"Sternness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breast as really generous and humane as that of Jack Tier's, such a feeling was not likely to endure in the midst of a scene like that she was now called to witness. The muscles of her countenance twitched, the hard-looking, tanned face began to lose its sternness, and every way she ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... retainer. He stood now, tall and straight, a trifle rough-looking in his careless planter's dress, but every inch the master. A slight frown puckered up his forehead, giving to his face an added hint of sternness. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... appeared somewhat pleased at this speech; but he did not relax the sternness of his ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... Stoic among the other schools met with most favor from this class of men, for it offered better security against the evils of life, and taught men how to take shelter from baseness and profligacy under the influence of virtue and courage. The doctrines of the Stoics suited the rigid sternness of the Roman character. They embodied that spirit of self-devotion and self- denial with which the Roman patriot, in the old times of simple republican virtue, threw himself into his public duties, and they enabled him to meet death with a courageous spirit in this degenerate ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... choked up with the bodies and heads of countrymen, who, though no members of the council, felt no scruple in intruding themselves upon deliberations in which they were so deeply interested. By expostulation, by threats, and even by some degree of violence, Burley, the sternness of whose character maintained a sort of superiority over these disorderly forces, compelled the intruders to retire, and, introducing Morton into the cottage, secured the door behind them against impertinent ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... John Knox had an audience with Mary, who, hearing of a furious sermon he had preached against the Mass on the previous Sunday in St. Giles's Church, thought that a personal interview would mitigate his sternness. The Queen took him to task for his book entitled The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regimen of Women, and his intolerance towards every one who differed from him in opinion, and further ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... that he has done all the cruel things he is accused of, but says that his sternness and severity were necessary for the occasion, and that Spain should be very grateful to have found such a leader at ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 40, August 12, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... a moment. Then, lifting up his head, and gazing at the professor with a sort of sternness of determination, ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... clear-cut features and prominent cheek-bones at once pronounced him to be a German. His eyes were large, light blue in color, and seemed capable of flashing with anger or melting with affection; his complexion was clear and bright, but his mouth was large and with an expression of sternness which detracted from the pleasing expression of his face; while his teeth, which were somewhat decayed, added to the unpleasing effect thus produced. He was, however, rather a good-looking fellow, with the erect ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Jake's eyes, as he grasped the Colonel's hand and looked into the face which had relaxed from its sternness, and was quivering in every muscle. The proud man was moved, and felt that if he were alone he would have knelt in the hot sand by Eudora's grave, and asked pardon for the wrong he had done her. But Jake was there, and the child looking ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... likewise," replied Socrates, "that it is a great satisfaction to beholders to see all the passions of a man who is in action well expressed? Thus, in the statue of a gladiator who is fighting, you must imitate the sternness of look with which he threatens his enemy; on the contrary, you must give him, when victor, a look of gaiety and content." "There is no doubt of what you say." "We may then conclude," said Socrates, "that it is the part of an excellent ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... whit more forcible because it comes upon us unprepared. We learn at the beginning that Philippe's austerity has not after all been proof against Gotte's seductions; but it has now returned upon him embittered by remorse, and he treats Gotte with sternness approaching to contumely. She takes her revenge by revealing Helene's secret; he tells Helene that he knows it; and she, putting two and two together, divines how it has come to his knowledge. This long scene of mutual reproach and remorseful misery is, in reality, the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the refreshment room and asked for a glass of milk. While she was drinking it a gentleman came in. She saw that it was Lord Wolfer, and set down the glass and waited. The man seemed totally changed. The sternness had disappeared from his face, and his eyes were bright with ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... them are conceived in a vein of fine irony throughout. Others, like "The Journey to Brundusium," are mere narratives, relieved by humorous illustrations. But we do not find in them the epigrammatic force, the sternness of moral rebuke, or the scathing spirit of sarcasm, which are commonly associated with the idea of satire. Literary display appears never to be aimed at. The plainest phrases, the homeliest illustrations, the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... John, with some sternness, "you cannot believe that I would oppose you in any possible thing. Your pleasure has been a law to me. I may have differed with you, but I ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... south, will have gently rounded backs, clothed in pastures nearly to the crest, with garments of purple heather lying under the sky upon their ridges. Yet for all this roundness of outline there will be, towards the Atlantic end of either army, a growing sternness of aspect, a more sombre ruggedness in the outline of the hills, with cliffs and steep ravines setting their ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... face relaxed its sternness a little. Even the hottest blaze of wrath could not burn quite so fiercely when exposed to a generous penitence like his young brother's. He understood Ted was working hard not only to make peace but to spare himself the sharp battle with the demon which, ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... Lower House, scarcely ever visited such places of amusement, and therefore knew not the conduct of either his wife or daughter. He long since discovered his authority was as nothing to his children; he felt most painfully his sternness had alienated their affections, and he now rather shrunk from their society; therefore, even at home he was a solitary man, and yet Grahame was formed for all the best emotions, the warmest affections of our nature. He was ignorant that his wife now very frequently suffered from ill-health, for ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... sternness on his wrinkled face as he could assume, he walked forward to demand a boat of Captain Kendall. As he was passing in the waist, a coil of signal line dropped down from the gaff above, square upon the top of his hat, forcing it far down upon his head. Mr. Hamblin immediately ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... your life and your death; but the last, permit me to tell you, did no good to your country, and the former would have done more if you could have mitigated a little the sternness of your virtue, I will not say of your pride. For my own part, I adhered with constant integrity and unwearied zeal to the Republic, while the Republic existed. I fought for her at Philippi under the only commander, who, if he had conquered, would have conquered for her, not for himself. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... desolate and her past futile. Back upon her a throng of memories came rushing—memories of the high and splendid moments they had spent together. First of all she remembered him as the cold, stern, handsome stranger of that first night—that night when she learned that his coldness was assumed, his sternness a mask. She realized once again that at this first meeting he had won her by his voice, by his hand-clasp, by the swiftness and fervor of his speech; he had dominated her, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... her, and had climbed on doggedly to the top floor. Now he was shut in his sanctuary, his room, sitting at his table. His head rested on a hand, his dark eyes had an expression of confused anguish, a look of guilt and sternness mingled.... He could no more have visited his mother, he told himself, than he could voluntarily have chopped off his hand. And yet he was amazed at the cruelty in himself, a hard cold cruelty which prompted ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of Rome. The "good Lord Grey," he was, if we believe his secretary, writing many years after this time, and when he was dead, "most gentle, affable, loving, and temperate; always known to be a most just, sincere, godly, and right noble man, far from sternness, far from unrighteousness." But the infelicity of his times bore hardly upon him, and Spenser admits, what is known otherwise, that he left a terrible name behind him. He was certainly a man of severe and unshrinking sense of duty, and like many great Englishmen of the time, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... duties and influence of woman are clearly stated in the New Testament. Those duties and that influence are unobtrusive and private, but the source of mighty power. When the mild, dependent, softening influence of woman upon the sternness of man's opinions is fully exercised, society feels the effects of it in a thousand forms. The power of woman is her dependence, flowing from the consciousness of that weakness which God has given her for her protection, (!) and which keeps her in those departments of life that form the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... she should at once tell her mother, and ask her mother's leave. She had once before confessed a tale of love, and had done so with palpitation of the heart, with trembling of the limbs, and floods of tears. Then her tale had been received with harsh sternness. Now she could tell her story without any trembling, with no tears; but it was almost indifferent to her whether her mother was ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Morini drew me away, and by dint of friendly persuasion, in which there was also a good deal of firm determination, led me into the hall, where he made me swallow a glass of wine. As I could not control my sobs, he spoke with some sternness: ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... King with somewhat of sternness in his voice. "Now I tell thee that but for three things, to wit, my mercifulness, my love for a stout woodsman, and the loyalty thou hast avowed for me, thine ears, mayhap, might have been more tightly closed than ever a buffet from me could have shut them. Talk not lightly of thy ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... written characters of his thoughts with deep interest, and not without some degree of awe, when she considered that she was entirely in his power; but forbore even to hint her fears, or her observations, to Madame Montoni, who discerned nothing in her husband, at these times, but his usual sternness. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Walk again. Suddenly, looking obliquely into it, he saw a cap and gown; he looked anxiously; it was Jennings: there was no mistake; and his direction was towards him. Charles always had felt kindly towards him, in spite of his sternness, but he would not meet him for the world; what was he to do? he stood behind a large elm, and let him pass; then he set off again at a quick pace. When he had got some way, he ventured to turn his head round; and he saw Jennings at the moment, by that sort of fatality ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... life, and stand on the other side, and can look back on the path over which we have been led, it will appear that we have found our best blessings where we thought the way was most dreary and desolate. We shall see then that what seemed sternness and severity in Christ was really truest ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... time Honor had risen also; a line of sternness hardening her beautiful mouth. Beneath her sustained cheerfulness lay a passionate temper; and Evelyn's unexpected attack stung it fiercely into life. Several seconds passed before she could trust ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... across the table at his prisoner, and answered gravely, yet with a touch of sternness ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... Euston Square, and passed from the gloom of the station into the brighter air of the London streets, there pausing for a second or two to look around him. He was a man of about fifty, short, thin, wiry, square-shouldered; his features firm even to sternness, and hardened by exposure to wind and weather; his hair gray; his beard also gray and clipped short. The harshness of his face, however, was in a measure tempered by the look of his eyes; these were calm and contemplative, perhaps even with a shade of melancholy in them. For the rest, he ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... parched corn and the remains of a buffalo steak for supper, as the meal was mouldy from its wetting, and running low. When Weldon had gone a little distance up the creek to scout, Tom relented from the sternness which his vigilance imposed and came and sat down on a log ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... it was time to take a hand here. Francis was standing there, still, not trying to answer Peggy. He seemed to Marjorie pitifully at their mercy; why, she did not know, for he had neither said nor looked anything but the utmost sternness. And Marjorie herself knew that he was not being kind or fair—that he had not been, in his exaction. Still she looked at that hand, moving like a sentient thing, ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... Miss Edgeworth was in doubt whether it would be becoming under the circumstances to laugh or to cry, so she made no speech in reply. She said afterwards to Mrs. Martin, "Mr. Philip must have been a most severe master; I can see sternness on his brow." Moreover, she was secretly aware that she did not deserve his compliments, and that her learning was limited, especially in arithmetic; she had often to blame the figures for not adding up correctly. For this reason she had ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... twice. When he put it into his pocket, there was a new light in his eyes, and at the corners of his mouth a relaxation of the lines of sternness. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... a chapel with five windows in it; four for the four cardinal virtues, and one for humility, in the middle, bigger than the rest. And Neith very nearly laughed quite out, I thought; certainly her beautiful lips lost all their sternness for an instant; then she said, "Well, love, build it, but do not put so many colors into your windows as you usually do; else no one will be able to see to read, inside: and when it is built, let a poor village priest consecrate it, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... emotions were manifesting themselves on the other side of the table. Dr. Warner had leaned his large body quite across the little figure of Moses Gould and was talking in excited whispers to Dr. Pym. That expert nodded a great many times and finally started to his feet with a sincere expression of sternness. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... chosen to make as to the purity of his strain. A notable immobility of nature—his friends called it firmness, his enemies obstinacy; a seeming disregard of what others might think of him; a certain sternness of manner—an unreadiness, as it were, to open his door to the people about him; a searching regard with which he was wont to peruse the face of anyone holding talk with him, when he seemed always to give ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... you say such a thing?" he answered, sternly. I did not mind the sternness; there was love ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... better than that of other princes of his time, his tastes and habits were more, not less, refined than theirs, and the restraint he imposed upon his sensual appetites was as conspicuous a trait as his sternness and violence."] ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... But stout decision, sternness, defiant ultimatums, win out with him. As long as Gard had tried to make himself agreeable in the affair of the Court ball, his efforts were misunderstood and he became a handball buffeted about for the superior convenience of others. As soon as he finally stiffened ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... swiftly, and there was a sternness in her face that made the fool recoil involuntarily and wince as if at a coming blow. But there was little anger in the girl's clear speech as ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... will have become of all this greenness and beautiful colour of flowers? The torrid sun and the hot breath of summer will have burnt up the fair garment of spring, and laid bare the arid sternness of the South again. The nightingale still warbles fitfully in the green bushes, but the raven, perched up yonder upon the stark rock, croaks like a misanthrope at the quick passing away of youth and loveliness. What sad undertones, mournful murmurs of the deep ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... innocence and unworldliness; but also an underlying sternness towards himself and others. His wants were small, and for many years the desires of the senses had been dead within him. Towards women he felt, if the truth were known, with that strange unconscious arrogance which is a most real and very primitive element in Catholicism, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... long enumeration of names and details. On the other hand, he constantly shows how well he understood the power of brevity and compression. There is not a superfluous word nor a poetic image in La Conscience, the severe and simple style of which is well suited to the sternness of the subject. The story of Apres la Bataille is related with telling conciseness, while in the highly finished work of Booz endormi there are no redundant phrases. The many variations on the same theme in Aymerillot may be criticized as tedious, but there underlies them ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... younger Racer lad with more sternness and determination than he usually employed. "It was all my fault. I filled your pants with sand, Chet. I really couldn't help it, the bottoms were so wide open. But I didn't push you when you fell the first ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... drive them off easily," and with a word of encouragement to the negroes, I returned to my post. As I neared the door, I saw two figures in white working over the guns. It was Dorothy and her mother, helping the negroes reload. I sent them back to the stair with affected sternness, but I got a second hand-clasp from Dorothy as she ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... had dropped to the floor, raised her eyes appealingly to the man's face; but she found in it no answering sympathy. In the short interval it had changed from geniality to a sternness almost incredible of belief. It was ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... futility of, and to warn against the folly of, struggle against what must be; yet they were kind eyes, and humourous, with many of the small lines of laughter at their corners. Reading the eyes and mouth together one perceived gentleness and sternness to be well matched, working to any given end in amiable and effective compromise. "Uncle Peter" he had long been called by the public that knew him, and his own grandchildren had come to call him by the same term, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... to this kind of language at Bellwood School, Mr. Mace," observed the professor with dignity and sternness. "You will kindly desist from using the same and act like a ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... love me! Me, the cold statue, thus he drapes with duty. Sometimes he waits upon me like a maid, Silent with watchful eyes. Oh, would to Heaven, He used me like a slave bought in the market! Yes, used me roughly! So, I were his own; And words of tenderness would falter in, Relenting from the sternness of command. But I am not enough for him: he needs Some high-entranced maiden, ever pure, And thronged with burning thoughts of God and him. So, as he loves me not, his deeds for me Lie on me like a sepulchre of stones. Italian lovers love ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... right to fish in provincial water on the payment of a small license fee. This favor was taken away in 1870, for the alleged reason that American captains failed to procure licenses, and in the course of this year many of our ships were seized and confiscated. New sternness had been imparted to the provincial policy by the Canadian Act of Confederation, valid from July I, 1867, which joined Ontario and Quebec with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, thus inspiring our neighbors to the north with a new sense of their ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... my child, none can know thy soft soul like he who watched over it since its first blossom expanded to the sun. My poor brother! had he lived, your counsel had been his; and methinks his gentle spirit often whispers away the sternness which, otherwise, would harden over mine. Nina, my queen, my inspirer, my monitor—ever thus let thy heart, masculine in my distress, be woman's in my power; and be to me, with Irene, upon earth, what my brother ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... knocked, but no response rewarded this courtesy—I was requested, by a stern-visaged Sister, to state my business. Her sternness was excusable. The visiting-hour was not yet, and in my unprofessional guise she had taken me for a visitor. My explanation dispelled her frowns. She was expecting me. Her present orderly had been granted three days' leave. He was preparing to depart. I was to act ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... part, and although he was burning with impatience to place the terms of the proposed bargain before this man, yet he would have preferred to be interrogated, to deliver his "either-or" with becoming sternness and decision, rather than to take the initiative in this discussion, where he should have been calm and indifferent, whilst his enemy should have been ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and ascetic in her treatment of it. An ascetic tone runs through all her work, the result of her theories of renunciation. The same sternness and cheerlessness is to be seen in the poetry and painting of the pre-Raphaelites. The joy, freshness and sunniness of Raphael is not to be found in their work. Life is painful, puritanic and depressing to them. Old ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... whose usually placid countenance expressed indecision and worry. Cheyenne seemed positive about the missing horses. Then Bartley saw an expression in Cheyenne's eyes that indicated more sternness of spirit than he had ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... time being, she deemed his reserve a little overdone. If Racine's "Aricie," who loved "Hippolyte," admired the youthful hero's untameable virtue, it was with the hope of winning a victory over it, and she would quickly have bewailed a sternness of moral fibre that had refused to be softened for her sake. At the first opportunity she more than half declared her passion to constrain him to speak out himself. Like her prototype the tender-hearted "Aricie," ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... a look of black sternness on her face, which made Margaret feel she had arrived at a bad time to trouble her with her request. However, it was only in compliance with Mrs. Thornton's expressed desire, that she would ask for whatever they might want in the progress of her mother's illness. Mrs. Thornton's brow contracted, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the west wall which illustrates the Baptist admonishing the soldiers. "Do violence to no man ... and be content with your wages." Wellington earned his name of the Iron Duke for the firmness and sternness with which he punished pillaging and outrage.[96] The stained-glass window by Mr. Kempe has been lately put in to the memory of James Augustus Hessey, Archdeacon of Middlesex (1875-93), whose Bampton Lectures, "Sunday," still remain for theologians ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... did be no cause either that I should have the cloak for a bed; for how should I perceive any softness from the cloak, through all the sternness of mine armour; but yet did I see that the Maid had made a couch that should be for the two of us, and did be so sweet and natural, and to lie by me; but yet to preserve her sweet modesty, and to do ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... silence, during which the brothers eyed each other, Gregory with a sternness before which Joseph's mocking eye was ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the maker of that melancholy town called Geneva, where, only ten years ago, a man said, pointing to a porte-cochere in the upper town, the first ever built there: "By that door luxury has invaded Geneva." Calvin gave birth, by the sternness of his doctrines and his executions, to that form of hypocritical sentiment called "cant."[*] According to those who practice it, good morals consist in renouncing the arts and the charms of life, in eating richly but without luxury, in silently amassing money without ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... those placid and humane people to be sensible that servitude, hopeless, endless servitude, could exist with so little servility and fear on the one side, and so little harshness or even sternness of authority on the other. In Europe, the footing on which service is placed in consequence of the corruptions of society, hardens the heart, destroys confidence, and embitters life. The deceit and venality of servants not absolutely ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... beauty and the grace of the hero were so far beyond anything he had yet seen. His fluted armour was inlaid with gold, his plumed helmet hung at his saddle-bow, and his thick fair hair framed a face gracious and gentle beyond expression till you caught the sternness in his eyes. He drew rein in front of the little inn, and the villagers crowded round with greetings and thanks and voluble statements of their wrongs and grievances and oppressions. The Boy heard the grave gentle voice ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... sure of that as ye seem to be," returned Leif, with increasing sternness, "but, whether faithful or not, no thrall shall ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... your father, by some accident, Should pass this way, as you did. O, the fates! How would he look to see his work, so noble, Vilely bound up? What would he say? Or how Should I, in these my borrow'd flaunts, behold The sternness of his presence? ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... pliant, sympathetic helpfulness, but it could smite and stab, and be severe, and knit its brow, and speak stern words, as all true service must. For it is not service but cruelty to sympathise with the sinner, and say nothing in condemnation of his sin. And yet no sternness is blessed which is not plainly prompted by desire ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... to Derry with a sternness which set strangely upon her, "We must have friends in our House of Dreams. The latchstrings will always be out for people like Emily and Marion, and Drusilla, and ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... exuberant, unrestrained, and, like some of the greatest actors on the stage of human affairs, he had associated his own personality with the prevalence of right ideas and good influences. In Turgot, on the other hand, we discern something of the isolation, the sternness, the disdainful melancholy of Tacitus. He even rises out of the eager, bustling, shrill-tongued crowd of the Voltairean age with some of that austere moral indignation and haughty astonishment with which Dante had watched ...
— Burke • John Morley
... pensiveness and composure of that expression were indeed almost unnatural, and they combined with a calm firmness and immobility of feature, which promised, I know not what of resolution and tenacity of purpose. It was not gravity, much less sternness, or sadness, that lent so powerful an expression to that young face; nor was there a single line which indicated coldness or hardness of heart, or which would have led to a suspicion that he had ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... assumed sternness, "you've worked hard to secure Dorfield's quota, and you've failed. Why, the biggest subscribers for bonds in the whole city are you and Jason Jones! There's plenty of wealth in Dorfield, and over at the mills and factories are ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... had Phoebe's eyes rested again on the judge's countenance than all its ugly sternness vanished, and she found herself almost overpowered by the warm benevolence of his look. But the fantasy would not quit her that the original Puritan, of whom she had heard so many sombre traditions, had now stepped ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was soon gratified. Once again she gazed upon the face of her only and beloved son. He was little changed—somewhat sunburned, it was true; but there was less of the old pride and sternness, a kindly smile playing round his lips. There was, too, a shade of sadness that plainly would never leave him; Lord Earle could never forget his ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the patient, nurse?' braced my faltering nerves in a moment, and enabled me to answer him without embarrassment. He had his grave professional air, and looked hard and impenetrable. I had reason afterwards to think that this sternness of manner was assumed for my benefit, for once, when I was preparing some lint for him, I looked up inadvertently and saw that he was watching me with an expression that was ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... recently permitted to visit the Imperial headquarters in a "small city" on the Meuse, is a good deal altered in his appearance. "He wears a dirty green-grey uniform, and has an intense earnestness of expression that seemed to mirror the sternness of the times." He "lives in a little red-brick house such as one would rent in ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various
... lord," replied the duke, in a tone of equal sternness. "I have no thought of betraying you; though, by a word to my royal father, I could prevent all chance of future rivalry on your part. I shall, however, demand a strict account ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... know you," said Lydia, with some sternness. "He is your host, and therefore concludes that ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... of the curses of schools. In pursuance of the same views, when reprimanding a boy, he generally took him apart and spoke to him in such a manner as to make him feel that his master was grieved and troubled at his wrong-doing; a quakerlike simplicity of mien and language, a sternness of manner not unmixed with tenderness, and a total absence of all "don-ish" airs, combined to produce this effect. Nor were his personal habits without their effect. The boys saw in him no outward appearance of a solemn pedagogue or dignified ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... their eyes, no real mother of mankind, bringing them up with kindness, and, if need be, with sternness, in the way they should go, and instructing them in all things needful for their welfare; but a sort of fairy god-mother, ready to furnish her pets with shoes of swiftness, swords of sharpness, and omnipotent Aladdin's lamps,[43] so that they may have ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... trial are sweeping over it. We must open our hearts to our religion; we must have the inward soil broken up, freely and deeply its roots must penetrate our inner being. We must take to ourselves in silence and in sincerity its words of judgment with its words of hope, its sternness with its encouragement, its denunciations with its promises, its requirements, with its offers, its absolute intolerance of sin with its inconceivable and divine long-suffering towards sinners.' But preaching like this would have frightened away poor Pliable. ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... Nonconformist), we agreed very well, and in the general impression I set Linnell down as a devout Christian of the Cromwellian type, and he certainly was a man of remarkable intellectual powers, both in art and in theology. His Christianity might have taken a form of less domestic sternness, but I remembered my own father too well to find it inconsistent with genuine piety, though not even my mother ever inspired the awe Linnell and his religious severity excited ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... sternness of the forest, something of the sadness which is a conscious presence, is in their faces. Their humor has a certain savor of grimness. For the rest, it may be said that they are poor, and that they make little effort to be anything else. They do a ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... coaxed and reasoned with her; then finding that this did not avail, he changed the mode of treatment, and, placing a chair by his own, said to her commandingly, "Edith, sit here!" and she sat there, for there was that in Arthur's sternness which ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... of the Seminary for Chaplains, Girard began, through his seeming sternness and his real dexterity, to win for the Jesuits an ascendant over monks thus compromised, and over parish-priests of very vulgar manners and ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... cried Dionis. "The actual case of the bequest of an uncle to an illegitimate child may not yet have been presented for trial; but when it is, the sternness of French law against such children will be all the more firmly applied because we live in times when religion is honored. I'll answer for it that out of such a suit as I propose you could get a compromise,—especially if they see you ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... now sore and sensitive. Was it the new love which had flung off its shield of sternness and left it exposed to every lash that flew? The misery of others afflicted him. Thoughts of injustice grew into motives of action, the loss of faith into the gain of unutterable longing. Who were these gods who ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... the reply; and it was delivered in a tone of unusual sternness; for it must be remembered that she entertained much anger against Sir Robert, for permitting the marriage to take place so manifestly against the inclination of his daughter. "No, sir, it is many nights ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... was," said Redhand quickly, and with a sternness of manner that surprised his companions; "come, lads, mount! mount! The redskins won't part with plunder without making an effort to ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... of a human life, from infancy to boyhood, and from boyhood to manhood. The story has been told a million times, but never quite in this fashion before. For rough delicacy, for exquisitely tender sternness, the biography is unique. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... time to discipline the bodies of his men and to confirm their courage; and what was most of all, it gave the soldiers an opportunity of knowing what kind of a man their general was. For the first impression created by his sternness and by his inexorable severity in punishing, was changed into an opinion of the justice and utility of his discipline when they had been trained to avoid all cause of offence and all breach of order; and the violence of his temper, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... a tone of solemn sternness, "it is fitting that I should tell thee all. I have renounced the evil doctrines of thy brother-in-law, and his brethren in false prophecy. It was a hard struggle, Mary; the spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh was weak, exceeding weak, for I thought of thee, Mary, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... sternness in Mr Gordon's query, which not only surprised but grieved his young companion; and the surprise was increased when the sick man replied ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... Many, too, of the dispossessed proprietors, the younger ones especially, continued to hang about, and either harassed the new owners and stole their goods, or made friends with them, and managed after a while to slip back upon some excuse into their old homes. No sternness of the Puritan leaven availed to hinder the new settlers from being absorbed into the country, as other and earlier settlers had been absorbed before them; marrying its daughters, adopting its ways, and becoming themselves in time Irishmen. The bitter memory of that vast and wholesale ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... that approaches it, is grossly unjust to Hamlet, and turns tragedy into mere pathos. But, on the other side, it is too kind to him. It ignores the hardness and cynicism which were indeed no part of his nature, but yet, in this crisis of his life, are indubitably present and painfully marked. His sternness, itself left out of sight by this theory, is no defect; but he is much more than stern. Polonius possibly deserved nothing better than the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... out of England; and so, when people invited me, I went with them—it saved expense at home, and we are so poor, oh! you cannot know how poor;" and Daisy clasped her hands together despairingly as she gazed up at the stern face above her, which did not relax in its sternness, but remained so hard and stony that Daisy burst out impetuously: "Oh, auntie, why are you so cold to me. Why do you hate me so? I have never harmed you. I want you for my friend—mine and Bessie's; and we need a friend so much ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost. I like Thornfield, its antiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn-trees, its grey facade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin: and yet how long have I abhorred the very thought of it, shunned it like ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... room stood the mild and gentlemanly Nathan Clark, the future speaker of the first legislature of Vermont; and by his side, the dark and rough-featured Gideon Olin, an embryo member of Congress, was leaning against the wall, with a countenance of mingled sternness and gloom. ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... His sternness offended Burrell, for the soldier was not the kind to discuss his affairs in this way, therefore he drew ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... Frightful is its sweep. But softly—softly! Watch my spur—my whip! I'll leap across unto that chasm's lip. What still and chilling sternness great cliffs keep! Down there light calls to me. Soon there I'll be. Uncanny ...
— Sonnets from the Crimea • Adam Mickiewicz
... of the Netherlands had passed through as many as five hands. The Duchess of Parma's indecision soon imparted itself to the cabinet of Madrid, which in a short time tried in succession almost every system of policy. Duke Alva's inflexible sternness, the mildness of his successor Requescens, Don John of Austria's insidious cunning, and the active and imperious mind of the Prince of Parma gave as many opposite directions to the war, while the plan of rebellion remained the same in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... appearance was much in his favour; though his firm mouth and the general expression of his features showed that he was accustomed to command, the pleasant smile occasionally playing over his countenance relieved them from too great sternness. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... tense, faces on paws, with bright expectant upward eyes. They trembled a little with impatience. It was all he could do to restrain himself from patting the sleek heads, which always seemed to shine with extra polish after a night's rolling to and fro on the flattened pillows. But sternness was a part of the game at this moment. He solemnly unlatched and lowered the ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... lightly, cheaply spent, as it had been before. They have not left behind them joy, but faith. And that is why the faces of the earnest living who are able to realize this sacrifice of youth have a grave sternness in them which touches even the most careless stranger. Something of the glory created by the dead and the wounded radiates out even to us in a distant, ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... shall be loosed upon thy head. The West and the furious North, the South wind shall beat thee down, shall league and send forth their blasts in rivalry; until with better prayers thou hast melted the sternness of heaven, and hast lifted with appeasement the punishment ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... muscular strength and deep bass voice were those of a man, while the smooth skin, the soft curling hair, and the rollicking gladsome look were all indicative of the boy. His countenance, too, might have perplexed a fortune-teller. Sometimes it was grave almost to sternness, at other times it sparkled with delight, exhibiting now an expression that would have befitted a sage on whose decisions hung the fate of kingdoms, and anon displaying a dash of mischief worthy of the wildest ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... one uncovered) was such that if one had considered it as an article of mere personal adornment he would have missed its meaning. In countenance the man was rather prepossessing, with just a hint of sternness; though that he may have assumed or cultivated, as appropriate to one in authority. For he was a coroner. It was by virtue of his office that he had possession of the book in which he was reading; it had been found ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... creeds of men, it seems to me, that now at least, if never at any former time, the thoughts of the true nature of our life, and of its powers and responsibilities, should present themselves with absolute sadness and sternness. And although I know that this feeling is much deepened in my own mind by disappointment, which, by chance, has attended the greater number of my cherished purposes, I do not for that reason distrust the feeling itself, though I am on my guard against an exaggerated degree of it: nay, I rather believe ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... some sternness. "If it should knit, which I doubt, it will take six weeks or two months before I can use it. Do you know what will happen before two months—before one ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... herself, with complete confidence, to any one and every one, and, with that triumphing vitality that one felt in her from the first moment of meeting her, she carried all before her. In the hospital at Petrograd they had been, I gathered, "all serious and old," had treated her I fancy with some sternness. Here, at any rate, "serious and old" she would not find us. We welcomed, with joy, her youth, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Lord Winsleigh. They were all near the grand piano—and Lady Clara, smoothing her vexed brow, swept her ruby velvets gracefully up to that quarter of the room. Before she could speak, the celebrated Herr Machtenklinken confronted her with some sternness. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... distance. "I shall fare forth some day," he said, "and lead my armies to victory proudly, yet disdainfully. I shall have no love in my heart, only sternness." ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... dismayed at the sternness with which he had denied them, till presently the old knight Phoenix in his great fear for the ships of the Achaeans, burst into tears and said, "Noble Achilles, if you are now minded to return, and in the fierceness of your anger will do nothing ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... system of home-discipline. "I know him," says God, "that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the ways of the Lord to do justice and judgment." He was not a tyrant; his comrades did not bear the rough sternness of a despot, neither did his power wear the scowl of vengeance. But these bore the firmness and decision of love tempered and directed by the law of Christian duty and responsibility. They showed his station as a father; they wore the exponent of his authority as a parent, whose love was a safeguard ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... in the Bible reading that morning, and when Miss Phipps laid aside the book she added a few words of her own before kneeling in prayer. The sternness had left her face, but it was ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and won't stand, and there's an end of it. There is something exceedingly winning, to us, in that sturdy sense, that thirst for mathematical precision, that impatience of theory, that positive and self-reliant—we don't mind saying, somewhat dogmatical—air, that sternness of feature, thinness of lip, and coldness of eye, which belong to the best examples. We respect even the humbler ones; for they at least hate sentiment, they do not comprehend or approve of humor, and they never relish wit. What does a taste for these qualities indicate, ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... assuage pain, that skill may close wounds, that those who are incontestably dying may be snatched from the grave. The Jewish physician became a living, an accepted protest against the fatalism of the Koran. By degrees the sternness of predestination was mitigated, and it was admitted that in individual life there is an effect due to free-will; that by his voluntary acts man may within certain limits determine his own course. But, so far as nations are ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... that Fanny Jane had none of the chivalrous reverence which had rendered the wild Noddy Newman tolerably tractable, and her failure was as complete and ignominious as that of her sister. Mr. Grant was finally appealed to; and the sternness and severity to which he was compelled to resort were, for a time, effectual. But even these measures began to be impotent, and the broker realized that the uncle and aunt had understood ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... present time all these misunderstandings have been removed, and if there is anything I can complain of it is rather excessive strictness than mildness. Now that my jailer has entered into the spirit of his position this honest man treats me with extreme sternness, not for the sake of the profit but for the sake of the principle. Thus, in the beginning of this week he incarcerated me for twenty-four hours for violating some rule, of which, it seemed to me, I was not guilty; and protesting against this seeming injustice ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... the shadow-dappled champaign girdling their bastions mortised on the naked rock. Except for the blue lights across the distance, and the ever-present sea, these earthy Apennines would be too grim. Infinite air and this spare veil of spring-tide greenery on field and forest soothe their sternness. Two rivers, swollen by late rains, had to be forded. Through one of these, the Foglia, bare-legged peasants led the way. The horses waded to their bellies in the tawny water. Then more hills and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... others; he is a member of the whole body of mankind; he ought to marry, and to take part in public affairs, but he will never give way to compassion or forgiveness, and is to attack error and vice with uncompromising sternness. But with this ideal, the Stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like true knowledge, although attainable, is beyond the reach of man. They were discontented with themselves, and with all around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt. They had a profound contempt of their age, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... bear upon me to this end. I will confess to you, sir, that in spite of my promise, my first impulse was to act straightforwardly and to make everything known to the head of the family, but the thought of his uncompromising sternness made me pause, and the probable consequences of the confession appalled me; my courage failed, I temporized with my conscience, I determined to wait until I was sufficiently sure of the affection of the girl I hoped to win, before hazarding ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... a natural severity of face, which even his smiles could never soften, or his utmost gaiety render placid and serene; but when that sternness of visage was increased by rage, it is scarce possible to imagine looks or features that carried in them ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I hope?" said he, striving to speak with such sternness and dignity as sell-respect taught in opposition to ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... say,' said Mr. Pickwick, gazing with solemn sternness at his friend—'you don't mean to say, Mr. Tupman, that it is your intention to put yourself into a green velvet jacket, with ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... she was in the breakfast-room, ministering to the little ones clustering around her. The father's frown had lost its accustomed sternness, as he stood regarding his eldest child. A gentle, sympathetic light was in his eyes as they rested on the sweet face grown older, much, in those days of anxious care. How matronly she looked! So patiently listening to, and answering every wish ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden
... and clearly expressed recognition of merit, wherever found; by avoidance of misunderstandings through explanation volunteered when possible,—not apologetically, but as it were casually, yet appealing to men's reason. Watchfulness and sympathetic foresight were with him as constant as sternness, though less in evidence. ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... round and faced her; his pale face working with emotion, but his voice subdued to calmness. Lady Kirton's last words halted, for his look startled even her in its resolute sternness. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... existence to the force of streams. But, on the contrary, the action of years upon them is now always one of deterioration. The increasing heap of fallen fragments conceals more and more of their base, and the wearing of the rain lowers the height and softens the sternness of their brows, so that a great part of their terror has evidently been subdued by time; and the farther we endeavor to penetrate their history, the more mysterious are the forms we are ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... men!" commanded the king speaking in English, and with a sternness which left disobedience out of the question; "look, I say, for never will come the ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... know me," replied the prisoner with sternness—a prisoner he seemed to be. "You do not understand that I am a friend of the Prince of ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... calmly confident of his return. To her servant, Bridget Greggs, who was perhaps the sole person in the world who entertained affection for the lone gaunt woman, and who held Jasper Losely in profound detestation, she said, with tranquil sternness, "That man has crossed my life, and darkened it. He passed away, and left Night behind him. He has dared to return. He shall never escape me again till the grave yawn for one ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have seemed a madman. What else could have induced him to burden himself with a woman on such an errand and at such a time? She had promised, indeed, to be his lieutenant and comrade—and to return to Venice if her health should be unequal to the common task. But in spite of the sternness with which he put that task first—a sternness which was one of his chief attractions for Kitty—she knew well that her coming threw a glamour round it which it had never yet possessed, that the passion she had aroused in him, and the triumph of binding her to his fate, possessed him—for ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... time independent. There was none of that confusion which might be expected on the part of a lad from the city in the presence of a lady of rank. His dark, heavy eyebrows, resolute mouth, and square chin gave an expression of sternness to his face, which was belied by the merry expression of his eyes and the bright smile ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... looked down at her. He was glad he was half a head taller; still he couldn't look very far down. She caught at the corner of her lip with a small white tooth. He tried to make a look of sternness come into his eyes, but he felt guiltily aware that he wanted to give in to her, just as he wanted to ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... good sisters told us that these were 'pious ladies,' or 'charitable ladies,' whom we must love and respect, and whom we must never forget to mention in our prayers. They always brought us toys and cakes. Sometimes the establishment was visited by priests and grave old gentlemen, whose sternness of manner alarmed us. They peered into every nook and corner, asked questions about everything, assured themselves that everything was in its place, and some of them even tasted our soup. They were always satisfied; and the lady superior led them through the ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... repeated Sir Norman, with gloomy sternness, "and there will be somebody else coming to take possession shortly. How many more servants ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... terrible boyish glee. No actor that I have seen expresses so well that scholarly irony of the Renaissance permeating the whole play. His scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the recorders is masterly: the silken sternness of it, the fine hauteur, the half-appeal as of lost ideals still pleading with the vulgarity of life, the fierce humour of its disillusion, and behind, as always, the heartbreak—that side of which comes of the recognition of what it is to be a ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... this place, directly," I said, with as much sternness as I could assume. "If you please, I will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... says Mr. Bancroft, "still acknowledged the fixedness of the divine decrees, and the resistless certainty from all eternity of election and of reprobation, there were not wanting, even among the clergy, some who had modified the sternness of the ancient doctrine by making the self-direction of the active powers of man with freedom of inquiry and private judgment the central idea of a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... told me you loved me." His voice was full of its curious mixture of gentleness and sternness, and she shrank ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Thomas Stevenson remains; what we have lost, what we now rather try to recall, is the friend and companion. He was a man of a somewhat antique strain: with a blended sternness and softness that was wholly Scottish, and at first somewhat bewildering; with a profound essential melancholy of disposition and (what often accompanies it) the most humorous geniality in company; shrewd and childish; passionately attached, passionately ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mammy," and there was a note of sternness in the Colonel's voice, "I want you to be quiet. I thought you had more sense. The devil had nothing to do with this. It's the Lord's arrow, it seems to me. He sent the ravens of old to feed his faithful servant in the wilderness, so perhaps he has sent the Indians ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... little volume of poems by a deaf-blind lady, Madame Bertha Galeron. Her poetry has versatility of thought. Now it is tender and sweet, now full of tragic passion and the sternness of destiny. Victor Hugo called her "La Grande Voyante." She has written several plays, two of which have been acted in Paris. The French Academy ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... then sent for de Tulle, and spoke to him with great sternness. The latter did not attempt to deny my accusation, but endeavoured to excuse himself, on the ground of the passion that he had conceived for my daughter. Certainly, from the king's tone, I thought that he would at least have sent him ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... incipient child-development, is to stand outside as a final authority and make the necessary adjustments. Where there is too much sympathy, then the great voluntary centers of the spine are weak, the child tends to be delicate. Then the father by instinct supplies the roughness, the sternness which stiffens in the child the centers of resistance and independence, right from the very earliest days. Often, for a mere infant, it is the father's fierce or stern presence, the vibration of his voice, which starts the frictional and independent activity of the great ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... you in bed?" the old gentleman demanded, with as great an affectation of sternness as he could muster. To say the truth, it was not much; for Colonel Hugonin, for all his blustering ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."[353] Another instance of his generous and tender feelings toward his nation is seen in his behavior when the people made the golden calf. First, his anger broke out against them, and all the sternness of the lawgiver appeared in his command to the people to cut down their idolatrous brethren; then the bitter tide of anger withdrew, and that of tenderness took its place, and he returned into the mountain to the Lord and said, "O, this people have sinned ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... wishes to have us subjects ... she is now giving us such miserable specimens of her government that we shall ever detest and avoid it, as a combination of robbery, murder, famine, fire, and pestilence." His humor could not be altogether repressed, but there were sternness and bitterness underlying it: "Tell our dear, good friend, Dr. Price, who sometimes has his doubts and despondencies about our firmness, that America is determined and unanimous; a very few Tories and placemen ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... twenty-two years of age, full and finely formed, and dressed always with the most studied neatness. She was, in truth, a seductive creature. She made an instantaneous impression on my senses. There was, however, somewhat of a sternness of expression, and a dignity of carriage, which caused at once to fear and respect her. Of course, at first, all went smoothly enough, and seeing that mamma treated me precisely as she did my sisters, I came to be ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... glass, and observed that those were always bumper toasts with him; which, having drank, he uniformly passed the bottle, and relapsed into his former taciturnity. It was impossible, during this visit, for any of us to make out his real character; there was such a reserve and sternness in his behaviour, with occasional sallies, though very transient, of a superior mind. Being placed by him, I endeavoured to rouse his attention by showing him all the civilities in my power; but I drew out little more than 'Yes' and 'No.' If you, Fanny, had been there, we ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... time he went to the front lines, however, he felt that there was a change in the atmosphere, and he saw by the strained looks and the compressed lips of the men that something desperate was expected. The officers gave their orders with more sternness than ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... under the mark, conspicuous both to foes and friends. By these, in every engagement, the attack is begun: they compose the front line, presenting a new spectacle of terror. Even in peace they do not relax the sternness of their aspect. They have no house, land, or domestic cares: they are maintained by whomsoever they visit: lavish of another's property, regardless of their own; till the debility of age renders them unequal to such a rigid course of ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... the old Marquis kindly, but with fearful sternness, as the door closed behind the others, "what have you to add ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... going to take command here now, Billie," I said with new sternness. "All you need to do is ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... hand, My pulse, at least, shall be at thy command." She said—and saw, surprised, Josiah kneel, And gave his lips the offer'd pulse to feel; The rosy colour rising in her cheek, Seem'd that surprise unmix'd with wrath to speak; Then sternness she assumed, and—"Doctor, tell; Thy words cannot alarm me—am I well?" "Thou art," said he; "and yet thy dress so light, I do conceive, some danger must excite:" "In whom?" said Sybil, with a look demure: "In more," said he, "than I expect to cure; - I, in thy light luxuriant robe behold ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... in its results everywhere the same. All the transactions and communications between the richer and the poorer classes, have thus substituted for them the sternness of official agency, in the room of that kind and generous treatment which, let them meet unrestrained, the more prosperous children of the same parent would in almost every case pay to their less fortunate brothers. * * * Where the power of sympathy has ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Asgard have to harken to, went through the City of the Gods. Loki heard it, and he had to come from his hiding-place and enter the house where the Gods held their Council. And when he looked on Thor and saw the rage that was in his eyes, and when he looked on Odin and saw the sternness in the face of the Father of the Gods, he knew that he would have to make amends for the shameful wrong ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... father, that old tyrant who made your first years wretched? How can you be sure that your children will love you? The very care you take of their education, your precautions for their happiness, your necessary sternness will lessen their affection. Children love a weak or a prodigal father, whom they will despise in after years. You'll live betwixt fear and contempt. No man is a good head of a family merely because he wants to be. Look round on all our friends and name to me one whom you would like ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... Marmaduke, with real sternness; 'nothing rash against my daughter. How should she be faithless to a man who has been wedded ever ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge |
