"Sullen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... garments of a Caesar, also covered with a purple cloak. He was a heavy-faced and somewhat stupid-looking youth, dark-haired, like his father and uncles, but having large, blue, and not unkindly eyes. From his flushed face I gathered that he had drunk well of the strong Greek wine, and from the sullen look about his mouth that, as was common, he had ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... untame'd boar. But virtue prepares its possessor for the skies. Upon the upright and the good, attendant angels wait. With heavenly spirits they converse. On them the dark machinations of witchcraft, and the sullen spirits of darkness have no power. Even the outward form is impressed with a beam of celestial lustre. By slow, but never ceasing steps, they tread the path of immortality and honour. Then, mortals, love, support, and cherish each ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... vain, And, fated in Boeotian fields to found, A rising empire on a foreign ground, 250 First raised our walls on that ill omen'd plain Where earth-born brothers were by brothers slain? What lofty looks th' unrivall'd monarch bears! How all the tyrant in his face appears! What sullen fury clouds his scornful brow! Gods! how his eyes with threatening ardour glow! Can this imperious lord forget to reign, Quit all his state, descend, and serve again? Yet who, before, more popularly bow'd? Who more propitious to the suppliant crowd? 260 Patient of right, familiar ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... thus confidently failed to reckon on the rapidly growing discontent at home, where the populace was close to the starvation point. Though their soldiers still fought desperately on, it was with the sullen mien of those who had lost their morale ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... Arms his shrill, ill tongue had been rarely still, now he maintained a sullen silence; Jem Burton, at least, had no cause of complaint. Crouched away in a corner, with Red Wull beside him, the little man would sit watching and listening as the Dalesmen talked of Owd Bob's doings, his staunchness, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... of his own government; he should fight harder and suffer more cheerfully and die more blithely in its defense in exact proportion to his ignorance of whom and what he was fighting and suffering and dying for. It was a sullen conclusion surely; but, forced home upon Richard, it taught him a vitriolic harshness that, getting into his letters to flavor all he wrote, gave him national vogue, and added to that mixture of hatred and admiration with which ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... different thing from that which is born of submission and resignation to the will of God. That the one but crowds the sharp grief deeper into the heart, and shuts up the fountain of healing tears, and makes the man hard and sullen and defiant, and chills his sympathies, and disposes him to solitary brooding, and after all, gives way at last, and leaves him a broken reed, while the other finds in the breach which God made in his cherished plans, ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... himself, especially in his face. Mark set his knee on the breast of his adversary and waited to hear "Enough." Hugh ground his teeth, but there was no escape; no feint nor sudden movement could reverse their positions; and, out of breath, he gave up in sullen despair. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... eruption of subterraneous fire, and whose remains were hid, even by that sea which holds no living fish in its bosom, bears no skiff on its surface, and, as if its own dreadful bed were the only fit receptacle for its sullen waters, sends not, like other lakes, a tribute to the ocean. The whole land around, as in the days of Moses, was "brimstone and salt; it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth thereon." The land as well as the lake might be termed dead, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... of a most irritable nature glowed in his cheek, fed with sharp shafts his glances, a nature—the injudicious, the mawkish, the hesitating, the sullen, the affected, above all, the unyielding, might quickly render violent and implacable. Silence and attention was the best balm to apply: ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... sphere of politics, barbarism, brutally aggressive or craftily obsequious, reigns undisturbed. Era succeeds era, faiths rise and set, statesmen and thinkers, prophets and martyrs, act, speak, suffer, die, and are seen no more; but, scornful of all their strivings, the great Anarch still stands sullen and unaltered by the centuries. And these critics, undeterred by Burke's hesitation to "draw up an indictment against a whole nation," make bold to arraign Humanity itself, charging alike the present and the past with ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Berry was beside herself, and we shall soon see why. The most bitter despair was painted with horror on her face. There was seen written, as it were, a sort of furious grief, based on interest, not affection; now and then came dry lulls deep and sullen, then a torrent of tears and involuntary gestures, yet restrained, which showed extreme bitterness of mind, fruit of the profound meditation that had preceded. Often aroused by the cries of her husband, prompt to assist him, to support him, to embrace him, to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... intimidating, their atrocities had served to arouse the Americans as nothing else could. As soldiers, they had usually run away at the first fire. As scouts, their minds were wholly fixed upon plundering. Burgoyne had sharply rebuked them for it. Ever sullen and intractable under restraint, their answer was at least explicit, "No plunder, no Indians;" and they were as good ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... Tom's chosen associates; but he was still obdurate, sullen, and angry, and would not speak, nor open his heart to those kind words. After one more, "I could not help it, Tom, you've no business to be sulky," Norman took up the bottle, opened it, smelled, and tasted, and was about to throw it into the river; when Tom exclaimed, "Oh, don't, don't! what will ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... he had not ceased thinking of the girl with the tambourine, of her savage, sullen grace, her magnificent poise and strange glance. He had learned at his hotel that she was called "Debora la folle," and that she was the daughter of the still crazier Baki. Was she some sort of a gypsy, or a Continental version ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... evident that the number of slaves was not great at this time, and that they were few and far between. The sullen and ofttimes revengeful spirit of the Indians had its effect upon the few Negro slaves in the colony. Sometimes they were badly treated by their masters, and occasionally they would run away. The country was new, the settlements scattered; and slavery as an institution, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... now I reach the moat's broad marge, And at each pace more fair and large The antique pile grows on my sight, Though sullen Time's resistless might, Stronger than storms or bolts of heaven, Through wall and buttress rents have riven; And wider gaps had there been seen But for the ivy's buckler green, With stems like stalwart arms sustained; Here else had little now remained But heaps of stones, or mounds o'ergrown ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... along the road in sullen silence; and, by the time they reached town, an account of the Battle was hawking about the streets, and songs singing to the praise of the successful combatant in all the melodious cadences of a last dying ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... girls with pink, blown cheeks and sulky mouths. You thought of sullen, milk-fed babies, of trumpeting cherubs disgusted with their trumpets. They were showing their racquets to Harry Craven, bending their heads. You could see the backs of their privet-white necks, fat, with no groove ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... Shakespeare, Sancho Panza to Cervantes, or Panurge to Rabelais. Whether Sganarelle is a servant, a husband, the father of Lucinde, the brother of Ariste, a guardian, a faggot-maker, a doctor, he always represents the ugly side of human nature, an antiquated, grumpy, sullen, egotistical, jealous, grovelling, frightened character, ever and anon raising a laugh on account of his boasting, mean, morose, odd qualities. Moliere was, at the time he wrote Sganarelle, more than ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... fact, Steele's command was worse than undisciplined. It was permeated through and through with defection in its most virulent form, a predicament not wholly unforeseen. The Choctaws had pretty well dispersed, the Creeks were sullen, and Cabell's brigade of Arkansans was actually disintegrating. The prospect of fighting indefinitely in the Indian country had no attractions for men who were not in the Confederate service for pure love of the cause. Day by day desertions[827] took place until the number ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... the door had shut upon Beatrice, Messer Simone shook himself from the wall and advanced with a steady, heavy stride to where Dante stood lost in contemplation of his rose, and I thought he looked like some ugly giant out of a fairy-tale, and his sullen eyes were full of mischief. He came hard by Messer Dante, and spoke to him roughly. "I do not care to see you and that flower ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... ridiculously easy, she was so earnest, so close to him. He had a brief kaleidoscope of impressions—Ward's sullen bewilderment, Moulton's angry roar, Dio's jerky rise to his feet as the ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... of the sunken day Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues. Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge! You see the glimmer of the stream beneath, Bur* hear no murmuring: it flows silently, O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still, A balmy night! and ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... River, swift and dim, where Winter Night sat brooding like the last dark thoughts of many who had sought a refuge there before her. Where scattered lights upon the banks gleamed sullen, red, and dull, as torches that were burning there, to show the way to Death. Where no abode of living people cast its shadow, on the deep, ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... unspeakable comfort of conquering by resignation, as you see that your resignation is to be like the resignation of Christ; not that of trembling fear like a condemned criminal before a judge; not that of sullen necessity, like a slave before his master: but that of the only-begotten Son of God; the resignation of a child to the will of a father whom he can utterly trust, because that father's ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... closed mouth, in addition to a lowered and frowning brow, gives determination to the expression, or may make it obstinate and sullen. How it comes that the firm closure of the mouth gives the appearance of determination will presently be discussed. An expression of sullen obstinacy has been clearly recognized by my informants, in the natives of six different regions of Australia. It is well ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... by his statement that just so long as the Negroes committed certain crimes just so long would they be unceremoniously dealt with. Sunday dawned upon a city of astounded white people and outraged and sullen Negroes. Throughout Monday and Tuesday the tension continued, the Negroes endeavoring to defend themselves as well as they could. On Monday night the union of some citizens with policemen who were advancing in a suburb in which most of the homes were those ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... sullen, red blaze on the distant vessel was dying down against the horizon. The flames had stripped her to a skeleton. Her hempen running rigging had been consumed; sails, gaffs, and booms lay smoldering on her decks; above ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... Maurice withdrew towards Wesel, sullen but not desponding. His forces were meagre, and although he had been out-generalled, out-marched, and defeated in the open field, at least the Genoese had not planted the blow which he had meditated in the very heart ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... treacherous manner, prowling round their "folds" by dusk, and often listening to conversations by concealing himself. Such was the man who now accosted the humble fisherman. Reverentially, as if to the terrible landlord himself, the peasant bared his head to his sullen representative. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... gently creeping, No longer sullen break; All nature now is still and softly sleeping, And why art thou awake? The busy din of earth will soon be o'er, Rest thee, oh rest upon thy ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... a man, but that only God can so go into the depths of my soul as that from His throne there He can flood the whole of my nature with felicity and peace. In all other gladnesses there is always in the landscape one bit of sullen shadow somewhere or other, unparticipant of the light, while all around is blazing. And we need that He should come to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... About Mary's sullen, stubborn belief in the "India ship," pretended or real as it may have been with her, but already growing legendary, I know only in the largest ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sullen river served in some measure to revive them, once the gates were opened and the car had taken a place on the ferry-boat's forward extreme. Day was now full upon the world; above a horizon belted with bright magenta, the cloudless ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... had not spoken to her during the entire journey. Morose, sullen, brutal, he had nursed his anger until his countenance fairly burned from the tension within. He slammed the door with violence; he tore the epaulets from his shoulders and threw them beyond the bed; he ripped ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... following, and avoid them, because they all carry scandal in their nature to your own and others' souls: as, 1. Proud, disdainful, and haughty words conduct, and conversation; for these are grievous and provoking evils, which will justly offend all the observers of them. 2. Sullen, sour, and churlish language and behavior, which is offensive unto all sorts of persons; for this is an evil altogether unbecoming the followers of Jesus Christ. 3. A cross, captious, and contradictive spirit and conduct, ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... submission, Jesus liberates those who believe on Him and abide in His word. He declares God as our loving Father, and through Him we have authority to become sons of God. He 'sends forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts,' and that makes us to be no more slaves but sons. Sullen obedience becomes glad choice, and it is the inmost desire, and the deepest delight, of the loving child to do always the things that please the loving Father. 'I ought' and 'I will' coalesce, and so there is no slavery, but perfect freedom, in recognising and bowing to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... table, backed by a sideboard loaded with cold meats, sat a man plying knife and fork, and with a flagon handy beside him—a heavy, broad-shouldered man, with a copper-red complexion, and black hair that grew extraordinarily low upon his forehead. This and a short, heavy jaw gave him a morose, sullen look. I guessed his age at something ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... after I had in vain endeavored to gain access to the old man through the day, I wandered out and stood on a high cliff, against whose base the waves of the lake beat with a sullen roar; and looking far away over the turbulent surface of this prince of inland seas, was wondering if ever its waters would become tributary to the will of my race, or if, as now, the canoe of the Indian was all the vessel that should breast its rugged ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... it up: and now our misunderstanding blazes, and is at such a comfortable height, that if we meet by accident, we run away from each other by design. We have already made two breakfast-tables: yet I am meek; he is sullen: I make courtesies; he returns not bows.—Sullen creature, and a rustic!—I go to my harpsichord; melody enrages him. He is worse than Saul; for Saul could be gloomily pleased with the music even ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... observing the young journalist with approbation, liking his sensitive and polite face, saw it grow suddenly sullen, even spiteful, at the sound of a voice raised in conversation ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... Dalmanutha resumed her knitting, swiftly and fiercely, all the pent-up force of a strong nature thrown into the simple act. Instead of the repose that characterizes the faces of the blind, her eaglelike countenance bore the marks of fretful, sullen, ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... favorite amusements—a ball-play on the ice. Those who owned the bright cloths and calicoes which were hung up before their eyes, as an incentive to win the game, were still rejoicing over their treasures; while the disappointed ones were looking sullen, and muttering of partiality being shown to this one because she was beautiful, and to that, because she was the sister ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... appears in the 4to, 1673, finding no place in the various collected editions of Mrs. Behn's plays. The writer of comedy— 'the most severe of Johnson's sect'— with his 'musty rules of Unity'— at whom she glances pretty freely is Shadwell, who had obtained great success with The Sullen Lovers (produced 2 May, 1668; 4to, 1668), and in spite of some mishaps and opposition, made another hit with The Humourists (1671; 4to, 1671). An ardent disciple of Ben Jonson, he had in the two printed prefaces to these plays belauded his model beyond all other writers, insisting upon the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... too, there was a strange hush, a tragic submission—it was so leaden and sullen in its color, and it flowed so soundlessly forever ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Christophe at length. Like all men fated to be deceived by women he flattered himself that he knew them through and through. He did know something about them, as a matter of fact, but a little knowledge is quite useless. He knew that women often have fits of persistent moodiness and blindly sullen antagonism: and it was his opinion that it was necessary at such times to leave them alone, and to make no attempt to understand or, above all, to find out what they were doing in the dangerous unconscious ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... slight breathing convinced them that the vital spark was not yet extinguished; in short the girl recovered. She was no sooner out of immediate danger, than one of Ali's sons repaired to the tent of his friends, the three brothers, who sat sullen and silent round the fire, grieving over the loss of their sister. The young man entered, and saluted them, and said, "I come to ask you, in the name of my father, for the body of your sister; my family wishes to bury her." ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... time being, in the paralysis of Liberalism, the Imperial reaction had things all to itself. The governing classes of England were to assert themselves. They were to consolidate the Empire, incidentally passing the steam roller over two obstructive republics. They were to "teach the law" to the "sullen new-caught peoples" abroad. They were to re-establish the Church at home by the endowment of doctrinal education. At the same time they were to establish the liquor interest—which is, after all, the ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... nevertheless she could retreat behind a baffling air of stolidity—almost of sullenness—when she chose, and that was precisely the mask she wore for Bill. In reality she was far from stolid and anything but sullen. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... fail him—tries to revolve one arm like a windmill, that he may restore his circulation, and that arm for some instants hangs powerless. Presently, with one tremendous concentration of will, his brain shouts down an order to the rebellious member—it stirs with sullen reluctance—it moves an inch—and then it breaks from the prison of its waking nightmare. Summoning his entire array of vital forces, our patient leaps, and smites his breast, kicks, whirls his arms, and little by little feels his heart tick again. ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... not the usual American breakfast, a sullen, dyspeptic gathering of persons who only the night before had rejoiced in each other's society. With him it was the time when the mind is, or ought to be, at its best, the body at its freshest and hungriest. Discussions of the latest plays and novels, the doings and undoings of ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... But no one comes near the ill-humored James, and the little party going to visit his sister "wish James was out of the way." He sees every motion, hears every whisper, knows, suspects, feels it all, and turns to go home more sullen and ill tempered than common. The world looks dark—nobody loves him—and he is told that it is "all his own fault," and that ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... imagination, high strung, high spirited, his feelings easily moved, his pride easily wounded. His brother was too dull and stolid to understand him, taking for deliberate malice what was but boyish mischief, and regarding him as sullen when he was only ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... arrowy rush of the water in the confined channel swept them down till they dropped where they now lie, just where the widening bottom first served to dissipate the force of the current. And over the sullen pool in front we may see the stern pillars of the portal rising from eighty to a hundred feet in height, and scarce twelve feet apart, like the massive obelisks of some Egyptian temple; while, in gloomy vista within, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... sullen rage I swoop down upon my inkstand after just lighting the Town Councillor downstairs with the kindliest countenance in the world. He sat here for two and a half hours by the clock, moaning and groaning, without the least regard for my wry face; I was just about to read the paper when he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... laughed aloud at the thought of herself, of all women in the world, going on such an errand. If she went to Coltsfoot now the anticipation of meeting strangers would turn her to lead as soon as she saw the house, and the woman would wonder apprehensively who this sullen-faced stranger coming up the path might be; when she gained admittance she would be able to speak only of trivial things and her voice would sound insolent, and they would take her for some kind of district visitor who intruded without even the justification of being a church worker ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... despair which is sure to be misunderstood and censured by those he loves best. When this stage is reached, it is easy for him to imagine himself a social outcast, a useless encumbrance that nobody loves, a clumsy dolt that nobody likes to have about. Again he may become sullen, morose, resentful, and suspicious toward all about him. Or, a timid nature may become more timid, shrinking, weak of will, and despondent concerning life in general; or the subject may show an exaggerated egotism ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... folks have a right to come in here out of the rain," she said, advancing to the fire and seating herself with a sullen and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... Silver looked sullen and uneasy. "I don't know why you should talk to me in this strain," he said irritably. "I appreciate what you have done for me, and have no reason to treat you ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... hardship and suffering that they had so recently passed through, I was compelled to confess to myself that they were by no means a prepossessing lot; they, one and all, O'Gorman and Price not excepted, wore that sullen, hang-dog, ruffianly expression of countenance that marks the very lowest class of British seamen, the scum and refuse of the vocation. Still, we had not far to go, and I consoled myself with the reflection that they would probably ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... his band reappeared, with M'Bongwele in their midst. The king's heavy features wore a sullen, savage expression as he was led forward through the narrow lane that the assembled warriors opened out for his passage; and he threw upward a single glance of mingled fear and defiance at the little group ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... my self almost despising, Haply I think on Thee—and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... countrymen in being always ready for a fight; but he was unlike them in harboring a sullen love of revenge. In this respect he was more like ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... rejoinders. At these times Dandy fell back for company upon his cousin Isabel, and I have met them frequently riding or driving together, she with a happy, radiant face, and he with the brooding devil in his eye and a sullen look in the smile with ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... reached Ramdam, a farm east of Graspan and fronting the drifts of the Riet, where the Army was being concentrated for the advance. Some hours elapsed before Cronje became aware that French had trekked away to the S.E., and to his slow and sullen spirit the movement did not appear to have much significance. He was persuaded that the British never trusted themselves much more than a day's march away from a railway. It was only a demonstration, a reconnaissance. He did, however, ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... there, he spent most of his time in idleness and debauchery; by night frequenting the abodes of vice and infamy, and by day, haunting the doors and corridors of the court-house, in the latter always instinctively seeking to avoid a rencontre with his sullen ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... was sullen about the failure of his trick, until Mr. Robinson, who was an experienced traveler, slipped him a coin, which must have been large enough to make up for the disappointment, for the man murmured: "Muchas ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... suggested that the latter believed themselves of Aymara blood. Physically, the pure Aymara is short and thick-set, with a great chest development, and with the same reddish complexion, broad face, black eyes and rounded forehead which distinguish the Quichuas. Like the latter, too, the Aymaras are sullen and apathetic in disposition. They number now, including half-breeds, about half a million in Bolivia. Some few are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... sense of disorder or noise, but it was just jolly. Mr. Benjamin at one end of the long table beamed at Mrs. Benjamin at the other end. They both played a part in the sprightly give-and-take of the children. It was like a happy family. Isabelle was silent, taking note of everything. Peggy was sullen. ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... said Ann politely, "but if you'll excuse me I shan't get up. Every time I sit down it makes a crease in a fresh place. By the time church is over I look like I was crumpled all over. It's the starch!" she added in sullen explanation. ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... when the field of strife had been a little mopped up and made presentable, and the Brigadier, who saw himself a Knight in three months, was the only soul who was complimentary to them. The Colonel was heart-broken, and the officers were savage and sullen. ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... perhaps the most stubborn and courageous animal in India. Even when pierced with several spears, and bleeding from numerous wounds, he preserves a sullen silence. He disdains to utter a cry of fear and pain, but maintains a bold front to the last, and dies with his face to the foe, defiant and unconquered. When hard pressed he scorns to continue his flight, but wheeling round, he makes a determined charge, very frequently to ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... later. It was the long grinding tyranny that had well nigh maddened us, that drove Caractacus first to take up arms, that raised the western tribes, and made all feel that the Roman yoke was intolerable. The news of the massacre of the Druids and the overthrow of our altars converted the sullen discontent into a burning desire for revenge, and the insult to Boadicea was the signal rather than the cause of the rising. It is to the rule of Suetonius that it is due that hundreds of thousands of Britons, Romans, and ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... least of all on the last. It is a bridegroom rejoicing to leave his chamber, and a bride blushing in her sweet bliss. There are after all only three great events in human history which, projected forward or reflected backward, colour all the rest—birth, marriage, and death. The most sordid or sullen population will collect in knots, brighten a little, forget hard fate or mortal wrongs for a moment, in the interest of seeing a wedding company go by. The surliest, the most whining of the onlookers will spare a little relenting, a happier thought, for "two lunatics," "a couple of young fools whose ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... heat was insufferable—streams of sweat coursed down his face, and the corpse seemed to grow heavier and heavier. Tydomin always walked in front of him. His eyes were fastened in an unseeing stare on her white, womanish calves; he looked neither to right nor left. His features grew sullen. At the end of ten minutes he suddenly allowed his burden to slip off his shoulders on to the ground, where it lay sprawled every which way. He ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... mountain-sides were covered with a dense scrub of rhododendron bushes, except where broken by rocks, landslips, and torrents: above this the winter's snow lay deep, and black rocks and small glaciers, over which avalanches were constantly falling with a sullen roar, forbade all attempts to proceed. My object in ascending was chiefly to obtain views and compass- bearings, in which I was generally disappointed: once only I had a magnificent prospect of Kinchinjunga, sweeping down in one unbroken mass of glacier and ice, fully 14,000 feet high, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... strive, however, to chase the gloom from Raoul's pale face; he sat listening, with a sullen frown, to his friend's jests about "swallowing the bitter ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... 'See that first ray, like an arrow, How it tinges all the fringes Of the sullen drifting skies. They told me to begin it At five-thirty to the minute, And at thirty-one I'm in it, Or my sub will ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... company of soldiers before a redoubt, when the captain runs forward full of hope and energy, but looks not behind him to see if his men are following, and they hang back, not knowing why they are brought there to die. The captain's life is spent for nothing, and his men are sullen prisoners in the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... occasioned led to a great many scenes of dispute and crimination between the two brothers, until at last Clarence could no longer endure to have any thing to do with Edward, and he went away, with Isabella his wife, to a castle which he possessed near Tewkesbury, and there remained, in angry and sullen seclusion. So great was the animosity that prevailed at this time between the brothers and their respective partisans, that almost every one who took an active part in the quarrel lived in continual anxiety from fear of being poisoned, or of being ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... so soothed to rest by his music, there was no room for cavil. It was natural that Alessandro came and went as a physician might. But after Felipe had recovered, why should this freedom and intimacy continue? More than once there had been sullen mutterings of this kind on the north veranda, when all the laborers and servants were gathered there of an evening, Alessandro alone being absent from the group, and the sounds of his voice or his violin coming from the south veranda, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... his whole character seems to have changed, even in little things. No longer is he affable and courteous, but silent, reserved, and sullen. His temper becomes bad; his brow is usually clouded; his manners are brusque; his egotism is transcendent. "Your first duty," said he to his brother Louis, when he made him king of Holland, "is to me; your second, to France." ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... easy. For instance, that memorable night when I had to work Rose's stubborn heart to a proper pitch of repentance for having stabbed a carving-fork in Lucy's arm in a fit of temper. I don't know that I was ever as much astonished as I was at seeing the dogged, sullen girl throw herself on the floor in a burst of tears, and say if God would forgive her she would never do it again. I was lashing myself internally for not being able to speak as I should, furious at myself for talking so weakly, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... be a calamity almost worse than the original war. German militarism would still be unsubdued, the Kaiser's pretensions to universal sovereignty, although clipped, would not be wiped out, and we should find remaining in all the nations of the earth a sort of sullen resentment which could not possibly lead to anything else than a purely temporary truce. The only logical object of war is to make war impossible, and if merely an indecisive result were achieved in the present war, it would be as certain as anything ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... the gloomy sky over the rubbish that floated on the Mersey, made them feel extraordinarily forlorn. Empty boxes, bits of straw, orange-peel, a variety of dismal dirtiness lay about on the sullen water; England was slipping away, England, their mother's country, the country of their dreams ever since they could remember—and the St. Luke with a ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... unwiped, while a piece of green weed, which he did not seem to have presence of mind enough to remove, trailed over his dripping locks. There was something in the sight which tickled Tom's sense of humor. He had been prepared for sullen black looks and fierce words, instead of which he was irresistibly reminded of schoolboys caught by their master using a crib, or in other like ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... his discharge. It kept his thoughts employed, and he worked hard—reading through the dusty papers, tearing them up, consigning some to the waste-paper basket others to the fire, which by-and-by grew sullen under its task. Twilight fell.... She would come, then, after dusk, and secretly—mooring her boat in the hiding-place under the Keg of Butter Battery, away from inquisitive eyes. At half-past five Archelaus brought him his tea. At six, having washed and refreshed himself, the ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the ardent public spirit of Sydney. Others could conquer; he alone could reconcile. A heart as bold as his brought up the cuirassiers who turned the tide of battle on Marston Moor. As skilful an eye as his watched the Scottish army descending from the heights over Dunbar. But it was when, to the sullen tyranny of Laud and Charles, had succeeded the fierce conflict of sects and factions, ambitious of ascendency, and burning for revenge; it was when the vices and ignorance, which the old tyranny had generated, threatened the new ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... a drunkard and a brute. The life of Patrasche was a life of hell. To deal the tortures of hell on the animal creation is a way which the Christians have of showing their belief in it. His purchaser was a sullen, ill-living, brutal Brabantois, who heaped his cart full with pots and pans and flagons and buckets, and other wares of crockery and brass and tin, and left Patrasche to draw the load as best he might, whilst he himself lounged idly by the side in fat and sluggish ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... was sullen, but his head was held very erect, and his eyes were steady and unwavering as he ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... In reply.— Curses him for scrupulousness. Is in earnest to marry. After one more letter of entreaty to her, if she keep sullen silence, she must ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... left her. She took no notice of the little girl's sullen face, nor of her rude manner. She went away looking what she ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... nursery, took to sleepy crying, and was immediately lulled in her arms with the fondest soothing; the fiercest threatenings between whiles being directed to Letitia and Arthur, until they both slunk off to bed, sullen and silent—at war with one another, with Phillis, and with the ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... contrast to the Stonehenge of to-day—abandoned and silent on the fast vanishing Plain of Salisbury. Yesterday, it was the workplace of a teeming hive of masons, the air filled with the tap of the smaller hammers dressing the stone faces, with the sullen thud of the big maul pounding the face of a newly arrived Sarsen, while the faint muffled "peck" of the deer's horn told of trench workers dressing down a chalk face to receive the thrust of the monolith, while high above the steady tap of the picks and hammers came the ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... remorse, suspended over the abyss of eternity in hopeless dread. We shall not enter into the details of the revolting scene, but simply add that curses, blasphemy, tremulous cries for mercy, agonized entreaties to be advised, and sullen defiance, were all strangely and fearfully blended. In the midst of one of these revolting paroxysms Spike breathed his last. A few hours later his body was interred in the sands of the shore. It may be well to say in this place, that the hurricane of 1846, which is known to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... 'She is not like the same woman, Susan. She thinks of other people now.' Miss Locke heard me silently, but I saw that she was still incredulous. She was not sanguine enough to hope for a miracle; and surely only a miracle could change Phoebe's sullen and ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... came mysteriously to her again. She trembled, for she had remarked in him lately a strange change. He had lost his usual loquacity and quaint humor; and had fallen back into that sullen taciturnity, which, so she heard, he had kept up in his youth. He, too, must know evil which he ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... only. They wanted to ask me a question about the healthiness of Brand Hall, drains, and all that kind of thing. That young Brand struck me as a very sullen-looking fellow." ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... streaks. This, though not quite obvious at first from the point where they stood, was caused by the slow formation of a great chasm in the centre of the seething lake of mud. The lake was sinking into its own throat. The blackness increased. Then a dull sullen roar was heard, and next moment the entire lake upheaved, not violently, but in a slow, majestic manner some hundreds of feet into the air, whence it fell back into its basin with an awful roar which reverberated ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... castle's outer door Stood Blondel, the Troubadour. Up the marble stairs the crowd, Pressing, talked and laughed aloud. Upward with the throng he went; With a heart of discontent, Timed his sullen instrument; Tried to sing of mirth and jest, As the knights around him pressed; But across his heart a pang Struck him wordless ere ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... zenana, and his quick access of anger showed that the gift had come from some other hand than his. Savage jealousy, therefore, had prompted the act of injustice inflicted upon the unfortunate washerman. I knew my master so well his sullen moods, his outbursts of passion, that already I could arrive at ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... added that he had nothing to reproach himself with on that head, for he had washed his hands of the whole affair, and was, therefore, quite innocent. The ancients were as hardened as ever, and replied, in a sullen tone, that there was nothing unnatural in the course of events, that they might be easily accounted for by philosophers, and that they did not repent of anything they had done. However, many persons were converted, and among others those ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... said the woman, with a dogged and sullen look, and in a voice that grew thicker with every word. 'Ain't there ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... dream had been realized; and the study of years slowly flowered into a large painting, which represented Antigone standing beside the heap of dust, strewn reverently to sepulchre the form dimly outlined at her feet. The sullen red sunset of a tempestuous day flared from the horizon, across a desolate plain; showed the city walls in the background, the hungry vultures poised high above the dead, the marauding dogs crouched in the wind-swept sand, watching their banquet, decreed by the king. The dust had been ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... throwing his bridle athwart mine arm, I bade the lad lead me to his mother, for I was a physician, and could maybe do her some good. I found her under an hedge, with nought save a ragged rug to cover her, twain other children beside clamouring for bread, and her husband, a rugged sullen-faced man, weaving of rushes for baskets. All they were dark-faced folk, and were, I take it, of that Egyptian [gipsy] crew that doth over-run all countries at times. I saw in a moment that though beyond their skill, her disorder was not (with ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... expression upon his countenance took a change— remarkable as it was sudden. From the look of sullen despair, which but the moment before might have been seen gleaming out of the sunken orbits of his eyes, his glance seemed to change to one of joy, almost with the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... rid of the detective. But matters did not readily settle down again into their old relations. The Colonel was irritable, and Rad was moody and sullen. He showed no tendency to confide in me as to the truth about the ha'nt, and I did not probe the matter further. In a day or so he brought me three hundred dollars, to cover the amount I had loaned him, together with the "blackmail," as he insisted upon calling it. The money, ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... been the guardian of his wife's honor? Well, the husband in this rather poor play was a creation that is common in modern English drama. He represented one idea at least that the English playwright has certainly not borrowed from the French stage. Moral worth is best indicated by a sullen demeanor. The man who has a pleasant manner is dangerous and a profligate; the virtuous man—the true-hearted Englishman—conducts himself as a boor, and proves the goodness of his nature by his silence and his sulks. The hero of this trumpery piece ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... from his face, his eye became sullen, and drawing the messenger's chair to him he sat down. As he gazed at his discomfited prisoner an expression of intense relief came over his features. His forged letters had proved successful, his only formidable obstacle between himself and his anticipated ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... of Penzhinsk Gulf, I was compelled to leave my good-humoured Cossacks and take for drivers half a dozen stupid, sullen, shaven-headed Koraks, and from that time I was more lonesome than ever. I had been able to talk a little with the Cossacks, and had managed to pass away the long winter evenings by the camp-fire in questioning them about their peculiar beliefs ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... till she was again awakened by her husband's grasp, to find that dawn was gathering its light roseate fleeces in the east, and that their flight was for the present stayed at the door of a tavern, lonely and rude enough, but welcome to Hitty as a place of rest, if only for a moment. The sullen mistress of the house asked no questions and offered no courtesy, but, after her guests had eaten their breakfast, rapidly prepared, she led the way to a bedroom in the loft, where Abner Dimock flung himself down upon the straw ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... from her islands, there is but one whose office was other than that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only [Footnote: Thus literally was fulfilled the promise to St. Mark,—Pax e.] from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with forked battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice never sank under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... furniture almost fell in ruins and the poor frightened mouse fled to cover. Kicking the chair to one side, the young fellow walked to the window and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking into the night. Then, in sullen tones, he addressed the lamp that twinkled in the bakery across the way: "I'm a fool. I know I'm a fool; a great big fool. I ought to have told her who I was. I ought to get out a poster and label myself ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... that there is no volume of water within sight to create mass or sound. But no words can paint the majesty of the surroundings, the caverned, precipitous walls of rock coming down in one black plunge from the blue sky above to the dark abyss of water below, the sullen shuddering sound with which pieces of rock came hurtling down among the trees, the thin tinkle of the water as it falls, the full rush of the river, the feathery growth of ferns, gigantic below, but so diminished by the height above, as only ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... follow up her benignant work. Walking is good,—not stepping from shop to shop, or from neighbour to neighbour; but stretching out far into the country, to the freshest fields, and the highest ridges, and the quietest lanes. However sullen the imagination may have been among its griefs at home, here it cheers up and smiles. However listless the limbs may have been when sustaining a too heavy heart, here they are braced, and the lagging gait becomes buoyant ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... tendered to the victorious Henry IV. the submission of the city. But Henry was as yet only the chief of a party, not the accepted sovereign of the whole nation; and the enthusiasm with which half the citizens rained their shouts of exultation in his honor had its drawback in the sullen silence of the other half, who regarded the great Bourbon as their conqueror rather than their king, and his triumphant entrance ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... intersected by sparse hedgerows and with here and there desolate, leafless trees, many of which, in shattered trunk and broken bough, showed grim traces of what had been; and ever as we advanced these ugly scars grew more frequent, and we were continually dodging sullen pools that were the work of bursting shells. And then it began ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... him, had returned home in no happy state. There had leapt upon him again that mood of sullen impatient rebellion that he knew so well—a mood that really was like a possession, so that, struggle as he—might, he seemed always in the grip of some ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... only object that they showed any eagerness to possess was iron, but they could not be made to understand that it was only to be given in exchange for fruits or pigs. Their expression was one of sullen defiance, and they refused to guide any one whatever to their village. During the unprofitable stay of the corvette in this harbour, D'Urville had a serious attack of enteritis, from which he suffered ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... (that he gives yearly at the latter end of November) was finisht, I had gone to mine own room which looks over that sullen, un-English stream, the Hoogly, scarce so sober as I might have been. Now, roaring drunk in the West is but fuddled in the East, and I was drunk Nor'-Nor' Easterly as Mr. Shakespeare might have said. Yet, in spite of my liquor, the cool night winds (though ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling |
