"Curtness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is coloured with rhetoric, and occasionally with poetic embellishment, but is otherwise terse and vigorous. The extreme curtness he cultivated often leads him into something bordering on obscurity. His habit of alluding to sources of information instead of being at the pains to describe them at length, while it adds to the neatness of his periods, detracts from its value ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... freewill, and treating it as a thing for which there is no evidence. When Johnson silenced Boswell's chatter with the words, 'Sir, we know our will is free and there's an end on't,' he expressed a great truth in language not the less philosophically accurate on account of its colloquial curtness. The consciousness possessed by an agent about to perform an act, that he is at liberty to perform it or not, is really conclusive evidence that the act is free. For it matters not a jot whether consciousness be 'an independent faculty,' or whether—as, Mr. Buckle reminds ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... grieve to chronicle the fact, That selfsame truant known as "Cadet Grey" Was the young hero of our moral tract, Shorn of his twofold names on entrance-day. "Winthrop" and "Adams" dropped in that one act Of martial curtness, and the roll-call thinned Of his ancestors, he with youthful tact Indulgence claimed, since Winthrop no more sinned, Nor sainted Adams winced when he, plain ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... functionary certainly resembles, in its square obesity, that of the great Emperor in his latter days. Possibly for this reason, Major Darr affects a Napoleonic curtness and decision of speech. Nevertheless, he was amenable to reason, and on my agreeing to pay the expenses of an escort, consented to forward me to Baltimore, to be identified. Shipley was committed at once ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... suggested nervous energy, but when advisable, he could assume the bovine stolidity which, though foreign to his real nature, the Canadian bushman occasionally adopts for diplomatic purposes. Thurston, however, still retained certain traits of the Insular Briton, including a curtness of speech and a ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... mushrooms—asparagus tips—strong black coffee—cognac," he ordered with the curtness of an army officer snapping commands at a trooper. His voice was rich and cultivated, but had a very distinctly foreign quality in spite of the fact that ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine |
