"Stolid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... savage can drink and dance through the night with as lusty a zeal as his white neighbour; the song, the jest, the merry tale, are as dear to his imagination; and in the retirement of his own village, feeling no longer the restraint of stolid gravity,—assumed in the haunts of the white man, less to play the part of a hero than to cover the nakedness of his own inferiority,—he can give himself up to wild indulgence, the sport of whim and frolic; and, when the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the sofa, breathing hard, and moaning just a little. The shock had been almost too much even for her stolid nerves. Presently she turned ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... begged her mother's help. Together they fitted them to the five smallest Indian children. Trading ceased for a moment, while all eyes turned to the funny sight of these wild little creatures in English clothing. The settlers and seamen laughed aloud, while even the stolid faces of the old warriors ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... after some fifteen minutes of exhausting labour on the one hand, opposed to stolid dogged resistance on the other, the monster reptile was dragged so close to the surface that the point of its snout was actually raised above the level or the water, and the whole of the gigantic body, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... The stolid boatman gave the command; the man at the bow paddled one way, while the man at the stern paddled another, and the ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... to see a Hercules, a fiery-faced, fierce-eyed man. This was merely a broad-shouldered, well-built, well-groomed youth, about twenty-three years of age; his face was square and rather stolid, clean-shaven, brown-complexioned, with honest eyes and a firm-set mouth. As he stood at the door he adopted the wooden expression that a University man always wears in the presence of strangers. He said nothing on being introduced to Pinnock; and when ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... himself at the outer window, and in a space of time so short that the excellence of the gray car's accelerator was amply demonstrated, the pursuer swung into sight. A stolid-faced chauffeur at the wheel did not appear discomfited at coming on his quarry thus unexpectedly. He whirled past, seemingly quite oblivious of Theydon's fixed stare. Though the weather was mild he ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... off the end of a fresh cigar and smoked it in stolid silence. He was a person of one idea. If he couldn't talk about the play, he couldn't talk at all. He meditated, considering his characters, his situations, his partner's and his own position, in a mental jumble that had lately become habitual ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... presence they soon forgot entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his pocket and read aloud some article, which they discussed eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened more and more like a dumb, hopeless animal, with a duller, more stolid look creeping over his face, glancing now and then at Mitchell, marking acutely every smallest sign of refinement, then back to himself, seeing as in a mirror his filthy body, his more ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... apprehensively at Great-aunt Eliza; but she was gazing intently at a picture of Aunt Janet's sister's twins, a most stolid, uninteresting pair; but evidently Great-aunt Eliza found them amusing for she was smiling ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a moment, disdaining formality, and to the, accompaniment of the polite jeers of two long-suffering friends, I proclaimed "Here shall I live! On this spot shall stand the probationary palace!" and so saying fired my rifle at a tree a few yard's off. But the stolid tree—a bloodwood, all bone, toughened by death, a few ruby crystals in sparse antra all that remained significant of past life—afforded but meagre ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... little woman. What do you think of such a marriage as that? To those who know society such things are common enough; a well-assorted marriage is the exception. Nevertheless, I have come to see how it is that this slender little creature handles her bobbins in a way to lead this heavy, solid, stolid general precisely as he himself used ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... with blunt, wistful ruminations upon her indistinct image. Jacob Sowerby's accusation, and several kindred innuendoes let fall by his mother, left him coolly incredulous; the girl still seemed to him altogether distant; but from the first sight of her face he had evolved a stolid, unfaltering conception of her difference from the ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... boat the settler would fill with household goods and farm stock, and commit himself to the current at Pittsburg. From the roof of the cabin that housed his family, cocks crew and hens cackled, while the stolid eyes of cattle peered over the high parapet of logs built about the edge for protection against the arrow or bullet of the wandering redskin. Sometimes several families would combine to build one ark. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... no very favourable impression by his actions. There seemed to be much that was forced about them, that was more incriminating than a stolid silence ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... dating from the first visit to Augsburg, is the half-length of the Elector John Frederick of Saxony, now in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. He sits obese and stolid, yet not without the dignity that belongs to absolute simplicity, showing on his left cheek the wound received at the battle of Muehlberg. The picture has, as a portrait by Titian, no very commanding merit, ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... marked the capture of a paleface. Some of the old squaws looked up from their work round the campfires and steaming kettles and grinned as the prisoner passed. The braves who were sitting upon their blankets and smoking their long pipes, or lounging before the warm blazes maintained a stolid indifference; the dusky maidens smiled shyly, and the little Indian boys, with whom Isaac had always been a great favorite, manifested their joy by yelling and running after him. One youngster grasped Isaac round the leg and held on ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... "You see that veteran In the straw hat, and the young man beside him: Father and son are they. Old Lothian, Five months ago, was high among the trusted Of our chief bankers; Charles, his only son, By a maternal uncle's death enriched, Kept out of Wall Street; turned a stolid ear To all high-mounting schemes for doubling wealth, His taste inclining him to art and letters. But Lothian had a partner, Judd,—a scamp, As the result made evident; and Judd One day was missing; bonds, securities, And bills, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... right," was the stolid asseveration of the German. "The home is sacred." The speaker's tone was so malevolent that Hamilton was impressed, in spite of himself. And then, suddenly, a suspicion upreared itself in his brain—a suspicion ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... minutes, a stolid, stocky figure in the midst of a storm of congratulatory comment. They forgot all about Happy Jack, asleep inside the house, and so their voices were not hushed. Indeed, Big Medicine's bull-like remarks boomed full-throated across the coulee and were flung back mockingly by the ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... won. At the left hand of our hostess stood a stolid man holding a small shovel with which he gathered in the winnings. All around were faces as of souls in torture; even the features of the winners (and these were few enough) scarcely expressed a trace of satisfaction, but seemed rather cast ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... little breathless. "It is yes! young Luigi!" The prisoner, silent till then, stirred and made some little noise of acquiescence. Behind him, still holding to the cord that bound his wrists, his two stolid guards stared uncomprehendingly; the old sergeant, his face one wrinkled mass of bland knowingness, stood with his thumbs in his belt and his short, fat legs astraddle. She leaned forward she seemed to sway like a wind-blown stalk and stared at the prisoner's quiet face. Jovannic saw her lips ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... the poet, who was not only placed under the surveillance of the police, but expelled from the Foreign Office by express order of the Tsar "for bad conduct." A letter on this subject, addressed by Count Vorontsoff to Count Nesselrode, is an amusing instance of the arrogance with which stolid mediocrity frequently passes judgment on rising genius. I ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the quaint beliefs of savage tribes make no particular impression upon him, except a passing spasm of disgust at anybody having different superstitions from his own; and, being in the main a good-natured animal in a stolid way of his own, he is able to make use even of popish priests if they will help to found a new market for his commerce. The portrait is not the less effective because the artist was so far from intending it that he could not even conceive of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... exploit, feeling with a sense of self-satisfaction, which he is at no pains to hide, that he aimed at winning honour for his country as well as for himself. In a letter which he wrote to his guardian, Chevalier Gherardo Compagni, he alludes to the stolid indifference of the English people and philosophers to the brilliant achievements in aeronautics which had been made and so much belauded on the Continent. He proclaims the rivalry as regards science and ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... pointed out a massive stone archway where she must enter, and passing here, beside a stolid soldier in his sentry box, she came presently to a black iron door in front of which were waiting two yellow-and-black prison vans, windowless. In this prison door were four glass-covered observation holes, and through these Alice saw a guard ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... quietly followed him down the lane. The sight of the millionaire climbing the railings had put him on his mettle, and the result was the ignominious capture of Racksole. In vain Theodore expostulated, explained, anathematized. Only one thing would satisfy the stolid policeman—namely, that Racksole should return with him to the hotel and there establish his identity. If Racksole then proved to be Racksole, owner of the Grand Babylon, well and good—the policeman promised to ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... the effect that, 'the last campaign, when they had a fort, how had the enemy fired then?—stabbed them, speared them, &c. &c.; and without a fort, assaulting!—how could it be expected they should succeed? how unreasonable they should go at all!' But even his stolid head seemed to comprehend the sarcasm when I asked him how many men had been killed during all this severe fighting. However, it was clear that it was no battle. We were all very savage, and I intimated how useless my being with them was, if they intended to ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Stolid and unshaven fishermen, in drab scows, along the canoe's route, looked up from their lines, in bovine wonder at the vision of loveliness which swept resonantly past them. For the quartet were warbling. They were also doing ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... and saw hidden within its stolid heart lessons which have not yet ceased to move men's lives. Beecher stood for hours before the window of a jewelry store thinking out analogies between jewels and the souls of men. Gough saw in a single drop of water enough truth wherewith to quench the thirst of five thousand souls. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... enemy swept forward toward the canal, with companies of British sappers bearing scaling ladders and fascines of sugar cane. They moved with stolid unconcern, but the American cannon burst forth and slew them until the ditch ran red with blood. With cheers the invincible British infantry tossed aside its heavy knapsacks, scrambled over the ditch, and broke into a run to reach the earthworks along which flamed the sparse line of American ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... manners in your bill. But to ignore the point of view of those whose country you govern may let loose a red torrent of tragedy. Such a temper of mind may, at the first touch of resistance, transform your stolid, laudable, laughable Englishman into the beastliest of tyrants. It may drive him into a delirium of cruelty and injustice. It may sweep away, in one ruin of war, wealth, culture, and the whole fabric of civilisation. It may darken ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... disquieted, Let stolid people think who do not see What the point is beyond which I ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... are of varying degrees of intelligence; but most of them belong to the peasant class of Germany, and were originally farmers, weavers, or mechanics. They are quiet, a little stolid, and very well satisfied with their life. Here, as in other communistic societies, the brains seem to come easily to the top. The leading men with whom I conversed appeared to me to be thoroughly trained business men in the German fashion; men ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... a sudden return to a theory of her which he had already entertained, that she had not done so. But she went lightly by him, where he stood stolid, and picked it up; and now he suspected that she had dropped ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... strides! In astronomy, what perturbations and changes! In history, what do we not owe to the amiable authors who, dipping their pens in whitewash, have reversed the judgments of ages on Nero and Henry VIII.! In genealogy, what thanks must we pay to Darwin! Geographical Science alone, stolid in its insolent fixity, has not moved: the location of Thebes and Memphis is what it was in the days of Cheops and Rameses. And so poor in intellect are our professors of geodesic lore that London continues to be, just as it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... We noticed more than one stolid face darkling as they glanced aside. Schenke had the name of a "hard case." "Schweinehunden," he said again. "Dey dond't like de hard vork, Cabtin. . . . Dey dond't like it—but ve takes der Coop, all de same! Dey pulls goot und strong, oder"—he rasped a short sentence in rapid ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... conspicuous) before finding one who knew its whereabouts; in another city I inquired in vain of a conductor who passed the building every few hours in his car. In the latter case the library was a beautiful structure calculated to move the curiosity of a less stolid citizen. In New York inquiry would probably cause you to reach the nearest branch library, anything more remote than that being beyond the local intelligence. Sometimes I think we had better drop all our far-reaching plans for ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... in a speech whose vigor, logic and eloquence were accentuated in the minds of the hearers by the thought that for more than thirty years she had made these pleas before congressional committees, only to be received with stolid indifference or open hostility. She began by saying: "In closing I would like to give a little object lesson of the two methods of gaining the suffrage. By one it is insisted that we shall carry our question to what is termed a popular vote ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... which Fitzjames most cordially despised. The morality was that of Dickens's 'Christmas Carol,' and the political aim that of sentimental socialism. Thus, though all three candidates promised to support Mr. Gladstone's Government, one of Fitzjames's rivals represented the stolid middle-class prejudices, and a second the unctuous philanthropic enthusiasm, which he had denounced with his whole force in 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' No combination could have been contrived which would have set before him more clearly the characteristics ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... account of how it had been at first intended that Oberon should be represented by little Sir Adrian, with his Bexley cousin, Pearl Underwood, for his Titania; but though she was fairy enough for anything, he turned out so stolid, and uttered 'Well met by moonlight, proud Titania,' the only lines he ever learnt, exactly like a lesson, besides crying whenever asked to study his part, that the attempt had to be given up, and the fairy sovereigns had to be of large size, Mr. Grinstead pronouncing ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... concerning herself no more about her own mind, body or future than the larch yonder did about its roots or leaves, and who took praise and blame as indifferently as the tree, the sun or rain, roused in her a feeling of active dislike. She called Jane stolid to other people, but she was by no means satisfied that she was stolid. She was often sorry that she had brought herself measurably under the protection of Captain Swendon and his daughter by renting two of the rooms in their house, though she had planned and manoeuvred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... surgeon's fingers first touched him, then relapsed into the spluttering, labored respiration of a man in liquor or in heavy pain. A stolid young man who carried the case of instruments freshly steaming from their antiseptic bath made an observation which the surgeon apparently did not hear. He was thinking, now, his thin face set in a frown, the upper ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... with the ordinary teacher (in an extraordinary state of coma) behind it; and rather rude desks and seats for the children, but not a single ornament, picture, map, or case of objects and specimens around the room. The children were nice, clean, pleasant, stolid little things with braided hair and pinafores. The sole decoration of the apartment was a highly-coloured chart that we had noticed on the walls of all the other schoolrooms. Feeling that this must be a sacred relic, and that it probably illustrated some of the Pestalozzian foundation ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... should like thy opinion upon her, and—she hath a secret, as the Duke there can testify." Buckingham started, but met the King's glance with a stolid countenance. ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... tremendous exceptions. In the first place, Lycaste Skinneri alba, the pure white variety, beggars all description. Its great flower seems to be sculptured in the snowiest of transparent marble. That stolid pretentious air which offends one—offends me, at least—in the coloured examples, becomes virginal dignity in this case. Then, of the normal type there are more than a hundred variations recognized, some with lips as deep in tone, and as smooth in texture, as velvet, of all shades from maroon ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... search before we found him. Then it was nearly noon, and we lunched in his hut, a square building of split logs, with bare earth floor, and roof of clap-boards and bark. Our lunch consisted of goat's meat and pan de mais. The Mexican, a broad-chested man with a stolid Indian face, was evidently quite a sportsman, and had two or three half-starved hounds, besides the funny, hairless little house dogs, of which Mexicans seem ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... smattering of several Indian dialects, which he turned upon Long-Hair to the best of his ability, but apparently without effect. Nevertheless he babbled at intervals, always upon the same subject and always endeavoring to influence that huge, stolid, heartless savage in the direction of letting him see again the child face ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... spiritual and physical well-being, but in spite of her best endeavors there were times when she despaired of the tremendous task she had undertaken. Phoebe's spirit tingled with the divine, poetic appreciation of all things beautiful. A vivid imagination carried the child into realms where the stolid aunt could not follow, realms of whose existence the ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... proffered assistance of myself and three other gentlemen, mounted the ladder with charming hesitation. Some delay in getting off was caused by our low comedian, who twice, making believe to miss his footing, slid down again into the arms of the stolid door-keeper. The crowd, composed for the most part of small boys approving the endeavour to amuse them, laughed and applauded. Our low comedian thus encouraged, made a third attempt upon his hands and knees, and, gaining the roof, sat down upon the ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... President." It was the Blunderbuss, and her stolid face grew hot and red in the darkness, as she wondered if any one who knew that she didn't belong to 19— now would question her right to take part in the meeting. "But I was bound to do it," she ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... boy magnifies his office, swaggering with legs wide apart. Even the feather in his cap bristles with importance. This bit of comedy contrasts with the almost tragic expression of the wounded man. The stolid fellow who lifts him seems to hurt him very much, and he clasps his hands in an agony of pain. He seems to be telling the gentleman at the window ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... saw a thin flying shadow coming up to her, with a shriek of delight; and immediately she was hugged rapturously and kissed all over by little Jeannie, whose movements, as they ever were—so agile, so quick, so Protean—appeared to her, now that she was stolid with despair, as the postures and gestures of a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... surprised look at the Yorkshireman's stolid face, elevated his well-marked eyebrows and shook his head. Then he edged his chair nearer to the table ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... kind of a man I like? Really like? I like a man that a woman can't bend in a thousand different ways in five minutes. He must have some steel in him. He obliges me to admire him the most when he remains stolid; stolid to me lures. Ah, that is the only kind of a man who cap ever break a heart among us women of the world. His stolidity is not real; no; it is mere art, but it is a highly finished art and often ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... lapel of his coat, nonchalantly twirled his mustache, his shoulders straining in tension. A Parisienne, with bleached hair and penciled eyebrows, leaned over her companion's arm. There was also a flashily dressed negro, evidently a Haytian, who sat motionless at the far end, as stolid as a boiler, only the steam-gauge of his ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... underbred-looking pony, was to convey them over the first stages of their journey. Then came more adieus, some hand-clasping, old Jimmy Robinson looking very serious just at the last, Mrs. Jimmy, stout, stolid, betraying nothing of visible emotion, and then the pony, rough-shod and shaggy, trudged on, while mutual hand-waves were kept up until the old Hudson Bay Post dropped out of sight, and the buckboard with its lightsome load of hearts deliriously happy, ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... in the interior of the limousine, with the arc light playing through the thousand raindrops on the window pane spotting a face lined with the strength of a stolid old maid, had finished her narrative, there was no sound but that of the storm mourning down the avenue. Estabrook sat with his forehead in his hands. I had had enough experience in my practice with those who are struggling to overcome a great shock, not to speak until ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... Gimpke, standing in the shadows of the darkened dining room, was not too stupid to understand what was said about her. And into her stolid brain came dreams that night of a fair face with soft golden brown hair and kindly eyes of deep, tender blue. Stupid as she was, the woman's instinct in her told her in her dreams that the handsome young son of her employer might not always look his thoughts nor dance earliest ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... street—as the greeting of acquaintances, or the exchange of civilities. The good sense of this view is apparent. A hat held in the hand in a crowded elevator is sure to be in the way, and liable to be crushed. A gentleman who wishes to compromise between stolid ignoring of the ladies who are strangers, and superfluous recognition of their presence, may lift his hat and replace it immediately, when a lady enters the elevator, or when he enters an elevator where ladies already are. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... a stolid-seeming nod. "He give it up clean. Why, now I come to think on it, I don't believe he iver touched the music—" She paused in some confusion, and to cover this feigned to consider. "Let me see. He give up the music just about the time ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... her alarm, Lady Louisa implored him to sell the property and buy one in Ireland, which was Lady Craikshaw's native country; and the list she contrived to run up of the drawbacks to the Ammaby estate would have driven a temper less stolid than her husband's ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that he forgot his manners and went into peals of laughter. And from that moment I ceased to exist as the bright particular star in Mr. Gibson's firmament of eligible young men: for in spite of the kink in my nose, and my stolid gravity, which was really and merely the result of my shyness, he had always looked upon me as an exceptionally presentable, proper, and goodly youth, and a most exemplary—that is, if my sister was to be trusted in the matter; for ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... bouleversement of the veracious sense—similar to certain perversions of the insane mind, and then other faculties of his nature are liable to share in the alteration. If the man was previously to the highest degree merciful and sympathizing, he may become stolid to human suffering as any infant who laughs at its mother's funeral, not from wickedness of disposition but absence of the faculty which appreciates woe, and I doubt not that this change goes far to explain the ghastly unfeelingness of many a Turkish and Chinese despot whose ingeniously ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... his daughter, as if deprecating that stolid expression of hers, which would have been eminently appropriate to the funeral of an indifferent acquaintance,—a total absence of all feeling, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... is all very well for a wedding or a funeral or a great public festivity of any sort," said the baroness, with a harmless, light manner of talking of grave subjects which is a closed book to the ordinary stolid British mind; "but when one has a prayer, there is nowhere like St. Germain en Pre, which is old and simple and dirty, so that one feels like a poor woman. I shall put on ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... about the wedding! An Ardayre married to an Ardayre! Good blood on both sides and everything suitable and rich and prosperous, and just as it should be! And there stood her handsome, stolid bridegroom, serenely calm—and the white flowers, and the Bishop—and her silver brocade train—and the pages, and the bridesmaids. Oh! yes, a wedding ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... secret-service men were down on their knees before piles of clothes, going over the seams, emptying the pockets, unfolding handkerchiefs, tapping the heels of shoes; every scrap of paper was passed over to the chief, who tucked it into his portfolio. I watched him, hating his square, stolid body that filled out his uniform smoothly. His eyes were long and watchful like a cat's, and his fair mustache was turned up at the ends, German fashion; in fact, there was something very German about his thick thighs and shaved head ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... had hoped so long, and on the night that faithful spies had brought her thirtieth wreath, Andelsprutz went suddenly mad. All the bells clanged hideously in the belfries, horses bolted in the streets, the dogs all howled, the stolid conquerors awoke and turned in their beds and slept again; and I saw the grey shadowy form of Andelsprutz rise up, decking her hair with the phantasms of cathedrals, and stride away from her city. And the great shadowy form that was the soul of Andelsprutz went away ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... Herrschaften!" roused them from their lethargy. Ices and beer and cherries and peaches successively filled up the weary hours until "the tocsin of the soul, the dinner bell," carried joy to their hearts. I can never forget the rapturous look of anticipation and satisfaction which those stolid middle-class Teutonic countenances wore when "Mittagsessen" was announced. They shook off their normal and habitual torpidity, and cheerfully elbowed their neighbours, nearly tumbling down the companion-ladder in their eagerness to be first in the field. ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... replied the sergeant. "I'm only acting upon orders"; and he spoke humbly, apologetically. Even at that moment a passing stranger could not have helped noticing the difference between the men. The policemen were stolid, commonplace, the mere creatures of formula; the young man whom they had come to apprehend was, to the most casual observer, a man of mark. Neither of them could help feeling it. Pale of face, clear-cut ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... there, with something of an expectant air in their stolid faces. All these were in uniform of some description; one stood a little in advance of the rest and held a paper in ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... sight to see that gentle child, with eyes blue as the heavens, whose pure and lovely spirit they seemed to mirror, gazing up at the dark boy as though she hoped to catch some ray of the awakening spirit flitting over the handsome but stolid features. Sometimes she would sit beside him, take his hand in hers, or stroke gently the dark locks that began again to hang in neglected curls around his face, and speak to him in the tenderest accents, saying, "I love you very much, pretty boy, and my father loves you too, and we ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... his own. Mr. Copperhead stared at his son with that look of authority, half-imperious, half-brutal, with which he was in the habit of crushing all who resisted him; but Clarence did not quail. He stood dull and immovable, his eyes contracted, his face stolid, and void of all expression but that of resistance. He was not much more than a fool, but just by so much as his father was more reasonable, more clear-sighted than himself, was Clarence stronger than ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... at the table, rang for the stolid maid. Her voice was carefully calm as she gave orders for the evening meal. If she was thinking of Giovanni Celleni, his brute face filled with semi-madness; if she was thinking of a burned baby, sobbing alone in a darkened ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... matter, our eyes are gladdened with that of the converse operation, of the transmutation of matter into mind. And on no account is this metamorphosis to be mistaken for annihilation of matter, whose stolid grossness has vanished, not in order to give place to empty nominalism or to a thin mist of mere mental perceptions existing only in virtue of being perceived, but in order to reappear gloriously etherealised into living energy. By the change that has taken place, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... an expression of stolid stupidity on his countenance, which was powerfully suggestive of a ship's figurehead— Tommy with an air of meekness that was almost ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... task to be performed, that the men got perfectly discouraged, and had to bespoken to sharply before they set to work. By the time I reached Msuwa there was nobody with me and the ten donkeys I drove but Mabruk the Little, who, though generally stolid, stood to his work like a man. Bombay and Uledi were far behind, with the most jaded donkeys. Shaw was in charge of the cart, and his experiences were most bitter, as he informed me he had expended a whole vocabulary of stormy abuse known to sailors, and a new one which he had invented ex tempore. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... was for the open air, sky, continent; Philip was for the cloister, and spent his life immured as if he had been a monk. In Charles was bravado, impudence, intolerable egotism, atrocious lack of honor, but there was a dash about him as about Marshal Ney or Prince Joachin Murat; Philip was stolid, vindictive, incapable of enthusiasm or friendship. Charles ruled Spain as a principality; Philip held the world as a principality of Spain. As has been indicated, Charles was Spanish in relationship and not in disposition; Philip ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... gathered at Hendricks' store. Ramos and Tiflin, two wild characters with seldom-cut hair and pipe stem pants, who didn't look as if they could be trusted with a delicate unpacking operation, broke the Archer out with a care born of love, there in Paul Hendricks' big backroom shop, while the more stolid members—and old Paul, silent in his swivel chair—watched ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... sympathy; and if they were not healed, at least they were comforted, that a famous professor should take them so seriously; and they began to feel that after all to have only one leg, or one hand, or one eye, or to have three, might be in itself no less beauteous than to have just two, like the stolid majority. Thus William James became the friend and helper of those groping, nervous, half-educated, spiritually disinherited, passionately hungry individuals of which America is full. He became, at the same time, their spokesman and representative before the learned world; and he made it ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... middle-class seem able to wallow without suffering asphyxia; but I am only mournful because I have seen the plight of so many and many after their dip in the sinister depths of the pool. I envy those stolid people who can talk so contemptuously of frailty—I mean I envy them their self-mastery; I quite understand the temperament of those who can be content with a slight exhilaration, and who fiercely contemn the crackbrain who does not know when to stop. No doubt it ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... slowly and thoughtfully returned to his quarters after witnessing the departure of his son, he found sitting on the doorstep, and patiently awaiting his coming, a Canadian woman. Beside her stood her stolid-looking husband, whom the major recognized as a well-to-do farmer of the settlement, to whom he had granted some trifling favors while in ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... not intense in other situations was strong here. It tugged at his coat and lifted it. We are mostly accustomed to look upon all opposition which is not animate, as that of the stolid, inexorable hand of indifference, which wears out the patience more than the strength. Here, at any rate, hostility did not assume that slow and sickening form. It was a cosmic agency, active, lashing, eager for ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... he was whipping the pool with long, graceful drops of the fly. He proved to be adept. Thorpe and Injin Charley stopped work to watch him. At first the Indian's stolid countenance seemed a trifle doubtful. After a time ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... him directly from both, and he plunged into his business at once; but as he went on, the smiles died out, and all he said was received in a dull, stolid way. Neither Jack nor his wife would understand what he meant—their denseness ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... their self-willed offspring to a more retired position than he chose to occupy. With genuine "Young America" spirit he scorned the conservatism of his elders. Though both parents hovered about him, coaxing, warning, perhaps threatening, not a feather stirred; stolid and wide-eyed he stood, while the father flitted about the bush in great excitement, jerking his body this way and that, flirting his wings, now perking his tail up like that of a wren, again opening and closing it like a fan in the hands of an embarrassed girl, and the mother added her entreaties ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... sun will come out strong by and by, and the longer we tarry here, the heavier the snow will be for our stretch to the Citadel. Up, there! leve-toi, cochon!" shouted I, in the elegant terms of address which experience had taught me were the only ones that had any effect upon the stolid sensibilities of the half-breed,—at the same time administering to him a kick that produced a thud and a grunt, as if actually bestowed on the unclean quadruped to which I had just likened him. The ragamuffin was very slow this time in getting the traps together ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... were tanned by the sun to the same brown hue as his face and bare throat; his feet were sandalled, and just above one of his ankles, a soiled bandage, apparently concealing a wound, was wrapped. A broad-brimmed felt hat shaded his half-closed eyes and dull stolid countenance, and the only thing that in any way distinguished him from the generality of peasants was his hair, which was cut short behind, instead of hanging, according to the usual custom of the province, in long ragged locks ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... men of high attainments, unless their coffers brim with lucre, affect him no more than the company of the most unlettered oaf. He becomes, in other words, the typical Wall Street man, and he becomes this with a stolid indifference to all ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... is Washington! And here at dinner are the diplomatic representatives of all the nations. That is the British ambassador, that stolid-faced, distinguished-looking, elderly man; and this is the French ambassador, dapper, volatile, plus-correct; here Russia's highest representative wags a huge, blond beard; and yonder is the phlegmatic ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... unsteadily over the rough stones. Now and then a mild-looking string of Chinamen stole along, clad in their dull-hued blue blouses, either chattering shrilly, like a lot of parrots, or moving silently down the alley with a stolid Oriental apathy on their yellow faces. Here and there came a stream of warm light through an open door, and within, the Mongolians were gathered round the gambling-tables, playing fan-tan, or leaving the seductions of their favourite pastime, to glide soft-footed to the many cook-shops, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... blue-jackets had evidently been piped up, for they lay there in a sort of serried disorder, to the number of two hundred and seventy-five. Nothing could be of suggestion more tragic than the wasted and helpless power of this poor wandering vessel, around whose stolid mass myriads of wavelets, busy as aspen-leaves, bickered with a continual weltering splash that was quite loud to hear. I sat a good time that afternoon in one of her steely port main-deck casemates on a gun-carriage, my head sunken on my breast, furtively ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... has brought forth this most perfect embodiment of purity among the nations. This is of itself one of those miracles which captivate the mind and charm the imagination, the living paradox in which the soul delights. How did she come out of that stolid peasant race, out of that distracted and ignoble age, out of riot and license and the fierce thirst for gain, and failure of every noble faculty? Who can tell? By the grace of God, by the inspiration of heaven, the only origins in which the student of nature, which is over nature, can put ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... speech with her, and especially at such an untimely hour, was sufficient to re-awaken all her unformed fears into full activity. Her lips blanched and a look of terror leapt into her eyes as she sprang to her feet, regarding the somewhat stolid Lucy as though the latter were some apparition ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... come orders to "Stand-to" in full marching order, to evacuate; at which all ranks expostulated angrily. And then perhaps another order—to stick it another day; at which we cheered and slapped one another boisterously on the back so that the stolid Germans over yonder must have wondered, knowing what they ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... came into the office—a stolid-faced, quiet-mannered, soberly attired person, who might have been a respectable tradesman out for a stroll, and who gave the inspector a sidelong nod as he approached his desk, at the same time extending ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... waited outside the station, and she had a momentary fear lest she should receive deferential recognition from the chauffeur. But he was as solid and stolid as any other portion of the car, and paid no more attention to her than he did to her baggage. The one was a nurse; the other, a box, both common nouns, and merely articles to be conveyed to Gleneesh according to ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... look doubly spectral; low-browed, sallow, bearded Russians; brawny English sailors, looking down with a grand, indulgent contempt upon those unhappy beings whom an inscrutable Providence has doomed to be "foreigners;" stolid Turks, tramping onward in silent defiance of the fierce looks cast at them from every side; sinewy Dalmatians, with close-cropped black hair; dapper Frenchmen, with well-trimmed moustaches, casting annihilating glances at the few ladies who happen to be abroad; and barefooted Greeks, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the full measure of the peril menacing our dear lady, there was need for swift determination and a blow as swift and sure; a coup de main which should atone in one shrewd push for the sleeveless failure of the night. So we would grip hands around, even to the stolid Indian, and swear a solemn oath to cut the women out or else to leave our bones to whiten in the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... arms across his massive chest and stood for a long time in silence. His eyes were upon the ground, and his stolid features were without show of emotion. His people had suffered wrongs at the hands of the white men; but in this one he had ever found an ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... of them in all, slouched over to the rail and stood looking down into the life-boat with an air of stolid indifference, as she rose and fell alongside. Then they turned and looked inboard at the long-boat, which stood upright in chocks, on top of the main hatch, with the jolly-boat stowed, keel-up, inside her. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... in our arrival. Men and women were haunched about the fire, above which simmered several pots with the savory odor of cooking meat. I do not think a soul of the company as much as turned a head on our approach. Though they saw us plainly, they sat stolid and imperturbable, after the manner of their race, waiting for us to announce ourselves. Some of the squaws and half-breed women were heaping bark on the fire. Indians sat straight-backed round the circle. White men, vagabond trappers from anywhere and everywhere, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... wore the stolid impassive faces of their tribe; but when this bright young creature questioned them, brimming over with ardour and joy, their countenances fell and they hung ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and the two bright black eyes, which look as if they were "stuck on," give them a rather comical aspect. You will find them inquisitive, too. Put your finger in front of their tank, and they will all flock to see what it is. On the contrary, other fishes, such as the pike and carp, will remain stolid and indifferent to any movement you may make, and some, like the timorous trout—for which Isaak Walton loved to angle above any fish,—will be so dreadfully upset at the appearance of your digit that they will dart ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the Englishman, showed by contrast his American origin. His chin was all that Peter had said an American's chin ought to be, and he had keen, brilliant blue eyes. Hannaford, though taller than he, was stouter as well as older, and therefore appeared less tall. He was of a more stolid type, and it seemed incredible that such an adventure as that sketched by Madame d'Ambre could approach such a man. Yet for once, gossip and truth were one. The thing had happened. Hannaford had lately retired from the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... wholly marred by his disdainful manners, curt speech, and contemptuous treatment of foreigners. Clearly here was a cold, sternly objective nature like that of Bonaparte. He was a good representative of the stolid Turk of the provinces, who, far from the debasing influence of the Court, retains the fanaticism and love of war on behalf of his creed that make his people terrible even ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... there present, I was surprised at seeing so few with red or fair hair. I noticed this to my companion. He had never observed it before, but said it was strange. The convicts were mostly of a dull grey complexion, large eyed, stolid looking men, or with very black hair, ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... The stolid Christina listened entranced to all of Lorena's songs, charmed by the melody not less than she was awed by her sister-wife's superior gifts of language. The husband, too, listened not without resignation, reflecting that, when Lorena did not sing, she talked. For the ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... house she paused, for a man was riding down the creek. At sight of him the face of the mountain woman in the doorway assumed a stolid, almost hard, look, as if life had already brought to her all the misery and trouble it could, and there was nothing now ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... by a forced and perpetual conformity to nature lift yourself above all vicissitudes. Those tender and tentative ideals which nature really breeds, and which fill her with imperfect but genuine excellences, you will be too stolid to perceive or ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... almost ready to clear out!" But Germinie would look up at her with a smile, a smile so sad and sweet that it checked the impatient exclamation on the old maid's lips. And so she stayed on with her, going about with a sort of fascinated, divinely stolid air, in the impassibility of profound adoration, buried in ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... merely from the general aspect of the population and such objects as may be seen in the streets, more resembles an Inferno than any other we have yet visited. The people are more crowded together, and the stamp of squalid, stolid misery and degradation more obvious and appalling. The English and Scotch do not take kindly to poverty, like those of sunnier climes; it makes them fierce or stupid, and, life presenting no other cheap pleasure, they ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... parents. Sheila is the first-born. Norah decided that she should be an Irish beauty, and bestowed upon her a name that reeks of the bogs. Whereupon Sheila, at the age of six, is as flaxen-haired and blue-eyed and stolid a little German madchen as ever fooled her parents, and she is a feminine reproduction of her German Dad. Two years later came a sturdy boy, and they named him Hans, in a flaunt of defiance. Hans is black-haired, gray-eyed ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... the hour, and how she turned the wrong way, in a manner which might have puzzled the quickest brain; but Moore did not show any surprise. That would come later when he had arranged his ideas a little; at present his face was perfectly stolid as he said: ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... assertion, that there exists absolutely no moral sense among the workers. In general, he found that the children neither recognised duties to their parents nor felt any affection for them. They were so little capable of thinking of what they said, so stolid, so hopelessly stupid, that they often asserted that they were well treated, were coming on famously, when they were forced to work twelve to fourteen hours, were clad in rags, did not get enough to eat, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... a saw. The Chinese depend upon the shrieks of the wheel to tell them how the axle is wearing, but the disconsolate foreigner finds that his nerves wear out much faster than the wooden axle. In Tsing- tau, that agonizing screech proved too much even for the stolid Germans and they posted an ordinance to the effect that all barrow axles must be greased. The Chinese demurred, but a few arrests taught them obedience, so that now the streets of the German metropolis no longer resound with the hysterical wails and moans ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... How can he give his neighbour the real ground, His own conviction? Ardent as he is— Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old "Be it as God please" reassureth him. I probed the sore as thy disciple should: 220 "How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessness Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march To stamp out like a little spark thy town, Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?" He merely looked with his large eyes on me, The man is apathetic, you ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... reckoning. Although his character is a strong mixture of courage and ferocity, the Apache is gentle and affectionate toward those of his own flesh and blood, particularly his children. Fear, to him, is unknown. Death he faces with stolid indifference; yet Apache men have been known to grieve so deeply over the loss of a friend as to end their ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... on the great, stolid, comfortable class which forms the backbone of the novel-reading public. The best novelists do not find their material in this class. Thomas Hardy never. H.G. Wells, almost never; now and then he glances at it ironically, in an episodic manner. ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... The crowd having dispersed, buffalo-robes were spread on the ground, and Marquette and Joliet spent the night on the scene of the late festivity. In the morning, the chief, with some six hundred of his tribesmen, escorted them to their canoes, and bade them, after their stolid fashion, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... from the studio of design and the rooms where the looms stand stolid, is a laboratory of dyes, a place which looks like a farmhouse kitchen on preserving day. You sniff the air as you go in, the air that is swaying long bunches of pendulous colour, and it smells warm and moist and full of the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... accompany his mother in her visits to the cottages, and had thereby made acquaintance with many of the village boys of his own age. There was Job Rudkin, son of widow Rudkin, the most bustling woman in the parish. How she could ever have had such a stolid boy as Job for a child must always remain a mystery. The first time Tom went to their cottage with his mother, Job was not indoors; but he entered soon after, and stood with both hands in his pockets, staring at Tom. Widow Rudkin, who would have had to cross madam ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... take to their heels. Mr. Marcoy, feeling unable to do justice to the case of the nephew, turned him over to Perez, whose undisguised dislike made the work of correction at once grateful and thorough. Marcoy himself confronted the stolid and sullen Pepe Garcia, insisting upon the example he owed to the Indian porters and the responsibility of his Caucasian blood. The half-breed listened for a minute, his eyes fixed upon the ground: he then shook himself, looked an instant at his employer, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... line. They simply stood and waited. In truth there is nothing about the survivors of the disaster that strikes one so forcibly as their evident inability to comprehend their misfortune and the absence of sympathetic expressions among them. It is not because they are naturally stolid, but the whole thing is so vast and bears upon them so heavily they ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... even by the possession of the two thousand dollars her mother had reported. He was still "funny and sort of scary," not like the overpowering Southern gentlemen she supposed she remembered. Also, she was hungry. She listened with stolid glumness to Mr. Wrenn's observation that that was "an awful big hat the lady with the funny guy ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... pomaded Parleyvoo Will air his sweetest airs And quote the highest rates when you "Comme bien" for his wares; And, though the German stolid be, His so-called heart of steel Becomes as soft as wax when he Detects the words ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... Rosendo sat stolid, buried in thought. Jose reached out through the dim light and grasped his black hand. His eyes were lucent, his heart burned with the fire of an unknown enthusiasm, and speech stumbled across ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... thoughts which were working, beneath that stolid face, in that always eager-working brain. They never fancied what a terrible demon now occupied that fiery heart which they supposed was wholly surrendered to the consciousness of shame. Could they have heard that voice of the fiend whispering in her ears, while they whispered to one ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... a shocking outrage, the captain of U.S.S. Adirondack concurred, and so the cruiser, with the injured, stolid-faced 'Reo on board, steamed off to Leone Bay and gave the astounded natives twelve hours to make up their minds as to which they would do—pay 'Reo one thousand dollars in cash or have their town burnt. ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... in Stampede's face, and the stolid effort he was making to say something which it was difficult for him to put into words, did not excite Alan as he waited for his companion's promised disclosure. Instead of suspense he felt rather a sense of anticipation ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... people of both sexes who were neither Hindoos nor Mohammedans, but bore a strong resemblance to the Chinese. The men were short, stout and muscular, and their faces wore a stolid and almost stupid look, which was not at all improved by their long black hair or by their filthy garments and persons. The women, however, were rather good-looking, not concealing the face as in the plains. These people were natives ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... life do not surpass those of untutored nature, that neither concedes nor claims a superiority to others. She was altogether of a different stamp from her sister, who was a common-looking person, and resembled the ordinary females to be found in savage life. Stout, strong, and rather stolid, accustomed to drudge and to obey, rather than to be petted and rule; to receive and not to give orders, and to submit from habit and choice. One seemed far above, and the other as much below, the station of their father. Jessie, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Leader-of-the-Opposition Bebel, the Prince said, "One thing at least, the Emperor is no Philistine," and proceeded to explain, rather negatively and disappointingly, that the Emperor possesses what the Greeks call megalopsychia—a great soul. One knows but too well the English Philistine, that stolid, solid, self-sufficient bulwark of the British Constitution. The German Philistine is his twin brother, the narrow-minded, conservative burgher. Other epithets the Prince applied to the imperial character were "simple," "natural," "hearty," "magnanimous," "clear-headed," ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... completed when the gong rang for supper. There were not more than a dozen men at mess. Most were of stolid English navvy type, dirty uncouth men whose gross irregular features told of low birth and evil life. The foreign element comprised an Irishman named Mike Hogan and the Frenchman whom the boys had met when they ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... in life is one of the supreme essentials of all successful living. We must work, for we must have bread. We require other things than bread. They are not only valuable, comfortable, but necessary. It is a dumb, stolid being, however, who does not realize that life consists of more than these. They spell mere existence, not ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... penetrate farther than the parlor, the very fact of his presence sent a thrill of excitement through the house. An English milord, a heretic, the grandfather of "cette chere Lisa," whom they were to lose so soon! No wonder the most placid of the nuns, the most stolid of the lay-sisters, tingled ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... seemed to be more completely master of himself. The drink had brightened his eyes, brought a warm flush to the sun-bronze of his cheek, lent swiftness to his tongue. He was talking brilliantly, matching epigrams with the Great Gaines, shrewdly poking good-natured fun at the stolid and stupid mayor, holding his and the near-by tables in spell with reminiscences in which so many of them shared. Some wondered how he would have anything ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... incarnate. Blue beads and amulets to ward off evil! No eye's more evil than a camel's eye. The elephant is quite a comely brute, Compared with Satan camel,—trunk and all, His floppy ears, and his inconsequent tail. He's stolid, but at least a gentleman. It doesn't hurt my pride to valet him, And bring his shaving-water. He's a lord. Only the bluest blood that has come down Through generations from the mastodon Could carry off that tail with dignity, That tail and trunk. He cannot ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... decidedly sulky as she twitched round on her seat, and resumed her stolid staring into space. Again there was silence, till a hand stretched out to clasp her arm, and a voice spoke ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... A stolid, ignorant, and densely superstitious people was at war with a rejuvenated nation keenly alive to the power of education. That is the secret. Man for man, Russia would have won. But the resourcefulness ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... fit to 'go on the land'. The place was only fit for some stolid German, or Scotsman, or even Englishman and his wife, who had no ambition but to bullock and make a farm of the place. I had only drifted here through ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... involuntary appeals, in those brief glances. Far from me and from my friends be the misfortune of meeting such looks in reply to pain of our inflicting. To be clever and sensitive and to hurt the foolish and the stolid—"wouldst thou do such a deed for all ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... safe, and I have sent for him. Now I imagine that the Duke will wish our new secretary to live still at the 'Brand'—he preferred it in your case, as you will remember. Our new secretary is going to be my nephew. He is very stolid and honest, and fortunately not a chatterbox. He is going to be the nominal secretary, but I want you to be the one ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Some hundreds, indeed, had passed the night there in prayer, or in sheer terror of the catastrophe which could not fail to ensue, and they were kneeling in groups, groaning, weeping, and cursing, or squatting in stolid resignation, weary, crushed and hopeless. It was a heart-rending sight, and neither Dada—who till this moment had been dreading Dame Herse's scolding tongue far more than the destruction of the world—nor her companion could forbear joining in the wail that rose ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seated—a hardy race, reared on the hills, and disciplined in the straitest of creeds. Stolid and self-complacent, theirs was an unquestioning faith, accepting, as they did, the Divine decrees as a Mohamedan accepts his fate. What was, was right—all as it should be; elect, or non-elect, according to ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather |
