"Dour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you do not know the dour temper of the Scots, though you have dealt with them so often. I have a right to know them, my mother being ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... into the room where Robert sat, and began once more to question him. But Robert was still obdurate, and stolidly kept silent. Mr. Clapper recognized at once that this was a clear case of a dour nature in the wrong. It needed correction, and that of a severe kind. That spirit he felt must be broken, or there would be trouble ahead in after years for Robert Sinclair. Mr. Clapper was determined to do his duty, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... sense, and had perhaps misinterpreted Seth's keen desire to return forthwith to Virginia. Seth, in short, was seldom able to express himself adequately, emotion scarcely ever sounded in his voice, and the expression of his face was a fixed and unchangeable one, somewhat dour and ill-tempered in aspect and reflecting ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... wide, bright places seemed suddenly to open and shine before me. Not places to shrink back from—oh no! no! One could be sure, then—SURE! Feargus had lifted his bonnet with that extraordinary triumph in his look—even Feargus, who had been rather dour. ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and wind and clamoring sea and solemn hills, the dour, ill-tempered world wherein we were, our days as grass (saith the psalmist). Ay, an' 'tis so. I remember the day: the wet moss underfoot; the cold wind, blowing as it listed; the petulant sea, wreaking an ancient ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... was Sir Herbert Templewood, K.C., M.P., a political barrister, with a Society wife, a polished manner, and a deadly gift of cross-examination. With him was Mr. Grover Braecroft, a dour Scotch lawyer of fifty-five, who was currently believed to know the law from A to Z, and really had an intimate acquaintance with those five letters which made up the magic word Costs. Apart from this valuable knowledge, he was a cunning and crafty lawyer, picked in the present case to ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... Joseph and Lady Webling were protesting too well and too much. Marie Louise hated herself for even the disloyalty of such a criticism of them, but she was repelled somehow by such rhetoric, and she liked far better the dour silence of old Mr. Verrinder. He looked a bishop who had got into a layman's evening dress by mistake. He was something very impressive and influential in the government, nobody knew ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... a Saxon than a Celtic derivation in East Kent; but many localities, &c. there still retain British or Celtic names, and eminently so the stream that runs through River and Ewell, the Dour or Dwr, unde, no doubt, Dover, where it disembogues into the sea. May we not therefore likewise seek in the same language an interpretation of this (at least as far as I ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... Catherine supped with her brother and sister-in-law: Joseph and I joined at an unsociable meal, seasoned with reproofs on one side and sauciness on the other. His cake and cheese remained on the table all night for the fairies. He managed to continue work till nine o'clock, and then marched dumb and dour to his chamber. Cathy sat up late, having a world of things to order for the reception of her new friends: she came into the kitchen once to speak to her old one; but he was gone, and she only stayed to ask what was the matter with him, and then went back. In the morning he rose early; and, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... father sitting by the living-room window and came to a stop. Mr. Darner was a dour, heavy-set man with a coarse, bristling gray beard. He glared at ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... was the gayest ever known at Boobyalla; never had Mrs. Donald Macdougal been so prodigal, never had such lavish hospitality been dispensed under Macdougal's roof-tree, and the squatter wore a dour and anxious look as he saw the liquor flowing, and heard the music, and the laughter, and the clatter of dishes, and found himself in collision with his wife's guests in all the passages and windings of his large, wandering homestead. Macdougal, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... days last fall when he had been so closely cornered by his creditors that it took many a writhe and a wriggle to get through. Nobody but himself, unless it was the dour Tom Barton, knew ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... dining-room. The shaded candles on the table did not permit much light to fall on the walls, but such portraits as were visible showed that David was right when he said the "Hume-Frazers were all alike." They were a handsome, determined-looking race, strong, dour, inflexible. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... sank back discouraged. What ailed the girl? She simply would not take life seriously. She would not lift her hand to help. When they were so poor and the future so dour, how could she keep from earning a little money? Was she condemned to be altogether useless, shiftless, unprofitable? A weight about her father's neck till he could shift her to the neck of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... least of ours. Some of us had dreamt of dining in Europe. Others of us had visions of beer drinking at the coast. A great many would fain have taken the waters of Modder River. But all were disappointed, dour, and sorrowful—all save our true philosopher, ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... the dour Prime Minister of the greatest empire in the world, the Minister in charge of the Empire's defense measures, the editor of England's most powerful newspaper, the Right Honorable Speaker of the House of Commons, the sister-in-law of England's leading fascist and several others ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... Dour-like he gaed, wi' doon-hingin heid, Quhill he cam, by the licht o' the mune, Quhaur michty stanes lay scattert like sheep, An' ance they ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... was reported to Pretoria almost simultaneously with the news that Cronje was hemmed in at Paardeberg. But owing it may be to the distance which intervened between Kruger and the scene of action, the dour old voortrekker of Colesberg would not hear of any voluntary retirement before the enemy who had driven him out of the Cape Colony sixty years before. He sent an appeal to the Boers of the Tugela which, in an intense human document, displayed his steadfast and touching faith, and which might have ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... little humor to cajole the swarthy, sarcastic, and unsociable Spaniard. Their minds were too full of the pleasures of the months to come, of plans and frolics in contemplation, to sacrifice their time to this dour personage. ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... was startling. The tele-columnist was a tall, dour and bushy-browed man who took a perverse sort of pride in the impression he gave of shabbiness. He slouched wordlessly into the room, hands thrust deep in the pockets of a makeshift jacket. But there was nothing shabby about the ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... woman—pine knots an' the like o' that. I didn't git home much afore darruk, and me owld horse wasn't more nor in the shtable an' I 'atin' me supper, quiet like, afore Belcher druv up to me house wid his purty man on the seat wid 'im. An' says he: 'Mike Conlin! Mike Conlin! Come to the dour wid ye!' So I wint to the dour, an' he says, says he: 'Hev ye seen a crazy old feller wid a b'y?' An' says I: 'There's no crazy owld feller wid a b'y been by me house in the daytime. If they wint by at all at all, it was when me family was aslape.' ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... fit, and when he had glanced through them, he stared out of the window at the landscape flashing past. They were passing through the Black Country, and it seemed to him to be in keeping with his thoughts—dour, relentless, grim. The smouldering blast-furnaces, the tall, blackened chimneys, the miles of dingy, squalid houses, all mocked the efforts of their makers ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling, minion of pleasure, Phedo's toyable ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... cuts into the heart of life; but he makes a very shallow incision, if he only reaches as deep as habits and calamities and sins. Deeper than all these lies a man's vision of himself, as swaggering and sentimental as a penny novelette. The literature of can-dour unearths innumerable weaknesses and elements of lawlessness which is called romance. It perceives superficial habits like murder and dipsomania, but it does not perceive the deepest of sins—the sin of vanity—vanity which is ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... the plaint of the wind on the moor, Crying at dawning, and crying at shut of the day, And the call of the gulls that is eerie and dreary and dour, And the sound of the surge as it breaks on the beach of ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... ominous court proved to be appallingly short. The dour-faced elders merely put their heads together, muttered a few sentences, then straightened up almost immediately. The chief priest—he with the yellow face—thrust out his fist and made the immemorial signal of death by jerking his thumb at ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... getting no nearer the root of Aleck's trouble, though he came back after each dismissal and doggedly took whatever was offered. Finally, the agent's patience wore thin, and when Aleck had been more than usually dour and aggravating it went entirely to pieces. Aleck listened to his outburst apparently unmoved; then said, "Very well, if you want to know what would make me stop drinking, I'll tell you. If I could see any ray of hope that I was on the way to getting my home and family back, I'd stop and stop ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... his life to his trade; and, despite his travels in France and Spain, he enjoyed few intervals of merriment. Even the humour, which proved his redemption, was as dour and grim as Scotland can furnish at her grimmes: and dourest. Here is a specimen will serve as well as another: three of Gilderoy's gang had been hanged according to the sentence of a certain Lord of Session, and the Chieftain, for his own vengeance and the intimidation ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... politics did not interest him. He was the only Irishman I have ever met who cared nothing for either the political or the religious issue. He had a prejudice against one Orange district, because the people in it were dour. He had a prejudice against one Roman Catholic district, because the people in it were rude. Otherwise his mind was untroubled. Life was what interested him. He would have watched a political or religious riot with gravity, with pleasure in the spectacle, and ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... to Dour, in Belgium, and for us a bad day's march it was. My job was to keep touch with the 14th Brigade, which was advancing along a parallel road to the west.[5] That meant riding four or five miles across rough country roads, endeavouring to time myself so as to ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... gone where neither you nor that dour-faced deevil that befooled us all will find her soon, I promise you, Dickie Jennifer!" he snapped; and I gave them my back and stumbled blindly to the door, making sure his next word would tell my poor wronged lad all that he should have learned ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Davie was become the most powerful man in Scotland, and it is not to be dreamt that a dour, stiff-necked nobility would suffer it without demur. They intrigued against him, putting it abroad, amongst other things, that this foreign upstart was an emissary, of the Pope's, scheming to overthrow the Protestant religion in Scotland. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... in a dour mood of unrest, spite of the promise of wealth he carried in his pocket. He mailed the package and the letter, and went to a saloon and had a highball. He was not a drinking man—at least, he never had been one, beyond a convivial glass or two with his fellows—but he felt that day ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... his feet, uttering an exclamation of bitter self-reproach, asking himself angrily what he was doing. He knew how much she gave him, what full measure of her affection! Was not that enough?—Out upon you, Louden! Are you to sulk in your tent, dour in the gloom, or to play a man's part, and if she be happy, turn a cheery ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... that wealthy and amiable eccentric, Madame Helene Omber, was a souvenir of those days when Passy had been suburban. A survival of the Revolution, a vast, dour pile that had known few changes since the days of its construction, it occupied a large, unkempt park, irregularly triangular in shape, bounded by two streets and an avenue, and rendered private by high walls crowned with broken glass. Carriage gates ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... compelled now to give an apparently scientific reason for their conduct, they say that it is so placed to produce a draught. But this it does not do. The practice originated in the belief that the slow or dour fire was spell-bound by witchcraft, and the poker was so placed that it would form the shape of a cross with the front bar of the grate, and thus the witch power be destroyed. In early times when the poker was placed in this position, ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... been so grumpy about the Scotch doctor. The man is everything dour that the word "Scotch" implies. I detest him on sight, and he detests me. Oh, we're going to have a ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... caught the superb sweep of the Casa Grande beetling on its crag. Over the sapphire canal where the old men are fishing for sprats, above the rugged scarp where the blue-bloused ouvriers are quarrying the famous champagne cheese, you see the Gothic transept of the Palazzio Ginricci, dour against a nacre sky. An involuntary tremolo eddies down your spinal marrow. The Gin Palace, you murmur.... At last you are ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... as an author that he is fantastical and artistically artificial, it must be owned he is so. His humour, exquisite as it is, is modish. It may not be for all markets. How it affected the Scottish Thersites we know only too well—that dour spirit required more potent draughts to make him forget his misery and laugh. It took Swift or Smollett to move his mirth, which was always, three parts of it, derision. Lamb's elaborateness, what he himself calls his affected ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... at me in that affectionate way of his. You would never have taken us for brothers. We were so different in temperament and appearance that we were almost the reverse of each other. He was the handsomest boy I have ever seen, frank, fair-skinned and winning, while I was dark, dour and none too well favoured. He was the best runner and swimmer in the parish, and the idol of the village lads. I cared nothing for games, and would be found somewhere among the heather hills, always by ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... was instantly and effectually brought back to a dour sense of reality by Evelyn Forbes's next words. She, by chance, looked at Theydon just as she had looked at him the ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... natures of us Northern folk break in vain efforts. Our advances are met with an imperceptible but impermeable resistance by the very people who are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It is the very reverse of that dour opposition which a Lowland Scot or a North English peasant offers to familiarity; but it is hardly less insurmountable. The treatment, again, which Venetians of the lower class have received through centuries from their own nobility, makes attempts ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... it'll be. The McRaes don't cry back on a bargain," the dour old buffalo-hunter said. "But first we'll look at this young man's arm. Get water and clean ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... saw, across the room, a sandy-haired young man regarding him with dour intentness, and the spectacle, instead of feeding his joy, sent conjecturing chills down his spine. His bubble was pricked. Suppose, ran the horrid thought, suppose she was simply paying off the Englishman? Girls, even blue-eyed, ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Tombstones are bright beacons of cheer as compared to the monumental regret one experiences on getting up to greet the alleged and vastly over-rated glories of a budding day. The sunrise is a pall! It is a deadly, dour thing. It may be pink and red and golden and full of all the splendours of the east, but it is a resurrection and you can't make anything else out of it. Staying up till four and then going to bed gives one an idea of the sunrise that is not supported by the facts; there is but one way ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... of Alexander Johnstone—for Newhaven wives, like great artists, change their conditions without changing their names—was known in the town only as a dour wife, a sour ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... to a dour-looking individual at a counter at the ramp's end. Clearing my throat, I said rather inanely, "Hello!"—but what does one say ...
— Lost in the Future • John Victor Peterson
... Blake and Burton—all long and lean and hard, with deep-set, keen eyes and brown, thin faces; Evans, who was supposed to be over-seer, and important enough to arrive late; younger fellows, like Fred Anderson and David Boone (the latter's hair suspiciously smooth and shiny); Hogg, the dour old man who ruled the flower garden and every one but Norah; and a sprinkling of odd rouseabouts and boys, very sleek and well brushed, in garments of varying make, low collars, and the tie the bushman loves "for best"—pale blue satin, with what Wally termed "jiggly patterns" on ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Crawshay, dour and threatening, came a little further into the room. Behind him in the hall was a vision of his escort. Sir Denis looked up from the hearth with a poker ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... being both busy and uncomfortable and making every one around her share the latter feeling, had little or nothing to do with Isabel or her friends. She was the typical Puritan, the salt of a somewhat dour earth, and how Isabel ever came into her household would be difficult to say. The mother had much undemonstrative affection for her daughter, but no understanding and less sympathy. She could never accustom herself to the girl's habit of ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Christians, who, descended from the Iconoclasts of two centuries before, found the rule of Moslem image-haters more congenial, as it was certainly more effective, than that of Byzantine emperors. The creed of the Seljuks was Islam of an Iranian type. Of Incarnationist colour, it repudiated the dour illiberal spirit of the early Arabian apostles which latter-day Sunnite orthodoxy has revived. Accordingly its professors, backed by an effective force and offering security and privilege, quickly won over the aborigines—Lycaonians, Phrygians, Cappadocians, and Cilicians—and welded them into ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... explain this startling paradox? How is it, and why is it, that the artistic and exuberant, genial and sentimental German submits to the hard rule of the commonplace, uninteresting, and dour Prussian? ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... M. Pelouse. "Oh, Madame!" he said, as before, but with an expressiveness doubly charged, "what a climate!" He was panting and was covered with fine snow. Behind him was Peter, looking very grave and dour. ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... hands enthusiastically, "it will be the greatest football match that ever was played;" but an old burgher, with his left hand in a sling, bound up in dirty-looking bandages, interposed: "No; the only game we like to play now is the one with cannon-balls." No; these dour, stolid men take their fighting sadly and sternly; there is none of the "frolic welcome" with which our Irish Tommies, for instance, enjoy their fighting or endure the waiting for it. When I was a prisoner in Pretoria they used to keep us awake ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... banks which obstruct the funnel-shaped cavity between the upper and middle prongs. This I knew from the chart. My unaided eye saw nothing but the open sea, growing dark green as the depths increased; a dour, threatening sea, showing its white fangs. The waves grew longer and steeper, for the channels, though still tortuous, now begin ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... and dour. He had held socialistic views in his fiery youth, but had changed his mind like the rest of us when he found himself rising in the world. In these days he received a percentage on the Works profits, and cursed the impudence of Labor. As to visitors, his politics were ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was seemingly impossible, he faced his misfortunes with a dour courage. It had been a difficult and thankless task during the past month to stave off pressing creditors. With Iris in Bootle and Bulmer her devoted slave, Verity would have weathered the gale with jaunty self-confidence. But that element of strength was lacking; nay, more, he felt in his heart ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... prevailed for a year or more. It's this d—d Oliverian element among them. You see, ever since his Majesty's blessed restoration, gang after gang of rebels have been sent us—Independents, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchy men, dour Scotch Whigamores—dangerous fanatics all! Many are Naseby or Worcester rogues, Ironsides who worship the memory of that devil's lieutenant, Oliver. All have the gift of the gab. We disperse them as much as possible, not allowing above five or six to any ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... was set, Till nae food had they, but twa ounce a day o' meal was the maist they'd get. And men fight but tame on an empty wame, so they sent a flag o' truce, And blithe were the Privy Council then, when the Whigs had heard that news. Twa Lords they sent wi' a strang intent to be dour on each Cavalier, But wi' French cakes fine, and his last drap o' wine, did Middleton make them cheer, On the muzzles o' guns he put coats and caps, and he set them aboot the wa's, And the Whigs thocht then he had food and men to stand for the Rightfu' Cause. So he got a' he craved, ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... King Edward's dour sister-successor Queen Mary and her sombre spouse Philip of Spain were scarcely the people to make the place bright on their occasional visits, and when they were here shortly after their marriage it was said "the hall ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... a manly tree, but "dreigh and dour" in the leafing; and yonder stands an Ash-grove like a forest of ships with bare poles in the docks of Liverpool. Yet like ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... acquaintance over six hundred paper-covered volumes which surveyed the world of adventure, from the Nevada of Deadwood Dick to the Australia of Jack Harkaway. He knew the stories by heart, their phraseology and their construction, and was wont at times, half in earnest, half in dour fun (at his own expense), to satirize every-day adventures in the romantic language of his ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... basket, now an unhung and travelling basket, heavy, iron-ribbed, anciently mossy, oozy of slime, fell with neat exactitude upon the bald, bare cranium of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith, head gardener, and dour, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... minister, Zorra had no intention of neglecting its own duty in the premises: the Englisher was not to be let off while memories of Bruce and Bannockburn lived in Scottish hearts. Which way he turned that day and in the months that followed he met dour faces. Excepting Cap'en Donald McKay, a retired mariner, whose native granite had been somewhat disintegrated by exposure to other climates, no man gave him a word;—this, of course, without counting Neil McNab, ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... often wondered, since, why I never shed a tear during all those terrible three days. I couldn't, in some way, though the nurse herself was crying, and poor old Whinnie and Struthers were sobbing together next to the window, and dour old Dinky-Dunk, on the other side of the bed, was racking his shoulders with smothered sobs as he held the little white hand in his and the warmth went forever out of the little fingers where his foolish big hand was trying to hold back the life that ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... nowadays with two things, money and Irish. I mind the day when I followed Mr Gladstone's Home Rule policy, and used to threep about the noble, generous, warm-hearted sister nation held in a foreign bondage. My Goad! I'm not speakin' about Ulster, which is a dour, ill-natured den, but our own folk all the same. But the men that will not do a hand's turn to help the war and take the chance of our necessities to set up a bawbee rebellion are hateful to Goad and man. We treated them like pet lambs and that's the thanks we get. They're coming over here ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... of us Scots who were meant to be dour were always dour," Sir. S argued, "since the days of John Knox, and long before. It was partly climate—partly persecution. Both agreed with our constitutions. But look, here's the little house where ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was twice again as tall as the plump little fellow beside him, and was as dour and thin as the other was cheery and fat. He seemed in a state of perpetual depression, and no amount of chuckles on the part of the plump gentleman could cause even a passing smile over the long sad face ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... Saunders cam tae me a haflin, and hes been on Drumsheugh for twenty years, an' though he be a dour chiel, he's a faithfu' servant as ever lived. It's waesome tae see him lyin' there moanin' like some dumb animal frae mornin' tae nicht, an' no able tae answer his ain wife when ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... fro. Out there the line between mistress and servant had inevitably been supplanted by the bond of companionship; but when they returned to the more humdrum civilization of the western world, it was Janet whose dour Scotch rectitude had re-established the distinction. She took her meals with old Bates at a little table in the butlery, found her chief relaxation in the one motion-picture house that Hambleton boasted, and for the rest, ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... 'm a lad o' laigh degree, Her purse-proud daddy 's dour an' saucy; An' sair the carle wad scowl on me, For speakin' to his dawtit lassie: But were I laird o' Leven's glen, An' she a humble shepherd's daughter, I 'd kneel, an' court her for my ain, The bonny ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... go into the workshop. As they disappear, JOHN MURRAY, sweating and angry looking, comes through from the yard followed by BROWN. JOHN is a tall, stout man, with a rather dour countenance and somewhat stolid expression. He is a year or so the elder of Dan in age. He goes to the dresser, puts his hand on the top shelf, takes down a spanner and throws it down angrily on ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... he saw a Catholic audience, its character emphasized by the appearance of priests clad in the distinctive garments of their orders. It was his duty to oppose a great mass of legislation intended to strengthen that Church and to add to its privileges. His spirit rose and he grew more dour and resolute as he realized the strength of the forces opposed ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... anywheres, except to church—they never miss that—and nobody goes there. There's just old Thomas, and his sister Janet, and a niece of theirs, and this here Neil we've been talking about. They're a queer, dour, cranky lot, and I WILL say it, Mother. There, give your old man a cup of tea and never mind the way his tongue runs on. Speaking of tea, do you know Mrs. Adam Palmer and Mrs. Jim Martin took tea together at Foster ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... wagon. Jed was vastly proud over a bullet crease he had got in a shoulder. After his mother's alarm had taken the form of first aid he was all for showing his battle scars to a certain damsel in Caleb Price's wagon. Wingate remained dour and silent as was now his wont, and cursing his luck that he had had no horse to carry him up in the late pursuit of the Sioux. He also was bitter over the delay in ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... a slow dour race, Kit, who never gave our heart lightly, but having given it, never played the traitor. Fortune has not favoured us, for acre after acre has gone from our hands, but, thank God, we 've never ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... interested in the probable location of the Mission—far too deeply interested for a shipmaster docking his ship—and Little, too, had his mind and eyes on the scene of his imminent adventures to the exclusion of all else. Rolfe, the dour chief mate, was where a good mate should be, on the forecastle head, looking out for lines and fenders. Vandersee alone appeared capable of handling his duties and giving attention to the shore at the same time. Never relaxing his vigilance for a moment in ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... humor, had he ever possessed one, had long since been ruined in his battles with Father Dominic's automobile, raised a dour face. ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... villainies by the dust of war, and to make him gape after you in need and necessity for war-pensions. If Demos can only get into the country in peace and taste the barley-cakes again, he will soon find out of what blessings you have rid him by your briberies; he will come back as a dour farmer and will hunt up a vote which will ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... personal glory to you that your friend Miss Von Eaton's energy cavorts perpetually in the gold of her hair or the blue of her eyes, because rain or shine, congeniality or noncongeniality, her energy hasn't any other place to go. But I tell you it means some compliment to a man when in a bleak, dour, work-worn personality like the old Botany dame's for instance he finds himself able to lure out into occasional facial ecstasy the amazing vitality which has been slaving for Science alone these past fifty ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... hae one the noo?" I questioned. For a moment he eyed me a trifle dour and askance, then he smiled (a ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... distracted. When it got dark I jogged along to the Town Hall—God knows how I got there—and sat on the edge of the balustrade. I tore a pocket out of my coat and took to chewing it; not with any defined object, but with dour mien and unseeing eyes, staring straight into space. I could hear a group of little children playing around near me, and perceive, in an instinctive sort of way, some pedestrians pass me by; otherwise I ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... friend said, "I beg your pardon, sir, but before ye go I wish to caution you, when you get to the speech of the queen, not to put any speerings to her about a certain tongue or dialect which they say the Gypsies have. All the Gypsies become glum and dour as soon as they are spoken to about their language, and particularly the queen. The queen might say something uncivil to your honour, should you ask her questions ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... her babe, warming and caressing our hearts. We did not know then that happiness was a thing to be sought. We only knew that peddling is a pleasure, that a bank account is a supreme joy, that a dish of mojadderah cooked by Im-Hanna is a royal delight, that our dour dark cellar is a palace of its kind, and that happiness, like a bride, issues from all these, and, touching the strings of Khalid's lute, mantles us ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... more mistaken," said he. "What makes the differ with me is just my great penetration and knowledge of affairs. But for auld, cauld, dour, deidly courage, I am not fit to hold a candle to yourself. Look at us two here upon the sands. Here am I, fair hotching to be off; here's you (for all that I ken) in two minds of it whether you'll no' stop. Do you think that I could do that, or would? No' me! Firstly, because ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... doctor's breath away. For the moment he could say nothing. He stared over his tea-cup dour-faced. An objection formulated itself very slowly. ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Protestants of the most dour sort, and they distrusted their new ruler because of her religion and because she loved to surround herself with dainty things and bright colors and exotic elegance. They feared lest she should try to repeal the law of Scotland's ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... something else, too," went on Marsh, a cool voice speaking out of the darkness. "I saw that her black, dour husband is furiously in love with her and furiously jealous of that tall, ruddy fellow with an expressive face, who stood by the door in shirt-sleeves and never took ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Maharajah of Dour, both about 15 or 16, have been sent together to an English Boarding School. Glyn's father has been for many years a Colonel in the Maharajah's father's army, but now the old Maharajah is dead, and his son, known at school as "Singh", has inherited ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... rang out with extreme clearness. A rabbit or two scuttled away, and a pheasant flew off with a whirr. Presently another and heavier pair of boots might be heard tramping towards them, the bushes parted, and a dour-looking face, with lantern jaws and a stubbly chin, regarded them grimly. The gamekeeper glowered a moment, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... have harm happen to him, and he was very much concerned and alarmed to see him so candidly discouraged and sick at heart. Perhaps too quick to draw an inference, Robbins mistrusted his intentions; his dour habit boded ill in the servant's understanding: men in such moods were apt to act unwisely. But if only he might contrive to delay Duncan until Kellogg's return, he thought the former might yet be saved from the consequences of folly of some insensate sort. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... said to him, you mean," said Shenac sharply. "I was sorry for that as soon as I said it. But, Hamish, if you think I'm going down on my knees to Angus Dhu to tell him so, you're mistaken. He may not be a thief and a robber, but he's a dour carle, though he is of our own kin, and as different from our father as the dark is different from the day. And I can say nothing else of him, even for your ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... it had not helped to soothe her spirits. She felt an unreasoning anger against Claire for appearing more attractive than herself, but it did not occur to her that she was heightening the contrast by her own dour, ungracious manner. Altogether that tea-party was a difficult occasion, and as it proceeded, Claire's spirits sank ever lower and lower. She had spent more than she had any right to afford on those ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and Mr. Mott, smoking their pipes on the makeshift bridge, studied the throng of women in dour silence. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... was the next morning; but about noon we were cheered by the sight of the glorious mountain-walls of well-remembered Midian, which stood out of the clear blue sky in passing grandeur of outline, in exceeding splendid dour of colouring, and in marvellous sharpness of detail. Once more the "power of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... lit and revealed a heavy-set, dour of countenance man seated at a desk. He looked into Joe Prantera's ...
— Gun for Hire • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... cried to his young men, "Harness me my horses and yoke my chariot. There are few," he said, "in Erin for whom I would leave my own house, but that youth is one of them. His father Amargin was well known to me. He was a warrior grim and dour exceedingly, and he ever said concerning the boy, 'This hound's whelp that I have gotten is too fine and sleek to hold bloody gaps or hunt down a noble prey. He will be a women's playmate and not a peer amongst Heroes.' And that fear was ever upon him till the day when Conall came red out ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... to school in the town hall, shouted with glee as they romped in the snow-laden gale. It had no terrors for them. They were not concerned with the dour prospect that brought anxiety to the hearts of ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... was a Cornishman, and dour to beat. And, if he had incurred unreasonable dislike, he had also lighted on the virgin lode of Nance's love and trust, and that, he said to himself with a glow ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... down here, rampauging like a lion, with commissions of lieutenancy (and of lunacy, for what I ken), to put down a' the Whigs and Covenanters in the country. Wild wark they made of it; for the Whigs were as dour as the Cavaliers were fierce, and it was which should first tire the other. Redgauntlet was aye for the strong hand; and his name is kend as wide in the country as Claverhouse's or Tam Dalyell's. Glen, nor dargle, nor mountain, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... excellent reason for wishing to take possession: and depend upon it, the reason is that he wants to get hold of something or other that's Harold's. But he sha'n't if I can help it; and, thank my stars, I'm a dour woman to reckon with. If he comes, he comes over my old bones, child. I've been overhauling everything of Marmy's, I can tell you, to checkmate the boy if I can; but I've found nothing yet, and till I've satisfied myself on that point, I'll hold the fort still, if I have to barricade that ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... of the hall-door, and altogether declining to do anything; so he is superseded by an equally ugly little red- headed Englishman. The Irish housemaid has married the German baker (a fine match for her!), and a dour little Scotch Presbyterian has come up from Capetown in her place. Such are the vicissitudes of colonial house-keeping! The only 'permanency' is the old soldier of Captain D-'s regiment, who is barman in ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... upon her bosom,—a magical jewel, whence, with the sky's aid, she draws the soft rain that is her scent and her cosmetic. 'Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers.' Do you know, I could almost forgive the dour and detestable Milton everything for the sake of those seven words. They show that in the sense of smell he had at ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... girl with a twinkle in his grey eyes, and lit a cheroot. The relationships between Patricia Hamilton and Bones were a source of constant joy to him. Taciturn and a thought dour as he was, Pat would never have suspected the bubbling laughter which arose behind that lean brown face, unmovable and, in his moments of most intense ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... demonstration as if to retake Binche. This was supported by the artillery of both the first and the second divisions while the first division took up a supporting position in the neighborhood of Peissant. Under cover of this demonstration The Second Corps retired on the line of Dour, Quarouble and Frameries. The third division on the right of the corps suffered considerable loss in this operation from the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... needed," Scharpe said in a dour, bass voice, staring off past Jonas' left ear at the darkening sky. "And for the money, you will be welcome. I must take your word that you are not dangerous; I can only pray that you ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... ago. The two friends, scorning delights, living laborious days, had seen but little of one another. Light-hearted Annie had borne to her dour partner two children who had died. Nathaniel George, with the luck supposed to wait on number three, had lived on, and, inheriting fortunately the temperament of his mother, had brought sunshine into the gloomy rooms above the shop in High Street, Kensington. ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... and looked at her. They had now reached a little park, some half mile from the grim and dour old walls of the Federal Pen. Trees and grass and playing children seemed to invite them to stop and rest. Though strong, moreover, Gabriel had for so long been unused to walking, that even this short distance had tired him a little. And the oppressive heat had them ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... Binche. This was supported by the artillery of both the First and Second Divisions, while the First Division took up a supporting position in the neighborhood of Peissant. Under cover of this demonstration the Second Corps retired on the line Dour-Quarouble-Frameries. The Third Division on the right of the corps suffered considerable loss in this operation from the enemy, who ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... She offered, however, to convey the letter to Double Dykes. She was anxious to see the inside of the Painted Lady's house, and this would be a good opportunity. She admitted that she had crawled to the east window of it before now, but that dour bairn of the Painted Lady's had seen her head and whipped down ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... after his marriage, Bianca Buonaventuri was introduced at Court as Bianca Cappello. The young Duchess of course was furious, and pointedly refused all intercourse with her rival. Bianca, on the other hand, laid herself out to propitiate the dour Austrian princess and to stifle slander. Still a mere girl, she was in full command of all the moves in woman's strategy. There was no school like that of Venice for the display of tact and fascination. To be sure, she was living in ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... (A pause; she collects herself for her big effort.) Feyther, I'm one o' they dour silent girls to whom expression comes hardly, but (with veiled menace) when it does come it means fifteen minutes' unrelieved monologue. So tak' heed. We're not wanting these changes, and to be up-to-date, and all that. I'm happy as I am, and so's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... of them, whose training and instincts are of the goody-goody, milk and water type,—the lily-livered weaklings, who measure the courage of others by their own,—may be excused their inability to conceive the situation. They cannot understand the dour, unyielding spirit of the Ulsterman in a matter which affects his property, his religion, his freedom. A party backboneless as the Globerigina ooze, and, like that sub-Atlantic production, only held together by its own sliminess, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... serving with exemplary diligence to fear dire consequences to himself if he became the direct cause of a broken idyl. The position was even worse if he fell back on an artistic lie. The Earl was a dour person where servants were concerned, and Salome did not demand John the Baptist's head on a salver with greater gusto than the autocrat of Fairholme would insist on Dale's dismissal when he discovered the facts. Talk of the horned dilemma—here was an ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... following his unexpected illness brought no relief to the bishop, at all events to outward seeming, for he was paler and more haggard than ever in looks, and as dour as a bear in manner. With Mrs Pendle he strove to be his usual cheerful self, but with small success, as occasionally he would steal an anxious look at her, and heave deep sighs expressive of much inward trouble. All this was noted by Cargrim, who carefully strove, by sympathetic looks and ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... would not be exaggerating too much to say in the world. His name was not as well known among the masses as that of Miller and Dean; in fact, outside of an exclusive circle it wasn't known at all, but ask any scientist about Reubens. He was a tall, dour man of sixty, with Scotch blood in his veins, and was content to teach a class in a college because of the leisure it afforded him for his own research work. That was at the ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... esthore phaidimos Ektor, Nukti thoe atalantos upopia lampe de chalko Smerdaleo, ton eesto peri chroi doia de chersi Dour echen ouk an tis min erukakoi antibolesas, Nosphi theun, ot esalto pulas puri d osse dedeei. —Autika d oi men teichos uperbasan, oi de kat autas Poietas esechunto pulas Danaioi d ephobethen Neas ana glaphuras omados d ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... conquered. But not the Scottish Whigs, the Auld Leaven of the Covenant,—they were still dour, and offered many criticisms. Thereon Scott, by way of disproving his authorship, offered to review the Tales in the "Quarterly." His true reason for this step was the wish to reply to Dr. Thomas McCrie, author of the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... with Merrill and the others to the door, was silent and dour. He had been cavalierly affronted by a man who, but a few short years before, he would have considered a mere underling. Here was Cowperwood bearding the lion in his den, dictating terms to the principal ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... up to the walls, and in many places the scaling ladders on the ships approached so close, that those on the towers and on the walls and those on the ladders crossed lances, hand to hand. Thus lasted the assault, in more than a hundred places, very fierce, and very dour, and very proud, till near upon ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... body, that I presented myself, about ten o'clock in the morning, at the front door and demanded the "Frau Graefin." By Carter's advice I had removed my moustache, and my clean-shaven countenance, together with my black felt hat and dark overcoat, gave me, I think, that appearance of rather dour respectability which one looks for in ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... thicket, peered through, swore fiercely under his breath and didn't apologize for it. He beckoned Blunt, and that dour old salt squinted at the sight that had staggered the mate. Natalie stepped softly beside them and gazed over their stooping backs, to swiftly step back with a choking ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... coming into his house to wish him well, to reestablish old relations with him. Why, it would be almost like holding a reception. He would be to those of his own age as a friend of their youth, returning after a long absence to his people, with the dour stranger who had lived in his house while he was away now ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... me, dour bachelor of Glasgow,[E] If I existed not for him, the knave, 'Twas all his fault who let some bonnie lass go Unwedded to ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... would spring up to cover them or rest on her arms. But when he found he was banished to the kitchen every evening, he began to consider and presently gave in. He would sit beside Uncle Win in dignified protest, looking very "dour," as ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... child taken up with fancies and finding omens and stories in the piping of a fowl. Oh! no, he had been a bluff, hearty, hungry boy, hot-headed, red-legged, short-kilted, stirring, a bit of a bully, a loud talker, a dour lad with his head and his fists. This boy beside him made him think of neither man nor boy, but of his sister Jennet, who died in the plague year, a wide-eyed, shrinking, clever girl, with a nerve that a harsh word ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... wonder now why I did not go mad with the joy, and the pain, and the uncertainty of it all. Never was a girl so dazzled, so humbled, so worshiped, so neglected, so courted. He was a creature of a thousand moods to torture one. What guise would he wear to-day? Would he be gay, or dour, or sullen, or teasing or passionate, or cold, or tender or scintillating? I know that my hands were always cold, and my cheeks ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Dour river Jaded with monotony of lights Diving off mast heads.... Lights mad with creating in a river... turning its sullen back... Heave up, river... Vomit back into the darkness your spawn of light.... The night will gut what you ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... little Prayer Book. The body was reverently lowered by means of a couple of ammunition belts from a machine gun, and the three rounds cracked strangely in the rain-laden air, the water dripping from the rifles. After the firing, one of the party, a dour-looking Scot, void of all sentiment I should have thought (God forgive me!) stooped, and picking some objects out of the mud, thrust them into a handy pocket. They were his three empty cartridge cases. Then the Fifes sorrowfully marched away, leaving their beloved captain ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross |
