening, or a great part of ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... bitter for the younger man to use towards the elder. The fact is that Borrow had one dangerous virus in him—a poison which distorts the whole vision—for he was a bigoted sectarian in religion, seeing no virtue outside his own interpretation of the great riddle. Downright heathendom, the blood-stained Berserk or the chaunting Druid, appealed to his mind through his imagination, but the man of his own creed and time who differed from him in minutiae of ritual, or in the interpretation of mystic passages, was ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... did the fire From thine owne altar which the gods adore, Kindle the souls of gnats and wasps before? Who would delight in his chast eyes to see Dormise to strike at lights of poesie? Faction and envy now are downright rage. Once a five-knotted whip there was, the stage: The beadle and the executioner, To whip small errors, and the great ones tear; Now, as er'e Nimrod the first king, he writes: That's strongest, th' ablest deepest bites. The muses weeping fly their ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... widely heralded liberalism; in spite of the effort to accommodate itself to the rationalism, the unbelief and downright infidelity of the hour; in spite of the determination to cut loose from the primaries of the first century and ally itself with the fast-going advance of the twentieth, this movement in the name of Christianity has not succeeded in winning and holding ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... I do," he said. "In fact, I want for 'The Tiger' to swallow the 'Seven Stars,' in a poetical way of speaking. I'm a downright man and never take ten minutes where five's enough, so there it is. It came over me last night as a thing that must be—like the conversion of Paul. And I'll go further; I won't have you beat about the bush, Nelly. You're the sort of woman that ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... imaginary characters, or long-forgotten incidents, he takes the bolder and more desperate course of getting up his plot at home, casts the principal parts among his nearest friends and connections, and rehearses it in downright earnest, with steady nerves and unabated resolution. We will just give ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... "Ninepence," replied the waiter. Anger, consternation, and incredulity were all depicted, by turns, on the visitor's cheek. "What!" he shouted, "ninepence. Why, I could buy a dozen bottles for half-a-crown. It's downright robbery to ask ninepence for one bottle. You've made a mistake." "I've made no mistake," said the waiter; "I was told to ask ninepence. But," (at this point he sidled up to the traveller and whispered, with terrible accents, in his ear) "it's a damp mean house this you're ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... confess afterwards, or whether he would resist them, as he did sometimes, or whether he would lie, which he never did. Holt instructing the boy on this point, however, that if to keep silence is not to lie, as it certainly is not, yet silence is, after all, equivalent to a negation—and therefore a downright No, in the interest of justice or your friend, and in reply to a question that may be prejudicial to either, is not criminal, but, on the contrary, praiseworthy; and as lawful a way as the other of eluding a wrongful demand. For instance (says ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... at ma! Did you ever see her so bright and jolly? She looks downright pretty. She can hold her own better than ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... Mr. Thrale is to be found in his mental and bodily condition at the time, which made it impossible for Johnson or Burke to interfere without a downright quarrel with him, nor without making matters worse. This, however, is not the only instance in which Johnson witnessed Thrale's laxity of morals without reproving it. Opposite the passage in which Boswell reports Johnson as palliating infidelity in a husband by the remark, that the man imposes no ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... 1774, arrived. Putnam was fifty-six years of age, a somewhat portly personage, weighing two hundred pounds, with a round, full countenance, adorned by curly locks, now turning gray—the very picture of a hale, hearty, good-humored, upright and downright country gentleman. News came that the port of Boston was closed, its business suspended, its people likely to be in want of food. The farmers of the neighborhood contributed a hundred and twenty-five sheep, which Putnam himself ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... 'Only downright nonsense,' said Rupert, looking down, and unconsciously drawing very strange devices on the blotting paper, 'unworthy the attention of so wise ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... with the Greek cities and native tribes of Sicily, and after gaining as many allies as possible in the island, let them proceed to the attack of Selinus and Syracuse. Lamachus, on the other hand, a plain, downright soldier, was for sailing straight to Syracuse, and striking immediately at the heart of Sicily. The city, he argued, would be found unprepared, and if they acted at once, in the first terror of their presence, they were certain of victory; but if they ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... face, no woman's hand had sought his with tenderness. All his long life of grasping greed had been spent in money-getting and money-saving. No sense of right or justice had ever restrained him; but only the fear of getting caught had kept him from downright stealing. Year after year he had added to his hoard, carefully invested it, and now in a few days of desperate dread it had ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... finds in the pseudo-moral romances of the sentimental character; no flashy excuses like those which Sheridan puts forward (unconsciously, most likely), for those brilliant blackguards who are the chief characters of his comedies. Vice is never to be mistaken for virtue in Fielding's honest downright books; it goes by its name, and invariably ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... Spencer," said Mrs. Hill carelessly. "He's at the head of the Land Office here. That's really all I know about him. Jack says he is a downright good fellow and all that, you know. But he's no earthly good in a social way; he can't talk or he won't. He's flat. So different ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... upon my left. But I do not think the charter gives him very much power over me; moreover, I shall soon come to an end of my examinership, and therefore I am not afraid, but shall go on to say what I was going to say, and that is, that in my belief it is a downright cruelty—I have no other word for it—to require from gentlemen who are engaged in medical studies, the pretence—for it is nothing else, and can be nothing else, than a pretence—of a knowledge of comparative anatomy as part of their medical ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... sugar-tongs, Zachariah—excusable, perhaps, this time, considering the warmth of the speech he was making against the late war—pushed them aside, and helped himself after the usual fashion. A cloud came over Mrs. Zachariah's face; she compressed her lips in downright anger, pushed the tongs towards him with a rattle, and trod on his foot at the same time. His oration came to an end; he looked round, became confused, and was suddenly silent; but the Major gallantly came to the rescue by jumping up ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... "What a downright nice little soul she is, anyway!" thought Truesdale. "There are nice good girls in this world, after all, and some of them are right here. And how she idealizes this brutal and ugly town! If only she doesn't ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... Peer Gynt but the "awful interest of the universal problems with which it deals." This obsession of the critic to discover "problems" in the works of Ibsen has been one of the main causes of that impatience and even downright injustice with which his writings have been received by a large section of those readers who should naturally have enjoyed them. He is a poet, of fantastic wit and often reckless imagination, and he has been travestied in a long black coat and white choker, as though he were ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... me downright angry with you, Anna, if you talk such nonsense," Mary said, severely. "You know very well that I have always made up mind that nothing shall induce me to marry and give up my freedom, at any rate for a great many ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... delivered them to sixty knights, who were good in fight, fast to hold over the weald. And he himself drove him forth, and made much din, and Gorlois the fair, forth on the other side, and all their knights ever forth-right slew downright all that they came nigh. Some they crept to the wood on their bare knees, and they were on the morrow most miserable of all folk. Octa was bound, and led to London, and Ebissa, and Ossa—was never ...
— Brut • Layamon

... seen him his chest had manifestly become of a larger girth. I am speaking only upon distant recollection; but I should judge it to have been three or four inches larger round, or perhaps more. His voice was stronger, his manner more confident and downright, and, although not less emphatic, yet decidedly less impulsively changeful. I can recall his reading from an ancient author, translating as he went, a passage about the making of the first man; and I remember it from the subject and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... Conrad, trying to rally his own courage, 'there's plenty of blue cloth and yellow facings in the world besides what is on Swedish uniforms; and as I told you before, that dragoon could swear in downright good German.' ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... fatal to their future happiness and usefulness, and hold them till they grow into habits of thought or feeling. A wise mother will have her eyes open, and be ready for every emergency. A few words of common, downright practical sense, timely uttered by her, may be enough to counteract some foolish idea or belief put into her daughter's head by others, whilst if it be left unchecked, it may take such possession of the mind that it cannot be corrected at ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... wicked—downright wicked!" declared Mary, with some passion—"Any girl who would plan and scheme to marry an old man for his money must be a worthless creature. I wish I had been in ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... vigorous. It's closely in touch with nature, and it doesn't pretend to be what it isn't. You might do well to study a cabbage: but not follow its program. A cabbage has too much to learn. How our downright young moderns will learn things, I'm sure I don't know. Sanine scornfully says "not by repression." Well, I don't think highly of repressions; they're not the best method. Yet it's possible that they might be just the ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... "She's getting downright mean, is that old Deb!" grumbled he; "especially if Jan happens to be out. Wasn't it different in West's time! He knew what was good, he did. Catch her daring to put bread and cheese on the table for supper then. I shall be quite exhausted before ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... nor loosed his hold for some five minutes, during which period he bestowed more kisses than ever he gave in his life before, I daresay: but then my mistress had kissed him first, and I plainly saw that he could hardly bear, for downright agony, to look into her face! The same conviction had stricken him as me, from the instant he beheld her, that there was no prospect of ultimate recovery there—she was ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice—to express it in a word—the downright acted villany of the part, so different from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness,—the hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy,—which made Jack so deservedly a favourite in that character, I must needs conclude the present generation of playgoers more virtuous than myself, or more ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... they don't go with me; next thing will be to take them with him anyhow, and the idea of having Johnny and Flora brought up to believe that it is a mortal sin to be absent from Mass, even when the day is scalding hot, or piping cold! That is downright tyranny. I would never endure it! It is well I was never brought up a Catholic; they'd find a rebel in me, sure. All the priests, and Bishops, and the Pope, and a hundred like him, couldn't oblige me to go to church, if I was not ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... pass-over.—I have stretched the duties of a serving-man as far as my northern conscience will permit. I can give my gude word to my master, or to my native country, when I am in a foreign land, even though I should leave downright truth a wee bit behind me. Ay, and I will take or give a slash with ony man that speaks to the derogation of either. But this chambering, dicing, and play-haunting, is not my element—I cannot draw breath ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... she is clever and odd, and I hate odd women. Why can't they be like other people? Think of her being strong enough to save your life like that too. She must have the muscle of an Amazon—it's downright unwomanly. But there is no doubt about her beauty. She is as nearly perfect as any girl I ever saw, though too independent looking. If only one had a daughter like that, how one might marry her. I would not look at anything under ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... of downright frauds and vicious food adulteration in the times of Apicius. The old rascal himself is not above giving directions for rose wine without roses, or how to make a spoiled honey marketable, and other similar adulterations. Those of our readers with sensitive ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... not reply, but seemed hesitating what to say. But here Walter broke in again. "I call it downright mean!" he exclaimed bitterly; "but he's getting meaner and meaner, that he is. What he does with his money nobody knows. I suppose he spends it in religious pocket-handkerchiefs and pious bed-quilts for the little niggers in Africa, or ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... the evening before, as you may remember the ostler told us, had been 'gay and dull,' and this morning it was downright dismal: very dark, and promising nothing but a wet day, and before breakfast was over the rain began, though not heavily. We set out upon our walk, and went through many streets to Holyrood House, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... first place, they have grounded their principal argument for my compliance with their will, upon my acknowledgement that my heart is free; and so, supposing I give up no preferable person, my opposition has the look of downright obstinacy in their eyes; and they argue, that at worst, my aversion to Solmes is an aversion that may be easily surmounted, and ought to be surmounted in duty to my father, and for the promotion ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... absolutely unlearned, and almost as stupid as his own sheep. He had not wit enough to know that when he sang a Christian hymn where any and all could hear it his life was in the greatest danger. He was stupid, downright stupid, but he had a keen eye, knew whom to trust and was possessed of an ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark

... turf was very slippery and my poor Larkspur got a fall, and I broke my knee, and so of course I was of no more use there. But I could not live without horses, of course I couldn't, so I took to the hotels. And I can tell ye it is a downright pleasure to handle an animal like this, well-bred, well-mannered, well-cared-for; bless ye! I can tell how a horse is treated. Give me the handling of a horse for twenty minutes, and I'll tell you what sort of a groom he has had. Look at this one, ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell

... the navies of Europe, with above two millions of people in your American colonies, you will bear to hear of the expediency of receiving from Spain an insecure, unsatisfactory, dishonourable convention? Sir, I call it no more than it has been proved in this debate; it carries fallacy, or downright subjection, in almost every line. It has been laid open and exposed in so many strong and glaring lights, that I can pretend to add nothing to the conviction ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... a dream," interrupted downright, determined Mary; "it is not a dream; it shall be a reality. How glorious it will be! I can see our little house now nestling among the hills, shaded by great spreading trees with flowers and vines and golden fruit all about it, rich plumaged ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... and, demoralized by this belief, the Union commands, by a common impulse, gave up the fight as lost, and half marched, half ran from the field. Before reaching Centreville, the retreat at one point degenerated into a downright panic among army teamsters and a considerable crowd of miscellaneous camp-followers; and here a charge or two by the Confederate cavalry companies captured thirteen Union guns and quite ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... an Inn and stepped within The Bar and read the "Times;" And never such a treat, as—the epistle of one "Vetus,"[42] Had he found save in downright crimes: "Though I doubt if this drivelling encomiast of War Ever saw a field fought, or felt a scar, Yet his fame shall go farther than he can guess, For I'll keep him a place in my hottest Press; 130 And his works shall be bound in Morocco d'Enfer, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... the practice of advertising a "humour" or "passion" in a name (English or Italian) established itself most firmly. Hence such strange appellatives as Sir Epicure Mammon, Sir Amorous La Foole, Morose, Wellbred, Downright, Fastidius Brisk, Volpone, Corbaccio, Sordido, and Fallace. After the Restoration, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger were, for a time, more popular than Shakespeare; so that the label-names seemed to have the sanction of the giants that were before the Flood. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... How can cleanliness and self-respect survive? Yet sometimes they do survive, but at a terrible cost, for more and still more of the weekly income must go in rent, which means less and still less for food and clothing. Sometimes the grossness and impurity, the ignorance and downright wickedness of the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... is in reality tremendous, downright crushing, terrible... And not at all terrible are the loud phrases about the traffic in women's flesh, about the white slaves, about prostitution being a corroding fester of large cities, and so on, and so on... an old ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... he gave Violet a home of her own that was a home at the very start, she'd soon settle down in it. He needn't worry about the hard work it meant. The only thing that would keep Violet steadylike was downright hard work. No; she didn't mean anything cruel. They could have a char once a fortnight for a ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... the bridle. Dashing aslant-wise as before, the winged horse made another arrow-flight toward the Chimera, and Bellerophon aimed another downright stroke at one of the two remaining heads as he shot by. But this time neither he nor Pegasus escaped so well as at first. With one of its claws the Chimera had given the young man a deep scratch in his shoulder, and had slightly damaged the left wing of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... he actually uses no energy even in that business. Just staggers around and bemoans his lot; a most unfortunate man, in his own estimation, with whom the world, through no fault of his, has gone wrong. He is never downright intoxicated, and never free from the effects of liquor. He is much like a wilted leaf in the hands of this boy and girl. They could pitch him out of the window without much difficulty, and if the fall did not kill him he would shed tears and say it was a hard world. But now, what do ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... long street, at the windows, on the footways, and in carriages, amused day after day for several hours in pelting and being pelted with handfuls of mock or real sugar-plums; and this no name or presence, but real downright showers of plaster comfits, from which people guard their eyes with meshes of wire. As sure as a carriage passes under a window or balcony where are acquaintances of theirs, down comes a shower of hail, ineffectually returned from below. The parties in two crossing carriages ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... take the Professor's tobacco," said John; then, angrily turning upon poor M'Allister, he cried, "And as for your filthy stuff, it's a downright insult to ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... boy's springs, and so fierce his attacks. Lucinus fairly lost his temper at last, and I stopped the fight, for although they fought with blunted weapons, he might well have injured the lad badly with a downright cut, and that would have meant trouble with ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty









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