"Abruptness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... squire, "uncommonly lucky as usual. Now, excuse my abruptness in changing the subject—I want to consult you upon ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... interrupted, and his disappointment was perceptible when he heard the creaking sound rather farther down the stairs, as if his visitor had decided to withdraw. He rose, opened the door with unnecessary abruptness, and waited on the landing. The person stopped simultaneously ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... least, so Amy declared afterwards. The car, which fortunately had decreased its speed to negotiate an abrupt turn in the road, suddenly shot down a slope at the left, turned around once and stopped with a disconcerting abruptness, its radiator against a four-inch birch tree. Clint and Amy picked themselves from the bottom of the tonneau and stared, more surprised than frightened. Behind them, on the level road, a wheel—present investigation ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... resembled an escape than a departure. In fact, she had left the house in the morning, on foot, and was expected back, as usual, to luncheon after her walk. But luncheon passed, and there were no tidings of her; and, at dinner-time, a brief note by the post announced her leave-taking, excusing its abruptness, on the ground of a sudden and urgent call into the country. This was, no doubt, the subject which the angry shadows on the blinds had been so vehemently discussing the night before. So violent an infraction of etiquette ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... doing here, Fenn?" he asked, with an abruptness which brought a flush to the latter's face. "Why are ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... the young fellow who stood in it should have seemed so foreign to the business in hand; perhaps the carriage of his tall figure, the military abruptness of his movements, the way he swung the door far back against the wall and halted there, looking us over. But I do know that no sooner had Worth Gilbert, lately home from France, crossed the threshold, meeting Whipple's outstretched hand, nodding carelessly to the others, than suddenly ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... acquainted with his brother's character than Newton, took no notice of the abruptness of his remarks, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... conversation was as haphazard and casual as the luncheon, until the pretty countess lighted a cigarette and tasted her tiny glass of Port—the latter a gift from Querida. "Do you think it odd of me to call on you uninvited?" she asked, with that smiling abruptness which sometimes ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... vocal sound. In the Fut. Neg. the voice rests on an articulation, or is cut short by a forcible aspiration. Supposing these Tenses to be used by a speaker in reply to a command or a request; by their very structure, the former expresses the softness of compliance; and the latter, the abruptness of a refusal. If a command or a request be expressed by such verbs as these, tog sin, gabh sin, ith sin, the compliant answer is expressed by togaidh, gabhaidh, ithidh; the refusal, by the cha tog, cha ghabh, cha n-ith. May not this peculiar variety ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... back to his men, deeply wounded in love and pride. He tried to excuse Marcia for her treatment of him, on the score of her youth and of youth's thoughtlessness; he blamed himself for his abruptness and his lack of knowledge of women—failings that had perhaps turned an impending victory into the defeat that now oppressed him. Worst of all, there was no hope to remedy his or her fault. A dangerous campaign lay before him, and the omens—but pshaw! ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... an horseman shriking sore and rashing wildly home,— A mediaeval horseman with ye usual flecks of foame; And he did brast into ye ring, wherein his horse did drop, Upon ye which ye rider did with like abruptness stop, And with fatigue and fearfulness continued in a swound Ye space of half an hour or more before a leech was founde. "Now tell me straight," quod Launcelot, "what varlet knyght you be, Ere that I chine you with my sworde and cleave your harte ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... he laughed. All the mystery was gone with the abruptness of a mist under the first glare of the sun. He saw how neatly he had been duped. He still carried the note. This he gave to the leader of ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... covert, while the grey pony scuttled after him as nimbly as a rabbit. The colt seemed to realise the stress of the occasion, and jumped steadily enough; but the last fence on to the road was too much for his nerves, and, having swerved from it with discomposing abruptness, he fell to his wonted ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... biographer, says, he had not yet really begun to think. When he began to think, he did so with the rapidity, the intensity, the impatient fervid vehemence which lay all along at the bottom of his character. His Evangelical views appear to have snapped to pieces and dissolved with a violence and sudden abruptness entirely unaccounted for by anything which these volumes show us. He read Carlyle; but so did many other people. He found the religious world at Cheltenham not so pure as he had imagined it; but this is what must have happened anywhere, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... only son! Obviously, however, she could not advance this argument, so they stood, the man and the girl, looking at one another, helpless, irresolute, while the clock opposite ticked remorselessly on. Then, with an abruptness which lent added weight to his words, Erskine ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... put her out of countenance. I often tell you abruptness is your fault; remember, too, that to you she is a stranger, and does not know ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... disturbing her (nor yourself) with a word about human passion; but, for my humble part, I beg to say I always share Tannhaeuser's impatience and am glad when it is over. As soon as Tannhaeuser gets up the mighty spirit of Wagner begins to work. With a dramatic abruptness that startles one, a fragment of a Venusberg theme shoots up; then a few chords, and Tannhaeuser begins praise of the thing he understands by love. His strains are impassioned—too much so for another of the troubadours, Walther, who follows somewhat ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... warm bed into a cold bedroom. The matter has been considered from that angle. 'I have been warm all night,' wrote Leigh Hunt, 'and find myself in a state perfectly suited to a warm-blooded animal. To get out of this state into the cold, besides the inharmonious and uncritical abruptness of the transition, is so unnatural to such a creature that the poets, refining upon the tortures of the damned, make one of their greatest agonies consist in being suddenly transported from heat to cold—from fire to ice. They are "haled" out of their "beds," says Milton, by "harpy-footed ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... well? Do you dare deny my will? By the eternal, I'll show you, old as you are, that you have still a father! Get to your room! Out of my sight!" He took two steps forward, and so his eye fell on Ned Trent. He uttered a scream of rage, and reached for the pistol. Fortunately the abruptness of his movement when he arose had knocked it to the floor, so now in the blindness of a red anger he could not see it. He shrieked out an epithet and jumped forward, his arm drawn to strike. Ned Trent leaped back ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... first and last appearance on the suffrage platform of Miss Kate Field, who was introduced by Miss Anthony with her characteristic abruptness: "Now, friends, here is Kate Field, who has been talking all these years against woman suffrage. She wants to tell you of the faith that is in her." Miss ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... and clambered fully eighteen miles, and had attained an elevation of eighteen hundred feet. The lake itself was not visible until they stood upon its shores, as it lies bosomed in a deep hollow, among lofty and precipitous mountains which descend with startling abruptness to the very brink of its dark, deep waters. To cross the lake it is necessary to put one's trust in one's swimming powers, or in a curiously frail kind of boat, which the natives prepare with equal rapidity and skill. Madame Pfeiffer, however, was nothing if not adventurous. Whatever there ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... With characteristic abruptness Liane Delorme announced that she was sleepy, it had been for her a most fatiguing day. Captain Monk rang for the stewardess and gallantly escorted the lady to her door. Lanyard got up with Phinuit to bow her out, but instead of following her suit helped ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... quotation shall be from the veritable Browning—of one of those poetical audacities none ever dared but the Danton of modern poetry. Audacious in its familiar realism, in its total disregard of poetical environment, in its rugged abruptness: but supremely successful, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... probably been among the number of those pious Jews who had prayerfully waited for the "consolation of Israel," and who had lived to see their fondest wishes and hopes realised. The Evangelist gives no information regarding their previous history. The narrative all at once, with an abruptness of surpassing beauty, leaves us in no doubt that the Divine Redeemer had been for long a well-known guest in that sunlit home, and that, when the calls and duties of His public ministry were suspended, many an hour was spent in the enjoyment of ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... she with the abruptness of extreme embarrassment, "did you know that Lady Cayley ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... the Canadian, as running midway between the town and Hog Island, derived its source far within the forest, and formed the bed of one of those wild, dark, and thickly wooded ravines so common in America. As it neared the Detroit, however, the abruptness of its banks was so considerably lessened, as to render the approach to it on the town side over an almost imperceptible slope. Within a few yards of its mouth, as we have already observed in our introductory chapter, a rude but strong wooden bridge, over which lay the high road, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... to the superior the deadly nature of the animal, and my fear that he would have put his handkerchief in the pocket of his robe before I had time to prevent him, and begged him to excuse my seeming abruptness. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... Hence the coffee. When breakout came, the overdrive field must collapse and the Duhanne cells down near the small ship's keel absorb the energy which maintained it. Then Esclipus Twenty would appear in the normal universe of suns and stars with the abruptness of an explosion. She should be somewhere near the sun Tallien. She should then swim toward that sol-type sun and approach Tallien's third planet out at the less-than-light-speed rate necessary ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the wagon. "Thar's a shakedown in the wagon bed; you kin lie there." Nevertheless he hesitated, and, with the inconsequence and abruptness of a shy man, continued the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... certain abruptness which reminded her of the change in his manner she had noticed once or twice during recent days, and quitted the bridge. She sighed, and was sorry for him, knowing that he ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... life in these deserts, Paul replied eagerly, and his manner softened and became almost winning. Thou'lt forgive, he said, any abruptness there may have been in my speech, I am speaking differently from my wont, but to-morrow I shall be in health and able to follow thee and to listen with interest to thy tales of shepherding among these hills of which thou must know a goodly number. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... said Mr. Bellingham, remembering that he had missed one engagement, and was on the point of missing another. He suddenly felt that he must send Claudius away, and he held out his hand. There was nothing rough in his abruptness. He would have liked to talk with Claudius for an hour longer had his time permitted. Claudius understood perfectly. He put the letters in his pocket, and with a parting shake of the hand he bade ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... swelled within me, so that I was utterly unable to sit still, for sheer joy; and my soul began as it were to dance in such excitement, that I could hardly refrain from shouting, resembling one intoxicated by the abruptness of a sudden change from certain death to the very apex of life's sweetness. And I said to myself: Sunset! So, then, beyond a doubt, she has either forgiven me, or is willing to forgive. And who knows? For if she has forgiven once, she may forgive again: when again, it may be, she will allow me to ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... ceases, with equal abruptness. There is no blending, in the constant alternation, until the earlier (lamenting) motive conquers and rises to a new height where a culminating chorale sounds a big triumph, while the sighing phrase merely spurs a new ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... happens to me from now on, I'll have the comfort of knowing that for a few hours I have been absolutely happy." Then, with the abruptness that marked her changes of mood, she became the slangy, pert, feather-headed Marion Rose whom Jack had met first; and remained so until she left him after breakfast to go home to Kate, who would be ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... he said, "you will excuse the abruptness of my manner in our late interview. I was so little prepared for the communication you had to make, that I was, perhaps, unsuitably discomposed. Will you allow me to ask whether you were requested by any of the parties to communicate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Edith Bartlett's great-granddaughter in my arms, I had not, till this moment, so illogical are some of our feelings, distinctly realized that but for that marriage I could not have done so. The absurdity of this frame of mind could only be equalled by the abruptness with which it dissolved as Edith's roguish query cleared the fog from my perceptions. I laughed ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... and many's the time he told his mother that if the mills were to pay it would be necessary to start business on a large scale. He was an impracticable lad and even now he couldn't help smiling when he thought of the abruptness with which he would go down to the river-side to seek a new argument wherewith to confute his mother, to return happy when he had found one, and sit watching for an opportunity ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... much used to walking. Besides, I have had a great loss to-day. My man, Bela—" Then with his former abruptness: "Have you no idea who this Mrs. Averill is, or why she broke into ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... abruptness, her mind plainly wandering to another matter; and Mary perceived that she had come upon a definite errand. Moreover, a tensing of Sibyl's eyelids, in that moment of abstraction as she looked aside from her hostess, indicated ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... in awe-struck wonder at the Miss Smiths as they moved with conscious grace and certainty through the various figures of the dance, now curtsying haughtily to each other, now with sudden abruptness turning their backs and pirouetting down the room on the very tips of their toes; now advancing, now retreating, now on the very point of reconciliation, and now bounding apart as though nothing were further from their thoughts. Finally, after the spectators for ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... His abruptness and hoarseness were expressive, but she felt that there was something lacking and she answered with a flippancy ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... coffee. Mrs. Van Zandt had a weak spot in her heart for Marc Scott—most women and children had. One did not at first see why. He was not good looking, except that he was well made and well kept; not particularly pleasing in his manner, being given to an abruptness of speech which most people found disconcerting; and he liked his own way more than is conducive to ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... Susan went back to her work abruptly. With stern efficiency she shook out a heavy sheet and hung it up. Stooping, she picked up another one. But she did not shake out this. With the same curious abruptness that had characterized her movements a few moments before, she dropped the sheet back into the basket and came close to the fence again. "Mis' McGuire, won't you please let me take a copy of them two women's ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... to the point at last with startling abruptness, so much so that for a moment or two his listeners sat almost petrified by the bad news, and unable to say a word. The lawyer finished what he had to ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... with what seems temperamental abruptness: "Sit down. One can always think better sitting down." She catches a chair under her with a deft movement of her heel, and Miss Garnett sinks provisionally into her seat. "And I think it ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... abruptness of the transition produced no bewilderment, it seems. Realizing that without Rostom he would be in a position of helplessness that might be serious, the Irishman put his hands to his lips and called out with authority to the running figure of his frightened guide. He shouted ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... extremely doubtful about my story of the auto. Most likely, said they, it was a late Store delivery van. I had imagined so much. They paid detestable tribute to my imaginative powers. Married people are like this. With disconcerting abruptness, they wheel round together and go off at some incalculable tangent, serenely unconscious of any need for explanation. They made matters worse by harping on my imagination. And they capped all by declaring that I was a bad man and hoped ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the surprise came. She was anticipating commiseration—commiseration for the awful hell she had undergone. She little guessed the struggle that was taking place beneath her husband's seemingly calm exterior. The revelation came with an abruptness that staggered her. "Woman!" he cried, "you are a murderess. Sooner than have sacrificed your children you should have suffered three deaths yourself—that is the elementary instinct of all mothers, human ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... for the moment disconcerted by the abruptness of his entrance. Dot sprang to her feet with burning cheeks. It was her evident intention to escape, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... to relieve her feelings, and she sat down before the machine, which clicked and rattled for several minutes under her stubby fingers. Then the clicking ceased with sudden abruptness, and she prodded the mechanism viciously with a hairpin. As this appeared unavailing she used her forefinger, and when at length the carriage slid along the rod with a clash there was a smear of grimy oil upon her cheek and her somewhat tilted nose. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... with the deference which all the Clan of Good Fellows give to hotel clerks. Now he said with snarling abruptness: ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... almost immediately verified by the appearance of two riders. A moment later Thorne and California John dismounted at the hitching rail, some distance removed among the azaleas, and came up afoot. The younger man had dropped all his dry, official precision, his incisive abruptness, his reticence. Clad in the high, laced cruisers, the khaki and gray flannel, the broad, felt hat and gay neckerchief of what might be called the professional class of out-of-door man, his face glowing with health and enthusiasm, he seemed a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... records, taken down from the very lips of the red people as they sat around her fire and opened their hearts to her kindness. She has even caught their tone, and her language will be found to have something of an Ossianic simplicity and abruptness, well suited to the theme. Sympathy,—feminine and religious,—breathes through these pages, and the unaffected desire of the writer to awaken a kindly interest in the poor souls who have so twined themselves about her own best feelings, may ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... "Galatai is the same word as Keltici," which indicates that the Gauls were Kelts. It is supposed that St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians soon after his visit to the country of their origin. "Its abruptness and severity, and the sadness of its tone, are caused by their sudden perversion from the doctrine which the Apostle had taught them, and which at first they had received so willingly. It is no fancy, if we see in this fickleness ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... appalled. His face had gone red and white with such abruptness as to startle her. He was patently very angry. She sipped the last of her coffee, ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... (again of set purpose, it is evident) overlap one another without an end-pause where in Italian it is almost universal, namely, after the sixth line. The result of the innovation is far from successful: it destroys the flow of the verse and gives it an air of abruptness. Of the liveliness, vivacity and pungency of the tale, no idea can be given by quotation: two of the stanzas in which the moral is enforced, the two finest, perhaps, in the poem, are, however, severable ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the strong servant and fore runner (verses 4-8). The abruptness with which the curtain is drawn, and the gaunt figure of the desert-loving ascetic shown us, is very striking. It is like the way in which Elijah, his prototype, leaps, as it were, full-armed, into the arena. The parallel passage in Matthew links his appearance ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... and connected it with some new notions about the "Pioneer;" but when he was shown into Mr. Bulstrode's private room, he was struck with the painfully worn look on the banker's face, and was going to say, "Are you ill?" when, checking himself in that abruptness, he only inquired after Mrs. Bulstrode, and her satisfaction with ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... unceremonious abruptness and singularity of the question into a spontaneous tribute paid to her costly ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... he said gravely, "we will not be able to overtake them if we do not start immediately. Pardon my abruptness, but I cannot rest while there are two of my party prisoners in the hands of this ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... my Lord Bishop—you hear," said he, when Benedetta had concluded; and turning to the Bishop, whose departure the narrative had delayed—"you hear to what outrage the citizens of Rome are subjected. My hat and sword! instantly! My Lord, forgive my abruptness." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... you, then, disapprove my suit, madam, or the abruptness of my introducing it? If the latter, my peculiar situation, being obliged to leave the city in a few days, will, I hope, be my excuse; if the former, I will retire, for I am sure I would not give a moment's inquietude to her whom I could devote my life to please. I ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... several ponds and marshes, with an intervening brook about six feet wide, and rather difficult of passage, from the abruptness of its banks, to a small brook, the outlet of a small and partially ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... kingdom in intestine commotion, and was content to await the progress of events.[65] It is probable that he was the more readily induced to exert this forbearance from the extreme generosity of the Queen, who, remembering the abruptness with which he had been deprived, on the occasion of his marriage, of the many lucrative appointments bestowed upon him, hastened to present him with a pension of two hundred thousand livres; to which she added the Hotel de Conti in the Faubourg St. Germain, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... myself a little too lyrically," he said with an amicable abruptness. "My philosophy has its higher ecstasies, but perhaps you are hardly worked up to them yet. Let us confine ourselves to the unquestioned. You have found your way, gentlemen, by a beautiful accident, to the house ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... a polite voice, and stopped abruptly. It seemed to Wogan behind the curtain that his heart stopped at the same moment and with no less abruptness. There was no evidence of Clementina's flight to justify that sudden silence. Then he grew faint, as it occurred to him that he had made Lady Featherstone's mistake,—that his boot protruded into the room. He clenched his teeth, ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... and the beginning of an intimacy which caused no end of wonder among their acquaintances. Had its real nature been suspected, that wonder would have been vastly increased. For whereas they supposed it to be an entirely ordinary love affair, except in the abruptness of its development, it was, in fact, a quite extraordinary variation on the usual social relations ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... and its court, "placed herself on the top of the staircase to greet him with the formality of a courtly reception. Napoleon started when he beheld her, Qui etes vous? he exclaimed with characteristic abruptness. Je suis la Duchesse de Weimar. Je vous plains, he retorted fiercely, J'ecraserai votre mari; he then added, 'I shall dine in my apartment,' and rushed by her. The night was spent on the part of the soldiery in all the horrid excesses of rapine. In the morning the duchess sent to inquire concerning ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... witnessed a falling off. Though always promptly on hand at the serving out of rations, Mr. O'Rourke did not even make a pretence of working in the garden. He would disappear mysteriously immediately after breakfast, and reappear with supernatural abruptness at dinner. Nobody knew what he did with himself in the interval, until one day he was observed to fall out of an apple-tree near the stable. His retreat discovered, he took to the wharves and the alleys ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... saddle flapping. Buck held his rope ready, and when the animal was about a hundred feet away he spurred suddenly to the right, whirling the widening loop above his head. As it fell accurately about the horse's neck the animal stopped short with the mechanical abruptness of the well-trained range mount ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... attractive and desirable woman, and was quite aware of it, as was her elder sister, Lady Georgina, who spent her silent life in alternately admiring and despising the younger. Lady Georgina was short, thin, and nearly white-haired. She had a deep voice, which she used with a harsh abruptness, startling to the newcomer. But she used it very little. Cynthia's friends, were used to see her sitting absolutely silent behind the tea-urn at breakfast or tea, filling the cups while Cynthia handed them and Cynthia talked; and they had learned ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I well remember the fine view from the upper room—that looking down the steep hill, by the side of which runs the road you describe—that path was always my preferred walk, for its shortness (abruptness) and the fine old wall to your left (from the Villa) which is overgrown with weeds and wild flowers—violets and ground-ivy, I remember. Oh, me! to find myself some late sunshiny Sunday afternoon, with my face turned ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... This Poem was intended to be the concluding poem of a series of pastorals, the scene of which was laid among the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland. I mention this to apologise for the abruptness ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... abrupt termination of this was succeeded at two hundred miles by what is now so well known as Sturt's Stony Desert, to which frequent allusion is made by Mr. Stuart in his journals. After thirty miles more, this stony desert ceased with equal abruptness, and was followed by a vast plain of dried mud, which Captain Sturt describes as "a boundless ploughed field, on which floods had settled and subsided." After advancing two hundred miles beyond the Stony Desert, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... same sort, for the almost complete absence of editorial explanation or introduction. They have no visible sponsor; only a few insignificant lines of preface and the scantiest possible supply of notes. Such as the book is, in spite of its abruptness, we are thankful for it; in spite, too, of our bad conscience. What we mean by our bad conscience is the feeling with which we see the last remnant of charm, of the graceful and the agreeable, removed from Balzac's literary physiognomy. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... was sinking rapidly. The night had come, already. A minute it seemed, and the moon fell those remaining fathoms of dark sky. Another minute, or so, and the Eastward sky glowed with the coming dawn. The sun leapt upon me with a frightening abruptness, and soared ever more swiftly toward the zenith. Then, suddenly, a fresh thing came to my sight. A black thundercloud rushed up out of the South, and seemed to leap all the arc of the sky, in a single instant. As it came, I saw that its advancing edge flapped, like a monstrous black ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... at the abruptness and tone of this question, and he answered very quietly, 'My father was busy last night, and I could not ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... an abruptness in the question which for the moment struck Harry dumb. How was he to say what he thought about Mountjoy Scarborough, even though he should have no feeling to prevent him from expressing the truth? He knew, or thought that he knew, Mountjoy Scarborough to be a thorough blackguard; ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... thoroughly good natured despite his abruptness. "At least, that's my plan. I'm certain Withers had nothing to ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... once he put on the cynic's cloak, and went to the other extreme. Still in spite of an abrupt and cynical tone he kept much of his old art of elaborate fine speeches, and particularly in his relations with women.[222] Of his abruptness, he tells a most displeasing tale. "One day Rousseau told us with an air of triumph, that as he was coming out of the opera where he had been seeing the first representation of the Village Soothsayer, the Duke of Zweibruecken had approached him with much politeness, saying, 'Will you allow ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Rhetoric is a thing inbred in them. They are quite unconscious of it. It is as natural to them as breathing. And, while they talk on, they really do believe that they are a quick, businesslike people, by whom things are "put through" with an almost brutal abruptness. This notion of theirs is rather confusing to the patient ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... been pointed out that force depends upon the amount of energy. The above examples show that stress or the location of force depends upon the kind of mental energy, or the attitude of mind, whether it be that of abruptness, of ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... sisterhood. Saint Dominic had just brought his friars to the dilapidated house then known as San Sisto, had caused rapid repairs to be made, and in his fervor had created round himself a nucleus of ardent reformers. The Gordian knot was referred to him, and with characteristic abruptness he promised to cut it at once. He came alone to the gates of the convent, presented no credentials from pope or cardinal, and asked an interview with the abbess. He spoke of the holiness of an austere life, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... of rising wind passed through the house like a sucked breath of triumph. Windows and doors drew in and out against their frames with a rattling crash, then hung still with unnatural abruptness. Absolute stillness succeeded. I felt a very slight shock, as if the ground at ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... irrepressible, a man who, because of his deficiency in breadth, scope of intelligence, and strong moral convictions, invariably formed his opinions in public matter on his personal feelings. He was a man of moods, admirably suited withal for a command in the field where bluntness and abruptness of manner could cause him to rise to an emergency, but wholly unfitted for this reason for a diplomatic office where the utmost delicacy of tact and nicety of ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... although they are in a minority; and the play is concluded by the precipitate marriage of his daughter with Colonel Promise. Mr. Fustian, the Tragic Author, who, with Mr. Sneerwell the Critic, is one of the spectators of the rehearsal, demurs to the abruptness with which this ingenious catastrophe is brought about, and inquires where the preliminary action, of which there is not the slightest evidence in the piece itself, has taken place. Thereupon Trapwit, the Comic Author, replies as follows, in ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... of the head that Cranston just passed you, Mr. Wade, I gather that he failed to find any trace of the envelope that's missing," said Kendrick quietly. He smiled at the abruptness with which the President of the C.L.S. took hold of his arm and walked him away from ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... story entitled, "The Man Out of Work," is very brief, but apparently not the effort of a tyro. It would probably hold the attention even if it were much longer and we are almost inclined to regret its extreme abruptness. Nevertheless, it is complete as it stands and an artistic whole. "Still At It," by Mr. Lindquist, gives us interesting information regarding the editor and also some sound advice as to finding congenial employment. Mr. Lindquist seems to be a philosopher whose practise will bear ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... direct and brutal allusion which his interlocutor had made to the war of 1859. It is always a thorn in the flesh of those of our neighbors from beyond the Alps who do not love us. The pride of the Garibaldian was not far behind the generosity of the former zouave. With an abruptness equal to that of Montfanon, he took up the volume and grumbled as he turned it over and over in his ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... with an abruptness that startled her, and in a tone of anger which was just a little bit affected—"Natalie, what is the meaning of ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Beeches—Nevil excepted—the crash came with startling abruptness; dwarfing all personal problems, heart-searchings and high decisions. Even Lady Roscoe forgot Family Herald heroics, and 'crossed the threshold' without comment from Nevil or herself. The weightiest matters became suddenly trivial beside the tremendous questions ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of expounding his hand puts him in mind of the action in which the palm is shewn, by raising it to lay it on the book, in judicial attestations. Well, says he, if any man in Italy have a fairer table, that doth offer to swear upon a book——Here he stops with an abruptness very common, and proceeds ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... on the sidewalk in front of Jackson's cigar-store, Mr. Crow directed his slowing footsteps toward it. He flopped down with an abruptness that almost dismembered it. He was fanning himself with his ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... service Haydn was sent for by the choirmaster, who, after expressing his regret for his former abruptness, asked him to stay with them until the following day. Poor starving Haydn was only too glad to accept the invitation, and when the morrow arrived he was told that he might extend his stay for several days longer. When, therefore, he finally ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... level space are seen the signs of culture and human habitation, fields green with the early grain, or yellow with the harvest. The roads now wind through forests of constant shade, even under the burning sun of the equator; now they turn with gentle windings, or with steep abruptness, while below spread bright and beautiful lands, and interesting the more because associated with the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... cheerfully. "We seem to be out of luck this evening." Then, with searching abruptness: "Do you call yourself Ford's friend, ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Harrington, you loved my wife before I married her," he said, with rude abruptness, that made his auditor rise from his ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... Bob hurtled backward off the rock where he had been standing and landed in a snow-drift; while Van, much to his astonishment, sat down with abruptness in the wettest of ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... the fiend; and I thought that after a while he endeavoured to drag Aurore from me. A struggle followed, and then the scene ended with confused abruptness. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... invalid relapsed into thoughtful silence. Then, rousing himself as if with an effort, he took a few sips of a cooling drink that stood by his side, and began with a startling abruptness. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... railway-station is a splendid building, with fountains and broad nights of stone terrace leading up to it from the street behind. Our drosky-driver rattles up to the foot of these terraced approaches at 8 a.m., and draws up a steed with an abruptness peculiar to the half-wild Jehus of the Caucasus. The same employee of the Hotel de Londres who had mysteriously hailed us by name from the platform as our train glided in from Baku the morning before, accompanies us to the depot now. All English travellers ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... might just steel her heart against any appeal, and make her rest satisfied with what another was doing for the man whom she had vowed to love in sickness as well as in health. He knew that his scrap of a letter must prove startling by its abruptness; but he had no wish that it should be otherwise. These startling words might rouse her to a sense of her duty; if they did not, he ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... shoul, Mr. Francis Ardry, you enter with considerable abruptness, sir," said one of two men who were seated smoking at a common deal table, in a large ruinous apartment in which we now found ourselves. "You enter with considerable abruptness sir," he repeated; "do you know on ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... merrily forward, and they along with her. Almost immediately, however, Peony pulled away his little fist, and began to rub it as if the fingers were tingling with cold; while Violet also released herself, though with less abruptness, gravely remarking that it was better not to take hold of hands. The white-robed damsel said not a word, but danced about, just as merrily as before. If Violet and Peony did not choose to play with her, she could make just as ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Elizabeth's hand and fell to the floor; the smile with which she had welcomed her father faded from her lips; she gazed at him with pale face and wide eyes. The general instantly regretted that he had spoken with such cruel abruptness. ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... four miles were passed at a rattling gait, and the boy was sitting on the front of his wagon, dreamily watching the play of the huge engine, when it suddenly paused, and with such abruptness that he was thrown forward from his seat, with violence, falling directly between the legs of the monster, which seemed to stand perfectly motionless, like the intelligent elephant that is fearful of stirring a limb, lest he might crush ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... His abruptness rather took her breath for a moment. Then she said, "Yes, I have a plan, but so have you. What is it?" At her quick retort she saw a smile of grim relish come ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... "We hereby reaffirm the resolve of the great Ulster Convention of 1892: 'We will not have Home Rule.'" These words became so familiar that the laconic phrase "We won't have it," was on everybody's lips as the Alpha and Omega of Ulster's attitude, and was sometimes heard with unexpected abruptness in no very precise context. A ticket-collector, when clipping the tickets of the party who were starting from Belfast in a saloon for Enniskillen, made no remark and no sign of recognition till he reached Carson, when he said almost in a whisper and without a glimmer of a smile, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... time to the calculated abruptness of my manner, it no longer discomposed or surprised her, and she answered with only so much of hesitation as was rendered inevitable by the difficulty she experienced in improvising the translation of her thoughts from ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... meeting, at which some one read a fragment aloud. At these meetings he criticised little himself, but devoted his attention to our criticisms. He would not allow harshness or abruptness in what we said. "We don't want your conclusions or your impressions—we want your reasons." Or he would say: "That is a fair criticism, but unsympathetic. It is in the spirit of a reviewer who wants to smash a man. We don't want Stephen to be stoned here, we want him confuted." I ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the book is admirable. It is brief almost to abruptness. The words are few, and are crammed with all the meaning they can hold. There is not a page which does not show that the writer is an economist of expression, and desirous of conveying his matter with the slightest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... relief to dine at home"—and Brookenham faced about. "Would you mind finding out?" he asked with some abruptness. ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... account of the exploring parties which Leif sent out, some of which he joined, while at other times he remained behind to guard the house. Here occurs, with curious abruptness, this graphic bit of characterization: "Leif was a large and powerful man, and of most imposing bearing, a man of sagacity, and a very ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... time, he placed a small case about nine inches square in the hands of Gerard Douw, who was as much amazed at its weight as at the strange abruptness with which it was handed to him. In accordance with the wishes of the stranger, he delivered it into the hands of Schalken, and repeating his direction, despatched him ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... really seemed unpremeditated,—something he had been surprised into saying in spite of himself, as where he finishes a picture of Moses on Mount Nebo, after a fashion both startling and effective in its abruptness, and yet altogether ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... met him she had teased him about it, asking who it was he took after, and such-like questions; and Tony had replied with an abruptness which was so unusual in him that she had at first felt amused, until it began to rankle. Then she resented it, and when they met again, she was equally abrupt to him as he had been to her, and had, moreover, given a great deal of attention to what Dickson, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... from the road and with immense leaps descended into the depths of a rocky ravine. His clothes blew out with the speed and abruptness of his course, and his hands were extended upwards as though he would fly. Lo! now he crept along an abrupt declivity, and suddenly rolled down in a grey ball, rubbing off his skin against the stones; then he jumped up and angrily threatened the ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... celebrated for its abruptness, and plunging into the subject all at once[1184]. But such arts as these have no merit, unless when they are original. We admire them only once; and this abruptness has nothing new in it. We have had it often before. Nay, we have it in the old ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Brusasorci—Caliari dared combinations of colour the most trenchant in their brilliancy as well as the subtlest and most unfamiliar. Unlike his predecessors, however, he preserved the stimulating charm while abolishing the abruptness of sheer contrast. This he did mainly by balancing and tempering his dazzling hues with huge architectural masses of a vibrant grey and large depths of cool dark shadow—brown shot through with silver. No other Venetian ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... memory," he said thickly. "She will recall what I spoke of you when she gave it me. You have been leal and true to me indeed, and many a black hour have you tided me over since this war' began. Do you know how she may be directed to?" he concluded, with abruptness. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... example, in his Grundriss der Psychiatrie, Theil ii., Leipzig, 1896) have explained "paranoiac" conditions by a laming of the association-organ. But the higher mystical flights, with their positiveness and abruptness, are surely products of no such merely negative condition. It seems far more reasonable to ascribe them to inroads from the subconscious life, of the cerebral activity correlative to which ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the city came with startling abruptness. Suddenly he stood blinking, all about him men halted dazzled, and the world was incandescent. The light found him already upon the outskirts of the excited crowds that choked the Ways near the wind-vane offices, and the sense ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... grip, and the next instant the latter's education, in the true sense of the word, so long postponed, had begun; and with it that avalanche of sound which, rolling down into the drawing-room, hurled Mrs. Pett so violently and with such abruptness from the society ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... pencilled mist of smoke from chimneys, a fringe of thready masts around the farthest point. In front slid ceaselessly away the vast sweep of levelled water, and still it came undiminished on. The opposing shore was a mile distant, its rocky front gradually gaining abruptness and height until lost round the northern curve. But directly opposite Helwyse's promontory, the stony wall was for some way especially precipitous and high, its lofty brink serried with ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... contrary to the laws of romantic chivalry (which you reverence so much) for me to introduce to you my friend Mr. Pepler, who is a very nice man indeed though a social idealist, and who has, I believe, something of a practical sort to ask of you. Please excuse abruptness in this letter of introduction; we are moving into the country and every piece of furniture I begin to write at is taken away ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... one or two of his intimates that in due course of events he would of course marry his employer's daughter. As she faced him across the table, the pink light of the candle-shade adding to the glow of health in her pretty cheeks, she caused him to start by the abruptness with which she said:— ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Amelia's love, by Kotzebue, is indelicately blunt, and yet void of mirth or sadness: I have endeavoured to attach the attention and sympathy of the audience by whimsical insinuations, rather than coarse abruptness—the same woman, I conceive, whom the author drew, with the self-same sentiments, but with manners adapted to the English rather than the German taste; and if the favour in which this character is held by the audience, together with every ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... waste, of destruction and desolation, must have sunk deep into the heart of the sick child, and produced the condition shown by this entry when she was a few years older: 'When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry and told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the Abruptness of the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some signs of dejection and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she burst into an amazing cry which caus'd all the family to cry too. Her mother ask'd the Reason, she gave none; at last said she was afraid she should ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... "Well, well!" with emotional abruptness. "I took this girl for her sake. Her short life was not wasted if another's is built upon it. That's one of my fantastic fancies, ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had taught her to regard him as a possible lover; and now that he was an actual lover, a declared lover standing before her, waiting for an answer, she was so astonished that she did not know how to speak. All her ideas too, as to love,—such ideas as she had ever formed, were confounded by his abruptness. She would have thought, had she brought herself absolutely to think upon it, that all speech of love should be very delicate; that love should grow slowly, and then be whispered softly, doubtingly, and with infinite care. Even had she loved him, or had ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Cadiere would soon see through all this. She made some demur about taking her in. Anon, with some abruptness, she entirely changed her cue. In a charming letter, all the more flattering as sent so unexpectedly from such a lady to so young a girl, she expressed a hope of her leaving the ghostly guidance of Father Girard. The girl was not, of course, to be transferred to her Observantines, who were far ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... mean?" asked the Colonel, advancing toward the minister, and showing his irritation by his frown, his flush, and the abruptness of his speech usually ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... luxurious, and that our relations were by now different, or perhaps that intense grief had already set its mark upon her; she did not strike me as so elegant and well dressed as before. Her figure seemed smaller; there was an abruptness and excessive nervousness about her as though she were in a hurry, and there was not the same softness even in her smile. I was dressed in an expensive suit which I had bought during the day. She looked ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the nature of which he had since learned entirely to comprehend; controversies with white-waistcoated proprietors of hotels and voluble tradespeople, generally followed by a severance of hastily-cemented friendships, and a departure of apparently unpremeditated abruptness. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... begin," he replied, yet smiling at the characteristic abruptness of her question. The modulations of her voice revealed again the searching, inquisitive spirit within her, and his responded to the intensity of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Sixteenth from la jeune France of the present day, when the usual greeting between the young men would be a nod of the head, "Bon jour, ca va bien?" adieu, and away, which is tantamount to "How do, quite well, good bye," and off; with a lady the abruptness would be a little softened, but any politeness that gives much trouble is quite at a discount with such young men of the present day in France. A solitary workman, a sentinel, and an old soldier, if near the Hospital of the Invalids, are probably the only persons you will usually ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... the scenery of the opposite bank, and this you lose by water; and the bank you travel on is much more grand from its towering above you, and also from the sharp angles and turns which so suddenly change the scenery. Abruptness greatly assists the picturesque: the Rhine loses half its beauty viewed from a steam-boat. I have ascended it in both ways, and I should recommend all travellers to go up by land. The inconveniences in a steam-boat are many. You arrive late and find the hotel ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... drifted silent and awe-stricken beneath the shadows of the mighty cliffs, which, in their tremendous height and abruptness, seemed to overhang at the top, the Indians gazing intently, as if they, too, were impressed with the strange, awe-inspiring grandeur that shut them in, one of them at length broke the silence by saying, "This must be a good place for woodchucks; I ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... The abruptness of the first part of this speech might have shocked her exhausted spirits to insensibility, had not the extraordinary assertion at its end, and Sir Robert's audible ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... conversation. He perceived that he had made a terrible blunder; and, as it was not his business at that moment to vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous abruptness. Catching at the arm which Mr. Avenel had withdrawn from ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... caverns and holes, then along a ledge till Jones, being a taller man than Prof., got up and pulled Prof. after him with his revolver belt. They obtained a remarkable view. Buttes, ridges, mountains stood all round, with the river so completely lost in the abruptness of its chasm that a mile from the brink the whole region was apparently solid, and the existence of the gorge with a river at bottom would not even be suspected. They could trace the line of Grand River by tower-like buttes and long ridges, and just at the gap formed by the junction with the Green ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... into a yawn. He realized with the abruptness which comes to a man who stands alone with nature in the small hours that he was very sleepy. The excitement which had sustained him till now had begun to ebb. The free life of the bearded farmer seemed suddenly less attractive. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... common dress, than any masquerade habit could have made her. The novelty of the scene, however, joined to the general air of gaiety diffused throughout the company, shortly lessened her embarrassment; and, after being somewhat familiarized to the abruptness with which the masks approached her, and the freedom with which they looked at or addressed her, the first confusion of her situation subsided, and in her curiosity to watch others, she ceased to observe how ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... blushing scarlet with alarm at the abruptness of the question. "Yes, I am. T-Twitter is my name. You're the man that gave him the Bible, are you not, whom he turned out of his house for tryin' to speak to him about ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... suddenly in his chair one day, and said: "Parbleu, God bless me!" (he loved to mix his native language with English) got up and went over to Secord's office, adjusted his glasses, looked at Secord closely, caught his hand with both of his own, shook it with shy abruptness, came back to his shop, sat down, and said: "God ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... resembled some ancient crater scooped out of the mountain, that on all sides swept upward around it. The sides of this mountain, trending up from the level of the plain, rose not with a gentle acclivity, but with precipitous abruptness. At no point, however, did it assume the character of a cliff. It might have been scaled with difficulty by a man on foot, especially should he avail himself of the assistance of the trees—pines and trailing ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... as typhoid fever, or a sharp local lung-trouble like pneumonia, really do make these minute changes approximate in abruptness to death. You weigh, let us say, one hundred and eighty pounds, and you drop in three weeks of a fever to one hundred and thirty pounds. The rest of you is dead. You have lost, as men say, fifty pounds, but your debt to disease, or to the blunders ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... were, small fish making shift to live precariously with other small fish in a pool where big fish swam lazily. If one small fish now and then disappeared with mysterious abruptness, the other small fish would perhaps scurry here and there for a time, but few would leave the pool for the safe ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... of the neighbourhood. Then he specified, as the guests invited, Lady Augustus and her daughter and Mr. Gotobed,— omitting the honourable Mrs. Morton of whose sojourn in the county he might have been ignorant. His Lordship went on to say that he trusted the abruptness of the invitation might be excused on account of the nearness of their neighbourhood and the old friendship which had existed between their families. He had had, he said, the pleasure of being acquainted with Lady Augustus and her daughter in London and would be proud to see Mr. Gotobed at his ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... height where he stood, to the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian,[231] in their hideous blackness and ruin; and then he wrote down for himself such a warning entry as this, significant and terrible in its abruptness:— ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... expression of her face veiled, but there seemed no response, no softening in the rigid attitude of her figure. She did not care; was only interested in his immediate departure. The change had occurred with such abruptness, West was unable as yet to realize its full significance, but, with no attempt to combat her decision, left the room, closing the door behind him. In that moment his mood changed. The dismissal had been so curt, his pride rose in rebellion. Finding Sexton ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... suddenly the railway and the steamship, the former opening with extraordinary abruptness a series of vast through-routes for trade, the latter enormously increasing the security and economy of the traffic on the old water routes. For a time neither of these inventions was applied to the needs of intra-urban transit at all. For ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... of the manifold brightness of the divine nature is introduced in this psalm with singular abruptness. It is set side by side with a vivid picture of an evildoer, a man who mutters in his own heart his godlessness, and with obstinate determination plans and plots in forgetfulness of God. Without a word ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is probable that the first hymn (Te Deum ... Paraclitum Spiritum), lines 1 to 13 of Te Deum are older than the second part, which was written probably as a sequel to the early hymn. The rhythm of the hymn is very beautiful, being free from abruptness and monotony. Students of poetry may note that seven lines have the exact hexameter ending, if scanned accentually, as voce proclamant; Deus sabbaoth, etc. Seven have two dactyls, as laudabilis numerus, laudat exercitus; one ends with spondees, apostolorum chorus. The other six lines ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... provide for, so take everything you can get, and don't worry about me, for I am all right now that Andrew is safe. This letter has been written by instalments, as I have been interrupted so many times, so pardon the abruptness of it, and please send it to Germantown, as I have too much to do now. My hands and heart are both full. Milk is as scarce as wine, as the pasturage was all on the other side, and cows were lost, and bread is as scarce ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... answered with intentional abruptness; "then the servants' room—you won't make a noise, will you? or you'll wake them up. Bathroom, spare room, my own room, smoking-room. No, the limits of my unconventionality are soon reached; ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... line is far more improbable than that the unaccented syllable before 'twelve' is purposely omitted by the poet; and few readers will not acknowledge the solemn effect of such a verse. As another example with a contrary effect, of impulsive abruptness, we may take a line in Measure ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... the surmise—'twas lusty young Jack Bluff that uttered it before me—I persuaded the youth of his error, which, upon rising, he admitted, as did they all of that group, upon my request, forgiving me, too, I think, the cruel abruptness of my argument, being men of feeling, every one. The maid was not gone with John Cather, she was not on the hills of Twin Islands; she was then fled to Topmast Harbor for self-support, that larger settlement, whence many Labradormen put ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... THE abruptness with which we were compelled to conclude this history, may render it necessary to make a few explanations. Indeed, we fancy we ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the inevitable reaction which followed the subsidence of anxiety about the girl, after her own resolution had set that anxiety at rest. She threw open the door and made one of her sudden appearances at the boudoir. Even in the fervent outpouring of her affection, there was still the inherent abruptness of manner which so strongly marked Lady Lydiard's character in all ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... you suppose we would?" she queried, rather incoherently. "Do you think I'm doing this for fun?" Then she abruptly disappeared from sight again. The abruptness was caused by the terrible fear that if she stood looking at that sour old visage another moment she would have to spoil everything ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... accompany O'Take and O'Haru from Toemon's in Honjo[u]. A pretty business is in preparation there." Said the embarrassed and enraged Cho[u]bei—"Wh-what does this rude entrance of Taki mean? Is not the master of the metal shop present? Is such language, such abruptness, to be used in his presence?"—"The Danna of the doguya is certainly present," coolly replied the woman. "It would be better if he was at home.... Honoured Sir, pray betake yourself there. This Cho[u]bei has business with Toemon Sama of Honjo[u], the brothel keeper and chief of ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... few long reaches of sand where one may saunter, or meadows, save the brown and purple meadows of the sea, overgrown with slippery kelp, swashed and swirled in the restless breakers. The abruptness of the shore allows the massive waves that have come from far over the broad Pacific to get close to the bluffs ere they break, and the thundering shock shakes the rocks to their foundations. No calm comes to these shores. Even in the finest weather, when ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... miraculous feeding of the five thousand is introduced into John's Gospel with singular abruptness. We read in the first verse of the chapter: 'After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee,' i.e. from the western to the eastern side. But the Evangelist does not tell us how or when He got to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Gumbinnen, he reviewed several of his armies; conversing with the soldiers in a gay, frank, and often abrupt style; well aware that, with such unsophisticated and hardy characters, abruptness is looked upon as frankness, rudeness as force, haughtiness as true nobility; and that the delicacy and graces which some officers bring with them from the salons are in their eyes no better than weakness and pusillanimity; that these appear to them like a foreign language, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... devils alive when it comes to trading wives and fighting," said Philip, a little ashamed of the suddenness with which he had jumped back from the window. "Excuse my abruptness, dear. But I'd recognize that death-thing on the other side of the earth. I've seen them throw it like an arrow for a hundred yards—and I have a ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... started at my sudden and strange abruptness: he looked at me astonished. "Oh, that is nothing yet," I muttered within. "I don't mean to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part; I'm prepared to go to considerable lengths." I continued, "You observed it closely and distinctly; but I have ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte |
