"Harshness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... revolts and insurrections among the subject cities and allies, Fabius thought it best to restrain them and discountenance their proceedings in a gentle manner, not treating every suspected person with harshness, or inquiring too strictly into every case of suspected disloyalty. It is said that a Marsian soldier, one of the chief men of the allies for bravery and nobility of birth, was discovered by Fabius to be engaged ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... adding soft water to it until it forms a soft paste, which, laid neatly on furniture, or even on paintings, and carefully rubbed when dry with a woollen rag, gives a polish of great brilliancy, without the harshness of the drier varnishes. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... reception. Out of pure spite to Michael, however, when Satan learned who was his billet-master, he would no more receive him than he would receive the Wife of Beth; and instead of treating the unfortunate man with the harshness characteristic of him, he showed him considerable civilities. Introducing him to his "Ben Taigh," he directed her to show the stranger any curiosities he might wish to see, hinting very significantly that ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... had a ring of harshness. "Believe me, I am not accustomed to being ranked with the saints," he said. "How shall I get away from your halo? I warn you, it's a most awful misfit. You'll find it out presently, and make me suffer for ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... than please; the images are magnified by affectation; the language is laboured into harshness. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence. Double, double, toil and trouble! There is too little appearance of ease ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... popular, and deservedly so. He was one of the most excellent and amiable of men; his countenance, voice, and manner were expressive of the kindliest benevolence; he had none of the angular rigidity of person and harshness of feature of his brother: both were worthy and distinguished men, but Andrew Combe was charming, which George Combe was not—at least to those who did not know him. Although Dr. Combe completely indorsed his brother's system, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... to note the changing attitude generally in the matter of discipline. The harshness of other days is largely replaced by a leniency that borders on "easiness." Our whole attitude toward criminals has been revolutionized, and our human impulses have carried over into the realm of teaching, until now, at least in the opinion of very many critics, we have drifted largely ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... That he loved her is the only thing to explain the harshness of his behaviour to her. Had he not loved her and not been miserable about her, he would have been as polite to her as well bred people would ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... benevolence by the discipline of affliction; versed in tolerance by his refuge in Holland; choleric, yet gentle in his affections; firm in his faith, yet readily yielding to the power of reason; the peer of the reformers, without their harshness; the devoted apostle to the humble and the poor, severe toward the proud, mild in his soothings of a wounded spirit, glowing with the raptures of devotion, and kindling with the messages of redeeming love; his eye, voice, gesture, and whole frame ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... gruff with women. By nature courteous, considerate of the weaker sex, he nevertheless realized that soft phrases will not prop a witness who, through sheer desperation of will, has been staving off physical collapse. On the contrary, harshness in the inquisitor, by arousing antagonism or fear, will frequently serve to carry the witness through a most desperate ordeal. In this case, however, the woman showed neither fear nor resentment. Evidently ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... claimed the lordship of the forests, these colonists, excepting only in the treacherous slaughter at Port Fortune, bore themselves in a spirit of kindness contrasting brightly with the rapacious cruelty of the Spaniards and the harshness of the English settlers. When the last boat-load left Port Royal, the shore resounded with lamentation; and nothing could console the afflicted savages but reiterated ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... figure of the heavenward-ascending Virgin, all harshness and sternness are effaced, even to the last trace; and, indeed, does not Painting itself seem in it to soar upward, transfigured on its own pinions, as the liberated Psyche delivered ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the very asperity of the man's outside becomes endeared to us by the association. His irritability never vented itself against the helpless, and his rough impatience of fanciful troubles implied no want of sympathy for real sorrow. One of Mrs. Thrale's anecdotes is intended to show Johnson's harshness:—"When I one day lamented the loss of a first cousin killed in America, 'Pr'ythee, my dear,' said he, 'have done with canting; how would the world be the worse for it, I may ask, if all your relations ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... precautions, and, on the other hand, no harshness, no punishments. We must love the child, and encourage his playing. To make him realize his weakness and the narrow limits within which it can work, to keep the child dependent only on circumstances, will suffice, without ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Clotelle with a degree of harshness scarcely equalled, when applied to one so tender in years, still the child grew every day more beautiful, and her hair, though kept closely cut, seemed to have improved in its soft, silk-like appearance. Now twelve years of age, ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... you and your husband have been treated with some harshness; but our royal ear was deceived by one in whom we had confidence. Your husband and yourself were wrong in marrying without the consent and against the will of your father, and such marriages cannot be permitted; ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... to fulfil her fear,—she now acknowledged to herself that it was a fear,—for his visits ceased. She tried to dismiss him from her thoughts, but a sense of her unfairness and harshness haunted her. She did not see why she had not taken her father's view, or why she had thrown away her influence that accorded with the scheme of life to which she had pledged herself. The very restraint indicated by his ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... instruct. I soon found that the constant demand on my stock of animal spirits reduced them to the lowest state of exhaustion; at times I felt—and, I suppose, seemed—depressed. To my astonishment, I was taken to task on the subject by Mrs. —- with a sternness of manner and a harshness of language scarcely credible; like a fool, I cried most bitterly. I could not help it; my spirits quite failed me at first. I thought I had done my best—strained every nerve to please her; and to be treated in that way, merely because I was shy and sometimes melancholy, was too bad. At first ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fairy-land. Here, too, she invariably came when anything had gone wrong, when the endless troubles about money which had weighed upon her all her life became a little less bearable than usual, or when some act of discourtesy or harshness to her father had roused in her a tingling, burning ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... most affectionate disposition, which made the duty of imparting knowledge to her doubly pleasant. The progress of little Lewis was equal to that of most boys of his age. I found less trouble with him than I had at first anticipated. I found him to be a child that would never be controlled by harshness, but he was easily ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... such lenity, it gave him, on the contrary, occasion frequently to abuse it by running from one dancing bout and merry-making to another, without the least care of his master's business, who out of downright affection forbore to restrain his follies with that harshness which they deserved, and which any other ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... has become a grim reality. The un-Christian pomp and arrogance of ruling prelates, the mean cruelty of William of Noellet in refusing to allow corn to be imported from the Papal States in Tuscany in time of famine, the harshness and lack of tact in the policy of Gregory toward his unsatisfactory children, were all forces potent to destroy among the rebels any strong sense of committing a religious crime in their opposition to the Church. Catherine stands as mediator ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... serious consideration of my past conduct had led me to think that she might have only judged wisely in her opinion as to what was the best course to adopt for her daughter's future happiness. Now, she had amply atoned for her former harshness, as I esteemed it, by her permission for our correspondence; and, notwithstanding that she never responded to my note, I regarded her thenceforth in ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... how vexed I was, so very few minutes after my note left last night; how angry with the unnecessary harshness into which some of the phrases might be construed—you would forgive me, indeed. But, when all is confessed and forgiven, the fact remains—that it would be the one trial I know I should not be able to bear; the repetition of these 'scenes'—intolerable—not to be written of, even ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... harshness from the Germans," he said, "but I'm in this war to stay, if the bullets and shells will let me. I warn you now that I'm going ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that carried conviction, "She will take no poison. She will hate us for an hour; then she will have a good cry: to-morrow she will come to our terms; and this day next year she will be very much obliged to us for doing what all women like, forcing her to her good with a little harshness." ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... down with sticks; but latterly they quitted the low boughs, and generally harboured about the tops of the pines: when plucked and drawn, they weighed from three-quarters, to one pound each. The parrots are numerous, and the ugliest bird of the kind I ever heard of; this, added to the harshness of their note, makes them a very disagreeable bird. The parroquets are entirely green, except a red tuft on their head. Hawks are numerous and of two different kinds, the grey and blue: they were great enemies to the young chickens, and it ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... well at first; But the least particles in the water clogged The holes through which it dripped; and so, one day, We two came home so late that we were sent Supperless to our beds; and suffered much From the world's harshness, as we thought it then. Would God that we ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... the woman he was hers, and life a Paradisian dream. The sweetness of the thought intoxicated her, thrilled her veins with fire. But the next instant she was chilled as by a gray cold fog. The realities of things came back, a whirl of self-contemptuous thoughts blent with a hopeless sense of the harshness of life. Who was she to aspire to such a match? Had her earlier day-dream left her no wiser than that? The Schnorrer's daughter setting her cap at the wealthy Oxford man, forsooth! What would people say? And what would they say if they knew how she had sought him out in his busy ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... clinging to Marian, to the harshness which life had shown her who was all goodness and sweetness and courage, Bud forgot to keep careful watch behind him, or to look for the place where the hill trail joined the road, as it probably did some distance from Crater. ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... the Shawnees, peering from the thickets behind him, tried to leer. "Governor Hamilton appreciates your situation. The force against you is over-whelming, but he has charged me not to destroy you. He does not wish even to treat you with harshness. If you will send out nine of your men for a talk, we will come to some agreement by which you will evade further trouble, and I will then withdraw my forces and return ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... blighted by neglect; hopeful, and her hopes were crushed by unkindness; happy, and her happiness was marred by inconstancy and insult. Her woman-nature, plastic as it might have been under more fortunate circumstances, became indurated to harshness; and it is not they who strive to work upon the most solid marble who should complain if the chisel with which they pursue their purpose ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... education was scant, and his English [sic] was still faulty. And yet he was silently asking ordination in a preaching order, for which a thorough education is a prerequisite. Father de Held, therefore, is not to be condemned for his harshness as wanting in sympathy or in judgment of character. Gold is tried by fire, and fire is an active agent and a painful one. But Brother Hecker soon found both solace and assistance ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Pontiff, and estranged from his own Patriarch of Constantinople. Opposition and the weariness of age soured a naturally sweet temper, and he was guilty of some harsh proceedings towards his ecclesiastical opponents. Even worse than his harshness (which did not, even on the representations of his enemies, amount to cruelty) was a certain want of absolute truthfulness, which made it difficult for a beaten foe to trust his promises of forgiveness, and thus caused the fire of civil discord, once kindled, to smoulder on almost interminably. ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... and the imagination of the French began to be touched by him [1797]. His proclamations to the Cisalpine and Ligurian republics were talked of.... A tone of moderation and of dignity pervaded his style, which contrasted with the revolutionary harshness of the civil rulers of France. The warrior spoke in those days like a lawgiver, while the lawgivers exprest themselves with soldier-like violence. General Bonaparte had not executed in his army the decrees against the emigres. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... proceeds to deliver his opinion both of the constitution and quantity of this Succus in healthy Animals, and the vices thereof, in the unhealthy: deriving most diseases partly from its too great Acidity, or from its saltness, or harshness; partly from its paucity or redundancy: but especially, endeavouring to reduce from thence, as all intermittent Feavers (of all the Phaenomena whereof he ventures to assign the causes from this Hypothesis) so also the Gout, Syncope's, Stranguries, Oppilations, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... undermined the throne of Bonaparte. To his own subjects, and his own kinsmen, never did Charlemagne forget to be, in acts, as well as words, a parent. In his foreign relations, it is true, for one single purpose of effectual warning Charlemagne put forth a solitary trait of Roman harshness. This is the case which we have already noticed and defended; and, with a view to the comparison with Napoleon, remarkable enough it is, that the numbers sacrificed on this occasion are pretty nearly the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... not a little astonished at the spirit which Emily displayed upon this occasion. He had calculated too securely upon the general mildness and suavity of her disposition. He now endeavoured to qualify the harshness of his former sentiments. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... but how charmingly, protected against the shocking conditions of the journey. There is naught charming in a mackintosh. And yet there was, in this mackintosh! ... Something in the contrast between its harshness and her fragility... The veil was supremely charming. She had half lifted it, exposing her mouth; the upper part of her flushed face was caged behind the bars of the veil; behind those bars her eyes mysteriously gleamed... Spanish! ... No exaggeration in all this! He ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... whipped for it. When we got home my sister dragged me into the kitchen where mother was sitting by the fire in the twilight. My poor wee legs were trembling so that I could hardly stand. And mother—mother just took me up in her arms, without one word of rebuke or harshness, kissed me and held me close to her heart. 'I was so frightened you were lost, darling,' she said tenderly. I could see the love shining in her eyes as she looked down on me. She never scolded or reproached me for what I had done—only told me I must never go away again without asking permission. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... self-upbraiding, arises a disposition to be indulgent—to forbear—and to forgive—so at least it ought to be. When once we have shed those inexpressibly bitter tears, which fall unregarded, and which we forget to wipe away, O how we shrink from inflicting pain! how we shudder at unkindness!—and think all harshness even in thought, only another name for cruelty! These are but common-place truths, I know, which have often been a thousand times better expressed. Formerly I heard them, read them, and thought I believed them: now I feel them; and feeling, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... "No" into the will which says "Yes," and this is brought about by seven organising spirits or forms. The first three of these bring nature out of the dark element to the point where contact with the light is possible. Boehme calls them harshness, attraction, and anguish, which in modern terms are contraction, expansion, and rotation. The first two are in deadly antagonism, and being forced into collision, form an endless whirl of movement. These two forces with their resultant effect are to be found ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... all violations of laws, against all murderous child labor, all foul sweat shops, all unsafe mines, all deadly tenements, all excessive hours for those who toil, all profligate luxuries, all standards of wage and life below the living standard, all unfairness and harshness of conditions, all brutal exactions, whether of the employer or union, all overlordships, whether of capital or labor, all godless profiteering, whether in food, clothing, profits or wages, against all inhumanity, injustice and blighting inequality, against ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... as far as the culprit was concerned, were not encouraging. In the first place she would not acknowledge Mrs. Cameron's right to interfere in her life; in the next harshness had a very hardening effect ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... forced manner of Ophelia, that the sweet girl was not acting a part of her own, but was a decoy; and his after speeches are not so much directed to her as to the listeners and spies. Such a discovery in a mood so anxious and irritable accounts for a certain harshness in him;—and yet a wild up-working of love, sporting with opposites in a wilful self-tormenting strain of irony, is perceptible throughout. "I did love you once:"—"I lov'd you not:"—and particularly in his enumeration of the faults of the sex from which ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... by inspectors. Rich and poor were alike compelled to submit. Every suspicious article was seized, and the man in whose dwelling it was discovered was arrested. The inspectors performed their tasks with unnecessary harshness, ruthlessly destroying any valuable object upon which they could lay their hands. They rapped upon the walls to see if they contained any secret hiding-place; they pierced the mattresses with their swords and poignards. After these visits thousands of citizens were arrested and conducted to the ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... brother. In the first one he wrote that he was now clear in his mind about the girl to this extent, that her harshness toward Apollonius was due to her fondness for another whom he could not bring her to name. In the next, one in which he scarcely spoke of the girl, Apollonius read between the lines a certain pity for himself, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... with democratic doctrine. Passing through Constantinople in 1843 he accepts a post as schoolmaster at Trnovo, but is immediately at loggerheads with the Greek bishop and departs. Returning to his birthplace he is irritated by the pride and harshness of the upper class, and he attempts to make the people rise against them. They charge him with being a disturber of the peace. "He has travelled through Europe," says their complaint to the Government, "and now in this town he bestrides a horse, brandishes ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... long poem, except "Pippa Passes," which is a lyrical drama, and neither exactly a 'play' nor exactly a 'poem' in the conventional usage of the terms. Artistically, "Paracelsus" is disproportionate, and has faults, obtrusive enough to any sensitive ear: but in the main it has a beauty without harshness, a swiftness of thought and speech without tumultuous pressure of ideas or stammering. It has not, in like degree, the intense human insight of, say, "The Inn Album," but it has that charm of sequent excellence too rarely to be found in many of Browning's later writings. It glides onward like a ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... had again turned to Mrs. Carew, he looked across the room towards Hilda with the same expression of vacant composure that she had noticed on a previous occasion. The accent with which Signer Bruno had spoken the few words of French was of the purest Parisian, entirely free from the harshness ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... moment from parents, or those whom she regarded as such, and from a comfortable and happy, though humble home, to this dismal place. In place of the kindness and indulgence to which she had been accustomed, she was now treated with harshness and cruelty. ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... addressed ourselves to the chief, who seemed angry with his people, and made a harangue to them; but we did not recover the articles, and soon afterward two of our spoons were missing. We therefore ordered them all from our camp, threatening to beat severely any one detected in purloining. This harshness irritated them so much that they left us in an ill-humor, and we therefore kept on our guard against any insult. Besides this knavery, the faithlessness of the people is intolerable; frequently, after receiving goods in exchange for a ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... was treated with increasing harshness. After separating him from his escort at the gates, the cardinal and the chancellor barred his way when he reached the staircase which led to the apartments ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Bayley said, as he entered the room, "if you knew how long and earnestly I have sought for you, and how many years I have grieved and repented my harshness to your mother, you would not find it in your heart to think hardly of me. We were both to blame, my boy, and we were both punished, heavily punished; but you shall have all the story some day. I know that it must be a bitter ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... am passionately in love with this girl, and more touched with her misery and her Christian heart than even with her perfections; but I am," said he, with tears in his eyes, "still more astonished at your harshness, and I say it although I know that my fate is in your hands. Yes, monseigneur, I know the law; and if my goods fall to your domain, if I become a bondsman, if I lose my house and my citizenship, I will still keep that engine, gained by my labours and my studies, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... little to do with the sort of Caesarean Imperialism I wish to sketch. I differ from the Colonial idealism of Rhodes' and Kipling; but I do not think, as some of its opponents do, that it is an insolent creation of English harshness and rapacity. Imperialism, I think, is a fiction created, not by English hardness, but by English softness; nay, in a ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... rested upon an utter delusion. He had neither 'sentiment, imagination, nor generalisation.' Johnson, though the best of Tories, lived in the wrong century, and unluckily criticised Milton with foolish harshness. Therefore 'Johnson, viewed in relation to Milton, was a ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... rhymes, Bright as a blaze, but in a moment done; True wit is everlasting, like the sun, Which, though sometimes behind a cloud retired, Breaks out again, and is by all admired. Number and rhyme, and that harmonious sound Which not the nicest ear with harshness wound, Are necessary, yet but vulgar arts; And all in rain these superficial parts Contribute to the structure of the whole, Without a genius too—for that's the soul; A spirit which inspires the work throughout, As that of Nature moves the world ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was not used to so much loveliness in great distress, and he moved away; but she tried to follow him on her knees, crying: "Oh, as you hope mercy for yourself, take me home!" And beginning to doubt his strength, he affected harshness. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... balanced modulation of voice with which they are accompanied. In an ordinary actor, this peculiar tone is often, to many foreigners, extremely fatiguing, but it is defended in France, as securing a pleasure in some degree independent of the merits of the actor, and defending the audience from the harshness of tone, and extravagancies of accent, to which otherwise, in bad actors, they would be exposed; and certainly no one can listen, in the National Theatre, to the beautiful and splendid declamations of the most celebrated compositions ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... time Lady Desmond had uttered no one word of condolence—not a syllable of commiseration for all the sufferings that had come upon Herbert and his family; and he was beginning to hate her for her harshness. The tenor of her countenance had become hard, and she received all his words as a judge might have taken them, merely wanting evidence before he pronounced his verdict. The evidence she was beginning to think sufficient, and there could be no doubt as to her verdict. After what she ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... had Johnson returned, Dr. Adams would have been his tutor. It is to be wished, that this connection had taken place. His equal temper, mild disposition, and politeness of manners, might have insensibly softened the harshness of Johnson, and infused into him those more delicate charities, those petites morales, in which, it must be confessed, our great moralist was more deficient than his best friends could fully justify. Dr. Adams paid Johnson this high compliment. He said to me at Oxford, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... this have been otherwise so long as Abelard retained the admiration of Heloise, and was worthy of her devotion. We cannot tell what changes may have taken place in her soul had he been grovelling, or tyrannical, a slave of degrading habits, or had he treated her with cruel harshness, or ceased to sympathize with her sorrows, or transferred his affections to another object. But whatever love he had to give, he gave to her to the end, so far as the ideas of his age would permit. His fault was in making a nun of his wife, which was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... deny that ye come here e'en noo to reform upon Square O'More and his bonny wean? Daur ye hae the impurence to deny it?" Here I was relieved by the entrance of Mr O'More himself. I addressed him in a tone as cool and conciliatory as I could command. "I am much relieved to find, sir, that any harshness I may have to complain of, has originated in a mistake. I am Mr Macdonnell of Redrigs. It was only last week that I returned from England. I have not been in this part of the country for many years; and can only say, that if any person bearing my name deserves ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... time that she would lead me right, was a warning to me from her sufferings. To Mrs. St. Felix I was equally indebted, and had I not been permitted to pay the debt of gratitude to both of them? Even my mother's harshness, which appeared at first to my short-sightedness to have been so in-defensible, was of great advantage to me, as it had stimulated me to exertion and industry, and pointed out to me the value of independence. Was I not also ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... brought all England under one great centralised authority, with the Crown not only predominant but absolute in its supremacy, and the Archbishop contended for the great mass of poor and needy people to mitigate the harshness of the law, and to maintain the liberties of the Church against the encroachments of sovereignty. "Nothing is more certain," as the old writer put it, "than that both strove earnestly to do the will of God, one for the sake of his realm, the other on behalf of his Church. But whether ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... and tobacco almost incessantly; they suffer much want and exposure in their fishing and other excursions; their lives are often passed in alternate starvation and feasting, idleness and excessive labour,—and this naturally produces premature old age and harshness of features. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... for several days subsequent to our first encounter, and then only to catch a fleeting glimpse of her as she was being conducted to the great audience chamber where I had had my first meeting with Lorquas Ptomel. I could not but note the unnecessary harshness and brutality with which her guards treated her; so different from the almost maternal kindliness which Sola manifested toward me, and the respectful attitude of the few green Martians who took the trouble to ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... been called 'a dreadfully ill-mannered century.' Let us do our very best not to give any one an excuse for saying the same of this twentieth century in which we live. Thus, in reading of these Quaker Saints, let us try to copy, not their harshness or their intolerance, but their unflinching courage, their firm steadfastness, their burning hope for every man; above ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... Caepio[42] effected nothing worthy of mention against the foe, but brought much serious harm to his own men, so that he ran the risk of being killed by them. He treated them all, but especially the cavalry, with such harshness and cruelty that a vast number of most unseemly jokes and stories passed current about him during the nights; and the more he grew vexed at it, the more jests did they make and endeavor to infuriate him. When what was going ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... baser nature belie the soft and beautiful characteristics of nature about him; how often, how very often, is the still, heavenly influence that reigns in fragrant flowers and bubbling streams, marred and desecrated by the harshness and violence ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... respect to the personal appearance of Marius, I saw a stone statue[52] of him at Ravenna in Gaul, which was perfectly in accordance with what is said of the roughness and harshness of his character. He was naturally of a courageous and warlike turn, and had more of the discipline of the camp than of the state, and accordingly his temper was ungovernable when he was in the possession of power. It is stated that he never studied Greek literature, and never availed ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... the history of war will make the officer guard against exaggerated humanitarian concessions, will teach him that war can not take place without certain harshness, that true humanity ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... liable to special abuses, an instance of which had come to the fore recently. This was the long lease acquired by a rich American of enormous areas which he converted into a single deer forest, evicting certain crofters in the process with what was said to have been signal harshness. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... here? He might as well offer a sacrifice at Conrad's grave. Children," said March, turning to them, "death is an exile that no remorse and no love can reach. Remember that, and be good to every one here on earth, for your longing to retrieve any harshness or unkindness to the dead will be the very ecstasy of anguish to you. I wonder," he mused, "if one of the reasons why we're shut up to our ignorance of what is to be hereafter isn't because if we were sure of another world we might be still more brutal to one ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... designs at once with extent and novelty of Beauty, as to convey the sentiment of spiritual interference. It will be seen that, in bringing about such result, he secures all the advantages of interest or design, while relieving his work of all the harshness and technicality of Art. In the most rugged of wildernesses—in the most savage of the scenes of pure Nature—there is apparent the art of a Creator; yet is this art apparent only to reflection; in no respect has it the obvious force of a feeling. Now, if ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... for her niece's, she was resolute to defend herself against injustice. Alfred could scarcely bring himself to believe that Buckhurst Falconer had acted in the manner represented, with a rapacity, harshness, and cruelty, so opposite to his natural disposition. Faults, Alfred well knew that Buckhurst had; but they were all, he thought, of quite a different sort from those of which he now stood accused. What was to be done? Alfred was extremely averse from going to law with ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... at all likely. Defend himself when such extreme harshness as you are going to practice makes the man a very martyr! Nay, I am sure that if he has a million of francs left, which I very much doubt, he would be willing enough to give it in order to have such ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... that we must conquer our own spirits, and in this new birth of freedom not imitate the cruelty and harshness of royalty against which we protest. "We will kill the king, but not the man," were his words. But with all of his tact and logic he could not make his colleagues see that to abolish the kingly office, not to kill the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... with whom to share my grief. I wished to tell something of it to my mother, and that caused me so many new crosses that I resolved to have no other confidante of my vexations than myself. It was not through harshness that my husband treated me so, but from his hasty and violent temper; for he loved me even passionately. What my mother-in-law was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... shrines—which are places of festivity rather than of solemnity—dancing-platforms are erected. Family existence would seem to be everywhere characterized by gentleness: there is no visible quarrelling, no loud harshness, no tears and reproaches. Cruelty, even [13] to animals, appears to be unknown: one sees farmers, coming to town, trudging patiently beside their horses or oxen, aiding their dumb companions to bear the burden, and using no whips or goads. Drivers or pullers of carts will turn out of their ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... been without a cloud. Of course, as in every other society, there had been the necessity of fending for oneself—of picking up a scrap, for instance, quickly, if you wanted it at all. Such things are good, and make for progress and development. But harshness and unkindness, like injustice, had been altogether foreign to the mill and all who lived or worked there. Life sped on in that favoured spot with as even a surface as that of the river, whose waters flowed sluggishly up ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... instructions, without committing a distinct breach of faith. And that, I need not tell you, is impossible." He evidently added the last words in order to prevent an appeal to his personal consideration. He did not like the seeming harshness of his words, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... Ruthie," declared her chum. "You're not to blame. Her father's harshness with her has made the child ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... strange scene set those that witnessed it pondering many and divers matters: but among them all none was so appalled as the cruel damsel that Nastagio loved, who, having clearly seen and heard all that had passed, and being ware that it touched her more nearly than any other by reason of the harshness that she had ever shewn to Nastagio, seemed already to be fleeing from her angered lover, and to have the mastiffs on her flanks. And so great was her terror that, lest a like fate should befall her, she converted her aversion into affection, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... circumstance about them was exactly that this vacuity, this dreariness, this total want of all that can make the life of a boy and of a young man pleasant to our fancy or attractive to our sympathy, did not in the least depend upon any harshness or stinginess of fate. Indeed, perhaps, no man had ever prepared for him an easier existence; no man had ever less misfortune sent to him by Providence, or less unkindness shown towards him by mankind, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... dead! Still forever is the pen whose wondrous alchemy transposed the English language—with all its inherent harshness—into music sweet as song of Israfil. Stilled is the heart that stood alone, defiant, a bulwark 'gainst the wave of corruption ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... ground that the fine imposed upon the Rajah of Benares was excessive., Upon the whole, it would appear that Hastings was acting within his rights in demanding an extraordinary subsidy from the Rajah but the enormous amount of the fine, and the harshness and in' dignity with which Cheyt Sing was treated, point to a determination on the part of the Governor-General to ruin a subject prince, with whom, moreover, it was known he had personal grounds ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... clung to her mother with a force that made it a difficult task for her father to remove her. He could not do it at first; and Ellen seemed not to hear any thing that was said to her. He was very unwilling to use harshness; and after a little, though she had paid no attention to his entreaties or commands, yet, sensible of the necessity of the case, she gradually relaxed her hold and suffered him to draw her away from her ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... see a hint of that spirit of harshness and unfairness which so often characterizes the actions of the liquor party, and which sometimes leads to just such deeds as this brutal assault, which "Fair Play" would persuade the ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... colossal character. Jerrold said that Kean's Shylock was like a chapter of Genesis. Macready—whose utterance of "Nearest his heart" was the blood-curdling keynote of his whole infernal ideal—declared the part to be "composed of harshness," and he saw no humanity in the lament for the loss of Leah's ring, but only a lacerated sense of the value of that jewel. Brooke, a great Shylock, concurred with Kean's ideal and made the Jew orientally royal, the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... honest purchaser, or dupes the confiding vendor; the baseness which conspires to wink down credit; the avarice which greedily takes advantage of poverty, or the craft which converts it into a weapon of fraud; the scandal which sets neighbor against neighbor; the fretful harshness which clouds the domestic fireside; the ingratitude which spurns parental influence; the selfishness which would trade in principles, and bargain away public measures for private gain,—these, and ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... must not pause here. Some important lessons are to be learnt from this narrative. See how the law of love and kindness, combined with justice, prevails, where harshness and severity fail. The crews of the Saint Fiorenzo and Clyde were composed of the same class of men as those of the ships which mutinied; yet the latter basely struck their colours, and the former were ready to die ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... the information that I had nothing more to expect from the countenance of those who had supplied me with the means of prosecuting my studies to "so bad a purpose." I was so irritated by what I considered the unjustifiable harshness of this decision, that at the moment I wrote a haughty and angry letter to one of the parties, which of course widened the breach and made the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... in the smoking-car. George felt that it was imperative. Also, having successfully caught the train, his heart softened. He felt more kindly toward his brother, and accused himself of unnecessary harshness. He strove to atone by talking about their mother, and sisters, and the little affairs and interests of the family. But Al was morose, and devoted himself to the bottle. As the time passed, his mouth hung looser and looser, while the rings under his eyes ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... pleasure such as that with which Weld the traveller lay and listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter of Indian women; for the less you understand of a language, the more sensible you are to the melody or harshness of its sounds. For such a purpose, therefore, it was an advantage to me that I was a poor Italian scholar, reading it but little, and not speaking it at all, nor understanding a tenth part of what ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... over a dirty pack of cards; among them I saw a girl who appeared to be very young and very pretty, decently clad, and resembling her companions in no way, except in the harshness of her voice, which was rough and broken as though it had performed the office of public crier. She looked at me closely as though astonished to see me in such a place, for I was elegantly attired. Little ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... stranger; and you may be sure that he would have his faults, though, perhaps, not the same as those of Jonas. I think you don't make allowance enough for mamma, Vincent. I quite agree with you as to Jonas, and I don't think mamma can like his harshness to the slaves any more than you do; but everyone says what a difficulty it is to get a really trustworthy and capable overseer, and, of course, it is all the harder when there is no master to look ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... Ye dight me blight that delights your sight: Your wone is between my unrest and my eyes; * Nor tears to melt you, nor sighs have might. How oft shall I sue you for justice, and you * With a pining death my dear love requite? But your harshness is duty, your farness near; * Your hate is Union, your wrath is delight: Take your fill of reproach as you will: you claim * All my heart, and I reck ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... amiable and kind-hearted woman, and all accounts concur in saying that she exercised the power that she acquired over the mind of the king in a very humane and praiseworthy manner. She was always ready to interpose, when the king contemplated any act of harshness or severity, to avert his anger and save his intended victim, and, in general, she did a great deal to soften the brutality of his character, and to protect the innocent and helpless from the wrongs which he would ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... harshnessall thy suspicions. I now see it all. I forgive thee everything, but suffering this aged man to dwell in such a place, when not only my habitation, but my fortune, were at his and ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... have read the aristocratic pride of his soul in the haughty curl of his short upper lip,—the harshness of his domineering character in the lines that marked his forehead,—and the cruel sternness of his disposition in the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... household loved her. Mrs. Hurd and the other children feared and depended on her. This creature of thistle-down—this little thread and patch of humanity—felt no fear of her. It was as though his weakness divined through her harshness and unripeness those maternal and protecting powers with which her nature was in truth so richly dowered. He confided himself to her with no misgivings. He was at ease ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... then have forgiven everything for the sake of one kind word. But the kind word was not proffered, and it may be possible that I grew somewhat wayward and sullen. Though I had faults, I know now, as I felt then, harshness was the poorest inducement for the correction of them. It seems that Mr. Bingham had pledged himself to Mrs. Burwell to subdue what he called my "stubborn pride." On Friday following the Saturday on which I was so savagely beaten, Mr. Bingham again ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley |
